Too Lucky to Live

by Annie Hogsett

  Nan, the receptionist, was seated behind that imposing desk and beneath a veritable benediction of light that streamed down from the skylight situated above it. As far as I knew, she’d been sitting there forever. I wasn’t sure they even gave her bathroom breaks.

  She was probably a nice, friendly lady, but it was hard to tell. Like Ivy Martin, Nan was a gatekeeping pro. Part of her job was to impress by intimidation and she needed to have her wits about her. The GG&B client is not to be trifled with and the GG&B attorney is one very busy, don’t-interrupt-me-unless-you-absolutely-have-to human being. That’s a lot for one woman in a suit and faux pearls to cope with.

  “Good morning, Dr. Bennington. And Mrs.—Uh. Alice. It’s very nice to see you. Again.”

  Whoa. Was Nan twinkling? Her small fumble of the Official GG&B Greeting reminded me of good old Mary at the lottery. She obviously appreciated the nuances and ramifications of our visit.

  “Good to see you too, Nan,” I twinkled back. And I meant it. I knew that Nan had been dealing with D.B. for years. As a matter of fact, we were sisters-in-D.B. One could assume he’d been the son of a bitch to her that he is to everyone he considers below his rank.

  I was also sure Nan’d heard many of the details of our shabby “lawyer takes spouse to the cleaners” divorce. GG&B is tight-lipped with outsiders, but a coffee room is a coffee room. People talk. Nan had plenty of personal and general anecdotes to establish what a jerk my former spouse was prone to be. Of that I was sure. And now word had it that the former Mrs. D.B. had hooked herself a sexy, blind, 550 million-dollar buckaroo. Money old D.B. would never see a dime of. How much payback was that?

  “I’ll let Mr. Castillo know you’re here. And, Allie?” She hesitated at the brink of humanity. “That’s a very pretty dress. You look really lovely today.”

  I did, too. I was dressed up in a flowery pink sundress with a modest jacket and a pair of new shoes of a name and a price tag I’d always coveted

  “And—” she hesitated again, “it’s very, very nice to meet you, Dr. Bennington. Very nice.”

  Seeing Tom through Nan’s eyes refreshed my own appreciation. His crispy new white shirt was setting off his delectable tan and my handsome-man alert. One might have worried about the sprinkler system.

  In so many ways, it was a gratifying moment. To make matters even juicier, my lawyer of choice was one of D.B.’s younger, somewhat subordinate partners. He was going to handle the blind trust and other legal considerations. Right under D.B.’s nose.

  Skip Castillo is cute as a bug and ex-football big & tall. Caramel skin, flashing brown eyes, dazzling smile. He’s forever been super good to me. Where D.B. is uptight and snobby, Skip is down-to-earth and egalitarian. He’s ultra-smart but not a brat about it. His specialty is a giant, happy bear hug that makes you feel like you’re the one making his day.

  He loped out to the reception area to claim us, booming, “Allie! Wonderful to see you!” and enveloped me in that XXL squeeze. Next, he managed an unembarrassed and skillful handshake with Tom. After that he hustled us into the office proper and down a long corridor, tactfully guiding Tom and sheltering me, dodging gawkers and well-wishers. At last he shooed us into an elegant, comfortably appointed conference room and closed the door. “Boy, oh boy.” He was beaming. “This is so cool. Tell me all about it.”

  We gave him the short version, which was getting longer every day. The rationale for the ticket purchase. Tom’s prophetic dismay about possible tidal wave/earthquake-size complications. Enumeration of the subsequent incidents of disaster. I didn’t mention the part about my tampering with evidence. The Skipper is an officer of the court, after all. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t turn me in. But if he were ever under oath, this man wouldn’t lie. I approved of that, even though it might not always work in my favor.

  He had called the lottery people and had also made contact with some legal folks who had the rare experience of handling a situation like ours. He thought it would be at least a couple of weeks or so before we’d receive the check. He assured us it would not be the size of a tablecloth, nor would it be presented to us on Public Square. I loved him for saying to Tom, “Wow, I bet everybody freaked when they had to break it to you about the blind trust thing.”

  He also pointed out that Tom’s trust didn’t need to be all that blind or all that locked in.

  “Given that quite a few folks already know you won, it’s not worth all the restrictions. We can set it up so you have more access to the funds. More control.” Neither of those observations made Tom all that happy, but we were on a roll of optimism so he smiled and nodded.

  After we’d spent an hour or so with Skip, working our way through the details, I felt like I had the big picture. The money would come to Tom in a format he’d never even have to hold. The transfer would be electronic. The money would be secure and maintained in a manner that would cause it to generate an obscene amount of income for Tom. For me, too, of course, because I was still figuring to continue cashing in on his ten-million-dollar offer at least once a day for thirty or forty years. Minimum. Even with a generous distribution of coupons, a lot of prosperity was in my future.

  I planned to remind Tom of this as soon as we got back out into the unstuffy world. I was grinning a secret grin, on the inside of my lips, as we made our way down the hall and hugged farewell to Skip. I’d seen nothing of D.B. but I felt a disturbance in The Force that suggested to me he was in hiding, somewhere close by. Fuming wrathfully. We said goodbye to Nan, and she talked to us again.

  “I hope everything went well, Allie,” she beamed.

  “Oh, it was terrific, Nan. I mean, how could you go wrong with Ski—uh, Mr. Castillo?”

  She nodded. “He’s very competent. Everybody here thinks very highly of Mr. Castillo. And, Allie,” she leaned toward me, confidentially, over the polished surface of her presidential desk, “he’s just such a hunk.”

  “Nan,” I responded with as much gravity as I could muster, “you are a connoisseur of quality.”

  Nan blushed up to the roots of her professionally highlighted, honey-blond hair and stole a quick glance at Tom who was waiting, patient and handsome, for me to get on with our day. She twinkled her approval. “You, too, Allie.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Okay. When we came out, all the elevator doors were closed except one and that one had a uniformed guy vacuuming its rug. We were proceeding at a leisurely pace because I was murmuring a once-in-a-lifetime, bonanza, double-coupon, top value offer in Tom’s ear and he was grinning and saying, “Well, that’s a very attractive savings opportunity, Miss. I’d be interested in hearing more. In, say, about a half hour?”

  As we reached the open elevator, the maintenance guy popped out, unplugged the sweeper from an outlet by the door, zapped in its cord, rolled it toward the back of the elevator, held the doors open for us, and—in a welcoming “I-take-great-pride-in-my-work-however-menial” way—said, “All nice and ready for you, folks.”

  Whaddya going to do?

  I shelved my plans for whispering even sweeter sweet nothings to Tom on our way down, and said thank you to the guy.

  We got on.

  The doors whisked shut.

  The guy pulled a gun.

  I could tell it was a spidey moment for Tom, if a second on the too-late side. Maybe it was the way I startled when our friendly maintenance man produced his chunky black weapon. Maybe it was because I hollered, “Shit!” in my best Margo. Or possibly it was that the guy then moved close to Tom and shoved the barrel of the weapon into his ribs.

  He snarled at me, “If anybody gets on and you make a fuss, I’ll kill him. And you, too. And them, too, if I get a chance. I got nothing to lose and twenty million dollars to gain. So shut up and push the garage button.”

  I shut up and pushed it.

  I stood as near as I could to Tom, sucking in deep breaths, trying to
calm down enough not to cry or scream, wanting to comfort him and myself for this last five seconds of our journey together.

  The elevator did not stop even one time.

  I didn’t believe the guy was intending to hurt Tom. He’d take me away and let Tom figure out how to pay the ransom. Tom hadn’t seen him, after all. However, this man who had a nondescript but unlikable appearance—rat brown hair, rat-small brown eyes, squinchy nose and mean mouth, five foot-eight, medium build—had taken no pains to hide himself from me. I knew what that meant. I hoped Tom would figure it out. He could find another use for that twenty million. Which I had planned to earn in the best possible way. In two installments. I blinked back tears, remembering Margo’s parting words.

  “You just found happiness, Al. This is no time to die!”

  The doors slid open to reveal a dank and murky basement vestibule. I stared through misty glass at the ramp leading up and the ramp leading out. Cars passing through had tracked in water from yesterday’s afternoon storm. I made note of the gleam of meager illumination on wet surfaces and the red signs that kept on blinking Park and Exit, as if this were any ordinary day when a person could park or exit and not die.

  The kidnapper yanked me away from Tom, and shoved me out into the gloom. He stepped back onto the elevator, pushed a button, waited for the door to slide back shut and stepped off. At the last moment I heard Tom call out. “Allie!” in a voice so desperate I almost couldn’t recognize it.

  “All you have to do now, young lady,” the guy said, taking my arm and shoving the gun up under my new pink jacket so that only a delicate layer of fabric lay between me and what I assumed had to be a very big slug, “is everything I say. Exactly how I say to do it. And everything will go fine.”

  He favored me with a creepy smile. “ I think maybe you and me could get along good.”

  I was torn between making a scene that would probably cause me to get shot right here in the empty garage—where Tom might at least find me and say goodbye before I died—and going along, hoping for a better chance. Make no mistake. I’d read the “What To Do If You Get Grabbed in a Parking Garage” articles and I knew the common wisdom was: Allie, for godsake, don’t go along. But I was sure if I put up a fight, I’d die right here and now. Almost anything looked like a better chance than that.

  “Look,” I said to the gun guy, “please. You don’t have to—”

  In spite of having a long list of things I hoped he didn’t have to do, I couldn’t come up with a single helpful way to explain them to him. Which was good because that mere “Look” and “Please” caused him to mutter, “Shut your mouth!” and slam the barrel of the gun into my new dress so hard that I could feel the inevitability of a small circular bruise forming on my back. “Perimortem,” as those TV coroners love to say while peering at the victim on the tray. I was realizing right then how much about that word I had so completely not understood.

  My perimortem world had telescoped into a dark, suffocating cavern where the only sounds were my own ragged breathing, the swish of tires on wet concrete, and some slow, heavy footsteps approaching from the dim reaches of way too late.

  The guy I was coming to think of as Rat Man hustled me out of the vestibule and paused to let a black SUV and a red Miata pass us by without even the slightest sideward glance from their drivers.

  I was so dead.

  In my slow-motion moment of glazed desperation, I heard the approaching footsteps getting louder. Closer. Rat Man, distracted, loosened his bony grip on my arm as a big, wide, black security guard came around the corner, walking through his daily routine, checking things out.

  Right after that, in quick succession:

  The guard paused to give Rat Man and me a gently inquiring glance.

  The alarm from the elevator went off, very loud.

  I tore my arm all the way loose, whipped around, and kneed the guy as hard as ever I could, right in the crotch.

  He doubled over, screaming bloody murder and aimed his gun, which was now out in the open and hugely obvious, at me.

  And the security guy shot Rat Man.

  Can everybody say, “Halleluiah?”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  I plopped down hard on a wet curb, giving my rubber knees the reward they’d earned by not dropping me before.

  Maybe twenty seconds later, Tom came flying, cane-first, out of the elevator, calling my name in a gratifyingly panicked way.

  The guard used his crackling walkie-talkie to summon authority, both internal and external, and collapsed onto the curb beside me, clutching his chest.

  Tom located me by the sound of my quavering answer. He groped around until he could put his hands on top of my head. “Allie, thank God,” he breathed and slid down to join us on our curb.

  I leaned against him, osmosis-ing warmth from his closeness, and whispered a heartfelt, “That alarm, Tom. Perfect timing.”

  My kidnapper continued to lie very still on the garage floor. It looked for all the world like Tom’s Mondo had now claimed Number Six. It was hard for me to stir up much sympathy, though. Any sympathy.

  All that, including a shaking fit I couldn’t control and some loud sobbing I’m not ashamed of, was Phase I of the aftermath of my kidnapping and the righteous shooting of the Rat Man whose real name turned out to be Dan.

  Phase II followed with the appearance of three Cleveland police cars, rippling a kaleidoscope of red and blue all around us. Back-up guards from the Arco Building spilled out of the stairwells. There was the arrival and containment of a lot of obstreperous spectators, a number of whom simply wanted to retrieve their cars. And the summoning of an ambulance for Arco Security Officer Otis Johnson.

  As a member of the Cleveland Police Force for twenty-five years, Otis had never fired his gun in the line of duty. “Not once,” he insisted as he rocked back and forth on the pavement. “Not even one goddamn time.”

  Now in his retirement job with Arco Security, he’d walked around a corner and brought Dan all the way down with a single instinctive shot. He wasn’t sorry, not at all. But he was having a reaction that exhibited all the earmarks of a heart attack. I had aspirin in my purse, so I shook one loose and gave it to him. He sucked on it and waited, scared and patient, murmuring, “Not even one damn time” until the huge, square, chartreuse EMS vehicle backed in, in all of its earsplitting, beeping glory. They bundled him onto a stretcher, noted that he’d had his aspirin, loaded him up, and drove him away.

  Otis Johnson saved my life. I’d told him so and thanked him from the bottom of my heart for doing his duty and being wonderful. I’d shushed him when he’d looked at me, wide-eyed, and said, “That was so—I coulda shot you.” Now I was praying he wouldn’t turn out to be more collateral damage from the earthquake ticket.

  Phase III started when Skip rushed out of the elevator, big, healthy, and worried in a reassuring way. He hoisted me in a modified Skip hug, pulled Tom to his feet, and scooped us in like baby ducks or something. I was so glad to see him I cried. Skip, my Momma Duck. Upon further reflection, I was so glad to find myself alive enough to be hugged by Skip and reunited with Tom that I cried some more.

  Skip was, by turns, gentle and soothing to us and outraged at the turn of events. I’d almost stopped noticing that my ratty guy was lying there, bloody, uncovered, and as far as I could tell, unalive. It’s possible to ignore a lot of stuff when you’re in semi-shock.

  But then the elevator doors opened again and Nan burst out, her face twisted with sorrow and fear. I was about to comment to myself, “Wow, I had no idea Nan cared so much,” when she stumbled past me and over to the silent corpse on the parking lot floor. She fell to her knees, oblivious to the effects of a puddle of oily water on her nice suit and stockings, and cried, “Dan. Oh, Dan.” That’s when I learned Dan’s name. And started to understand how we got on his radar in the first place.

  The story
came out, amid stern questioning from the police, Skip, and—after a short while—some of his partners, not including D.B. Almost all the answers I needed were sobbed out by an inconsolable Nan.

  Dan was Nan’s brother. In my humble opinion, Nan and Dan’s parents had not been thinking it forward when they named their kids. And it might have cheered me, earlier on, if I’d known a lot of stuff that came out now.

  Dan had been, to be blunt about it, a most awesome fuck-up.

  In his thirty-one short, tedious, and dim-witted years, he’d almost never held a job for more than six weeks. What’s more, he’d never been out of juvie or prison for more than eighteen months at a stretch since he was fourteen. When he’d told us he had nothing to lose, he was speaking as accurately as he ever had or ever would. Dan was already a Grade A loser.

  The parents were dead, and Nan had been charged with the chore of looking after Dan whenever he wasn’t a guest of the state. He’d moved in with her about six weeks prior, and she’d jiggled the system a small amount to get him a job as a custodian in the Arco.

  It further evolved that the evening after I’d scheduled our Monday-morning Skip appointment, Nan had chatted on the phone with her best friend in the firm who was somebody’s admin. They’d dished it up about me and the blind Mondo guy and the money. How pissed D.B. was bound to be. How I deserved the best. How D.B. deserved the worst. And so on.

  Poor Nan. To me, that sounded like a damn fine conversation. C’mon. Life is hard. I reminisced for a half-second about Margo and me sitting around in her garden with our shoes off and our feet up, knocking back white wine and dishing the dirt like it was our job. What are girlfriends for?