Payback

by Mike Lupica

  SIXTY-FOUR

  We sat at the kitchen table. I asked Gina if she wanted some wine. She said red if I had it. I told her I did, and opened a bottle of cabernet that Spike had given me, saying I could break it out the next time I cooked up a steak for him, if I ever did cook up another steak for him.

  “I made it after he was murdered,” Gina Patarelli said, the little flash drive next to my laptop. “But I didn’t really go into it until after you left my apartment.”

  “I thought you didn’t have a laptop,” I said.

  “Betty’s old Dell,” she said.

  “Why did you copy his files?” I said. “You would have had to do it before Eddie showed up at the office, correct?”

  “My boss had just gotten shot on the street where he lived,” she said. “And there’d been a lot of general weirdness going on before that.”

  In her Boston accent, lot came out lawt.

  “What kind of weirdness?”

  “Like I said, he had started to act a little paranoid. Alex, I mean. I asked him one day if he was all right and he said, ‘Never better.’ But it was in that sarcastic way that made you think he meant the opposite.”

  She drank some of her wine.

  “And I thought that maybe if I went through his shit I might finally know what he’d known. Or a lot more than I did.”

  Rosie sat at her feet. My dog didn’t like all strangers. But maybe she sensed the same thing about Gina that I did. That she was real, and good.

  “What changed your mind about me?” I said.

  She looked at me and smiled for the first time since she’d come through the door. She still had a little too much hair and maybe a lot too much hair, and had gone heavier than she needed to on the eye makeup, and lipstick the color of a plum. None of that could hide how pretty she was. And the intelligence in the dark eyes.

  “I come out of a pretty tough neighborhood in Revere,” she said, “before Pop moved us over to Lynn. I have three older brothers and was raised not to take any shit. And the more I kept thinking about it, the more I decided that the reason they thought they could mess with me was because I was a girl.”

  “Happens to me all the time,” I said.

  Then I pointed at the drive and said, “So what you got going there, girl?”

  She smiled again and plugged the drive into the side of my MacBook Air and took me through it, this young woman who sounded as street-smart as Jalen Washington did when he was trying to explain the world of money to me. It somehow made me happy, that the girl from Revere Beach and the street kid from Blue Hill seemed to know as much as the whiz-bang Stanford and Wharton boys.

  Gina Patarelli tried to keep it simple, promising that she wouldn’t take me too deep into the weeds. But the bottom line was that Alex Drysdale, as the general partner of Sale Riche—and the only partner on record—had essentially turned his fund into a trust.

  “In this case,” she said, “you can think of the trust as a will. Wills have beneficiaries. But that’s the thing: There was no wife, no kids. He was an only child and, get this, his dead parents were only children. What’re the odds? And as much money was involved, Alex kept things simple. He dealt with the investors directly. Bottom line, though? The guy hated paperwork, mostly because he didn’t want to read any of it.”

  “No will?” I said.

  “Like I said, the fund was the same as his will. One of the bank lawyers drew it up and he signed off on it.”

  “Who was his lawyer?”

  “He didn’t even have one when he died,” she said. “Before that he went through them like Skittles.” She sighed. “Even smart guys act like incredible dopes sometimes. Starting with this: They think they’re going to live forever, and that they can work out the details later. He was like an old-fashioned bullshitter acting like he was running the whole thing out of his pocket.”

  “Even with big money at stake.”

  “Even with.”

  “So who got the money if something happened to him,” I said, “the way something did?”

  She paused just long enough to make me wait for it.

  “You’re gonna love this,” Gina Patarelli said.

  She waited.

  “Wharton,” she said.

  “Wharton?” I said.

  “Go figure.”

  Fig-ya.

  “He used to talk about that MBA he got there the way guys talked about women they slept with,” she said. “He told me once that it was football that got him into Stanford, but he got himself into Wharton on his own, whether he was the world’s greatest student when he got there or not.”

  “And so they were going to get his money?”

  “He would have changed stuff if he’d ever gotten married,” she said. “Probably would’ve, whether he had a pre-nup or not. But it was still the school the day he died. As far as I know, the only trustee he ever had before this was his old man, who died about nine months ago. Heart attack. Alex put off naming another trustee until Lawton.”

  “But our Wharton guy was still going around shaking down people like my friend, and guys who owned gyms?” I said.

  “He probably tried to keep it from the Alumni Association,” Gina said.

  Her glass was empty. I asked if she were driving. She said she’d taken an Uber. I poured more wine into her glass. Our relationship, clearly, had evolved exponentially across the course of the day. Now we were kicking back over a couple bottles of red and white.

  “Are his investors listed on what you took off the drive?” I said.

  “Every single one of them is a shell company, I checked,” she said. “You know what those are, right?”

  “I’m not a complete idiot about this stuff,” I said.

  She smiled and made a wavy motion with her hand.

  “So he could’ve been fronting for Russians, even if their fingerprints weren’t on the fund,” I said.

  “Maybe so,” she said. “But good luck trying to find out.”

  “How much money are we talking about, by the way?” I said.

  “Ballpark?”

  Ball-pawk.

  “Fifty million, give or take.”

  “All going to Wharton.”

  “That’s fifty before the investors are paid off, provided they do get paid off,” Gina said. “After that, there’s just one question we need to get answered.”

  “You have my undivided attention,” I said.

  Gina Patarelli grinned.

  “Who’s the trustee now that Lawton is dead?” she said.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  Spike came over to pick up Gina and drive her back to Hanover Street to pick up clothes and toiletries and other girl stuff. Then they were going back to his apartment, where she had agreed to stay for the next couple days.

  “You think I’m not safe?” she said.

  “I’d just rather know that you are,” I said.

  “Think of me as a gay superhero,” Spike said, “just with no tights.”

  “To his everlasting chagrin,” I said.

  “We can even go over those files again,” Spike said. “You can ask Sunny. I’m way better with numbers than I used to be.”

  It was after eleven when they left. I told Gina that I had some calls to make in the morning, and would check in with her after I did.

  At the door she said, “I’m sorry I acted like an idiot before.”

  I said, “Now you know how I’ve been feeling lately.”

  Spike kissed me on the cheek.

  “You think the balloon is about to go up?” he said.

  The Americanization of Emily was one of our favorite all-time movies.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I do. Now I just have to figure out where.”

  “And with who.”

  “Whom.”

  He kissed me again. “Even b
etter,” he said.

  They left. I put on my very cool L.L. Bean utility vest and walked Rosie. I looked around for Gled, or his men, and of course they weren’t in sight. When this was over, I would ask him where their stakeout location had been, or if they changed it from day to day, night to night.

  When Rosie had finished her oblations, we went back inside. I locked the door and set the alarm. Spoiled myself, because I deserved it, with a chocolate chip cookie and a glass of milk, before Rosie and I went upstairs to call it a night.

  There was much to do in the morning, starting with a phone call to Wharton, without even knowing to whom I needed to speak about Alex Drysdale’s trust, and if anyone had contacted them about it since his death. Maybe someone up there could complete the refresher course that Gina had started for me, and Jalen before her.

  I still didn’t know everything I wanted or needed to know. But I knew a lot more now than I had before Gina had appeared on my doorstep with her thumb drive.

  Follow the money.

  I was awakened in the night by my phone. I was afraid it might be Spike. The display said that it was 1:15 in the morning and that it was an unknown caller. Rosie was standing at the end of the bed, staring at me.

  “They’re going to kill me,” the voice, female, said.

  I sat up, fully awake now, the only real light in the room coming from my phone.

  “Who is this?”

  “Emily.”

  “Where are you?” I said.

  “A friend’s house, near Taft,” she said, her voice sounding high-pitched, as if about to shatter. I had read somewhere that anxiety affected the throat area that way.

  “Who’s going to kill you?” I said.

  “Who do you think?” she said. “Eddie. He killed them all and now he’s going to kill me.”

  “Why now?”

  “I found out something I wasn’t supposed to know,” she said.

  There was a pause and then she said. “I should have listened to you from the start.”

  Everybody was getting religion late in the church service tonight.

  “They don’t know about this place,” she said. “My friend’s out of town. Please come get me.”

  She gave me the address in Walford. I told her I was on my way.

  Sunny Randall Investigations, I thought. We never close.

  SIXTY-SIX

  I thought about calling Spike, despite the hour. But I didn’t want him to leave Gina. I still trusted that I had backup from Gled and the boys if I needed it, even though I couldn’t spot anybody trailing me on the way out to Walford.

  Whatever Emily Barnes had become—or perhaps had been all along—she was still Lee Farrell’s niece. I’d promised him I’d find out what had happened to her. Now I kept finding out. And would do it one last time now.

  I knew Lee was in Nantucket, chasing down a lead on the Carly Meme case, the lead being that she might be alive and had staged her disappearance.

  “Imagine what it would do for her YouTube channel,” Lee had said.

  But then the world was full of drama queens, and kings, lives played out on social media with moment-by-moment updates. Maybe Emily Barnes, poker queen, had thought her life was some kind of drama. What was the movie about poker? Molly’s Game? Maybe Emily had thought she was playing the Jessica Chastain part. Or that Jessica Chastain should have been playing her.

  Only she had ended up in over her head. Way over.

  He killed them all and now he’s going to kill me.

  The address she’d given me turned out to be a couple miles away from the Taft campus, and the reservoir where Emily had been attacked. Lee had told me once that off-campus housing was scattered all over the town of Walford, almost as if the whole town was the Taft campus.

  Brick Kiln Lane was off Taft Drive, and 44 Brick Kiln was at the end of a cul-de-sac, a fair amount of distance between the house and the ones closest to it. I could see a faint light behind the drawn curtains on the first floor of the house. I parked in the driveway and took one last look behind me for Gled. If they were still with me, they were even better than I had originally thought.

  I had brought the Glock with me. I took it out of my bag as I walked toward the front door of 44 Brick Kiln.

  Yesterday I was lying. Today I’m telling the truth.

  Which was it with Emily Barnes?

  Lying tonight or telling the truth?

  I knocked on the door and waited. No sound from inside. I tried the handle. Locked. If she was afraid for her life, it would be locked.

  I knocked again.

  “Emily?” I said.

  Now I heard her.

  “Sunny?” she said from the other side of the door.

  I heard the bolt being released and saw the handle turning and when the door opened, Vadim had a gun pointed at me.

  Presumably his own this time.

  He motioned me into the front hall and put out his hand and I handed him my gun. Kind of our thing.

  “They are waiting for you,” he said, and motioned me toward the living room to my left.

  Eddie Ross was standing in the middle of the room, wearing what looked like the same suit he’d been wearing that first day in my office. Emily Barnes, legs crossed, wearing an even shorter skirt on her than she’d been wearing at The Carmody and a tight, scoop-necked T-shirt, was on the couch, a champagne flute on the coffee table in front of her.

  Eddie looked at me and shook his head, as if I’d just broken curfew with Mom and Dad’s car.

  “You just wouldn’t get the message,” he said, “even though I did everything except hire a goddamn skywriter.”

  “Stupid bitch,” Emily said to me again.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  A very tall man was leaning against a wall to my right, behind Emily. He also had a gun pointed at me.

  Eddie nodded at the tall man.

  “Boyko thinks that he should be the one who gets to shoot you because you shot him, and he believes that is worse than you biting Vadim.”

  “I could leave,” I said, “and you could work it out among yourselves.”

  “You don’t get away this time,” Eddie said.

  “I intuited that,” I said. I looked at Boyko. “That means I’d already figured that out.”

  “Хуй Tебе!” he said.

  “Probs can figure that out, too,” I said.

  “Let me be of help,” Boyko said. “Fuck you.”

  Keep talking. Keep everybody talking. And hope that the Russian cavalry was out there somewhere. I tried to tell myself I had been in tougher spots than this, but now I was the one lying.

  I looked over at Emily. “You and Eddie make a cute couple,” I said.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she said.

  “We did everything we could not to have to kill you, Sunny Randall,” Ross said. “We thought you would walk away after your friend got his restaurant back, even after poor Alex died.”

  “I might have, Eddie,” I said. “I actually considered it. But then you had to go ahead and shoot poor Matt Dunn, too.”

  Eddie shook his head slowly again, side to side, then sighed.

  “He was just a loose end,” Eddie said, “at the table the night all of us met and this all started. Eventually he started to ask questions.”

  “Why’d you stuff the card in his mouth?”

  He said, “We wanted you to keep thinking this was all about poker.”

  “And not Alex’s fund,” I said.

  “And Kuznetzov, the big Russian, that was just another bluff, right?”

  “The last time I checked, Mr. Kuznetzov was living the life with his latest wife in the Maldives.”

  “Never came to Boston to play poker,” I said.

  “Never been to Boston, far as I know,” Eddie Ross said.

  “S
o you were the one who ordered somebody to shoot at me and my friend Jalen,” I said.

  “Your last warning shots,” Ross said.

  “Fuck all this talking,” Boyko said. “Let’s get out of here and be getting this done.”

  Eddie turned to stare at him.

  “Did I ask you?” he said.

  He turned his attention back to me.

  “We just needed a few more days,” Ross said. “But you just would not leave this shit alone.”

  “I’ve got more questions,” I said.

  “This isn’t the movies,” Eddie said.

  I had my Beretta in my boot. Wasn’t sure if Vadim would have felt it if he’d patted me down. But I knew that if I went for it, Vadim and Boyko would both get their wish.

  “At least answer me this,” I said. “Who’s the trustee now that Lawton’s dead?”

  He smiled at me. “It is of no further concern to you,” he said.

  “Me being the last loose end,” I said.

  “Not for much longer,” Eddie said.

  “Last question,” I said, “I promise.”

  “For fuck’s sake!” Boyko said.

  I ignored him.

  “Did you think Wharton isn’t going to notice that you’re trying to take their money?” I said.

  Something changed then in Eddie Ross’s eyes, something reptilian in them now as he stared at me across the room.

  “To the end,” he said, “you still won’t let shit go. From the start, Alex didn’t understand the problem he’d made for us by bringing you into this.”

  “You’re too kind,” I said.

  Ross nodded at Boyko, who limped toward the front door.

  “Go around back and get the car,” Eddie Ross said. “Enough talking.”

  I hadn’t heard the door open. All I heard now was the sound of the first gunshot that spun Boyko around and put him down before he could raise his own gun.

  Then I saw Gled leading the way into the room, a long gun in his hand.

  Richie Burke was right behind him, yelling for me to get down.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  Vadim had dropped to one knee and started firing in their direction. Richie shot him twice and he fell over backward and was still, his gun still in his hand. I crawled over and took it from him. The room was suddenly thick with the smell of the fired guns, sulfurous and metallic.