Justin Kramon (27 page)

Finny recalled the talk she’d had with Poplan about Judith, way back at Thorndon, a talk that had begun similarly. And the discussion with her brother, only a few weeks ago, where Finny had seemed to be the expert on Judith.

“Sometimes she says things she doesn’t really mean,” Carter went on. “It’s not that she’s lying, exactly. It’s that she likes a certain kind of attention. So she’ll tell you things to get that attention. I can imagine that when she was fifteen, and just learning how a penis fits into a vagina—excuse the language—she would be coming up with all kinds of theories about whose was fitting into whose. But I can tell you for a fact that your brother was the first guy she slept with, and that Prince Hollibrand was the second. There was one other, once, as a payback to Prince. But that’s the whole sexual history of Madame Turngate, whatever else she might lead you to believe.”

Just as Carter was finishing his speech, the waiter arrived with their entrées, a steamy beef noodle soup and a plate of panfried beef cubes with lettuce and tomato and a sauce that had flecks of pepper floating in it. The waiter removed the plate that had held the crêpe, still shaking his head, as if over the loss of a close friend. Both Carter and Finny stared at the new food without moving.

“This is delicious,” Carter said, pointing at the beef cubes. “You dip them in that sauce, which has lemon juice, salt, and pepper. You’re going to go crazy over how it tastes.”

Finny looked at the food for a few seconds. She knew that Carter was bringing attention to it to save Finny from the embarrassment of her mistaken assumptions about Judith. How many people could Finny get wrong? Suddenly she wasn’t hungry anymore.

“Do you think we could take some of this home?” she said.

“Look,” Carter said, “I love Judith, Finny. The same way you do. She’s magnetic. She’s big and beautiful and smart. And even though I’m as gay as a poodle in a peacoat, I’d still probably bone her once, the same way I would Judy Garland or Andrew Lloyd Webber—just to say I did it.

“But I don’t trust a word that comes out of her mouth. That’s why I’m always on her case. Especially around you. Because I know she’s playing it up for you. She thinks you see her as some gorgeous, vivacious, cosmopolitan woman, and she likes to think of herself that way.”

“I suppose I am taken in by some of that,” Finny admitted.

“As you damn well should be,” Carter said. “Just know it for what it is.”

“Okay,” Finny said. “Thanks.”

“Now eat some of this
bo luc lac
before I smack you.” Carter smiled. “As a friend.”

Finny called Earl when she got back to the Beresford, but there was no answer. What had he wanted to say? What could be so important that he hadn’t told her while she was in France? She decided to hang up before the machine came on, so she wouldn’t waste her phone card minutes. She was considering calling her mom but instead decided to pack. It was only four. She could still get back to Stradler at a reasonable hour.

Carter had left for his catering job, which he’d described as “seven hours of getting fucked in the ass in a way even
I
can’t enjoy.” Finny liked Carter more and more the better she got to know him. He was dramatic, she was aware, but he really was very good at knowing people for what they were, as he’d put it. It was like he couldn’t help saying what he thought, no matter how discordant. Which reminded Finny of the way
she
used to be.

When she was done packing, Finny tried Earl again. It was almost eleven o’clock Paris time, and she couldn’t imagine where he would be at that hour. The phone rang once, twice, three times.

Then someone picked up.
“Allo?”
It was Earl.

“Hey,” Finny said. “I’m sorry I lost you before. My phone card ran out of minutes.”

“It’s okay. I figured.”

“I tried you before, but you weren’t around. You said you wanted to talk to me about something?”

“Yeah. It’s actually why I wasn’t in my room. I’ve been discussing it with my mom all evening.”

“What is it?”

There was a pause. “I think I’m ready to leave Paris,” Earl said.

“What do you mean?” Finny asked.

“I mean, I think it’s time for me to move away. When I was in New York, I realized I could do it. Live there. And getting this story published was a huge thing for me. It gave me confidence that I’m on the right track. I’ve been thinking about what we talked about the other night. About how things would be with us. And you’re right. I don’t want to be apart either. I want to be with you, Finny. Completely with you. I want to move to the States for you.

“I told my mom tonight, and actually she took it surprisingly well. She’s really happy for me. She loves you. She said she would come visit us. I think she’d be okay. I know this is the right thing. I mean, if you’re still up for it.”

It was all coming so quickly, Finny thought. She didn’t know what to say.
Happiness
wasn’t the word to describe what she was feeling. More like
shock.

“Finny?” Earl said.

“Yeah.”

“Well? What do you think? I thought you might have a response.”

“I think it’s the best news I’ve ever gotten.”

She could hear Earl exhale on the other end of the line. She wanted, as she had many times before, to reach across the phone wire and touch his face. “I’m so happy to hear you say that,” he said. “I just have this whole idea of how our life can be. I’ll rent an apartment near your school. I can get a job somewhere close by, at a restaurant or something. I’ll write in the mornings. We’ll have every night together. I’m really ready for this.”

“It sounds like a dream,” Finny said. “I couldn’t imagine anything better.”

“You don’t have to imagine,” Earl said. “This is real.”

The rest of the afternoon, though, passed somewhat like a dream in that Finny had the sense she was floating through it, or maybe above it, not totally there. When Judith returned, Finny told her she was going to head back to Stradler that evening. She said she’d love to spend the night with Judith but that she wanted to get to school and see her grades before her mom got them. And Finny was still deciding between two English classes, so she wanted a chance to sit in on both. She told Judith to thank her parents again for letting her stay, and she hoped she hadn’t been too much of a disturbance.

To Finny’s surprise, Judith didn’t protest. She said she understood. She said it was probably time for her to get down to work, too, but that she’d call Finny over the weekend. She said that Finny’s face looked much better, not puffy at all, almost completely healed.

At Penn Station, Finny decided she’d take the Amtrak back to Philadelphia. She didn’t think she could stay focused enough to make all the transfers on the New Jersey Transit. She was reeling. Visions of her new life kept flashing in her mind: roasting in bed with Earl; the two of them reading together at night; meals at their little kitchen table; Earl coming back from work, exhausted but happy, falling into her arms. She was giddy with the possibility of it.

On the train she opened her bag to find some reading material, something to slow her spinning thoughts. She pulled out a magazine, and realized it was
The New Yorker
she’d been reading at Judith’s parents’ apartment. She must have packed it with her things by mistake, she’d been so absentminded.

She opened the magazine back to the article she’d been reading about spices, deciding she’d give it one more go. She was still having trouble focusing on anything, but she got the gist of the first page, about how spice importers grind up all kinds of things and try to pass them off as rare spices. How they set up phony identities and business records. How they pull in gullible investors.

Finny flipped the page and began to read about a man named Gregory P. Mark, who went by various pseudonyms and who owned a company called Futurecook. The company sold extremely rare spices that you could buy only in very small quantities. As she read, she felt a twitchy uneasiness in her chest. She knew she was going to have to ask her mother some questions.

Dorrie wasn’t in the room when Finny got back. Finny dialed Laura’s number the minute she put down her bags. She’d read the article from start to finish on the train. She knew what she had to say.

“Hello?” Laura said when she picked up.

“Mom,” Finny said.

“Hi, sweetie. How was your trip?”

“It was fine. Great, I mean. But, Mom, I need to ask you a question.”

“Finny, it’s unfortunate, but I must tell you that people will take offense if you don’t begin a phone conversation by asking how they are.”

Finny sighed. She knew her mother must have been in particularly good spirits, since she was back to offering her opinions as objective truths. She’d hardly done that since Stanley had died. Finny assumed things must have been going well with Gerald, which was a good sign. It meant that maybe Finny was wrong about him, or possibly that Laura hadn’t been pulled in yet.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Finny said. “It’s just that, what I have to ask you is pretty important. Really important, actually.”

“Oh,” Laura said, and Finny could imagine the blank look on Laura’s face. It was an expression she’d begun to have after Finny’s father died, and it seemed to reappear whenever bad news was about to be dropped.

“I wanted to ask you what’s going on with Gerald,” Finny said.

“Oh,” Laura said again, her voice much lighter. “Is that it? Well, it’s going fine. Thanks for asking, sweetheart.”

“No, Mom. I mean—I guess I’m not being clear. I was just reading this article. I think there might have been a part about Gerald in it.”

“He’s a very well-regarded businessman. People like that have articles written about them all the time.”

“But this article, Mom—it wasn’t about business, exactly. It was about stealing. It was about a scam that a guy named Gregory P. Mark is pulling. He has a bunch of fake names, and I realized that Gerald’s name, Kramp, is P. Mark backward.”

“Such a funny coincidence,” Laura said.

Finny knew the way Laura had of pushing uncomfortable details to the side, smiling that undefeatable smile of hers, waving at drivers who wanted to kill her.

“It’s not a coincidence,” Finny went on. “I’m pretty sure it’s Gerald. Your boyfriend, Mom. Everything in the article sounds like him. I think he’s a criminal.”

Finny went on to explain how Gregory P. Mark’s fraud operated. He would attend events that were often populated by single women with money—widows or divorcées. Lectures in the middle of the day, museum tours, wine tastings and cooking classes—these were the places he’d locate his targets. He would start casually, simply striking up a conversation, and then usually the conversation would continue in some more private setting—a bar or a restaurant. It would be like a date, except Gregory would spend most of the time talking about his business ventures, how successful they were, how much money he’d made from certain deals. If the woman was impressed, he would keep seeing her over time, and talk more and more about his new project: spices. He offered samples, even began to interest some local specialty businesses in his products. The spices were really just combinations of other store-bought spices you could buy for almost nothing. But Mr. Mark hired a food scientist to blend them, and then they gave the spices exotic names. He could sell a small jar for a hundred dollars. He’d even fooled some very knowledgeable tasters. All of which gave the women he dated more confidence in him. They practically insisted on backing his company.

The problem came when the products were tested. The business would fall flat at that point. But Gregory P. Mark was always able to wriggle free of legal ramifications, claiming he’d been duped by his suppliers. He’d shake his head and manage to walk away with a significant amount of the money the investors had given him, which he’d remove to various offshore accounts. He’d pulled the scam in a dozen states. And he was yet to be indicted.

Finny read to her mother a short passage in the
New Yorker
article she thought would be particularly persuasive. “‘The key to Gregory Mark’s success as a con artist is not his business savvy or the initial results he supplies; it’s his manner. He seems on the surface to be easygoing, almost inhumanly flexible. He’s known for using the catchphrase that has become his business motto: ‘Whatever you want.’ Yet one of his former business associates remarked, ‘The funny thing is, it always turns out that Greg gets whatever
he
wants. It’s just that you’d never suspect that such a fool could be swindling you. And once you do, he’s out the door with your money.’”

Finny stopped there. She waited for her mother to comment. She hadn’t wanted to present her case quite so forcefully, at least not yet.

“Mom?” Finny said.

No response.

“Mom, are you there?”

In a moment Finny heard a choked sobbing on the other end of the line, and she realized her mother must have been muffling her crying with a towel or a pillow.

“I gave him everything,” Laura said. “Everything I had.”

“Oh God. Listen, Mom,” Finny said. “You have to listen to me. Mom?”

“Mm-hm.”

“I think the worst thing you can do now is tell Gerald you suspect anything. The second you do that, he’ll be in another state and you won’t even be able to find his phone number.”

“So what do I do?” Laura sounded so much like a child that Finny had to remind herself she was speaking to a fifty-six-year-old woman.

“We’ll think about it,” Finny said. “I know someone who might be able to help.”

Chapter
28
The Spice Trade

There was one nice surprise for Finny when she started classes the next day: she’d received A’s in all her classes the first semester. Well, almost all. An A– in her philosophy class, which was a nagging disappointment. But she realized she was being a perfectionist. She hadn’t studied quite as hard for the philosophy final, since she’d found the contemporary philosophers such a chore to read. She’d done pretty well for her first semester, especially considering all the disruptions. She let herself be proud.