The Idea of Him (24 page)

34

Girl Loses Girl?

With a dented metal spoon, I swirled a hefty amount of sugar into my tea. As it dissolved, so did my uncertainties. Jackie Malone had a hold on Wade's dick and his cash. Somehow she'd played him—played
me
. Somehow she'd gotten him into something treacherous and benefited from it herself. I was absolutely positive that only a woman could get this much out of Wade, a world-class manipulator in his own right.

The crowd up front thinned out in the diner as the clock ticked to nine. Out the window by my lonely table in the back, people rushed by to get to their jobs, narrowly missing each other on the sidewalk, like the rush in a high school hallway to get to class before the bell.

Did the casino chips in my husband's drawer really come from his jaunts to Atlantic City with Murray and Max? I'd seen Georges the conniving maître d' pass Jackie a chip; he could have easily been asking for the full monty for one of the powerful men dining at the Tudor Room. I had figured it out—or Tommy had figured it out for me to see. That's how Jackie was paying off her loans—if there even were any loans. She was a high-class hooker, plain and simple, her currency untraceable casino chips. No checks, no bank transfers that could be traced, and none of her clients had to sully their hands with a dirty cash transaction. She got paid with casino chips she could cash in anywhere in Atlantic City any time she wanted for cold hard cash. I'll bet she had businessmen clients out there too.

If only I'd just trusted my instincts in the first place. First Jackie sucked their dicks, and then she sucked information out of the briefcases and BlackBerrys. Then she found the unhappy wife to help her get access to more of that money, conning all of us all the way to the bank. For all I knew, the account in Liechtenstein was all her idea gleaned from some class in Philadelphia. If there even were an account over there. Or a business school.

I have to admit, when Jackie waltzed through the front door at 9:09, turning heads the entire way, I was shocked. I really didn't think she was going to show. She sat down opposite me.

“Oh, Jesus, thank God you're here.” Jackie kept up the pretense of actually trying to help me. “Sorry to be late. I do have some really really important questions for you. Why is . . .”

“I only have one question for you: Did you take all my money?” I half screamed, half whispered.

For the first time in my relationship with Jackie, she looked utterly shaken and I did not have any idea how she would answer. She sat there in silence, staring first at the table and then up at me, softly. She actually looked wounded. “How could you?”

“How could I . . .”

“After all we've gone through, me admitting the thing with your husband the first time you asked?” she pleaded. “And us talking about your life and men and me with my mom, and everything we're working on here, I feel like we were such a fast, unlikely pair in some weird but important way, you know.” She paused a long time. “I did sleep with your husband, so that was big of you even to talk to me, but how could you think I'd take your money? You really think that is what this is all about?”

“I don't know what to think. My bank account is in ruins and you . . .”

“And I what?” she interrupted, sounding unbelievably hurt by the accusation.

“You expect me to take everything at face value in this whole deal when all my money is gone?” Sweat dripped down my neck, and I pushed the menu back down on the table. “You're grabbing and looking through confidential folders in Murray's driveway in Southampton, you tell me the information is all there, but then it isn't, you say, I assume it's some bank account linked to Wade and . . .”

“You still don't trust me. Amazing.” She studied the breakfast choices with a deep sigh. “I told you there were no bank accounts in those files in Southampton. I told you I still need that flash drive.” Her voice cracked and she rubbed the corner of her eye.

I fired the questions at her. “I can tell you're upset. Really I can. But this isn't about your hurt feelings at this point. I'm sorry, but I have to know this: Where is my money, Jackie?”

She folded the menu and flagged a waiter. “Your husband took it, to invest, and then he fuhhhcked up, as Max Rowland himself put it in your own living room.”

“How do I know you didn't take it?” I answered. “Prove it to me now.”

A large waiter wearing a white apron approached our table. “Whataya want?”

Jackie continued to look at me, then calmly turned to the sweaty waiter. “A Greek omelet, please. Dry rye toast on the side.”

“You want home fries? You wanna the omelet egg white only?” he asked.

“Neither, thanks.” She smiled at him.

“I'm fine,” I answered without looking up from my steaming cup of tea.

“Don't you just hate egg whites?” Jackie said. “So rubbery. Don't know how women diet like that.”

“Jackie! We are not talking about our egg preferences. We are talking about how I could trust you. I think you lied to me!”

“I have never lied to you once,” she reassured me. “Just please try to focus on Wade. I need to know what you told him and why he's so upset that you know everything. Not everything is as it appears. The money is elsewhere, and he's added to it. Then he lost it. But now, it's actually back. You won't have access to your money for a while, but you will at some point very soon.”

“I have two children. ‘Very soon' doesn't work,” I answered tersely, wondering how on earth I was going to nail her. “And by the way, how do you know? Are you an expert in money laundering and overseas transactions as well?”

She pulled out some sheets from her bag. “You had about two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, right? I mean in all your retirement accounts and savings and everything.”

“How on earth did you know that number, Jackie?”

“Well, look at this sheet. Project Green is Wade, see that? The envelope I took from you had some good information in it about various people's financial dealings but no account numbers to nail them for sure. That's what's on the flash drive. See that amount? It's all just transferring from them and back to Wade. Don't worry, it's all there. That green column is Wade's. See how it went way up here . . . and now it's just where it was when he started this thing . . . he won a lot on his bets and then he lost a lot.”

“How do I know Project Green is our money and we will get it back?”

She took a deep breath. “Because the authorities are on it now, Allie. That woman you saw me with at the bar, the redhead with the blunt cut in the gray linen dress that day with Wade? She works for the FBI. How else could I possibly know all this? They approached me when they figured out I was following the same people they were. I couldn't lie, and I didn't see any reason not to help them determine who was breaking the law.”

“You're working with the FBI? Is Wade in huge trouble?”

“Nope, he's not who they're after at all. If he talks, he'll get full immunity. You and I just need to stay quiet for the next two days. That's why I sent you that note about no obvious texts.”

The waiter slammed Jackie's greasy omelet on the table and filled up my coffee, splashing a little on the saucer.

“Excuse me,” she yelled at him over the clanging of the busy coffee shop. “Some ketchup, please?” She picked up a pepper shaker and vigorously dusted the omelet.”

I hit the table to keep her on topic. “I want to talk right now about you, Jackie. Your motives.”

She speared a huge piece of omelet with her fork and poured ketchup on it before devouring it, almost Murray-like. Then she said, “You sure you didn't say anything to anyone or do anything else?”

I flinched at her unladylike eating habits. “What did I do? What did I do?” And then I quietly rummaged through my purse. I took a bunch of casino chips and spread them across the table. “Of course you can tell me you know what men are like in the hay from every age decade.
That's because you sleep with everyone.
Only you get
paid
for it. Did you leave that part out on purpose or were you going to tell me,
girl to girl
?”

Jackie took an even larger bite of omelet and chewed as she glared at me, swallowing hard and taking a sip of water before she spoke. “It's not like it seems, Allie.”

“What's not like it seems? Tommy works in the Tudor Room. He watches you operate, and it makes him go nuts. He watches you screw Wade, and he can't stand Wade. Believe me, now I get why he hates my husband. First, I thought it was me, but it's because of this.” I pointed at the chips. “He watches you sell yourself to the guys, Wade, Max, God knows who else. And, by the way, you know what Tommy just did?”

Ms. Cool Cucumber dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin, in a sudden display of table manners, then crossed her arms and raised her well-tended eyebrows. “What did Tommy do?” she asked.

“He outed you. He wrote a scene in our class about an Ivy League call girl in a powerful lunch spot.”

“Oh no.” She rolled her eyes.

“You don't care that people know that you have sex for money? How did your mother think you were getting all the money to help her pay off the loans?”

“My mother is clueless, one reason she's trusted the wrong people all her life. She thinks I got all my money from my summer jobs at banks and she's grateful. Period. I leave it at that with her. As for others around here, I genuinely don't care what people think.”

35

Cash Call

“You don't care people know you're fucking for cash?”

Jackie pushed her omelet away and leaned over the red-flecked linoleum diner table. “What we are really talking about is this: I fuck for a lot of things, Allie. For a lot of reasons that will all become clear to you. And yes, if you want me to be truthful, I did some fucking for cash.”

“You wanna refill?” the waiter asked as he cleared her plate and tried to linger over this conversation a bit longer.

“I heard,” I answered.

“I got customers waiting, lady.” He started to add up our bill.

“I'll have a blueberry muffin and another tea, please.” I turned to Jackie. “Go on, please explain how you did some fucking for cash.”

The waiter tried to hear until she glared at him to leave.

“It was very simple, really, on so many counts.”

“Doesn't sound simple.”

She pulled her hair behind her ears. “I wanted my mom to have her house down payment now, not later. It took me like four months to collect that. A five-grand casino chip for a few hours. To tell you the God's honest truth, it was just so efficient, I couldn't resist. Someone important I worked for at a summer analyst position wanted sex, and I told him he'd have to pony up big-time first. It was really that simple, just a transaction. And then there were more.”

“A few hours of pure hell!” I exclaimed.

“Well, yes, on some level it was pretty unsatisfactory, but I knew them all and they were perfectly gentlemanly and businesslike. It was about four guys over the past few years, and my mom's settled where she should be. I know it may seem strange, but some girls get gifts; I got large amounts of casino chips.”

“Cash isn't the same as gifts. Gifts usually mean you're in a relationship of some kind, not a cold transaction that . . .”

“Well, for reasons that benefited me, I decided to take the cold transaction . . . and by the way, think a little about what you are insinuating here. I know it's not exactly a common thing for a business school grad to be doing, but I think I'm just more realistic than most about how stuff goes.”

“Can I give you some advice for once?”

“I'm listening.” She poured some cream in her coffee and raised an eyebrow.

“Could you just quit with the ruthless expediency of it all? I mean, it's going to catch up with you. It's going to destroy a part of you or screw with your head somehow.”

“Allie. When there are people you love whom you have to take care of, you'll do anything.” Her voice almost cracked.

“You didn't have to use your body.”

She looked down and her lip twisted a little. “You're right. I didn't. But if you could learn to give people a break, you might see I was getting my family out of a desperate financial situation as fast as I could. I used my business acumen and my body to get there. My summer associate money wasn't going to get my mom on track fast enough.”

“What do you mean? Whoring is more realistic? You don't find it debasing?”

“Really, Allie? What exactly is whoring?” She cocked an eyebrow. “Half the women in this city should take a look in the mirror.”

I pulled back against my seat to hear the coming onslaught. The waiter delivered my muffin and slapped the check down next to it.

Jackie placed her elbows on the table and stared at me. “Would it be more honest if I'd taken all the school loans, married some rich banker that I liked well enough, and then once he'd paid off my debt, divorced him and taken him for twice as much once I
came to my senses
?” At this she made little quotation marks with her fingers and went on.

“Many women do that, get comfortable until they can't take it anymore, and take half the man's fortune, having never loved him from the beginning. I bet you don't judge them. That could work too, I guess. But if the wife stops loving him, and the husband is making all the money, isn't she fucking for money too?”

I answered quickly. “Most people love each other in a marriage at some point.”

“Bullshit. I've known my share of girls at school who are looking for one thing: the rock. They could care less about the cock, but if they have to suck on it a little until they get what they're after, then they lower themselves to the job.” She sneered. “I actually like sex. I guess that's what makes me truly different.”

“Jackie, I get you think this is normal.”

She shook her head. “Fuck normal. I just said it was more honest than most people can admit. And in that sense, it has more integrity. But that casino chip business is over now. I don't need to do it anymore.”

“And Wade, how did he figure in exactly?”

“Max would throw him a few chips on Atlantic City trips, and he saved a few for me. It was like a couple of times with him, but he got hooked. That's when I stopped and said he's all yours.”

“You sure you're not doing any sex for cash anymore?”

“Yes, I'm done. The house down payment is made, and Mom and I can earn the rest with ‘normal' jobs, as you say.” She threw her dirty paper napkin on the table. “Do you understand my motives better now? And, more important, how did you leave it with Tommy?”

“I don't want to talk about Tommy.”

She touched my arm. “Allie, whether you like it or not, we're in this together now. Tell me what happened with him.”

“Nothing. No big deal.” And then two nanoseconds later, “He left after class without talking to me!”

“That's called a man's baby routine. He just wants some attention—if you want to give it to him, he's back eating out of your hands.”

“He's not interested in even having a friendship with me,” I said, throwing a ten-dollar bill on top of her money on the check and sweeping the casino chips back into my bag.

“Well, maybe yes, he's hurt because he didn't know you were married to the great Wade Crawford, but he'll get over being pissed at you if you just give him a little female attention.”

“I will tell you I have to fight an intense urge to text him, but it's just not a good time to start with him. I do know that. And, honestly, I don't think he wants me back. Now, forget Tommy and me for a minute. What else do you or the authorities know about Wade? Do you know where he is at the moment on all this? Let's start there, now that I have the whole picture, which”—I paused—“which I'm choosing to believe.” I broke into a wry little smile.

“Well, good thing and good timing. Wade did technically fall for me, but he's licking his wounds now with others. That's something I just found out with help from the people who are following him. I learned about it last night and now you need to know.”

“Others?”

She pulled out a room key. “Go to the Willingham Hotel right now. Penthouse 1602. It's where all the guys from the Tudor Room go for the utmost discretion. They're so weird, they all are competitive over who gets this one room with automatic shades that go up to enhance their viewing pleasure during whatever other pleasure they are experiencing in the groin area. Go find your husband and ask him yourself.”

She gave me the key. Now I figured I owed her. And, this being the entry into Act III, I might as well just get to some tipping point in this madness. And so, in the depths of a filthy, cluttered side pocket of my purse, I stuck my finger through a little hole that had ripped in the lining and dexterously pulled out a little flash drive and set it on the table.

Jackie closed her eyes and placed her palms in prayer position, resting her head on the tips of her fingers like she'd just witnessed the Second Coming.

She then calmly took out her laptop, slipped in the flash drive, waited two minutes while the information downloaded, and said, “Thank you, Allie. This is exactly what we needed.” She bit her bottom lip as she nodded up and down, up and down, as she carefully perused the columns of project Red, Green, and Blue. “Wade'll get full immunity. Don't worry.”

I tried to look over the top of her computer. “What is it?”

“Give me twenty-four hours.”

I grabbed the key from the table. “You want me to go to the Willingham Hotel now?” I asked.

“I can't say I really want you to go there, but I do want you to believe two things: one, I have never lied to you, not once, ever. And two, I want you to trust me always, because the feds don't care about Wade and he's cooperating now anyway for immunity. And I'm sure of where the bodies are buried and I'm so very close to finding them.”

She picked up the check to take it to the front counter and added, “Oh, yeah, one more thing to remember when you get to the Willingham Hotel: your husband's the whore, not me.”