you’re defending them?”
“I didn’t call them because I don’t want them to freak out and worry.”
She plopped herself down on his oversize sectional sofa and threw her feet onto the ottoman. “It doesn’t piss you off that he spent all those years telling us to ignore tabloid lies? It was all true, Ben. All those years. All those women. It’s embarrassing.”
“Of course I’m pissed. And, yeah, that’s part of why I’m not really down with them right now either. But with me, it’s temporary. So the man’s not perfect. He loves Mom. He loves us. He’s just-you know, he’s fucked up and has his baggage, like everyone else. Did it ever dawn on you that maybe he and Mom had an understanding?”
“Oh, gross.”
“Don’t be so provincial, as they’d likely say. They’ve always been a little weird.”
They both knew that her parents’ nontraditional approach to marriage had rubbed off more on Ben than on her. She’d been so eager to have a stable, regular marriage that she had dashed down the aisle with someone who proved to be entirely wrong for her. Ben, on the other hand, had been engaged twice to two wonderful women, who both eventually left when they realized he would never be able to live his life around anyone but himself.
“I’m sorry. I’m not ready to forgive him.”
“Will you ever be?”
“I don’t know. Why are we talking about this?”
“Sorry. I guess I want to see things back to normal with you guys. You’ve always been able to be my sister, even when I was sticking anything I could find in my arm. I wish you’d show the same tolerance with Dad.”
“I can tell you one thing: if it turns out he had anything to do with this gallery and kept it from me, even after all that has happened, I’m done with him. I will never talk to him again.”
“Well, hopefully that won’t be the case, then.”
She pushed her fingers through her hair. “Fuck, if the police know about Arthur they might try to ask Dad about ITH. I can only imagine how that conversation will go. Remember that time the police came to our house after that belated birthday party you decided to throw for yourself?”
“I’m surprised you remember that.”
How could she forget the one time police officers had been called to their home?
It was a Sunday afternoon. Before the drive back into the city, she had been finishing a project for her sixth- grade civics class-a five-minute oral autobiography delivered in the role of the first female Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor. Her father had knocked on her bedroom door. Two police officers in uniforms stood behind him. She remembered her father looking nervous, but in retrospect, she had probably projected her own reaction onto him. Apologetic for disturbing her, he made a point of telling the officers they were disrupting his daughter’s schoolwork.
She remembered feeling small as she followed them to her father’s private study. She remembered running her fingers across the nap of his new red velvet sofa-push it one way and it’s shiny, then the other way for dull.
“Alice, these policemen have some questions about a gathering your brother had Friday night? Remember we were watching your movie until midnight? They just need to ask you about that.”
Ben had a way of telling his parents he was “inviting a few friends over,” only to wind up hosting a kegger in the backyard. This particular night was precisely one week after Ben’s sixteenth birthday. Ben had wanted to celebrate the actual date with his school friends in Manhattan, but that didn’t stop him from taking a second bite of the apple in Bedford a week later. By then, Ben was nearly an adult in her parents’ eyes. They thought of themselves as too freewheeling to interfere.
The party had proven to be a doozie. Ben would tell her later that one girl got so drunk her parents sent her away to an all-girls boarding school.
It seemed like the police officers’ questions went on forever. How many people were at the party? Could she name any of them? Did she hear or see anything unusual? Where were her parents? She ran her fingers back and forth over that red velvet-shiny then dull, shiny then dull.
She remembered wanting to protect her parents. She remembered hating her brother for putting them in a position of having to answer questions from police officers. She remembered wishing that her father’s friend, Arthur, was still there, but he had already left for the city.
Were her parents going to have to go away with these men because of Ben and his stupid underage drinking parties? All she could do was tell the truth: her mother had gone to bed early, and her father hadn’t paid the party any mind. He’d been in their screening room with her, watching an advance copy of
Her parents were the kind of people who dined with liberal senators and raised funds for elected officials, but who held in contempt the people who actually carried out the work of government. People like her parents saw police as security guards for people with “those kinds” of problems. She remembered that day because it was the day she learned that police officers-whom children naturally saw as helpers and heroes-were, to men like her father, unfit to intrude upon the private affairs of a family like theirs, unqualified to disrupt even a sixth-grade homework assignment. She would witness that attitude in her father several more times over the next fifteen-plus years, every time Ben had one of his scrapes with the law. He’d rail against the war on drugs. He’d demonize the nation’s irrational emphasis upon retribution over rehabilitation. But he’d never blame Ben for blowing so many second chances.
She didn’t want to think about how her father would respond if Willie Danes and John Shannon showed up at his doorstep unannounced, as they had with her.
Ben walked her to the door and gave her an awkward hug. “Try not to get ahead of yourself on this ITH stuff. Arthur represents thousands of clients at that huge firm, and that was like twenty-something years ago anyway. It’s probably just a coincidence. Hang tight, and I’m sure the police will figure this out.”
As she made her way to the 6 train, she passed the location of what used to be her favorite bar, Double Happiness. It seemed like only yesterday that she and her girlfriends were downing ginger martinis in the basement-level hangout-getting ejected once when her friend Danielle broke not one, but two, cocktail glasses-but she realized it had been closed now for almost five years. Terrific. First she was yelling at the group of hot party girls on the street. Now she was pining for the better-than-today places that used to be. Why didn’t she go ahead and adopt a dozen cats to seal her grumpy-lady fate?
She was just about to swipe her MetroCard through the turnstile when something about her conversation with Ben began to nag at her. The man behind her rammed into her when she failed to follow the usual rhythm of the subway system.
“Sorry.”
“You going or what, lady?”
She stepped out of his way, not wanting to board the train until she figured out what was bothering her. Something related to what Ben said about Cronin. What was it that he had said? That Art had a lot of clients, and it was a long time ago.
But she had never said anything to Ben about ITH being incorporated twenty-five years earlier. She nearly slipped on ice patches three different times as she ran back to his apartment. Despite five minutes of buzzing, no one answered.
Chapter Thirty-Six
H ank Beckman popped his third Advil in as many hours. He felt his eyes beginning to cross from the strain of reading entries on bank statements and deposit slips.
“Okay, Mrs. Ross. If we’ve identified every transaction at issue”-he punched a series of numbers into the calculator-“it looks like you transferred a total of $410,525.62 to Coulton since 2007. You withdrew only $35,000, leaving you with a loss of $375,525.62. Our charges against Coulton will reflect as much, and you might be needed to testify about the transactions and your communications with Coulton should the case proceed to trial.”
“What about the money? When will I get the money back?” Marlene Ross was a well-maintained woman with
