Payback

by Mike Lupica

  “So you can lose that much,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “Sometimes the trick in poker, once you’ve got a seat at the table, isn’t knowing how to win. It’s knowing how to lose. Sounds like she didn’t.”

  “What if Emily got caught cheating?”

  Spike laughed. “You better not get caught cheating.”

  “Would they beat up a woman?”

  “Even if it was their mother,” Spike said.

  I had taken an Uber home from the house. Spike said he’d drive me home, in case someone had left another envelope.

  Spike took one last look into the back room.

  “I know they call asshole women Karens now,” Spike said. “Can we just call fuckwits like this guy Alexes?”

  “Works for me,” I said.

  I insisted on leaving a hefty tip for Jack. Spike and I were walking to the door when I heard Drysdale’s voice behind me.

  “Leaving so soon?” he said. “The night is young.”

  Spike was ahead of me. He turned around. There was nothing in his eyes that I liked. I casually got between him and Alex Drysdale.

  “Go back to your table, Alex,” I said. “The puppies look as if they might die of heartbreak if you don’t.”

  There was the smirk again. I wondered if he practiced it in a mirror.

  I looked at him and then turned and looked around at Spike’s, which was Drysdale’s now, and was overwhelmed in the moment at how wrong that was.

  And then I turned and slapped Alex Drysdale as hard as I could, the sound like a crack of lightning. Not the punch I wanted to throw. Close enough.

  After I did, I said, “Don’t you touch me like that ever again,” loudly enough to be heard on the Freedom Trail.

  He seemed as stunned by the force of the blow as by the blow itself. I could see his cheek reddening. He started to put a hand up there, then stopped and turned to the room and said, “She’s kidding.”

  “Am I?” I said.

  I could see the two bruisers standing behind him now. But what were they going to do, toss me out onto Marshall Street?

  “You need to leave,” Drysdale said, keeping his voice low.

  “Why in the world would I want to stay?” I said, and then followed Spike out to the sidewalk.

  “What the hell was that?” he said.

  “Better me than you,” I said.

  “How’d it feel?” Spike said.

  I smiled.

  “I’m much too refined to say.”

  “Since when?” Spike said.

  SEVENTEEN

  I spoke to Lee when I got home about what I had discovered at Emily’s house.

  “Could she have been hiding that stuff for a friend?” he said.

  “The kind of friend who just basically stole ten thousand dollars off her mom’s card,” I said.

  “Maybe I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.”

  “You’re her uncle, not her roommate,” I said.

  “I’m also a detective.”

  “When you were with her,” I said, “you were an uncle.”

  “Maybe trying too hard to be the funny one.”

  “She ever mention poker to you?”

  “Never,” he said.

  “Nevertheless,” I said.

  “Losing the money at cards would explain a lot,” Lee said.

  “And she didn’t want to come to you for it.”

  “Or she owes more than ten grand,” he said. “And is in a lot more trouble than we think.”

  He said he was going to take a ride out to Taft himself, maybe tomorrow afternoon, and did I want to join him? I told him Spike’s situation was going to have me jammed up all day and likely into the night, but that we’d touch base at some point. He said he’d call me if he found out anything more.

  “A card cheat?” he said.

  “What are the odds?” I said.

  I couldn’t make another trip to Taft because I had decided to spend all day tomorrow, and into the night, following Alex Drysdale. When all else failed with sophisticated modern detecting, trail somebody.

  Something else that was in all the manuals.

  EIGHTEEN

  I knew, just because Drysdale had told us often enough at Spike’s, that he lived at the Archer Residences on Temple Street in Beacon Hill. It was close enough that I could have walked there from River Street Place, but I needed my car, which I had parked halfway up from the block by seven-thirty the next morning.

  The Archer was once two buildings owned by Suffolk University, but now had become one of the tonier condominium complexes in the Back Bay. Drysdale, who talked about the place as if it were a miniature version of Versailles, owned a two-story penthouse suite that he had once described as being maybe the greatest bachelor pad in Boston history.

  “Pad?” I’d said at the time.

  He’d winked and said, “Least I was polite enough not to say ‘fuck pad.’”

  There was a fountain out front, and a circular cobblestone courtyard in case you had gotten disoriented and forgotten you actually were in Beacon Hill. I saw a black Mercedes pull into the driveway at a few minutes before eight o’clock and Drysdale came walking through the double doors about ten minutes later. One of the bruisers from last night, one of the two who had bounced Spike around, got out from behind the wheel and opened the back door. He then pulled the car out onto Temple. No reason for them to notice my car, or care about it. I followed them all the way to One Financial Center.

  I wasn’t entirely sure of what I hoped to accomplish. But as pleasurable as slapping Drysdale had been, I needed to be in motion, needed to feel as if I had some control of the action. It meant doing something more than talking to his former partner, or letting Rita Fiore do some legwork for me, or having some prints run. Skinny Suit had come to my office to warn me off. Somebody had left that picture of my father at the front door of my home. The French, as my father liked to say, had an expression for what I was feeling today.

  Fuck ’em.

  When the Mercedes pulled away, I miraculously found a metered parking space on the other side of the street from One Financial, one that afforded me a full view of the building’s front entrance.

  I prepared to wait, as long as it took. I had brought KIND bars, bottled water, an apple. I had brought my still-home-delivered Globe with me. I had brought along a book of Georgia O’Keeffe’s watercolors. I had a new Joe Ide audiobook on my phone. I tried to remember the last time I had been on a stakeout and could not.

  At eleven-thirty, the Mercedes was back. Drysdale came out. The bruisers drove him to the Equinox gym on Franklin Street. Drysdale must have had a locker there, because he had carried a gym bag with him out of One Financial, but had not had one with him when he’d come out of The Archer. Or maybe he kept one in the car. Wherever he kept his workout clothes, he stayed at the gym for an hour. From there he went to the Central Wharf Co., a restaurant on Milk Street. There was a drop-dead gorgeous woman waiting for him out front, light-skinned but African American, wearing jeans, a stand-up-collar blazer I knew came from Rag & Bone, a bag with dg in silver letters on the outside. Dolce & Gabbana, that bitch. I bet no one had ever mom-ed her. She pointed at her watch when Drysdale was out of the car. He made a don’t-shoot gesture with his hands, hugged and kissed her, then grabbed her ass for good measure. I wondered how he even got a good grip. She laughed and slapped his hand.

  They came back out at two o’clock. I used to have the tuna tacos there when Richie would occasionally bring me for lunch. Today lunch for me was a second KIND bar. They finally came outside. He grabbed her ass again. She grabbed his back. He laughed. She laughed. The Mercedes took them back to the Archer Residences for what was most certainly a matinee. When Drysdale came outside an hour later, the Mercedes took him back to his office, where he stayed until six o’clock.


  Then I was back on Temple Street in front of The Archer. I thought about Richie while I waited. Then Jesse. I thought about my marriage to Richie and how happy I had been until I wasn’t. And why I wasn’t. Not for the first time, I tried to imagine myself married to Jesse. He was easier than Richie, I knew that. Not less complicated. Probably more so when I really thought about it, with more sadness to him, and even darkness, so much of it tied to his drinking, whether or not he was sober, as he was now. I didn’t love him more than I loved Richie. But for now, being with Jesse was easier, perhaps because he seemed quite content for us to continue on with things the way they were indefinitely.

  But was I?

  Or did I want more, and wasn’t admitting that to myself?

  Or less?

  Fuckety fuck.

  I could ask Dr. Silverman tomorrow, if today ever actually ended. I drank some water and finally ate my apple. I thought about Emily now, weighing what I thought I’d known about her against what I’d learned. I tried to imagine someone losing enough money playing cards that she had to steal from her mother to pay it. Or maybe the loss had led her to cheat to break even, even knowing the inherent risks, whether you were playing for a thousand dollars or ten thousand or a million.

  I wondered if it was a form of sexism, or reverse sexism, or something else, not to be able to picture a beautiful young woman, which Emily certainly was, being a poker player at all.

  Something else I could ask Susan Silverman, who pretty much knew everything.

  The Mercedes hadn’t come back. It gave me time to run over to the parking garage two doors down and shamelessly flirt with the attendant so he’d let me use the bathroom. I’d done the same with a garage on Milk Street while Drysdale was at lunch. Spike was watching Rosie today. She’d probably never had a full bladder the whole day. My life was often less glamorous than the Duchess of Cambridge’s.

  I got back in the car and looked at Georgia O’Keeffe’s watercolors and finally snapped myself out of my reverie as the black Mercedes pulled past me and back into the courtyard. Then Drysdale came through the doors and got back inside the Mercedes, and I was once again following them down Temple Street at a safe distance, determined to go the distance, even if they were on their way to the Berkshires.

  This time the Mercedes dropped him at an impressive old brownstone on the river side of the Comm Ave walking mall, a four-story town house that looked even more expensive than the ones on either side of it. I was vaguely aware that the writer David McCullough had once had an apartment around here somewhere or perhaps still did, but couldn’t remember exactly where it was.

  The Mercedes pulled away. Fuckety fuck. He was going to be here awhile, which meant so was I.

  I was starting to nod off when I saw that the Mercedes was back. It was five minutes after eleven o’clock when Drysdale came walking down the front steps, smiling, chatting with the guy in the skinny suit who’d come to my office. He had been inside since eight.

  It wasn’t nearly as noteworthy as the fact that when the door opened again, Emily Barnes came walking down the steps behind them.

  NINETEEN

  I sat in my car, on the opposite side of Commonwealth, as I watched Drysdale get back into the Mercedes, which headed west for a block before making a left turn and passing right by me.

  I knew where he lived and worked and where he’d eaten lunch today and that I could find him most nights at Spike’s. But Emily was right across the street, checking her phone, looking around as if waiting for her own ride. She wore a cropped blazer and jeans and Golden Goose sneakers, ones that went for at least five hundred a pair. I could see the huge star on the side even from where I sat.

  Wait for her to be picked up, by an Uber or by the boyfriend, or go talk to her right now?

  I got out of my car and called out to her as I started across Commonwealth.

  When she saw it was me, she took off.

  “Emily!” I said, running after her. “I just want to talk!”

  I was wearing a pair of cute slip-ons. Very comfortable. Not made for the finishing kick of the Marathon. I had actually been doing a lot of running lately, distance and intervals. Not in my Toms. I was fast. She was a lot faster.

  Another thing to hate about college girls.

  She crossed Clarendon, heading for the park, had already put more distance between us as she caught a green light at Berkeley. I was still at Dartmouth, and had to stop when I heard the blare of a car horn, heard myself being cursed at through open windows as the car went past me before I was in motion again.

  I saw her look back over her shoulder to see if I was gaining on her when she had to wait now for a light at Arlington. Then she was on her way across the street and into the Public Garden, raising her hand to her ear and leaving it there, obviously talking on her phone. Probably to arrange a new pickup location. Uber or Lyft or perhaps the red Mazda that had been her ride away from Lee’s apartment that day. It didn’t matter. I was going to lose her if I couldn’t catch up with her. I remembered chasing a woman named Lisa Morneau up River Street Place one night when she was headed for the park. Never caught up with her, either. She later ended up dead.

  Emily Barnes was flying across the bridge over the Swan Boat lagoon, then angling toward Boylston, when I gave up, turned, and walked back to where I’d left my car, already feeling the pain in my feet, thinking:

  Nice running, Grandma.

  TWENTY

  That building on Comm Ave is owned by an LLC,” Lee Farrell said.

  Spike grinned as he turned to me.

  “That’s a limited liability corporation,” he said.

  I told him I knew stuff like that from watching Billions.

  The three of us were at my kitchen table at nine the next morning. By now I had filled them in about my adventures the night before, all the way until I chased Emily and finally lost her in the park.

  “She ran cross-country in high school,” Lee said, “if that’s any consolation to you.”

  “And, let’s face it,” Spike said, “everybody loses a step eventually.”

  “They had to be there for the same poker game,” Lee said. “Nothing else makes sense.”

  “Very little makes sense at the moment,” I said.

  “Except that my world just collided with yours,” Spike said to Lee.

  I’d made a pot of coffee this morning, abandoning Mr. Keurig. I poured more for everybody. When I sat back down I said to Lee, “So there’s no name on the lease?”

  He shook his head.

  “I ran the address through Records Management,” he said. “Commonwealth Mall LLC owns the building. I could have gone deeper with the Regional Intelligence Center. But that would have started a paper trail that would have made me explain why I was doing a deep dive on something not attached to an active investigation. Which this isn’t.”

  “Missing person?” I said.

  “Not if you saw her on the street,” Lee said.

  “Maybe whoever was hosting the game, if there was a game, just rents the place,” Spike said.

  “From an owner who wants his identity kept private,” I said.

  “I’m guessing foreign owner,” Lee said.

  Spike said, “Makes sense. I read this piece in the Times about how these rich foreign guys love LLCs because it’s one of the ways they can launder money.” He grinned. “One of many.”

  “You told me you thought the guy who came to your office might be from somewhere else,” Lee said to me.

  “I told you, it was something about the way he spoke,” I said. “I just felt as if English might be his second language.

  “There were just a couple little things that hit my ear wrong when I thought about it afterward,” I said. “It wasn’t just that I thought there was some kind of accent buried there, like with all those Aussies and Brits on TV shows. It was that h
is English sounded a tiny bit off.”

  “Maybe Drysdale is fronting for somebody who doesn’t want his identity known,” Spike said.

  “Maybe even the guy who came to your office,” Lee said.

  Spike put his mug down hard.

  “What’s Drysdale into?” he said. “Other than me, of course.”

  “It could be nothing more sinister than a poker game,” I said.

  “But if these guys are high rollers,” Lee said, “how did my niece get into the game?”

  “Maybe she’s a play-ah,” Spike said.

  “And maybe she didn’t get beat up because of a debt,” Lee said. “Maybe it was because she got caught cheating.”

  “Or maybe the ten thousand was the vig,” Spike said. He grinned again as he turned to me. “You know what the vig is, correct?”

  “My ex-father-in-law is a legendary loan shark,” I said.

  “And then they just turn around and let her back into the game?” Lee said.

  I saw him check his watch.

  “I know some heavy players,” Spike said. “I’ll ask around. Maybe they’ve been in games with Drysdale. Or Emily. Or both of them.”

  “Be nice to know whose game that was last night,” I said. “And what the stakes were.”

  “And who Drysdale’s friend is,” Lee said. “Send me the picture you took of him. If I get a chance later I’ll run it through facial recognition.”

  My phone was on the table. I sent Lee the picture.

  “Well,” Spike said, “we’ve put the band back together, haven’t we?”

  Lee gave him a blank stare.

  “I was never in the band,” he said.

  I patted him on the arm. “Well, you are now, sweetie,” I said.

  He said he was going to keep trying Emily’s phone, and asked if I would do the same. I told him she had her chance to talk to me last night, so I wasn’t hopeful that she’d take my call.