Black Fridays (28 page)

“All right, I’m convinced. I’m out of here. There’s a place across the street where they know me.”

“I’ll have the NYPD put a man on the floor. Until they find the killer. I wish I could do more.”

“Any word on the Kid?”

“Way too early. Call me later.”

—

I DIDN’T SEE
anyone watching me as I crossed the park. No one was following me. No eyes darted away as I looked in their direction. It was a cool, fall day, with high, white wispy clouds and a pale blue sky. Two nannies with sleeping toddlers in strollers looked at me suspiciously as I passed. A handsome old man with a mane of swept-back silver hair was tossing bread crumbs for the pigeons and squirrels to fight over. The rats would show up after dark for what morsels remained.

It was all so normal. I felt like I was walking through a movie set—something light where people might suddenly break out in song. And I could plod safely through, in dim-witted comfort, immune to danger. Exempt from feeling.

Vinny was studying the
Racing Form
and making notes. Rollie was busy restocking the back bar. I slid onto a stool and asked for a beer.

“You don’t look so good,” Vinny said. “Maybe you want to start with a cuppa coffee.”

“I’ve felt better,” I said.

“Give him a coffee.”

The coffee was hot and black. It had no taste. My body kept humming with too much energy, while my brain sputtered and gapped.

“I think I’m in shock,” I said.

“Bad day?” Vinny said.

“Bad week.” Couple of years. Bad decade. The surface of the coffee was covered with tiny ripples. My hand was shaking. I wanted to explain—I wanted someone to understand—but I couldn’t decide what event of the past few days to start with. “My ex took the Kid.” That hurt the most, but compared to getting attacked, or having my apartment ransacked by a murderer, it sounded weak. “I’ve had some other problems,” I finished.

“Better give him a cognac with that,” Vinny said.

The cognac burned and soothed, but I couldn’t taste it either.

I checked my watch. It was almost 11:30.

“Would it be all right if we watched the news for a bit?”

Rollie raised a questioning eyebrow and Vinny gave a nod. Everyone was being nice to me. He put on CNN.

“You know that investigation I was working on?” I said.

Vinny nodded.

“Well, it has snowballed. And somebody is killing people to protect it. Last night I had my own private security force and today I’ve got zip. Not quite zip. Brady’s taking my calls.”

Vinny nodded like he knew what I was talking about.

A red banner replaced the ticker tape running across the bottom of the television screens. Breaking news. Stay tuned. I wasn’t going anywhere.

The talking heads were replaced by a street scene somewhere downtown. A group of gray-suited men stood in front of the glass doors of a gray building. One of them stepped forward and spoke to the cameras.

“Turn it up, Rollie.”

It was still hard to hear every word, but the story was simple. A combined task force of the FBI and the SEC had just arrested the renowned, but reclusive, head of a major hedge fund, who had owned up to running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme over the past twenty years. One of the largest in history. I saw Brady and other lower-level agents carry box after box of files out of the building. Maloney was among the senior agents who stood and watched, all with serious, concerned frowns plastered in place. The U.S. Attorney spoke as though someone had just given him the briefing two minutes before the cameras rolled. He looked like he wasn’t having as much fun as he had anticipated.

They gave the perp his walk of shame, but he refused to play the part. He came out the glass doors smiling, looking relieved rather than guilty. He didn’t quite wave to the cameras, but he made sure they shot his good side. For him, it was over. The fear of being discovered a fraud always outweighs the guilt.

I had felt that relief once.

I didn’t want to identify with him. This guy, the pundits told us, had destroyed the lives of hundreds of investors. People he had looked in the eye, taken their money in exchange for his trust, and never invested a penny of it. He was a predator. A vampire.

But a part of me cringed. The world saw us as the same. I knew why people like Barilla hated me. I knew why friends had not returned my calls, and I wondered if those who did harbored some pathetic sympathy for me because of some weakness of their own.

“Rollie,” I said, pushing away the coffee cup and the empty snifter. “Could you fix me a cocktail? Vodka on the rocks. Ketel One. With a twist.”

It didn’t matter if I couldn’t taste it.

BOTH NEW YORK
baseball teams were lame ducks for the playoffs and Vinny was content to watch horse racing on only two television screens, so Rollie kept the third tuned to the news. The collapse of the big Ponzi scheme was the day’s story. The networks were milking it like it was the fall of Baghdad.

“This that thing you was working on?” Vinny said.

“No. This is some other thing.”

I kept reaching into my jacket pocket and feeling through the dozen or so flash drives I had taken from Hochstadt’s apartment, searching for the one wrapped in duct tape. Each time I found it, I rewarded myself with another soothing sip of vodka. I was getting hammered, but I still didn’t want to go home and wait alone.

I dialed the FBI’s number again.

Robert Duvall’s voice answered again. “Senior Agent Maloney’s line.”

“I thought you were amazing in
The Apostle
.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“This is Jason Stafford calling. Agents Maloney and Brady know me. Please ask one of them to come to the phone.” If I spoke very carefully the words all came out in the right order.

“Senior Agent Maloney is in conference, sir.”

No, he wasn’t. He was on television again. Standing to the right of the DA with a handful of other serious-looking men. No. I had seen this earlier. It was a replay from the morning’s press briefing outside the office building downtown. Maloney must be cold, I thought. They all looked cold.

“Sir?”

“Never mind. Let me talk to Brady.”

“One moment.”

He put me on hold. This time there was no message exhorting me to join the most elite police force in the world. They didn’t really want me anyway.

“Stafford? You there?” It was Brady. “NYPD went through your place. They left two men. One in the lobby. One on your floor.”

So I could go home again.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this,” he continued.

I was instantly sober. He couldn’t be that upset about a break-in.

“What are you sorry about, Brady?”

“Maloney hasn’t called you?”

“No.”

“That son of a bitch.”

“Tell me what the hell is going on.” I wasn’t quite as sober as I had thought. Anger came too easily.

“Christ! We heard from our people in Richmond. Two hours ago. Your son was released to his mother and stepfather. Maloney was supposed to have called to tell you.”

It was the word “stepfather” that lit my fuse. I understood the other words and knew they mattered much more, but vodka has a way of twisting truth and shifting emotional priorities. It’s what makes Russia a nation of paranoids.

Brady let me rage. Between my bouts of screaming curses, useless threats, and demands for instant action, he gave me the story. My lawyer had warned me, a Family Court judge has powers Idi Amin would have envied. This one had listened to Angie’s side of the story and made an instant, absolute, and irrevocable decision. The fact that the United States government had sent two FBI agents and a Justice Department lawyer to speak for me and my son only seemed to convince the tyrant he was in the right.

“There are things we can do,” Brady continued.

“I depended on you guys. I did everything you asked. I should have been there.”

“Jason, from what they tell me, it wouldn’t have helped. But we can make this right. Not today. Everybody’s too backed up. But I promise you, Monday morning I will get our people on this.”

“Monday? Fuck you, Brady. Fuck you and your promises.”

“Please. Don’t do anything stupid. We’ll pull out all the stops for you. You have my word.”

“Have a nice weekend,” I said, and hung up.

—

BY THE END
of the day, I had already told Tommy that the Dead sucked without Garcia and that the rest of the band had morphed into a nostalgia act, working just enough to keep their loser roadies from going on welfare, and it was time for the band, the fans, the roadies, and the whole goddamn bunch of hangers-on to give it a rest. Fucking tie-dyed Trekkies! Move on!

It was unforgivable.

PaJohn had the bad luck to ask me where my son was. I told him both that the Kid was on his way to Louisiana with his drunken bitch of a mother and that it was none of his fucking business. The double
s
in “business” gave me a hard time.

I looked around for my next victim.

Roger came in the door with Skeli right behind—she held the door for him. For a brief moment, I felt a swelling of euphoria at the sight of her, dashed immediately by the realization that I had stood her up the night before and that I was now far too drunk to finesse the situation. Not that any of it mattered.

She saw me, and relief, annoyance, and joy swept over her face in a hectic triple bill.

“I haven’t been stood up since I was married,” she said, grinning enough to let me know that I still had a chance to pull a rabbit out of a hat, turn water to wine, and redeem myself in her eyes. All somehow miraculous, but attainable.

I wasn’t up to the task.

“I had some things I had to take care of,” I muttered, earning me a sidewise glance of incredulity from Roger as he sidled onto a stool.

“So? What? You can’t call? Lost your charger?” Once mounted, he sagged over the chair back as though his spine had suddenly melted. “Rollie! Gasoline! And whatever for the broad.”

“I’m buying,” I said—with a lot more vehemence than was warranted.

“Well, fuck me for a frog. Your boyfriend’s pissed, Wanda. Never thought I’d see the day.”

I threw a few twenties on the bar and tried to remember why I was so mad at Roger. Maybe I wasn’t.

Skeli was looking at me as though I had grown a second head.

“Are you okay? You don’t look so okay.”

Where to begin? “I’m fine.”

“The ex showed up,” Vinny explained. “She took the Kid.” The condensed version left a lot of room for misinterpretation.

“Oh my God! And you just let her take him?”

The injustice of this was not her fault—I recognized that. I just couldn’t do anything about it. It was like watching myself step off a cliff.

I wanted to tell her how bad I felt. For the Kid. For standing her up. For myself. For Diane Havell, mourning a man, or at least a marriage. For Lowell and Sudhir. For all the “little shits” whose lives were ruined—or ended—because of greed. If I could just tell her the whole story, I was sure she would understand. She would forgive me and hold me and fix me. I wanted her to fix me. I wanted to feel something other than despair. But I did not want sympathy. Sympathy would just curdle whatever was left of my sanity. Sympathy meant somebody cared and wanted me to care as well, and right then, at that single moment in time, I was trying very hard to
not
care.

“Can we talk about something else? Anything else.” I avoided her eyes.

“Jason! Are you out of your mind? Get your ass out of here. You can’t just let this happen.”

Every guy there looked someplace else, the way men do when a woman is telling one of them the truth.

“Wanda, my life is very fucked up right now. Way too complicated. I’ve got a boatload of shit to deal with. You don’t know. Just trust me on this. You will be much better off without having to worry about my sorry ass. Do us both a favor and just walk away.”

It got through. Part of the way.

“You are drunk. And full of shit.”

“Fuck this,” I said, pushing by her. “I gotta take a leak.”

Somehow, I found the bathroom. My piss ran clear—not the barest tint of yellow. All the health guides say that’s a good thing. It shows you’re hydrated. I was beyond hydrated. I was liquefied.

It was cool in the tiny bathroom. It smelled awful, but it was a nice place to be. No one wanted me to do anything. Or say anything. Or be anything. I could be nothing and get away with it.

“Fuck!” I yelled. No one heard me.

I remembered to zip up before stepping back into the bar. The place had become packed with the Friday-night happy-hour crowd. A young man with short, spiky, heavily gelled hair jostled me. Was he the one who had broken into my apartment? Unlikely. He was too well dressed. I pushed him back. He fell.

One of his friends stepped in between us and pushed me back. I swung. He dodged it easily, but tripped over his buddy’s leg and went down. I heard myself giggle.

People started making a lot of noise—girls screaming, guys yelling—none of which was helping to restore order. The first guy was back up and in my face, managing to land punches on my bruised ribs that hurt like fire. It felt like there were two or even three people hammering on me and maybe there were. I was past caring. Other hands reached in and pulled at me. Stretched out to protect me. I saw Vinny and Roger. Roger’s too old for this shit, I thought. So was I.

Then I was outside and Vinny and Roger were yelling at me and Tommy was laughing—which pissed off Skeli. She took a swipe at him and called him an asshole before walking off alone into the night. God, I wanted her to stay. But I was caught in a timeless eddy, circling endlessly between pain and limbo, and I could no longer speak. Or cry.

—

THE FRONT DOOR
slammed. I hoped it wasn’t someone who wanted to hurt me, because I couldn’t move.

Early-morning sun was streaming in the front windows. I tried turning my head to get the light away from my eyes. Pain forced me back to immobility.

But it was only hangover pain. Righteous. Earned. My ribs hurt, but the rest of my physical wounds were healing. My soul was another matter. The previous day’s events came back to me in ugly little vignettes.

The intruder had not yet come over and stabbed me in my bed. In fact, judging by the sounds and smells, he was laying out breakfast in the kitchen. I smelled coffee.

“Hello,” I croaked.

“Good morning, Sunshine.”

It was Roger. I remembered. I had seen him curled on the couch when I got up to piss in the middle of the night.

I swung myself into a sitting position and waited for the pain to localize. Not much more than a headache. A gargantuan headache. I was still wearing my suit pants and shirt, though someone had kindly removed my jacket and shoes.

“Thanks for getting me home.”

“Yeah, not a problem. I brought coffee. You ready for it?”

He had also brought an egg sandwich—on a roll, with ham, cheese, and home fries. Salt, pepper, and hot sauce. Washed down with sixteen ounces of hot black coffee and about a quart of water out of the tap, the sandwich swelled up in my stomach into a lump the size of a melon—but I felt better for it.

I looked around. The floors were clean, the CDs swept up into a box, drawers back in their proper places, shelves realigned, my books stacked neatly again.

“Shit. Did you do this?”

“Ah-huh. Place looked like it got tossed.” His sipped his coffee and nibbled on a minuscule morsel of the corn muffin he had brought for himself.

“It was. Thank you for cleaning up. I don’t know if I could face it just yet.”

We drank coffee in silence for a minute.

“So. You gonna tell me about this shit, or what?”

I told him. He didn’t interrupt, but he did let out with a “Holy shit” when I got to the part about finding Hochstadt dead. And when I finished with Brady’s call about the Kid and the results of the hearing in Virginia, he summed it up in one word. “Fuck.”

“Amen.”

“What can you do?”

“Right now, not much. If I chase after Angie, she can have me back in jail with one call. I need to find a way to get my parole officer on board.”

“I meant what can you do now. Today. This morning.”

“I’ve got a few calls to make first. Apologies.”

“Ah-huh. That’s how drunks start the day.”

“I can’t imagine you starting the day that way.”

“Yeah, well. I’m not a drunk. I’m an alcoholic. There’s a difference.”

The distinction escaped me and my head was starting to hurt again. “Enlighten me.”

“I may down most of a bottle of cognac every day—I been doing it for forty years—but I don’t ever get drunk. I don’t like the feeling of being out of control.”

“I see.”

“I don’t think you got it in you. Drunks, especially mean ones like you, give alcoholics a bad name.”

Some remaining element of self-respect floated to the surface. “I don’t normally do that kind of thing.”

He laughed. “Or you’d be dead.”

“I’ve had some . . . setbacks.”

Roger laughed again. “Okay. So you got a one-day pass to act like an asshole. Day’s over, sport. Whaddya goin’ do now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Screw that! You wasted one day feeling sorry for yourself. Hiding. Pulling a liquid blanket over your head. One day. That’s all ya get. Do you know what set you off? Why you had to do that to yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then you’re in better shape than ninety percent of the drunks in this world. So, go take care of your shit.”

“Roger, I can’t—”

“Right. Right. You can’t fly off to Louisiana, like the fucking cavalry in the last reel. I got that. But you can fix some shit, right? Start with something easy. How about a shower? Shave? There’s a start. Then pick one of those things you can do something about and just fuckin’ do it. Just one. You get that under your belt and you’ll be on your way back to the human race. Then—if you really need to—you can make some apologies.”