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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

September 16, 1996

Monday afternoon

W hile I was waiting for Cass to come out of the high school, something tumbled for me. There was no computer on Joanne’s desk in her den. The computer was upstairs on Cass’s desk next to a laser printer. A laser printer. A kid like Cass didn’t need a laser printer. Not to mention they were expensive. Ronnie was angling for one for Christmas. Four hundred dollars.

Joanne needed a laser printer though, to write her letters from Top Dawg. But then I doubted very much she went into Cass’s disgusting room to write the letters, so she’d have had her son do them.

Everything seemed to be in his name. She’d been setting him up. I was sure she used his age to justify it to herself. He’d begun working at Top Dog when he was fifteen. It made sense to blame him. Worst case scenario he’d go to juvie—and she’d go nowhere.

Cass was one of the last students to come out of the building. He slunk over to the car and got in.

“What took so long?”

He shrugged. I waited. Then he said, “Teacher kept me after class. She said I’m smart and if I tried harder I could get good grades. Bitch.”

“Oh yeah, that is bitchy.” I’d pegged him on the plane, I was a little proud of myself. I asked, “So why not try harder?”

“What for?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. It would be a shame if you did well in life.”

He gave me a disdainful glance. “Nobody cares about your grades in high school. They just care if you got the diploma.”

“I think there’s more to it than that.”

“Just drive, okay?”

Before we got to his house, he asked what I’d done that day. I told him about my trip to the bakery and checking out Luca’s Lifts. Of course, I left out my trip to see his mother. But I did start to lay the groundwork for my plan.

“We need to convince your mother to tell us who told her your father was beaten to death by mistake and see if that person can tell us who actually killed him. Once we find out, I’m going home.”

I said the last very firmly, wanting to get him used to the idea I was leaving. I parked the car in front of his house. We got out and went inside. He went immediately to the kitchen, pulled open the drawer with take-out menus, and began going through them.

“Do you have homework?”

“Yeah, like that’s what’s important.” He’d picked out three of the menus. “On Mondays we have Chinese.”

Standing behind him, I noticed that each of the menus had dates written on top. They were spreading things out. Probably because they were using fraudulent credit cards and didn’t want to charge too much in one spot.

He looked at the clock; it was 3:50. He went over to the wall phone and dialed the number for a place called Dragon House.

“Yeah, I want to order for pick-up. I want a lemon chicken with extra white rice, shrimp fried rice, and two egg rolls.” He listened. “Forty-five minutes? Great. And make sure it’s hot. The name is…” He reached into his jeans and pulled out a card and read it. “Blansky. Brian Blansky.”

After he hung up, he said, “My mom likes to eat at five-fifteen sharp. You need to be gone. I’ll drop you at Motel 6.”

“I’d like to have a conversation with your mother.”

“I don’t think she wants to talk to you.”

“Okay. Then I’ll go home. Take me to the airport.”

“You’re not going anywhere until we know who killed my dad.”

“If that’s the deal then you need to actually let me find out for you. I need to talk to your mother.”

There was struggle on his face. He really didn’t want to displease her, but there was no other way to get to the truth. Or at least there wasn’t the way I was presenting it.

“Yeah, okay, whatever.”

“Call back and add a beef and broccoli to your order. I think I deserve dinner.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said, but he did it.

Driving to Dragon House, I kept thinking if my plan worked I would be leaving in a few hours and never have to see this kid again. That wasn’t a bad thing. I wouldn’t mind never seeing him again.

I mean, I didn’t hate the kid. As kidnappers go, he wasn’t bad. I did feel sorry for him, though. With Joanne for a mother he didn’t have a chance. He’d mentioned that he had to get out of her house when he graduated high school. That meant he had about eight months, maybe nine. It was hard to see how he was going to manage on his own. It seemed the only things he was good at were credit card fraud and coercion. He’d end up in prison before he was twenty-one.

“You should think about college. I bet your Aunt Suzie would help you figure that out. They have dorms. You’d have some place to live for four years.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I didn’t say you wouldn’t be. But maybe there’s something better than just fine. That’s all I’m saying.”

When we got to Dragon House he told me to stay in the car. Probably because he was sick of listening to me. I sat there staring at the red lacquered door. I knew it was entirely possible Joanne wasn’t going to keep her word. Hell, it was likely she wouldn’t. So what was she going to do?

She’d run a credit check on me and wanted to get her hands on my rather scant assets. Would she really have me killed for fifty thousand dollars? I was ninety-nine percent sure she’d killed her husband, so yeah, why wouldn’t she?

And this time she’d have to have a body. Mine. She’d just need to make sure that neither my fingerprints or DNA were checked. They had my fingerprints in Chicago. I was sure of that. But I didn’t know what organizations they’d been shared with. I’d heard talk about some kind of national computerized database but didn’t know if that had happened yet. Joanne wouldn’t know either.

She’d be hoping the police just took her word for it when she identified my body… Except, at some point Suzie was going to want to see her brother’s body. And that would be a problem. A big problem. The whole reason to kill me was so she could say I was her husband and get my stuff. If she thought it through she’d know it was bad idea. The question was… would she think it through?

On the other hand, maybe it was better not to have a body. If she called her cousin and had me put at the bottom of Lake Erie with the first Dom Reilly she’d only have to wait five years or so to have him (or me) declared dead. At that point she could try to attach my half of the co-op, which by then will be a condo and worth substantially more. That was a better plan. Not that I intended to explain that to her.

The kid came back with a big bag that he put in the back seat. As we pulled out of the parking lot to head home, I asked, “Do you have take-out every night?”

“Monday is Chinese, Tuesday is Mexican, Wednesday is Pizza, Thursday is Greek, Friday night my mom goes out to dinner. On Sundays we have Italian. Lasagna or Manicotti.”

“Italian from a restaurant?”

“Of course from a restaurant. Pretty girls don’t have to cook.”

“That’s what your mom says?”

“Everyone knows that.”

I decided that wasn’t a point I wanted to argue. After a bit, I said, “It’s hard being a kid, isn’t it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I remember when I was a teenager everyone said I had it easy. But I didn’t really. In a lot of ways life gets easier when you get older.” And harder, too. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. He’d learn it on his own.

“I’m fine. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Except, of course, he did. If his life was easy he wouldn’t be looking for his father. Or willing to blackmail someone into finding out what happened to him. If his life was easy he’d be more focused on learning. If his life was easy he might think college was possible.

But his life wasn’t easy and the closer we got to his house the edgier he got. I finally asked, “What’s going on with you? You seem really nervous.”

“We’re running late. She hates when she gets home and dinner’s not there.”

What I wanted to say was ‘Wow, what a bitch,’ but I went with, “I’m sure she’ll be okay about it.”

“You don’t know her.”

“I’ll be there. I’ll get her to calm down.”

That got a chuckle out of him. “Good luck with that.”

And then we pulled up to the house. He parked on the street. Yeah, I was right. He wasn’t allowed to park in the driveway I had to pick up the pace to keep up with him. He rushed through the front door and into the kitchen. As he did, he called out, “Mom. We’re here. We’ve got dinner. And it’s hot!”

Silence.

Cass set the bag down on the kitchen counter, then continued over to the door to the garage. He opened and stuck his head inside. Then he backed out.

“Her car’s not there.”

“I guess you lucked out.”

“No, it’s weird. She never stays late.”

I glanced at the clock on the microwave. It was 5:35. “It takes fifteen minutes to drive home?”

“Twenty. But she always leaves five minutes early. Mr. Cray usually leaves at four.”

“Must be nice.”

“They work hard,” he said, defensively.

“Maybe you should call the office, just in case.”

He walked over to the wall phone and dialed. The phone still had a rotary dial instead of buttons. I guessed that it was here when they bought the house and Joanne didn’t want to pay to replace it.

Cass turned around and looked at me, saying, “No one’s answering.” He hung up and said, “We should go to Top Dog. Maybe her car broke down.”

“It looked like it’s just a couple of years old. Why would it breakdown?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a lemon.”

“Then why hasn’t she called you? She’d call you if her car broke down, wouldn’t she?”

He walked back through the house to Joanne’s office. I followed him. He was staring at the answering machine.

“There aren’t any messages. We should go.”

“Put the dinner in the oven so it doesn’t cool off too fast.”

He heard me, but he didn’t pay any attention. I followed him outside and we got into the Belvedere.

“What if she comes home while we’re gone?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It’s all kind of weird. She’s never late. Never. She’s a good mom.”

Not the time to disagree with that.

“We’ll find her,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. I had no idea what was going on.

It didn’t take us twenty minutes to get back to Top Dog. He drove at least fifteen miles over the speed limit and the car had a very powerful engine.

As we approached the parking lot, I could see that there were six black-and-white patrol cars. There were a lot of people, mostly police officers standing around. At the center of it all I could see glimpses of a bronze car. A bronze Eldorado. On the pavement next to the car, a sliver of purple that had to be Joanne.

“Don’t turn in,” I said, as firmly as I could. “Keep driving.”

“What? No. Why?”

“Do what I fucking tell you.”

Cass stared at me. Shocked. Then we passed the parking lot. “What’s happening? Something’s happening.”

“Go around the corner and pull over.”

“Why? We should go back. I’m going to turn around.”

But he didn’t, he pulled over like I told him.

“I’m going to drive.”

“It’s my car. We need to go back. Something’s hap—” And then it seemed to flood him. “That was my mom, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. It was your mom.”

“We have to go back.”

“It’s not going to help. She was lying on the ground. No one was helping her. There was no ambulance.”

“Then it’s on its way!”

“You said your mom was punctual. Whatever happened, happened almost an hour ago.”

He started to gasp. I undid his safety belt and pulled him across the bench seat. I pulled him over me as I slid toward the driver’s seat. It would have been absurdly funny if the kid wasn’t starting to sob and my shoulder didn’t scream bloody murder. Well, that might be a poor choice of words.

My mind was racing, skipping around, jumping at different ideas. There were a few things I was sure of.

“Okay. You need to calm down,” I told Cass. “There are a few things we need to do, and then you can go ahead and lose your shit.”

He looked at me in horror. “What?”

“Technically, I’m Dom Reilly. I just showed up out of nowhere and now my wife is dead. That makes me the prime suspect. Meanwhile, you’ve been embezzling from your mother’s place of employ?—”

“It wasn’t me. It was?—”

“Your name is on everything. The police will tell themselves a story that she found out and you killed her over it. That makes you prime suspect number two.”

I pulled out into the street and began driving back to his house. I kept talking. “We don’t have much time. The police are going to show up within an hour to do the notification. That’s when you want to turn on the waterworks.”

“Fuck you.”

“We have to get the file with all those credit cards and anything else that refers to Top Dawg – D-A-W-G. We also need to get the shoe box full of cash out of your mother’s closet.”

“How do you—you weren’t supposed to go in there.”

“You need to be glad I did. Is there anything I missed?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’d better know, unless you want to go to prison.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“I’m not a DA, but you’re definitely guilty of credit card fraud. A lot of credit card fraud. But that’s not the point. Is there anything else suspicious in the house?”

“There’s a gun.”

“Where is it?”

“Under my bed.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Luca gave it to my mother to hide.”

“Which means it was probably used in a crime. Or at the very least it’s stolen and can’t be traced back to Luca. Either way you shouldn’t have it.”

“You’re acting like the police are going to search the house. I won’t let them do that.”

“And if you don’t you move up the suspect list.”

“I have an alibi. I was with you.”

“And I can’t be anywhere near this.”

“That’s your problem.”

“No, Cass… it’s your problem.”

And then I parked in the driveway. Not bothering with the steering wheel lock, I jumped out of the car and ran to the house. Cass came up behind me and unlocked the front door.

Inside, I rushed to the den and grabbed the accordion folder from the desk and then went upstairs for the shoebox from Joanne’s closet. Meanwhile, Cass got the gun from under his bed. It took some time so either he had another burst of emotion or it was buried under there pretty deep. It was in a Macy’s bag. I looked inside, the gun was a 9MM Ruger, scratched up and badly in need of a cleaning. It looked like it had been buried.

“Where’s the nearest pay phone. I need to call a cab.”

“You can call from here.”

“Not if they check your phone records.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, don’t call anyone except your Aunt Suzie. Speaking of which, where will I find a pay phone? Is there a gas station nearby?”

“You probably want to go to the 7-Eleven right off 10 Mile Road.”

I’d already been there. It wasn’t exactly close. As I walked out the slider into the backyard, he asked, “You’re coming back aren’t you?”

“Tomorrow,” I said, and I had a sick feeling I meant it.