About nine that evening Tam and I slipped out of the Plaza's Fifty-ninth Street entrance and headed up Fifth Avenue toward Bill's. He was headquartered in one of those solid, granite-faced buildings near the Metropolitan that are constructed like small fortresses—presumably so New York's upper one tenth of one percent can repel the long-feared assault of the homeless hordes at their feet. In the lobby, Henderson vouched for us over the TV intercom, after which we were given a visual search by the doorman, his uniform a hybrid of Gilbert & Sullivan and crypto-Nazi, and shown the elevator.
A quick doorbell punch and the man from Georgia greeted us, Scotch in hand. His little pied-a-terre was about three thousand square feet of knee-deep carpets, Old Masters (I loved the Cezanne and the Braque), and masculine leather furniture. A padded wet bar, complete with mirror and a bank of computer monitors—for convenient stock action—stretched across one side of the living room, while the sliding glass doors opposite faced onto a balcony that seemed suspended in midair over Central Park. While Tam, with her designer's eye, was complimenting him politely on the understated elegance of his Italian wallpaper, French art, and English furniture, I tried not to remember all those early years back in New Haven when his idea of decor was a feed-store calendar featuring a bluetick hound.
Although the balcony doors were open, the living room still had the acrid ambience of a three-day-old ashtray. He poured us a drink from a half-gallon of Glenfiddich on the bar, gestured us toward the couch, and offered Havana cigars from a humidifier. I took him up on it, out of olfactory self-defense.
"So tell me, ladies and gents, what's the latest?" He settled himself in the leather armchair and plopped his boots onto an antique ottoman. "How're the Jap assault forces doing these days? They gonna take over the Pentagon next?"
"Not that we've heard." I was twisting my Havana against the match. "Though it might reduce procurement costs on toilet seats and ashtrays if they did."
Henderson sipped at his drink, then his tone heavied up. "Who are we kidding, friends. My considered reading of the situation is your boys on Third Avenue are unstoppable. They can do whatever they damn well please from here on out."
"That's not necessarily in everybody's best interest, Bill." I strolled over to look down at the park. "Got any new thoughts?"
"Can't say as I do. Our IBM play didn't get to first base; Noda saw us coming a mile away. Thank God I didn't get in deep enough to get hurt." He leaned back. "What makes it so damned frustrating is the market's tickled as a pig in shit. Ain't nobody too interested in dissuading your friends from buying up everything in sight. Street's never seen anything like this kind of bucks before. It's a whole new ball game downtown."
"That's right, Bill," I mused aloud. "The question is, whose ball game is it?" Tam still hadn't said anything.
"Damned good question. What happens when foreigners start owning your tangible assets? The answer, friend, is they end up owning you."