She nodded, her eyes not moving from his. “It may mean that I spend time in prison. I’m prepared for that. One of us has to stop being selfish and think of our children, Jack. And clearly you’re not going to be that one.”
“You know that going back is not an option for me?”
“Yes, I know that. The stakes are much higher for you.”
“Jesus, Susan, I’d be put away for life.”
“I understand.” She almost reached across and took his hand. But she forced herself not to. “But do you understand that you’ve imprisoned us? What happened last night shows how far you’ve gone. That man with the knife in his hand wasn’t the man I married, Jack.”
She watched him sag, like all the strength was draining from his body. “So what are you saying exactly?”
“When I get out of here, I’m going to contact the U.S. Consulate. I’m going to do whatever it takes to get Matt and me and my baby back to the States. If I have to do jail time, my sister will take the kids.”
He stared at her. “You’ve spoken to her?”
She shook her head. “Of course not. I don’t need to speak to her.”
“So where does this leave me?”
“I don’t know, Jack. That’s for you to decide.”
CHAPTER 6
When the Sniper Security truck pulled up at the site, the builders were leaving, talking loudly in Xhosa, laughing as they walked down the road to the taxis. Benny Mongrel jumped down from the truck and helped Bessie to the ground. The truck drove off, and Bessie squatted against a pile of builder’s sand, her back legs unsteady as she pissed. Benny Mongrel looked away, giving her the time to do her business.
He had arrived at Sniper Security an hour earlier than his usual reporting time of 5:00 p.m. He had looked around for Ishmael Isaacs, the shift foreman, ready to report for inspection. Before getting the taxi to town, Benny Mongrel had stood in the tin bath in his shack and scrubbed his body with Sunlight soap. Then he had been forced to ask the fat bitch in the next-door shack if he could use her iron. Even though she nearly shit herself when she saw his face, she was greedy enough to demand money. Back in the day he would have smacked her and walked with the iron. But he paid up, pressed his uniform, and took the iron back to her. She had grabbed it and slammed the door in his face without a word.
Anyway, there he was smelling of soap, with creases like knife edges in his uniform.
But another guard had told Benny Mongrel that Isacs had already gone for the day. He wouldn’t be back. Fucken asshole.
While Bessie pissed, Benny Mongrel took in the view from high up on the slope. All was still. Honey-colored sunlight washed Table Mountain, Lion’s Head, and Signal Hill. Toylike yachts caught the breeze on the placid ocean far below.
He saw the red BMW still straddling the yellow line. A pink parking ticket was glued to the driver’s window, flapping in the soft breeze.
Bessie appeared at Benny Mongrel’s side and licked his hand. He took hold of her chain, and the two of them headed into the unfinished house.
Burn felt like he had been sucker punched. He was relieved that Matt, tired out after the time on the beach, was asleep in his car seat as they drove home.
Burn knew that Susan was serious. He also knew that she was right. That didn’t stop him from feeling as if his entire universe had fragmented and been sucked into a black hole. Being without his wife and son was something he couldn’t process. Not being there to father his daughter was too painful to imagine.
He knew he had brought this upon himself.
As he drove over the Neck and down toward Sea Point, the panorama of mountain and ocean was invisible to him. What he was seeing was the ease with which he had been set up back in the States, and how willingly he had slipped his head into the trap and let it spring shut.
After Tommy Ryan left, Burn had become a regular down at Gardena, sitting at poker tables with strangers who were prepared to wager more than most of them could afford. Burn hadn’t let sympathy get in the way of him taking their money. Money that helped him grow his business and make things more comfortable for Susan and Matt.
And Burn couldn’t deny it: he’d enjoyed the rush gambling gave him.
So he started betting on sports. A guy he met at the poker table put him onto a bookie named Pepe Vargas, who drove an old Eldorado and wore pinkie rings. Vargas amused Burn with his cheesy suits and easy humor. He was a character, and somehow having him around made Burn feel that he was leading a more interesting life. Vargas seemed to like Burn and extended him credit. He never acted bothered if Burn was late in paying.
Then the slide began. Horses stumbled on the homestretch, quarterbacks fired bum passes, and hockey pucks followed paths that defied any reasonable logic. Suddenly Burn owed Pepe Vargas nearly twenty grand, and Vargas started calling the house, looking for his money.
These calls, and Burn’s absences, made Susan suspicious. After a particularly heavy confrontation when she accused him of being unfaithful, he told her about the gambling. She was shocked and angry. Was he going to do what her father did: fade away from his family, leaving a trail of bad debt, lies, and heartache?
Burn swore to her that he’d stop. He’d pay Vargas off, and that would be that.
He kept his word until his biggest contract went south.
Burn had installed a security system in a new mall out on the fringes of the Valley. It was state-of-the-art stuff-security cameras, motion-triggered as, smoke detectors-all wired into an operations room that looked like something out of mission control at Houston. He had to hire more staff and front for expensive gear to deliver on the contract. The developers of the mall had given him only a first payment, a quarter of the billable total-long spent-when they ran out of money. The mall, agonizingly close to completion, was mothballed while bloody legal battles were fought.
Burn’s name was just one on a long list of contractors looking at getting ten cents on the dollar at best.
Meanwhile Burn’s employees needed to be paid, and his suppliers were screaming for money. Money he didn’t have. He was in danger of losing the house, mortgaged to cash-flow his business.
Which was when he did the thing that totally fucked up his life.
And the lives of his family.
Burn called Pepe Vargas and asked him to take a phone bet, eighty large on a tough middleweight out of Jersey City named Leroy Coombs, an ex-champion who was making a comeback against a no-hoper as part of the undercard of a Vegas title fight.
He heard the bookie go quiet on the other end of the line, probably thinking about the money Burn still owed him. But Vargas took the bet.
Burn was running a crazy risk, betting money he didn’t have. But it was a sure thing. The opponent was a glorified sparring partner; there was no way Coombs could lose.
Burn sat at home and watched the fight on HBO. It went according to plan for ten of the scheduled twelve rounds. Coombs toyed with his opponent, and though he couldn’t knock him out, he left him looking like hamburger by the end of the tenth. Burn was starting to feel good, convinced his recent run of bad luck was over.
Then in the eleventh Coombs got complacent, started clowning, and took a blow that should never have landed. A looping right that caught him on the chin and sent him to the canvas. He didn’t get up before the ref waved his arms over his prone body.
The fight was over.
Burn watched, stunned, as Coombs was helped to his stool, his legs like cooked spaghetti. He knew that if he tried to stand, he’d feel the same.
His cell phone rang. It was Vargas, wanting to know when he was coming down to Gardena to make good the damage. Burn muttered a promise and killed the call.
After this loss, with the unpaid bets still on his tab, Burn owed Pepe Vargas nearly a hundred thousand dollars. An amount of money that he had absolutely no way of getting his hands on.
