But I had to remind myself that I was no longer the rainmaker I used to be. Maggie and Martin worked hard to pull in cases, and as their associate I had to focus on whatever case they wanted.
There was solace in being a soldier, too. In my former job at Baltimore & Brown, I was responsible for shepherding nearly all the legal work of a large media conglomerate, and after a while the responsibility had overwhelmed me.
My phone buzzed. It was Theo. “Can you go house-hunting with me tonight?” he asked.
I felt a warm flush of flattery. Theo’s lease was up, and he had decided it was time to buy a house and leave behind the rented apartment he’d occupied since quitting college. But so far, he’d been doing this mostly on his own.
“I’d love to.”
“Meet me in Bucktown in an hour?” He named an address in a neighborhood that had been gentrified in years of late but still kept its youthful edge. It sounded perfect. Theo, after all, was a big, gorgeous and decidedly edgy young man with ribbons of tattoos that snaked up his arms and seemed to brush at the tips of his hair, which hung to his shoulders.
“I’ll be there.”
The Bucktown condo was huge—four bedrooms with a modern kitchen stocked with top-of-the-line appliances, three balconies, two fireplaces and a tub in the master bath that could fit a family of five. But Theo kept pursing his lips as we followed the real-estate agent around the place, narrowing his eyes in the way that he did when he was thinking hard about something.
“It’s not right,” he said.
At the next home, I thought we had it. The floors were wide-planked, the feel was casual but cool. It had a game room, which Theo and his friends would love. I could see Theo’s shoes in the hallway, his jeans on the bedroom floor.
But then we saw the “outside space,” which was a metal balcony overlooking the Kennedy Expressway. “Nope,” he said.
The next place, near the Museum of Contemporary Art, had a striking view of Lake Michigan, its perimeter newly frozen like white crust. Theo shook his head again. “It’s just not right for us.”
I blinked a few times. Us? The word was thrilling. “It doesn’t matter if it’s right for me. What matters is if it feels good to you.”
He turned to me. His hand brushed my collarbone, my curls, then briefly touched my cheek. “It has to be good for you, too.”
Theo was discouraged going into the fourth stop, a three-bedroom condo near the Green Door Tavern that had once been a warehouse. But then we walked through the door and saw the raw, wood floors just like Theo wanted. Then we moved farther inside, gasping at the two-story vaulted ceiling, growing more and more excited. The bedrooms were spacious. The bathroom, with its intricately tiled circle tub, made me sigh. The real-estate agent excused herself, ostensibly to take a phone call, but I knew she’d seen our enthusiasm. She was giving us time to stroll some more, to think, to discuss.
I want you to fall in love with me.
I want you to fall in love with me.
I want you to fall in love with me.
That was my internal chant, my mantra, that night. I couldn’t believe I’d found myself here—in love again. It’s not that I didn’t think it would ever happen. I just thought (and I mean I really thought I knew) that my heart needed a while before it could bear weight again. Before it could hold someone there. But now, I wanted Theo. I wanted him there.
And I was scared. He’d said things, lots of things, like, Everyone who knows us tells me we should date for a long time.... You’re like my best friend.... You’re one of the most wonderful people I know.... And he would kiss me with that lush, greedy mouth. After some time, he would slow, then pull back to look into my eyes and it felt, in those moments, like he could see into every cell of me, into everything thought, hidden or not. He had me in those moments. He owned me.
I want you to fall in love with me.
We went into the kitchen, which bore taupe-and- white granite that gleamed, and brand-new appliances. I sat on the kitchen counter. “What do you think?” I asked Theo.
He walked over to me, nudged my legs apart and placed himself between them, his face close to mine. “I think this is it, gorgeous.”
We stared at each other.
Even though I’d been muttering “love you” to him when he couldn’t hear, I was only rehearsing the words. There was hesitation about getting the sentiment returned, and there was also the fact that I wasn’t sure it was a correct statement. I wasn’t sure I recalled what it felt like to fall in love, to be certain.
But at that moment, I remembered.
“I think it is, too,” I said.
Even though I didn’t say anything more, I was sure then of our place in the world. I thought that life could only keep moving one way—upward, and in the direction of good.
4
His office behind the restaurant was much nicer than the restaurant itself. Back here, in his managerial quarters, he had brocade couches and tufted leather chairs. The desk was from the 1800s and it was built to last. Just like him. That’s what his father had always told him, and unlike his younger brother, Vincente, he’d always believed their padre. Still, it pleased him to look around, to see what he’d created, what he was entitled to.
José Ramon sat at the desk now and took in his office. With its carved pocket doors, collection of Mexican art (including one Diego Rivera), and high-tech audio and visual equipment, the luxurious room was second only to his private residences. He hoarded such places, because if one showed too much luxury, he’d learned, people started asking questions. His competition, for example. The government, certainly. The only people to whom he could show the luxury he required, and had acquired, were the few women he took home. He liked best those women who could handle it—who could step into that luxury and not be impressed by it. Or at least not show it—but who could appreciate it. That was the type of women he wanted. They were hard to find.
But he wouldn’t worry about that now. Now, he was worried about the thing that would eventually get him those women. Money.
It fucking killed him that the wealth his family had amassed had been “invested” into a legitimate business—that’s what it looked like anyway, a legitimate business—and now, what the fuck was happening? Where the fuck was the return on that money? And if there was no return—the way he’d been promised—where the fuck was all the money that was supposed to be in that goddamned business?
José slammed his hand on the table and squeezed his eyes shut. But it didn’t help. He could still envision Vincente as a little boy who had always wanted to be like his brother. Except that “Vince,” as he called himself now, was smarter. That’s why he had eventually gotten his MBA after his father sent the boys to the U.S. from Mexico. And that was supposed to be why they could trust Vincente to find legitimate investments when they needed them. But Vincente had fucked it up. That was becoming clear.
He slammed his hand again, right as the door opened. “I told you never to just walk in,” he barked at the new restaurant general manager.
The man didn’t respond. Instead, he left, closed the door, knocked and then reentered.
“What?” José said in a demanding bark.
“The eggs that were delivered are spoiled. We’ll need more to get through the week,” the manager said with urgency.
He glared. This restaurant was not his identity. It was a front, like so many others the family had. He crooked his finger at the man, who came closer. Then he did it once more, slowly bending and extending and bending his finger in a methodical way. When the manager was close to the desk, he spoke in a low tone, threateningly. “If you can’t handle these issues, someone else will,” he said simply. “Do you get that?”
The manager had the audacity to return the glare before he backed out of the room.
As the door closed, he slammed his hand flat on the desk once more. It disgusted him that he continued to have such discussions with his underlings. But a “discussion” was not required with th
e people running that business, a business that was running off with his family’s money. No, something much, much more than discussion was necessary.
5
“Ms. Granger? Mr. Reynolds will see you now.”
I slid carefully out of my seat and smoothed the front of my pencil skirt. I undid one more button of my shirt to allow ample cleavage to show and made sure the tiny camera in my necklace was still pointing forward. After one last check in the mirror, I strutted my stuff across the bank lobby.
All right, Izzy, I thought to myself. Let’s do this.
Mayburn did a lot of work for banks. Sometimes the cases he worked were huge and complex—big-scale bank fraud and money laundering and such—requiring me to do something dangerous like invade someone’s home computer to download information. (Naturally, Mayburn always undersold such jobs, letting me figure out for myself—usually right when I was about to get caught—how much bigger and potentially threatening the situation was than I’d thought.)
Tatum Reynolds’s office was about as typical as they came. One Plexiglas wall looked onto the bank. The rest of the walls were gray, the carpet blue, the desk and bookshelves black metal. Mayburn had told me the bank hired him to prove Reynolds was hoarding enrollment incentives that were supposed to be given to all new clients. When a number of his clients complained they never saw the money they were promised, the bank suspected that Tatum was depositing the money into his own bank account. However, the transactions couldn’t be proven, and after watching him, Mayburn and the bank came to believe that he might be taking the money and then giving large sums to “special” clients. All the “special” clients were pretty women with almost no money to deposit into their new account. That’s where I came in. I was supposed to open an account with fifty bucks. If he failed to give me the hundred-dollar incentive, we had him. If he tried to offer me more, we had him. For once, Mayburn might have been right. This was going to be easy.
“Ms. Granger, welcome to Chicagoland Bank and Trust,” Reynolds said. “I understand you want to open an account?”
He was thin and pale and much younger than I anticipated. His voice had a squeak to it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say this guy was a teenager, not a late-twenties, thieving bank manager. He had a bowl cut, for goodness’ sake.
“Yeah, I want a checking account. One of those online ones,” I answered, affecting a nasally voice. Was the fake voice a part of the undercover assignment? No. But I couldn’t help myself.
“We can certainly help you with that.” He gave me a crooked smile.
For the next twenty minutes, I listened to Reynolds give me options on checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards and investments, but no mention of the cash incentive. I did my best to play my part and noted with pleasure that he glanced down my blouse, where the necklace hung, quite a few times. He even blushed a little when I laughed at one of his jokes. I handed him the ID that Mayburn had given me and started signing the paperwork.
“You know,” he mumbled, “our bank offers an incentive program.”
I lowered the pen slowly. “Really? What’s that mean?”
“Well…” He cleared his throat. “There’s this really nice restaurant around the corner. It’s a French place called Tru.”
Tru was one of the most touted and expensive restaurants in Chicago. Where was this going?
“We could…ah…go there,” he stammered, his eyes firmly planted on his left cuff link.
I blinked at him. Did he just ask me out on a date?
“You see,” he continued, “our bank offers you two hundred dollars toward a dinner at Tru for opening an account with us. It’s impossible to get a reservation, but I know a guy who lets me in whenever I want.”
I know a guy. Such a Chicago thing to say. The city had a strange but wonderful pride that involved being able to help others. Sometimes this was meant to make the helper feel better about himself. Sometimes it was more altruistic. But almost always the phrase I got a guy (or some variation thereof) came into play as the person offered a connection to make it all better—a plumber who would show up in an hour and stop your basement from flooding; the cop who would arrive in minutes, assess the situation and then leave if you didn’t want to go through the hassle of a police report; a doctor who normally had a three-month waiting list, but who would get you in as a special favor to the one who said I got a guy.
“So if you wanted the incentive,” Tatum said, “I could get you in.”
Wow. Tatum was using the incentive money not just to impress women, but also to pay for a date? At Tru? Thank God the necklace cam was getting all of this or no one would believe me. (And thankfully Mayburn and my dad would be paying the tab on this job if they wanted to keep it going, because two hundred dollars wouldn’t buy much at Tru.)
Reynolds was staring at me with something akin to blind fear in his eyes, and for a second I felt sorry for him. But then I remembered I had a job to do.
“I’d love to, Tatum.”
At the sound of his name, his entire face exploded into an ear-to-ear smile. “Great! I’ll get the paperwork going.”
After saying goodbye to Tatum Reynolds, I made my way to the café across the street. Mayburn and my father had set up shop there so they could watch the feed from my necklace camera on a laptop. I weaved through the tables and to the back booth.
My father gave me a curt nod in greeting and Mayburn mumbled what was barely discernable as a salutation. It might have been my imagination, or the lighting in the coffee shop, but Mayburn looked a little red.
“Did you get all that?” I asked, trying to get a read on the situation between the two of them.
“Yeah, we got it,” Mayburn answered. “He offered you the money…to take you…out on a date....” Then he burst out laughing. His face turned more apple-red, his breathing came in gasps and tears sprung from his eyes. Even my father chuckled a little.
My father rarely laughed and Mayburn didn’t, either, not since he’d fallen in love and then broken up with a woman named Lucy DeSanto. I tapped my foot and waited. When the guffawing finally died down, Mayburn was completely out of breath, and I couldn’t help but smile a little.
“You did good, McNeil,” he finally managed to say.
“Poor kid,” my father said. “Tatum Reynolds might go to prison because he wanted a girlfriend.”
“The reason doesn’t concern us, Christopher. I just need to figure out how to tell the bank owners without cracking a smile.” Mayburn bit his lower lip then launched into another fit of hysterics.
“All right, gentlemen,” I said as I took off the necklace camera and set it on the table. “I’ve got to go.”
“Later, McNeil,” Mayburn said, finally managing to compose himself.
“’Bye, Boo,” my dad said, using his nickname for me. When I stood, he stood with me. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah, sure. You?”
He nodded but looked at my face with a concerned expression. “You can tell me if you ever want help. If anything isn’t all right.”
“Okay… Thanks.” I tried to think whether the cryptic remark meant anything. But my dad was new to Chicago, new to our family again. I figured he was just trying to get his sea legs, so to speak.
I looked at my father and allowed a small smile. It was good that he was working with Mayburn. It was good that he was loosening up a little. And I had to admit, it was good that he was in my life again.
6
“I don’t understand,” I heard Theo say, his voice pained. “Why would that be?”
Something was wrong. And on the day we were moving in together—well, not exactly moving in—Theo had decided to buy the place by the Green Door (offering nearly the entire asking price just so he could “avoid all bullshit”), and we figured that Theo might as well stay with me in the short-term since his apartment lease was up.
And so, a few uneventful days after my meeting with Tatum Reynolds, I left Bristol & Associates a little early and
climbed the stairs to the “L” platform, heading home so I could help Theo situate his stuff in my condo. (I was also attempting to make sure he did not situate any of said stuff in places I didn’t want it.) Also, I needed the time to think; to process the fact that someone was moving in with me. I adored Theo, craved him, couldn’t believe how in tune he was with me when we were together, so dialed in, in a way that Sam hadn’t been. It was thrilling. It was scary. But I loved him, I reminded myself. Yeah, but you don’t know if he returns the sentiment.
The “L” train rumbled around the corner at Lake and Wabash, and I moved over for someone to sit next to me.
No reason for too much analysis, Izzy. I reminded myself that Theo and I moving in together was a temporary thing.
It was a chilly, sunny November day. As I rode the “L,” listening to its wheels screech awkwardly at stops, I let my mind meander into other things. I thought about how I missed my Vespa scooter, which I’d had to retire for the winter. I thought about Thanksgiving coming up in two weeks. I planned to go to my mom and Spence’s place, as I always did. For some reason, Theo and I hadn’t talked about what he was doing. Should I invite him to join? The fact that we were temporarily moving in together already seemed momentous enough.
When I got home, a nearly empty moving van was out front.
The numbered keypad outside the front door of the three-flat complex had been disabled by someone with the code; I could tell just by glancing at the display because I had overseen the installation of the keyless entry systems on the front door as well as the door to my condo on the third floor. (Okay, Mayburn had done the overseeing for me while I watched him watch the locksmith.) When it was first installed, we guarded the front-door code like the sphinx. But changing the code frequently quickly got cumbersome. First, my ground-floor neighbor sold his place, requiring visits of about fifty real-estate agents a week. Then my second-floor neighbor decided to rent his condo, and that allowed hordes of apartment hunters to roam the place. And now that Theo was moving in, with his buddies helping him and his moving vans, someone had given up the fight and disabled the keypad altogether. I really couldn’t blame them.
Question of Trust Page 2
