Golden Age

  It now appears certain, that on or about September 15, Michael did forge papers that transferred his mother’s trading account to his own firm. For most of the end of September, no one understood this. When Andy’s broker asked her if she had authorized the transfer, she said that she had, but the broker was, let’s say, both suspicious and disappointed, and he called a friend of his in the Manhattan DA’s office and asked him as a favor to look at the papers. It turned out that there were a few errors in the wording of the transfer, and that, when they had a forensic handwriting expert examine the signatures, there was reasonable uncertainty about Andy’s signature. She continued to resist pressure to admit that she had not signed the papers, but in the end, they noticed, she could not say that she HAD signed the papers. I guess she kept saying, “The signature is fine. It looks fine.”

  When the realization hit that Michael’s company had gone bust right at the end of September, the coincidence was just too great, and so the DA’s office began investigating Michael. There was that picture in the Post, you will remember, of Michael in handcuffs, with the caption, “Is this the only financier who will pay the piper?” Of course, Michael only spent one night in jail, and maybe, if the picture had been in the Times rather than a more populist paper, it wouldn’t have had such an impact. He was very well dressed in that picture, which I think turned out to be a disadvantage. I believe the immediate motive for the forgery was that Michael was, as they say, “short” on some investments, and that he was trying to maintain payments on them, so that if they crashed he would benefit and repay his mother’s account. However, this did not work out. I do not know when his trial date is, and I don’t think he does, either.

  At any rate, the newspapers were now on to him in a way that they were not on to other traders that perhaps behaved even worse, and of course Michael always has a certain facial expression we are all familiar with, which I suppose is best described as “haughty,” and it does no good to explain to the average person that he has always had that expression, Wall Street or not.

  All of this was happening around the same time as the bailout, so there was a lot of chaos. Riley informs me that she did not allow Richard to vote for the bailout, either for the first bill or the second bill, but, as you know, neither his remarks concerning the unpopularity of the bailout (I guess Riley read that government purchase of toxic assets always has a deleterious effect on recovery, and stood next to him during both the votes) nor his vote had any effect (but see below).

  You may have read the article in the Times about Richard. If not, I enclose a copy. I believe that this was a hit job, unwarranted by the true circumstances, but Riley says to me that, as soon as they saw it, Richard and the office staff started packing up to leave Washington. No one in Congress would sit with him at lunch, or even talk to him. The writing, as they say, was on the wall, written there by The New York Times. I have only spoken to Richard once since the election. He and Jessica are still in Washington, of course, because it takes a while to undo sixteen years of your career. Their condo is on the market. The housing market is pretty bad, but it may be that, once the new administration is inaugurated, the market will pick up.

  There are many ironies here, but I will refrain from pointing them out, as even I understand that pedantry is sometimes out of place.

  I look forward to seeing you all.

  With love from Alexis, and your uncle

  Henry

  From The New York Times, Oct. 12, 2008,

  New York and Region:

  CONGRESSMAN HITS A ROUGH PATCH

  Voters in Brooklyn may be forgiven if they find themselves confused by recent events involving their representative of the last sixteen years, Richard Langdon. His constituents are beginning to wonder if Congressman Langdon has been unduly influenced by his twin brother, Michael Langdon, a bond trader and manager of Chemosh Securities, a subsidiary of Wells Fargo Bank. Michael Langdon was recently arrested for forging papers that transferred his mother’s funds into his business’s account without her knowledge. Chemosh was shut down, and Wells Fargo has issued a statement saying that they are looking into “the last eleven years of investments managed by Michael Langdon for further irregularities.” How close have the Langdon twins been? And what influence has Michael Langdon exerted in Washington? When asked, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was willing to say only that “A look at the Congressman’s record shows that he has voted for Wall Street more often than he has voted against them.” She is right—even apart from the most recent financial bailouts, such as TARP, Congressman Langdon’s voting record is more closely aligned with that of the Republicans than with his next door neighbor in Congress, Jerry Nadler.

  The word on the street (the street being Flatbush Avenue) is not so much outraged as perplexed. “Yes, I have always voted for him,” says Bernice Stein, a lifelong Brooklyn resident and Democrat. “But what’s the alternative? It seems like the Republicans just throw their silliest candidates up against him. It’s become sort of a race to the bottom.”

  Congressman Langdon has presented himself for years as aggressively fighting for alternative energy solutions, but evidently to no effect. Vito Lopez, chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, says, “Look, Richard is a decent person and his heart, well, at least he has one, you know? But he hasn’t filled Scheuer’s shoes, and that’s been a concern for all of us for years now. We have to eventually ask, what are we getting from this guy? His challenger looks pretty good this time around, though I bite my tongue before saying so.”

  Richard Langdon is a twin, younger by four minutes than his brother Michael. Their father was a well-respected defense contractor and World War II veteran. When Mr. Langdon was first elected, in 1992, the outgoing representative, who was a much-decorated veteran and a real power in the House, said that he had great hopes for the young man: “He’s articulate, he has the right ideas, he’s a brilliant talker who knows how to keep a bargain and to make a deal. He has a real future doing right by our citizens.” Congressman Jerrold Nadler has said, “I think we all have to admit that making deals and reaching across the aisle hasn’t been a valuable skill during the Clinton administration or, especially, during the Bush administration, but I was surprised at how readily Richard Langdon caved.” Harold Rickman, a Brooklyn constituent, says, “Look, I’m sure he means well. But every time I heard about him going uptown to the brother’s place, I had to wonder. Your heart may be in the right place, but that doesn’t mean your hand isn’t in your pocket, too.”

  In the end, Congressman Richard Langdon remains something of a riddle. He is well-liked by many among those he has served, but whether he deserves their regard is, at this point, still undecided.

  2009

  JARED WAS FIDDLING with the espresso maker, his third cup. He lost his temper and smacked the machine (new, De’Longhi) to the floor. He did not bend down to clean up the mess. Instead, he confessed that his company was bust, his employees were let go (had been for two weeks), and the reason was that he had borrowed money against the company to invest with Michael. That was the Friday before Thanksgiving. Janet’s first response had been to find herself an AA meeting. She closed the refrigerator door, picked up her car keys from the kitchen counter, and walked out. It was 9:00 a.m. (Thank heavens, Jonah was at school.) She drove around Palo Alto, detesting the eucalyptus trees and their breezy shade as she always did in a crisis, until she finally saw the sign outside of a church. She went in, sat down, waited for the meeting to commence, stayed quiet the whole time, returned home in a daze. Jared was lying on their bed. She said nothing about the fact that he could have at least done the breakfast dishes. She lay down beside him on top of the covers. They were both fully dressed, right down to shoes and socks. Jared had never failed before. He was the reliable one, the sane one, the one who got impatient with her irritability and grudge holding. How he had come to invest with Michael, Janet could not imagine, but she knew she would hear the story, though she didn’t want to hear it at that mo
ment.

  She had taken his hand, she had come up with the response she wanted to come up with—sympathy, solidarity. Remember when their monthly income was something like a thousand bucks before taxes, when they lived a block from the railroad crossing, when they didn’t have a car? Remember, said Jared, when we tried to make our own mozzarella that time the milk went sour and we were afraid to throw it out? They laughed. Now, two months later, that was a poignant memory.

  More had to come out, and it did: There was a lien on the house. It was not a second mortgage; the mortgage had first priority, and the mortgage was small, only eighty thousand dollars—he had kept up with those payments.

  A day went by. Janet understood that each item of the confession was like a circle on the floor that seemed secure, but could, or would, turn instantly into a hole, dropping her to a deeper, darker level. On Saturday, she asked who had made the loan.

  Washington Mutual.

  Why hadn’t she been told? Why hadn’t she had to sign any papers? Her name was on the deed to the house, on the mortgage.

  It was a business loan. The loan officer was friendly. He overlooked some of the paperwork. He wanted to make the loan.

  Janet said, “Washington Mutual went bust. They were sold to Chase.”

  “They own the loan now. Or don’t. No one is quite sure. I’ve been talking to them, but everything is so chaotic.”

  Bad luck—Janet and Jared agreed, he wasn’t to blame, just a piece of bad luck.

  On Monday, after an amicable two days, Janet broached the topic of Michael. She hadn’t known that Jared had talked to Michael, had seen Michael. How in the world could he imagine that—

  Then it came out: Michael had set him up. Jared realized that now, but had not realized it in August, when it happened. Did Janet remember when they went for a few days to the Ventana Inn with the Trycks, and Janet had decided not to go with them to the Post Ranch for lunch because the weather was so gloomy?

  Janet did remember this—she had opted for a facial.

  Michael and some client of his had been there, finishing breakfast in the Sierra Mar. They said they were on their way to Santa Barbara, taking the long route. Jared had been in a bad mood, complaining about business, wishing he could expand. He thought nothing more of it until a few days later, when Michael called him on his cell and told him that, if he wanted to expand, Michael had the investment for him. He was sure to hit it big before the end of the year. If he put in $750,000, he could get several million out, easy as falling off a log, no downside. The client he’d been with (driving a Bentley) was already in—why not Jared? Jared was driving their Toyota Highlander Hybrid, two years old, a car to be proud of, except at the Post Ranch Inn.

  Janet swallowed when he said the amount—$750,000. Their house could have eaten that up without gagging in ’06, but maybe not anymore. Hard to say. They dropped the subject. Janet had not even said the obvious, “How could you trust Michael for half a second, how could you?” She continued to opt for solidarity, support, getting poor Jared through this, being thankful that they had paid Jonah’s school tuition, thankful that Jonah was a senior, thankful that he had not, could not, would never apply to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, thankful that Jonah drove the old Prius and that at his school this was not an embarrassment. Thankful that Emily was enjoying her job at the same Pasadena art gallery where Tina had put up her show five years before, thankful she spent weekends helping Fiona teach the littlest kids, content to ride once in a while, not to aspire to equestrian glory, to talk about someday having a handicapped riding facility, as if this were the form that her rebellion against everything her parents represented would finally take. Janet was in the habit of supporting this aspiration by remarking from time to time that she could never make a living at that.

  Thanksgiving had been modest, enjoyable. The kids followed Janet’s lead in being especially affectionate toward their father and deploring both Richie and Michael—Emily said that a single continent between herself and her uncles was hardly enough. Janet had continued going to AA meetings, listening, remaining silent, cultivating a larger view. Jared’s birthday, his sixtieth, had been December 10. Janet made dinner for him, his favorite dishes. He didn’t show up that evening, that night, the next morning. The very moment when she was about to pick up the phone to call the cops, it rang, and it was Jared. He was in Minnesota, at his mom’s house. He wasn’t coming back. He had decided to return to Minnesota as an alternative to killing himself.

  If Janet were to look in the drawer on his side of the bed, she would see the loaded gun there. He asked her to dispose of it, very carefully. He did not think it would go off—the lock was on—but you could never be too cautious. He was not coming back to California, to their marriage, to anything. He could not bear it. He hung up. When she called back, no one answered, either then or in the subsequent three days, during which she tried the number seventeen times, and then gave up. It took her several hours to open the drawer. The gun was underneath some folded-up pages from the Financial Times. She picked it up the way they did in movies, between thumb and forefinger, and carried it down to the cellar (holding the railing with her other hand every step of the way), and put it into an unused little safe they had bought years before. She locked the door, and in the morning she went out into the backyard and buried the key.

  She was surprised at which specifics enraged her, and also at the order in which they arose. First, of course, was that he would have a loaded gun in the house, in the bedroom, and not a shotgun, but a handgun, and many bullets. What if, what if, what if, became a series of steady pops in her brain, day and night, the image of herself and Jonah naïve and stupid, walking around a house inhabited by a loaded gun, making one wrong move and having an accident. That sort of thing happened all the time—some high-school kids in Santa Clara had found a pistol and started playing with it, and one of them ended up shot in the throat. After that, the first notice of late payment, addressed to Jared and to her, arrived. She opened it in a rage and then quailed: no payments had been made on the loan since October, they (she) owed almost twenty thousand dollars, including fees. Twenty thousand that they (she) didn’t have. She stopped what-iffing and simply froze—only following her first instinct, which was to go to Safeway and buy lots of beans and cans of stewed tomatoes. In the middle of the night, she prioritized her spending: Bluebird’s board and vet bills would come before any of this debt, because a sixteen-year-old former event horse with soundness issues had no hope in the now collapsed equestrian market. But when she went to the barn, she was too edgy to ride; she took Birdie for walks and gave her cookies, and she avoided everyone human.

  None of her friends knew that Jared had left. She accepted no invitations of any kind. She told Jonah the barest bones of the story—his dad’s company had failed, his dad had gone back to Rochester to get himself together and help his mom move out of her house to an old folks’ home (totally made up), everything would be all right. Jonah gave her one of his looks, the one that always said to Janet, “I knew something like this was coming.” She told Emily a little more—that maybe she would have to sell the house, that sometimes a marriage was just a marriage, not a love match, and marriages could hit the wall. At least there wasn’t another woman, some thirty-five-year-old. Emily said, “Dad doesn’t have enough money for one of those”; clearly, Emily was in communication with Jared.

  And with Far Hills. When her mother called, she knew all about it, which relieved Janet from having to tell her. Andy hemmed and hawed until it was clear that Janet wasn’t ready to confide, then went on to other events—Ray Perroni had died, and Gail Perroni was sure it was because the housing development Michael had funded on the southeast corner of the ranch was such an empty eyesore, rows of prefabs, two stories of rattling plywood bleaching in the sun, weeds everywhere, streets but no sewage lines or electricity. A hundred acres of quite good pasture wrecked. It wasn’t much in comparison with the rest of the ranch, but Ray Perroni couldn’t stay away fr
om it, couldn’t get over it. He keeled over in his truck, heart attack, Gail found him dead and cold, eyes open, hours later. Loretta was not invited to the funeral. She had moved to the house in Savannah—did Janet know they had a house there? Binky was with her. Michael was still in New York, trying to sell the place on the Upper East Side.

  Andy’s tone was normal for her, the recitation of facts and events, something like a steady hum, nothing like the ups and downs of gossip, absent both Schadenfreude and fear, expressing nothing more than curiosity. All of her money was lost, too, but when Janet said, “Mom, what about you,” daring to delve no deeper, Andy only said, “Oh, I have plenty of books I’ve bought over the years and never read. Chance has simply disappeared.”

  “What does that mean?” said Janet.

  “He might have gotten a job on a cattle ranch in Colorado. Emily heard that through several intermediaries. He doesn’t want anything to do with Michael. Terribly shamed.”

  “I wouldn’t have given him that much credit.”

  “Then you underestimated him, I guess.”

  Finally, Janet said, “What about Richie?”

  “Free at last,” said Andy.

  And Janet knew this was true.

  “And he has a pension.”

  “How much?” said Janet.

  “Oh, goodness, I’m not quite sure,” said Andy, “but maybe seventy-five or eighty thousand a year.”

  After they hung up, this was the thing that enraged Janet for the next four days.

  —

  JESSE WAS SURPRISED at how well informed everyone at the Denby Café was—even Julianna, about nineteen, who carried the coffee around and ran the cash register now, had read about Michael Langdon, not quite a local boy but close enough, in the Chicago Tribune. He and Jen didn’t say much, beyond recalling various incidents they had heard about that served as predictors for some sort of bad behavior. Felicity followed the story in her online subscription to The New York Times—she occasionally sent Jesse links and disapproving e-mails, especially when it came out that Michael’s fund had been “worth” almost a billion dollars. She had looked for Chance online, but he had closed his MySpace account (who hadn’t?), and never responded to e-mails. And his cell-phone number did not work. Every time she tried and failed to contact him, she e-mailed Jesse—“Are you worried?”—and Jesse e-mailed back, “No.” He wanted to e-mail back, “Not about him,” but then, he knew, she would fire back, “WHO ARE YOU WORRIED ABOUT?”