Tim Green - Exact Revenge

“Money, money,” she says. “You sound like Bob.”

“I think you’ll find I have manners too,” I say. “I hope so. People say even a sliver of reputation with you will leave me welcome anywhere in New York.”

She sniffs at this, splays her fingers, and looks down at her nails.

“Martin tells me you bought the Jets,” she says.

“Yes,” I say. “I thought that if I was going to live in New York, I should own a team.”

“I happen to like tennis,” she says with a limp smile. “I understand you and Bob are talking business? I’ll let you two go then.”

“I hope you’ll join me for dinner sometime with your husband?” I say.

“I’m old-fashioned that way,” she tells me. “If Bob says we’re having dinner, then we’re having dinner.”

Then with a quick glance at Debray, she slips away and out across their private boardwalk toward the beach where someone has already set up a towering blue-and-white-striped cabana.

Debray’s eyes linger on her bare legs and a perfectly tucked bottom before he turns to see me looking at him and goes red. A voice from the direction of the house makes us both turn.

“Ah, you met my wife.”

It is Rangle, his face sharper than ever. His big dark eyes, barely separated by that pointed nose; great wealth has made him complacent. He has a little mustache and his hair has been dyed as if he tried to match his wife’s, but instead of auburn, it’s a strange swirl of orange and black. The top of his head is covered with a flap of the stuff, combed over from his right ear. The long fingers of his left hand are clutched in the right. Next to him is a dish.

“Martin,” Rangle says, “introduce your new friend to Dani, will you?”

“Of course,” Debray says, then introduces me to the young college girl who I know is Rangle’s daughter from his first marriage. She is short with dark hair and a body that’s curvy and tight.

The girl looks me up and down as she takes my hand. There is a hungry flicker in her dark eyes and a smile that shows just the tips of the small pointy teeth she inherited from her father. She slips out of her robe, throws a little arch in her back, and struts over to a deck chair. There is a small black spider tattoo poised above the crack in her bottom. She sits and begins to oil her brown stomach.

“She’s a sophomore at Penn,” Rangle says, grinning so hard in his daughter’s direction that the corners of his eyes disappear into a web of wrinkles and his teeth gleam in the sunlight. “All A’s, and boys lining up like jets over La Guardia.”

“Oh,” I say. “I thought Martin said she was going with Allen Steffano.”

Rangle’s elation fades. He looks at me with half a smile and says, “You know young girls. Engaged to one man one day and marrying another man the next…”

I feel my face get tight and I tilt my head, studying Rangle hard. For a moment, I feel more like the mouse than the cat, but that can’t be.

“Don’t get me wrong, Allen’s a good kid. But I think I’ve raised a girl who knows the importance of reputation. Allen’s father has done well, but he’s a long way from Katie’s Christmas party list.”

His good girl looks over at me, smiles, and crushes her lower lip with her teeth.

“I understand the mother is a little odd,” I say.

“A painter,” he says with a nod. “Very pretty, though. But let’s sit down and have a drink before lunch.”

“Daddy,” says the girl, using her hand as a visor against the sun, “I want a drink. Would you?”

“Of course, kitten,” Rangle says.

He asks us to sit and he hurries behind the teak bar to mix her a screwdriver, then he hurries across the deck to deliver it into her hands. His pale thin legs protrude from his khaki shorts and move with the awkward gait of an insect. The daughter rewards him with a kiss on the cheek. Debray is smiling as if this is par for the course.

When Rangle returns with bottles of Chimay Belgian Ale for the men, I swallow a mouthful before saying, “I’m pretty direct, Bob. I know you make money, and I want to invest some with you or I wouldn’t be here. I have a hundred million I want to move, but… what do you think of the Russian stock market?”

“The Russian?” Rangle says, his bony fingers clenching the beer bottle. “Do you have people there?”

“If I didn’t,” I say, “I wouldn’t want to invest in it.”

Rangle’s beetle eyes dart to Debray and back.

“Why me?” he says, twisting his fingers.

“I need an American,” I say. “Someone with a big fund. Someone respected. Someone who isn’t afraid to use the information that’s available to him. I see you’ve done well in U.S. treasuries and I’m assuming that it’s no coincidence that Martin has an older brother who works closely with Alan Greenspan at the Fed.”

“I trade on instinct,” Rangle says with a smile, opening his arms, palms up.

“I prefer to trade on information,” I tell him without smiling back. “If you’re not interested, neither am I. Thanks for the beer.”

I take a sip and get up.

“Seth, Seth, Seth,” Rangle says, taking my arm. “Please. Sit. Don’t be so damn… Of course I’m interested. We just need to talk about it. I’m interested. We’re both interested, aren’t we, Martin?”

“Yes, we are,” says Debray.

At lunch, Katie and Dani join us and I tell them all about Andre Kaskarov, a Russian prince whose family escaped the revolution and survived by guile and ruthlessness in Belgium. The mention of royalty gets even Katie’s attention. Andre, I explain, was educated in the American embassy in Brussels from an early age. His father envisioned a new Russia where opportunity between East and West would create incredible wealth to go along with the Kaskarov family’s noble lineage, and he returned to Moscow with his family in 1991.

“A real prince?” Rangle asks, his eyes agleam.

“There are lots of them,” I say with a shrug. “A prince in Russia isn’t like the prince in England, but they’re still nobles.”

“Of course I’d love to meet him,” he says. “I think Katie would too, and Dani. We should have dinner.”

Dani forces a smile and raises her glass of chardonnay at me.

“I’ve got a lake cottage upstate,” I tell Rangle. “I understand you’re from up that way. Skaneateles, it’s called. Bill Clinton told me about it.”

“The president?”

“Former president.”

“I was in Congress during his first term,” Rangle says. “I didn’t know you were involved in politics.”

“No, just power,” I say. “Anyway, I’d like to have a small dinner there and an overnight. It’s a beautiful place. I guess you know. We’ll fly up and back on my G-V. Andre loves it there. We could mix some business.”

“With pleasure,” Rangle says, looking across the lunch table from his daughter to his wife. “My motto.”

Before the coffee comes, I excuse myself to use the bathroom. I’m directed down a long oak hallway to a small marble temple with gold fixtures. After I wash my hands, I grab the doorknob. It’s stuck and I hear a giggle through the wood. The door pushes in suddenly, and there is Dani with her pool robe open and her top off, wearing a peach thong. She closes the door behind her and drapes her hands around my neck, swaying.

“Aren’t you seeing someone?” I say.

“I’m a debutante,” she says, smirking. Her words are slurred. “We don’t have the same rules. I like to play.”

“I know someone you’ll like to play with,” I say. “I’d hate to ruin it for him.”

“You won’t ruin it,” she says. “It likes a lot of attention.”

I grip her wrist and tug her toward me, then right past. In a blink she’s standing inside the bathroom by herself, scowling and huffing. I pull the door shut and walk away.