B009XDDVN8 EBOK (39 page)

“Cash?”

“That’s right.”

“Tax free?”

“It was all tax free.”

“So two forty.”

“Ben has to get some—”

“Fuck Ben,” she says.

“Whoa.”

She rises up on her arms, hovers over me. She is wearing a T-shirt and her breasts are straining the fabric. Her straight blonde hair hangs down close enough to tickle my face. She seems now as strange to me as she did that first night together our sophomore year. How is that possible? And why do I like it so much?

“Where is it?” she says.

“In the car.”

“Unprotected?”

“It’s safe. Trust me.”

“You boys are all the same,” she says. “I want to see it.”

“No you don’t.”

“Yes I do,” she says, still hovering. “I paid for it.”

“You paid for it?”

“It killed my marriage.”

“Is that what did it?”

“You don’t think so?”

“Maybe we were incompatible. Maybe we just grew apart.”

“We never had the chance to grow together. There were hundreds of thousands of us in the relationship and I never knew.” She swings a leg over mine so that her thigh is rubbing up against my crotch. “It’s time for me to meet the competition.”

I roll her off me and roll myself off the bed. Without putting on my shoes, I grab my keys from the top of the bureau and head outside. When I come back, there are tiny pebbles embedded in my soles and the rusted green toolbox is in my hand. I turn on the light. I open the box on the bed. I lift out the top tray, take out the tools, pry up the false floor.

“I thought there would be more,” she says, staring at the piles.

“Hundred-dollar bills stack up neatly.”

“Can I?”

“Go ahead.”

She picks up a stack, hefts it, puts it on the bed, picks up another. It isn’t long before all the stacks are lined up on the bedsheet, leaving only the cigarettes and the condoms in the toolbox. I expect to hear about the latter two items, but Caitlin makes nary a comment. What else would you expect to find with $240,000 in cash? The way she’s reacting, I don’t think she would blink if she knew about the gun locked in the glove compartment of the car.

“My God,” she says.

“It is a sight, isn’t it?”

“It does something to you,” she says. “You spend so much of life thinking and worrying about money that when you see so much of it in one place, it does something to you.”

“It’s why people go into banking.”

“It makes me hungry.”

“Now you get it.”

She takes a stack and slips the paper wrapper off. She fans the bills in her hand and then tosses them in the air so that they flutter onto the bed.

“What are you doing?” I say.

She does it again with another stack.

“Stop it,” I say, but I say it halfheartedly. I’m a stranger to her and now she’s a stranger to me. Of all the reactions I ever expected, this was not one of them.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” she says.

“Do what?”

“Haven’t you?” she says.

“Do what, exactly?”

And then she shows me. With the lights on.

It is only after, when the money and tools are packed away, and the lights are back off, and Caitlin is lying beside me again in the quiet of the dark, that I remember being with Augie and Ben the night we took the money, talking of having sex on all the bills with Tawni Dunlop, with Sandra Tong, with Madeline Worshack, all the avatars of our high school lust. And I smile when I think of it, because it was better than I ever imagined. And it was with my wife.

Augie would have never understood. And, frankly, neither did I. But it filled me with something, the hope it brought, something maybe even more powerful than my murdered secret.

W
HAT’S UP WITH
you and Mom?” said Shelby the next morning. Eric, Shelby, and I were walking on the beach.

“I don’t know for sure,” I said.

“So are you getting divorced or what?” said Eric.

“What do you want us to do, Eric?”

“I want you to stay together for your kids, live at home together, and be so miserable that you leave us alone.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

“So it’s Mom’s fault,” said Shelby, “the whole splitting-up thing?”

“No,” I said, resisting the urge to start laying the groundwork for our inevitable postsplit child battles. I figured there would be time enough for that when this was all over. “It’s my fault, all of it. I’ve been a jerk.”

“But you’ve always been a jerk, Dad,” said Shelby. “That’s you.”

“Thank you, sweetie. Look, that’s not what I want to talk about. Your mom and I will figure things out eventually, but right now that’s between us. What I want to talk about is why you’ve been stuck here for these few days without phone or e-mail.”

“It’s not so bad,” said Shelby.

“Really?” I said.

“I thought I’d go crazy without a phone, but it’s so calm. And I sort of like Mathilda in a weird way.

“Speak for yourself,” said Eric. “That lady creeps me out.”

“She’s okay,” said Shelby. “She taught me how to make biscuits.”

“Biscuits?”

“Yeah, can you imagine?”

“No,” I said.

“She asked me if I was a sinner,” said Eric. “I told her not yet, but I’m only eleven, give me time.”

“Even Mom laughed at that,” said Shelby.

“But there has been no phoning or e-mailing, right? You’re not doing anything that can give your location away, are you?”

“We’re not stupid, Dad,” said Shelby.

“I know you’re not, sweetie.”

“We just go to the library and read.”

“But no phones.”

“No, I promise.”

“Okay, here’s the story. A long time ago, when I was just a bit older than Shelby, some friends and I discovered a stash of money. I mean a lot of it. And we took it, just like that.”

“You stole it?” said Eric.

“Sort of.”

“How cool is that?” said Eric.

“No, it wasn’t cool.”

“Sort of stealing,” said Shelby. “Is that sort of like being pregnant?”

“Well,
sort of
means it wasn’t really anybody’s money. It was drug money. The guys we took it from made it selling drugs. To kids. In schoolyards. They had no more right to it than we did.”

“So it wasn’t stealing?” said Shelby.

“It was like
Grand Theft Auto
,” said Eric, “where everyone is bad so you can do whatever you want?”

“We didn’t shoot hookers and steal cars,” I said.

“But you stole something,” said Eric.

“Did the people you took it from think it was stealing?” said Shelby.

“Oh, yes. And that’s what’s going on right now. They’re looking for it. And they think I still have it.”

“And do you?”

“Not much of it anymore. I spent most of it. On us, I mean. The house, the cars.”

“And your strippers?” said Shelby.

“Strippers?” said Eric. “You really are the Batman.”

“No, I’m not. And I know it’s a disappointment to you, Shelby, but I actually don’t like strip clubs. I’d rather go to a ball game.”

“So, you bought all our stuff with drug money?” said Shelby.

“Some of it, I guess. Though I didn’t make it selling drugs.”

“But still,” said Shelby.

“Look, I was young and stupid.”

“But you weren’t young when you were buying, like, cars with it. That was, like, last week.”

“No, I was just stupid then.”

“This is all pretty cool, Dad,” said Eric. “You’re an outlaw. I can’t wait to tell Teddy.”

“No, it’s not cool, and I’m not an outlaw, and you’re not telling anyone. The truth is, I’m just another idiot who screwed up badly. Everything would have been better if we just left it alone.”

“So it
was
stealing,” said Shelby.

Here’s a new rule to live by. If you can’t justify your actions to your kids without sounding like a fool, then all your little rationalizations are nothing so much as puffs of wind dying at the mountain’s edge. And it’s true whether you’re stealing drug money from a basement, or selling subprime mortgages to people who can’t afford them, or betting other people’s life savings on credit-default swaps.

Fortunately, before I tried to wade again into the untenable, my cell phone rang and saved me from the humiliation.

“Give me a minute,” I said to my kids before heading to the ocean’s edge, where the surf could drown out my conversation. This call wasn’t coming into my original phone, or the phone I had used to call Clevenger on the way south from Philadelphia—those were both long gone. The phone that rang had a number I had given to only one person. I looked at it a bit to steel my nerves, and then pressed the A
NSWER
button.

“Is this Mr. Moretti?” An older voice, solid and discreet, like a concierge at the Hotel Adultery.

“The name’s Willing,” I said. “Jon Willing.”

“Call yourself anything you want,” he said. “I’m phoning from the offices of Talbott, Kittredge, and Chase, Mr. Willing. We’re a law firm in Philadelphia.”

“You don’t need to identify yourself to me,” I said. “My mother got the occasional missive from Talbott, Kittredge, and Chase during our darkest days in the wilderness. You’re the Willing family firm, specializing in disinheritance and body bags.”

“We’re just lawyers, Mr. Willing.”

“And Al Capone just sold a little beer.”

“We have some information for you, but first we’re going to put you on a recorded line. Is that acceptable?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No.”

“Then knock yourself out.”

“Thank you.”

There was a pause, and then a click, and then another pause, followed by the man giving the time and date.

“Now, you claim to be Jonathon Willing, is that right?” said the man.

“It’s the truth,” I said.

“We won’t dispute that for purposes of this conversation, Mr. Willing, though we admit to nothing. And you’ve been made aware that this conversation is being recorded, isn’t that correct?”

“So you said.”

“Very good. Now, Mr. Willing, our understanding is that you are intending today to renounce all claims you might have against the estate of Montgomery Willing III or of his son Preston Willing, is that correct?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On what I get in return.”

“Mr. Willing, you made a request, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“And you relayed that request to Montgomery Willing at the Philadelphia Country Club, is that not correct?”

“Yes.”

“And now, in full consideration of his efforts to meet that request, and for the payment of one dollar, which will be sent forthwith to your address in Virginia, you are intending today to renounce all claims against the aforementioned estates, isn’t that correct?”

“What did you find?”

“What we found is not under discussion at the moment. We have made a good-faith effort to satisfy your request. We are also sending you the dollar. If that is sufficient consideration to renounce all possible claims, please say so on the recording. If not, our business here is at an end.”

“You’re not going to tell me what you found?”

“Not until this part is clarified.”

“Okay, I accept. I renounce.”

“And you are renouncing all claims not only for yourself, but also for all of your issue, for all of time. Is that acceptable?”

I glanced at Shelby and Eric clowning in the sand, thought of that old man at the club, and I said, “Good riddance.”

“Just say yes or no, please.”

“Yes.”

“And you admit that your claim to be a relation of Montgomery Willing III is fraudulent.”

“No.”

“Excuse me? Need we try this again?”

“No, the only thing fraudulent is that old bastard. I don’t want his money, but I’m his grandson. And he knows it. And you checked the DNA already, or the marriage records, or something, or we wouldn’t be having this discussion, so you know it, too. And let me ask you, how does it feel to so blithely slice off a member of your client’s family tree?”

“It’s what we do, Mr. Willing.”

“So said Al Capone on Valentine’s Day. Anything else?”

“There are a few more things we need to go over.”

“No, there aren’t. I’m done. Give me what I want or I’m coming back to Philadelphia. The press always likes to blat out the scandals of the aristocracy. I can see the headline in the
Daily News
: ‘Disowned Scion Ready and Willing.’”

“There is no need for publicity here.”

“Heaven forbid.”

“We’re going to end the recording now, is that acceptable?”

“Let’s keep it going. We’re having so much fun.”

A pause, a click, another pause.

“It’s off,” he said.

“All right, bub. What do you have for me?”

“We have an address for you, Mr. Moretti.”

“Willing.”

“Whatever. It’s not the exact address of the man you’re looking for, but it’s the next-best thing. A contact number buried deep within the files of the Department of Justice. It was quite hard to obtain, quite expensive. You should be grateful to your grandfather.”

“That’s like being grateful to a scorpion. It doesn’t matter how grateful you are, he’d still sting you just because he can. Let me have it.”