9:34 P.M.
9:34 P.M.
In the intimate and regal Grand Ballroom at the Plaza Hotel, many of New York City’s wealthiest and most powerful people have come together as a display of solidarity in their support for incumbent New York City Mayor, Harold Deakins. After their thousand a plate feasts, speeches were made and applause was given. The ballroom was lavishly decorated with exotic flowers, animal statues carved out of ice, dozens of golden candelabras, and various pieces of modern art, which were being sold through silent auctions to support the Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital in Manhattan. As the five-piece ensemble plays everything from Mozart and Rachmaninoff to Cole Porter and Miles Davis, the guests mingled over drinks. Some danced beneath the extravagant chandeliers and the oceanic lighting cast upon the high ceiling. Others spread about the latest hot gossip, which, on that night, was particularly salacious. Some navigated the crowd, seeking ways to expand their enterprises and line their pockets. Off to the side were a small group of friends, sharing drinks while standing beneath the prominent arches that formed the perimeter of the main floor, but their jovial conversation was interrupted by the ringing of a phone.
Philip Donaghue Jr. answered the call. It was his driver, informing him that he’d gassed up the limousine and would be outside awaiting his call. Philip said, “Thank you, driver,” and hung up.
“Did you get a new driver?” Milton Jameson III said, curious because Philip had called the driver ‘driver’. Milton was short and handsome man with short red-brown hair. And despite his three-piece black suit with navy-blue pinstripes and glaring white, Italian shoes, he didn’t carry himself like the sole heir of a large fortune. He preferred to spend his time away from all these people in low-class bars seeking low-class women who were easily impressed with his style and class because the sorts of people who frequented egregiously lavish places knew he lacked style and class.
“I did,” Phillip said somewhat sombre.
“What happened to your usual driver?” Jeannette Pascal said. She was an extraordinary beauty with jet black hair, light skin, radiant blue eyes, a pert, little nose, and full lips adorned with a light, pink lipstick. She wore in a strapless black dress that let her high, black heels truly display her remarkable legs.
“He’s dead.” Philip sipped his drink.
“Dead?” Marcel Pascal, Jeannette’s husband said.
“I’m afraid so.”
“What on Earth happened?” Jeannette said.
“There was an accident. The front tire blew on my limousine. Then it skipped a guardrail and tumbled downhill. It was absolutely totalled. I was told he died relatively quickly.”
“What a horrible story.”
“That’s why I missed court Wednesday,” Phillip said. He was one of the best, and most expensive, criminal defense attorneys in New York State. “Almost damn well cost me the trial.”
“He was en route to pick you up?” Marcel said, taking a sip of his light-amber Lagavulin 16 year.
Phillip nodded. “He’d just dropped the children off at school and was returning for me.”
“Why didn’t you call a car service?” Milton said. He and Philip had been best friends since boarding school, and was Godfather to Philip’s first born daughter, Kimberly.
“I was detained by the police for questioning.”
“Whatever for?” Jeannette said.
“They wanted to know if I had enemies, anyone who wished to do me or my family harm. What a question to ask! I’m a defense attorney for Christ sakes! Of course I have enemies, on both sides of the law.”
“Do they suspect foul play?” Marcel said, scratching his thin, black moustache.
“It seems they’ve ruled it out. For now, it’s merely an unfortunate accident. But they’re still sifting through the evidence, which is kind of meaningless.”
“How so?”
“If someone wished me dead and they intended my murder to seem like an accident, it would look like an accident.”
“Well, that wretched notion aside,” Jeannette said. “I am sorry for your loss. He was a very good driver, from my limited experiences with him, anyways.”
“What was his name, again?” Marcel said.
“Stanley.”
Jeannette raised her gin martini and the two, uneaten olives revolved once around the glass. “To Stanley.”
They all drank.
“I must say, that story has made me think,” Milton Jameson said. “Philip, what if the tire blew on the next trip?”
“With me in the back, you mean?”
“Or, heaven forbid, your family,” Marcel said.
Jeannette politely slapped her husband’s wrist. “Don’t say such things!”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing for days,” Philip said. “Accident or not, the entire ordeal has been quite sobering.”
“How so?” Milton said.
Philip Donaghue searched through the motion of the ballroom and found his wife, Brigit, in the midst of the crowd. She was wearing that blue, Prada dress, the backless one with that long slit that reached so high up her left hip her panties were nearly visible – she never looked better than in that dress, and she knew it. He tilted his head upon realising she cut her hair. “It has made me take stock of that which is most important.”
Jeannette looked at a bald servant in a white shirt and ruby vest and snapped her fingers.
“What about fate?” Milton said.
“Fate? What fate?”
“That maybe this close call was a sign that you have a greater purpose.”
“That’s sort of what I was thinking about,” Marcel said. “That the accident was some kind of omen, telling you to change your current course.”
Phillip laughed. “You guys don’t really believe in that sort of thing, do you?”
The bald servant presented Jeannette Pascal with a fresh martini, garnished with a twist of lemon, and took away the empty glass.
“I don’t,” Milton said.
“Me either,” Marcel said with a loud slurp of the champagne in his other hand. He was a naturally bombastic man, existing as if his volume made him taller. With his short, slick, black hair, thin moustache, and sharp, expressive features, he was a top hat away from being the loudest silent movie villain in history. “But I could be very easily persuaded that powers greater than ourselves are at work around us, even as we speak. Well, given the correct circumstances I could be. I mean, doesn’t the existence of irony kind of confirm fate?”
“I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive.” Milton said.
“No?”
“Irony requires consciousness, the ability to discern internal from external, to be rational. If I throw a scrap of food and a pigeon swoops down to get it and is hit by a car and killed, we, as self-aware beings, can see the cosmic humour in that. The pigeon’s need to eat, its drive to survive, killed it. But the pigeon who watches this happen from a nearby telephone wire sees no humour in it as is unable to rationalise what death is. Or what life is, for that matter.” Milton chuckled and sipped his champagne. “In fact, the other pigeon would swoop down and die too, leaving that scrap of food to kill again!”
“You think you’re so smart,” Jeanette said. “But you can’t prove a pigeon couldn’t find such a death ironic.”
“But why would anyone attempt to prove such a thing, Jeanie? It’s a fucking pigeon.”
All four of them guffawed.
“Gentlemen, I do insist that we shift from the morose course our conversation has taken.” Jeannette looked out the window at the beaming full moon illuminating Central Park. “It is far too bright a night for such dark topics.”
“I agree,” Philip said. He adjusted his solid silver cufflinks. “And I think it’s important to remember why we’re all here. Mayor Deakins needs all the positivity we can spare.
“Things have been tough for him, lately,” Marcel said.
“Jackson has been running quite the smear campaign.” Milton said.
Marcel looked around and grimaced. “And this fundraiser is nowhere near as lively as ones we’ve had in the past.”
“Hey,” Jeannette said. “We’re trying to be positive, remember?”
“You’re right, honey.”
“In order to be positive,” she said, “I’m looking at this meagre turnout like this...the less people here, means the more there is for us to drink.”
Marcel laughed and put his arm around her bare shoulder. “You’re still the solid gold lush I married all those years ago. This one can drink any man under the table.”
“I am sure being so short helps one fit under the table.” Philip smirked at her. Jeannette was barely over five feet yet she was full-bodied with breasts large enough to make any schoolboy or schoolgirl blush upon seeing them.
“Oh, it does.” Jeanette leaned in close to Phillip. “And I take great pleasure in beating a man at anything.” She sipped her martini and licked the alcohol from her plump lips. “Especially the tall ones.”
“Spoken like someone with a true Napoleon Complex.”
She batted her eye lashes and popped out her hips with her free hand. “My, you are so quick-witted, Philip Donaghue.”
He raised his glass. “And no one disguises an insult with the grace that you do, Jeannette Pascal.”
“He’s right, you know,” Marcel said to Milton, who chuckled.
“I wasn’t about to correct him, darling,” Jeannette said. Her blue eyes dipped to Phillip’s crotch. “I wouldn’t want to bruise his delicate ego.”
“Counsel Donaghue,” a brusque voice said from behind them.
“Judge Tremblay,” Philip said without turning around. “What a surprise to hear your voice at a place such as this. I assumed Harold Deakins to be a little too progressive for you.”
“This is simply a stop along the way, I assure you.”
Phillip turned and looked down at Judge Tremblay and slurped his bourbon. Tremblay was a short, pudgy man, built like an overfull bag of milk, his lined face curdling more every day. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“Then I saw you from across the way, and I wanted to make sure you know that, going forward, when my courtroom is a stop long your way, Mr. Donaghue...you stop.”
“My truancy was not intentional. It was truly unavoidable.”
“Yes, I was informed of the accident, Counsel. But my gut instinct tells me you took advantage of the incident to stall proceedings and regroup. That’s not out of character for you, Mr. Donaghue. And I refuse to allow such shenanigans to dictate my courtroom.”
Philip slurped again. “I’m offended by your salacious allegations.”
“I know you, Donaghue. Well enough not to be insulted or surprised when you spin a negative into a positive.” Judge Tremblay surveyed the ballroom with the face of someone prepared to spit. “You belong here, Donaghue. You and Harold Deakins are both a waste of the taxpayer’s money, and a waste of my time.” Like all men, married, single, old, young, he was powerless not to give Jeannette Pascal a quick up and down, and Jeannette scrunched her face. “Now you will be in my courtroom Monday morning, on time, or so help me God you will be sanctioned this time.”
“As always, it was good seeing you, Kenny.”
Respect was what Judge Tremblay valued most and he insisted. whether in an official or unofficial capacity, on being referred to as Judge Tremblay or Your Honour. Even his friends and family knew well enough to call him Kenneth or Ken, but never Kenny. His shiny cheeks burned red and his mouth hardened in a sneer before he walked away.
“Warm guy,” Milton said with a sniff.
“He sure is,” Phillip said.
Jeannette swayed her empty glass in her hand by its stem, while looking at the passing servants. “Surely the staff can plainly see I am in need of refreshment.”
“The service tonight has been rather poor.” Marcel took a cigar from his breast pocket. “I suppose we’ll have to fetch them ourselves. And then I say we abscond with fresh drinks onto the terrace and enjoy the night air.”
“Terrific idea,” Milton said. “But first I am afraid I must use the little boy’s room.”
“I too will have to meet you two out there,” Philip said. “I should retrieve Brigit before she gets lost.”
“Don’t dawdle!” Jeannette said as Marcel planted his palm on the small of her back and impelled her toward the bar.