Pleading guilty

TAPE 3

D. The Head of Finance Pagnucci said, 'That was troubling,' as we headed toward my office after the meeting, strolling down the book-lined corridor. Martin and the decorators have decided that it is the right touch to fill the halls with the gold-spined federal and state reporters, though it's hell on the associates, who never know where to find the volumes they need.

Carl was in town from DC for the second time this week. Eager to please TN, and to minimize their dealings with other large firms, we had opened the Washington office fifteen years ago to handle matters before the FAA and CAB. When airline regulation went the way of white tennis balls, we had about thirty lawyers with nothing to do. Enter Pagnucci, a former Supreme Court law clerk to Justice Rehnquist, with six million dollars in annual billings, thanks to Ronald Reagan, who in 1982 made Carl the youngest member ever of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The saying about law firms is that there are finders, minders, and grinders, referring first to people like Carl and Martin and Brushy who find big-time, big-money clients to employ them, then the service partners, guys like me, who make sure that skilled work is carried out by supervising the third group, the young toilers laboring in the library amid the ghosts of dead trees. The sad fact is that there are far fewer finders than minders and the finders increasingly demand more of the pie. Carl left his former firm because they were not contemporary enough, meaning they did not pay him what he thought he was worth, and his very presence among us on those terms means we have to make sure the same thing does not happen here. There are only so many ways to do it. Maybe you can get the associates to stay another quarter hour past midnight, or pile on charges for ludicrous extras -fifty cents a page for running sensitive documents through our shredder – but in the end the best way for the top guys to stay ahead is if they have fewer people to share with, fire a few minders and give Carl their points. Lots of people around G amp; G claimed we'd never do it, but the pressure's there, and Carl, who heads the subcommittee on firm finances, has never expressed the same resolve. No doubt he thought that's what I wanted now – to lobby him about next year's pay – and as soon as my door was closed he raised another subject. 'So what's the latest from the Missing Persons Unit?'

'Gaining a little ground,' I said. 'Still no sight of our man.'

'Hmm,' said Pagnucci. He allowed himself a bit of a frown. 'I had a request to make to you as head of finance.'

He nodded. No words. He was steeling himself. Unconsciously he raised a hand to his head. There's a bald spot the size of an orange at the back of his head and you can tell from the way he's always fussing that it drives him nuts – the imperfection, the lack of control, the fact that he is as subject as anyone else to the whims of fate. 'Suppose I told you I want to take a trip to Pico Luan?'

Carl deliberated. Even crossed up, he was disinclined to quickly agree.

'You didn't think that was such a clever idea earlier this week.' 'It's the only lead I have left.'

Carl nodded. He'd been right from the start; he could accept that. For my own part, I felt too much vestigial loyalty to tell him there was something squirrelly about Martin's account of his phone call to the International Bank of Finance.

'There's a lawyer down there I'd like to retain. Subject to your approval.' I handed him the card I'd gotten from Lagodis. 'The guy's supposed to do black magic getting stuff out of the banks.'

Pagnucci made a sound but otherwise failed to react. Off-camera, Pagnucci has quite a life, this trim little guy with a stiff little mustache cuts some figure. He's on wife number four – each of them blondes, drop-dead gorgeous, who are getting progressively taller as his marriages wear on – and he runs himself to work in one modified Formula One car or another, Shelbys and Lotuses, all kinds of hot stuff. At some point, maybe all day, his fantasy life must be running wild, John Wayne movies probably, banal stuff like that. But in the office, none of it shows. Not a muscle twitches. He did not seem to have any more to say now. He touched the corner of his mustache with a lacquered fingernail.

'I was going to charge the trip to the recruiting budget, frankly,' I said. 'I'll probably take someone with me to witness any interviews. But I wanted you to know so there's no squawk when the bills come through.' 'Have you talked to Martin or Wash about this?'

'I'd rather not.' I was telling Carl a good deal now and he absorbed it like all else in silence. I was taking a chance. But Carl by his nature liked keeping things to himself. And I couldn't see him vetoing his own idea.

'You're turning out to be a much more complicated fellow than I imagined,' said Pagnucci. I tipped my head slightly. I thought it might be a compliment. Before he opened my door, Carl said, 'Keep me in the loop,' then drifted off, smug and unruffled, leaving behind his usual aura: every soul for itself.

Rational self-interest is Carl's creed. He worships at the altar of the free market. The same way Freud thought everything was sex, Pagnucci believes all social interaction, no matter how complex, can be adjusted by finding a way to put a price on it. Urban housing. Education. We need competition and profit motive to make it all work. It is, I know, quite a theory. Let everybody struggle to get their bucket in the stream and then do what they like with the water they fish out. Some will make steam, some will take a drink, a few fellows or ladies will decide to take a bath. Entrepreneurship will flourish; people will be happy; we'll get all this nifty indispensable stuff like balsamic vinegar and menthol cigarettes. But what kind of ethical social system takes as its fundamental precepts the words ‘I 'me' and 'mine'? Our two-year-olds start like that and we spend the next twenty years trying to teach them there's more than that to life.

I stayed down for the evening, cleaning up what I'd ignored while running all over town the last couple of days. Memos and letters. I returned all my calls. I hadn't eaten much. I was tired, my eyes and bones felt acid-etched from the hangover. Now and then I closed my eyes and thought I could still catch far back in my throat the fierce taste of rye, which I savored.

Eventually I picked up the Dictaphone. The city out the window at this hour has a sort of painted stillness, all black forms and random lights: a woodcut pattern – gray on indigo and jet. A lone car races up the ridges of the superhighway. I am one more life in hiding amid the occasional heaving and cranking of a big building in the darkness, talking to myself. A single coast guard icebreaker's mast light bucks along the river.

It seems increasingly obvious, even to me, that I'll never show a word of this to anyone on the Committee. Ignoring the insults, which I could cross out, I've lied to or hidden things from each of them half a dozen times. And for you, sweet Elaine, a Dictaphone or some typing won't really make our communication improve. So we all wonder: who am I talking to?

In my mind's eye, there are faces. Don't ask me whose. But I see some reasoning and sensate being who will get hold of this thing, some someone of largely indecipherable characteristics who I nonetheless find myself addressing now and then. You. The universal You. U You, in my mind. Gender, age, and disposition unknown. Experience unimagined. A somebody floating like dust in the outer reaches of the cosmos. But still – I think, bud, this is for you.

Of course, I try to imagine reactions. You could be a copper, or a Bureau agent, with a soul rough as sandpaper, who locks this up at night to make sure your wife does not get ruffled by the bad words, while you, when you're alone, rifle the pages looking for another passage about my hand on my crank. Maybe you're some fifty-year-old Irishman who thinks I don't sound a bit like you do. Or a kid who says this is boring. Or a professor who concludes it is generally vile.

Whoever, I want something from You. Not admiration, God knows, I don't feel much for myself. What more can I call it but connection? Comprehend. Let that mighty magic lightning flow across the gaps of space and time. From me. To you. And back. The way the bolts explode from sky to earth and then bounce again into the heavens and the universe beyond. Going on forever, to the regions where the physicists tell us matter equals time. While in one spot on this single humble planet, a tree is split, a rooftop smokes, a human being sits awake and startled by the miracle of energy and light.