Page 17

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I sit on the kitchen floor with Henry and read our favorite book. It’s a somewhat chewed cardboard edition of P. D. Eastman’s classic Are You My Mother? My dad read it to me when I was a boy. It’s the gripping story of a recently hatched baby bird who thinks his mother abandoned him and thus goes on a search (walking—he’s too young to fly) to find her. He asks the titular question to a kitten, a hen, a dog, a car, and a boat, and he finally ends up on the scary tooth of a giant steam shovel. It’s a creepy and kick-ass book. When you think about it, Are You My Mother? is our first experience with horror.

Molly finishes up in the shower and comes out in my bathrobe. We are about the same size, and I love when she uses my bathrobe or dress shirts or boxer shorts. It’s a different kind of intimacy.

Molly says, “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“That was…”

“… bizarre,” I finish for her.

“Yes. I feel sorry for her.”

Henry reaches out and pulls down on the book. This is his signal he wants to hear more. We are on the page where the baby bird sits on the head of a large dog. I don’t know what breed the dog is. I once googled it, but there was nothing out there. I have a dormant social media account, so I asked on that too. The most common answers were bloodhound or basset hound.

I can waste time with the best of them.

Molly sits with us. “Do you know what I found particularly strange?”

“Tell me.”

“You spot an ex-girlfriend at your class. Someone you were only with a few days, maybe a week. You haven’t made clear how long you were with her.”

“Five days,” I say.

“Five days,” Molly repeats. “And now, more than twenty years later, you spot her in your class—and when she chooses to leave, you react by chasing her and trespassing on her property. I remember when you dated Jayme Ratner before we met. If you saw her in your class now and she took off, would you go through all that trouble?”

“No.”

And then I tell her. I tell her about waking up with blood. I tell her about the bloody knife in my hand. I tell her how Buzz suddenly burst in and started shouting, “ Oh my god, what did you do…? Get out! If they find her body, we will both go to jail. They’ll think you killed her and I… just get out! ” I realized a long time ago, when I replayed what happened, that whatever compound Anna had gotten from Buzz was more potent, that I still wasn’t thinking straight, that Buzz was able to get me to acquiesce because I was roofied or drugged. I complied. He dragged me out. I went downstairs and outside and ran and ran. I don’t really remember much about that, just bumping into things and ending up on the beach and passing out, and by the time I was back awake, I didn’t know what to do. I was confused and scared, and I just wanted to leave. I wanted to forget all this and chalk it up to a bad dream. It would be simple enough—just rejoin the Lax Bros and keep backpacking…

But I couldn’t do that.

Even as a stupid kid, I knew I couldn’t just do that.

So I went to the local police station on the Avenida Condes de San Isidro. I met with a young detective named Carlos Osorio. But as soon as I started explaining to him that an American girl named Anna had been murdered, I could hear how bizarrely the words echoed in my own ears. Part of the problem was that it all did feel a bit like a bad dream. The drugs probably made that happen. Or maybe, I don’t know, maybe it never really happened.

Except I knew that it did.

The other part of it was that, well, I was lying to Inspector Osorio, at least by omission. I’m a kid of Pakistani descent in a tourist destination jammed with white Europeans. I’m not dumb enough to say, “Oh, I woke up with a bloody knife in my hand,” so even as I’m trying to convince Osorio that I’m telling the truth, I’m lying to him, and I think he knew that.

Eventually Osorio agreed to go with me to Anna’s. But her apartment was in a complex of like-size buildings. I had trouble remembering which building was hers. When we finally found it—this was now a full day later—the place was empty and clean. Osorio gave me a look. I wanted to argue. I wanted to say that Buzz must have cleaned it up, like he said he would, but even then, I realized that Buzz would probably have that knife with my fingerprints on it, and remember, this was twenty-two years ago—taking or possessing illegal drugs in a foreign country could lead to a hefty prison sentence no matter what.

So what could I do?

I didn’t know.

I went back to my hostel on the outskirts of the city for the night to think it through. Then I called my dad on the pay phone and told him what happened. As I did, I got an urgent message from the front desk telling me Inspector Osorio wanted me to come by the station immediately.

“ Don’t go ,” my father told me.

“Are you serious?”

“You never got the message. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t even pack. Get on the next plane to the USA. I don’t care what city—”

“But, Dad—”

“You are a brown kid in a foreign country.”

Henry is still chewing the book when I finish. Molly sits there, digesting it.

“Well, we know now she wasn’t dead,” Molly says.

“Yes.”

“That has to be a relief.”

I nod, not trusting my voice.

“Did you check for a pulse?”

“No.”

“Because when you screamed, this Buzz guy burst right in?”

“Yes.”

“Like he was waiting for you to wake up?”

“Yes,” I say again.

“You must have wondered about that.”

“Over the past twenty-plus years, I’ve considered every possibility. But I don’t think my mind would let me go to what I now know is the truth.”

“Which is?”

“I was scammed. I had a lot of money on me. A phone too. When I rushed out, I never even realized that it was gone. That was their play. Anna and Buzz were con artists. I was their mark. Anna’s job was to get close to the mark. By drugging him and making him think he’d killed her, the mark would just run off. He wouldn’t make a fuss. He wouldn’t go to the police or press charges or any of that. Most of the time, the mark, I imagine, would just do what my father suggested. Run and never look back. And if the mark did report it, well, they cleared out of that room before anyone could find them.”

“Seems like quite an effort,” Molly says. “Couldn’t they have just rolled you the first night?”

I shake my head. “I kept the money in a safe deposit box. That was my first night with it. I was going to move in with her.”

Molly sat there. A tear rolled down her cheek. Watching her, I could feel two hands grab my heart and snap it in two. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my wife look so sad.

“Molly?”

“You never told me.”

“I never told anyone. Only my dad.”

Molly swallows. “Nicole?”

I shake my head again. “Not even Nicole. Not even my mother.”

“This huge part of you,” Molly says, her voice sounding far away. “And you never told me.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I buried it.”

She makes a face. “You didn’t bury it.”

“I didn’t want it in our life.”

She doesn’t reply. She just sits there and breaks my heart.

“Molly?”

“Maybe you should stay with your dad tonight.”

I feel what remains of my heart plummet in my chest. There is no anger in her tone. I wish there was.

“I don’t want to worry my dad,” I say.

“Then maybe a hotel or a friend. Just for tonight.”

I end up at Craig’s, for once not just to pick up my car. I was going to stay with Marty—Lord knows that would be a more upscale accommodation—but I hadn’t spent much time with Craig recently, and I worry about him being lonely. Craig is excited for my visit. He ran to the supermarket and bought guac and salsa and Tostito chips (“the scoop-shape ones—I remember you like those”) and Black Cherry Coke. Craig always has brandy on hand. He likes to mix it in his Black Cherry Coke. That may sound disgusting to you but that’s only because it is.

Craig had taped a soccer match between Manchester City and Fulham from earlier today, and we watched it. I love watching soccer or football or whatever you want to call it, especially when I have no rooting interest. It’s too stressful when you care, but when you don’t, football has the most Zen quality to it, a gentle wave of back and forth, to and fro, with—and I can’t stress this enough as an American—no time-outs or commercial breaks except at the half. I wish other sports could do that, but hey, I’m not na?ve enough to think this isn’t all about money. I’m old enough to remember when betting was against the law—what, ten years ago maybe?—but now there are more TV ads for betting apps than beers.

I would judge this if I cared more.

Craig has one son named Michael. He’s grown and moved to San Francisco. There are a lot of family photos around. Craig’s late wife, Cassie, is in every single one. I don’t know how to say this without seeming unkind, but Cassie was the more ordinary-looking woman in every way, or maybe what I’m saying is kind in the sense that we should all have someone who looks at us and sees us the way Craig saw Cassie.

Craig falls asleep in his recliner. He’s made up the spare bedroom—what used to be Michael’s room—for me. I lie down and stare at the ceiling. I can hear Craig in the next room, still snoring in his recliner.

My phone buzzes at midnight. It’s Molly. I pick up the phone and say, “You okay?”

“I can’t sleep,” she says.

“Me neither.”

“We don’t go to bed angry,” Molly says.

“I’m not angry.”

“Neither am I. Come home, Sami. I want you here with me.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Spain.”

“I don’t care. I just want you back home with us.”

“Craig is already asleep.”

“Wake him and say you’re coming home. Or just leave a note. Please?”

She doesn’t have to ask me again. Craig understands and falls promptly back to sleep. My app says the train is delayed, so I splurge on an old-school yellow taxi. My father used to drive a cab. He then moved on to investing in taxi medallions. They used to have tremendous value—at their height, they were almost a million dollars a pop. He poured most of his savings into it and did well, and then the ride-share apps came along and now that million is maybe one hundred grand and my dad lost pretty much everything.

It’s the late-night shift so it’s Russian roulette about what kind of driver you’re going to get. My driver is a chatty guy named Dmitri Scull, who is skinny and unshaven and wired. He tells me that he used to be in the advertising business.

“I came up with a great campaign for Verizon,” Dmitri tells me.

I enjoy talking to taxi drivers. I regret that so few speak to you now. They all have their earphones in and are talking for hours on end to someone back home and I often wonder who loves them that much. Like with Cassie. Love is everywhere, if you look for it. “Have I seen the ad?” I ask.

“They didn’t use it. But it was a brilliant idea. Want to hear it?”

“Sure.”

“You know Bruce Springsteen?”

“Not personally.”

“His song ‘The Rising.’” Then Dmitri sings it for me. “‘Come on up for the rising…’”

“I remember it,” I say.

“So you just change one lyric,” he explains. “‘The Rising’ becomes ‘Verizon.’”

I smile and sing. “‘Come on up for Verizon’?”

“Exactly.”

We both sing it together for the rest of the ride: “‘ Come on up for Verizon, come on up, lay your hands in mine… ’”

“Catchy, right?”

“Brilliant,” I agree.

Molly opens the door before I knock. She is wearing the bright red nightgown that has always been my favorite. I wonder whether that’s the reason she wore it, if she changed into it, or if it was just the red nightgown’s turn in her rotation. Then I wonder why I’m asking myself such inane questions. She throws her arms around me. I hug her back with everything I’ve got. “I’m sorry,” I say again. She shuts me up with a kiss. I kiss her back. She smells of honeysuckle and Neutrogena face soap, and no man can resist that combination.

In the morning, I reach for my phone and check my texts. The first is from a number I don’t recognize.

Molly looks good in red.

I jolt up. Molly sleeps next to me. I take a screenshot and send it to Marty.

Find out whose number this is.

But I know the trace will go nowhere. It’s so easy to send anonymous texts with any one of those readily available burner apps. Still, maybe Marty can get something from the number.

I also have a pretty good idea who sent it.

Tad Grayson.

At least that is what I think until I tiptoe out of bed and look at the street outside my bedroom window. As though I don’t have enough going on in my brain, there, parked on the corner, is a dark blue Cadillac Escalade with a Connecticut license plate.

The Belmonds’ car.

As I throw my clothes on, Molly starts to stir. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s okay, my love. Go back to sleep.”

“You’re going to lead with the patronizing again?”

She has a point. I say, “Victoria Belmond’s car is parked outside.”

“You think she’s here?”

“She hasn’t rung the bell, so no.”

“Last time she came in an Uber without telling anyone.”

“Right.”

“So why is her car here?”

“That’s what I’m going to ask.”

“Should you call the cops?” Molly asks.

“And say what? An expensive car is parked on our street?”

“It is suspicious,” Molly says with a smirk.

“I got this.”

We agree that Molly will watch from the window, phone in hand, in case something goes wrong. I have a gun. I keep it locked and hidden and up high, and I know the stats on keeping a gun in your home so I will probably get rid of it as soon as Henry is old enough to move around. But I’m also a cop and have been heavily trained in how to use one. I get the pros and cons. I know what I’m doing.

Should I get it out now? Better safe than sorry?

I decide to leave the gun behind. I exit the building. The first thing I see is what we might call a suspicious-looking dude on the far street corner with a face tat, scraggly dirty-blond hair, faded denim vest, and mirrored sunglasses. He has the telltale brown bag clutched in one hand (for those who don’t know what I mean, a bottle of booze is most likely in the bag). He raises the hand as I pass as though offering me a toast. I give a small nod back. I’m not sure what to make of him. Suspicious-looking dudes drinking in the early morning are not uncommon in this neighborhood, but something about this guy is tingling my spidey senses.

I turn right. As soon as the blue Cadillac Escalade comes into view, the driver door opens. Gun Guy steps out. He smiles at me and waves. My best pal. I quickly glance up at my window. Molly is there. I turn back toward Scraggly Dude. He’s stumbling away now, almost out of sight. I approach Gun Guy. He keeps the smile on his face.

“Nice to see you again,” he says when I get closer.

I am tempted to sucker-punch him. I have that right, but I don’t know how it will play out here in the middle of the street. When I get closer to the car, he opens the back door for me to get in. I look inside to see who is there. No one.

“Did you send me a text this morning?” I ask.

“Not me,” he says. “I’m more of an ‘in-person’ guy.”

“Why are you here?”

“I was asked to bring you to the estate.”

“The Belmonds’ estate?”

He smiles again and gestures toward the opening. “Why don’t you get in?”

“My mommy told me not to get into a car with a stranger.”

“Oh, come on, Mr. Kierce. We are old friends by now, aren’t we? Please. Make yourself comfortable.”

“Pass,” I say and start back toward my door. Is this a bluff? I am not even certain. I don’t think I’m in any danger. He knows that I’m an ex-cop now. What is he going to do, drive me out someplace and dump my body? Seems clear that he wants to take me to the Belmonds. I don’t know why or at whose request. But I’m curious. Still, I hope walking away will force him to divulge more information. Gun Guy is here to pick up and deliver a package. If he doesn’t, I assume that his task will be viewed as a failure.

“It’s her father,” he says.

I stop. I don’t ask whose father. There is a dance going on here in terms of names. I’m willing to sway with the music a bit.

“What does he want?”

“Above my pay grade.”

“Why not call me?”

“Above my pay grade.”

I press the first number on my speed dial. When Molly answers I tell her I’m going to take a ride with Gun Guy (I don’t call him that) at the request of Victoria’s father. She insists that we move over to FaceTime and keep it on me, just to be on the safe side. I agree, but again I’m not worried. Molly has seen the Escalade’s license plate, and I’ve taken photos of Gun Guy and we know where he works.

When we arrive at the estate in Connecticut, the ornate gate slowly opens. I say goodbye to my beloved as we head up the long driveway. It takes a full minute before the house comes into view. It’s enormous, of course. Stately. There are some Victorian touches mixed with classic gray stone, and yet something about it makes it difficult to know if it’s a very old home in good shape or a newer home that aped some more opulent era’s architecture.

As we circle to the front, a familiar young man opens the door and steps out.

It’s Arthur from White Shoe Law.

I should be surprised to see him—and I guess I am—but it’s almost as though all my worlds are colliding and being smushed down into one tiny space. When the car comes to a stop, I open the door before Gun Guy can do it. Arthur comes over with his hand extended. I shake it because why not.

“You work for Belmond?” I ask him.

“No,” Arthur says. “I work for you.”

“Then why are you here? Or better yet, why am I here?”

“I’m here at Mr. Belmond’s request,” Arthur says.

“But you represent me?”

“Yes. Mr. Belmond wants us to go over a few things before you meet. He felt that I could facilitate by making sure you have proper legal counsel to answer any questions you may have.”

I stare at him. “Uh-huh. In English?”

“Mr. Belmond wants to meet with you.”

“Yeah, I got that part.”

“But before he does, he wants to make sure that you are both”—Arthur looks in the air as though searching for the word—“protected.”

“Wait, how did Belmond even know that I know you?”

Arthur makes the skeptical face that reminds me that this wouldn’t be difficult for a man with Belmond’s means to figure out, and of course he is right.

“Mr. Belmond’s chief counsel is Lenore Spikes.”

“Am I supposed to know the name?”

“It doesn’t matter, but yes. Anyway, Ms. Spikes has drawn up an NDA.” Then he adds, “That stands for Non-Disclosure Agreement.”

“I know what an NDA is, Arthur.”

“This one is both pretty standard and pretty inflexible. You can’t talk about anything that goes on with this meeting. You can’t talk about the Belmonds. You can’t reveal anything about the Belmond family or any interactions you have with them herewith.”

I frown. “Did you just say ‘herewith’?”

“I’m being the total pro.”

“And why would I sign this NDA?”

“Three reasons. One, it is a precondition for the meeting about to occur.”

“That’s not a reason.”

“Two, he has things he may wish to reveal to you. He wants to know you can be discreet.”

I frown again. “Again not really a reason. And three?”

“Three, Mr. Belmond is willing to pay you one hundred thousand dollars to sign it.”

That catches my attention. Arthur tries to keep a straight face.

“A hundred thousand dollars,” I repeat.

“Yes.”

“Just to sign an NDA?”

“Yes.”

Wowza. Belmond clearly wants me to keep my mouth shut. I’m not sure what about. I assume Spain. But does he even know about that? Did his daughter tell him?

“And if I refuse to sign it?”

“You’ll be driven back home immediately by Prince Charming over there. The family will have no further communication with you on any level whatsoever. If you go anywhere near them, their attorney will request a restraining order, and they are well enough connected to get it.”

I try to think it through. “The hundred grand is for real?”

“Very much for real,” Arthur says. “In fact, your attorney insisted that the money be wired to your Bank of America account the moment you sign it—before you meet Belmond.”

“I could use that money,” I say.

“I know.”

“I feel like I’m being bought off.”

“I assume so, yes. Do you want to tell me about it?”

I think about it. The only thing I know is Spain. What could I do with that? I can’t even prove the young woman—my Anna—was Victoria Belmond. I suspect it. I think it’s true. But I have zero proof. Even if I wanted to hurt the family, what could I do? Go to the press? And say what? I guess there’s an outside chance that I could stir up some trouble and scandal. Maybe that tiny worry is enough for the rich. A hundred grand is a small price to pay to insure that doesn’t happen.

One hundred thousand dollars, ladies and gentlemen.

Oh man oh man could I put that money to good use. I’m broke. I’m swimming in debt. And I’m also curious. Why does Belmond want to see me? If I refuse to sign and I’m driven back, my investigation into what really happened twenty-two years ago to me—and, more to the point, Victoria—hits a dead end. But if I sign, if I go in and talk to him…

One hundred thousand dollars, ladies and gentlemen.

“I’ll sign,” I say.

It’s the only move. It’s the only way I learn more. And if nothing comes from the meeting…

One hundred thousand dollars, ladies and gentlemen.

And there is one more thing here. If there is some attempt to cover up something worse, some kind of crime that I believe needs to be prosecuted, I’ll find a way to break the NDA. Sue me, assholes. I don’t have any money anyway except for…

I won’t say it again.

Arthur opens the enormous front door and leads me inside.

“Wait,” I say, “are you doing this pro bono?”

Arthur looks at me as though I’d asked him if the Easter Bunny was real. “I don’t work for free, Kierce, but don’t worry. That’s part of what I negotiated for you in all this—attorney’s fees.”

“Savvy move,” I say.

“Right? Also you wouldn’t have the money to pay me if you didn’t sign.”