“Just clearing some space in the filing cabinets,” Alkaitis said.
Harvey made an odd sound in his throat, as if he’d tried to laugh but had choked instead.
“Okay,” Claire said, clinging to normalcy like it was a life preserver. “Anyway. I wanted to ask you about those transfers that went through yesterday. The loans from the brokerage company to the asset management side.”
He was silent.
“Four loans,” she continued, to jog his memory, but the silence only persisted. “Look,” she said, “to be clear, I’m not suggesting anything here. It’s just that these were the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh loans this quarter, with no repayments, and it’s the kind of thing that…look, please understand, I’m not suggesting anything other than the appearance of impropriety.”
“These transfers are fairly routine, Claire. We’re expanding the London operation.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I’m not sure I understand the question.”
“Everything’s contracting,” she said. “I heard you speaking with Enrico last week, and you said you were losing investors, not gaining them.”
“You look tired, Claire.”
“Because I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about this.”
“Claire, honey, I know what I’m doing.”
“No, I know, I’m just saying, the optics of the thing, the timing of it—”
“Right,” he said. “The optics.” He blinked.
“Dad.” She hadn’t called him that in over a decade.
“I can’t keep it going,” he said quietly. “I thought I could cover the losses.”
“What do you mean, cover the losses?”
2
Why was Simone shredding documents? Why would Alkaitis leave his receptionist alone in a conference room with several file boxes of incriminating evidence? In his deposition, Alkaitis claimed not to understand the question. Harvey, in his own deposition, offered the opinion that Alkaitis, who in most matters had an impressive capacity for self-delusion, understood finally that it was too late to avoid arrest but possibly hoped to shield Lenny Xavier, his most important investor, who’d understood that it was a Ponzi from the beginning and had provided the occasional infusion of cash. Perhaps Simone was shredding documents precisely because she was only a receptionist, and Alkaitis didn’t think she would understand anything she saw. He was an intelligent man, but he suffered from the tendency of certain long-term senior executives to think of receptionists as office fixtures, not quite on the level of the filing cabinets but close. Perhaps, because Simone was not just new to the office but new to the world—polished in that young-in-Midtown way, but after all only twenty-three years old—Alkaitis was counting on her naïveté, thinking that perhaps she wasn’t someone who would necessarily know that being asked to stay late and help her boss “clear some space in the file cabinets” was a probable indicator of a cover-up. Or perhaps the paper shredding was something of a token effort and we’d already reached the point where it didn’t really matter who saw what.
After some incalculable amount of time had passed, Alkaitis returned to Conference Room B. His demeanor had changed considerably since Simone had seen him last. Were there tears in his eyes? He had the look of a man on a precipice.
“Simone,” he said, “I’d like you to call my wife, please. Tell her it’s an urgent matter and I’d like her to meet me here as soon as possible.”
“Okay,” she said, “right away,” and by the time she reached her desk he was already back in his office, the door firmly closed. She called Vincent, relayed the message, and returned to Conference Room B and the paper shredder.
Simone was surprised when Harvey came in with pizza. This was around seven-thirty. She smelled the pizza before he entered the room.
“Look at you!” he said brightly. “Still at it.”
“I thought you’d left.”
“I was stuck in a long meeting,” he said. “Then I went out for a quick walk and came back with pizza.”
“To supervise me?”
“To take over. You’ve been here for hours and you’re not getting overtime, which obviously isn’t right, and more importantly, the holiday party starts in a half hour.” He set the pizza on the conference table. “Are you hungry? I’m assuming there’ll be food at the party, but you can’t count on passed hors d’oeuvres as a dinner substitute.”
She was hungry. Simone had been at work for nearly eleven hours and was worn through, her eyes burning a little from the dry tower air. The conference room had an L-shaped arrangement of two sofas in a corner, with a lamp on a little table between them. At some point she’d turned off the fluorescents and switched