The First Wives Club (39 page)

And as a lover, he was even better. She hoped to see him make it in the NBA, a star, a dark horse she could ride to success with. But he couldn’t stick to his training or his books and had eventually flunked out. He was a failure, but she wouldn’t be, and she wouldn’t be brought down by him.

But now he was dangerous. Now he knew he was a failure. Her dark horse had become her dark secret.

“Okay, Bobby. I can help you out, but just this once. I swear to God, if you call me again for any reason, I’ll put the cops on you. And you know I can do it.”

”Hey, baby, I don’t like to be threatened. Nobody does, know what I mean?”

Mary did, but wouldn’t acknowledge it. “Here, Bobby. This is it.

It’s all my savings. Take it and go, and don’t call me again.”

She pushed the envelope across to him. He looked inside it, and his eyes opened. She saw his jaw muscles pop as he gritted his teeth.

”Oh, now. Hey.”

“Hey yourself, Bobby.”

”You married to one of the richest men on Wall Street, baby. And you got a Fifth Avenue apartment, the newspapers say.” His voice became almost a whisper. “So don’t shovel none of your bullshit about your life savings.”

” He stuffed the envelope in his pocket. “Tell me it’s all the cash you got on hand. Even, This is all you’re going to get, Bobby.” But don’t cry poor to me.”

He sat back and smiled. “I think we understand each other.”

He looked her over. “You was good, Mary. Hey, we was good, wasn’t we, baby?”

She nodded.

“You interested?”

She felt a tightening at her crotch. Just what she needed, now. She shook her head.

“Too bad, baby, cause you the best white pussy I ever had.”

She stood up, pushing her chair out from behind her.

“Happy Thanksgiving, Bobby,” she said, and walked out of V & T’s, hoping never to see him again, but certain that Bobby wasn’t out of her life yet.

Miguel De Los Santos took a certain pleasure in baiting Annie. He knew it wasn’t his best trait, but he couldn’t help it sometimes. Despite that silly hat, the Paradise woman had really gotten to him. She was undeniably attractive, even on that first meeting, mincing around the subject. Jesus. Now they’d met twice more for lunch and once for dinner. But it had all been on her turf. So when he called to firm up his invitation to her for lunch today, he had picked Asia de Cuba to see her reaction. A CubanChinese place, it was affordable and on the West Side of town, closer to his neighborhood, not hers. Not that they’d go back to his place. Certainly not. He chose it just to see her reaction. Well, what the hell, he thought. He did it to make her squirm.

“I’ve never been here before,” Annie said as she took her seat opposite Miguel in the vinyl-covered booth.

“I’m sure you haven’t, so let me explain. This is a CubanChinese restaurant-” “Oh, I know that. I just haven’t been to this one before. I’ve been to Estrella de Asia on Seventy-eighth and Broadway near the Beacon Theatre. But I think Mi Chinita in Chelsea is more authentic.” She leaned back and smiled.

Miguel laughed. “So, I guess I’m guilty of stereotyping. I’m sorry.”

“Al’s forgiven,” Annie said, smiling, and began to sift through the contents of her oversized bag.

“Well, what have you got to show me?” he asked, smiling at her.

“Ready to work?”’ They were still using the fiction of the investigation to justify their meetings. At least, Miguel hoped so.

“Perhaps. Why don’t you start by calling me Annie.”

“All right. And I’m Miguel.”

“I’ve got a lot of files here—some records of the Morty the Madman offering, and some information from Cynthia’s bank. It seems she was close to penniless when she died.” Annie paused. “Also, I was thinking, Gil invested for her family. She mentioned that in her note.

Well, she had an Aunt Esme. Esme Stapleton. Could you see what trades were made in her name? Maybe Gil used her portfolio.”

“A long shot,” Miguel said, but he was impressed with her persistence.

“You really mean this, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes.”’ Annie paused for a moment, then seemed to make a decision.

“Miguel. Can I tell you something else that might help in the investigation?

But something I’d prefer you not use unless you have to?”

“Well. I suppose.”

Miguel listened as Annie told him about Aaron and Sylvie’s trust fund, and about her visit to Gil Griffin. “It doesn’t sound like an SEC matter to me, but I’ll check into it. There might be a chance Gil violated some SEC regulation,” Miguel said. “It’s a pity about your daughter’s trust fund. Maybe she could apply for some scholarships.”

If the kid was anything like her mother, she’d sail into a good school.

“The fund wasn’t meant to pay for her education. It was meant to provide for her care.” Annie paused. “Sylvie has Down’s syndrome.”

Miguel felt his face redden. “Annie, I’m so sorry. That’s twice this afternoon I put my foot in my mouth.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Miguel. Why shouldn’t you presume a child is born into this world normal?” Miguel noticed Annie’s voice get very soft.

“It’s the birthright of every child. Anything else seems to be such a gross injustice, at least, I used to think so.”

Miguel recovered from his embarrassment. “Injustice, of course,” he said adamantly. “But what do you mean you used to think so? What changed you?”

Miguel waited for a moment. Annie first looked off into the distance then back to Miguel. “Sylvie changed me.” Miguel nodded, gently urging her on. “She changed Aaron, too. But in the opposite way.”

“You must have been very lonely.”

“I was.” Annie lowered her head and added, “I am lonely.”

Miguel was touched by Annie’s honesty. He refrained from reaching out and putting his hand to her face. A moment of silence passed between them. Then Miguel asked, “Was Sylvie the cause of the breakup of your marriage?” Miguel didn’t want to pry into Annie’s life, but she seemed so ready to talk.

“I’d say Sylvie’s birth was the catalyst rather than the cause. If there had been no Sylvie, perhaps Aaron’s shortcomings would never have become apparent to me. Perhaps I would never have been given the insight I gained.” Annie paused while the waiter placed the covered dishes on the table.

Miguel ignored the interruption. “And that was … ?”

Annie’s hand fell slowly to the top of a covered dish, then stopped.

“Sylvie taught me to live in awe.” She spooned some fried rice onto Miguel’s plate, then her own. “Do you have any children?”

“I have. Two. Two boys who live with my ex-wife in New Jersey.”

Miguel shifted slightly in the booth. The woman was brave, braver than he’d thought, he realized guiltily. Madre de Dios, how would he cope if one of his boys … ?

He couldn’t bear to think about it.

”Then you know what I’m talking about. Do you know the way young children, when they make a discovery on their own, seem so in awe of what they’ve discovered?”

“Of course,” Miguel said. “I remember when my first boy discovered the mobile that had been hanging over his crib since he was born. One day he noticed it and gurgled and kicked frantically at the moving colors.”

Miguel lifted his fork. “But then he got used to it and moved on to his next discovery.”

”Exactly. Except with Sylvie, it was always the first time. She sees the colors in bath bubbles, and it’s like the first time all over again. And stars, and ice cream.”’ “I call it the wow’ experience,” Miguel said. “It’s a shame, but it seems that as they get older, it gets harder and harder for them to have that experience.” Miguel chewed a piece of sweet and sour chicken. “Well”—he shrugged—“what can we expect? I read somewhere that before a child reaches his teens, he has seen twenty thousand violent deaths on television. That’s enough to take the wow’ out of anyone.”

“Do you see your boys much?”

“Every other weekend, or when Milly asks me to baby-sit.”

“What happened?”

Miguel understood what Annie meant. ‘We had different dreams, I guess.

She’s chasing the American dream … you know, car, suburban house, vacations.”

“And what is your dream?”

“That’s easy. Family and work, in that order.” Miguel dabbed his mouth with the corner of a napkin. “Milly thinks it should be the other way around. She couldn’t stand to be married to a government employee. She used to call me a crusader.”

“I take it you have different ideas on child-rearing.”

Miguel snorted. “That’s an understatement. Milly talks about quality time’ and all that other yuppie crap. Then she takes them to McDonald’s and out to play video games.” Miguel paused. “I tell her she’s a long way from her roots. Not everything the gringos do is better.”

“And how do you spend time with your children?”’ Miguel leaned forward on his elbows. “I had heard about a veterinarian in Pennsylvania who raises llamas. Breeds and raises them! Now, you can go to the Bronx Zoo and look at llamas twelve feet away and read the little card with three lines of information about llamas. But when do you get the chance to visit a llama farm and touch them and hear how they’re cared for? I mean, I was excited.”

“And your boys weren’t?”

“The woman was nice enough to invite us down to see the animals. Then we went to a Pennsylvania Dutch restaurant for a family-style meal.”

Miguel lifted the napkin off his lap and tossed it on the table.

“Guess what? The boys wanted to go to McDonald’s and then play video games instead.” Miguel couldn’t hide his disappointment as he remembered “But, I keep on trying. Next month I’m taking them to a town on Cape Cod where there is a large population of deaf people, so the entire town uses sign language.”

“Honestly? asked Annie. “That’s incredible. That would be a wonderful experience.”

Miguel really liked this woman. He considered, for a moment, asking her to spend Thanksgiving with him. But that was too much.

.

”Would you like to go to dinner with me Saturday night?” Saturday night meant a real date, no more pretend business meetings.

“I’m sorry. I already have plans. But thanks anyway.”’ She paused.

“I wonder if I could ask a favor, though.”

She blew me off and she’s asking favors? Miguel wondered.

“I’m going to visit my daughter on Saturday. Want to come? It’s a long drive.

I can’t afford a chauffeur anymore, and I don’t want to go alone. ‘ “I’d be delighted.”

Stuart Swann sat back in the limo parked outside V & T’s, his camera resting on his lap. He saw Mary Griffin hurry out the door of the restaurant and approach the corner for the crosstown bus, getting one immediately. Stuart watched as the bus pulled out into traffic, then noticed the black man he had seen Mary sitting with leave a minute later.

Stuart had decided to follow Mary whenever she left the office unexpectedly without Gil during the day. He wasn’t sure why he was doing this, he just knew there was something not right about her, and since he was feeling the pressure of her dislike for him at work, he figured he had better have some ammunition.

At least I’ve learned something from working for Gil Griffin, he thought. Now, after only two outings, bingo!

Except he didn’t know what “bingo” was exactly. Not yet, at any rate.

He’d barely been able to glimpse her and her companion through the dirty glare of the restaurant window. But the combination of this out-of-the-way restaurant, a black man, and an envelope he’d seen her pass over were enough ingredients to cook up a Mary stew, he was sure.

Drug addiction? Sex? Something worse? He ordered his driver to follow the black man as he walked quickly toward Broadway. At Ninety-sixth Street the man walked into the lobby of a newly constructed luxury apartment building, incongruously set amongst tenements and bodegas. This, Stuart decided, was a good day for him.

A bad day for Mary, he believed. It was becoming more apparent every day that Mary Griffin was not a woman of integrity.

Stuart looked at the sign on the side of the building and copied down the name of the management company, recognizing it as one of his pension-fund accounts.

One step closer to bingo! he thought. Directing his driver back to Wall Street, Stuart smiled to himself as he began making calls on the car phone.

Queen for a Day.

Annie smiled to herself as she turned off Montauk Highway and crossed the railroad tracks. This would probably be the first time Elise visited the wrong side of the tracks out here in the Hamptons.

Annie’s little house, which she had inherited from her grandmother, was truly a cottage, not one of those enormous beach-side mansions that the wealthy persisted in calling “cottages.” The place was in Devon, a small corner of Amagansett, on the north and unfashionable side of the main road. Seventy years ago, her grandmother had seen this old farmhouse on a small peninsula called Promised Land and had fallen in love.

It was easy, now, in the dying autumn light, to see why. The misty blue trim on the windows perfectly set off the brown cedar shingles of the little house, set on a gently sloping lawn. One side of the cottage was a single lofty room-the living room—with a peaked roof and big French windows on three sides that opened onto an old brick terrace.

The other part of the house was two storied, with a kitchen, bath, and study below, and two bedrooms and a bath above. A glassed-in porch on the west side of the house served as a dining room and conservatory From the west windows, one could see the little or chard, and behind it the beach and the bay, now silvery gray in the late-autumn afternoon.

As Annie pulled up the drive, the crunching gravel seemed to welcome her.

She’d have just enough daylight to check on the woodpile, to air out the house, and perhaps make a mulled-cider punch for the holiday tomorrow. It was unseasonably cold, really almost winter cold, and she’d have to bring in lots of wood.

First, though, she’d unpack the car. She had bought whole-wheaI croissants at Dumas and raspberries and cream at Frazier Morris, along with some fabulous-smelling fresh Jamaican coffee beans and, finally, indulged in a big bunch of peonies from her florist. She looked guiltily at the huge, fluffy blossoms. They were four dollars a stem.