CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
Shore Parkway, Manhattan
WITH DERRICK taking care of matters pertaining to the SEC, Simon seized upon the opportunity to pick his daughter up at the airport. Jennifer was eager to spend a few days in New York and, in addition to doing a little shopping, she was looking forward to seeing her father’s new apartment. The architecturally stunning ‘The Gladium’ was now one the city’s most impressive structures.
Marcus had called during the drive to JFK and couldn’t help lamenting the convalescence he still required. “All I do is eat and watch TV,” Marcus joked, while talking into a mid-wire mic that dangled from his earpiece. Simon smiled when he heard the sound of crutches creaking under what he presumed to be Marcus’s expanding waistline. Previous conversations had confirmed that he wasn’t getting as much exercise as he should.
“I gotta get out more,” Marcus complained. The dimensions of his modest apartment seemed to be decreasing by the day. More creaking, more frustration was exhaled. “Hey, would our benefits plan cover the rental of one of those motorized buggies?”
A humorous vision attempted to divert Simon’s attention from the road. “You mean those things people drive around shopping malls?” Again Simon couldn’t help seeing the humour in the situation. “I can have Samantha arrange that for you, if you’d like.” Simon was talking in hands free mode while travelling southeast, alongside the Hudson River’s Lower Bay.
“Ah, I don’t know. I suppose I shouldn’t complain. Although Tanya thinks my chauffeur license should be upgraded to reflect my ability to drive someone crazy.”
Simon laughed loudly enough to cause Marcus to respond in kind. “Listen, I’m trying to arrange a get together up in the Thousand Islands. You and Tanya should come.”
“Sounds nice. I’ll see if she’s up to it.” The same creaking noise finally subsided when Marcus stopped in front of a large apartment window. “Simon,” he said, in a more somber tone.
“Yes?”
“Do you think that super genome of yours might be able to do anything for Tanya?”
Simon paused, for a moment, as his Audi R8 swung northward along the Shore Parkway. “Between you and me, we’ve received three proposals pertaining to Multiple Sclerosis. Sophia suggests one of them might be onto something.”
Marcus’s head tilted downward. “Thank you, Simon.”
“You’ll be the first to know of anything viable. You’re family now, my friend.” Simon felt a profound obligation to never forget what Marcus did for him.
For a moment only the sounds associated with driving could be heard. Simon wondered if Marcus’s emotions might be getting the better of him, so he took the opportunity to fill the void. “Why don’t I have Sam keep you up to date on that file?” Again, another short pause. Marcus struggled to hold onto his left crutch while the same hand rubbed his forehead. Everything is piling up at the most inopportune moment, he thought. Marcus wasn’t the type to express his feelings and the words to do so continued to elude him.
“I’ll call you and let you know about getting up north, how’s that?” Simon added.
Hearing his apartment’s bathroom door open, and the subsequent bumping sounds a wheelchair makes when navigating tight spaces, Marcus turned to see Tanya beginning to exit the small room’s doorway. It was a prompt to get his head back in order. “We’re quite a pair here, I can tell you that,” Marcus said, turning to see if his wife needed any help. “Would you mind if I let you go, Boss?”
“Not at all, Marcus. We’ll talk again soon. Take care.”
While waiting for Jennifer at the airport later on that same evening, Simon confirmed with Rose their desire to see The Tenors concert at The Lincoln Center tomorrow night. During the drive to his apartment, Jennifer had offered to let her father and Rose attend on their own, but Simon insisted that she come along, that she would enjoy the quartet’s masterful, harmonic voices. When the pair finally sat down to enjoy a late supper at home, he also suggested, for the record, that Rose and he were not as formally committed to each other as most people thought. After Jen pressed further, Simon divulged the fact that he sensed a mutual desire to step back and take stock of their relationship. He looked up from his Thai take-out and was somewhat surprised when his daughter fell silent.
“No comment?” Simon asked. He was seated across from Jennifer at a glass-topped dining room table. Simon’s large apartment was decidedly furnished in the stern, lone male occupant motif.
Jennifer alternated between eating and poking at her Pad Thai. “I guess I never saw her as your type.”
“I didn’t know I had a type,” Simon replied.
The conversation seemed to unfold slowly, almost unnaturally, as if dialogue was a side they thought the other had ordered. Simon glanced up from his meal periodically and dared to think that he might already be testing his daughter’s threshold of boredom.
Without any preamble, Jennifer announced: “Mom’s met someone. He’s a Prof at Stanford.”
“Oh,” Simon replied, pausing. “Is he nice?” He continued eating from his cardboard container and tried to appear unaffected by the revelation. However, it only added to the discernible tension already permeating the evening. It drifted indifferently to their casual sweatshirt-like attire.
Jennifer took a sip of her Merlot and gave the appearance of appraising her father’s reaction. “Mom seems happy.”
“Well, I guess that’s what counts, isn’t it?”
Jennifer set her food aside and turned her focus to her wine. She grasped the bottle sitting on the table close by and began to top up her glass. “Do you think you have a future together?”
Simon abruptly stopped eating. “A future with whom?”
“Rose, of course. Who did you think I was taking about?” Jennifer’s eyes went wide as the bottle made contact with the table. She was obviously surprised by the misunderstanding.
“I don’t know. One minute we’re talking about your mother, the next we’re back to Rose.” Simon’s tone remained generous; he wanted the weekend to go over well for both of them. Nevertheless, he dropped his fork into his dinner and got up from his seat. He walked over to the room’s floor to ceiling windows with more than Rose’s smile on his mind. She was beautiful, outwardly confident, and very well educated. Often a victim of her best attributes, Simon also knew she was easily made an accomplice to her worst. The only way he could summarize his thoughts was to state the obvious. “Rose is a complicated woman.”
Jennifer couldn’t help balking at the notion. “That’s being generous.”
Simon was a master at absorbing such provocations. “Maybe so,” he admitted. “But you must know what it’s like to not be taken seriously. It bothered your mother when we were together.” Simon wanted to expand on his line of thinking, but decided instead to allow Jennifer to interpret the nuance of what was left unspoken.
“We’ve talked about it,” Jennifer said, suggesting she understood her father’s inference.
“Then you and Rose have something in common.”
“Yeah, but she also has that quality that everyone recognizes the moment she walks into a room.” Jennifer recognized the look of bewilderment on her father’s face. “What? You don’t see it? Every woman picks up on it right away. She’s an apex predator.”
“She’s a what?” Simon said, laughing. He challenged his daughter. “Is that what they’re teaching in Anthropology these days?”
Jennifer laughed as well and appeared equally happy to turn the moment into something more light-hearted. “An apex predator,” she repeated, smiling. “She probably picked you out the moment you walked into the room. Where did you meet her? It was at the Carnegie Awards, wasn’t it?”
Jennifer’s jovial candor caused Simon to smile. “You know beauty isn’t the only thing you inherited from you mother.”
“Should I take that as a compliment?”
Simon was distracted by his own line of thinking. “For the record, I thought I was the one w
ho picked out Rose.” His memory of the event caused him to reflect, however. A flashback seemed to suggest that Rose was already looking at him when he noticed her on the other side of the room. The recollection gave him pause.
Jennifer raised her eyebrows. “Touché,” she said.
Simon put his glass down and began clearing the table. He brought everything into the kitchen while continuing their conversation. “Look, all I know is sometimes things are not exactly as they appear. I’m sure you know a few people who struggle with previous life experiences, addiction, that sort of thing. Some undergo a life changing moment that originates from within. Others emerge from the greys more slowly.”
Jennifer listened while her father talked loud enough for her to hear, but she waited for him to return from the stainless steel, restaurant-like galley before responding. “So you’re suggesting Rose needs something external to trigger that cathartic moment.”
“Possibly.” Simon leaned on the open threshold between rooms.
“You need more time then. To figure things out, I mean.”
A slight facial contortion reflected Simon’s indecisiveness. “We have a few things left to resolve.”
Jennifer put her wine glass down, feeling the soft glow of her Merlot. “You know, Dad, I wish I inherited that special quality of yours.”
“Which one is that? The knack of being cut out of the herd without realizing it?”
“No, no,” Jennifer said, laughing along with her father. “I’m trying to be serious here. It’s that ability to see the best in those you encounter. And I’m not suggesting that you’re naïve, it’s just … you have this ability to always see the redeeming value in people.”
Jennifer could detect a degree of embarrassment in her father’s smile. “I guess we all have our faults,” he said
“Well, if it’s genetic then I should consider myself lucky to be your daughter.”
Later that evening Simon had a few moments alone to sit down on the couch and watch a compilation of pre-recorded interviews conducted by Cameron Osborne. Sophia had put them together in order to prepare him for his interview tomorrow afternoon. She was also able to use her human behaviour profiling software when listing relevant questions. They were ranked by their probability of being asked and were specific to both Simon and his company.
The cross-section offered the usual balance of business versus personal, serious versus humorous. The inquiries came across as even-handed, but pointed. There were no low balls, but nothing lobbed either. Simon was actually looking forward to meeting Osborne. He had obviously interviewed some of the most influential people in the world.
He was about twenty minutes into the collection of segments when a text arrived from Derrick.
‘I’ve been contacted,’ it read. ‘Gary’s trail of breadcrumbs worked. Have suggested the Whiskey Cupboard for a meeting next week. I’ll keep you posted.’
Both men assumed that Gary had successfully compromised his anonymous identity in the subtlest ways possible. If deceptively done, they knew it would lead his dark web contact to believe the original leak was perpetrated by Derrick ˗ the man some may have suspected as being the most likely candidate to have betrayed his company. With his anonymity blown, and a career now hanging in the balance, Derrick would appear vulnerable, moreover, easily coerced into cooperating with whomever wanted to get their hands on PurIntel’s assets.
Simon then used the remote to turn off the flat screen. Jennifer had already retired to the guest room. The grip on another long day was his alone to relinquish. He sighed, closed his eyes, and let his head fall backward into the suppleness of things physical. In the intangible dark, he wondered: I hope I’ve done the right thing.