The Family Fortune

foundation, enough to support the average schoolteacher. I lived at home and had few expenses, so I could splurge occasionally.

Since I don’t like to shop, my excursions are over quickly. We were out of there in half an hour. I wore the suit out of the store and carried the clothes I’d been wearing in the Bilzerian bag.

“Major improvement,” Tad said.

I looked down at the green suit.

“Feels good,” I said.

“Still pretty conservative,” Tad said.

“It’s simple and elegant.”

We picked up my car from the garage. I had the Mercedes 460SL that had belonged to my mother. It was ages old and Miranda hadn’t wanted it for that reason, but I liked it. The car was barely used and still reliable.

Tad was impressed by the car. “This is awesome,” he said. There was that word again—awesome. Yes, it was a lovely car, but awesome?

We drove north toward Lynn. Tad navigated. I knew how to get to Lynn, but we needed a map to find the exact address. Lynn is a run-down city that is always preparing for a renaissance that never arrives. We followed the map to 61 Kennedy Ave. I found a parking spot on the street. Tad looked around when we got out.

“You want me to stay and watch the car?” he asked.

“It’ll be okay,” I said. I was none too sure about that, but I was willing to risk it. In minutes, we’d be ringing the doorbell and Jack Reilly would come to the door. He might slouch a little, have heavy brows, and a sexy smile. He’d be thrilled when I told him he’d won the fellowship, just as every winner had been thrilled. He’d be grateful and an instant connection would be made.

Jack Reilly’s apartment was on the third floor. Tad and I walked up the stairs. Someone had clipped their toenails onto the carpet and the hall smelled like fried fish.

We reached the door and I rang the bell. Nothing. We looked at each other and waited. Tad hit the bell again. There was movement inside.

The door was opened by a woman. She had one sponge curler in her hair and an unlit cigarette dangling from between her lips. She was thin and wore gray sweatpants and a pink T-shirt with no bra underneath. Tad stared at her as if he’d never seen a woman before.

“Yes?” she asked.

“We’re looking for Jack Reilly,” I said.

“You the police?”

“No.” In my suit, I guess I might have been mistaken for a very well-dressed detective, but Tad was every inch the college kid. “Jack Reilly has won an award,” I said.

“Are you Publishers Clearing House? Where’s Ed McMahon?” She poked her head into the hallway and looked around.

“I am Jane Fortune of the Fortune Family Foundation. Jack applied for our fellowship.”

“Fellowship?”

“Isn’t he a writer?” I was beginning to think something was terribly wrong. Maybe we had the wrong address.

“I guess you could say that. He scribbles. Won’t even get a decent job.” The woman’s voice was nasal, not too different from my sister Miranda’s.

“Is he here?” I asked.

“He took off. I don’t know where he is,” she said.

“Do you have his phone number?”

“I doubt he even has a phone. I had to beg him to get his own phone when he lived here. He likes to live off the grid.”

“Off the grid?”

“No phone, no address. He wouldn’t want the IRS to be able to find him, not after all the years he’s forgotten to pay his taxes.” She hadn’t invited us in and it didn’t look like she was going to.

“Isn’t there any way we can reach him?” I asked.

“I think I have his sister’s address around here somewhere,” she said. “But how do I know you are who you say you are?”

“You don’t, really,” I said. “I do have a card somewhere, but that doesn’t mean much.” I dug into my bag— the old canvas one—and fished a card out of my wallet. I handed it over.

She shrugged. “You know, I don’t even know why I asked. I guess it just seemed like the right thing to do, not that Jack would ever do the right thing. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t care if you were the Mafia. If you find him, can you remind him that he owes me two hundred bucks? I’ll go find the address. I’ll be right back.” She retreated into the apartment, leaving the door open a crack.

Tad looked at me. “That’s that, then,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“We looked for him. We can’t find him. He seems like a loser anyway,” he said.

“We don’t know that,” I said. “Look at her. She isn’t exactly an arbiter of good taste. For all we know, he could just be some kind of iconoclast, which would be appropriate for a really great artist.”

“I thought you didn’t believe that artists had a license to misbehave. That’s what you always say.”

“Well, that’s true.” He was making me a little uncertain. I did have a long-held belief that the true artist spent more time on his art than on creating an artistic persona.

“He owes her two hundred and fifty dollars,” Tad said.

“Two hundred,” I said.

“Two hundred, then. He still sounds like a loser.”

“She probably doesn’t understand him,” I said.

Tad looked at me as if I’d gone mad.

“You sound like the other woman,” Tad said.

He was right. I had all the symptoms of infatuation for a man I hadn’t even met. Maybe you become susceptible to that sort of thing when you’ve been alone too long.

The woman came back with a slip of paper that had been ripped from a notepad. She was also carrying a spiral notebook and two books, Jitterbug Perfume and Duet for One. “This is his sister’s address. She lives in Vermont. I’m sorry, but I don’t even know her name. I know it isn’t Reilly.”

I took the paper and pulled out my wallet. I slipped the paper in and took out a hundred-dollar bill. “Here,” I said. “Some money came with the fellowship. Here’s a down payment on his debt.”

“Thanks,” she said. She smiled. “That’s white of you. Look,” she said, “if you find him, can you give him these?” She handed over the notebook and the books. “He left them here and frankly you have a better chance of seeing him than I do. I hate when men abandon stuff after they leave. So if you take it—whatever you do with it—it would be a favor to me.”

I slipped the things into my bag. Of course I’d find Jack Reilly. I might as well take them.

We walked back down the hall, then down the fish-stinking stairwell and out onto the street. The car was still there, and untouched.

“That’s that, then,” Tad said after we got inside.

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“There’s no point in looking for him. I don’t know why you took that stuff. I think we should just dump it right here into the sewer.”

“I disagree,” I said.

Tad frowned. “Come on. Let’s get out of here,” he said.

I pulled from the curb and we drove away from Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin—you never come out the way you went in.

Chapter 8