Christopher Smith - Fifth Avenue

Tried to run for it.

Eric grasped her ankle and she lost her balance. The room whirled. Leana knew it was over at the same instant her forehead struck the carpet.

But Eric did nothing. He was on his feet, suddenly aware of what he had just done. How could he have lost control like that? What had gotten into him?

He looked at Leana. She was lying motionless on her stomach, her head buried in the crook of her arm. The area of carpet surrounding her was stained with her blood. A wave of nausea overcame him and he wondered how badly she was hurt. She wasn’t moving…

He glanced at his watch. How long had Celina been gone? Four minutes? Five? If she had told George what she had seen, he would be coming up here now.

His drunken haze lifting, he stepped over Leana, locked the bedroom door and hurried into his clothes.

Leana waited. She listened to the sound of Eric dressing and peered across the room. He was standing in front of the dressing table, tucking in his shirt, quickly checking his appearance in the oval mirror. He was fully dressed now-except for the belt, which was still clutched in his hand.

He faced her. There was a moment when their eyes met, when a universe of hatred passed between them, and then Eric said calmly, “These are your options-you can either get yourself cleaned up and pretend none of this happened, or you can run to your father and tell him everything.” He moved toward her, the belt swinging like a pendulum by his side. “And doing that, Leana, would be a mistake.”

As he approached, Leana recoiled, her eyes riveted on the belt. A section of it was stained with her blood. “Get out,” she gasped. “I’ll call the police.”

“You can do whatever you want,” Eric said. “But I promise you this-if you do call the police, or go to your father, I’ll have a contract put out on you so goddamned fast it’ll make your head spin. You hear me? I hope so. Because I will do it. I’ve got the money and I’ve got the contacts. If anything happens to me, you die. It’s that simple.”

The elevator door slid open and Celina hurried out. She slipped through the crowd, avoiding the questioning stares, not stopping until she came upon the twin glass doors that were across the lobby.

Curtains of rain were billowing down the avenue, lashing the windows and the reporters on the sidewalk. She turned to ask a doorman for an umbrella and came face to face with the man from security who had given her Leana’s message.

He nodded at her.

Celina moved in his direction.

“That message you gave me-you’re certain it came from my sister?”

“She told me herself she was your sister.”

She had to be certain it was Leana who did this. “Describe her for me."

“She has long dark hair and she’s pretty. I only talked to her for a few seconds.”

“What she was wearing?”

“A white dress, I think. It left one of her shoulders bare.”

Celina turned away from the man, her stomach sinking. She was about to leave when she saw her father moving in her direction, sifting through the crowd, his expression grim. “We need to talk,” he said.

She wanted out of here, but she didn’t want to tip him off. She followed him to an area just behind the waterfall.

“I just got off the phone with RRK. They’re worried about what happened today. I think they’re going to back out of the deal. They're waiting to see what the police find.”

“And?”

“If there’s even the slightest hint that those spotlights were rigged in protest of our deal with WestTex, they’ll pull financing. Richards says it’ll be a public relations nightmare if we takeover that company in lieu of what’s happening in the Middle East.”

“Maybe in the beginning,” Celina said. “But when the public learns what we’ve done, we'll be fine.”

“They're panicking,” George said. “They know that until WestTex is ours, our agreement with Iran is only verbal. They feel there’s a strong possibility the Navy won’t move into the Gulf on the date we’ve been given. They're going to pull out. I can feel it.”

“So, let’s find someone else.”

“Agreed. I’m having lunch with RRK tomorrow. If it falls apart, how do you feel Ted Frostman at Chase?”

“I like Ted,” she said. “He’s a good guy. Think he’ll play?”

“Maybe. And God knows he owes us. I’ll set up a meeting with him.”

“Are we good here?" she said. "I’d like to go home.”

George looked at her in surprise. “Home? Are you all right?”

If she told him what had happened, it would ruin his evening.

“Today was pretty intense,” she said. “And I’m feeling every bit of it.” She looked over the crowd. “The party will wind down soon. I’ve spoken to everyone I needed to speak to. If you don’t mind, I’d like to call it a day.”

It was pouring when she left Redman International. Those members of the press who hadn’t been invited inside immediately started taking her picture. She nodded at the short, white-haired doorman standing beneath the canopied entrance and together, they hurried toward the limousine parked at the curb.

The press followed, recording her exit for the world. Lights popped. She stepped into the back of the car, told the driver to get her out of there and was home fifteen minutes later, packing Eric’s belongings.

The morning after the party, George Redman was showered, shaved and in his black track suit at a time most people were still in bed asleep. Before meeting RRK for lunch, he planned on running three miles in Central Park.

He stepped out of his dressing room and moved to where his wife lay motionless in their bed. They had made love last night and the sheets were now twisted impossibly around her pale legs. “I’ll see you at breakfast,” he said, bending to kiss her on the cheek. “Will you be up?”

Elizabeth murmured something in her sleep, lifted her head from the pillow and kissed him awkwardly on the chin. “You smell good,” she said, and turned onto her side. “Don’t forget to stretch.”

He went to the elevator at the end of the long hallway. The apartment was quiet. Besides Isabel, the family cat, who was washing herself on top of an ormolu table, he was the only one up, which was not surprising considering it was just a little past five.

He stepped into the elevator and pressed a button. As the floors sped by, George wondered again how the meeting with RRK would go. If they decided not to back him, he would have to move fast on Ted Frostman at Chase. He had come too far to miss this deal with WestTex.

The elevator slowed to a stop. The doors slid open and George stepped out, pleased to see the lobby nearly back in order. The cleaning crew had arrived not long after the party ended and they had worked throughout the night.

George left the building, checked the time on his watch, dutifully stretched his legs and started uptown. Soon he was running along the nearly barren paths of Central Park, and musing at how far he had come since graduating from Harvard.

When he graduated in 1977 and moved to Manhattan, it seemed everything he tried failed. Banks were reluctant to trust a newcomer and so they ignored his requests for loans. Instead, they chose to finance the established developer over the rookie. George knew he could go back and work for his father, but that would mean giving up on his dreams. And so he pressed on, determined to find success.

It didn’t come. It seemed the harder George tried, the more often he failed. It wasn’t until the fall of 1977 that things began to look up.

Louis Ryan, an old college friend, called and told him about Pine Gardens, a 1,000-unit apartment complex that recently had been foreclosed on. Would George be interested in going into a partnership?