World Gone Water (6 page)

“So when can you start?” Teddy asked.

I told him I could begin immediately.

We stood and shook hands, and like that I was Buckley Cosmetics' newest runner, a position I learned had an amorphous set of responsibilities. There were certain absolutes: The three supply rooms, one on each floor of both buildings, were to be inventoried and restocked daily; the out-of-state lawyers fighting JSB's various legal wars were to be shuttled to the airport on Friday afternoons and picked up again on Monday mornings; a catered lunch was to be provided daily on each floor, each entrée from a different restaurant (JSB's theory about this was that if he catered lunch, the lawyers were less likely to disappear for hours in the afternoon); the buildings were to be opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 7 p.m. I came to understand that the largest responsibility, by far, was to be ready to be called into action should the need arise: a last-minute run to FedEx; spinning one of the family's Mercedes through the local car wash; beating the clock at the courthouse clerk's office with a legal filing, etc.

My first day on the job, I was certain I'd made a serious error in judgment.

“We could lose our jobs any day,” my fellow runner Trish said on my inaugural courthouse run. “We're all just waiting to get fired. A lot of people have already quit.”

Trish's grim prediction spooked me. I'd hoped that I'd quickly rise through the ranks to more hours and more money. More importantly, to be identified with Buckley, a brand everyone knew, would go a long way toward obliterating my anonymous past. The possibility that the opposite would happen was a disaster, and I began to wonder what I'd do if it came to pass.

I envisioned myself a foot soldier under JSB's command.

And no job was too small.

When JSB needed someone to fetch a tie from his gleaming mansion, I volunteered, punching in the gate code, letting myself into the empty house. My worn loafers clicked against the Italian marble floor as I took in the spectacular view of Phoenix from the kitchen bay windows. I opened the refrigerator to peek at the groceries of the rich and famous, expecting the labels to be fancier, the foods richer, surprised by the inventory of everyday brands you could find in
anyone's
refrigerator. I traipsed through the tastefully decorated living room (furnished with the same style and color of furniture as the Buckley offices) into the master bedroom, a room as large as the front room. I stood before the bathroom mirror and ran my fingers through my hair, marveling at my infiltration of such a nice house. I thought about how my ghostly footprints would never be known by JSB or any of the fabulous people who most certainly came through JSB's front door, how once I stepped back out into the driveway, it would be like I'd never been here.

I finally saw Jay Stanton Buckley again the second time I paid a visit to his house, some two months after I started working at Buckley. JSB sometimes liked to walk the few miles between the office and home for exercise (shrugging off the concerns for his
safety from the investors who wanted his blood, according to the papers), and so one of the runners would drive his Mercedes to his house at lunch, with a runner in a company vehicle following. As the last hire, I was never offered the lead position in this two-car caravan; but one day JSB walked home without notifying anyone, calling for his car after all of the other runners had gone home, save me and Trish. Trish had no interest in driving JSB's Mercedes (she was afraid she'd wreck it), and so I confidently took the keys from Teddy, barely hearing his warning to be careful.

I had, to that moment, driven every car in the Buckley fleet except JSB's Mercedes. Once every week or so, two runners would spend an entire day driving the company cars through the car wash that was a mile or so away, including the company's twin tan Cadillac limousines, which sat like sleeping tigers in the back of the employee parking lot. But I'd never been closer to JSB's Mercedes than walking by it on my way into the building (it was the lead position in the row of employee parking, closest to the door, and directly in sight of JSB's office window, so I rarely stopped to admire it). It was like no Mercedes I'd ever seen, and there was a rumor that it had been imported from Europe. The dark blue interior matched the custom paint job, and I had to adjust the driver's seat to account for the difference between JSB's 6'2” frame and my 5'11” reach. I carefully started the immaculate car, the dashboard and stereo lighting up as I surveyed the gauges and JSB's preset radio stations. After adjusting the rearview mirror (but not the side mirrors; I couldn't figure out how), I backed the car out of its spot and pulled into traffic, Trish behind me in the company van.

The drive up Camelback Road to JSB's house was a short one, but I savored every mile, the Mercedes floating along the streets, banking softly with the slightest turn of the steering wheel, as if the machine were reading my mind. I eased the car into JSB's driveway,
punched in the gate code, and touched the accelerator to climb the sharp incline. My instructions were to leave the keys in the car, but I recognized my chance and strolled through the marble portico and knocked on the solid wood of the front door. Trish threw her hands in the air and shrugged, and I smiled back.

The heavy door swung open and JSB stood towering over me, beaming, his jacket and tie replaced with a polo shirt bearing the Buckley logo.

“I … I brought your car,” I said, stammering, caught without anything to say.

“Great!” JSB said. “Do you want something to drink?” He stepped back to let me in.

“Who is it?” a voice asked. A smallish, impeccably groomed woman appeared from the kitchen. “Oh, hello.”

“This is Charlie,” JSB said. “He's a good guy.” JSB slapped me on the back with a force that propelled me forward. That JSB knew my name was an unaccountable thrill.

“Very nice to meet you,” the woman said.

“Here are the keys,” I said dumbly.

The woman disappeared into the kitchen and JSB followed her, reappearing with two cans of soda. “For the road,” he said. I took the cans, wanting instead to be invited for dinner, to eat from expensive china and hear conversations littered with references to JSB's friends: Ivan Boesky, the Wall Streeter who was eventually busted for insider trading; Michael Milken, the genius junk bond financier at Drexel Burnham whom the government charged with securities violations (my economics teacher at Randolph, a former broker at Drexel, first introduced me to the idea of junk bonds, and to the name Michael Milken; he began every class by pulling a bottle of Pepto-Bismol from his leather briefcase and chugging a healthy swig); or Sir James Goldsmith, the billionaire merchant banker.
I relished the idea of annotating this fantasy dinner conversation with what little I knew about anything, indicating gently that I was willing to learn, wanted to be an apprentice.

My new ranking among the runners was quickly apparent when Teddy approached me about a mission JSB wanted carried out. The noose was tightening around Buckley Cosmetics, it seemed, and JSB was making plans for life post-Buckley, having rented office space up the road for a real estate consulting firm. Few knew that JSB had handpicked a group of executives to move with him to this new business, and he wanted to furnish the new offices with furniture from the Buckley offices. So as not to alarm those employees who were not in the know, the furniture would be moved before and after working hours, JSB and others placing a small orange sticker on items that were to be moved up to the new offices.

Secrecy was an essential element of the transition, and Teddy deputized me and Lance, another runner, for this very important responsibility. At first, Lance and I moved effortlessly, making a run in the morning and one in the afternoon; the offices up the road filled quickly with expensive furniture. We moved silent as cat burglars until a marble credenza we could barely lift wouldn't fit in the elevator.

“Should we even be doing this?” Lance asked me, exasperated. Lance had, from the outset, agreed to the mission simply because he wanted the overtime.

“I'm sure it's fine,” I replied, unsure if it was or not.

“Then why do we have to sneak around like this?”

I smelled revolt and did my best to quell it. “Teddy wouldn't involve us in anything underhanded,” I said, a truth Lance couldn't deny.

Lance waited with the credenza, which we parked in the atrium of the small office building, the other occupants glancing at it curiously as they filed in for another day at the office, while I called
Teddy to apprise him of the situation. The twenty or so tenants seemed to know that Jay Stanton Buckley was moving into their building, and they watched from their windowed offices as Lance and I brought expensive piece after expensive piece through the front door, up the elevator, and down the hall to the newly rented corner offices.

Teddy's instructions about the credenza did not make Lance happy.

“This is ridiculous,” Lance said as I relayed Teddy's directive to take the credenza to the unused stables on JSB's property.

The code for the back gate was the same as the code for the front, and we committed the combination to memory as we punched it in time and time again, the gates opening slowly as we ferried the overflow of furniture to the stables. Three or four runs in, Lance asked to be relieved of his overtime duties, and Teddy took his place without comment, gabbing with the Tongans who landscaped JSB's property while we unloaded our take in the crisp fall morning air. I hoped JSB would remember my stamina when he made the move from Buckley to his new offices.

My interest was more than simple employment: If I could catch JSB on his next upswing, a new life could be made, I guessed.

The government had caught wind of JSB's intention to flee, and upon my early arrival one morning I was met with the unhappy news that the FBI wanted to talk to me and Lance and Teddy. In fact, Teddy was already being interviewed in the conference room in legal. I sprinted across the compound to find out what was going on, a wild look in my eyes, bumping into William, a Southern lawyer who worked for JSB.

“What is it?” he asked.

I explained to him what was happening and he called me into his office and shut the door.

“What's the truth about the furniture?” he asked, sitting behind his desk.

I told him the whole story, about Buckley's new offices, about the moving expeditions before and after work, about the stash of furniture in JSB's stables. A horrified look clouded William's face. In the short time that I'd known him, I'd come to know that he was an aboveboard guy who did not tolerate dishonesty.

“My advice is to tell them the whole thing,” he said. “It's a felony to remove property from a bankruptcy estate.” It was the first time I understood that Buckley Cosmetics had filed for bankruptcy, rather than having the impression that it was an option. William's words were not the legal comfort I was searching for. I wanted him to jump out from behind his desk, outraged, ready to defend me against the crush of a maniacal government run amok.

It occurred to me that I might be in real trouble and I cursed JSB for putting me in a vulnerable position.

The conference room door swung open and a red-faced Teddy charged out, asking over his shoulder, “Should I get a lawyer?” The two young, fresh-faced FBI agents answered that that was up to him. Teddy spotted me coming out of William's office. “The boys had nothing to do with it,” Teddy added.

“Thank you for your time,” one of the agents said, motioning for me to take a seat at the conference table.

The legal conference room was a naturally dark room, its eastern exposure partially blocked by the accounting building across the compound. The FBI agents did not turn on the lights, but took their seats across the table from me. The credenza populated with tiny crystal tombstones commemorating Buckley's various product launches caught what light was available, twinkling like a constellation behind them.

“We already know from Teddy about your recent activities,” the one agent said. “We just want to hear it from you.”

The agent's use of Teddy's nickname frightened me.

“Are you aware that what you've done is a crime?” the other agent said. “One felony count for each item removed.”

I looked the agents in the eye. I wanted to let them know that their tactics didn't scare me, but it wouldn't have been the truth. I told them what they wanted to know. Teddy had failed to mention the cache of furniture on JSB's property, and I drew them a detailed map, providing them with the gate code, the last ounce of loyalty draining from my body.

A ringing phone in the middle of the night is always bad news, but when Talie's out with her friend Holly, it's always the same bad news. “Charlie,” Talie's voice falters on the other end. “Will you pick me up?”

I try to rationalize, try to say it might be something else, too drunk to drive, lost her keys,
anything
.

I wish Talie would've called Dale, but Dale wants to marry Talie and something like this might change his mind, even though Talie has never said she wants to marry Dale.

I'd like to see Dale handle this one.

The scene at Holly's is as predictable as it was in high school, and I get into my old routine: ask Holly how Talie is, how it happened, who this time, where she is now.

For a change, Holly isn't acting groggy, like she doesn't know the details.

“It was this asshole from Texas,” she says, crying.

Cowboys. I can't stand them. Many cowboys have seen the inside of Holly's apartment, which looks newly cleaned, each magazine and remote control whisked back to its proper place in anticipation of after-hours company. It's not me she had in mind when she cleaned earlier.

“She didn't do anything,” Holly is saying, defending Talie's behavior. I haven't even accused anybody and Holly is spinning the defense—this is how bad it really is.