Arthur didn’t linger at home after he’d deposited his groceries. Instead, he exited his apartment block almost immediately, and had the misfortunate to encounter Barbara Perlmann who was heading in the opposite direction. Her head was bowed and she appeared preoccupied and worried. Even Arthur’s chauffeur outfit didn’t raise a response from her and, despite himself, her lack of interest upset him.
He stopped walking, his conscience willing him to enquire whether she was okay, but he held back, repelled by the idea of conversing with her. Don’t be a fool. He chastised himself. Barbara wouldn’t stop for you, or anyone else. Let her suffer. God knows she deserves a taste of the misery she’s given out over the years.
He carried on, crossed the road to his cab, entered it, and drove. Nearby, a man, who was talking to a slender lady in a black shawl and flowing black dress, halted his conversation to wave at him. Arthur returned the greeting. The man’s name was Vernon, a neighbour from two blocks down. The woman wasn’t recognisable, although she was familiar. Arthur had given up acquainting himself with the folks who lived in the blocks around his: so many people moved in and out it was impossible to know them all. Maybe the woman was someone he knew, maybe she wasn’t.
At a set of traffic-lights a crow landed on the bonnet of his car and strutted to his windscreen, cocking its head to peer at him with a critical eye. Two other crows pranced along the sidewalk beside the cab. Arthur blasted his horn when the lights changed and the birds fluttered off in a squawk of complaint. Even for a bird lover he’d seen too many corvids recently: they were everywhere, spying on him with their dark, questioning eyes.
When he arrived back at the depot, he entered the office to find Florence being propositioned by Davide. ‘I’ve a wonderful trumpet,’ she was informed. ‘You can blow on it anytime.’
The girl blushed and cast her eyes toward her desktop, but Davide pressed on. ‘I’m serious, Flo. You teach me how to play your maracas and you can give my horn a blow.’ Arthur’s entrance encouraged Davide to try a different tack. ‘Hey, Artie, you’re a musical man, ain’t ya? With your Scotch windbag stuff and the likes? Florence doesn’t believe I play the trumpet, how about that?’
Arthur groaned. ‘It’s bagpipes, Davide, not windbags. And you don’t play the trumpet, either. Also, I’ve listened to you sing. You ain’t got a musical note in your body.’
This made Davide harrumph. ‘You don’t appreciate my talents, that’s all. I make sweet music. Sweet. Florence, with your maracas and my trumpet we’d make wonderful sounds together.’ He leaned across her desk, lips puckered, ready for a kiss.
The girl recoiled, pushing her chair away from her desk and the approaching Davide while at the same moment Zander bounded out of his office, fingers stabbing towards the man. ‘Keep your hands off my receptionist and get to work! If I catch you making some leud pass at her one more time, I’ll kick you all around Williamsburg. And then I’ll fire you. And then… and then I’ll tell Florence’s parents for good measure. You won’t like that. Have you met her dad, Davide? He works down Rondo’s Fitness Centre and there’s two of him to one of you.’
Arthur hauled out a plastic chair and sat down with relief. With Zander supporting Flo, Arthur didn’t need to jump to her rescue. Instead, he regarded Zander with admiration as his boss continued to threaten Davide. ‘Now, stop dawdling and get out and earn me some money. For God’s sakes I need it. This company doesn’t run on air, you know.’
Davide’s expression was contrite as he retreated from Flo’s desk. ‘Hey boss, I’m sorry. I was only messing. I’ll go now.’ He scrambled for his car keys, which dangled from a hook on the wall, and all but ran out the door.
‘Thank you.’ Flo sighed, visibly relieved. Her hands shook as she reached for the bottle of drinking water she stored beside her keyboard.
‘Think nothing of it,’ Zander said, his cheeks flushed red. ‘That’s what I’m here for, I guess. Well, aside from making money. But Florence, you gotta stop taking crap from him, and from everyone else for that matter. Do you hear me? You gotta for your own sake ‘cause look at ya… he’s made a wreck out of ya.’
She snivelled, reached for a handkerchief, and nodded her head while wiping her nose.
‘So, you gotta dry those tears, right? Make your mom and dad proud of ya. Understand? Good girl… Now, everyone, let’s get back to work. This show is over.’
He headed back to his office but stopped abruptly, distracted by movement on the old television installed mid-way up his office wall. ‘Hey!’ he said, ‘I know that woman!’ He scurried into his room, climbed a chair, which creaked in protest at his weight, and turned up the volume. He remained perched on the chair seat for some time, his eyes widening with every second that went by.
An image of the Wall Street Stock Exchange switched to one where a reporter was waving Forbes magazine in the air, its pages rustling in the stiff breeze. Next, the cameras cut away to footage of a middle-aged woman with mousy hair being dragged out of the back of a cop car and up the steps of a police station. The woman stumbled upon the fifth step, as if she found it difficult to balance with handcuffs restricting her movement. When the officer she was attached to yanked her forcefully back to her feet she emitted a pathetic yelp.
‘What’s going on here? Why’s she cuffed like that?’ Zander asked the TV. ‘That’s…that’s Erica Barnes.’ Zander stabbed a finger at the screen. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘You can’t arrest her. She’s a great entrepreneur. She makes money out of thin air.’
He regarded the news bulletin some more, his eyes scrunched together as he tried to focus on the report, before repeating, ‘What have they arrested her for? Insider dealing? You are shitting me. Unregistered weaponry? Drugs?’ The cogs in Zander’s brain were almost audible as they whirled and creaked with the strain of absorbing the information. ‘How…?’
The question hung in the air for some time. The broadcast switched to a money expert in a bland TV studio. Arthur’s mind began to drift, but Zander’s didn’t. Within a few minutes he was stabbing his finger at the screen again. ‘She’s a goddamn crook.’ His face coloured with angry red blotches and his eyes widened in disbelief.
On the TV, the news coverage had swung back to the reporter outside the police station. There, the journalist bobbed his head toward the camera while he waited for his signal to talk, paused for a controlled second, then recited a series of facts that had been leaked to him by cops burdened by the need to disclose.
Zander’s face flipped from red to ashen white. ‘Goddamn it. This is bullshit! Bullshit! I don’t believe it…Not at all…How did she…? Bullshit!’ He stumbled down from the chair, pressed his hands against the side of his desk to steady himself. ‘Christ, I need to make some phone calls. I need to make sure my fucking money is safe…’ Spittle drooled down one side of his mouth.
‘Boss, are you okay?’ Arthur asked.
Zander wasn’t listening. He’d picked up the phone and punched noisily at a number. ‘Get me Mr Aikers. Now. Zander Kauffman. I don’t care if he’s busy. I’m busy, too. But I’m not so busy that I can’t make this call, and trust me, Aikers ain’t so busy that he won’t spare me two minutes of his time.’
There was a pause, before Zander spoke again. ‘Aikers, have you seen… oh, you have. What do you make of it? You put all my money in with her, didn’t you? What’s the damage?’ To Arthur’s ear, Zander had calmed down a little and was being more measured, reasonable.
There was another delay while the person at the opposite end of the call said something in reply that made Zander’s cheeks puff in and out like fish gills.
‘All of it?’ he asked. ‘Are you sure?’ His voice cracked, his eyes bulging. ‘Bottom line… beneath the bottom line? Fuck…’ He let the phone receiver drop against his desktop and waved his arms at the TV. Words appeared to escape him. His cheeks puffed out again as he sought a way to articulate what he was experiencing. ‘I trusted that woman,’ he said eventually, his voice quiet. ‘I put all my cash in the companies she’s been telling the world are a sure bet, thinking her acumen would ensure I got a nice, safe profit…’ His hands quivered as rage overtook. ‘Then she goes and gets herself arrested for insider trading! Bloody Erica Barnes! Lining her own pockets at the expense of everyone else! If this man gets a hold of her, he’ll put a noose around her neck himself. And drop the floor so her legs dangle. And haul on her feet so it hurts more. Bloody thief!’ He waved his hands towards his employees. ‘Out! Out! I need some privacy. Close the door behind youse. I gotta speak with my broker some more, see if I can salvage any of this.’
Arthur retreated, made to shut the door. Before he did so, the television channel changed location again, this time revealing the same wide leafy driveway he’d driven to earlier, with the arcade of trees on each side of the road and the little guardhouse at the vast gates. The commentary revealed more about Erica Barnes’ wrong doings: ‘Police surrounded her home sometime this morning and arrested her on several charges of financial misconduct. It’s been confirmed that while they were gathering evidence of these crimes they stumbled upon a surprising cache of weaponry and illegal narcotics located within her mansion. Sources say local law enforcement officers were stunned at the find, stating they’d always considered Ms Barnes a model citizen.’
‘We said she was bad.’
Arthur was startled by Tina, who’d crept up beside him. ‘What?’ Somehow, the woman had snuck into the private part of the office without any of the staff protesting. ‘You shouldn’t be in here,’ he hissed. ‘If Zander spots you, there’s no telling what he might do, especially with the temper he’s in’.
She ignored this. ‘Weren’t you listening when we remarked how cold Erica Barnes was, how she lacked empathy. A horrible person. Nasty to the core.’
There was no arguing with that. If the reports were correct it was as well the cops had caught up with her. It meant there was one less criminal in the world. However, her arrest left Arthur with one nasty suspicion. ‘You knew her well, then?’
Tina responded with a sharp intake of breath. ‘We didn’t know her at all.’ There was a hint of restraint in her voice as she held back from saying something she’d regret. ‘We had a business appointment, that is all.’
‘A business appointment?’ Arthur feigned confusion. ‘So… you had business dealings with her?’
He wanted to ask if those dealings had involved heroin or coke, but Tina was already heading back to the front office, leaving Arthur no option but to follow. Over her shoulder she said, ‘We do business with lots of people. Some of those are good, some are bad, most are somewhere in the middle. But that’s all it is, business. There’s nothing personal in it. As a matter of fact, in the morning we have business in Islip, and after that we have another job to do back in Brooklyn.’
Tina’s two companions hovered near the public entrance. They were both agitated, flapping their arms up and down with impatience.
Lara reproached Arthur irritably. ‘You took too much time off. We should have been at our next appointment an hour ago.’
‘It’s fine, Lara.’ Tina said, ‘I’ve told him we will do the Islip job tomorrow…’
‘Did you, now?’ Lara didn’t appear happy with that. ‘Well then, if things go wrong, we’ll know who to blame.’
Arthur was grateful Tina was on his side in this argument. ‘It won’t go wrong,’ she told her companions. ‘When does it ever?’
Perhaps, if he hadn’t been so worn down by the events of the last couple of days, Arthur would have enjoyed their spat. Still, he should pretend to be enthusiastic about the task ahead. Especially since everyone was listening in. ‘So, we need an early start again, do we?’
The question made Lara scowl. ‘That’s not a problem, is it?’ Her voice was frosty.
‘No,’ he said, ‘not at all.’ A few extra hours in bed wouldn’t have gone amiss though, and he was disappointed that the women were depriving him of that luxury. Rather, Lara scowled at him. ‘That’s just as well. We will start especially early tomorrow in order to make up for the time we’ve wasted today.’
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