I can’t remember exactly when I first met Myron Hamish. But it must have been sometime after the early 1970’s because I wasn’t doing anti-Vietnam War protests any more, and it had to have been before the end of that decade because everyone was still screwing fearlessly, herpes and AIDs not yet having penetrated the popular consciousness.
Along with sex, everyone, at least everyone in the Boston-Cambridge area that I frequented in those years, was heavily into drugs. Pot mostly, though coke was gaining in popularity. There was also a lot of excellent hash around. Ash-gray hash that came in bricks from Turkey. Black tarry hash cut with opium that came from Afghanistan. Both exceptionally pleasant pipefuls. And if you got really lucky, on very rare occasions, even Nepalese temple balls. This is hash that has been aged for decades and perhaps even centuries in Himalayan caves. Hash of the kind that gives those ultra-skinny wandering Indian yogis eyes as red as a desert sunset and a visceral sense of the unity of all things living and inanimate.
It was on one of these druggy summer evenings that I first encountered Myron. I was living in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston at the time. ‘JP’ everyone called it. An area that would soon become nationally known as the big city neighborhood with the fastest rising residential real estate prices in the entire country.
But that was still a couple of years down the road. When I met Myron, JP was still home to a wonderfully funky mix of unionized city workers, students, and left over lefty radicals. A place so off-the-wall politically that Walter Mondale carried it by a nine-to-one margin a few years later in a presidential election in which Ronald Reagan was winning the electoral votes of every state but Minnesota and the District of Columbia.
God how I loved JP in those days!
Anyway, it’s a summer evening. It’s hot. And like always, there’s a long line at JP Licks, the local ice cream emporium. As usual the line is moving slowly because people who have finally reached the serving counter are suddenly riven with doubt about their choice of flavor. This isn’t a HoJo crowd that just wants something cold from a cow. These are serious ice cream affectionados with chemically accentuated taste buds.
No one is complaining about the service, though. The verbal conflict here revolves around more esoteric matters. More specifically, the old cone versus cup controversy.
“Don’t you see,” one of the disputants is saying, his voice rising with genuine emotion. “Isn’t it obvious? Cones are a con. Even if every square inch of a cone’s insides were filled with ice cream, you end up getting less ice cream than you get in a cup where the ice cream can spread out and fill a larger area. It’s another rip-off. Another scam to enrich the dairy industry. Another way they stick it to working people.”
‘Working people’ was a powerfully charged phrase back then. Especially among those if us who were pretty much unemployable. There were ripples of agreement and muttered comments about the cone conspiracy. A joint that was being passed up the line had finally reached me. I took a deep toke as the anti-cup disputant had his say.
“Cups my ass,” he began, only to be interrupted by someone far in the rear saying: “Right on, right on,” in support of who knew what.
“A plastic cup costs an ice cream parlor half a cent. A cone cost two cents. You do the math. Every time you eat ice cream in a cup you’re getting screwed. That’s money that comes right out of the hide of working people.”
“Right on,” repeated the guy in the rear.
“And how about the pollution factor? Cones don’t pollute. Cups end up in the oceans killing dolphins. How many dolphins have to die before Americans free themselves from the tyranny of plastic ice cream cups?”
The debate then moved on, if I recall correctly, to the comparative virtues of Mango Delight and Chocolate El Supremo, two of the Licks’ most highly favored lickables. My own attention, however, had shifted to a young woman ten or twelve persons ahead of me on the line. We’d been introduced a few weeks earlier at a party at a time when we were both with other partners. I was alone tonight and Naomi (thankfully I remembered her name) appeared to be alone as well.
Local etiquette prevented me from joining her at her spot closer to the front of the line. Our eyes had nonetheless met and she had favored me with a smile. If she happened to be standing outside licking her Mango Delight when I emerged with my own Chocolate El Supremo, well...
“You’re pretty big. Six-three. Right?”
The voice came from the guy directly behind me. Someone I hadn’t paid any attention to before. And frankly, wasn’t paying much attention to now. I was focused on Naomi entering the ice cream parlor’s front door. She was laughing at something the girl next to her had said. The laugh did nice things to her face. A round face made rounder by a dutch boy haircut. Her whole thickset body was actually a delightful collection of rounded curves, like one of those prehistoric goddess totems. The girl positively oozed fecundity.
“You ever been in the military?”
My reverie popped. Turning, annoyed, I was staring down at a wiry guy in his mid twenties with a prematurely receding hairline that immediately made you think of Sy Sperling and the Hair Club For Men. A guy wearing Sears off-the-rack clothing that looked so conventionally square in the prevailing tie-dyed fashion context of a JP Licks ice cream line that he might almost have been trying to make a 1950’s retro fashion statement. Except, as I was soon to discover, this wasn’t the kind of thing that Myron Hamish would bother doing. In many ways he was simply a very retro 1950’s sort of guy.
“Yeah, I did my time. It was a real crock”
“Mind if I ask what branch of the service?”
Of course I minded. I’m standing on a line waiting to buy some ice cream and a stranger wants my life history. “Military police,” I grunted. “O.K?” And turned away, hoping to see Naomi leisurely licking on a Mango Delight.
There was another tap on my shoulder. A business card was passed. It bore his name and a phone number.
“Call if you need work. Easy work. The pay’s good.”
That was my first encounter with Myron. A week or so later I called. Why not? Easy work? Good pay? My chosen lifestyle then and now.
Myron turned out to be into what he called’ ‘real estate upgrading services’ and he occasionally needed someone to help him ‘deport’—that was another word he used—deport occupants of apartments that he wished to lease at higher rents or sell at exorbitant prices to the more affluent people who were then starting to flood the neighborhood.
And no. I wasn’t a professional hardass. I didn’t particularly like intimidating people, at least, not when it could be avoided. I was more of an explainer. There were even times I sweetened the explanation with cash that Myron was willing to pay in order to expedite the deportees departure. If I happen to a big guy who can make nasty faces when the situation demanded, well, that’s not real hardass. Believe me. I know the difference.
“So you’re a long-time friend of Myron Hamish,” said the detective sitting across the table from me who I’d just told about JP and my first meeting with the recently deceased Myron. We were in an interview room in The Roundhouse, Philadelphia’s police headquarters.
He took a pack of Marlboros from the breast pocket of his wrinkled shirt and lit up. I was starting to feel dizzy. The room’s ventilation system was working at near zero efficiency. The air not only reeked of tobacco, it retained traces of every creep who’d ever been questioned here. This whole building oozed neglect. You could get crabs just sitting on one of its metal chairs.
“Friend? Well, I wouldn’t say friend exactly.”
The detective’s name was Ryman. He was rodent featured and had a chain smoker’s yellowed teeth.
“So how, exactly, would you describe your relationship with Mr. Hamish?
“It’s complicated.”
What else could I say? It was complicated. Someone you’ve known off and on, for twenty-five years. Someone you sometimes liked but usually didn’t. Someone who was once a fairly important part your life in another city, and then wasn’t part of it for a long time until he suddenly came out of nowhere in your present hometown and
begged for help. What do you call that kind of relationship?
I’d told Dective Ryman how we met. What else was there to say?
The detective stared, waiting, sending the occasional nicotine and tar-charged exhalation my way. An overhead fixture beamed light through his smoke and the cloud of dust motes that permanantly filled the air in the interview room, creating what was actually a rather beautiful effect.
“You were a military policemen. One of our guys. Both a cop and a soldier. I like that.”
The speaker now was Ryman’s partner, who had quietly entered the room a few minutes earlier. She was in her late twenties or early thirties and had the tough, dark good looks that could have been a product of any one of half-a-dozen ethnic neighborhoods in the city. Her accent suggested South Philly and Italian. Her name, Smith, suggested she had married off the block. She sported oversized earrings that nicely balanced off the handcuffs hanging from her belt
Just now she was leaning slightly forward so as to make clearer, if I hadn’t yet noticed, that the top two buttons of her blouse were open, offering a hint of the treasures that awaited beneath. Her ‘military policeman’ remark had also been uttered with exaggerated admiration.
Ryman was giving me the cold stare. Smith was showing a sliver of bra. Between them I was sure to crack and admit that I’d planned the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.
“A military policeman,” she repeated, leaning a tad further in my direction. When I didn’t respond, she looked hurt in an obvious sort of way, than sneered to let me know she thought I was only half a man. She finally gave both her partner and me the old I-tried shrug and retreated to a corner of the room where she stood, arms folded, for the remainder of the interview.
Who knows. Maybe her little act actually worked with some guys who passed through this room. It wasn’t a place that usually hosted Philly’s best and brightest.
“So tell me what happened between you and Hamish after Boston.” Ryman was back in charge.
“Well, nothing much. I did that work to help free up apartments he was renting or planning to convert to condos. He paid me. That lasted six, eight months. Then I moved on to other things.”
“And Hamish moved on, too?”
“I guess. We weren’t in touch after that for a very long time. Until about two weeks ago. Here in Philly.”
“Old lovers reconnecting after a long separation?” Ryman’s narrow face was a total deadpan. Smith in the corner couldn’t contain a short-lived smirk.
“If you mean were we gay, were we lovers, that’s not the way it was.”
Ryman’s right hand, with yet another Malboro between the second and third fingers, did a slow circular waving in gentle dismissiveness. “We’re not interested in your sexual proclivities, Mr. Kahn. That’s not what this case is about. Or what we think it’s about at present.” This last caveat was accompanied by another narrowing of his eyes.
“That’s right, isn’t it Smittie?”
“Right,” came the answer from the corner.
I was suddenly depressed. This dynamic cop duo was desperately dropping hooks in the water in hopes that something, anything, would rise to the bait. It was painfully obvious that they knew even less about the murder of my occasional employer and erstwhile friend Myron Hamish than I did.
“So if you’re not gay,” said Ryman, “and Hamish wasn’t your lover, how come you two hooked up again after all those years through an ad you placed in a gay newspaper?”
“It isn’t a gay newspaper. It’s a weekly newspaper with a personals section that just happens to have ads from gay people trying to meet other gay people.”
“But your own ad wasn’t in that part of the personals section. The gay people section. Though it was close to that part. Do I have that right, Smittie? My memory isn’t what it used to be.”
“You have it right.”
Dear God! I suddenly realized in a burst of horrifying clarity that with a pair of schmucks like Ryman and Smith on the case, the job of solving it could end up falling to me.
“So Hamish sees your ad in the personals section. What does the ad say?
“The same thing that it says on my business card. ‘Freelance Intellectual. All assignments considered. Group rates available.’”
“A freelance intellectual. Is that what you are, Mr. Kahn?”
“Wow,” said Smittie from the corner. “Wonder if he needs a sidekick.”
Ryman: “You’re a big guy who could easily play the bad boy, but down deep you’re really an intellectual softy. A thinker. Myron Hamish is a small, wiry, very aggressive kind of guy who is a doer. Big softie. Small pile-driver. And neither one of you ever got married. Interesting...relationship.”
He gave me the old pregnant pause, a chance to leap in and defend my masculinity, and while I was at it maybe throw in some information on a case about which he was clearly clueless. After yet another long silence and no response, Ryman sighed heavily and moved on to other things.
“So you’re a private detective with a gimmick. Right?”
“Wrong. PI’s are licensed. I have no license. Never applied for one. Don’t need one. I’m a freelance intellectual.”
“Who does detective-style work.”
“Who does whatever a client needs done that’s legal and doesn’t require a PI license.”
“So what did Myron Hamish need from you after all those years. What problem did he have that required your many intellectual skills?”
Considering the source, I thought, this was a surprisingly good question. And given the way Myron and I parted in Boston all those ago, one I certainly asked myself when he got in touch after all those years.
The version of my early relationship with Myron, the one I’d given the crack Ryman-Smith investigative team, wasn’t entirely accurate. Not a lie, exactly. More like a tale with several important omissions.
I had, in fact, and I admit this shame-faced, played the hardass role to get some renters out of properties that Myron wanted to upscale. In my defense, this was before I found my true calling as a freelance intellectual. And to give Myron his own due, there was more to Mr. Hamish than the cardboard ‘nasty landlord’ stereotype some anti-eviction activists were claiming in those days.
The guy was smart and well read. He had done his time in the Civil Rights movement a decade earlier. And he loved, really loved, music. Everything from Mozart to Hendrix. There was always something worth listening to playing on a high-priced stereo rig in his office.
He was also capable of incredible generosity in ways you could never predict. Quirky do-good things that seemed to come out of nowhere. Like the time I almost quit because of one of my own guilt spasms. I’d gotten a women to move out of a great condo conversation prospect by doing grievous things to her beat up old Volkswagen. It turned out she needed the car to get her disabled little girl to a special needs school across town. Something I didn’t know before I did the deeds and something Myron apparently didn’t know either.
Sure, he went on to do the conversion after she was out. But he also paid to fix the lady’s car and a full year’s tuition at the special needs school for her kid. Anonymously! Something I only found out by accident. I got a bonus out of the deal, too. Tickets to the local opera house where I got to see one of the last regular performances of Beverly Sills.
How do you figure a guy like that? Just when you want to hate him, suddenly you like him.
With me, the hate feeling was the one that lingered, mostly because of our final Boston conversation. I’d come into some money, had decided to leave his employ, and called to tell him so. I figured there would be no hard feelings because, well, why should there be? There were a lot of other guys around who would be more than happy to do what I was doing and who could probably do it better Except with Myron, if you weren’t either helpless or otherwise under his thumb, you didn’t qualify for politeness much less generosity. You were enemy.
The minute he picked up on what I was going to say he cut me off. “Leaving the job, Ace? Gee, we’re gonna miss you. Don’t know how I’m gonna make it without you doing your thing.”
His voice then did an all too familiar quick switch from sarcastic to surly. “And Ace. Don’t bother coming around for your stuff. Consider it already shit-canned. I think for your replacement I’ll go with a german shepherd. They eat less and make better conversation.” The phone was slammed into its cradle.
And a pleasant day to you, too, Mr. Hamish.
There’s an old Wall Street saying. For the real pros, money is just a way of keeping score. Real pros have other motivaters. Which was certainly the case with Mitch Bernstein.
True, over the years Bernstein had made his pile and used his growing monetary resources to make still more money. He’d joined the billionaire club sometime around the turn of the new millennium and had been adding to his personal hoard ever since. The occasional million or two contributed to schools and civic organizations that fostered the public good as Bernstein understand that term—schools and civic organizations that helped turn out people who performed well in companies like his own—barely made a dent in these holdings.
What Bernstein really cared about in years past, the true focus of his energies, wasn’t making the money but expanding and perfecting the engine that earned it. The financial news empire he created and still largely owned. The organization that bore his name.
Bernstein Financial was the successful family his three attempts at marriage had failed to produce. It generated the vast respect this one-time helper in a family grocery store in Northeast Philadelphia had dreamed about. His name was now almost as well known among people craving financial advice as Alan Greenspan’s was among those seeking prognostications about the overall economy.
It was only recently that Bernstein’s vision, his personal mission, had changed. That he became fixated on a use for his enormous wealth other than increasing its size and funneling it back into his company. This new mission was the acquisition of political power.
As is often the way with big changes, this one came about because of an incident that initially seemed trifling. A long-time acquaintance had contacted Bernstein to solicit a contribution for an upcoming political campaign. The election of a local judge. Bernstein remembered their conversation well.
“Mitch, baby,” it began. No one except Carl Tregaloff ever addressed him that way. Bernstein leaned back in his chair when he recognized the voice on the other end of the line and sighed. It was payback time again.
They had a history, Carl and him. They grew up together in The Great Northeast, a huge chunk of Philadelphia with a rich mix of ethnicities that didn’t get along very well when these two were youngsters. Kicking the shit out of Jews was a popular sport in those days. Especially if you were small and bookish like Mitch Bernstein.
Carl Tregaloff was neither. Then as now he was a large and openly aggressive individual. For some inexplicable reason, the two having little in common and not being close friends, he would nonetheless come to Mitch’s rescue and had saved him from many beatings. You grow up in the Northeast, you don’t forget that sort of thing.
“Carl. Good to hear from you.”
“Yeah, yeah. You love hearing from me. How’s the old pecker hanging?”
“Hanging good, Carl. What can I do for you?” The question wasn’t a pleasantry. There was always something he could do for Carl Tregaloff. Professionally, Carl was still doing what Bernstein once did. Peddling stocks and other securities on commission. Except Carl wasn’t very good at it and was always looking for a side deal to boost his earnings.
“You could give me half your money.”
Tregaloff could spout humor like this for long minutes at a time. Very long minutes at a time. “Carl, I’m a little busy right now...”
“Got you, babe. Happens I am calling about money. Not for myself, though. A contribution I want you to make to a political campaign. Ever hear of Judge Ronson? Ronson like the lighter?”
“Vaguely. He’s the judge who threw out that big age discrimination suit a few months back. Yes?”
“The very one. And we can get him for twenty grand. Total. That’s all he needs for his campaign. Well, not exactly his campaign. For his campaign war chest. Whatever’s left over after his unopposed run he gets to keep.”
Bernstein suspected someone else might also end up keeping part of these campaign leftovers. Carl the fund-raiser, for example. It was something else Carl just said that had caught his interest, however. “You’re telling me we can buy this judge, have him in our pocket on other cases, for only twenty thousand dollars?”
The question was answered with a smoker’s rasping laugh. “You know, Mitch, for a smart guy, you ask some pretty dumb questions.”
Bernstein was suddenly taking a growing interest in this conversation. He knew as much about financial markets as any man alive, and had a pretty good handle on municipal issues involving bond financing. But he hadn’t given much thought to the non-financial, real world workings of Philadelphia city government. Carl
Tregaloff, who worked the underside of every institution, including city government, was providing insights that might one day prove useful.
Before he could follow up on this thought, Tregaloff interrupted. “Twenty grand’s squat to you. Heck, I’m not even asking that much. Ten would be great. I got other people I can tap for the rest.”
“I appreciate that, Carl.” Bernstein’s sarcasm was of course wasted on Tregaloff, a man immune to sarcasm and impossible to offend. The only way to rid yourself of someone like this was to tell him in the most unmistakable terms to get lost. And Bernstein, for whom loyalty was the ultimate virtue, could never do that.
“Few years back,” said Tregaloff with a note of nostalgia in his voice, “you could buy a sitting judge in Philly for a few hundred bucks. Just pass the money along through a clerk. Cost you a hundred times that much in New York. Philly used to be a cheap town to operate. Now with all this...this...”
While Tregaloff reached for the words to describe the unfortunate inflation that had overtaken local government bribery, Bernstein offered, “Good government? That what’s causing the problem?”
“Mitch, baby, you said it all. We need more good government in this town. You oughta run for mayor. I’d back you a thousand percent.”
“I’ll give it serious thought, Carl. Your support would mean a lot. Where do you want me to send the ten thousand and how do you want the check made out.”
“Make it out to the Ronson Reelection Campaign and send it to me. I’ll make sure it gets delivered personally. That way we both get in good with the judge. Great investment, Mitch baby. Guaranteed.”
This conversation had both irritated and intrigued Bernstein. After he replayed it in his head a few times he realized why. And that, in the usual circuitous way of things, was what led to his present run for mayor of Philadelphia.
The petty corruption Carl was promoting wasn’t the issue that decided him. He didn’t like it. He planned to stop it if he could. The real inspiration here for Bernstein was the linkage between good investments and political power.
To his businessman’s way of thinking Carl’s approach didn’t make sense. If buying power with campaign contributions just gave you easier access to an elected official, or even made you a bit more able to influence decisions of that official, was that really a good investment? You bought influence that way, you were working through a middleman. Wouldn’t it make more sense to get rid of the intermediary and buy the office direct?
The more Bernstein thought along these lines, the more attractive the idea became. The process didn’t seem to have a downside. Lose, and you have some funny stories to tell and a lot of clippings at a cost that in his tax bracket passed for chump change. Win, and you get to play governor or senator for a few years.
Mitch Bernstein’s own public office ambitions didn’t go quite that high. Not yet, anyway. What possessed him now was an intense desire to become mayor of his hometown, Philadelphia. A desire that with amazing and surprising suddenness exceeded his desire to further expand and improve his beloved company.
With these new political aspirations came an absolute conviction that this long suffering city desperately needed him at its helm. And when he explained this conviction to leading representatives of a local Republican Party that hadn’t had a popular leader since that indomitable champion of law-and-order, Frank Rizzo, passed from the scene a decade earlier, and mentioned the very large sums he was willing to spend on his own campaign, these politicos immediately recognized Bernstein’s singular qualifications to be their standard bearer.
Even in heavily Democratic Philadelphia a surprising number of things seemed to favor his candidacy. Along with money Bernstein had name recognition by virtue of being one of the city’s largest employers, one with a reputation for treating his employees well. He was Jewish in a city with the largest percentage of Jewish voters of any American city. Best of all, the present mayor was notoriously incompetent and surrounded by unpopular and corrupt advisors.
Six months before the election the smart money already said it was Mitch Bernstein’s to lose. He just had to avoid doing anything really stupid, or getting involved in a scandal that made him look even worse than the guy he now fully expected to replace. He also had to take the personally painful but necessary steps to find a successor who would run the company he had built from scratch when its founder went off to become hizzoner.
Lisa Sankerson couldn’t care less about her employer’s aspirations or succession angst. She was happily focused on the coming end of her own trials and tribulations as a Bernstein employee, and on returning to work as a serious musician.
In half an hour or so, after this little ceremony was over and she had received the company’s employee of the month award and the cash bonus that went with it, she’d walk up to Myron Hamish’s desk, utter a few choice insults, and be on her way.
Maybe she would even sing her farewell sentiments. What was that old Johnny Paycheck song? “Take This Job And Shove It.” Yeah, that was the one. She could pick up one of the guitars in the composer room and use it to serenade Myron on her way out the door.
When it came to instruments Lisa had a lot to chose from for such a serenade. The Bernstein Building’s composer room had a huge selection of stringed and wind instruments, and an even larger selection of electronic music makers. Reverb units, drum machine sequencers, mic preamplifiers, monitor loudspeakers, sampler and controller keyboards and mixing consoles, 24-track recorders, multi-effects units. It also had a full range of stock and bond market trackers and monitors. Devices that could give you instantaneous information about the performance of countless securities on markets anywhere in the world, or historical data about any security that had been bought or sold since traders were peddling shares in South Seas real estate from seventeenth century London coffeehouses.
This strangely varied assemblage of things that made music and things that tracked financial markets both fascinated and confused Lisa when she started work here. It didn’t seem to make sense. At first glance is appeared to be just a weird combination of musical instrument bizarre, hard rocker’s recording studio, and stock market junkie’s masturbation fantasy. The fact that most everything here was new, top-of-the-line and state-of-the-art, merely compounded the mystery.
Her first day on the job she asked her boss, Myron Hamish, for an explanation.
“Look,’ he said, pointing at a piece of paper on a table next to where they were standing. “That’s a chart showing the stock movements of a Fortune 500 company. See the way the line goes up and down?
“I see.”
“That line represents the end-of-the-day selling price of this stock over the course of a month. The dots along the line represent each day’s end price. So this is a graph of changing prices for the stock over a one month period.”
“O.K.”
Myron put his finger on the paper. “See the different thicknesses of the lines between the dots?”
“I see that.”
“Good. Line thickness represents volume. The number of shares traded that day. The thicker the line, the greater the volume. Still following?”
“Sure.
“Now,” said Myron, reaching across the table and grabbing another sheet of paper that he placed next to the first. “This is where you come in. Where you earn all the money I’m going to pay you.”
Lisa stared at the second sheet. It was filled with something she understood very well. Musical notation. She scanned the notes on the paper and in her head heard how they would sound. “This is crap,” she said. “It’s elevator music.”
Myron smirked. “Now, now. Let’s not be judgmental. Look more closely at the two sheets. What’s their relationship?”
Lisa did as she was told. It took her only seconds to have the answer. “They’re the same. I mean, they’re just different ways of expressing the same thing. Someone improvised a bit and turned your stock movements into musical notation. And created...”
“Market music?” suggested Myron.
“I guess you could call it that. I’d give you an argument about the music part.” She stopped herself. “I don’t mean to offend. It’s just...”
Myron laughed. He looked around in a comic way as if making sure that no one was listening. As if they were sharing a big secret about the quality of the music that was produced in this room. After which he spent a few additional minutes explaining what else was involved with this offbeat composing, and why it was so valuable to the company.
“Don’t sweat the details now,” he concluded. “It’ll come to you gradually. You’ll be great. Anything you don’t understand, just ask one of the other composers. We’re one big happy family here.”
Before he could walk off Lisa couldn’t help asking: “People actually believe in this stuff?”
Myron smiled, looking quite proud of himself. “Believe in it. Invest with it. Pay us big bucks to get a fresh dose every morning. Which is why composers like you, my little subway fiddler, are so important to our organization.”
With that Myron reached out and patted Lisa’s cheek in a way that might have been avuncular, except she was pretty sure it wasn’t. He also took her playing hand and gave an overly long congratulatory squeeze. Then turned and walked off to conduct other business.
She didn’t like being called a little subway fiddler. She liked the way Myron touched her even less. She was also beginning to suspect she’d become part of some kind of scam.
But hey, what wasn’t a scam these days? And since it was being carried out on the premises of someone she’d heard would soon be mayor, she was pretty sure this one wouldn’t cause her any personal trouble. So why not just go along and reap its benefits?
Even just a few hours at her new job had her thinking this could be a great place to spend a few months, make some money, meet interesting people, store up stories for later telling. As for the way her new boss looked at her, his touching games, she thought she knew how to handle that one.
That was Lisa Sankerson’s introduction to market music. Now, six months later, she was an expert at producing it. To her own horror and Myron Hamish’s delight, she’d gotten so good at this composing that she was about to be honored as Bernstein’s employee of the month.
Lisa knew it was time to quit. The more she composed and played this elevator music, the further she felt she was drifting from the real thing. Another few months and she might actually start thinking market music was real music. Another few months and she might turn into another Billy.
“I’m so proud of you. We’re all so proud.”
Myron was suddenly standing behind her, whispering in her ear. He did this a lot. Come up silently from behind and start whispering in her ear. It gave her the creeps. The guy wore bedroom slippers at work because he said he didn’t want the sound of his footsteps to intrude on his composers’ creativity. Lisa thought he wore them to enhance his sneakiness, which she didn’t think needed enhancement.
“When this is over, after you get your bonus money, the gang’s throwing you a party.” He was at her ear again. Practically in her ear. He was so close she could almost feel his tongue. Her body gave an involuntarily quiver.
“Enjoy your party, Lisa. Take off early. You’ve earned some free time.” He stepped away and she felt herself go limp. God, that man spooked her.
Lisa knew her special attraction for certain males, especially those in deep middle age who still had to prove something in the sack. It was her aura of vulnerability that always got them. That was her special sex pheromone.
She was tall but she slouched. She had blond hair, but it hung limply and lacked sheen. Her nose and lips were too thin, her breasts too small. Most people looking her way would describe her as washed-out.
For guys like Myron, washed out was synonymous with accessible, needy, controllable. It made them want to give a little in the expectation that they would get something big in return.
Young though she was, Lisa had that one figured out long before she arrived in Philadelphia. It was a game she was prepared to play when necessary, as long as the older man playing it with her accepted modest payment for favors rendered and otherwise stuck to the rules.
Myron played by another set of rules. Kinky rules. Myron was a tease.
Those hot breath whispers. The way he’d speak about their “growing relationship” in a way that could be interpreted as purely professional but wasn’t. How he’d reach out a hand as if he were going to stroke her cheek or brush against her breast, then pretend to pick something out of her hair. How even the innocent conversations between them were always conducted at very close range.
“I don’t understand what the guy’s playing at,” she confided to Billy one time when they were on break, sipping a cup of Bernstein coffee, both getting the buzz this brew always generated. “Ass grabbing I understand. Requests for a quick servicing I understand. Getting teased by a balding, hyper, over-age Jerry Seinfeld look-alike confuses me.”
“Around here we call it ‘Bernstein interruptus’,” said Billy, flashing her his know-it-all look.
“Bernstein interruptus. I like that. It’s got a ring. What does it mean?”
“It means,” said Billy, “that this company has very strict policies about harassment. And the policies are very strictly enforced.”
“So...”
“So,” said Billy, puffing himself up another notch or two as he imparted wisdom garnered from working here for almost three years, longer than any other composer. “So Myron puts the moves on you at work, even after hours, our ultimate master, Lord Bernstein, fires the bastard. Even though Myron makes the company tons of money, that wouldn’t save his butt.”
“And Lord Bernstein does this because...” said Lisa, sipping her coffee, “...because he loves and respects us?”
“One possibility,” said Billy. “Could be that. More likely he’s afraid of lawsuits and bad publicity. You want my personal opinion, it’s also because Bernstein wants to take some dips in the company pool but is too high profile to get away with it. So he takes it out on his employees. On the managers, anyway. You and me, we want to have some fun, that would probably be alright.”
Lisa took a bite of her sweet roll. “Please. Not while I’m eating.”
Her mouth was full as she spoke and a few bits of chewed roll flew out and landed on the table. She swatted them off, more annoyed at the loss of something whose taste she liked than fearful of offending her companion. The baked goods the company supplied free to its employees were super. Everyone said so.
As for having a fling with Billy. Why ruin a good friendship? Billy was shorter than Lisa by a couple of inches. He was also even thinner, and sported a mop of red hair on top and a raggedy beard below that was so stringy it looked as if it was pasted on a hair at a time. His glasses had lenses thick enough to start a forest fire. A good office pal, for sure. Fun to schmooze at work. Definitely not dating material.
“All right. I got that part now,” she said after swallowing. “Myron can’t use me to wet his dipstick. So what’s he playing at instead?”
“I’m not sure he’s playing at anything. I mean, playing at anything with you.”
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