Six Bad Things (15 page)

—No problem, Dad.

I drive home, this town’s most infamous son, dressed as my father.

MOM WANTED to skip her volunteer day at the elementary school where she tutors special-ed kids. I told her it would be better if she and Dad did everything as normally as possible until I left. The specter of my departure made her start to cry again, but she went. Now I’m alone.

When the landlord cleared out my apartment in New York, he sent the stuff to my folks. Mom donated some things to Goodwill, but I’m able to find a couple boxes of my old clothes. The jeans and thermal top I pull on are snug, but they’ll do while the clothes I was wearing go through the washer. In the meantime I page Tim some more and try to distract myself by watching
Monday Quarterback.

The guys on TV are breaking down just how bad Miami is without Miles Taylor when the phone rings. I reach for it. Stop myself. I’ll let the machine pick up. If it’s Tim he’ll let me know. The machine picks up and whoever is calling hangs up.

OK, not Tim.

The phone rings again. The machine picks up. The caller disconnects. Maybe it is Tim and he doesn’t want to talk into the machine in case… In case what? God, who knows what that pothead could be thinking? The phone rings again. Christ! The machine picks up. The caller hangs up.

Jesus F. Christ.

The phone rings. It has to be Tim, who else would do this? The machine picks up. Caller hangs up.

Goddamn it, Timmy, you know I can’t answer the fucking phone. Just talk to the machine, you burnout.

The phone rings.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

The machine picks up. The caller does not hang up.

—Mr. Thompson.

A voice I don’t know, a caller for Mr. Thompson: my dad.

—Mr. Thompson? Are you there?

I stop holding my breath.

—Mr.
Henry
Thompson, please pick up.

Oh.

So yeah, turns out the call
is
for me after all.

MILL’S CAFÉ is the oldest restaurant in town. When I was in high school, Patterson was so small there wasn’t anywhere else to go. Now there’s a McDonald’s and a Taco Bell and a Pizza Hut and God knows what else, all thanks to the Silicon Valley real-estate boom that sent people scurrying farther and farther east of San Francisco in search of affordable housing. We could have gone to one of those new places where all the employees are kids that I’ve never seen, but he wanted to try this place, where the waitress serving us is the same one who used to bring me burgers and Cokes after baseball games. I keep my shoulders slumped, Dad’s sunglasses on my face, and try not to look around too much.

He takes another bite of his egg-white omelet and keeps talking.

—Honestly, it’s easier to explain in terms of
political science
rather than
business.

He pauses, gathers his thoughts.

—OK, OK, I got it, it’s like this. When a country gets a nuclear weapon, the first thing they do is to test it.
Publicly.
They don’t do this because they want to know if the weapon
works,
but because they want
everyone else
to know that it works. For a country, having nuclear weapons isn’t so much about being
able
to blow up your enemies, it’s about letting your enemies
know
that you can blow them up. You test your new A-bomb where it can be seen and heard so that you can be
sure
that your enemies know what’s coming if they piss you off. Now Russians understand this kind of thinking because they pretty much invented it when they tested their first hydrogen bomb after the war. That’s why
your
particular Russians never sent anyone to kill your parents. What would be the
point
? They kill your folks and it removes the biggest weapon from their arsenal and they don’t get anything in return. What they wanted was for you to surface so that they could
threaten
to kill your parents unless you gave them back the
money.
Now,
after that,
they would have killed them, and then you of course.

A couple old-timers are at the counter reading the
Patterson Irrigator.
Other than that, it’s just us. I’m drinking coffee, but I was only able to eat a bite of the English muffin I ordered. When he mentions my parents, that one bite of muffin flops over in my stomach.

—That was a sound strategy, and it was clear to me that it was one I should stick with.
Except
the part about killing your folks and you once the money is returned. That’s just pure revenge. The
Russians
had their reasons for wanting revenge, but
I
could care less about what you did or who you killed. For me this is purely a
business
proposition, and revenge is a poor business strategy at best. If I get my money, that’s all I care about. And I want no confusion about this: it is
my
money now. I paid for it.

He’s just a few years older than me, and everything about him screams Manhattan. He’s got one of those two-hundred-dollar haircuts that’s engineered to look like he paid thirteen for it at Astor Place Hair, and the flecks of premature gray at his temples set off the titanium frames of the rectangular glasses he’s wearing. His Levis look worn, but I’m certain they are a pair of phenomenally expensive historical replicas of a pair owned by some prospector in 1849. His feet are tucked into bright blue-and-yellow vintage Pumas, and over a designer T-shirt of some extra-clingy material that super-defines his razor-edged pecs he’s sporting a black leather jacket of such ethereal smoothness that it almost feels like fur when I brush up against it. He’s charming and affable, has bottle green eyes and a toothy Tom Cruise grin. I’d hate him even if he wasn’t threatening my family.

—That’s one of the things I need to be
certain
you understand. Whoever the money
might
have belonged to, and, believe me, I’ve done quite a bit of research on this, it is
mine
now. Sure, you could argue that ultimately it belongs to the depositors at the banks that the DuRantes robbed in the first place, but the insurance companies took care of those people long ago. After that, the most legitimate claim is the Russians, and for awhile they were committed to recouping, but after three years they pretty much gave up. They were ready to call it a day, write the money off, and kill your mom and dad out of principle. If you ever turned up later that would be great, but they were done looking. That’s when I knew it was time for me to get involved. See,
what you do is,
you look at other businesses for assets you can pick up cheaply, especially from businesses that are struggling, and, believe me, the Russian mob is not what it once was. They had their heyday in the nineties. I mean, who didn’t? But they’re just not
cutting-edge
anymore, not sharp, and the market wants you to be
sharp.
So I saw that they had this great asset, which is essentially ownership of a four and a half million dollar IOU,
but
no real plan for collecting on it. See what I’m saying? Great asset, but they don’t know how to make it work for them.
I do.
So, what I do is, I go to a guy I know and I make an offer. I’ll buy your IOU for one hundred thousand dollars. Well, they balk of course,
but then,
I give them the kicker: one hundred grand to secure the IOU, which means that I become the sole agent licensed to pursue it,
and,
if I recover the money, a guarantee that they’ll receive ten percent of whatever I recover, less the hundred they already have. But they keep that hundred no matter what I get my hands on. Well, hell, at that point they have nothing, so it becomes a no-brainer. And trust me, when dealing with the Russian mob, a no-brainer is the only kind of deal you can make. So they take the 100K, and take the guys who had been looking for you and put them to work making money again. And I put my plan into action.

The waitress brings the pot over again. He covers his cup with his hand.

—No more for me, sweetheart, I’m about to float away. You want anything else?

I shake my head. He smiles up at her.

—Guess that’s it, just the check when you have a sec.

—Got it right here, hon.

She scribbles on her pad, tears off the check, sets it on the table, and walks back to the register.

He looks at the check.

—Unreal. You know how much that omelet would be in New York?

He takes out a twenty and drops it on the table. Leeann comes to pick it up.

—Be right back with your change.

—It’s good like that, sweetie.

—Thanks.

—It OK if we hang out here just a little?

—Sure, long as you like.

She leaves. He smiles after her.

—Sweet lady. Where was I?

—Assets.

—Right. So now I have this asset, this
IOU,
but, and here’s the rub, no way to collect. Well, I’ve already spent a hundred thousand on this project, I’m not about to sink more capital into sending a bunch of headhunters out to find you. So what
do
I do? Do you know what I did?

—You had my parents’ house staked out until I came home.

—No. Because I had looked into that, and do you know what I found out? Stakeouts, a
real stakeout
in a suburban neighborhood, that is both constant and imperceptible, is very difficult and expensive. So that’s not it. Any other guesses?

—No.

—OK, here it is, this was my multimillion-dollar idea: I paid one of your parents’
neighbors
to watch the house and call me when you turned up. Brilliant, right? I mean, not to blow my own horn, but this is a recurring expense of five hundred dollars a month with a possible, if not likely, return in the
millions.

There’s no smoking in Mill’s, there’s no smoking anywhere in California these days, so I’ve been fiddling with an unlit cigarette for about half an hour. I snap the filter off and break the rest into little quarter-inch pieces.

—Which neighbor?

—Hey now, that would be telling.

WE SIT in his rental car in front of my parents’ house. I look at the other houses on the street and watch for someone peeking from behind a curtain or over a fence, someone advertising their guilt. No luck. The car is a nonsmoker, which should really come as no surprise. He hands me a cell phone and a recharge cable.

—We could do this
a lot
of ways. I could have someone sit in the house with your mom and dad while you go and get the money or arrange to have it sent from wherever it is. I mean, assuming it’s not here. It’s not here, is it?

—No.

—I figured not. The thing is, that’s not my
style
of business. I really
prefer
to manage in a hands-off kind of way. Keep my distance until my presence is
required.
What I want to do is back off. Let you get the money together and give me a call when you have it. That phone has my number programmed into it, and I’m talking about my
personal
number here, so please don’t go giving it out. Just to be clear, there will be
people
here, employees of mine, and they will be
watching
your mom and dad. And I’m not talking about neighbors this time, I mean
professionals.
Understand? I do need an answer on this, Hank. Understand?

—Yeah.

—If my employees see your parents try to leave town, etc? Well, to return to my metaphor, if they leave, they can no longer be detonated, and they are no longer of value to me. I need them here where they can be
watched,
where I can get to them in case you fail to bring me my money. So if my employees see any indication that your parents are trying to leave or to seek shelter, I’ll have no choice but to
detonate
my “weapon.” You understand all of this?

—Yes.

—Good. So, you go get the money in what we will simply call a
reasonable
amount of time, and call me. After that, you pay off your IOU and I disassemble my arms, so to speak.

He sticks out his hand.

—Deal?

I look at his soft, well-manicured hand.

—What’s your name?

—Jeez, did I do that again? Sorry. I’m
Dylan,
Dylan Lane.

His hand is still sticking out.

—Dylan?

—Yes?

—Keep my parents safe.

—Trust me, that’s in
my
best interest, too. And hey, I won’t even bring up the police, because they would be in
no one’s
best interest.

I shake his hand, it’s almost as soft as his jacket, and he drives off.

I stand on the curb and imagine all the things I could do to make myself dead. I remember all the drunken times in Mexico that I thought about trying to swim to Cozumel, knowing that I would drown long before I got there. And I never did it. I sobered up and stayed alive long enough to kill a man who threatened my folks. And then I ran home to protect them. And by doing those things I have put their lives at greater risk than they ever were before.

Looks like it’s a good thing Dad is tuning up the BMW, because I can’t wait around here any longer for Timmy’s call.

But I do have something I’d like to do before I go.

—SO, MOM, how have the neighbors been, any of them come around?

She looks up from the pasta Dad made for dinner.

—Pat and Charley used to check in on us, that first year, when it was especially hard. But, then they moved last year to… Oh, where did they go?

Dad is over at the stove, serving himself seconds from the big pot.

—Vacaville.

—Vacaville, they moved to Vacaville.

—Anyone else, what about the new people?

—I don’t know, Henry, they know about us, but I don’t think. It’s not the kind of thing that comes up in conversation. A couple of my friends at the school, they ask, if we’ve heard anything, if we know how you are. But.

She sighs. Little Dog wanders into the kitchen and starts snuffling at her feet.

—Oh, get away from there. You know you’re not supposed to be in here.