Lights Out Read online

  No one seemed to notice Eddie. Maybe they thought that just by being there he was perfect too, a millionaire returning from a morning jog, on his way upstairs where a wardrobe full of finery awaited. Eddie, in the role of the jogging millionaire, walked to the elevator as though he had a right to be there and rode up to the ninth floor.

  He stepped into a hall that smelled of flowers. Sounds were muted, the carpet creamy and thick. As he moved along it, Eddie forgot how to play the jogging millionaire; he degenerated quickly into someone else, some lesser character, not even up to his own level, a short-of-breath character with a heart beating too fast and too light, like some cheap over-wound tinny thing. A character who was light-headed when he reached his brother’s door.

  There was no sign saying Windward Financial Services, nothing but a number and brass knocker. Eddie stood outside the door in that hushed hall that smelled like a garden in spring, the sole sound the pulse in his ears. He faced the thought that had risen in his mind, demanding recognition: turn back. Eddie knew that turning back was the right thing to do. Fifteen years was too long, those fifteen years especially. The building itself sent the message. Leave it, leave town, leave the past completely: Eddie knew that with certainty. But his hand went to the knocker anyway, raised it and knocked. The tinny thing inside him was under the control of something more powerful than logic.

  Ten or fifteen seconds passed. Maybe no one was inside, maybe the bookstore boy’s information was wrong, maybe-

  The door opened. On the other side stood a big man in a pinstripe suit. He wore half glasses, had graying hair, a fleshy face, a thickened body. It took Eddie a few moments to see Jack somewhere inside him.

  “Yes?” Jack said.

  “Jack.” There was mist in the air all of a sudden, blurring his vision, the way it had blurred as the white station wagon drove him out of prison. None of that, Eddie told himself, and made it go away. “Jack. It’s me.”

  Jack took off his half glasses and stared. “Oh, my God.” He covered his heart. “Oh, my God.”

  And next? Eddie was ready for a handshake, an embrace. Neither happened. Jack looked over his shoulder. At a coffee table in the room behind him sat a blond woman in a gray-flannel suit, a little coffee cup in her hand; there was a French name for it that Eddie couldn’t remember. She was straining to see who was outside.

  “Eddie. Jesus.” Jack turned to the woman. “One second, Karen,” he said. Then he stepped out into the hall, half closing the door behind him.

  Jack glanced up and down the hall. He had a little pouch of fat under his chin. “You’re not …”

  “Not what?”

  “On the lam, or anything?”

  On the lam. Was this an attempt to speak the language he thought Eddie’s? The tiny and archaic phrase measured the enormity between them. Eddie almost laughed. “I’ve paid my debt to society,” he said with a straight face. As long as they were going to talk silly.

  Jack got it. He smiled. Jack had changed a lot, but his smile was the same: a flash that promised fun, lots of it and slightly dangerous. “You son of a bitch,” he said.

  Then came the embrace. They threw their arms around each other. Jack was still big and strong, but now there was some softness to his body. He shook a little. Eddie realized Jack was crying. Walking down the hall he’d been close to crying too. Now it was an impossibility.

  They separated. Jack held him at arm’s length. “You look good, Eddie.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How are you?”

  “All right.”

  “You’re in shape.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How are you?”

  “All right.”

  “God, I’m glad to hear that.” Jack looked into the room.

  “Have I come at a bad time?” Eddie asked.

  “So what’s new?”

  Jack laughed. Eddie didn’t.

  Jack wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ve got a client, that’s all. Come in, if you don’t mind waiting in the bedroom. I’d get rid of her, but I’ve been trying to sew this deal up for months. It won’t be long.”

  “I can come back, if you like.”

  “Come back?” Jack said. “Bro!” And he wrapped his arm around Eddie’s neck in that old familiar lock, half dragging him into the room.

  “Karen,” he said, letting Eddie go. “I want you to meet someone very special to me-my brother, Eddie. Eddie, Karen de Vere.”

  “A pleasure,” the woman said. She wore tortoiseshell glasses; behind their lenses her eyes were cool blue.

  “Eddie’s just dropped in from out of town,” Jack said. “Rather unexpectedly, but that’s Eddie.” He moved Eddie toward the bedroom. The Monarch fell out of Eddie’s pocket. The woman leaned forward in her chair to see what it was. Eddie stooped to pick it up.

  “Where do you live, Eddie?” the woman asked.

  Jack was watching him. “Upstate,” Eddie said.

  “Whereabouts?” said the woman. “I’m from upstate myself.”

  Buffalo? Syracuse? Were those considered upstate, or did the term refer only to the towns near New York? Eddie wasn’t sure. “Albany,” he said.

  “I’ve got a lot of friends there,” the woman said. “I grew up on a farm near Troy.”

  Jack said: “It’s a small world.” Then, to Eddie: “We won’t be too long. Help yourself to the minibar. Within reason.” He smiled, to show the woman that it was a joke, and Eddie was a bit of a character.

  Eddie went into Jack’s bedroom. He heard the woman say, “He sounds just like you.” The door closed behind him.

  Except for all the electronic equipment, Jack’s bedroom reminded Eddie of a movie he’d seen in the inmates’ rec room, a movie where a bitter couple lived in luxury and said nasty things to each other. And then there was the equipment: four computer terminals, three phones, a printer, and what he assumed to be a fax machine; even as he watched, it dropped a sheet of paper into a tray. He glanced at it: all numbers and abbreviations, incomprehensible to him.

  Eddie looked out the window. Jack had a view of Central Park. The landscape was brown, with a few gray patches of snow here and there. Rain was falling again, billowing past in long curving patterns. Down below, dull-colored people beetled along like characters in a computer game.

  Warm and dry, all city sounds muffled, Eddie watched them for a while. This was nice. He opened the minibar, found beer and wine and a carton of orange juice at the back. “Not from concentrate. Shake first for better taste.” He sat in a gilded chair, shook the carton, drank from it. Delicious. One of the computer screens flashed a message about Vestron dividends. The fax machine slid out another sheet. Eddie got up and looked at it. This one was from the Mount Olive Extended Care Residence and Spa in Darien, Connecticut. “Dear Mr. Nye: Please call re your account.” Then came another fax full of numbers and abbreviations.

  A copy of the Financial Times lay on the couch. Eddie picked it up and started reading. In this room it began to make sense. Eddie recalled El Rojo poring over Business Week. He and Jack could probably have found a lot to talk about. Eddie couldn’t imagine Jack at the steel table in the prison library, but he could easily picture El Rojo in a room like this. El Rojo probably had whole houses like it in Colombia, or on the Riviera, or some other fancy place Eddie had encountered in his reading. That would make living in that cell in C-Block all the more unbearable. Eddie recalled the picture of El Rojo’s son, the dead shot in the cowboy outfit-Gaucho, wasn’t it, and hadn’t he had some other name too? — and found himself admiring El Rojo’s stoicism, his self-control. Of all the inmates Eddie had known, he’d had the most to lose; and he’d lost it.

  At that moment, Gaucho’s real name came to him: Simon. After the Liberator.

  Jack entered the room. “What’s that?” he said.

  Eddie realized he’d spoken “the Liberator” aloud. “Nothing.”

  Jack had a check in his hand. He stuck it inside his jacket pocket, gazed at E
ddie, shook his head. “This is something,” he said. “Really something. I’m having trouble believing it’s true. That you’re here, and everything.”

  “Me too.”

  Jack laughed. “The same old Eddie.”

  “No.”

  “No, of course not. Sorry. How are you, really?”

  Before Eddie could reply, the fax produced another document. Jack went over, scanned it quickly-more than quickly, almost with the speed of a character in a silent movie-checked the other faxes in the tray, checked the computer screens, turned.

  “Hungry? I’m going to order up some lunch. Or do you want to go out?”

  Eddie wasn’t hungry. The bookstore boy’s little three-cornered pastry had somehow filled him up. “Whatever you like,” he said.

  “Let’s eat in,” Jack said. “Give us more time. There’s so much I want to ask you. This is just so …” Words failed him. He smiled helplessly, then flipped Eddie a menu and sat down at the desk. “Just one sec.” He began tapping on a keyboard.

  “What are you doing?” Eddie asked.

  “Hedging.”

  Eddie studied the menu. Many choices, many foreign words, prices he wasn’t prepared for. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

  “Pasta salad okay?” Jack asked, reaching for the phone. It buzzed before he could pick it up. He answered, listened, then rose and began pacing back and forth as far as the phone cord permitted, as though it were a leash. “That wasn’t our agreement,” he said. “They’re asking the impossible.” He listened, paced. “You’d better not be,” he said, his voice rising. Eddie could hear a tiny voice protesting on the other end. Jack hung up.

  He glanced at Eddie, stopped pacing, composed himself. “Everything you’ve read about those pricks is true,” he said. “Just like bloodsuckers except they do it for pleasure. The money has nothing to do with it.”

  “What pricks?”

  “Wall Street pricks.” Jack snapped off his tie. He quickly undressed down to boxer shorts and knee-length socks, threw open a huge closet full of clothes. His body had grown top-heavy, his legs thinner. They were trembling slightly. He selected a new shirt, new tie, new suit, all of which looked almost identical to what he’d had on before, and began putting them on. Eddie followed every move, fascinated as a neophyte allowed in the master’s studio; or like a boy watching his father.

  “Got to pass on lunch,” Jack said, knotting his new tie in a quick fluid pinwheel of navy and crimson. “Just order up whatever you want. Or call Hector, he’s the concierge. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He hurried through the bedroom door, came right back. “It’s great to have you here,” he said. “Just great. We’ll celebrate tonight.” He left, returned again. “Sorry I have to run off-I’m so excited about this I can’t tell you.” He went, came back once more. “Don’t bother answering the phone-the machine’ll take it.” Then he was gone.

  Eddie sat on the gilded chair in Jack’s bedroom. He didn’t order food because he wasn’t hungry, didn’t drink from the minibar because he’d drunk too much at L’Oasis, didn’t go out because he was afraid he might have trouble getting back in. To make himself useful, he picked Jack’s suit off the floor and carried it to the closet. He folded the pants, hung them on a wooden hanger, slid the jacket on top. He was about to hook the hanger over the rail when he remembered the check Jack had stuck in the inside pocket. He reached for it out of curiosity, just wanting to see.

  It was a check drawn on the Banque de Geneve et Zurich, made out to Windward Financial Services, signed by Karen de Vere. The amount was $230,000. Eddie put it back.

  The phone rang. Eddie didn’t pick it up. A voice said: “Mr. Nye. This is the billing department. Please call to discuss your account at your earliest convenience.” Eddie returned to the closet and looked at the check again.

  He went into the sitting room, sat down on the couch where Karen de Vere had been. The cushions were still warm from her body; very slightly, but he could feel it. There were a lot of papers spread out on the coffee table. Some bore the letterhead of Windward Financial Services, some were the prospectuses of companies listed on the stock exchange, some had nothing on them but more numbers and abbreviations. Going through them, Eddie discovered a glossy brochure with Jack’s picture on the cover.

  Jack was standing in front of 222 Park Avenue: the number was visible behind him. His hair was a little darker and thicker, his face a little darker and thinner, and he was smiling his smile. Eddie opened the brochure and began reading.

  He learned a lot about his brother: how he was the president and founder of Windward Financial Services, one of the top-ten small financial consultancies in the nation, according to Crain’s New York Business (1990); how before that he had been the president and founder of J. M. Nye and Associates, a private investment firm that had specialized in trading high-yield bonds in the eighties, and had been acquired by a Belgian conglomerate (1988); how he had houses in Connecticut and Aspen; how he and his wife were skiers and golfers; how he’d graduated from USC with a degree in engineering.

  Eddie stopped right there. He checked the graduation date: three years after the summer at Galleon Beach, which was when Jack would have graduated had he stayed in school.

  But he hadn’t, had he? He’d left during his freshman year. Maybe he’d gone back, somehow made up the work he’d missed, graduated on schedule. Then Eddie recalled that Jack hadn’t left USC, exactly. He remembered the letter he’d found in Jack’s cabin at Galleon Beach, remembered what he hadn’t understood at the time and had almost forgotten: Jack had been expelled, permanently.

  Meaning what? He didn’t know; didn’t know enough about how the world worked to even guess. He flipped on the TV. Wile E. Coyote lost his balance and fell off a cliff.

  16

  Although he had never been to France, Eddie dreamed he was in a French cafe. The elements of the dream: a little cup of the type Karen de Vere had held in her lap-in his dream he remembered it was called demitasse; snails dripping with garlic butter; blue smoke. He smelled smoke-even as he smelled it wondering if the smell had triggered the dream: didn’t dreams pass in seconds? — and opened his eyes.

  It was dark. He lay on the couch in the sitting room of Jack’s suite at the Hotel Palazzo. The night glow of the city came through the window. The only other light was a red cigarette end moving back and forth along the opposite wall.

  “Jack?”

  The tiny red light was still. “Did I wake you?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Late. Sorry.”

  “No problem. Did you sort out whatever it was?”

  “Partly.”

  The red light began moving again, back and forth.

  “Do you live here, Jack?”

  “It’s where I lay my weary head.” No mention of Aspen or Connecticut.

  Eddie sat up. The smell was irresistible. “Got another cigarette?”

  “You smoke?”

  “Trying to quit. It’s prong one of my three-pronged plan.”

  There was a soft smack on the coffee table-the cigarette pack; and a softer one-the matches. Eddie lit up.

  “I give up,” said Jack.

  “About what?”

  “Prongs two and three.”

  “Steam bath, which I haven’t had yet. And take nothing with me.”

  “Did you?”

  “I took my sneakers,” Eddie said. But he knew the break hadn’t been as clean as that. There was El Rojo’s hundred dollars, for starters. That had led to Sookray and Senor Paz. Then there was Prof’s charcoal drawing. That had led to Tiffany, who was in contact with Sookray. He hadn’t made a clean break at all; his old community reached out for him.

  “Still wear a ten?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “There’re boxes of tens around here somewhere. Jogging, tennis, loafers, Christ knows what else. I’ve got this personal shopper, don’t ask me why. Take what you want.”

  The red-tip glow kept moving,
back and forth.

  Eddie said: “You got rich.”

  Jack made a sound, half laughter, half choking on cigarette smoke. “Rich? What’s rich?”

  “This place. Boxes of shoes. Personal shopper, whatever that is.” A check for $230,000 left in a jacket on the floor.

  “That’s not rich, Eddie. Rich is never having to worry about money. Never having to think about it. Just living in it, like the air you breathe.”

  “Is Bobby rich?”

  “Bobby?”

  “Falardeau. He says he’s set for life.”

  The red light stopped, brightened, moved on.

  “You went home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Saw Bobby?”

  “And Vic.”

  “What made you do that?”

  “Bobby I ran into. Vic … I don’t know.”

  “He’s a pathetic drunk.”

  “The whole town’s kind of pathetic now.”

  “It was always pathetic. How about a drink?”

  “What’s BCC?”

  “Mining and metals.”

  “They fired Vic.”

  “That’s such a loaded word,” Jack said. “I wish people would stop using it. Firing’s just an expression of socioeconomic forces. You can’t fight forces like that. All you can do is get on their backs and ride them.”

  “I’ll tell Vic that the next time I see him.”

  Jack laughed again, this time without choking. “How about that drink?”

  “Okay.”

  The red light went out. Then came bumping sounds and clinking sounds.

  “You like Armagnac?”

  “What is it?”

  “Cognac, but snobbier.”

  “That’s me.”

  Jack appeared in the pool of pink-orange night glow, sat across the table with brandy snifters and a bottle. His half glasses were up on his forehead; there were deep pockets under his eyes, garish pits in the city light.

  “Bobby’s set for life, all right,” said Jack as he poured, “but I wouldn’t call him rich. He could have been rich, but he didn’t have the balls.”