The Fat Guy From Greenwich by Jane Genova

A new novel “The Fat Guy From Greenwich”  by Jane Genova, formerly of Greenwich, now available at Amazon.com.

“The Fat Guy From Greenwich” peeks at the comic underbelly of success on the Gold Coast of Connecticut. In this novel, the main character Jonathan Miller II aka The Fat Guy From Greenwich is a venture capitalist who became wealthy during the 1990s boom and made even more after The Crash. He is one of the few left standing in that smug town of Greenwich, Connecticut in 2008.

Excerpt from Chapter 1

THE FAT GUY FROM GREENWICH

A Novel by Jane Genova

DEDICATED TO ALL THOSE WHO WOUND UP IN LOST AND FOUND

Chapter 1

The Fat Guy From Greenwich was not originally from Greenwich, Connecticut.  And everyone he collected also had to be from somewhere else.  For years he was a legend in that affluent town that was on the Gold Coast of Connecticut.  After 2010, his name was rarely mentioned.

The Fat Guy as well as the people he took possession of might have lived a contented life in some middle-class or low-life box.  But being contented was not appealing in the late boom years of the 1990s, the time this story took place.
“You can be doing better” was what The Fat Guy told everyone.  That was the bait he threw out there to hook his prey.  He had picked up that tactic in boarding school. There the ethos was: Push to do better, even if that kills you.   Many of his classmates’s fathers had done just that.  He was duped by that inspired mission, at least in his youth.  So, it stood to reason that others who were immature, emotionally crippled and unrealistic would also fall for it.  He was on the money.

One of the ones who he told could be doing better was Maria Romano, a big mess of a personality from Jersey City, New Jersey.  His tone was part the good father, part the scornful Upper Crust.  As expected, she put the hook in her mouth herself.   She felt it an honor to have been selected from all the other fish.

Irrationally, and wasn’t that what the boom was all about, she expected by risking it all, including her sanity and dignity, she would reach some kind of Promised Land.  Why not?  she thought to herself.  She wound up ghostwriting for him and the ventures he invested in for 18 months.

Greenwich wasn’t the only setting where this was happening but it was the ideal one.  A 30-minute train ride from Manhattan, it promised the best of both worlds:  Belonging to something special and the distinction of having made it in the commercial jungle of New York City.  At the end of the brutal work day, the first wives as well as the trophy wives of Greenwich waited by the commuter train to bring the warriors back to their gaudy mansions.   Despite the billions spent on interior decorating, few homes displayed superior taste.   The Manhattan tribes looked down on the Greenwich ones as dowdy.

Mary Murphy, the classic girl-woman from a family of Irish drunks, was also told she could be doing better.  That was 28 months before he had brought Romano in.   Murphy worked as his office manager at both his mansion in Greenwich and his office in Manhattan.   In addition, she handled family affairs.  Everyone predicted she was a lifer.

There was also Christopher Reilly, a man adrift who had left the priesthood.  A black cloud had hung over him all his life.  Because he was so emotionally retarded, those who knew him had been surprised the BigFoots in the Roman Catholic Church had accepted him into the seminary and even more surprised when he exited that protected life.  Reilly was The Fat Guy’s driver for 13 months.

Red and Shorty were jailbirds sprung by The Fat Guy’s son.  Their parole was only possible because The Fat Guy had given them jobs.  They worked for him for 20 months.

About 16 others had been taken hostage but they were bit players and not very interesting.

He asked Red a hundred times about opening up the matter with The Priest.  A hundred times Red blasted, “He’s cursed.  He’ll bring that jinx.”  Still Shorty was convinced when The Fat Guy was busy on the phone in the car, Reilly could veer off the route.  They could have a few guys waiting.  Rough up Reilly.  The guys could hold Miller until Colette paid.  Red would then break in laughing at the scenario. “She would say ‘good riddance’ and let him starve to death in some abandoned building.”  That never deterred Shorty.  He was a creature of fixed ideas.

“Time.  Patience.  No greed.”  That was Red’s continual instruction to Shorty.  If his partner would comply, they could both have a normal life.  Because of his own intelligence, Red didn’t understand that Shorty was incapable of envisioning normal anything.  He was damaged in the way most cons are damaged, that is, he was beyond salvation by self-interest.

“The first thing I need to buy with the money is teeth,” Shorty repeated over and over again to Red.  One of the few things which registered on his own radar was that he was missing a front tooth.  In prison, it was pulled out.  A bridge was going to be made.  It never was.  He calculated that a bridge would cost thousands of dollars.  That’s why he didn’t fear winding up back in the joint.  He could get his bridge.

The two were carting used furniture from the Miller basement to where the tag sale would be held on the Post Road in Greenwich.  Colette headed various do-gooder committees.  That was how she had to earn her keep.  All the females in Greenwich did good.  Their husbands paid human trash like Red and Shorty to make the good possible.  If the women and men of Greenwich were drowning, the cons would save the men.  Colette used her finger to indicate which furniture went on the truck.  “Be gentle,” she instructed.

Shorty’s fixed revenge fantasy was to kill Colette, slowly.  The details were always the same.  First he would shoot her with horse tranquilizer.  His cousin, who worked in a stable in Seymour, Connecticut, sold that, both in tablet and pistol-form.  Then he would tie her to the refrigerator.  He would put duct tape on her mouth.  He would sip the vodka when waiting for her to come to.  Then it was her little fingers and little toes.  She would assume this was simply sadism and have hope she would survive.  Then, more serious amputations.  He would leave the mess all there.

Red wearied of hearing details of all that as they headed toward the Post Road.  His second mistake in life was giving in to his need to control Shorty.  It was low-hanging fruit in prison.  He grabbed it.  Now he was stuck.  But only for now.  He was unusual among those who had screwed up.  He never lost hope and he never lost his self-assurance.