Fallen Idols (27 page)
Callie unearthed a pot in the jumble of packed boxes and made cowboy coffee. They drank it laced with bourbon Clancy had brought from the bar and smoked a joint, which Callie rolled with an expert's panache, the three of them sitting back in their fold-up chairs as the dry pungent smoke drifted up to the high ceiling.
There was no way of putting off the inevitable any longer. “So what're we going to do about dad?” Clancy asked. “We need a plan.”
“Follow the money,” Will answered crisply. A pad of paper and a ballpoint rested on his lap. “That's the cardinal rule. Whenever there's a situation like this, the money trail will lead you to the source, or close. The firm hires investigators who do nothing but that.”
Clancy shook his head. “We're not bringing detective into this,” he said in a sharp tone of voice. “This is family, strictly.”
“I'm merely telling you how it's done professionally.”
“You may have to, at some point,” Callie prodded her husband. “There might be information you need to get to get to that you don't know how.”
“Later—if we absolutely must—we'll deal with professionals,” Clancy said forcefully. “We're nowhere near there yet.”
Neither Will nor Callie responded. They didn't need to verbalize what they all knew, including Clancy: that they were.
Clancy was half-asleep on his feet—his perpetual shortchanging himself of rest, on top of the anxiety this mess was causing, was draining. “You're right. Money is the logical place for us to start, because of the discrepancies over it.”
“You mean lies,” Callie corrected him. “Deceits.”
Clancy shot her a dark look. “Yeah. Lies and deceits.”
“You guys are the ones who said that, not me,” she pointed out. “But if you're going to dig up your dad's buried bodies …” She caught herself. “That's a terrible metaphor. I'm sorry.”
“It's okay.”
“If you're going to chase after whatever you can find about Walt's secrets, financial or otherwise, no matter how unsavory,” she rephrased, “you can't be sentimental about it. You're doing detective work, you need to be as objective as you can. Sentiment clouds your vision.” She looked at him. “Are you mad at me for butting in? Should I excuse myself?” She started to get up.
Clancy grabbed her arm and pulled her back down, “I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at dad. I don't mean to take out my hostility on you.”
“This is a bitch,” she commiserated.
“I know. But we're there now, so let's keep going and hope nothing more terrible turns up.”
Will's expression was dubious. “Let's don't pretend nothing else will. We have to be prepared for more bad news.” He picked up his pad and pen. “Let's make a list and slop conjuring up bogeymen.” Right on,” Clancy said. He raised a forefinger, “Insurance. What kind they had, how much, how it was dispersed.”
Will wrote on the pad. “And dad's retirement package from the university, and mom's,” he said. “That should be the most important, that's where they'd have the most money They were going to live on it.” He paused, looking up into space. “I still can't believe she's dead.”
Clancy nodded. “I know. I'm always expecting her to walk in the door. Okay, what else?”
“Investments. Stocks, bonds, IRAs, mutual funds. Maybe they had money salted away in places we wouldn't have expected them to.” Will scribbled another note. “I'll do that. There's a database program at the office that should give me access to whatever we need.”
“Is that legal?” Callie asked dubiously.
“No,” Will told her candidly. “But it's done all the time. Privacy in this country is as extinct as the dinosaur. Every kid on the Internet knows that.”
“We can debate civil liberties some other time,” Clancy said impatiently. “Let's stay on focus. I'll look into their retirement packages from the university and their insurance policies.”
“It's going to take me a week or two to ramp up,” Will said. “First I've got to dig out of this mess”—his hand swept the room that was a jumble of unpacked boxes and crates—”and get set up in my new office.”
“There's no rush,” Clancy said. “These questions aren't going away.”
Will tossed the notepad aside. ‘This is not going to be pleasant.”
“Tell me about it,” Clancy answered dolefully. “Dad’ financial situation is only part of what we need to get into. We know he's been lying about going back to teaching. What about the rest of it? The big book he claims his publisher is breathing down his neck for, for instance. Is that real or is that bullshit, too?”
Will nodded. “And don't forget La Chimenea. Tom told me that when Professor Janowitz at UCLA told him dad wasn't teaching there, and wasn't going to be, he also threw out a cryptic remark about thefts at the site that were somehow associated with dad.”
Clancy nodded. “Tom mentioned that to me, too.”
“That could be a land mine, if there's problems down there like that dad isn't copping to,” Will said. “La Chimenea was going to be the pinnacle of his career. Now he doesn't even want to talk about it.” He grimaced. “We're going to have to find out about that, too, I'm afraid, sooner or later.”
“What a mess,” Clancy groaned, Callie had been listening as they formed their plan. Now she spoke up. “Aren't you forgetting something?” she asked.
“what?” Clancy said,
“The woman Walt's living with. What's her name again?”
“Emma,” Clancy told her. “Emma Rawlings.”
“Who is she?” Callie questioned. She paused, then asked “Could she be connected to any of these issues you guys are wrestling with?”
Clancy sat back. “I haven't thought about that.” This was spinning out of control. “Why would she be?”
She ticked the obvious reasons off on her fingers. “because when a young, beautiful, intelligent, financially secure woman—she's all these, right? …”
He nodded. “Yes, she's all that.”
“ … when a woman like that gets together with an older man, there's usually an agenda.” She smiled.
“Which is usually money—his. But if she has her own, then it's different.”
“Dad said she does,” Clancy answered morosely. “But How you've got to wonder about whether anything he's telling us is the truth.”
Callie nodded. “Maybe there isn't any connection,” she continued. “But here she is, all of a sudden, with your dad. An attraction a thought a terrible ordeal. Granted, Walt can run rings around plenty of men who are younger than him, but still, doesn't this relationship feel peculiar somehow? Don't you want to know about her background, since every other aspect of Walt's life is now under suspicion? I know I do.” She rocked on the heels of her shoes. “I'm remembering something you told me about him and her that's making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.”
“What?” Clancy asked, almost fearfully.
“You told me Walt met her at a party, at UCLA. She's a graduate student there, right?”
“Yes, that's what he told me,” he answered slowly. He could see where this was going.
She said it before he could. “Except this Professor Janowitz told Tom that Walt hasn't had any connection to UCLA. They don't even know he's living in L.A. So how could he have met her there if he's never been there?”
“This is getting to be as complicated as Rubik'a Cube,” Clancy lamented.
“Hold up,” Will said, interjecting. “We need to find out more about Emma Rawlings, I agree. But she's secondary. We can't juggle a dozen balls in the air. Let's take this a few steps at a time. If we're still dissatisfied after we find out about dad's financial affairs, we'll look into her.”
“Agreed,” Clancy said with alacrity. ‘This is much more complicated than we thought it would get.” He put his arm around Callie's shoulder. “We'd better get going Busy day tomorrow. You coming down to the bar?” he asked Will. “It'll be a zoo, but it'll be fun.”
“Maybe,” Will said. “Depends on how much of a dent I make on this place.”
“I'll come help you,” Callie volunteered. “This apartment definitely needs a woman's touch. There's one more thing we need to talk about,” she added, picking her coat up and slipping her arms into the sleeves.
“What else?” Clancy asked. He was weary of all this, he wanted to go home, make love, and fall asleep. Hopefully he wouldn't fall asleep first.
“Tom.”
Clancy shrugged on his jacket. “What about Tom?”
“shouldn't he be included in this?”
The brothers exchanged a look. “He's in this as much as we are,” Clancy answered. “More, emotionally. He's been most upset and suspicious from the beginning.”
Callie shook her head. “You know what I mean: proximity. You and Will and me are here. Tom isn't. He's going to be upset if he finds out we're doing things about your father he isn't involved in.”
“He can be involved as much as he wants,” Clancy replied with a rare show of pique. “He can handle the whole mess, as far as I'm concerned. I've got a job. Two. So does Will. Tom's the one with the free time.” He”s groaned. “I'm sounding more and more like dad. He's been beating up on Tom forever about not being focused.’
“So don't you,” she admonished him. “That's another thing that worries me. The three of you at each other's throats.”
“We,” won't be Clancy avowed.
“You were just ragging on Tom. I had to remind you not to.”
Whill went into the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. He came back and sat down Indian-style. “Tom ought to move here,” he said.
Clancy turned to him in surprise. “How can he do that? His work is in Ann Arbor.”
“what work?” Will asked, almost pityingly. “Teaching freshman calculus for twelve bucks an hour? He meets with his doctoral advisor once every couple months, the rest of the time he could be living in Tahiti, for all they'd know or care.”
“That's not a bad idea,” Callie chimed in enthusiastically. “He could work a shift at the bar. Nights. It would take the pressure off you, honey. And he'd be here. That's important now.”
“I don't know,” Clancy answered slowly. “He might…” He trailed off.
“Might what?” she pressed.
“Think it's a handout. That I'm throwing him a bone.”
“It wouldn't have to be like that,” she said. “You could present it like you're asking him to do you a favor. And that you'd all be close by, so you could coordinate your strategy.”
Clancy thought of Tom's defensive fragility, always lurking just below the surface, waiting to erupt at the first slight. “I don't know …”
“He could live here, with me,” Will volunteered. “I could house half the Notre Dame football team in here and still have room left over.”
“What is this,
Friends?
” Clancy joked feebly. “Maybe Callie and I should move in, too.”
“Over you know what,” Callie replied.
“Tom's my brother,” Will said somberly. “And yours.”
Callie became serious again. “It can't hurt to ask him,” she pushed Clancy.
Clancy gave in. “Okay. If you guys think it's the right thing to do, fine by me. You're the one who's got to live with him, Will, not me. I'll call him tomorrow, tell him what we're thinking.” He laughed weakly. “The worst that can happen is he'll tell me to go fuck myself.”
T
om secured the ball joint of the U-Haul onto the bumper hitch the machine shop had welded to the frame of his car. He rigged the electrical wires to make sure the trailer lights would go on when he hit the brakes, tightened down the chains that secured the trailer to the car, and pulled on them to make sure they were taut, satisfied that nothing would fall off, he went back into his apartment.
He had finished packing. Everything he was taking with him to Chicago was crammed into the small trailer: his bed frame, box spring and mattress, a few other pieces of furniture for his bedroom at Will's, his clothes, books, CDs, tapes, his old Sony TV, and his Bose bookshelf music system His computer and the pieces of tech gear he used for work, computer games, and downloads were piled in the backseat of the car. The rest of his stuff—furniture, dishes, cooking utensils, other odds and ends—had been donated to Goodwill. There wasn't much of it. It was cheap and crappy, stuff you find in shabby secondhand stores. Not worth trying to sell.
Yesterday, he had gone to the bank and closed his account, taking the money in a cashier's check. One thousand, six hundred, and forty-three dollars: the sum total of his wealth. When he got to Chicago he'd hand the check over to Will and ask him to invest it. He was twenty-eight years old, and he owned almost nothing.
“Chicago's a great town,” his faculty advisor exclaimed jealously, when Tom informed him he was moving there to live with his brother. “Everything New York has, but more accessible.” He'd flipped open his Week-at-a-Glance. “Keep me abreast, we can do that via e-mail, and every couple of months you'll come back here and we'll spend a few hours, right?”
Tom had nodded, and kept his silence.
“You're doing well with your final draft,” the professor said, brandishing the section of Tom's thesis he'd recently edited. “There's no reason you shouldn't be presenting this by spring.”
Tom nodded again. No reason at all, he thought, except I'm not going to finish it. And after today you'll never see me again, unless it's by accident.
The calls from Clancy and Will had initially stunned him; but then, after he'd had time to reflect on the possibilities they offered, it was as if he had been thrown into a freezing shower. Not that the two of them had made the decision to dig further into their father's life; he'd expected that. If they hadn't, he would have done some thing about it himself. He hadn't figured out what that action would be, or how he would go about it, given his limited resources. But now he wasn't going to have to Lone Ranger it—the three of them were going to work together.
Once he had decided to take Clancy's job offer at the bar, and Will's invitation to share his apartment (rent-free, will had stressed), Tom moved fast. He withdrew from his teaching position and tidied up his other university affairs. He gave his landlord the required thirty days’ notice, and got (after some verbal sparring and threats) his four-hun-dred-dollar deposit back, part of the sixteen hundred dollars deposit back part of the sixteen hundred dollars tucked away in his wallet.
