Page 37

You What?

It was hot and crowded in Hector’s mother’s small living room, and Hank felt as if he were living a literal game of musical chairs. Although the man Hector had hired mostly sat by the door, and Hector himself had returned to the States, Hank still had to outmaneuver Larry and Andre to avoid the skin-peeling, plastic-covered sofa.

They had gotten away.

But now they were stuck. They’d overplayed their hand. They should have arrived and moved on. Now they were vulnerable. Now Hector knew they had money. And a lot of it. Between their Duolingo Spanish lessons, they huddled around the coffee table.

“We could just walk out. Between the three of us, I think we could take him.”

Larry shot a discreet look to the man scrolling through his phone by the door.

“I’m more worried about his mother.”

Hank exchanged smiles with the compact woman at the dining table, deftly slicing peppers with a machete. “And what about our wives? We have to decide what we’re going to do about them. We’ve gotta make sure they’re safe.”

“You mean if they don’t pay Hector the hundred grand they owe him?”

Larry asked.

Hank waved him off. “Did you not hear him when he was here? Hector’s not gonna kill them over a hundred grand. Now that he thinks there’s millions up for grabs, he might use them for leverage.”

Larry asked, “You don’t really think he’d hurt them, do you?”

“Who cares?”

Andre asked.

Hank and Larry spun their heads to him.

Andre looked over the tops of his bifocals. “Am I the only one who heard what the man had to say? Our wives—Pam, Nancy, and Shalisa—paid him to kill us. And they think he did. So who the fuck cares about them?”

Larry glanced at Hank and then said, “That’s a little harsh, Andre. When we decided to run, it was you who wanted to be sure the girls would be taken care of and that we’d send them money. I know they hired Hector, but there are a lot of extenuating circumstances at play here.”

Larry picked up a tiny tangerine from the bowl on the coffee table and began to peel it. Droplets and that sweet smell sprayed the air as he carefully piled the pieces of rind on the table’s lace doily.

Andre shook his head, leaned forward, and tapped the table with his forefinger to drive his words home. “That was before I knew they paid the man to kill us. You can’t extenuate enough to explain that away.”

Hank sighed. “Can we blame them?”

“I can,”

Andre said. “I can absolutely blame them. Of all the lousy things I ever did to Shalisa, I never hired a hitman to kill her. I even got her fucking juniper chopped down.”

Hank’s head snapped up. “You what?”

“Before we scattered Dave’s ashes, I paid that kid at the marina to run over to my house and cut down that fucking juniper bush she’s been on my ass forever about. I didn’t want her to be mad at me every time she looked at that fucking bush. Even had him drop off a cupcake. And I left her a note.”

“Wait. You did what?”

Hank had to hear it again.

“I gave him a note to leave in the dirt that said I’m sorry.”

Andre nodded and sat back. “Even had it laminated so the ink wouldn’t run.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Hank glanced at Hector’s mom, then smiled. He lowered his voice and leaned toward Andre. “You left a goodbye note?”

“No. I left an ‘I’m sorry’ note. Different. She won’t know what it means, but I do. She’ll think I was just saying, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t cut the tree down the first twenty times you asked.’ Not ‘I’m sorry I faked my death and left you.’ No big deal.”

Maybe they would have been better off to have stayed home and been killed. At least then Hank would be out of this misery quickly. Now he was stuck with Andre and Larry forever.

Andre continued, “Look. I couldn’t end our marriage with Shalisa hating me. She’s been pissed at me for so long.”

Hank couldn’t speak, so he was happy when Larry did. “And whose fault is that, Andre? What kind of marriage did you think you were building? What the fuck did you expect when you didn’t tell her about the cancer?”

Hank’s head spun to Larry. “Cancer? What cancer? What are you talking about?”

Larry nodded at Andre.

Hank looked at Andre. “What cancer?”

Andre wrung his hands and brought his eyes up to meet Hank’s. He breathed out. “Just after we got married, I found out I had testicular cancer.

The treatment was gonna make me infertile, and this was back in the eighties, you know. Freezing sperm wasn’t an option for me. Shalisa wanted kids.

Real bad. And now I couldn’t give them to her. But if she knew I had cancer, she’d never leave me. So I didn’t tell her. I didn’t want to ruin her life. I lied.

I told her I’d decided I didn’t want kids. That gave her an out. And it worked. We split up. For a while.”

Hank frowned. “You could have adopted.”

Andre squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then said, “I wish we had. But I thought I was gonna die.”

He looked at Hank.

“I didn’t think I’d get to thirty, let alone sixty. I’m a walking miracle. I’m telling you—eating healthy makes a difference.

Everyone gives me a hard time about it, but if Shalisa and I eat right, we could live to be a hundred. You guys and your chocolate bars and aioli, don’t get me started.” He shook his head and continued, “So, yes, I thought about adopting, but I didn’t want to die and leave her a struggling, single mom. I saw how hard it was on my mom. I couldn’t do that to my queen.

I thought I’d die, and she’d still be young enough she’d remarry and have her family with her new husband. I tried to stay away. We broke up before I started my treatment, and afterward . . .” He hung his head for a moment and then looked up. “It was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done—I asked her to take me back.

I wanted to spend my last months with her. But the cancer never came back. Every appointment, I thought I’d get bad news. But I never did.

And Shalisa was stuck with me. My biggest failure in life is that I didn’t die, she was saddled with me, and she never got the kids she wanted. I was young, and stupid. I thought I was doing the right thing. What can I say?”

It was a lot to process. Hank looked at Larry. “You knew about this.”

Larry shrugged. “Andre and I had a heart-to-heart a while back. About fatherhood. When Paul came out and I was having a hard time with it. Andre pushed me to get my act together.”

Andre jumped in. “And a lot of good that did, Larry. Your wife wanted you dead too. It’s because you fucked things up with your kid. Right?”

Hank was worried. He’d been worried for years, but this was different. He used to worry about other people coming at them. Now, as he watched Larry and Andre, he was worried they could implode from within. At least they were just sniping with words. If it came to blows, Hank wasn’t sure how to handle it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hector’s mother’s machete flash.

Andre repeated, “You fucked things up with Paul, didn’t you, Larry?”

Larry sighed. “I did. But I came around. I let him know I knew I was being a jerk, and I apologized.”

“You did? About Estuardo?”

Hank grabbed Larry’s knee. “Good for you, Larry, to finally come into the twenty-first century. You never said! When did you talk to him?”

“I wrote him a letter.”

Hank blinked. Then blinked again. “You what?”

Larry rubbed his hands on his knees. He tried to scooch forward. Hank could tell the hair on the backs of his thighs burned, pulling against the plastic. Larry lifted his butt a fraction and then edged ahead. “I listened to what you guys had to say. You helped me. You did.”

Larry exhaled. “So, before we . . . you know . . . exploded, I left Paul a note. I could not have my son thinking his father had died despising him. That’s one good thing about all this. I came to grips with what’s important.”

Hank counted, One, two, three, breathe. Four, five, six, breathe.

He couldn’t have heard Larry correctly. They had gone over the rules twenty times: Leave everything as if you were planning on coming home that night. Don’t bring your passport. No extra money. Not your laptop. Not your father’s gold watch. Delete the emails to each other. Act normal and do nothing out of the ordinary.

First Andre had some kid rush back to cut down a tree and leave an “I’m sorry”

note, and now Larry wrote a goodbye letter.

Hank finally spoke. “Why didn’t we just rent the billboard at the Dairy Queen and post ‘Thanks for the memories, Love Hank, Larry, and Andre. Your favorite not-so-dead guys’?”

Larry ignored the comment and picked up another tangerine. “I didn’t say goodbye. I made it look like I was going to mail it. I knew he’d tell his mom, and then at least Nancy could forgive me. Posthumously. I’d never get back what I lost, but at least she wouldn’t spit on my grave. Anyway, I was careful to not be incriminating.”

“That was you being careful?”

Hank put his head in his hands.

He heard Andre ask him, “What did you do, Hank? What did you do to Pam that was so bad she wanted you dead?”

Staring at the floor, Hank answered, “I ate her pad thai.”

He raised his eyes. Larry’s and Andre’s mouths hung open. He looked from one to the other. They squinted and cocked their heads. Larry finally spoke. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

Hank sighed. “It’s her favorite food, and I ate her leftovers without asking. You should have seen her face when I told her. She crumpled. I hurt her so deeply, and I never, ever wanted to do that. But we’ve been in such a mess with all this shit, for so long, I don’t know. So, yep. I think she wanted me dead because I ate her pad thai leftovers.”

He looked from one man to the other. “And I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, like you did. I didn’t fuck her over with my secret cancer or disown my only child.

“The first thing I was going to do with that money was buy us one-way tickets to Claire. And rent a condo near her. Indefinitely. That was our real problem—Pam missed our girl. We both did. But once we were together again, Pam and I had a future, and I gave it up to keep us alive. So, I’m insisting”—Hank looked pointedly from Andre to Larry, so they’d understand how strongly he felt about this—“I’m insisting we make sure they’re safe. We’ll make a deal with Hector to leave them alone. Do you hear me? We just have to be careful we don’t lose it all.”

Larry and Andre nodded, then Larry said, “But it’s not like the money is sitting in a duffel bag under my bed, and the last man to grab it wins. It’s in secured offshore accounts. Hector’s not getting anything unless we give it to him.”

Hank said, “That’s what I’m worried about—what he might do to get us to give it to him.”