“I’m not liking where this appears to be headed.”
Tuck confronted him squarely. “The question is this: If I were an employer looking to hire a person to fill a job opening today, would I hire Jimmy Donovan?”
“Hmm.”
“Well, Jimmy, what’s your answer?”
“No, of course I wouldn’t hire me, Tuck, not in a million years.”
“There you go, then, Jimmy, that says a lot about you; doesn’t it?”
“And I wouldn’t hire you neither, Tuck.”
*
A New Scam
Claire Poole entered the Bull & Bear Tavern accompanied by a comely, hollow-cheeked woman who had long, silky black hair and lustrous violet eyes. She appeared to be Eurasian or Middle-Eastern and was wearing a jewel-toned pantsuit. The leather bag she carried was bulky and appeared to function as a purse-briefcase combination. Several pens were clipped to the pocket of her blouse and on her wrist she had a bulky steel watch with many dials. She didn’t display a wedding ring or jewelry of any kind.
Claire rubbed the Bull’s hoof for luck and her companion did the same after she explained the custom to her. They paused in the entry of the barroom, checked out the crowd, and then Claire told a waiter they wanted to sit in the adjoining dining room. He led them to a table with a commanding view of the oval bar. She gazed up at the TV monitors which read:
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THE CASH FLOW!
Claire agreed wholeheartedly with Hilda’s message and picked up the wine list. Ten minutes later, after the waiter brought each of them a glass of Burgundy, Frank Mills showed up. Seeing them, he came over to their table.
“Evening, Frank.”
“Hey, Claire.”
“Grab a seat.”
“Thanks.”
“Frank Mills, this is Roksaneh Astar Dabababad.”
“Pleased to meet you Miss Dababa … eh …”
“You can call me Roxy, Frank, it’ll be easier.”
He appeared relieved. “Thanks, Roxy, I’ll gladly do that.”
“My father was born in India and my mother is from Iraq. That accounts for my tongue-twister of a name.”
“Do you speak Hindi or Arabic?”
“Both.”
“I’m impressed. Unfortunately, I don’t speak a word of anything.”
The server promptly came by for his drink order.
“Bring me a vodka martini with three olives.”
“Right away, Frank.”
“This is my first visit to the Bull & Bear,” Roxy said, glancing around the tavern, “it seems to be a pleasant place.”
He took in the barroom with a proprietary glint in his eyes. “Yes, it is. I’ve been coming here since 1954. At that time nobody lived this far downtown, the area was strictly banks, brokerages, and insurance companies. Come 6:00 P.M., they pulled the sidewalks up like in a small town. Restaurants had to cover their nut off the lunch crowd. On the weekends it was a veritable ghost town.”
“That’s certainly not the case today.”
“No, the Financial District is now the fastest growing residential neighborhood in New York City.”
“There seems to be new construction everywhere you look.”
“That’s true, what with the Freedom Tower and the Fulton Street Transit Center going up, not to mention all the condos and conversions.”
“I take it, Frank, you were here at the time of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.”
He nodded. “Yes and I’ll never forget the day. It was a lovely morning, not a cloud in the sky, and I was coming out of my doctor’s building on Broadway just as the first Tower collapsed. The sidewalks trembled and a black cloud quickly enveloped the whole area; I thought I’d die from suffocation. Inches of ash and soot covered everything, including my lungs. They rushed me to Bellevue. I had a dry, hacking cough for almost a year.”
“Many were killed.”
“The official toll is 2,752 at this site, excluding those who died at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.”
“So sad.”
“It also doesn’t include the fetuses of the 300 to 400 pregnant women who died in the attack.”
“That’s tragic.”
“In the hospital there was an injured fireman from Ground Zero in the next bed to me. He told me the fire got so hot due to the burning aviation fuel that the people who fled to the roofs were forced to jump. Apparently many of the women jumped in groups while holding hands.”
“Those poor people.”
He nodded. “Yeah; you leave the house in the morning thinking it’s going to be just another routine day at the office, Roxy, and a couple of hours later you’re cowering on a ledge 110 floors above the street.”
“And where were you, Claire?” she asked.
“I remained in my building until the all-clear signal was given. As I walked past Foley Square on my way uptown, I saw hundreds of medical personnel in white coats who were staged there, waiting to go down and treat survivors. Of course, there weren’t many survivors, but nobody knew it at the time.”
“Horrible.”
His martini was delivered. “It is indeed, Roxy, so let’s change the subject. Tell me about yourself.”
“Well, Frank, I’m originally from Chicago but I’ve been posted overseas the past ten years.”
“Do you work at the SEC too?”
She shot a glance at Claire who dropped her chin ever so slightly.
“No, Frank, I’m with the Central Intelligence Agency.”
His eyes widened. “You’re a spook!”
“That’s an old Cold War term, Frank, intelligence is more about data collection and analysis today.”
“What about the drone attacks in Pakistan, the secret jails, the renditions, the water-boarding, and the targeted assassinations?”
“I didn’t say our work was all data collection and analysis.”
“No, Roxy, you just implied it,” he said, “it was spookspeak.”
“Don’t bully her,” Claire warned, “or you’ll be paying for your own dinner tonight.”
He held up both palms in a conciliatory mode. “Mea culpa.”
“Drink your martini, Frank, it’ll make you mellow.”
He took a big sip of the silver bullet. “Ah, I needed a jolt, it’s been another one of those long, dull days.”
Roxy revolved the stem of her wine glass with her long fingers. “I have a feeling your day is about to get a lot more interesting.”
“I can’t wait.”
Claire picked up the menu. “Shall we order first?”
“I’m starved,” Roxy said, “they didn’t serve anything on the shuttle up from Washington and I only ate a Hershey bar for lunch.”
He smiled. “I’ve often munched on one of Claire’s