jurisprudent
08-30-2010, 03:54 PM
Part 2.
Jerome’s office was in the financial district of Paris. Next to a quiet park, it afforded unique serenity for the people who were working under the pressure of the big money deals. The bank occupied seven floors; the office was a half-empty room with a pretty view but nothing else besides the computer and the files. No pictures or photos, no posters, nothing. Jerome’s colleagues were looking with suspicion at that man who left a fabulous job in the London City to take up the rather boring department in Paris. Yes, he was dealing with private equity, mergers and large-scale projects, but this was not the high-profile investments and transactions he was engaged with in London. Moreover, the man was so silent, so reluctant to speak, that nobody wanted to see him outside work. Exactly at six, Jerome was taking the tube to his home.
He lived in a flat in a modern, expensive quarter, where his neighbours were mainly managers and financial consultants like him. He had an old apartment in the centre of the city, with a view to the Tuilerie gardens, where he had lived before moving to London. When Claire was pregnant, they used to walk for hours in the garden, treading on the fallen leaves, and he still recollected these days. So he sold the flat – each and every object in it reminded him of the past. His new place was spacious but he did not buy much furniture, he did not need it. During the long nights, he sat in the dark, watching a movie, mechanically eating badly prepared food. He could not sleep well, only a few hours, often interrupted by nightmares.
If he could not find consolation at home, he decided to spend his days at work. Surrounded by piles of papers, buried by reports, contracts and projects, he would often dismiss his secretary and remain in the office until eleven or twelve, leaving the building followed by the amazed stares of the guards. He was working at home, too, until he was so tired he could not stay awake. But the job was so boring, too boring; his mind would treacherously try to jump either to the realm of memories - the stifling hell of images that filled the dark nightmares - or lead him to a bar, for a drink, to the slavery of alcohol.
One morning he noticed a white Ferrari parked nearby; it was new, he had not seen it here before. While crossing the parking, Jerome saw the man who left the car and walked to the building. A tall, slender man, with long auburn hair, clad in a white suit, with sunglasses. He suddenly turned, looked to Jerome and exclaimed: “God!” Jerome stared at him and vaguely recollected something.
Pierre was 29 or so. He had started his own business, selling food and drinks, when he was 18, immediately after leaving school. Though it was very successful, he also needed a diploma, to gain respect rather than knowledge. When he enrolled at the university, he needed people to educate him in the basics of finance, for which he was paying quite well; Jerome was among them. He was now amazed that Pierre remembered him; but he boasted perfect memory.
There was a bewitching scent wafting around Pierre. Very sexy, in handmade clothes, athletic, he was rich and wanted everybody to know it. Ruthless, aggressive, expansive - Jerome had never liked him. Pierre had the gift of corrupting people, charmingly permeating their will through swiftly injecting them with what they desired. Pierre’s appearance spoke for him, his life looked expensive and he played a lot on this string. With a cigar between his fingers, he opened his arms and greeted Jerome with a wide, brilliant smile. “****, it’s more than ten years!” And he hugged Jerome if they were old, old friends.
The white Ferrari was his. He looked to the car with great devotion and said it was a perfect “baby”. Jerome retorted that he did not have a car now. Pierre took off his sunglasses.
“You look bad, my friend. You need some good time. What are you doing now?”
Jerome told him of the bank where he was working and Pierre smiled – “I think we can have a talk, Jerome. Come to Cannes. I spend the summer there, my yacht is there. Come, we can have fun.”
Pierre walked away, then turned and, staring at Jerome, repeated in a very decisive, compelling voice: “Come.”
That was a proposal Jerome could not refuse. The days were boring, the job was tiresome. Jerome did not want to sleep, he was sitting by the windowpane, watching the reflections of the TV screen on the wide windows, ordering pizza on the phone, on the brink of walking out to the bar for a drink. When the time for his vacation approached, he toured the luxurious Paris shops and bought some fine clothes. Looking at himself in the mirror, he found that he seemed older, but that was not bad. To the contrary, the women in the shop were staring at that tall, slim man, with a sense of mysticism around him, with a sense of gravitas surrounding him, and that made him even more attractive. And he booked a flight to Cannes.
The hot days in the South were full of sticky, sweaty reminding images of the time when he was younger and came here with Claire. In the evening of his arrival, he sat on the terrace of his room and watched the crowds go by, colorful, wonderful, in random motion. Life. Movement. He went down to the street and mingled in the flow of faces - eyes full of energy, feet running to the places of consolation, hands reaching for the hands of the beloved. The smell of living, sweating, hot bodies striding through the caverns of the night and its pleasures. Jerome walked along the beaches, until he saw an old bar he had been before. He sat there, while some people were watching a football match. Their team won and they ordered drinks for everybody in the bar. And Jerome drank, alone, in the badly-lit lounge, feeling his veins waking up, feeling almighty again. Suns come and go, suns also rise. He drank so much that he hardly found the way to his room.
“Azimuth” was built for a Russian oligarch who went bankrupt and so Pierre managed to buy the yacht. Painted in silver and white, it was a 25-metre wonder of science and engineering, bouncing on the Mediterranean waves in a slight, sleepy way. Pierre was clad in white again; he was sitting on a sofa, surrounded by silver cushions and a tray with alcohol. He hugged Jerome and said he was so, so glad to see him.
“I know what happened to you. Life has a bad side, too. But you are still here. Look – there is everything out there for us. Everything can be done.”
Pierre was a private investor. Shares, capital, sale of goods (coffee, sugar, tobacco), funds and securities. He had been through three bankrupts, he had lost everything but he was here again, in his yacht, rich as an Ancient king, handsome and attractive. Everything is out there, everything can be done. The yacht was slightly bobbing on the waves.
“Jerome, there are two greatest resources on earth, mate. Not oil. Not gas. Two others – time and information. Information. I need to know lots of things. When companies make plans of investments. When they make contracts. What is there in those contracts. What shares they want to issue. Simple, little things.”
Insider trading was a serious fraud. Jerome had access to substantial corporate information and he knew that, if used, it can earn millions on the stock exchange. The business was risky but the scam was very difficult to prove. Fraud cases can last for years, with no significant success. He had met, in his career, several people who were well aware of insider dealing and had also tried it, only for a while. It bore the premonition of a fortune buried in a volcano.
“Think about that, Jerome. We know that stuff, money and all. We do not do anything wrong. We do not hijack corporations. Nothing bad. But, on the other hand, we can have - you can have - so much – yachts, houses, jets, everything. My firms are registered abroad. I can just step aside and disappear. You can do it too. Only a pretty raid on the market and we can retire. You can retire. Everything can be done”. Pierre was almost laughing.
Jerome sat next to him, with a glass in hand, his eyes were fixed on the wall but he was actually seeing a different picture – the emerald waters of the Caribbean, a large three-storey house surrounded by palms, on a beach, and he was sitting there, in the shades, in the afternoon quietude. Silence and serenity, no nightmares, just a pacific, timeless moment that could supersede everything ugly that had been in the past.
But Pierre had other thought on his mind. He waived with a hand – “Go to the bathroom, have fun.” The bathroom was a spacious, vast room with a Jacuzzi, where a naked girl, with tanned skin and long black hair, was lying, preparing white lines on the side tray. She smiled, inviting him with bright and glittering eyes, as if offering him a drop of heavenly ambrosia. Jerome stepped forward.
Later he went out, in the last sunrays of the sunset, and lay on the deck, feeling the beat and the pulse of the engine heart of the yacht; blue and purple were mixing in the sky, and the coast in the distance was trembling, shaking. Jerome was silent and numb, his mind was wallowing in a beautiful world of lights and colours. Pierre gave him a hand, whispering again, “everything can be done, Jerome.”
They left the yacht and a motor boat took them to a beach party in Cannes. In a shirt and shorts, with a slight tan, Jerome was walking amidst the dancing girls, who were smiling, staring at his eyes, and each was there, just next to him, he could grab her, take her, a fruit hanging from the tree. He kissed one, touched another, wading in the tide of blasting loud music around him, but it was alright, it was so alright. He went to the toilet, looked at himself in the mirror and saw the handsome face, the big eyes, the lines of lipstick on his chin and cheeks; a girl appeared, took his hand and said “come on, come on”. He followed her, sensing nothing, feeling nothing, subliminal.
Pierre was always in white. In his white Ferrari, he used to take Pierre out in the night, first to some fashionable bar where they had a few drinks, then they would move to a club with loud music and women, where they had a few lines of cocaine and jumped in the crowd, finishing the night in a hot hotel room, never alone. Jerome could feel a new drive, new energy within, a mighty pump that was launching him out of limits, setting him alight, afire, ablaze. He was running, on a thin line, breathless but enchanted, euphoric; raised high, like a surfer on a wave, rushing to the deepest waters. Images, pictures, names and colors, faces and bodies were mixing in a vortex, flowing away from him. Everything was moving so fast that he could not even perceive what was really happening. But he was feeling well; in the eye of the tornado.
Pierre had opened a British Virgin Islands account for Jerome, from which he could draw any time of the day. A new Lamborghini, a modern flat, a whole new row of suits and shirts in the wardrobe. Suddenly Jerome had the look of a tycoon; walking in his fashionable clothes, with a touch of bohemian over-the-top elegance and lavishness, with dark sunglasses and a smell of expensive perfume, he had all eyes on him. His withdrawn face had become so mellow and pleased now. Smiling, open, talkative, Jerome was walking on air, walking high above ground.
Everything can be done. Jerome’s office was full of confidential reports he only had to summarize and secretly send to Pierre. In between two business meetings, he was having a lunch with fine and unknown girls – most of them were directly sent from Pierre’s vault, this mystical source for beauties who came for a lunch or dinner or a night out and sex, quickly disappearing afterwards. Besides them, his days were also filled with cocaine. Mr. Cocaine, the best friend, the cheerful guy that always comes in a party mood, with a lavish smile, in a white suit with a purple shirt and a diamond ring, who says “hey, just have fun, mate” and leads you by the hand. Mr. Cocaine was a passionate fellow walking side by side with Jerome, lying with him in the bed at home, accompanying him in the bathroom - simply the nicest person you can ever meet. He and Jerome were so close they could not part day and night. Sleep was useless, sleep was bad; Jerome wanted satisfaction and everything was there to give it to him.
After a weekend outside Paris, in a countryside villa with a lady he had met the week before that, Jerome arrived at work with a hazy mind, still sensing the smell of her licentious perfume. With a wide smile, greeting everybody around him, he reached his office to find the door locked. He called his secretary, who said that Friday evening two men from the staff took out everything and locked the door. At first, Jerome was perplexed, then angry, in the end worried. He tried to connect with a member of the board, but he was refused access. A colleague passed him by, laughed devilishly and told him, “Go home”. His home was now luxurious, as if designed after a magazine photo. But was so empty. He sat on a chair and remained there for hours, wondering what was going on. Jerome tried to call Pierre, but he was not answering. Then he had a line of Mr. Cocaine and leaned back, in a room full of splendid colours, in a state of trance.
Pierre had really become invisible. He had not been to his Paris apartment for a week, his several offices were closed and empty, his staff knew nothing of him. Jerome was staring at the empty parking lot, previously occupied by the white Ferrari. Two days later, he was called to a board meeting of the bank, where he sat among the directors - in his fashionable clothes but looking pale. They put a file in front of him and he skimmed through several charts of stock fluctuation of some of the clients of the bank. “This is not an extraterrestrial event”, said the chair, “this is a speculation on purpose, which coincides with key activities planned by these companies.” In other words, somebody trading on the market had information what was going on and bought and sold with awareness of that. “We cannot claim that the source of information is you but the information was within your department”.
Jerome was sitting, still, his blood full of ice. His new flat, the car, the clothes, the beautiful women everybody had seen with him - these facts were raising the presumption he had suddenly become rich, which would be the strongest claim against him. “We could have arrested you on Friday, there’s a case in the prosecution office, but we wanted to talk. Jerome. The reputation of the bank does not need a media scandal and journalists with cameras around. We don’t need an arrest here, or elsewhere. If you know something, speak out at the place you have to.”
At home, in the silent flat, he stood by the window, scrutinizing the line of cars in the evening lights, and thought about going straight to the police, as it was hinted. He tried to call Pierre again, but to no avail. Jerome guessed he had left the country long ago. To the Maldives, Antigua, Jamaica, South Africa, who knows. He took an old coat from the wardrobe, wandered around the neighbourhood, as a sudden autumn rain started to fall, and slowly reached the police station. He stood for a minute by a playground where kids were running, chasing each other. A little boy fell, his mom and dad cleaned his wounds and took him home, as the game ended. Then he headed to the entrance of the station.
According to his lawyer, Jerome’s assistance could help him a lot. Jerome meticulously explained the structure of the scam, the way he supplied Pierre with information, how he was trading on the market. Two prosecutors, working on the case, prepared a detailed indictment where there were two separate offences pleaded - breaking the regulations on confidential information and complicity to Pierre’s market speculation. Jerome’s lawyer, a well-paid self-confident guy, wanted to turn everything on Pierre’s actions and the influence he exercised on the unstable Jerome; but Jerome sat aside, not really listening to his defense, in a brooding state with a hollow stare.
It turned out that Pierre had created an even greater scam; he had nothing, his yacht and houses and flats were either owned by various unconnected companies, or leased to him; his entire lifestyle was financed by huge credits on the basis of forged documents. He had no property in Jerome’s quarter and Jerome tended to think that the occasion when they met each other was a well-planned one. In “Azimuth”, left by the Cannes coast, there were data that Pierre had been following the lives of several of his past acquaintances, waiting for the time to contact them again. It was suspected that he had fled to an island in the Pacific, but nothing was certain.
The newspapers were full of stories - Jerome’s biography was dissected and heralded all over the pages and through the screens. A successful financial advisor, a promising manager, who participated in a large-scale fraud after a complete failure in his personal life. But he never read anything about that. He did not care. When the verdict was read, he listened but without caution. Five, or seven, or ten years, a lifetime – what did it matter anyway? There was a civil proceeding against him, too, and his property was forfeited. Apparently he did not need it; the prison was his next home.
His cell was a tiny and narrow one, grey, dusty, with a small window above his head. Lying on the bed, with his eyes closed, he was feeling as if trying to jump over a chasm but wallowing down into the bare nothingness. Then, to ward off the stifling horror inside his chest, he escaped in his imagination. Now he was gliding on the surface of a river. For hours and hours, he kept this dream, inside his mind, picturing strange scenery and fabulous places – castles, snowy mountain tops, desolate tropic islands. The fictional images calmed him down, raising his mind up in the air, like a bird spreading wings and flying away to another dimension. Jerome was freed of the bondage of time, he lived in another world full of splendor. His days in prison seemed to be one and the same, but that was just a veil of appearances – he was elsewhere, and this made him look so relaxed and serene. A journalist sent him a letter, proposing to make an interview with him. Jerome rejected, but to the question how he was feeling in prison, he simply wrote “fine”. He was fine.
On a two-day leave from prison, he strode down Paris streets, it was summer again, and he watched a boat floating on river Seine along island Cite, full of tourists with cameras. Sitting on a bench, he watched the waves, and thought what could happen if he jumped in them – a strange figure grasped and turned by the water, falling deep down to the bottom of the river until he would look small, negligible as if not existent at all. If he died. Then Jerome looked up, to the sky, and still staring upwards, he slowly returned to the point where he had to be taken back to his prison cell. While the car was leaving Paris, he could sense his heart was beating faster, faster, faster.
End of Part Two. Part Three (final) - coming soon.
Back to Part 1 - http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=945286
Jerome’s office was in the financial district of Paris. Next to a quiet park, it afforded unique serenity for the people who were working under the pressure of the big money deals. The bank occupied seven floors; the office was a half-empty room with a pretty view but nothing else besides the computer and the files. No pictures or photos, no posters, nothing. Jerome’s colleagues were looking with suspicion at that man who left a fabulous job in the London City to take up the rather boring department in Paris. Yes, he was dealing with private equity, mergers and large-scale projects, but this was not the high-profile investments and transactions he was engaged with in London. Moreover, the man was so silent, so reluctant to speak, that nobody wanted to see him outside work. Exactly at six, Jerome was taking the tube to his home.
He lived in a flat in a modern, expensive quarter, where his neighbours were mainly managers and financial consultants like him. He had an old apartment in the centre of the city, with a view to the Tuilerie gardens, where he had lived before moving to London. When Claire was pregnant, they used to walk for hours in the garden, treading on the fallen leaves, and he still recollected these days. So he sold the flat – each and every object in it reminded him of the past. His new place was spacious but he did not buy much furniture, he did not need it. During the long nights, he sat in the dark, watching a movie, mechanically eating badly prepared food. He could not sleep well, only a few hours, often interrupted by nightmares.
If he could not find consolation at home, he decided to spend his days at work. Surrounded by piles of papers, buried by reports, contracts and projects, he would often dismiss his secretary and remain in the office until eleven or twelve, leaving the building followed by the amazed stares of the guards. He was working at home, too, until he was so tired he could not stay awake. But the job was so boring, too boring; his mind would treacherously try to jump either to the realm of memories - the stifling hell of images that filled the dark nightmares - or lead him to a bar, for a drink, to the slavery of alcohol.
One morning he noticed a white Ferrari parked nearby; it was new, he had not seen it here before. While crossing the parking, Jerome saw the man who left the car and walked to the building. A tall, slender man, with long auburn hair, clad in a white suit, with sunglasses. He suddenly turned, looked to Jerome and exclaimed: “God!” Jerome stared at him and vaguely recollected something.
Pierre was 29 or so. He had started his own business, selling food and drinks, when he was 18, immediately after leaving school. Though it was very successful, he also needed a diploma, to gain respect rather than knowledge. When he enrolled at the university, he needed people to educate him in the basics of finance, for which he was paying quite well; Jerome was among them. He was now amazed that Pierre remembered him; but he boasted perfect memory.
There was a bewitching scent wafting around Pierre. Very sexy, in handmade clothes, athletic, he was rich and wanted everybody to know it. Ruthless, aggressive, expansive - Jerome had never liked him. Pierre had the gift of corrupting people, charmingly permeating their will through swiftly injecting them with what they desired. Pierre’s appearance spoke for him, his life looked expensive and he played a lot on this string. With a cigar between his fingers, he opened his arms and greeted Jerome with a wide, brilliant smile. “****, it’s more than ten years!” And he hugged Jerome if they were old, old friends.
The white Ferrari was his. He looked to the car with great devotion and said it was a perfect “baby”. Jerome retorted that he did not have a car now. Pierre took off his sunglasses.
“You look bad, my friend. You need some good time. What are you doing now?”
Jerome told him of the bank where he was working and Pierre smiled – “I think we can have a talk, Jerome. Come to Cannes. I spend the summer there, my yacht is there. Come, we can have fun.”
Pierre walked away, then turned and, staring at Jerome, repeated in a very decisive, compelling voice: “Come.”
That was a proposal Jerome could not refuse. The days were boring, the job was tiresome. Jerome did not want to sleep, he was sitting by the windowpane, watching the reflections of the TV screen on the wide windows, ordering pizza on the phone, on the brink of walking out to the bar for a drink. When the time for his vacation approached, he toured the luxurious Paris shops and bought some fine clothes. Looking at himself in the mirror, he found that he seemed older, but that was not bad. To the contrary, the women in the shop were staring at that tall, slim man, with a sense of mysticism around him, with a sense of gravitas surrounding him, and that made him even more attractive. And he booked a flight to Cannes.
The hot days in the South were full of sticky, sweaty reminding images of the time when he was younger and came here with Claire. In the evening of his arrival, he sat on the terrace of his room and watched the crowds go by, colorful, wonderful, in random motion. Life. Movement. He went down to the street and mingled in the flow of faces - eyes full of energy, feet running to the places of consolation, hands reaching for the hands of the beloved. The smell of living, sweating, hot bodies striding through the caverns of the night and its pleasures. Jerome walked along the beaches, until he saw an old bar he had been before. He sat there, while some people were watching a football match. Their team won and they ordered drinks for everybody in the bar. And Jerome drank, alone, in the badly-lit lounge, feeling his veins waking up, feeling almighty again. Suns come and go, suns also rise. He drank so much that he hardly found the way to his room.
“Azimuth” was built for a Russian oligarch who went bankrupt and so Pierre managed to buy the yacht. Painted in silver and white, it was a 25-metre wonder of science and engineering, bouncing on the Mediterranean waves in a slight, sleepy way. Pierre was clad in white again; he was sitting on a sofa, surrounded by silver cushions and a tray with alcohol. He hugged Jerome and said he was so, so glad to see him.
“I know what happened to you. Life has a bad side, too. But you are still here. Look – there is everything out there for us. Everything can be done.”
Pierre was a private investor. Shares, capital, sale of goods (coffee, sugar, tobacco), funds and securities. He had been through three bankrupts, he had lost everything but he was here again, in his yacht, rich as an Ancient king, handsome and attractive. Everything is out there, everything can be done. The yacht was slightly bobbing on the waves.
“Jerome, there are two greatest resources on earth, mate. Not oil. Not gas. Two others – time and information. Information. I need to know lots of things. When companies make plans of investments. When they make contracts. What is there in those contracts. What shares they want to issue. Simple, little things.”
Insider trading was a serious fraud. Jerome had access to substantial corporate information and he knew that, if used, it can earn millions on the stock exchange. The business was risky but the scam was very difficult to prove. Fraud cases can last for years, with no significant success. He had met, in his career, several people who were well aware of insider dealing and had also tried it, only for a while. It bore the premonition of a fortune buried in a volcano.
“Think about that, Jerome. We know that stuff, money and all. We do not do anything wrong. We do not hijack corporations. Nothing bad. But, on the other hand, we can have - you can have - so much – yachts, houses, jets, everything. My firms are registered abroad. I can just step aside and disappear. You can do it too. Only a pretty raid on the market and we can retire. You can retire. Everything can be done”. Pierre was almost laughing.
Jerome sat next to him, with a glass in hand, his eyes were fixed on the wall but he was actually seeing a different picture – the emerald waters of the Caribbean, a large three-storey house surrounded by palms, on a beach, and he was sitting there, in the shades, in the afternoon quietude. Silence and serenity, no nightmares, just a pacific, timeless moment that could supersede everything ugly that had been in the past.
But Pierre had other thought on his mind. He waived with a hand – “Go to the bathroom, have fun.” The bathroom was a spacious, vast room with a Jacuzzi, where a naked girl, with tanned skin and long black hair, was lying, preparing white lines on the side tray. She smiled, inviting him with bright and glittering eyes, as if offering him a drop of heavenly ambrosia. Jerome stepped forward.
Later he went out, in the last sunrays of the sunset, and lay on the deck, feeling the beat and the pulse of the engine heart of the yacht; blue and purple were mixing in the sky, and the coast in the distance was trembling, shaking. Jerome was silent and numb, his mind was wallowing in a beautiful world of lights and colours. Pierre gave him a hand, whispering again, “everything can be done, Jerome.”
They left the yacht and a motor boat took them to a beach party in Cannes. In a shirt and shorts, with a slight tan, Jerome was walking amidst the dancing girls, who were smiling, staring at his eyes, and each was there, just next to him, he could grab her, take her, a fruit hanging from the tree. He kissed one, touched another, wading in the tide of blasting loud music around him, but it was alright, it was so alright. He went to the toilet, looked at himself in the mirror and saw the handsome face, the big eyes, the lines of lipstick on his chin and cheeks; a girl appeared, took his hand and said “come on, come on”. He followed her, sensing nothing, feeling nothing, subliminal.
Pierre was always in white. In his white Ferrari, he used to take Pierre out in the night, first to some fashionable bar where they had a few drinks, then they would move to a club with loud music and women, where they had a few lines of cocaine and jumped in the crowd, finishing the night in a hot hotel room, never alone. Jerome could feel a new drive, new energy within, a mighty pump that was launching him out of limits, setting him alight, afire, ablaze. He was running, on a thin line, breathless but enchanted, euphoric; raised high, like a surfer on a wave, rushing to the deepest waters. Images, pictures, names and colors, faces and bodies were mixing in a vortex, flowing away from him. Everything was moving so fast that he could not even perceive what was really happening. But he was feeling well; in the eye of the tornado.
Pierre had opened a British Virgin Islands account for Jerome, from which he could draw any time of the day. A new Lamborghini, a modern flat, a whole new row of suits and shirts in the wardrobe. Suddenly Jerome had the look of a tycoon; walking in his fashionable clothes, with a touch of bohemian over-the-top elegance and lavishness, with dark sunglasses and a smell of expensive perfume, he had all eyes on him. His withdrawn face had become so mellow and pleased now. Smiling, open, talkative, Jerome was walking on air, walking high above ground.
Everything can be done. Jerome’s office was full of confidential reports he only had to summarize and secretly send to Pierre. In between two business meetings, he was having a lunch with fine and unknown girls – most of them were directly sent from Pierre’s vault, this mystical source for beauties who came for a lunch or dinner or a night out and sex, quickly disappearing afterwards. Besides them, his days were also filled with cocaine. Mr. Cocaine, the best friend, the cheerful guy that always comes in a party mood, with a lavish smile, in a white suit with a purple shirt and a diamond ring, who says “hey, just have fun, mate” and leads you by the hand. Mr. Cocaine was a passionate fellow walking side by side with Jerome, lying with him in the bed at home, accompanying him in the bathroom - simply the nicest person you can ever meet. He and Jerome were so close they could not part day and night. Sleep was useless, sleep was bad; Jerome wanted satisfaction and everything was there to give it to him.
After a weekend outside Paris, in a countryside villa with a lady he had met the week before that, Jerome arrived at work with a hazy mind, still sensing the smell of her licentious perfume. With a wide smile, greeting everybody around him, he reached his office to find the door locked. He called his secretary, who said that Friday evening two men from the staff took out everything and locked the door. At first, Jerome was perplexed, then angry, in the end worried. He tried to connect with a member of the board, but he was refused access. A colleague passed him by, laughed devilishly and told him, “Go home”. His home was now luxurious, as if designed after a magazine photo. But was so empty. He sat on a chair and remained there for hours, wondering what was going on. Jerome tried to call Pierre, but he was not answering. Then he had a line of Mr. Cocaine and leaned back, in a room full of splendid colours, in a state of trance.
Pierre had really become invisible. He had not been to his Paris apartment for a week, his several offices were closed and empty, his staff knew nothing of him. Jerome was staring at the empty parking lot, previously occupied by the white Ferrari. Two days later, he was called to a board meeting of the bank, where he sat among the directors - in his fashionable clothes but looking pale. They put a file in front of him and he skimmed through several charts of stock fluctuation of some of the clients of the bank. “This is not an extraterrestrial event”, said the chair, “this is a speculation on purpose, which coincides with key activities planned by these companies.” In other words, somebody trading on the market had information what was going on and bought and sold with awareness of that. “We cannot claim that the source of information is you but the information was within your department”.
Jerome was sitting, still, his blood full of ice. His new flat, the car, the clothes, the beautiful women everybody had seen with him - these facts were raising the presumption he had suddenly become rich, which would be the strongest claim against him. “We could have arrested you on Friday, there’s a case in the prosecution office, but we wanted to talk. Jerome. The reputation of the bank does not need a media scandal and journalists with cameras around. We don’t need an arrest here, or elsewhere. If you know something, speak out at the place you have to.”
At home, in the silent flat, he stood by the window, scrutinizing the line of cars in the evening lights, and thought about going straight to the police, as it was hinted. He tried to call Pierre again, but to no avail. Jerome guessed he had left the country long ago. To the Maldives, Antigua, Jamaica, South Africa, who knows. He took an old coat from the wardrobe, wandered around the neighbourhood, as a sudden autumn rain started to fall, and slowly reached the police station. He stood for a minute by a playground where kids were running, chasing each other. A little boy fell, his mom and dad cleaned his wounds and took him home, as the game ended. Then he headed to the entrance of the station.
According to his lawyer, Jerome’s assistance could help him a lot. Jerome meticulously explained the structure of the scam, the way he supplied Pierre with information, how he was trading on the market. Two prosecutors, working on the case, prepared a detailed indictment where there were two separate offences pleaded - breaking the regulations on confidential information and complicity to Pierre’s market speculation. Jerome’s lawyer, a well-paid self-confident guy, wanted to turn everything on Pierre’s actions and the influence he exercised on the unstable Jerome; but Jerome sat aside, not really listening to his defense, in a brooding state with a hollow stare.
It turned out that Pierre had created an even greater scam; he had nothing, his yacht and houses and flats were either owned by various unconnected companies, or leased to him; his entire lifestyle was financed by huge credits on the basis of forged documents. He had no property in Jerome’s quarter and Jerome tended to think that the occasion when they met each other was a well-planned one. In “Azimuth”, left by the Cannes coast, there were data that Pierre had been following the lives of several of his past acquaintances, waiting for the time to contact them again. It was suspected that he had fled to an island in the Pacific, but nothing was certain.
The newspapers were full of stories - Jerome’s biography was dissected and heralded all over the pages and through the screens. A successful financial advisor, a promising manager, who participated in a large-scale fraud after a complete failure in his personal life. But he never read anything about that. He did not care. When the verdict was read, he listened but without caution. Five, or seven, or ten years, a lifetime – what did it matter anyway? There was a civil proceeding against him, too, and his property was forfeited. Apparently he did not need it; the prison was his next home.
His cell was a tiny and narrow one, grey, dusty, with a small window above his head. Lying on the bed, with his eyes closed, he was feeling as if trying to jump over a chasm but wallowing down into the bare nothingness. Then, to ward off the stifling horror inside his chest, he escaped in his imagination. Now he was gliding on the surface of a river. For hours and hours, he kept this dream, inside his mind, picturing strange scenery and fabulous places – castles, snowy mountain tops, desolate tropic islands. The fictional images calmed him down, raising his mind up in the air, like a bird spreading wings and flying away to another dimension. Jerome was freed of the bondage of time, he lived in another world full of splendor. His days in prison seemed to be one and the same, but that was just a veil of appearances – he was elsewhere, and this made him look so relaxed and serene. A journalist sent him a letter, proposing to make an interview with him. Jerome rejected, but to the question how he was feeling in prison, he simply wrote “fine”. He was fine.
On a two-day leave from prison, he strode down Paris streets, it was summer again, and he watched a boat floating on river Seine along island Cite, full of tourists with cameras. Sitting on a bench, he watched the waves, and thought what could happen if he jumped in them – a strange figure grasped and turned by the water, falling deep down to the bottom of the river until he would look small, negligible as if not existent at all. If he died. Then Jerome looked up, to the sky, and still staring upwards, he slowly returned to the point where he had to be taken back to his prison cell. While the car was leaving Paris, he could sense his heart was beating faster, faster, faster.
End of Part Two. Part Three (final) - coming soon.
Back to Part 1 - http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=945286