He wouldn’t look at me. Suddenly his shoes were of tremendous interest.
“You need to get a handle on things, and you need to do it now. You’ll probably have to lose the house, get rid of a car, sell off some things. You may have to start over. But you’re going to have to do it. The one thing you can count on is your job with me. Just so long as you don’t pull any fast ones.”
He put down his beer, tossed the cigarette, and put his hands over his eyes. He didn’t want me to see him crying.
“I’m so fucked,” he said. “I am so totally, totally fucked. They sold us this bill of goods, you know.”
“They?”
“Everyone. Said we could have it all. The house, the cars, the Blu-ray players, big flat-screen TVs, anything we wanted. Even while we were sinking, we’d get more credit cards in the mail. Betsy, she grabs them like they’re lifesavers, but they’re just more anchors dragging us down to the bottom.”
He sniffed, rubbed his eyes, finally looked at me. “She won’t listen. I keep telling her we have to change things, and she says not to worry, we’ll be okay. She doesn’t get it.”
“Neither do you,” I said. “Because you’re letting it go on.”
“You know what we’re doing? We’ve got, like, twenty credit cards now. We use one to pay off the balance on another. I can’t even keep track of it anymore. I can’t bring myself to open the bills. I don’t want to know.”
“There are people,” I said. “People who can help you get through these things.”
“Sometimes I think it’d be easier to just blow my brains out.”
“Doug, don’t think that way. But you need to get hold of the problem. It’s going to take you a long time to dig yourself out of this hole, but if you start now, you’ll be coming out sooner. You can’t count on me for money every time you’re short, but you can talk to me. I’ll help you where I can.” I stood up. “Thanks for the beer.”
He couldn’t stand. He was back to looking at the ground.
“Yeah, thanks,” he said, but his tone lacked sincerity. “I guess with some people, gratitude only lasts so long.”
I weighed whether to respond or walk out. After a few seconds, I said, “I know I owe my life to you, Doug. I might never have found my way out of that smoke-filled basement. But you can’t play that card every time. That’s separate from this.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, looking out over his yard. “And I guess, I guess you wouldn’t want me making any calls.”
That stopped me. “Calls about what?”
“I’ve known you a long time, Glenny. Long enough to know that not every job’s on the books. Long enough to know you’ve got a secret or two yourself.”
I stared at him.
“Tell me you don’t have something tucked away for a rainy day.” His voice was gaining confidence.
“Don’t do this, Doug. It’s beneath you.”
“One anonymous phone call and you’d have the IRS so far up your ass they could count your cavities. But no-you can’t help out a guy when he’s having a few problems. Think about that, why don’t ya, Glenny.”
SEVENTEEN
Darren Slocum, standing out back of his house with cell phone in hand, made another call.
“Yes,” said the man who answered.
“It’s me. It’s Slocum.”
“I know who it is.”
“Have you heard?”
“Have I heard what?”
“About my wife.”
“Suppose you tell me.”
“She’s dead. She died last night. She went off the pier.” Slocum waited for the man to say something. When he didn’t, Slocum said, “You don’t have anything to say? You’re not curious about this? You don’t have a single fucking question?”
“Where should I send flowers?”
“I know you saw Belinda last night. Put the fear of God into her. Did you call Ann? Did you ask her to meet you? Was it you? Did you fucking kill my wife, you fucking son of a bitch?”
“No.” A pause. Then the man asked, “Did you?”
“What? No!”
The man said, “I drove past your place last night, must have been around ten or so. I didn’t see your wife’s car or your truck in the driveway. Maybe you threw her off the pier.”
Slocum blinked. “I was out for just a couple of minutes. When Ann left I tried to follow her, but I didn’t know which way she’d gone and I came home.”
Neither of them spoke for a couple of seconds. Finally, the man said, “Is there anything else?”
“Anything else? Anything else? ”
“Yes. Is there anything else. I’m not a grief counselor. I’m not interested in what happened to your wife. I’m a businessman. You owe me money. When you call me, I expect news on how you’re coming along with that.”
“You’ll get your money.”
“I told your friend she had two days. And that was a day ago. I’m willing to give you a similar deadline.”
“Look, if you could give me some extra time, there’s going to be some money. This wasn’t how I was expecting to pay you back, but Ann… she had life insurance. We just got these policies, so when they pay up, there’ll be more than enough-”
“You owe me money now.”
“Look, it’ll come. And right now, I’m planning a funeral, for Christ’s sake.”
The man at the other end said, “I’m sure your wife told you what she witnessed when she delivered a payment to me down on Canal Street.”
The dead Chinese merchant. The two women in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Yes,” Slocum said.
“He owed money, too.”
“Okay, okay,” Slocum said. “The thing is, in the meantime, I think I may know where the money is.”
“ The money?”
“Garber told Belinda the car didn’t totally burn up. They recovered her purse, and there was no money in it.”
“Go on.”
“I mean, I suppose it could have been somewhere else in the car, like the glove compartment, but I’m thinking, it makes the most sense that if she had the envelope with her, she’d have had it in her purse.”
“Unless,” the man said, “one of the first officers at the scene, one with your sterling ethical code, found it.”
“I’ve worked a lot of accident scenes, and believe me, a cop, rifling through a dead woman’s purse, I don’t see it. I mean, the most you could expect is a few bucks or some credit cards. No one’s expecting to find an envelope with more than sixty grand in it.”
“Then, where is it?”
“Maybe she never intended to deliver it. Maybe she kept it for herself. Her husband’s company’s got financial problems.”
The man was quiet.
“You there?”
“I’m thinking,” the man said. “She called me, earlier that day, left a message. Said she’d run into a problem, was going to be delayed. Maybe the problem was her husband. He saw the money, took it from her.”
“It’s a possibility,” Slocum said.
Several seconds of silence. Then: “I’m going to do you a favor. Consider it a bereavement leave. I’ll see Garber.”
“Okay, but listen, I know you’ll do what you’ve got to do, but just don’t do anything in front of-I mean, the guy’s got a kid.”
“A kid?”
“A daughter, same age as mine. They’re friends.”
“Perfect.”
EIGHTEEN
My father was a good man.
He took pride in his work. He believed in giving 110 percent. He felt that if you treated others with respect, you’d get it in return. He didn’t cut corners. If he bid twenty grand to remodel someone’s kitchen, it was because he believed that’s what the job was worth. For that money, he’d provide quality materials and excellent workmanship. If someone told him they could get someone to do it for fourteen, Dad would say, “If you want a fourteen-thousand-dollar job, then that’s the guy you should go with, and God bless you.” And when those people called him later, wanting him to fix everything the other contractor did wrong, Dad would find a nice way to tell them they’d made their choice, and now they had to live with it.
You couldn’t do an under-the-table job with Dad. People were always taken aback by that. They thought, if they paid in cash, Dad could cut them some slack on the price because he wouldn’t have to declare the income.