The Smart Money

by Lia Matera

  I had to make sure he didn’t repeat to the police what he’d just said to me.

  It couldn’t be true, for one thing. Daylight had been waning. Gary had certainly been mistaken. Or he’d been lying.

  Because my papa, Franco Di Palma, would not have run from the scene of an accident.

  6

  After I’d showered and changed my clothes, I telephoned the hospital. A southern-accented voice told me Gary was in “stable condition,” whatever that meant. The woman wouldn’t elaborate.

  I parted my front curtain and stared at my ex-husband’s house, thinking about the year and a half we’d been married: Dropping mescaline in a room with red light bulbs; discussing J. D. Salinger and listening to Leon Russell; going to sleazy dockside bars to prove we’d severed our middle-class roots; opening a “Peace Center” and running off “Peace Letters” on an ancient Gestetner; George Carlin records, Firesign Theater; a group of us skinny-dipping and nearly freezing in Jay Bartoli’s parents’ pool (not a trace of suntan on our goosefleshed bodies); Bartoli propositioning me in the water, showing off his muscles. But Gary had been the smarter man. That was all that mattered to me.

  They’d known about Gary and Kirsten, all our Peace Center friends. I’d run away because I couldn’t face them.

  I closed the musty curtain, flowered damask that had hung here for thirty years, perhaps, with little bright sun to fade it. I had seen what I wanted to see: Gary Gleason’s front door was still slightly ajar.

  I’d have been a fool to pass up an opportunity like that.

  I waited until the squad cars had driven off and the last of the neighbors had gone home. When I was reasonably sure no one was watching, I slipped across the street. I could always say I’d noticed the open door and come like a good neighbor to close it.

  But no one spotted me. I went inside unimpeded.

  My ex-husband’s furnishings were much like his clothes, serviceable but not stylish. His couches and chairs were mismatched, showing signs of wear. There were books and plants in every nook and on every shelf. The place was reasonably tidy, but it had been a while since anyone had vacuumed the rag rugs or dusted the top of the grandfather clock.

  I didn’t know what I was looking for, really. Some memory of Lennart, I guess. If his ghost were anywhere, it would be with the woman who’d lied to him for months while carrying on her affair with my husband.

  I glanced into all the downstairs rooms. The kitchen table was set and a casserole baked in the oven, the timer showing a few minutes left on the cycle. A half-finished square of needlepoint was on the floor near the back door, threads and needle dangling.

  I peeked out at the back porch. The daisy-ringed yard was pleasant but unkempt. A broken clay planter rested on the steep stairs, an azalea beginning to droop in its loose dirt. An empty macramé plant hanger swung from a nail below the rain gutter, a foot-long two-by-two caught in its mesh, thumping against the porch supports.

  Upstairs, in the bottom drawer of Kirsten’s vanity, I found something worth taking. It was a bundle of old letters. A few of them were in Lennart’s handwriting, but most were from Gary. I considered leaving those behind, but decided to take all of them.

  I read them at home that night, with a bottle of vodka beside me. I needed it, too, to control my disgust. Men were such fools, such asses.

  7

  I slid into the parking place in front of my papa’s brontosaurus-sized Lincoln. The black car appeared gray in the fog-dimmed glow of the streetlight across the road.

  There were no lights on in the mayor’s “chalet.” My dashboard clock read 11:48. I’d been drinking for a good long while, reading Kirsten’s goddamned letters.

  I cut my lights and climbed out of the car. It was hard to see the Lincoln’s front bumper in the dim light. It wasn’t mashed, that much was apparent. But a massive car like that wouldn’t show much damage if it broadsided a moose.

  I pulled a towel out of my car. With it, I wiped down most of the Lincoln’s front end. It’s usually blood and fibers that convict hit-and-run drivers.

  Then I groped in the misty darkness, feeling for crumpled metal. I found a few snails gliding along the bumper on a film of dew. And I also found a rough spot. It was slight, just some scratches and depressions near the headlight on the driver’s side, nothing to notify the insurance company about. It probably meant my papa had pulled too far forward trying to maneuver out of a tight parking spot.

  But I climbed back into my convertible—a Mercedes 380SL I’d waited six weeks for—drove forward twenty-five feet, shifted into reverse, and rammed the Lincoln at about twenty miles per hour.

  It was downright painful hearing metal meet metal. The chances of finding a new back bumper for a 380SL here in the outback were slim. But that’s what it was all about: my rear bumper and my papa’s front bumper had to be a matched set.

  In the morning, I’d call and apologize, tell my papa I’d come for a late visit, crumpled his bumper, and gone home, seeing that the house lights were off.

  If he sounded furious with me, I’d be relieved. If he sounded relieved, I didn’t know what the hell I’d do.

  I was about to pull away and go home, when a gray shape squatted beside my door, tapping on my window. I nearly screamed.

  Then I recognized the outline of the rude haircut. I hit the button to lower the window.

  “Some very poor driving, there, Mowgli,” my cousin Hal commented.

  “Don’t scare me like that,” I complained. “And I don’t need a running commentary on the state of my hair.”

  He chuckled. “I’d hate to see you try to pass a field sobriety test right now, Mow—Laura.”

  “I’m very coordinated when I’m drunk, Hal.”

  “I used to think I was too. Till I ended up spending a month in the slammer.”

  “Did you really? Where?”

  “Massachusetts. Here,” he opened the car door. “Move over. I’ll drive. If I can untangle these bumpers.”

  I considered protesting, then slid over.

  Hal eased away from my papa’s Lincoln, listening for falling parts. “You want to leave him a note?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll call him in the morning.”

  “You usually visit him at midnight, Mowgli?”

  “Do you, Hal?”

  Hal fiddled with the stick shift for a moment, and I thought of Lennart, who’d been too inept to work the gears of my old VW bug.

  He pulled away from the curb, remarking, “Nice car. Better than you deserve, if this is typical of your driving.”

  “What are you doing here, anyway? How’d you get here?” His van was history.

  “Walked.”

  “Walked? It must be ten miles.”

  “So, you think your papa tried to run down Gary Gleason?” Hal’s face was saturnine in the pale green glow of dashboard lights. “That’s why you rammed his bumper, isn’t it?”

  “How did you know Gary got hurt?”

  “Heard it on the news.”

  “You don’t have electricity.”

  “I do have a transistor radio.”

  “So you hiked ten miles into town to skulk around your father’s house?”

  He leaned back in the seat, driving in silent enjoyment for a moment. “I hiked in to get to a phone. The hospital says Gleason’s okay.” He smiled mirthlessly. “But I suppose you’ve been phoning every ten minutes—”

  “And pacing the floor with anxiety. Naturally. What were you doing at your father’s house?”

  “Looking for you.”

  “What did you want me for?”

  “Just thought I’d comfort you in your hour of distress. You know, you smell like Saturday night at the drunk tank. That’s interesting.”

  “I’m interesting much of the time, Hal.”

  We stopped at a light, and Hal t
urned to consider me. I’m not sure what he made of me; the light changed.

  When we got to my place, Hal followed me inside.

  He settled himself on my rented camelback couch, and I went upstairs to wash and try to sober up a bit.

  When I came back downstairs, I found him seated at my desk, a decorative little thing fit for a living room, not an office. He was nursing a glass—my glass—of vodka. In his other hand he held one of Kirsten’s letters from Lennart. The expression on his face was arrestingly bitter.

  I strode across the room and snatched the letter away. “Damn you, Hal!”

  “Love letters? Awfully sentimental of you, Mowgli.”

  I frowned at Lennart’s cramped handwriting. The words, I love you dearly—please don’t do this to me, leapt to the eye.

  “Sentimental? I guess so. I broke enough laws to get them. Look, just forget you saw them here, will you?”

  Hal gazed at my stack of borrowed letters. “Broke enough laws,” he repeated thoughtfully. He handed me the glass of vodka. “Tell me about the guy with the soul in his eyes. And I’ll forget I saw the letters.” There was a flicker of irony in his smile.

  “Give me a break, Hal. What do you care?”

  “The whole family’s out to get Gary Gleason all of a sudden. I want to know why. And this soul-eyed guy, he’s got something to do with it.”

  “No one’s ‘out to get’ Gary but me.”

  “Gleason’s been in the hospital twice in the last few years. The first time, my father put him there.”

  “Indirectly. Very indirectly.” Gary had organized a sit-in to block construction of the development that now housed Hal and his cockroaches. The “luxury subdivision” paved over wetlands where egrets bred, and Gary, it seemed, was a great conservationist. Not so my Uncle Henry. Loyal to his land-developer friends, he’d asked the police captain to have the demonstrators removed by force.

  And in Gary’s case, the force had been predictably excessive; cops don’t like public defenders.

  Hal continued, “And now you’re smashing up your car so no one will be able to say your father ran Gary down.”

  “He didn’t! I didn’t! I just …”

  Hal picked up a couple of Kirsten’s letters. “I know someone who’d love to know you’ve got these, Laura.”

  I crossed the room and sank into the couch, swallowing what remained of my vodka. “Christ, I wonder how many people get blackmailed by their own relatives.”

  “Why not? Why not blackmail? Look at our goddamned family, and tell me where you’ll find more greed, more vanity, more acquisitiveness.” Hal ran his fingers through his hair. “So tell me about Soul-eyes.”

  I told him.

  8

  “That’s the story?” Hal sounded disappointed. “You try for months to get this Strindberg guy to cheat on his wife, and the whole time she’s laying your husband?”

  “I’m sorry it’s not more titillating.”

  “So what did Soul-eyes do when he found out about his old lady and Gleason?”

  “Came to me.”

  “And?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you should have let him hang on to his moral superiority.”

  “I was in love with him.”

  Hal shook his head. “No, you weren’t.”

  “What do you know?” Admittedly a lame retort, but I’d had a couple more shots of vodka.

  “Not very damned much. You still haven’t told me how Soul-eyes died, and why everyone in the family is going after Gary Gleason a decade later.”

  An obnoxious buzzing filled the room.

  Hal looked peeved. “Saved by the bell. You expecting company?”

  “At two in the morning?” I parted the curtain behind my couch and strained till I could see my front porch. “It’s Kirsten!”

  I looked at Hal, but no sympathy was forthcoming. He sat at my desk, his arms crossed over his chest, watching me.

  I got up. “Let her in while I put away her letters, will you?”

  Hal glanced at the letters, then looked back at me with something akin to admiration.

  “No speak English? Hal, do you mind?”

  He laughed softly, looking suddenly cheerful. “My pleasure, Mowgli.”

  He rose and crossed into the hallway. I heard him open the front door while I slid Kirsten’s letters into my desk drawer.

  A moment later, Hal ushered her into the living room.

  Kirsten Strindberg looked around the room, then looked at me. Her face was pale, with every indication of recent tears. She clutched a handkerchief in her fist, and used it to push damp bangs off her face.

  I love you dearly—please don’t do this to me. I could feel my stomach knot; I hated her.

  “Gary told me you’d rented this house,” she complained, looking around. “I was going to wait till morning, but I saw your lights on.” She hesitated. “What did Gary say to you out there? I saw him open his eyes and say something to you.”

  My cousin stood in the doorway behind Kirsten. His expression said, So that’s it!

  “I really didn’t hear. One of the firemen thought he said something about having fun at my office party.”

  “Why did you want to talk to Gary tonight?”

  So she’d been wondering about that, had she? Enough to bring her over at two in the morning.

  “Lennart,” I replied.

  Kirsten’s stubborn little mouth puckered, and she swayed on her feet. I felt no sympathy for her.

  Apparently, Hal did. He said sharply, “Offer your guest a drink.”

  Grudgingly, I obeyed.

  Kirsten blinked back tears. “Gary’s all bruised up and he cracked two ribs.”

  Hal stepped up behind her and steered her to the couch. “That’s painful, but it’s not serious,” he consoled her. “I’ve cracked ribs before.”

  I muttered, “Good.”

  His glance left me unwithered. “Get her a drink.”

  “I don’t want one,” Kirsten said. She looked tired, but her posture remained perfect. “What are you doing back in town, Laura?”

  “I grew up here, remember?”

  “But you always said—”

  The buzzer sounded again. Hal bowed. “Shall I get it?”

  I nodded, leaning against the wall. Champagne all afternoon, vodka all night. My brain felt numb, so did my lips and fingers.

  I heard Hal telling someone he’d better wait outside, and I thought, Yes, wait outside, preferably until Monday.

  When my cousin stepped back into the room, he looked unusually grave, even for him. He caught my eye and conveyed some emotion I was too drunk to read. Apology, possibly, or warning. “Some friends you’ve got, Mowgli,” he said quietly.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s a fucking revolver, about two feet long.”

  “What?”

  He nodded. “Stuck into my back, right now.”

  “I must be drunker than I thought.”

  Kirsten sputtered, “Is this a joke?”

  Hal stumbled forward, and for the first time I saw a man standing behind him in the dark hallway. Apparently he’d given my cousin a little push with the barrel of the revolver.

  I shook my head. “It can’t be.”

  The newcomer grinned at me. He was a short man stuffed into tight jeans, his shirt straining at the belly. He had round cheeks that dropped into a double chin, an acned forehead, fleshy lips, and sad brown eyes. His black hair was shoulder-length and thin, showing some scalp on top.

  With Kirsten barking my name, and Hal staring grimly at the gun, I finally sobered up.

  I crossed the room and snatched the revolver out of the man’s hand. “You should know better than to carry around a weapon!”

  The man’s grin turned sheepi
sh, and I heard Hal, behind me, expel his breath.

  I pulled the man into the living room. “Get in here. Jesus! Did anyone see you with that thing?”

  He shook his head. “A guy down at the pier said to keep it for him for a while.”

  “Great. Why don’t you just break into jail, and save the cops some trouble?”

  Hal interjected, “Who is this guy?”

  Kirsten began to hiccough.

  “Don’t you read the papers, Hal?”

  “No. Who the hell—”

  I turned to my cousin. “Henry Di Palma, Jr., meet Wallace Bean.”

  Hal’s jaw dropped. Behind me, I heard Bean snicker.

  I was about to add that Wally was not dangerous, when I remembered that he’d murdered two senators.

  “Here, put this somewhere for me, would you?” I handed Hal the gun, and turned back to my client. “And Wally, don’t you say another goddamned word to me about the gun, how you got it, or what you wanted it for, understand? Not while these people are here.”

  I glanced back to see what Hal had done with the gun, and found him still staring at me, his mouth twisted into a strange half smile. “You waiting for an invitation, Hal? Will you please get that thing out of plain view?”

  For once, Hal’s smile reached his eyes. He opened my desk drawer and dropped the gun in on top of Kirsten’s letters.

  That made four crimes I’d committed within six hours: breaking and entering, theft, tampering with possible evidence of a hit-and-run, and now, concealing what was very likely an unregistered firearm.

  It was hard to believe I’d spent the afternoon charming judges.

  I turned back to my unwelcome guest. “What are you doing here?”

  “I heard that you came back to your hometown.”

  “So?”

  “So I wanted to ask you something.” Bean blushed. Even his ears turned scarlet.

  “What?”

  “It’s private.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Hal said firmly.

  Bean’s expression clouded as he looked at Hal. “Who’s he?”

  “My cousin. Look, Wally, what do you want? It’s late. And I’m too drunk to be your lawyer tonight. Can’t you come to my office in the—”