Skillful Death (75 page)

“I have no memory of paying you. In fact, I have no memory of the trip back to the office, or coming in and sitting down.”

“I don’t know what to tell you about that,” she says. “Are you prone to blackouts? Do you have them often? What’s the last blackout you’ve had?”

I let that question drop. Franza’s smiling. She’s laughing at me a bit, I suppose. She’s not going to reveal the secret to her little trick. I guess I shouldn’t be too mad. She could have done a lot worse. She could have robbed me of everything and left me in a bad neighborhood.
 

“So if you’re not here about the Prize…”

“I just came to check on you. Make sure you were okay. I thought maybe you would be out on the street.”

“Nope. I’m good. Technically, I’m unemployed, but I have options. Thanks, though. And I’m sorry to hear about Laurette, but I’m glad you have Susan back.”

“Now that you’re technically unemployed, do you think you have a free night to go out for dinner sometime?”

“I think I do.”

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To say that Franza is an entrepreneur would be a stretch. She’s a hustler, but for the most part she’s very creative and aboveboard. I respect her ability to earn money with her wits and on her own terms. I’ll give you an example. On our third date, the back of her van was filled with bags of compressed winter coats. These are the kind of coats that cost a fortune and keep you warm, but they’re not well made enough to last more than a couple of seasons. You’re paying for the label with these coats.
 

She “borrowed” them from a women’s shelter. Some company ordered dozens of them with custom logos, but sent the wrong artwork. Instead of trashing them, they donated the coats to the shelter as a charitable contribution.
 

Franza intercepted the coats, denying women and children of the designer garments. She got the logos removed, resold them as factory seconds, bought cheaper, sturdier coats for the shelter, and pocketed the profit. The women got better coats, the coats found homes with bargain hunters, and Franza made a week’s pay for a night’s work of unstitching. She’s a hustler.

I would find it exhausting to always be looking for the next hustle, but she enjoys that as much as she does executing her crazy plans.

With all her running around, she has managed to raise three amazing children. She has Emma, Nicole, and Haskett. We haven’t talked about the father of these kids. From what I gather, that’s a touchy subject.

She’s asked about my former relationships. I tell her to go through Laurette’s notes.

Susan does seem different now that she’s not “channeling” Laurette. She seems younger, and nicer. They still run the Palmistry business, but I take it their appointments have dropped off since Laurette’s departure.

I haven’t done anything with Bud’s money yet. My paycheck still shows up. Apparently, the payroll was set up to draw automatically from the escrow’s interest. Same with the rent on the office. I’m operating just as I was before. I’m just not doing any work. I’m sure the escrow is growing now that I’m not expensing all kinds of contractor work.
 

Franza’s been asking when I intend to get a real job. Apparently, her family disapproves of men who aren’t over-employed. Her sister’s husband works two full-time jobs and picks up shifts at a deli on the weekends. One of the jobs consists of playing cards at a firehouse, but still, it’s work.
 

I told Franza that I didn’t care what her family thought of me because I wasn’t sure that I approved of them. She smacked me on the back of the head.

 
Bud lied to me in his letter. He said that besides the Prize, his estate would be divided up amongst a small group of charities.
 

When Hughes finally proved Bud’s death—or just somehow got a death certificate, I’m not sure what happened—I was summoned to the reading of Bud’s will. All the real money was donated, of course, but he left me his property in Vermont. The lawyer handed me a bunch of papers and a set of mine-detecting goggles. Crazy stuff.

I’m going to go up some weekend and have all the security removed so I can take Franza and the kids up there. They’ve never been north of White Plains. Franza’s funny. No matter what you say, what she hears is entirely up to her.

“I would like to take you guys on a vacation,” I say.

“Oh yeah? Where?”

She’s working on peeling labels off peanut butter jars, so I’m only getting part of her attention. Even after you get a corner started, if you make the slightest mistake, the label shreds and leaves behind the glue and paper.

“Up to my boss’s place in Vermont. The kids will get a kick out of it. It’s way in the woods. You can’t even get cell phone reception up there.”

“Some shack with no electricity? My kids will hate that.”

“No, it has electricity. You just can’t use a cell phone.”

“What, like they take it away? What is this, some kind of police state? They tried to take Haskett’s phone from him in middle school. He just about punched that one teacher in the neck. That guy had it coming though. I heard he tried to get Cole Ruggiero’s pants off at the assembly. Did I tell you about that?”

“Yes, we talked about that. Listen for a second—it’s a really great place out in the country. There’s plenty of electricity and each kid will have their own bedroom. There’s a balcony with a grill, and a lake where we can go swimming.”

“That sounds much better than that shack you were talking about. Let’s go there. Besides, the kids like to go anywhere with you. They love you.”

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of New York State before the kids are already driving me crazy. I didn’t want to drive Franza’s van all the way to Vermont since it could break down at any time, and it’s probably filled with dozens of undocumented types of bacteria that might wreak havoc on the Vermont landscape.
 

For the trip, I’ve rented a big, luxurious SUV. The girls have their own captain’s chairs, which are completely separate with no shared armrest to fight over. Across the back, Haskett has his own bench where he can stretch his teenager legs. But Haskett is bored and the remote control for his seat-back TV isn’t working. That means to change the channel he has to reach forward, which puts his hand right in range of Nicole’s hair. Every time he pulls it, Nicole screams at such an intensely high pitch, my eyes automatically become unfocused. Haskett is bright, well-spoken, and handsome, and I wonder what it would feel like to choke the sweet spark of life out of his insolent eyes.

Emma, always sweet, is wearing headphones and singing a song that I assume she’s making up as the words leave her mouth. The syllables don’t seem to coalesce. The tune must have been composed on some Chinese scale. It contains notes that don’t fit into a Western ear.

I take a deep breath. It’s not that bad.

Franza doesn’t even seem to notice. She’s holding a book open with one hand and texting with the other. Last time I asked, she was working on a deal for a bunch of folding chairs.
 

Nicole screams. Haskett complains. Emma sings.

I decide to take a break as soon as we’re in Connecticut, the state of the long tidal river. There are a bunch of gas stations right off the highway in Danbury, and this vehicle guzzles fuel. As I’m filling the tank, I look through the tinted windows at my family. Is it too soon to call them that? A second ago I couldn’t wait to get out of the driver’s seat so I could catch a break from the noise. Now that I’m out here, I can’t wait to finish filling the tank so I can get back in. There’s warmth in that cacophony. There’s an embrace in Franza’s inattention.
 

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Everyone loves the cabin. I can tell because none of them have said anything nice about it yet. If the kids hate something, Franza will clout the back of their heads until they say something nice. Emma sets up her easel on the porch and makes about a hundred drawings of the trees. Nicole finds her way into the safe room and activates the cameras so she can spy on everyone. Of course, Haskett’s phone works here. As soon as we arrived, he figured a way to route his phone through Bud’s wireless network. Now, he’s messaging and fussing on the phone within minutes.
 

At the moment, Haskett is out in the yard showing his friends—via a live video he’s streaming from his phone—all the filled-in holes where the contractors dug up Bud’s mines. The security firm swept the property five times with every technology available. They swear that there’s a zero percent chance of mines on the property. I’m still nervous for Haskett.

Franza and I are in the living room, looking out the big windows. I’ve told her a little about Bud’s village, but the trees remind me it, so I tell her some more.

“In some ways, they were way more advanced than us,” I say. “But they had steam-powered carts. It was odd.”

“Wouldn’t that make sense though? Where were they supposed to get gasoline and oil?” she asks.

“That’s true,” I say.

“How come they were never prosecuted for murder? Don’t they have any laws over there?”

“I’m not sure they ever found the village. It’s kinda hidden.”

“Nothing is hidden from an airplane or a satellite.”

“Like I said, the place is completely covered by trees. You could never see the sky, so an airplane would never see them.”

“My cousin Andrew was a pilot who contracted for the Forest Service. He said that the FBI came and took one of their planes up with a special camera. They have this hole in the bottom of their plane so they can track fires or something. Anyway, the FBI came, took the glass out of the hole and mounted their special camera in there. They could see stuff hidden beneath trees. You would think an entire Russian country would have one of those cameras.”

She has a point. If there was any chance for Bud, I would have wanted the authorities to find the village. But since I watched him die, what was the point?

“What’s the point though?” I ask.

“The point is closure. You’ve got all these unresolved feelings about your friend. Someone is supposed to fight for justice. If nobody fights, then everyone has these unresolved feelings, you know? If you had any money, I could put the right guys together. My ex-brother-in-law has some connections. They could have a trained team on an airplane by the end of the week. They could get you justice.”

“Against who, though? Against a whole population? They all conspired to murder Bud. They saw all those Providentials as the root of their bad fortune, and they may have been right. I mean, not about Bud, but in general.”

“Take them all down, I say,” she says. “Cut a big hole through that bamboo and burn the whole place to the ground. Let God sort them out.”

“You’re sweet,” I say.

“I am not. You ask anyone. I’m a mean, vindictive bitch.” She turns her head and yells over the back of the couch. “I know you’re spying on us, Nicole. You better quit it or I’ll lock you in that little closet.”

The FBI doesn’t need any special cameras. They should just put Franza up in an airplane. She sees and hears everything.

“I don’t think that’s what I need for closure,” I say.

“You need your memory back?”

“Yeah.”

It took a long time for me to admit, but there are a lot of things I don’t remember. When I read Bud’s letter, it made me defensive and angry. Now, all these months later, I can admit he was right. I don’t remember my parents, or where I grew up, or if I have any brothers or sisters. My memory begins about the time that I started working for one of Bud’s companies. I couldn’t even admit that to myself.
 

“Yes, I want my memory back,” I say to Franza. She’s been incredibly supportive. We’ve tried all kinds of tricks. Laurette supplied a few facts that rang true. They were given to her by the men who contracted her to tell my fortune. There was nothing substantial there, just a couple of isolated bits of memory that led no farther.
 

We tried some of Franza’s other friends—psychics and mediums who can look into your past. Some of them came up with brilliant guesses about the past ten years, but eventually they all hit a brick wall. My childhood was “cloaked in mystery.” That was the recurring phrase. I hired some memory experts, scientists and hypnotists, from around the city. They hit a brick wall too. “Blocked” was their favorite word. One of the scientists actually hooked up electrodes to my skull and zapped me with pulses of current. I had an incredibly detailed vision of a flower, but that was it.

“Your boss had that same problem, didn’t he? Didn’t he have awhile when he couldn’t remember where he grew up?”

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The helicopter idles on the little pad while it waits for me.

“You sure you don’t want me to come along?” Franza asks. “I could get my sister to watch out for my kids for a while.”