Red Shirt

by A. J. Stewart

  “And then you hung a shingle, went out on your own. You did deals and probably some of them paid off, but then some of them didn’t. But that was an anomaly, it had to be. And then another deal tanked. And you had responsibilities, and you had car payments to make, and a mortgage to pay, so you started using other people’s money to pay your bills. You’d get it back, you knew that, because it had always been that way. Except you didn’t. You kept digging and the hole just got deeper. And deeper. And all because you didn’t really value any of it, because you had never truly earned it.”

  He stayed looking at the horizon, or maybe he was searching for the Long Island shore through the clouds. He remained like that for a good while, and I let him. I had said my piece, even though I hadn’t planned to. Then eventually, Brett spoke.

  “You think you’re so perfect?” he asked the horizon, but I figured it was aimed at me.

  “Not by a long shot. I’ve had my times to be questioned, and I probably will again. But today it isn’t about me. It’s about you. It’s about Coach.”

  Brett snorted. “You think your precious Coach is so perfect.”

  “No man is perfect.”

  “Got that right. He nearly killed a kid, did you know that? He beat a student. Beat him so hard he nearly killed him. And the whole thing was hushed up.”

  I said nothing. I didn’t know if Brett spoke the truth or was just lashing out. I knew for certain that no man was perfect, but I realized that I had always assumed Coach Dunbar was as close as one could get. He had been good to me—better than good. He had saved me when I needed saving, had been a father when my father had failed in that duty so completely, so I had gone on in life assuming that they were both just like that. As if Coach would show the same compassion and understanding in everything he did, and my father would crumple like cheap cardboard. But no man was perfect, and no man was without merit. Even knowing that, I found Brett’s story hard to believe, and even harder to take.

  “You can’t fill the holes in your life with the pieces of someone else’s,” I said. “Only you can make this right. Not just for Coach. For yourself, for your family.”

  Brett kept his eyes on the water and mulled all this over for a time, and then took a deep breath. Unlike his wife, it filled him, and his chest rose with it.

  “What happens now?” he asked.

  “Now you hit rock bottom. Maybe you wallow in it a while, maybe you don’t. I can’t speak to that. But eventually, you pick yourself up and you get on with it. Because when you’re at rock bottom, there’s only one way to look, and that’s up. You can choose to stay down, or you can follow your eyes and head back up. And it’ll be hard. It might cost you everything. But at the end, whatever you have, you’ll know you’ve earned it.”

  We spent a long time watching the water lap on the wide beach, a handful of gulls braving the cold to search for mussels or wait for bread pieces that we didn’t have. Eventually the cold numbed my backside, so I stood to stretch out, and Brett took it as a sign because he stood, too. We turned away from the water and headed toward the lot.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” Brett said as we walked back up the street.

  “Sally will tell you that. He’ll have a plan.”

  “I’m not sure I’m going to like his plan.”

  “I guarantee you won’t. But you’ll do it anyway. You’ll sell off whatever you have to sell off, and you’ll pay back whoever you have to pay back. Even if it takes years.”

  “I don’t have any money coming in.”

  “So get a job. That’s what people do. You still got friends on Wall Street?”

  “It’s a big step back.”

  “No, it’s a step forward, because you have to get your head around the fact that right now, you have nothing. Nothing you think you own is yours. None of it. Not until you pay everyone back. Coach, the other investors, everyone. Including the Kazakhs. How much do you owe them?”

  “I borrowed two hundred fifty kay.”

  “Well add that to the list. Right now you’re less than zero. So from this point on, everything is a step up. Including getting any old job you can.”

  I didn’t say any more because I didn’t think it would help. What I was thinking was that any old job he got on Wall Street would still probably make more money than 99% of people on the planet, so it wasn’t exactly a bed of nails. But I figured all things were relative.

  When we got back to the lot, the Lamborghini and the Jaguar were both gone. The kid who looked like Chachi was waiting by the shingled hut. Brett signed some papers to hand the lease over to some corporation with a forgettable name, and then the kid took us out back and Brett selected an old Ford Taurus to drive us home in. The kid did the paperwork to register the car in Brett’s name, all legitimate like, and then handed him the keys.

  I leaned against the hut and shivered in the cold. I was numb, and I needed some warmth, both physically and metaphorically. I stood in the cold, the breath wafting from my mouth like cigarette smoke, my eyes on the street. I had noticed a black town car, parked across the other side of Route 1. It had Connecticut livery plates. There was no shortage of such cars in the tri-state area, but this one was familiar. Not because of the plates or the black paint, but because there were two guys leaning against it, casually smoking cigarettes, looking across the Old Boston Road at a nondescript used car lot. They didn’t acknowledge my looking at them, but they didn’t seem to be too bothered by it, either.

  I knew from experience that seeing a suspicious car once meant nothing. Lots of people drive cars that don’t suit them or look out of place. Lenny used to drive around Palm Beach in a beat-up Toyota Tacoma truck, which certainly drew the eye among the Rolls Royces and Bentleys. I knew seeing a car a second time at an unrelated location could be put down to coincidence, but I also knew from hard-learned experience that coincidences like that had a funny way of becoming a third sighting, which usually involved that very same car crashing into me, or me getting beaten up, or something else that involved some kind of pain for me. So I did the smart thing. I called Ron back in Palm Beach. It sounded like a hurricane down the phone.

  “Where are you?” I said.

  “The office,” he yelled.

  “It doesn’t sound like the office. Is Lizzy there?”

  “No, not our office,” he said. “It’s a friend’s yacht, it’s called, The Office. We’re sailing just off Lauderdale right now.”

  “Tough work,” I said.

  “You know it.”

  “I have a question.”

  “Of course you do. Hold on, we’re tacking.”

  I heard a harrumph, and then the digital sounds of movement down a cellular line, which now that I thought about it, wasn’t really a line at all. Then Ron came back.

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “I have a car here that may or may not be suspicious. Is there any way to find out who owns it?”

  “You could call Danielle.” I heard the smile in his voice.

  “Yeah, she enjoys it so much when I treat law enforcement databases like my own personal play things. Option two?”

  “Might be able to look up the insurance records and then call them.”

  “How would I do that?”

  “You wouldn’t. Oh, my goodness, it’s a dolphin pod.”

  “What?”

  “Off to starboard, a pod of dolphins. They’re jumping in the air. Amazing!”

  I generally felt okay about my life choices, but right now, freezing in a used car lot in New York, I felt like I had made a wrong turn somewhere. There was no talking at Ron’s end, just the sound of breeze in sails and Ron’s breath. I could picture the water glistening in the sun, and the sea birds circling overhead as dolphins played. It was making me sick.

  “Ron?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Is it urgent?”

  “Semi.”

  “Text me the license plate. Is it New York?”

  “Connecticut livery.”

  “Ah, tha
t will make it a little easier. I’ll make some calls when I get shoreside and I’ll let you know later today.”

  “Thank’s Ron.”

  “Anytime, pal. You coming home soon?”

  “Soon, I hope.”

  I disconnected from Ron and then texted him the license plate of the guys across the street. Brett took the wheel and started up the Taurus, and it spluttered to life. It sounded like a tractor, the kind of vehicle that lived before everything became computerized, the type of car that was all steel and logic, and would run forever, given enough gas and oil.

  He pulled slowly out of the lot and onto the road, and pointed the vehicle north. I looked south, toward where the black town car had been parked.

  It was gone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mrs. Pickering was standing on the door step when we pulled around the driveway in the ancient Taurus. She neither smiled nor frowned, and again I wasn’t sure if she was capable of either expression, or if she was just well-trained. Either way, I reminded myself to never play poker with her.

  We got out and stood at the base of the steps to the door, Mrs. Pickering looking down on us like a school matron.

  “What’s next,” she asked.

  “I’m going to need the keys to the BMW in the garage,” I said.

  “What?” spat Brett. “That’s not a lease. We own that car.”

  I shook my head, and then I looked back up at Mrs. Pickering. She nodded curtly and then pushed the door open.

  “You’d best come in.”

  It was a grand house from the outside. The inside was even more impressive. I had seen my share of big houses in Palm Beach, but there was something about hurricane-proof concrete construction that lacked a certain charm. This house was all charm. It was like a charm offensive. The air felt warm, not hot, as if the thermostat was tailored to the individual person rather than the room, and the lighting from the chandelier that hung in the large entry hall was soft and inviting. There was a staircase that looped around the side of the hall and up to a landing, and on the other side a sitting room with furniture so pristine that it might have arrived from the boutique only minutes earlier.

  I followed Mrs. Pickering through a hall into a large kitchen that led out into a great room that fit the name completely. There was a stone fireplace that was large but not gaudy, and long, rounded sofas covered in sumptuous fabrics that looked far too nice to sit on. Mrs. Pickering swept around a marble-topped peninsula and picked some keys from a bowl.

  “My name is Ellen,” she said, tossing the keys to me.

  “They call me Miami,” I said, and she nodded as if it were the most normal name in the world. Brett stepped into the kitchen, keeping the peninsula between he and his wife.

  “How is Emma supposed to get the girls to school without the BMW?”

  “Who’s Emma?” I asked.

  “The nanny,” he said.

  “You have a nanny?”

  “Of course.”

  I looked at Ellen Pickering. She didn’t strike me as the working type. “I didn’t realize you worked.”

  “I don’t,” she said, without further comment.

  I shrugged. “Well, first of all, you’re probably going to have to let the nanny go.”

  “Are you serious?” said Brett.

  “Brett, I don’t want you to fall into a convulsing mess again, but you really need to face facts here. You’re in deep doo-doo. You get it? You have no more money. Everything you own belongs to someone else now. I’m sorry for the nanny, but maybe you can help her find another job. But as of right now, you can’t afford her.”

  Brett said nothing. Ellen spoke. “It’s that bad.”

  “Yes. You can’t afford the nanny, the cars, the house. None of it.”

  “Is bankruptcy an option?” she asked.

  “No. See, I’m here to make sure I get back the money that a friend of mine,”—I threw a look at Brett—“that a friend of ours invested and Brett lost. But apart from him? There are other investors, there’s the FBI, and there’s a lender of last resort that won’t accept bankruptcy as a solution.”

  “What does that mean?” Ellen asked.

  “It means the bad guys I was talking about earlier. The kinds of guys who when they find out you’ve lost their money, they take it back in body parts. Yours, Brett; yours, Ellen; and even your girls.”

  “Our girls?” I saw Ellen flinch. There was actual facial muscle movement.

  “Yes. And they’re onto you.”

  “They are not,” said Brett.

  “Don’t be so sure. Guys were watching your office this morning. The same guys were watching us at the car lot.”

  “You think they’ll hurt the girls?” asked Ellen.

  “I think they’re ruthless, that’s what I think. So let’s not give them reason to hurt anybody. If you have to sell the BMW, you sell it. If you have to sell your house, you sell it. If you have to move into a studio apartment in Norwalk and share a bed, you do it. Because you can recover from that. The other option is not so easy to come back from.”

  Ellen looked at her husband. I thought she mouthed the words oh, Brett, but no sound came out so I couldn’t be sure.

  “What about school?” she asked me.

  “School? What school?”

  “The girls’ school.”

  “Where do they go to school?”

  “Highfield Academy.”

  I whistled. I didn’t mean to, but it was a fancy all-girls school that included Secretaries of State, CEOs and a good collection of trophy wives among its alumnae.

  “That will have to stop.”

  Ellen nodded. Brett opened his mouth to protest but thought the better of it.

  “We’ve prepaid for the year,” he said.

  “Then I suppose they’re good for the year,” I said. “I can’t imagine the school will give the money back without a fight, and that’s just good money after bad.”

  “And then what?” he said with a distasteful look on his face. “The local middle school?”

  “It was good enough for you and me,” I said.

  “And me,” said Ellen. “We can make it work. These things build character.”

  I nodded. I was warming to her. There’s something about really pragmatic women that makes me think the human species might survive after all.

  “Where will we live?” asked Brett.

  “Somewhere near the station, I would guess. If Brett’s able to get a job back in the city, that’s how he’ll get there. You’re only going to have one car.”

  “I don’t know,” said Brett.

  I spun the BMW keys around my finger like a gunslinger.

  “Look, Brett, you made your bed, now you gotta sleep in it. Like Ellen says, think of it as a character building experience. Lord knows you could do with some. You do the right thing, you can come back from it. Rise from the ashes. The whole feel good story. But you don’t do the right thing? It’ll hurt more.”

  I stepped to the hallway exit and turned back to him.

  “I’ll make sure of it.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I took the BMW back to the lot in Rye and the young guy in the leather jacket told me that Sally had said to pay Kelly Blue Book value for it. He didn’t look happy about that. Buying low and selling high was a used car salesman’s bread and butter, and there was no future in buying at market value. But sales volume was also crucial to the used car salesman, and I figured I had gotten him three cars in a day, so we were about even.

  The wrinkle in my plan was that once I had handed over the keys to the BMW, I didn’t have a vehicle anymore. I was about to walk to the Metro North station and head back to Greenwich when the phone on the guy’s desk rang. It was Sal, and he told me to stay put.

  He came and collected me in the town car. The other town car—the one with the two smokers in it—was nowhere to be seen, despite my constant surveillance. The young driver got out of the front and opened the door for me, which I was qui
te happy to do for myself, and then he shuffled back into the front and sat. We didn’t move.

  “I haven’t eaten. Have you eaten?” Sal asked.

  “No.”

  “I wish it was baseball season,” said Sal. “We could grab a dog.”

  Sal loved baseball, but he never watched it on television. He loved his baseball live, because the one thing he loved better than baseball was ballpark food. He could live on footlong dogs and plastic cups of beer. He was even partial to a pretzel, and those peanuts they brine to within an inch of their lives.

  “Connecticut doesn’t have a major league team,” I said. “They had a minor league team in Bridgeport for a while, the Bluefish, but the city wanted to do something else with the space so they got booted out. Went to North Carolina, I think.”

  “You got anywhere you gotta be?” Sal asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Then I know where to go.”

  He gave the kid in the front the name of a place and the kid headed off like he knew exactly where he was going, but I suspected he had just punched it into the GPS on his phone.

  “So what’s the deal with the cars?” I asked.

  Sally frowned. “Cars?”

  “The Lamborghini. The Jag. They don’t just cancel out a lease, Brett was right about that.”

  “They do if the cars are in an accident and are written off by the insurance company.”

  “Written off? How . . . oh, okay. And then you resell the so-called destroyed cars.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sal said, turning to the window.

  It wasn’t a long ride from Rye into the Bronx. This had been Sally’s town, once upon a time. It was one of the five boroughs that made up the city of New York, but in reality each borough was like its own town. I didn’t know the Bronx well. It wasn’t the kind of place a kid from Connecticut went if he could avoid it, or unless he was looking for some kind of trouble, which I generally wasn’t. Not back then, anyway.

  We stayed off the freeway—the kid said there was some kind of pileup on I-95, so we followed Route 1 down between the botanical gardens and the Bronx Zoo, and then cut across the south side of Fordham University, and then we followed the elevated train line down from there.