by Stephen Frey
“Here you are, Ms. Hays, 250 thousand dollars.” The man placed the leather briefcase on the table in front of her. “The 25-thousand-dollar monthly payments will start once you get to the destination. Which shouldn’t take long. We’ll be monitoring you. You’ll receive the monthly payments in cash, as agreed.”
Kathy Hays gazed at the briefcase. Two hundred fifty thousand upfront, plus twenty-five thousand a month. And their promise not to tell her family what had happened five years ago. A horrible chapter in her life she thought was closed forever. One she thought she’d hidden from everyone. But they’d found it—and so much more.
But they’d promised they wouldn’t tell anyone what they’d found—as long as she stayed quiet about setting up Troy Mason.
4
Conflict. Nation vs. nation. Neighbor vs. neighbor. And the most destructive conflict of all—self vs. self. The fuse of all evil.
MARIA WAS THE BABY OF the family. But at five years of age, she already had more personality than most adults.
Gillette grinned at the little girl sitting on his lap. Admiring her jet black hair and the fire dancing in her mahogany eyes while she studied him with her serious look, tiny brows furrowed. Maria would have made something of herself even without his help. He’d come to recognize that fire in the eyes of all successful people.
She giggled, wrapped her small arms tightly around his neck, and kissed his cheek hard. “Te amo, Chreeees.”
“I love you, too, Maria.” Gillette liked coming here because he could completely relax. “I’m thinking of a number between one and ten,” he said loudly so that Selma, Maria’s mother, could hear, too. She was standing in front of the stove stirring a pot of stew. “You go first, Selma.”
Selma stopped stirring for a moment and thought. “Um, three.”
Gillette looked down at the little girl and raised one eyebrow.
“Four,” Maria piped up.
“Very good,” Gillette said approvingly. He had taught her how to play the game last time, and she’d learned fast. Always play the odds. A much better chance of the number being greater than three. “The number’s seven.”
Selma groaned. “I always lose at this.”
“You go first this time, Maria,” Gillette said.
“Six,” the little girl answered quickly.
“I’ll say four,” Selma called as she began stirring again.
“Seven, again,” announced Gillette.
“I’m not playing anymore.” Selma laughed. “It’s too hard on my ego.”
“Why did you say six?” Gillette asked Maria, making sure of her strategy.
“If I go first, I should say five or six,” she answered, looking toward the ceiling and putting a finger to her lips, remembering what he’d taught her. “That gives me the best chance. You used a big number the first time, and I thought you’d use a big one again.”
Gillette broke into a huge grin. “Very, very good.”
“I’ll take her,” Selma said, picking Maria up off Gillette’s lap and setting the little girl on her wide hip. Selma had been slim as a younger woman, but having seven children had taken its toll. “How have you been, Chris?”
Gillette loved Selma. When she asked how you were, she meant it. She really wanted to know. It wasn’t just some throwaway question as it was for most people. “I’ve been good, Selma.” Bad grammar. “Well” would have been correct, but he wanted her to think he was a regular person.
She wagged her finger. “That’s what you always say. You’ve done so many nice things for me and my family. I want to know more about you. Like what’s going on in your life.”
“It would take too long to tell you. Besides, my life is pretty boring.”
“Oh, I bet.”
“Could I get some water?” he asked, starting to stand up.
“Sit, sit,” she ordered, moving quickly to the cabinet for a glass, then to the sink.
As she put the glass down in front of Gillette, eight-year-old Jose Jr. burst into the kitchen clutching a toy truck, his younger brother, Ruben, in hot pursuit. They raced around the table several times, shouting at each other in Spanish, then darted back into the living room.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Gillette muttered, taking a drink.
“I don’t even hear them anymore.” Selma shot him a sly look. “Someday soon you’ll be doing it.”
“Oh no, I won’t.”
“Oh yes, you will. Some young thing will melt your heart and you’ll give in.”
“Selma, I’ll be a bachelor until the day I—”
“Buenas noches, Señor Gillette.”
Gillette felt a hand on his shoulder and glanced up. Jose Medilla stood beside the chair, smiling down from beneath a bushy black mustache. Jose was short and wiry with leathery brown skin and a wide face. He was first generation Puerto Rican American. His grandparents still lived in a shack on the outskirts of San Juan.
“Buenas noches, Señor Medilla.”
“Can you stay for dinner?”
“Thanks. I’d like that.”
The spread at the funeral reception had been exceptional—long rows of sterling silver trays full of everything imaginable, catered by several five-star Manhattan restaurants—but Gillette hadn’t had the time to sample any. Tom Warfield had wedged his way into Gillette’s conversation with Faith and suddenly there were four more people involved. So Gillette had returned to Donovan’s office to regain control.
“I’d never pass on Selma’s stew.” Gillette knew it was important for Jose to feel like he was giving something back. Even if it was just a meal. “Not even for a steak at Sparks.”
“Selma’s cooking is better than any Manhattan steak house’s,” Jose said proudly. He motioned toward a pair of French doors that opened onto a deck spanning the back of the four-bedroom home. “Can I show you the house?”
“Sure.”
They moved out into the chill of the central New Jersey night. Princeton University, where Gillette had gone to school, lay only a few miles to the west.
“That’s the one.” Jose pointed across the back of his one-acre lot toward the brightly burning lights of another home. “The husband is a professor.”
“When did it go on the market?”
“Yesterday.”
“What are they asking?”
“Four hundred and seventy thousand.”
“Offer five hundred Monday morning,” Gillette instructed. “Let him see what he gets tomorrow, then move. Understand?”
“Sí.”
“Your brother is in the Bronx?”
“Sí.”
“How many children does he have?”
“Three.”
“Will this house be enough?”
“This house will be like a castle for him, Christian. Alex lives in a two-bedroom apartment on top of a bodega and with many cucurachas.”
“Call him tonight. Tell him we’ve agreed. And tell him to leave everything he has at that apartment. We’ll get him what he needs down here. Furniture and clothes. The same way we did for you.”
“Good. Cucurachas have a bad habit of hitchhiking.”
“What about the neighbors?” Gillette asked, scanning the rooftops looming in the darkness. “How are they treating you?”
“They tolerate us.”
Gillette grunted. “Pricks.”
“You can’t expect people here to accept us with open arms, Christian. They’re all professionals. All gringos. When they bought in this neighborhood, I don’t think they expected a Puerto Rican factory worker with seven children to move in.” Jose pointed across the yard. “It’ll be interesting to see what happens when my brother comes.”
“If anything does,” Gillette said, “let me know.”
“I can take care of myself.”
Gillette glanced at Jose. “Yeah, I’m sure you can.”
“That’s why nothing’s happened so far. People are afraid of how well I can take care of myself. Of how far someone like me wou
ld go.” Jose twirled a finger beside his ear. “Loco, you know?”
Gillette leaned against the deck railing. “Did you really kill a man?”
“Sí.”
“How?”
“I slit his throat.”
“Why?”
“He was trying to slit mine. He wanted to be the father of Selma’s children, too.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Jesus,” Gillette muttered. At seventeen he’d been surfing off Santa Monica and hanging out on Rodeo Drive.
“Christian?”
“Yes?”
“Why do you do all this for me and my family?”
Gillette took a deep breath and glanced at the house he was about to buy for Jose’s brother. Conflict. Always conflict.
Mason held his head in his hands. A week ago he was sure he was going to be the next chairman. Donovan had promised him. Now he was barred from Everest for life, and fifty-nine million dollars poorer.
“I’m screwed,” he murmured, tears filling his eyes as he sat in the darkness of his Manhattan penthouse.
He swallowed hard and reached for a .38-caliber pistol lying on the coffee table. His career, his money, his future. Gillette had taken them all.
Mason cocked the gun, pressed the barrel to his temple, and slipped his finger behind the trigger.
Gillette stepped back into the kitchen from outside just as Jose Jr. and Ruben ran a lap around the table again. He grinned, watching them disappear into the living room. Then his smile faded, and for a moment he simply stared. The young woman the two boys had darted past was gorgeous. One of the most beautiful creatures he’d ever seen.
Selma bit her lower lip, trying to hide a smile.
Gillette caught Selma’s smile, realizing in that instant that this had been neatly choreographed. But he didn’t care. The young woman was too beautiful for him to care.
“Chris, this is Isabelle, my youngest sister. She’s visiting from San Juan.”
The man shivered inside his triple-layered, goose-down parka as he moved carefully across the frozen ground toward the ghostly outline of his specially outfitted Ford Explorer. You had to move carefully up here, no matter how much you wanted to reach the warmth of your truck. If you fell and something snapped in the bitter cold, you were a dead man. Survival time out here was measured in minutes, not days.
He brought his hands to his ski mask as a brutal gust of wind whipped snow past him. People thought they understood the meaning of “remote.” They watched specials about places like this on the Discovery Channel, so they thought they knew. But they had no idea. Images on a television screen couldn’t convey the isolation that dominated this barren area of Canada eight hundred miles north of Montana.
His breath iced up the window of the idling truck when he reached it, but he didn’t stop to admire the geometric patterns. He yanked the door open and hopped inside. He was one of the few people in the world who did understand this place. Who understood how weeks of little or no human contact spent almost entirely in darkness could play on your mind. How watching the aurora borealis shimmer across a star-laden sky could send shivers up your spine, no matter how many times you’d seen it. How you questioned your sanity ten times a day for being up here.
Once inside the truck, he removed his thick gloves, picked up a clipboard, and scrawled notes on a pad. They’d plant the last of the dynamite near this spot tomorrow and run the test. Then he was going to get the hell out of here and go someplace warm.
Gillette stopped in front of the pool hall and watched the Town Car’s taillights disappear down the Brooklyn street. He’d sent the driver off, telling him he’d get a cab back to Manhattan. The guy hadn’t hesitated a second. Just taken off like a bat out of hell the moment Gillette closed the door, happy to get out of the rough neighborhood as fast as possible.
It was late, almost one in the morning, but Gillette wasn’t tired. He didn’t need much sleep. Never had. Just a few hours a night and he was fine.
He was still dressed in the neatly pressed charcoal suit he’d worn to the funeral. Tie stuffed in his pants pocket, white shirt open a couple of buttons at the neck. He reached for the inside pocket of his suit jacket and his wallet. Before leaving home this morning for the funeral, he’d taken everything out of it except the cash and his driver’s license.
He took out what was left of the cash—two hundred dollars—and put the bills into the shirt pocket of a man lying on the ground in front of the pool hall cradling a wine bottle in both arms. The guy never moved, never even said thank you. But this wasn’t about charity. It was about going in unarmed.
The place was loud, smoky, and crowded. Rap music blared, and there was the constant crack of the cue ball. Every table had onlookers. People keeping an eye on the quarters they’d put down to reserve the next game. People there to root for the players—girlfriends, boyfriends. People just interested in seeing a good game. And sharks waiting for the best time to slip into the flow without seeming too enthusiastic.
Gillette was keenly aware of the looks he was getting. It wasn’t hard to catch them. He was the only white guy in the place—and the only guy wearing a suit.
He’d never been here before. He’d heard about it from a couple of guys in Queens. There were supposed to be some very good players, guys who could have made it on the circuit, and he liked the pressure their games would give him. He used it to test himself. He could beat anyone in here on a quiet, neutral table. He knew that. But in front of the hometown crew, without a dime in his pocket, it might be a different story.
He watched for a while, getting the lay of the land. It was clear to him after a short time that the back four tables were reserved for the best players. No smiles, no conversation, no alcohol. Just hard looks, crisp shots, the sounds of the game, and the dance of the two players around the table.
And one guy managing the gate for each table. The guy who held the money.
“How long’s the list?” Gillette asked loudly.
The gate glanced up, casing Gillette. Toothpick moving to the left side of his mouth as he took one more look at the expensive suit. “Just one ahead.”
“What’s the bet?”
“Five grand.”
“Put me down.” Gillette nodded at the gate’s scratch in his notepad.
“Money first.”
“I’m good for it,” Gillette said evenly. “I’m sure you understand why I don’t want to let go of my cash.”
The gate shook his head. “ ’Fraid not. You got to give it to me now.”
Gillette smiled confidently. “You really think I’d walk in here without the money?”
The gate looked Gillette up and down again. “You better be good for it. You tell me you don’t have the money when you lose, and you won’t make it out of here alive.”
An hour later, Gillette leaned over the green felt, curled his left forefinger around the cue, and lined up the shot. Other than the cue ball, the eight was the only one left on the table. It was an easy scratch, and, if he didn’t make the shot and didn’t scratch, the other guy would definitely drop the eight on his next attempt—and win. He’d owe five grand to a man whose biceps were as big around as his thighs. With no way to pay. And an IOU wasn’t going to cut it.
Gillette closed his eyes for a moment, tuning out the crowd. More and more people had circled around the table as the match—best of five—had unfolded. There were probably fifty people watching at this point. Some screaming at him. Not wanting him to beat the neighborhood hero.
The cue ball rolled smoothly toward the eight, smacking it exactly where Gillette had aimed. No doubt the eight would drop, but the problem now was the cue. If it dropped, too, he’d scratch and the human mountain who was his opponent would win five thousand without having to take another shot.
In his peripheral vision, Gillette was aware of the eight ball dropping into the far corner pocket. But he was watching the cue as it rolled back the length of the gr
een table toward him and the near corner. It was headed straight for the pocket, moving more and more slowly. The crowd screamed as it rolled and his opponent watched bug-eyed. Finally, it stopped, a quarter of the ball hanging over the pocket. The crowd groaned loudly and man mountain broke his cue in half over his knee.
Gillette handed his cue to someone in the crowd and moved to where the gate sat. The gate handed Gillette a wad of bills, which he slipped into his pocket with the tie.
“Hey, boy,” the gate asked as Gillette turned to go.
Gillette turned back. “What?”
“Did you have it?”
“Have what?”
“You know.”
Gillette moved back to where the gate sat, reached into his jacket pocket, and removed his wallet. Then he opened it up just enough that the gate—but no one else—could see that it was empty.
The gate smiled broadly. “Cool, man, but I’ll remember next time.”
“There won’t be a next time.”
“What? You think you’re too good for us now?”
“Got nothing to do with it,” Gillette answered, looking around. “I like this place, but I just beat the best in the house, so I’ll never get a money game in here again. And I never play for fun.”
5
The Male Curse. The relentless urge to hunt. The ruthless drive to conquer. The insatiable need to amass.
FAITH CASSIDY SCRIBBLED ANOTHER AUTOGRAPH, this time on the label of a champagne bottle. As she handed the pen back to the nervous young man who had approached her, she gave him the smile that had sold millions of CDs. It was the third time in the last ten minutes she’d been asked to sign something.
“You ever get tired of that?” Gillette asked when the guy was gone.
Faith picked up her glass of Chardonnay. “Tired of what?”
“People constantly wanting something from you.”
“No. Not fans, anyway.” She took a sip. “Do you ever get tired of managing all that money?”
Gillette ran the tip of his forefinger across his bottom lip. “No.”
“You aren’t telling me the truth.”
