“Yes,” said the man who answered.
“It’s me. It’s Slocum.”
“I know who it is.”
“Have you heard?”
“Have I heard what?”
“About my wife.”
“Suppose you tell me.”
“She’s dead. She died last night. She went off the pier.” Slocum waited for the man to say something. When he didn’t, Slocum said, “You don’t have anything to say? You’re not curious about this? You don’t have a single fucking question?”
“Where should I send flowers?”
“I know you saw Belinda last night. Put the fear of God into her. Did you call Ann? Did you ask her to meet you? Was it you? Did you fucking kill my wife, you fucking son of a bitch?”
“No.” A pause. Then the man asked, “Did you?”
“What? No!”
The man said, “I drove past your place last night, must have been around ten or so. I didn’t see your wife’s car or your truck in the driveway. Maybe you threw her off the pier.”
Slocum blinked. “I was out for just a couple of minutes. When Ann left I tried to follow her, but I didn’t know which way she’d gone and I came home.”
Neither of them spoke for a couple of seconds. Finally, the man said, “Is there anything else?”
“Anything else? Anything else? ”
“Yes. Is there anything else. I’m not a grief counselor. I’m not interested in what happened to your wife. I’m a businessman. You owe me money. When you call me, I expect news on how you’re coming along with that.”
“You’ll get your money.”
“I told your friend she had two days. And that was a day ago. I’m willing to give you a similar deadline.”
“Look, if you could give me some extra time, there’s going to be some money. This wasn’t how I was expecting to pay you back, but Ann… she had life insurance. We just got these policies, so when they pay up, there’ll be more than enough-”
“You owe me money now.”
“Look, it’ll come. And right now, I’m planning a funeral, for Christ’s sake.”
The man at the other end said, “I’m sure your wife told you what she witnessed when she delivered a payment to me down on Canal Street.”
The dead Chinese merchant. The two women in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Yes,” Slocum said.
“He owed money, too.”
“Okay, okay,” Slocum said. “The thing is, in the meantime, I think I may know where the money is.”
“ The money?”
“Garber told Belinda the car didn’t totally burn up. They recovered her purse, and there was no money in it.”
“Go on.”
“I mean, I suppose it could have been somewhere else in the car, like the glove compartment, but I’m thinking, it makes the most sense that if she had the envelope with her, she’d have had it in her purse.”
“Unless,” the man said, “one of the first officers at the scene, one with your sterling ethical code, found it.”
“I’ve worked a lot of accident scenes, and believe me, a cop, rifling through a dead woman’s purse, I don’t see it. I mean, the most you could expect is a few bucks or some credit cards. No one’s expecting to find an envelope with more than sixty grand in it.”
“Then, where is it?”
“Maybe she never intended to deliver it. Maybe she kept it for herself. Her husband’s company’s got financial problems.”
The man was quiet.
“You there?”
“I’m thinking,” the man said. “She called me, earlier that day, left a message. Said she’d run into a problem, was going to be delayed. Maybe the problem was her husband. He saw the money, took it from her.”
“It’s a possibility,” Slocum said.
Several seconds of silence. Then: “I’m going to do you a favor. Consider it a bereavement leave. I’ll see Garber.”
“Okay, but listen, I know you’ll do what you’ve got to do, but just don’t do anything in front of-I mean, the guy’s got a kid.”
“A kid?”
“A daughter, same age as mine. They’re friends.”
“Perfect.”
EIGHTEEN
My father was a good man.
He took pride in his work. He believed in giving 110 percent. He felt that if you treated others with respect, you’d get it in return. He didn’t cut corners. If he bid twenty grand to remodel someone’s kitchen, it was because he believed that’s what the job was worth. For that money, he’d provide quality materials and excellent workmanship. If someone told him they could get someone to do it for fourteen, Dad would say, “If you want a fourteen- thousand-dollar job, then that’s the guy you should go with, and God bless you.” And when those people called him later, wanting him to fix everything the other contractor did wrong, Dad would find a nice way to tell them they’d made their choice, and now they had to live with it.
You couldn’t do an under-the-table job with Dad. People were always taken aback by that. They thought, if they paid in cash, Dad could cut them some slack on the price because he wouldn’t have to declare the income.
“I pay my taxes,” Dad used to say. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m always thrilled about it, but it’s the right thing to do, goddamn it. When I call the cops at one in the morning because someone’s trying to break in to my house, I want them to show up. I don’t want to hear I’m on my own because they’ve had to lay off cops because there’s not enough money in the budget to pay ’em. People not paying their taxes, that hurts all of us. It’s bad for the community.”
It was not a commonly held opinion. Not back then, and not now. But I respected him for it. My father was a principled individual, sometimes to the point of driving my mother and me crazy. But he held to his beliefs. He was no hypocrite.
He would have had a dim view of some of the things I’d done.
I consider myself a pretty law-abiding individual. I don’t rob banks. When I find a lost wallet, I don’t empty it of cash and then pitch it into the garbage. I make sure it gets returned to its rightful owner. I try, within reason, to keep to the speed limit. I signal my turns.
I’ve never killed anyone, or even hurt anyone. A couple of bar fights in my youth, sure. I gave as good as I got, and afterward, we all had a few more drinks and forgot about it.
I’ve never gotten behind the wheel drunk.
And, every year, I’ve filed my return and paid my taxes. Just not all of them.
But, I admit, there have been times over the years when things were slow, when I have participated in the so-called “underground economy.” A few hundred here, a couple of grand there. Usually jobs that did not go through the company. Jobs I did on weekends, on my own time-when I was still working for my father, and since I took over running the company. A deck for someone down the street. Finishing off a basement for the neighbors. A new roof for a buddy’s garage. Jobs that might be too small for the company, but were perfect for me.
