One Trillion Dollars Page 14

  Quick as lightning, the image of podgy Miss Pearson, his landlady, came to mind, the way she used to bitch and rant with Marvin by the door when they were late with the rent payment. How long ago was that? A few weeks maybe, but it felt like a hundred thousand years. John knew what the minister meant; a government that didn’t re-pay its debts would not find anyone else to loan it money. It made sense, actually. “I, ah…” he uttered and tried to smile, “I haven’t had time to think about … an investment … um, strategy yet. But, I will consider your offer.”

  Later, John spoke with a Nobel Prize winner about the weather, with a banker about Jacques Chirac’s election as France’s new president, and with a soprano singer about the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He accepted business cards, promised to look into investment opportunities and at some point during the evening he switched from champagne to mineral water as the buzz he was enjoying threatened to grow into something sinister.

  “How does it feel to be a trillionaire?” a woman with a mass of carefully curled and set red hair asked. Her equally red sequined dress was almost transparent if you looked closely enough in the right light.

  John recoiled when he found his nose almost in her cleavage. “It feels,” John slurred, “as if all the women in the world were throwing themselves at you.”

  “Oh really?” she said with a peeved expression.

  John had finally found the best answer to the question he had been asked more than any other. This time it was the questioner who sought to escape.

  Outside, the sky was already turning to the pastel colors of dawn as John closed the door to his room and stood leaning against it with unsteady legs, enjoying its substance and the sudden quiet.

  The richest man in the world? He felt like the most exhausted man in the world. The freshly made bed was extremely enticing. He opened the door of a wardrobe with a mirror on the inside and stared at himself in his drunken state. Not such a bad suit, this tail thingamajig. He liked it. He could get used to it. And being a trillionaire. Whether or not he could get used to champagne was another matter. He dimly remembered drinking to “brotherhood” with a bunch of people, but had no recollection who they all were. Eduardo was among them, he remembered. He went after the woman with the red sequin dress, and John didn’t remember seeing any more of him. Or the woman.

  His bow-tie had suffered; it was stained and hung crookedly. He took off the cufflinks and, wobbly on his feet, got undressed. As he unbuttoned the vest he heard a garden gate squeak.

  At this time? He weaved over to a window. The Vacchis had a small structure annexed to this side of the estate house that looked like a workshop or a former shed. There was a walled-in courtyard on the side of the complex closest to the road, and it was the rusty gate to this area that squeaked.

  John took off his vest and frowned when he saw a van parked on the road and a man he had seen several times before running errands for the Vacchis unloading cartons. There was a light on behind the windows of the annex, and he saw a woman sitting at a table. When the man reached the door and knocked, she got up and helped him carry the rest of the cartons inside.

  John unbuttoned his shirt. The starched front also had various sorts of spots on it, so he threw it into the laundry basket. Odd for somebody to already be up at this time of morning working. Maybe it wasn’t good to be thinking about such things with so much alcohol in his blood. John wobbled over to the bed and succumbed to its irresistible allure.

  The containers looked like colorful building blocks from afar, but when you looked closer they were nothing but dented and scratched junk. The container crane, working hard during the day, stood stoically there at night quietly rusting away. Railroad tracks ran parallel to each other or crisscrossed here and there over potholed streets and roads and a few ancient piers that jutted out into the Hudson River, waiting in vain for new freight to arrive.

  Susan Winter was fifteen minutes early for the meeting. She ambled out onto one of the piers and watched the game of light and shadows play among the skyscrapers of Manhattan. She was thinking what she would do with eight hundred thousand dollars a year. At seven o’clock she turned around and wondered to herself if there was a place to eat nearby, but that was not a thought that could compete with her fascination of her future riches.

  When she sauntered back to the containers a man stepped out from between them, just like the first time she had agreed to break the law to earn money. He was wearing the same dark coat he did every time they met, including the last time at Rockefeller Center. He still moved as if he were suffering from rheumatism. And his face didn’t look any more handsome either. More familiar, and at least she knew his name now.

  “Hello Randy!” Susan Winter said a little derisively. “I’m sorry that you had to come here, now that everyone is looking for you. But today I have a meeting with your client.”

  “I know,” Randy Bleeker told her with an ugly smile. “He gave me certain instructions that concern you.”

  Picking up on his menacing tone, she suddenly realized she was there alone and unprotected. She could analyze anything, just not her own life. She stared at Bleeker and her eyes widened with dread. This time it wasn’t an envelope full of money he pulled out of his pocket.

  $9,000,000,000,000

  THE SUN HUNG high in the sky when they met the next day. Giovanna had put up a small breakfast table in the library; one of the few rooms that hadn’t been devastated by the party. People from catering services were bustling around all over the ground floor, getting things back in order. Through the open window they could hear the distant sound of the fairground rides being dismantled.

  “Quite something, being rich,” John said.

  “Without a doubt.” Alberto Vacchi sipped his espresso tiredly.

  His brother Gregorio had red eyes and looked just as moody and tired. Eduardo’s face looked really bad, as if he hadn’t slept a wink. He sat silently drinking one coffee after another. Only the Padrone looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. He had gone to bed early, as usual, and had already been for a long walk this morning.

  “But now,” John went on and stared at the black as night liquid in his cup, “it’s up to me to give all the money to the needy, right?”

  A sudden silence filled the room. John got the impression he had said something terribly wrong.

  “That’s what I understood. Isn’t that so? The money isn’t there for me. I’m supposed to do something with it; alleviate hardship — poverty — something along those lines.”

  The Padrone closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them again. “It is your money, John,” he said. “It belongs to you. There are no conditions.”

  “You may do what you want with it,” Alberto added.

  “But, there is that clause in the testament! That I’m supposed to give humanity back its future or something like that.”

  “That is not a clause,” Cristoforo Vacchi corrected him. “It is a prophecy. You don’t have to — you will. There is a world of difference.”

  “Does that mean that I could keep it all if I want to?”

  “You are totally free. You may keep it, or you may give it to the poor — whatever you wish.”

  “Although you might like to ask yourself who the poor really are.” Gregorio dourly interjected.

  For the first time it dawned on John that maybe the fortune really had nothing to do with him at all, maybe he was just some kind of straw man, that all along there had been some secret plan for how the fortune would be used. “Well,” he started lamely, “all those people who are suffering from hunger — they could be considered poor, couldn’t they?”

  “Agreed.” Gregorio stood up and went over to one of the bookshelves. He pulled out a thick book and from its title it must be an almanac or something like that. Unerringly he flipped through the pages. “That would be about … one point three billion people. How much should each one get? Approximately …” John, of course, could not figure that out in his head. He was neve
r good at mental arithmetic, and worse than ever with a hangover. John took a calculator that was always in the library and started to push buttons. “One billion divided by …” He paused. The calculator, like many, had only an eight-digit capacity. One trillion, however, has thirteen digits, more than it could handle. John stared at the thing in annoyance: a simple calculator in beige plastic with black rubber buttons; a gadget he’d seen on shelves for just a few dollars. For most people it would be more than enough. It would even suffice for a multi-millionaire. It was still difficult for his mind to grasp that he was moving in a realm that went far beyond normality — that went beyond the average calculator.

  “Almost seven hundred and seventy dollars,” Gregorio said, who had done the math with paper and pencil. “Seven hundred and sixty-nine dollars and twenty-three cents, to be exact. But, of course you have more than a trillion dollars by now; however, you must take away the money it would take to distribute all this money all over the world. So it’s nonsense to calculate it so exactly.”

  John looked at him and thought he was hearing things. “Seven hundred and seventy dollars? Per person?” That was crazy. He looked at the math and thought about what this could mean.

  “That’s not very much,” Gregorio reasoned. “The money they got would be gone within a year, even if food were very cheap.”

  In the end, was a trillion dollars, more money than anyone ever had, in reality so inconsequential? John felt dizzy. He had to stop thinking about it. “Maybe that isn’t such a good idea.”

  The Padrone handed him the chrome basket with the pastries. “If you would take a little advice from me,” he said with a kind smile, “don’t even think about how you can get rid of the money for now. First get used to having it.”

  The Learjet that Eduardo had chartered for the flight to London had a calming pale-gray interior. There were seven leather seats, a stereo with CD player, and for each passenger a lightweight headset. A sweet stewardess served them coffee and cold drinks.

  They took off at nine thirty in the morning from a private airport near Florence. It was a small, inconspicuous airport that looked like one of the old fashioned kinds that never get used anymore. There were no lines of people in front of the check-in, no self-important ground personnel, and no departure lounge. They simply got out of the car, walked over to the plane, where they shook hands with the pilot and co-pilot. And after the three passengers were seated — John, Eduardo and Marco — they took off. No lecture about oxygen masks or life jackets.

  “You need to buy some tailor-made suits,” Eduardo decided. “The best in the world.”

  Despite all the press photos flashed around the world in the past week, no one took note of the three men as they strolled along Savile Row in the early afternoon. John had imagined the ritzy street with all the high-class tailors would look more impressive. The rough cobblestones, the colorful facades partially broken and stained, and all the garbage bags on some of the street corners made this road look like any other in Westminster. But, on the other hand, there were more Union Jacks of all sizes fluttering here over the sidewalks than anywhere else and ad banners for the local firms and a few more marbled entryways than other parts of the city.

  Marco followed the two men keeping a discrete distance as they looked in the windows of firms like Henry Poole & Co., Gieves & Hawkes, J. Dege & Sons or Kilgour, French & Stanbury. They studied the finely tailored suits in conservative colors worn by headless mannequins. They finally stopped in front of a façade colored in a shimmering pale purple. Written in golden letters above the large display windows, through which one could see large balls of dark cloth lying on tables, was the name Anderson & Sheppard.

  “It is said that Prince Charles has most of his suits tailored here,” Eduardo told John. And whatever was good enough for the British heir to the crown seemed to be at least worth looking into for the richest man in the world. They entered.

  The man in the tailor shop on 5th Avenue looked like a choirboy compared to the man who greeted them here. Eduardo told him briefly who they were in a subdued tone of voice. What they wanted was obvious. The man didn’t display the slightest change of expression. He seemed used to having the beautiful, wealthy, and famous of the world ring the bell on the door of his shop. But it was different when Eduardo told him that they needed a dozen suits for the most diverse occasions. That did the trick and conjured a thin smile from the man.

  John was led to a well-lit room. White tailor’s chalk, a measuring tape and a work-order book with pale green pages lay on top of a chest with a vast number of drawers. An elderly man with a bald forehead and thin-rimmed eyeglasses entered from a storage room out back carrying a few samples of cloth.

  The cloth was draped over John’s arms or clamped below his chin while the others discussed at length various types of cut and other details — padded or unpadded shoulders, vest or no vest, the fit of the trousers on the hips, belts or suspenders, the type of pockets, buttons, flaps, stitches, there was no end to the details that needed considering. Then a puffy-cheeked young man came in and took notes as John was measured. Odd code-words were used, such as DRS or BL 1, which were carefully notated. The whole procedure reminded John of a ritual, like the initiation into a brotherhood, perhaps the Royal Society of True Quality Suit Wearers.

  John was surprised that the store did not demand a down payment and they did not even ask for an address. Only his name was recorded and an appointment for the first fitting. In six weeks; if this would be all right?

  “That would be excellent,” Eduardo told the man on John’s behalf.

  Since they were in London already, they went to another tailor, Turnbull & Asser, on 71 Jermyn Street, where they went through similar procedures and made an order for over six dozen suits, which would be sent to him within 12 weeks. They also stopped by John Lobb at No. 9 St. James Street, to order 20 pairs of custom made shoes. John refused to have a top-hat tailor-made at Lock & Co. Instead he purchased two Panama hats and was surprised to see them sold rolled-up in cylinder cartons.

  They spontaneously decided to stay the night. The jet crew was notified of the plans, and then they booked the Royal Suite at the Savoy Hotel. Just before the store closed they got a can of Malossol quality Beluga caviar at Fortnum’s. John thought that the price for the fish eggs was in lira instead of pounds sterling. They ate them in the hotel.

  “You eat it plain,” Eduardo told John as he carefully pushed the tin further into the ice in which the dry champagne was cooled. “People who eat caviar with sour cream, anchovies, chopped capers, hard boiled eggs or whatever, don’t realize that they are destroying the taste they paid so dearly for. At most I’d accept a thin slice of toast with unsalted butter, but, as I said, pure is best. And never,” Eduardo added fervently, as if to prevent John from committing a terrible sin, “never smear caviar on a piece of toast with a knife, because this is just as barbarous. The trick with caviar is the put the fish eggs into your mouth intact and to crush them between the roof of your mouth and tongue to get the explosion of taste; that is the point of the entire exercise.”

  John glanced at the dark mass in the open can that looked like a bunch of slimy black pearls. “Then what is the right way to do it?”

  “You take a spoon,” Eduardo said and held up two plastic spoons, similar to those used to feed babies with. “In the early days spoons made of horn, wood, or ivory were used, but plastic is best — lightweight, soft, without sharp edges, not to mention hygienic and disposable.”

  When John put the first spoonful into his mouth, he realized that this tiny pile of fish eggs in his oral cavity cost more than what he earned in a month only a few weeks ago. Crazy. Even obscene, he thought. Then he did what Eduardo had explained. Hmmm, on the other hand…

  The next morning they went back to shopping. They walked from Piccadilly to Burlington Arcade, studied the immaculate display windows and bought jackets and sweaters made of pure cashmere, money clips made of sterling silver, platinum cuff
links, and tie clips that cost a small fortune.

  “What about ties?” John asked.

  “For that only Paris or Naples will do,” Eduardo explained. “Hermes or Marinella.”

  “Oh,” John said nodding slightly.

  They bought sunglasses, silk handkerchiefs, gloves made of deer leather, shawls of wool and silk, socks, coats and umbrellas, the latter by Swaine, Adeney, Brigg & Sons Ltd. They, Eduardo told John keenly, supply the royal family. Their ever-growing bounty was delivered to the airport by obliging stores’ employees and loaded onto the charter plane by the crew members who were still wondering when they would take off again. Eduardo and John visited a horse race … just because they felt like it.

  At first John was not so very enthusiastic about this type of sport; a bunch of excited people and once in a while a few horses that run in a circle. They walked over the ever-growing number of thrown-away betting slips after each race. More out of boredom than interest, John thought he would see what it felt like to gamble away some money. After he had the bet procedure explained to him he placed a wager for one hundred pounds on a horse that was considered to have no chance of winning.

  Even though he had placed such a relatively tiny bet, it still made him much more enthusiastic about the race. All of a sudden the whole event, with the thunderous hoof beats, the nervous spectators with their binoculars, tweed jackets, and betting slips, became an exciting experience. To make matters even better, John’s horse won the race, and they left the racetracks with a much thicker bundle of bank notes than they had come with. It was hard for John to believe. It almost ruined the experience.

  In the afternoon they flew on to Paris to buy ties. Eduardo took John into a small but exquisite restaurant to let him taste Perigord truffles. He, of course, promised John that they would also try white truffles, but they grow only in Italy, in Piedmont, so they were frowned upon in France and they’d have to wait until their return home to do so.