by Joel Goldman
“Because you might fall in love with him, decide to get married, and end up spending the rest of your life unpacking your suitcase and hoping he comes home vertical and sober. That’s a tough way to live, especially for someone with your history. A lot of agents and their spouses can’t hack it. But Colby is the kind of guy who ups the ante. If he’s edgy, it’s because he lives on the edge. You don’t want to be holding on when he falls off, and I’ve seen enough guys like him to know that sooner or later that’s where he’s headed.”
“I’m not you and I’m not Mom. I don’t give up. If he falls, I’ll catch him.”
“And who will catch you?”
“You,” she said with the wide-eyed smile that never failed to open my heart.
***
Dinner was at Fortune Wok, a Chinese restaurant in a strip center at 143rd and Metcalf in Overland Park. Five years earlier, the owners would have been serving wontons in the middle of a cow pasture. Now they were stoking the appetite of the latest wave of suburban migration for everything wok roasted.
There were too many cities on both sides of the state line for me to keep up. There were forty-plus burgs in five counties, each with a budget and a city council dedicated to high growth, low crime, and good times. Overland Park was one of the biggest, cramming farmland down its throat and regurgitating rooftops so fast that it wouldn’t be long until Denver was just down the street.
Lions Gate, the subdivision where Colby was house hunting, bordered the strip center. I was early, so I drove through its manicured streets, past the clubhouse and the villas on the golf course. I remembered a friend who decided to sell his house and downsize to a villa only to discover that a villa was half the house for twice the money. The houses in Lions Gate were bigger and more expensive than the villas, proving that size mattered but not as much as money. There were no Chevy Impalas in anybody’s driveway.
I circled back to the restaurant, parked, and stopped short of the entrance when I saw Colby sitting in a Lexus two cars down from mine. I tapped on the passenger-side window and let myself in. He was on his cell phone.
“It’s nothing, man. I just needed some air. Call you later,” he said to whomever he was talking to, ?ipping the phone shut. “Don’t you knock?” he asked without looking at me.
“I tapped.”
“Next time, knock and wait. The people I talk to don’t want anyone listening. They play close attention to everything, including the background noise. They know I’m in my car, they hear the door open, and then they start asking a shitload of questions about who opened the door, who got in the car; who got out of the car, how come I let someone get in the car with me while I’m on the phone with them. Crazy shit like that.”
“You should get one of those Do Not Disturb signs the hotels use and hang it on your rearview mirror. Maybe get a bumper sticker that says ‘Undercover FBI Agent driving car he can’t afford.’ “
Colby looked at me and grinned, running his hand across his freshly shaved chin. He’d washed the red out of his eyes with sleep or Visine and was wearing crisp jeans and a black, short-sleeved polo. With his hair brushed back, he was indistinguishable from the thousands of other doctors, lawyers, and accountants who were living large.
“You remember that case we had last spring, the one where the stockbroker husband made a career move to peddling dope and the wife called us and turned him in after she caught him cheating on her?”
“Yeah. Thomas and Jill Rice. He went away and the wife got an emergency divorce.”
“And,” Colby said, laughing and shaking his head, “the wife called the office a few weeks ago and I took the call. Said how much she appreciated that we got rid of her husband for her. Then she says that she got his Lexus in the divorce settlement and did I know anyone at the Bureau who’d be interested in it, that it was her way of showing her gratitude. I told her I’d be interested but I couldn’t afford it. So she says, ‘you don’t know my price.’ “
“She make you a good deal?”
“A helluva deal. Says she doesn’t care about the money. She just wants her ex to know that she sold his car to an FBI agent for next to nothing.”
“Love is a beautiful thing.”
“It’s better looking than you think. I go over to her house to pick up the car and she says her ex was so pissed off that I was buying the car that she’s decided to do the same thing with her house, really make the poor bastard suffer. Says she’s leaving town and wants that to be her going-away present to him. So I figure, what the hell. Even with what’s she’s asking, it’ll stretch me, but I figure I can ?ip it, sell it to someone else, and make a bundle. I just came from her house. It’s a done deal.”
“Sounds like you can’t lose.”
He brushed the soft leather seat with the palm of his hand. “Like you said. Love is a beautiful thing.” He studied me, losing the grin. “You doing okay, Jack?”
“Yeah. Swell. I’m going to see a doctor at KU Hospital. He’ll adjust my vertical and horizontal holds and I’ll be good as new. How’s it going with the Marcellus Pearson case?”
Colby shrugged, looked away. “The usual grind. Run the forensics, run the family, friends, and neighbors. Line up the known bad guys and listen to their bullshit alibis. Hope somebody snitches so we can all declare victory and go home.”
Colby had told me more than once that he thought Ben Yates was a tightass and that Troy was so straight you could stick him through a keyhole. Ammara would struggle with breaking the rules. Colby would look for the chance. I decided to push him, make him decide whether to talk to me about the case.
“Did we pick up Marcellus’s mother?”
“Yeah.”
“Get anything from her?”
“Just a lot of crying about her baby.”
“Who’s Troy looking at? Javy Ordonez? Bodie Grant? Is he still obsessing about a leak from our squad?”
Colby put his hands on the steering wheel, sliding them slowly around its circumference and looking at the instrument panel like it was the first time he’d seen it. His arms tensed, as if he’d rather be fighting the wheel around a hairpin curve than answer my questions. A horn blared behind us, making both of us jump. Colby glanced in his rearview mirror, a smile creasing his face. I turned around to see Wendy waving from her car. Colby waved back, opening his door. I reached for his arm. He pulled away.
“Look, Jack. I can’t talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“Orders. Ben Yates put the lid on it. Troy has him shitting in his pants that there might be a leak, that someone at the Bureau might be involved.”
“I’m not exactly an outsider.”
“You are now. People think you cracked up. No one expects you to come back.”
“Do I look crazy to you?”
My words came out in a staccato rhythm, tripping over another round of tremors.
“Face it, Jack. You’re not right. Stay out of the case before you make things worse for everyone.”
Chapter Eighteen
I hadn’t told Wendy that I’d invited Kate to join us for dinner because I didn’t know how. Though Wendy accepted that our marriage was over, she was loyal to her mother and protective enough of me that she’d welcome a new person in my life with the same open arms she would extend to a carrier of the avian ?u.
Joy had told Wendy that I was having an affair with Kate well before we separated. Wendy confronted me and I told her it wasn’t so, explaining that ours was strictly a professional relationship. Wendy pushed harder, educating me about emotional affairs that stopped short of sexual intimacy but were equally destructive of marriages.
I had more trouble denying that because I fit the profile, remembering again how I’d reacted to Kate when I first saw her in the courtroom and how the word intimate so accurately described the lunches, conversations, and thoughts we’d shared since then. I fell back on a strict interpretation of my marital vows, telling Wendy that whatever our marriage was, it was still a marriage. Whe
n Joy finally left me, I realized how weak my defense had been. Joy was the one who’d been honest and courageous enough to walk away.
Watching Wendy and Colby embrace on the sidewalk, I knew I had to tell her that Kate was joining us. She wouldn’t need to read my micro expressions to know that I was lying if I told her that Kate’s presence was a coincidence.
“Honey, can I talk to you for a minute before we go inside?” She looked at me, then at Colby, raising her eyebrows. “Alone. It will only take a minute.”
Colby nodded and went inside.
“What’s up, Dad?”
“I’m really glad we’re having dinner together.”
“Me too, but I don’t think you have to keep that a secret from Colby.”
My mouth felt dry and my gut started to quiver. Wendy hadn’t seen me shake. I didn’t want to frighten her, but I couldn’t shut the tremors down.
“Listen, I should have told you sooner,” I began, my voice turning to gargles, my chest, shoulders, and arms wobbling.
“Dad, what’s the matter? Is this what Colby was talking about?”
She hugged me, easy at first, then fiercely as if she were doing battle with my demons. The shaking passed and she let go.
“It’s okay, really. I’ve got an appointment with a specialist at KU Hospital.”
“When?”
She made it a demand, not a question.
“Couple of months. That’s as soon as they could get me in unless they get a cancellation.”
“Well, that is bullshit!”
“Bullshit it may be, but it’s all they were serving.”
“Thanks for telling me. I’m going with you to see the doctor.”
“You don’t have to do that, honey.”
“Yes, I do. You stood by me all these years when I stepped in one bucket after another. You may not need me to go to the doctor with you, but I need me to go with you.”
I couldn’t help but smile. There comes a time in the lives of parents and children when their roles reverse, when the child becomes the parent. We had a long way to go before that happened. For now, we would take care of one another.
“I’d like that. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.”
She folded her arms, took a step back, her mouth tight. “Is it about you and Mom?”
I shook my head. “No. Relax. It’s nothing so dramatic. I invited a friend of mine to join us for dinner. I should have told you sooner but it was kind of last minute. I just didn’t want you to be surprised.”
She brightened, smiling and grabbing my wrists. “That’s okay. Who is it?”
The door to the restaurant opened. A familiar voice said, “There you are. I’ve been waiting inside. I was afraid I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Kate stood five feet away. Colby was a step behind, looking over her shoulder. The bell had rung and I couldn’t stop the chime. I held Wendy’s arm, not certain whether she’d attack, retreat, or fall down.
“Sweetheart, say hello to Kate Scranton,” I said.
Wendy stared at Kate, then at me, her mouth changing shapes as she searched for the words she wanted to use. Her eyes filled. She blinked, turning her head away from Kate, looking at me with wide and pained eyes.
“What world are you living in, Dad? How could you do this to Mom and me?”
Before I could answer, she was gone, speed walking to her car without looking back. Colby followed, stopping long enough to ask what had happened.
“What the hell was that about?” he asked.
“I invited Kate Scranton to dinner without telling Wendy in advance.”
“So?”
“So, Wendy’s mother told her that Kate and I are having an affair.”
Colby looked at Kate. “Her? I just met her inside. No wonder she was cross-examining me. You’d have thought she was the mother of the bride, not the stepmother.”
His multiple wedding references threw me. Was it possible that in one sentence he had said not only were he and Wendy getting married but that he believed that Kate and I were also getting married? If so, I had the answer to Wendy’s question. I was living in the Twilight Zone.
“And,” Colby continued, “somehow you thought it would be a good idea to make an ambush introduction of your girlfriend to your daughter before your divorce is final? Man, your brain must be shaking worse than your body. Like I said, you’re not right. Stay out of our case and stay away from Wendy.”
Colby thumped my chest with his index finger to make the point. On another day, I might have grabbed his hand and broken his finger. Instead, I watched both of them leave, not moving until I felt Kate alongside me.
“When I was a kid,” I said, “my buddies and I were convinced that we could cause a train wreck by leaving a penny on the rail, like that was enough to make the whole train jump the tracks. We were so certain it would work we didn’t have the nerve to try. Now I know what it feels like to cause a train wreck.”
Kate put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s not that bad.”
“You’re right. A real train wreck would have been better.”
“C’mon. You made a mistake. You should have told her that you had invited me, but you didn’t. If I was her, I’d be angry, too. Wendy’ll calm down and when she does, you’ll apologize.”
“She’ll never believe we weren’t having an affair.”
“Maybe not. She’ll have to reconcile herself to the past, whatever she believes about it. Then, she’ll have to get used to the future.”
“You think that will be any easier?”
“Depends on how she feels about us having an affair,” she said, kissing me softly.
Her kiss was filled with promise. I made her one of my own.
“By the way,” I said, “Colby says that you were you cross-examining him like the stepmother of the bride. What was that all about?”
Kate gave me a sly smile. “Well, I didn’t think he’d talk to me if he saw me only as a jury consultant, which is how I assumed you would introduce me. I had to put him at ease as quickly as I could. I knew he wouldn’t discuss the murders, but I thought I’d be on safe ground talking about buying a house.”
“And?”
“And I recognized him from your description and introduced myself. I told him I was a friend of yours, that you had invited me to join the three of you for dinner, and that Wendy had mentioned to you that he was considering buying a house out here. He couldn’t wait to tell me about the woman who had turned in her husband and how she was making him such a good deal.”
“That’s what he told me. He thought the whole story was very funny.”
“Really. For such a funny story, he’s a pretty worried secret agent.”
“Undercover agent.”
“Undercover agents are all about secrets. I caught a ?ash of his hidden face in between his grins. I don’t know if it’s buying this house, but he’s losing sleep over something.”
Chapter Nineteen
Kate wanted to try the wok-roasted shrimp and scallops. I wanted to chase after Wendy, apologize, explain, and warn her again about Colby.
“What’s your purpose?” she asked me.
I crimped a scallop between my chopsticks. “She’s my daughter. I’ve got to protect her. Or haven’t you been listening?”
“How do you think that would work out?” Kate asked.
“She’s upset, but I can calm her down and get through to her.”
“Doubtful. When someone is that angry, they can’t hear much of anything, especially an apology. Try combining a premature apology with a warning that she should run away from the man she loves and you violate one of life’s basic rules.”
“What’s that?”
“When you’re in a hole, quit digging,” Kate answered.
“How certain are you that Colby is worried about this house?”
“Pretty certain. Like I’ve told you, context is everything. He only displayed the micro expressions when he talked about the house.�
��
“What did the expressions look like?” I asked.
“His upper eyelids were raised and his lower eyelids were tense. His eyebrows were slightly raised and bunched together. We call it a fear eyebrow.”
“He told me that the house was a stretch for him even at the price he was paying, but he figured he could ?ip it to another buyer and make money on the deal if it turned out that he couldn’t afford it. Maybe that’s why he was so nervous.”
“Now you’re the one defending him,” Kate said. “Nervous, worried, and afraid are variations on a theme, a matter of intensity. If he was truly afraid, his jaw would have dropped open and he would have stretched his lips horizontally back toward his ears. He was past nervous, definitely worried, and not far from being really afraid.”
“How could he keep that much emotion under wraps?”
Kate shrugged. “He’s used to hiding his true self. That’s what an undercover agent does. It’s hard to know from a single micro expression how intense the emotion is. He might be more afraid than I thought.”
“I’ll check it out in the morning.”
“How?”
I sat back in my chair. “I’ll check the county’s records on the ownership and appraisal of the house, then I’ll talk to the wife. The husband is doing his time at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth. I’ll drive up and see him. Shake the bushes, see what comes crawling out.”
“At your peril.”
“I know. Colby will find out what I’m doing, tell Wendy, and my hole will keep getting deeper.”
“You could walk away.”
“You know I can’t.”
“I do.”
“Am I wrong?”
“To love your daughter? To want to protect her from a man that may have crossed to the dark side? No one would argue with that,” Kate said.
“But…”
“But, sometimes you have to get out of the way. The hard part is knowing when.”
“I’ll get out of the way when I know that she’s safe.”
“That’s not wrong but it’s likely to be tricky, maybe dangerous. Because of his undercover work, Colby is used to living with violence and betrayal. Someone like that gets into a tough spot, they’re capable of doing almost anything. I saw a piece of him that he keeps hidden and it frightens me.”
