Jake's 8 Page 2

  The client, or clients, sat on a leather couch while Mr. Carmichael and I sat opposite a low coffee table in leather wingback chairs. I sat to Mr. Carmichael’s right. I kept a yellow pad ready for notes. Mr. Carmichael had nothing but his presence.

  And like I said, it was boring. Aside from some preliminary chat about a to-do that Mr. Carmichael thought needed addressed, such as a small re-positioning of the portfolio or a problem the client brought in, such as a divorce, the talk was on nothing important. Just Mr. Carmichael and the client chatting the hour away. They talked about the client’s career and their kids and their grandkids and often the oldsters talked about their dog. Always with their damned dogs. Nothing important; nothing consequential.

  "Mr. Carmichael?" I asked one day after a client hit the sidewalk. "I don’t mean to be rude, but you spoke of nothing at all during that meeting."

  "Didn’t we?" he asked. "It was nothing to you. To them, it is their life. That’s everything to them."

  "Aren’t they smart enough to ask questions? These are not small time investors."

  "No, Mr. Gibb. They’re not stupid. They’re smart enough to trust me is all. They trust me to do the right thing. I bring them in here to assure them of that fact and the easiest way to do that is let them tell me about their life and for me to care about what they are saying."

  "Did I mention one thing about myself?" he asked.

  "No," I said.

  "That’s because I was listening. That is the first step to trust—the journey to trust isn’t a long trip, so listening is a big component."

  That’s the way it went. When I started with ‘The Offices of Prescott Carmichael,’ I assumed the one-hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year indentured me to around-the-clock work. Nope. Not so much as a phone call after hours. I got to the office at nine and when I wasn’t in a meeting with Mr. Carmichael, I was preparing for the next day’s meeting and as the bell rang in New York closing the market, Mr. Carmichael was out the door, followed by Mrs. Johnson and trailed by myself. This was easy money. This was really big, easy money.

  Then one Saturday night at eleven-fifteen I got a call. I was straddling a stool at Japp’s next to a pretty blonde who sported the most delightfully upturned nose that I had ever seen. It was almost cute enough to distract me from her ample cleavage. Almost.

  Caller ID said it was Mr. Carmichael’s cell. Seeing how this was the first time he’d rang outside of our nine to four regime, I excused myself from the pretty blonde with the delightfully upturned nose and ample cleavage and walked into the street to take the call in relative quiet.

  "Mr. Gibb," he said. "I’ll need you to meet me at Eight Eleven E. Fourth Street. There’s a man at the door with the Christian name of Frank. Tell Frank you’re with me and Messrs. Turner and Bloom. I have a client service issue we need to address tonight."

  I looked mournfully through Japp’s window to Ms. Upturned Nose with Ample Cleavage. I then thought of that one hundred and twenty thousand a year.

  "I’m dressed casual," I said. "Jeans and a sports coat. That okay?"

  "That will be fine."

  I walked back into Japp’s and laid down two twenties and asked Ms. Upturned Nose and Ample Cleavage to have a few on me—I’d be back as soon as possible. I sensed four guys ready to pounce, so I didn’t hold out any hope she’d be pining the night away for yours truly. I hit the street again and hoofed it down to Fourth.

  The man with the Christian name of Frank let me in the building then instructed me to take an elevator to the top floor. The elevator was one of those old-fashioned cage deals that must have been installed when Mr. Otis was still alive. I pulled the door shut and pushed ten. With a jar that reminded me of a broken down roller coaster, I was lifted to the tenth floor where Mr. Carmichael and two gentlemen stood.

  "Welcome to the Lodge of the Brotherhood of the Spoon Club," Mr. Carmichael said through the elevator gate.

  I pulled back the gate and stepped out into the early 1900s. There was a tall ceiling and flowered wallpaper and a well worn carpet holding up heavy furniture that looked to be hewn from some ancient tree. Overly elaborate vases sat on mahogany tables overstuffed with fresh flowers. Sit in this room for twenty years and art deco might finally come along and say "Hello, Joe, what d’ya know."

  Mr. Carmichael introduced me to the two mid- to late-life stiffs. I knew their names and knew they weren’t on Mr. Carmichael’s client roster. The men dripped wealth like they had just showered in it. They both looked nervous, however. I kept my mouth shut. It’s not good to yap around a wealthy man with a case of the nerves, and worse to yap around two of them.

  I followed the three men from the anteroom the elevator dumped me into, through a stunted hallway and into an even older looking dining room. A large table sat in the middle with twelve high back chairs surrounding it. Opposite the door we just came through was another door into the kitchen. Every piece of the room looked handcrafted in the Old World. The only problem was in the middle of the table. A section of about four inches by eight inches of it was inset. It looked to have been covered by glass. I say looked to have been because the table and the inset were covered in a mess of shards.

  "As you can see," said the man introduced to me as Mr. Gregory Turner, "the spoon was kept under glass in the middle of the table. Someone simply shattered the glass and took it. I assume there’s a financial loss. I have no idea what a collector would pay for something like that. But it’s the touchstone of our brotherhood. That’s the real loss."

  I’d never met Mr. Turner before, but I knew his son from serving my four-year sentence at The City Day School. He’d made his fortune through inheritance. He’d worked briefly but having quickly learned how hard it is to make a buck, he promptly stopped trying. He spent his time funding art exhibits and galleries and various charities that allowed him to wear tuxedos and feel good about himself and not touch too many sick people. I remember his son being a real turd.

  The second man was five foot four and weighed a hundred and twenty tops. He had to be in his seventies but looked to be in his fifties, and he scared the hell out of me. Matthew Bloom made Cincinnati his home, but he could make his influence felt in New York, London and Honk Kong. You could say he had settled on being a big fish in a small pond, but even in Manhattan, he’d still make a splash. Matthew Bloom was a venture capitalist. Strike that. He was more than a V.C.—he was one of the original corporate raiders. At one time, his name was mentioned along side of Boesky, Kekorian and Milkin. Starting in the late seventies he bought companies, busted them up and sold them off. There’s the ghost of a factory haunting the West Wide that was once home to a company with three hundred employees that he "invested in." It’s been empty some thirty odd years. There’s another of his ghost factories on the East Side and one north of town and many more spread out across America. He was a financial titan. And he didn’t say a word.

  "Tell me the story, Mr. Turner," Mr. Carmichael said.

  "There isn’t much of a story," he said. "We had our semi-annual dinner tonight. After we ate, we sat smoking and talking while the help cleaned up. Brother Bloom and I stayed behind after the other ten brothers left. I’m the Junior Warden of the lodge which means I hold the only key to the dining room. I get to wait around until everyone has left, then I lock up. Brother Bloom is the Senior Warden. His job is to make sure I lock up. It may sound silly, but it’s our tradition.

  "All the staff and brothers had left by ten o’clock," he went on. "We shut the door and made sure it was locked. We walked down the hall, I called the elevator and Brother Bloom remembered he had forgotten his gloves. I handed him the key and he went back to the dining room. A couple of minutes later, he called out saying that the spoon had been stolen."

  "You are sure it was there when you closed up?" Mr. Carmichael asked.

  "We’re both certain of it," he answered. "We would have noticed smashed glass on the table. We hadn’t left the room all night. We would have seen someone smash it.
We would have seen the spoon missing."

  "And you’ve done a search of the dining room and kitchen?"

  "Yes. We have spent an hour searching both. We even searched each other. Then I called you. The thief had maybe two minutes to grab the spoon and escape after we left the first time. But he couldn’t have. Even if he could get in, he would have had to have passed both of us to get out."

  "You can’t open these windows?" Mr. Carmichael asked.

  "None of them. They’re sealed," answered Turner.

  "There were no windows in the hall," Mr. Carmichael said under his breath to himself. "Could you please show me the kitchen?"

  We took a tour of the small kitchen. I’ve had girlfriends with bigger closets. It was blisteringly hot. Unlike the rest of the rooms of the Lodge, everything was modern. There were stainless steel and copper pots hanging about, a blender, a food processor, a mixer, a microwave and an oven—one of those professional stainless-steel gas numbers with eight burners on top with eight controls reading low to high spread across the front, separated by the dial for the oven that ranged from two hundred degrees to self-clean. Mr. Carmichael examined each machine and drawer. I did the same trying not to appear useless.

  "Anything you can contribute is appreciated," Mr. Turner said to Mr. Carmichael. "I can’t imagine how I’m going to break this to our brothers and Matt and I would prefer to keep the police out of it. I don’t want a bunch of white shirts tromping through our lodge."

  So there we were at midnight on a Saturday. Mr. Matthew Bloom, Mr. Gregory Turner, Mr. Prescott Carmichael and me looking at an empty hole in a table where there once was a spoon.

  Let me stop here and turn the clock back two hundred and thirty some odd years. Here’s the story Mr. Carmichael told me after we’d put that Saturday night, Brotherhood of the Spoon business behind us.

  It’s the winter of 1777. A farm boy is trying hard to look like a soldier, but he’s having a hard go of it. His boots are soleless, his pants are torn and his coat is a rag. Everything is wet; the ground, his tent, his food, his body, his clothes and his soul. He’s convinced that he is slowly freezing to death. He addressed letters to his mother from Valley Forge, but he no longer writes her now. What is there to tell her, but things to make her worry? And if he wrote something that didn’t worry her, it would be a lie.

  The soldier couldn’t sleep. He heard the watch change and decided to unwedge himself from his two tent mates. They both grumbled at him for the loss of the body heat he took with him. He stoked the embers of their fire and got a blaze going. He was hungry. They had tried to make a broth the night before and it helped a little. It was full of bones they’d managed to save and roots they had gathered. One of them had produced a rancid piece of bacon for flavor. He picked up the pot. The broth had frozen. He hung it over the fire and then blew into the flames.

  At last the broth melted and began to steam. The farm-boy-turned-soldier tasted it. It was disgusting but warm. He tried some more.

  "Do you mind if I share your fire?" a voice asked from the dark. The farm-boy-turned-soldier had no interest in sharing his meal but agreed with a grumble. The man stepped from the darkness into the firelight wearing the uniform of a major general. The farm boy rose.

  "General Washington, sir."

  "Sit, son. Stay close to your fire."

  The farm boy sat back onto his log and George Washington sat with him.

  Later on, the boy said they first spoke of inconsequential things to take their mind off the cold and the war, but then the conversation turned to what each of them were risking by fighting. A loss meant a traitor’s death for Washington. The farm boy knew the same could go for him.

  "A stew?" Washington asked.

  "Only a broth, sir. I would offer you some, but I only have the one spoon."

  "I have no fear of sharing spoons with my men."

  The soldier handed Washington the wooden spoon that his mother had given him on his thirteenth birthday. Washington took it in his massive hands. He dipped it into the broth and brought it to his lips.

  The soldier detected a brief touch of sadness on his commander’s face.

  "You do well with what little I’m able to get for you, son," General Washington said.

  "Thank you, sir."

  "I’m doing what I can to get you more."

  "You’re doing your best, General."

  "Let us pray my best is good enough. If we should fail, it will not be the fault of you infantrymen."

  General Washington dipped into the pot once more and dragged his wooden teeth across the wooden spoon another time. He then sat meditatively for a long moment. Finally, Washington rose and thanked the farm-boy-turned-soldier for sharing his fire, his broth, his company and bid him farewell.

  As his commander’s graceful form disappeared into the night, a single, startling thought gripped the boy’s mind.

  "George Washington just walked off with my damned spoon."

  The boy said he had the courage to face a line of Red Coats but not to give chase to General Washington demanding his spoon back.

  He went back into his tent and wedged himself between his sleeping comrades and in the morning he told his story and not a one of them believed him. Throughout the war his story was always met with jeers.

  After Yorktown, he headed west looking for his fortune and repeated his story to disbelieving friends and acquaintances. He became a tanner and set up shop in the settlement of Cincinnati, where he married and had children. One day he told his story to an army captain who was passing through their growing town. Army Captain Jackson Fowler listened politely to the tanner, then dismissed him as deranged.

  After serving as President, Washington’s goal of retiring to Mount Vernon was delayed by threatened war with France. President John Adams asked the general to once again serve his country as Senior Officer of the Army. Washington agreed. He left the day-to-day affairs of the

  army to others, but he kept himself informed. So it was that one day Captain Fowler was briefing an aged Washington on his recent tour of the western fortifications. During a relaxed moment over dinner the officer told the former President the Cincinnati tanner’s tale.

  Washington, still imposing in his old age, slowly stood from the table and after a short time returned. He laid before Captain Fowler a thin, worn wooden spoon.

  "Captain Fowler, that night was a dark night of the soul for me," he said. "One of my darkest of the war. Not being able to sleep, I went for a walk. I didn’t know where I was going or what I was doing, but the suffering of my men had shaken my soul. I sat down with a boy and spoke with him for a few minutes. I tasted his cruel gruel. It was thin and rancid. I tasted again and my spirits fell further. How were we to defeat the British with men fed on this, I worried. I bid him thanks and farewell and walked back to my quarters. It wasn’t until daybreak that I realized I had slipped the boy’s spoon into my pocket. In my melancholy, I could not remember where he was camped and soon became entangled in my daily duties. It always disturbed me that in my thoughtlessness I had taken such a rough spoon from a half-starved man.

  Captain, when you return to the west in the spring, can I entrust you to return this spoon to the tanner with his General’s sincerest apologies?"

  Captain Fowler did as his General asked. And in the spirit of true republicanism, he invited the tanner and other tradesman and lawyers and territorial leaders to dine with him. Tenant farmers and blacksmiths supped with bankers and a railroad owner. That first dinner became an annual event. Those of all social stations sat equally. They traded stories and concerns. They exchanged their views and visions of their booming city. As the years passed, they built traditions, designed rituals and imposed rules. They called themselves the Brotherhood of the Spoon. The final course of each meal was a bowl of broth to remind them of their origins and the dinner was capped at twelve men.

  The Brotherhood was a foundation block that the great river city of Cincinnati, the Queen of the West, was built o
n.

  As Mr. Carmichael told the story, the years progressed and as so often happens, the lower classes were given the old heave-ho. By the time of the robber barons, the Brotherhood of the Spoon had become an elaborate hoity-toity dinner and the city’s most-exclusive club. The lower classes were allowed to serve but not to sit. Twelve of the city’s leading citizens were its members. When a member died or resigned because of infirmity, the remaining eleven nominated and elected a new twelfth.

  I’m not sure if I believe it, but that’s the story that Mr. Carmichael gave me after the events of that Saturday.

  So as I said, the four of us were standing in that dining room, staring into a hole that once held a spoon that George Washington once wrapped his lips around.

  Mr. Carmichael turned to me.

  "Mr. Gibb," he said. "Investment advisors learn so much about human nature. We know just how mean, ruthless and evil people can be. They tell us everything. It seems talking about their money is like the first unfastened button. Once they start they can’t keep from undressing. They talk and talk until they stand naked in front of us. But fortunately, we’re not like priests or a therapist. We’re not bound up by theology that precludes a belief in human evil or science that ignores the truth about human nature. If we commit to seeing things the way they are and not the way we want them to be, we see so much more.

  "In this case of the missing spoon, we must overcome two obstacles," he said. "We must overcome the obstacle of not looking where we don’t want to look. We must also overcome the assumption that the spoon was stolen."

  "What do you mean?" asked Mr. Turner. We’ve looked everywhere. If Washington’s

  spoon wasn’t stolen, then where is it?"

  "Mr. Turner, no orangutan climbed up this building, opened a window and stole the spoon. No snake was trained to slither its way through the vents to steal it. With apologies to Mr. Poe, nothing is ever stolen by such fantastical means. We must look to the practical and the practical points to Mr. Bloom."