The Last Night Out

by Catherine O'Connell

‘Why are you telling me this now?’ he said quietly.

  I reached out and touched his arm, wanting desperately to make contact with him for the last time, to touch the flesh that had once been my future. ‘Because I think I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Maggie, tell me I didn’t hear you right.’ When my only response was silence, he banged the dashboard so hard the car rocked. It was the closest I’d ever seen him come to violence. ‘Maybe somehow we could reconcile cheating. But a pregnancy? I’d ask you who or why or how, but that doesn’t really matter does it? Not if you’re pregnant.’

  ‘Flynn, I’m sorry. So sorry. How can I ever explain?’ I fought not to cry. I didn’t want him to think I had the gall to expect his sympathy. But the tears started anyway, flowing down my face and spilling onto my dress, making me sorry it was still light out so that the passersby could see inside the car. In a gesture that nearly tore me apart, Flynn rested his head on my shoulder and started crying too.

  ‘Why, Maggie, why?’

  I didn’t know how to answer him. I wasn’t certain of the answer myself. All I knew was that us together as a couple wasn’t enough for me and never had been. That I had never really been in love with him. It wasn’t that I wanted something more, but I wanted something else. The swiftly moving current of middle age had caught me up and I hadn’t been brave enough to break free of its pull. Until this moment. But I could never explain this so he could understand it. The best I could do was rock my former fiancé gently back and forth, saying over and over again, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  FORTY-FOUR

  Suzanne

  Suzanne was watching the news when the doorman called from the lobby.

  ‘Ms Lundgren, there’s a delivery for you here.’

  ‘Thank you, Alvin. Send it up.’

  She turned off the TV and went into the foyer, surprised her pizza had arrived so soon. When she’d placed the order, she’d been told they were running an hour and a half for deliveries and here it was in under an hour. Well, there was no sense in complaining about a pizza arriving sooner than later. She was starving.

  She stood in her doorway and waited, holding enough money in her hand for the pizza and a generous tip. The elevator doors opened and instead of the usual green-capped Parducci’s delivery man, a voluptuous raven-haired girl stepped out carrying a brown shopping bag.

  ‘Suzanne?’ she enquired, looking towards the doorway.

  ‘Yes,’ Suzanne replied cautiously. She’d never had a delivery person address her by her first name, and besides where was Parducci’s signature box? The shopping bag sure didn’t look like it held a pizza. An impulse to slam the door came over her, an impulse she failed to act on. The girl stared at her from dark, unreadable eyes.

  ‘I’m Anna,’ she said with a broad-lipped smile. ‘Vince’s daughter.’ Before Suzanne had a chance to speak, Anna added, ‘My father sent me to get you. He’s at the boat and he wants you to meet him there.’

  Suzanne was stunned speechless. She sized up the young woman standing at her threshold. There was something familiar about her she couldn’t pinpoint, or was that just Vince’s DNA she was seeing? More importantly, what was Vince thinking, sending his daughter over to collect his mistress for a romantic rendezvous? Had he lost his mind? The very notion stretched the limits of sanity. When Suzanne found her voice it was an angry one. ‘Look Anna, I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, but I’m not going anywhere. You can tell your father I’m in for the night.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ the girl implored. ‘My mother knows all about you. She confronted him tonight just before they were supposed to go to the gala. They had a big fight over you and she threw him out of the house. He’s staying on the boat.’

  ‘So why didn’t he come to get me,’ Suzanne asked skeptically. ‘Why would he send you?’

  ‘Daddy thinks my mother’s hired a private detective. He didn’t want to come to your apartment himself in case he’s being followed. He’s afraid my mother is going to take him for every cent. She can be quite a vindictive bitch,’ Anna added.

  Suzanne felt herself boiling with anger. She couldn’t believe Vince had put her on the spot like this. It was weird enough that he had her followed the night of the party, but now sending his daughter to retrieve her like she was some kind of chattel? That was over the top. Really over the top. She was having none of it.

  ‘Anna, it was very nice of you to make the trip here to get me, but you can tell your father if he wants to see me he can call me. I’m in for the night. Goodbye, now.’ Suzanne started to close the door, but the girl reached out and touched her arm.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she pleaded. ‘I promised I’d bring you. Don’t make me let him down. I told him we can be friends. All I care about in the world is my dad’s happiness.’

  Suzanne looked into Anna’s strange pleading eyes. She knew how much the girl meant to Vince, and how hard the collapse of his family would be on him. And she understood only too well his concerns about his wife going after his money. Well, that was his problem and something that he would have to deal with on his own. Then her own finances crept into her mind. The penthouse was tied to him through the loan. If things went the wrong way, could Vince’s wife somehow end up getting her home? Could she sue Suzanne for alienation of affection? There had just been a case in the Tribune where a wife won a million dollars from the girlfriend. Suzanne began to feel panicked. Maybe it was better that she and Vince talk after all.

  ‘All right, I’ll come with you,’ she capitulated. It wasn’t until they were riding down the elevator in silence that Suzanne remembered she’d ordered a pizza. She gave the doorman money to pay for it and told him to share it with the staff.

  ‘My boyfriend’s waiting in the car,’ said Anna. She led Suzanne around the corner to a silver Buick parked in front of an expired meter. Loud music was emanating through the tinted windows. Anna opened the back door for Suzanne and then climbed in front. ‘This is Sal,’ she said, pointing to a dark head hunched behind the wheel.

  ‘Yo,’ he grunted without turning around as he pulled onto Lake Shore Drive. The music was so loud it was virtually impossible to think, so Suzanne asked him to lower it. This time he glanced back at her, and when she saw his face, she thought he looked familiar too. Surely she couldn’t forget a face like his. Then her blood iced her veins as she noticed the heavy gold Rolex and gold bracelet wrapped around his wrist.

  Angie’s taunting words echoed in her brain. I make it a policy to never dance with someone wearing more jewelry than me.

  Now she knew where she had seen him before. At The Overhang. And Anna too. Only Anna had been blonde that night. Warning bells started going off and she decided that she was going to get out of the car at the first opportunity. When they exited the Outer Drive at Belmont, she waited until they stopped for the light and then pulled on the door handle. The warning bells turned to sirens. The door refused to open. It was locked from the outside.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Vince

  Vince stood in his walk-in closet working his bow tie in front of the full-length mirror. Having resigned himself to his fate, he had decided to go with the flow and make the most out of the fundraiser with its bores, bad food, and long speeches. Maybe he could do some business. He tugged at the tie until he achieved the desired result and stood back to admire himself. He really wished Suzanne could see the imposing figure he cut in the penguin suit. Then he buried the thought. It only made her seem that much farther away. He went into the master bathroom where his wife sat at her vanity putting on makeup.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked, pointing at the tie.

  ‘So much work,’ she said, squinting as she applied eyeliner. ‘I don’t know why you don’t just get a tie that’s already done. You make things so difficult.’ Giovanna was immensely relieved that her husband’s earlier foul mood had dissipated. She loved getting dressed up and going to events with rich, important people. With only a high school education,
she was never quite sure she fit in with this crowd, but then again, money was the great equalizer. She wanted Vince to bid on an expensive auction item tonight, to put her that much closer to acceptance in Oakbrook society. She had her eye on a lot that included a week at a villa in Tuscany and a private tour of something called the Uffizi. She wondered if it was a restaurant.

  Knowing his wife would be another half hour with her makeup, Vince went down to the game room and poured himself a vodka at the unfinished bar. He took the drink outside onto the patio where the evening sun had painted the manmade lake a shimmering gold. He had just taken a bracing sip when a movement caught in his peripheral vision. He pivoted to see Kaufman crouched in the bushes, his clothes gray with dirt, his dark curls falling in greasy spirals.

  ‘What in hell are you doing here?’ Vince demanded.

  ‘Hiding from the cops for one,’ he replied, scoping out the yard like an animal checking for predators. ‘You wouldn’t believe what I had to do to get here. Do you mind if we go inside?’

  ‘What the fuck?’ said Vince, opening the sliding door to the game room. The moment they were inside he turned to the carpenter, and demanded, ‘What the hell happened to you last night? I fuckin’ put my ass on the line for you, I put you up at my house, give you money and food, and you go and pull a disappearing act. Well, don’t expect to stay here anymore. I already told Suzanne the truth, so I don’t give a flying fuck if the cops find you now.’

  Kaufman stood at the bar, running his hand along the smooth wood. ‘This was gonna be beautiful,’ he lamented before turning back to Vince. ‘Look, I’m not asking to stay, but I need your help. There are some outstanding warrants on me, and I’ve got to get out of the state. I need more money.’

  ‘Warrants? What do you mean warrants? What kind of warrants?’

  Steven shrugged and held his former employer’s gaze. ‘Assault and bigamy. The charges are bullshit. It’s a long story.’

  ‘Yah. Well, my wife takes forever to get dressed. I got plenty of time.’ He stared at the carpenter with growing anger as he realized he had allowed a man with assault charges to eat and sleep in the same house as his wife and daughter. Vince had always considered himself a good judge of character. Had he made a mistake in Kaufman’s case? He took a good look at Steven, pulled out another glass and filled it with vodka. He handed it over to the bedraggled carpenter. ‘Go ahead,’ said Vince, turning back to stare out the window. ‘I’m all ears.’

  Steven took a measured sip and started to pace. ‘Like I said, those charges against me are a piece of shit. You want the short story or the long story.’

  ‘Short story’ll do. My wife’s not that slow.’

  ‘The short story is I married Meghan, my high school sweetheart, right after graduation. We were way too young and thought we were in love, and I suppose we were – then – but after a few years we realized it was a mistake. We were more like brother and sister than husband and wife. So we decided to get a friendly divorce. No big deal, right? We went to this attorney who told us since we didn’t have any kids it would be easy. The deal was Meghan got the house, which didn’t have much equity in it anyway, and I kept my truck and all my tools. I heard about some work in Manchester, so I signed a bunch of papers, gave her the money for the lawyer and told her to take care of finalizing things. One day she calls me and says, Congratulations. We’re divorced.

  ‘So, now I’m in Manchester working for one of the local contractors who had this hot-looking daughter named Heather. I swear, this chick was nothing but trouble. She starts showing up wherever I’m on site, basically throwing herself at me. Her being the boss’s daughter and all I did my best to avoid her. I mean, who needs that kind of trouble, right?

  ‘Then one day she shows up when I’m alone installing some kitchen cabinets,’ Steven continued, ‘and next thing I know we’re banging on the plywood floor. After that she starts showing up more often, and well … you get the picture. Next thing I know, she’s telling me she’s pregnant and that if her father found out he would beat her senseless and that I had to marry her. I mean, we never even had a date. Just sex at construction sites. And I seriously doubted I was the only one doing her.

  ‘I tell you, I thought about getting in my truck and hauling ass out of there. But my guilt wouldn’t let me do it. So we eloped. Her father didn’t care much for that, but once it was done it was done. The asshole even gave me a raise.

  ‘A few months go past and Heather isn’t getting any fatter. Turns out she lied about being pregnant. She just wanted someone to get her out from under her father’s thumb, and I ended up the stooge. When I found out there wasn’t a baby, I told Heather I wanted out. So I called my ex-wife to find out who handled our divorce because it had been so easy. That’s when the real nightmare began.’

  Steven stopped pacing and downed the better part of the vodka. Vince’s eyes turned towards him, unblinking as he sipped his own drink. ‘I’m still listening,’ he said. Steven resumed his pacing.

  ‘Turns out my divorce was never finalized, because Meghan used the money I gave her to buy a car instead of paying the lawyer. So, shit, here I am with two wives through no fault of my own. I decided to get out of Dodge and deal with the marriages later. I was almost out of Manchester when I got pulled over. Cops put me in handcuffs and threw me in the back of the patrol car.

  ‘When we get to the station, my new father-in-law is there and next thing I know he cold cocks me so hard he nearly broke my jaw. The cops are holding him back and he’s yelling that when he’s through with me, I’m going to wish I looked one-tenth as good as his daughter. Then Heather walks in and if they didn’t tell me it was her, I swear to God I wouldn’t recognize her. Her face looked like it’s been through a meat grinder. I don’t know what happened, but her lip was split wide open and one of her eyes was swollen shut. And she’s telling the cops and her old man I did this to her. It was like she was the guy in Dirty Harry who gets himself beat up and blames Clint Eastwood. Only I was Clint Eastwood.

  ‘And her old man is not the type to listen to explanations. He’s the shoot first, ask questions later type, so I know I’m as good as dead if he ever gets his hands on me. I called Meghan to make my bail, she owed me that much, and the minute I was out I blew town and didn’t look back. It was either my father-in-law or prison and neither looked very appealing.

  ‘That’s the truth. I swear it. I’m not a bad guy. Just the victim of some pretty crappy circumstances. And I wouldn’t be in this huge mess now if you hadn’t asked me to …’ He lowered his voice and looked up the stairs before continuing in a near whisper. ‘… if you hadn’t asked me to follow your friend.’

  Vince chewed over the carpenter’s story. As wild as it was, he had no reason to disbelieve it. Kaufman had always been a straight shooter with him. ‘I may be a fool, but I’ll help you out. How much do you need?’

  ‘Just enough to get me to Colorado and to buy some new tools. I know a guy working around Aspen who says they’re starting to build like crazy around there. The cops have my truck, so I’ll have to take a bus. Can you front me a couple grand?’

  ‘That all?’ said Vince almost as if he meant it. He went back into his office and brought out the strongbox. The first thing he noticed upon opening it was the boat key was no longer sitting atop the stack of hundreds. Which made no sense since it had been there not an hour ago when he made the date with Suzanne. He started opening and closing drawers thinking perhaps he’d absentmindedly put it into the wrong one.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Steven asked.

  ‘Yeah. Just misplaced something.’

  He was still riffling through his desk when his private line rang.

  ‘Hello,’ he barked.

  ‘Hey, I got some good news, bad news, really bad news for you.’ There was no mistaking the nasal voice of Charley Belchek. After telling Suzanne the truth about having her followed, Vince had almost forgotten about his deal with the ex-cop. ‘The good news is I found out who did the
chick in Lincoln Park. The bad is I had to spread a shitload of fertilizer around. Sixty large. You good for it?’

  ‘Of course,’ Vince replied, knowing it probably cost Belchek about half that. But a deal was a deal. And though he didn’t care about getting the cops off Kaufman’s ass anymore, presenting Suzanne with the person who murdered her best friend would make him golden in her eyes.

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ he said to Steven who sat anxiously waiting for the money.

  ‘You talkin’ to me?’

  ‘No, Charley. Got somebody else here. Go ahead.’

  ‘So like I told you,’ Belchek continued, ‘you throw enough fertilizer around and you can grow anything. Me, I start with the prison population first. Usually there’s someone you can buy in exchange for a favor. You know, help out the felon’s family or something like that. Now, I gotta tell ya, from the beginning I was sure it was some shine who did her. Or some spic. But when I wasn’t hearing anything from my usual Afro-American or Latino contacts, I moved to the lighter side of the tracks.

  ‘Turns out there’s a punk named Rico in on a B and E at County. Guess he had this cellie named Joey in on a possession charge. So Joey’s reading the days’ old papers they get to read – they do read, some of them – and he points to a picture and says, ‘I know who did this girl.’ A couple days later Joey’s sprung and that’s that. When Rico gets word about my little incentive, he gets in contact and puts me on to Joey. When I find this Joey, he’s all clammed up until I up the incentive, and then he’s willing to share. Seems he’s got a bit of an H problem.

  ‘Told you spreading the green grows things,’ he added as an aside.

  ‘Can you get to it, Charley? I’ve got to be somewhere within the year,’ Vince nudged.

  ‘Right. So Joey tells me he was with this guy and some broad and they picked up the girl who ended up dead outside some bar. She’s all drunk and Joey smells trouble, so he decides to beat it. But he’s dead certain, the guy did her. Says his buddy’s done some contract work in Lake County, enforcement, debt collection and all, and so snappin’ a neck wouldn’t be nothing for him.’