Bring on the blizzards, the holiday madness. This winter I was planning something long overdue. To treat my daughter Amy, the Madame Curie of her ninth grade, to a real vacation. Just us. We'd leave at Thanksgiving and stay gone through the Christmas break. She got to live with me three months a year, and December was by God going to be one of the months. School? She'd already skipped a year; maybe she was a little too fast-track for thirteen.
Since Joanna, my ex, had already lined up her own holiday excursion (Amy the spy claimed it was with some divorced Tishman VP), she hadn't bothered inventing the usual roadblocks. Clear sailing. We'd open the house down in St. Croix and spend a month getting reacquainted. Work on the tan and some postgraduate snorkeling, a strategic move while I still enjoyed a small sliver of her attention, before a certain "totally terrific" skateboard virtuoso finally got around to noticing her. Only a couple of jobs needed finishing, but they'd be wrapped up with weeks to spare.
That night, in truth, had its moments of nostalgia. The destination was Sotheby's auction house, a place where Matthew Walton was greeted by name at the cashier's window. Home away from home for obsessive collectors. I leaned back
against the vinyl seat of the Checker, letting the rhythm of the streetlight halos glimmer past, and reflected on all those happy nights I'd made the trek with Joanna. She'd had no real interest in my collecting hobby, Japanese samurai swords and armor, but she was always a decent sport about it. Besides, she had her own passions. While I was agonizing over long blades and short blades, she'd sneak off and browse for something French and nineteenth century and expensive. Fact is, I'd usually plan ahead and have something of my own on the block just to pay for that little sketch, or print, she suddenly had to have. Out of habit I'd even shipped up a couple of mistakes for the auction this evening (a hand axe and a lacquered-metal face guard).
Though tonight's sale had only a few odd items in my specialty, the slim offerings actually suited the occasion. It left the evening open, time for the real agenda—getting things rolling with a new client who'd inexplicably handed me a job as simple as it was strange.
The man, name of Matsuo Noda, had rung all the way from Japan Friday before last, introduced himself in generalities, then declared he had a pressing legal matter requiring both speed and confidentiality. Inquiries had led him to me. Would I have time to help him locate an office building to buy? He claimed he was head of a Kyoto consulting outfit that called itself Nippon, Inc., and he was looking for something in midtown, seventy-million range.
Honestly I couldn't quite believe he was serious at first. Why this job (just a little legwork, really) for somebody he'd never even met? I could swing it, sure, but now that Japanese investors were snapping up U.S. property right and left, who needed some ex-Texan turned New York lawyer knocking around? There was no rational reason to engage a corporate attorney.
"Out of curiosity, why aren't you working through one of the Tokyo firms here in New York, say, Hiro Real Estate or KG Land? Surely they could—"
"Mr. Walton," he interrupted smoothly but firmly, "allow me to say I have my reasons. May I remind you I stressed confidentiality."
"Merely asking." I took a deep breath. The connection was distorted, a high-pitched hum in the background, as though he wasn't using commercial phone lines. "If you want, I can look around and see what's on the market . . . and in the meantime how about sending along a prospectus, just for the file?"