The Last Word

by Lisa Lutz

“We’re fine. I’ve been checking the bank balance almost every day.”

  “Who is GLD Inc.?” Rae asked.

  “That was the large deposit about a month ago?” I asked.

  “Exactly ten grand. Over three weeks ago.”

  “I thought it was how Zylor Corporation wired money into the account,” I said. “I thought it was a retainer.”

  “Zylor has always written checks, and in what fantasy world of yours do they pay ten thousand dollars a pop?” Rae said.

  There is a particular circle of hell reserved for being shamed by your younger sibling.

  “I don’t know. I guess I had a lot to do, and since the checks weren’t bouncing—”

  “Izzy, I got news for you. That ten grand is not ours. We can’t touch it. I’m going to deposit a loan from my own funds, so that we don’t get in trouble when the bank wants it back. And they are going to want it back. Then I’m going to take over the bookkeeping responsibilities, for which you’re going to pay me twenty-five dollars an hour, which is really fair. Okay?”

  “Okay. Can you do me a favor and not tell Mom and Dad?”

  “Deal. And, one day, I might ask a favor of you . . .”

  “Nothing with you is free,” I said as I hung up the phone.

  • • •

  Apparently, along with a company apartment, Edward Slayter issues a company car. And a nice one.3 I tried to arrange a neutral meeting location or a convenient intersection or bus stop where I was happy to await his carriage, but Damien insisted on an at-home pickup. I was going to use the office, but my mother kicked me out at six, so I texted my brother’s address to Damien.

  David, Maggie, and Sydney were in the middle of dinner, which calmed my nerves about any flash babysitting scenario. David offered me a glass of wine, which I accepted, but then made it clear he should not make the same offer to Damien.

  “Who is this Damien?” Maggie asked.

  “He’s Mr. Slayter’s new chief counsel.”

  “A lawyer. Is he young? Is he cute?”

  “That’s a subjective question.”

  “That’s a yes,” Maggie said.

  “No, it’s not like that. I’m showing him around the city and mostly I’m trying to make sure that he’s someone Edward can trust.”

  “I really must compliment you on your ability to lie to yourself,” said David.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  David stood up from the table, put his napkin on his chair, and walked over to the front door. He waited exactly five seconds. The doorbell rang. I raced to the door to intercept my brother, but it was too late. He was already shaking Damien’s hand.

  “David Spellman, Isabel’s brother. A pleasure to meet you. Please come in. Can I offer you a drink? We have everything.”

  “We have to go,” I said.

  “Hi, I’m Maggie.” You don’t need me to tell you who said that, right?

  They shook hands and then Sydney was formally introduced.

  Then people started stating their professions, as they do, and I realized I was outnumbered. David suggested that Sydney was a likely future lawyer or doctor.

  “Or a truck stop waitress,” I suggested.

  Damien thought he should go to the source and said, “Sydney, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “A princess,” Sydney said.

  “Good luck with that,” I said (to Sydney).

  Sydney perhaps didn’t understand the content of my snide remark, but she grasped the tone and responded with her usual two-word retort, “No Izzy.”

  “Do you want a time-out?” Maggie asked.

  “No. We’re going to drink elsewhere,” I said, tugging on Damien’s wrist.

  My brother patted Damien on the back as he walked him to the door, as if they were old college buddies. Then he leaned in conspiratorially and said, “Watch your back.”

  • • •

  Damien wanted a tour of the city. I wanted to drive the fancy car. Reluctantly, he handed over the keys. Like any good tour guide, I began with locations associated with our most infamous crimes. We drove past the St. Francis Hotel, where Fatty Arbuckle came to celebrate his one-million-dollar contract and ended up getting accused of rape and murder. Three trials later, he was exonerated and then blacklisted. My dad used to shake his head and gaze disappointedly at the sky and say, “It would never have happened to a thin guy.” Then we drove to the Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre. I’m not sure who runs it now, but not the Mitchell brothers. Their business partnership ended tragically when Jim Mitchell shot Artie Mitchell, although the shooting happened in Marin. There’s no point in driving to Marin unless you live there.

  “Do you want to see the bank that Patty Hearst and the SLA held up? But it’s not a bank anymore. In fact, I don’t think there’s anything there but an empty building, maybe.”

  “I think we can skip it.”

  Since I’d seen Damien drink coffee, I pointed out the civic center location of Blue Bottle Coffee,4 which is so tucked away you’d think they were giving you a dime bag with your morning brew. I told him where to find hookers and which kind if he was so inclined. Then he suggested we get out of this part of town, which bordered the red-light district, and asked if there was a place with a view. There’s always Twin Peaks, but Damien seemed like a museum guy and I’d heard (from Edward Slayter) that the tower at the de Young Museum was open some nights.

  First I took a loop through the park and showed Damien where the bison paddock is located, and told him a tragic story of how last year one of the baby bison accidentally killed itself while running away from a little dog that got into the paddock.5

  “Do you give tours of the city often?” Damien asked.

  “Nope.”

  “That’s obvious.”

  As we drove through the windy stretch of Martin Luther King Junior Drive, I didn’t ruin the surprise of the ocean at the end of the road. I’m not one for nature, but I’ve always found the sudden break of ocean at the end of the woods a fresh surprise.

  “Don’t swim there,” I said. “People die.”6

  “Didn’t you mention something about a museum?”

  I circled back to JFK Drive and parked near the de Young. We took the elevator to the tower (which is free!) and took in a view of the park after nightfall.

  As we tried to decipher the dim landscapes, I reminisced about the old days: “There was a Warhol exhibit here when I was in high school. We went on a class trip and the docent told us that one of the paintings was worth over a million dollars. My best friend, Petra, and I spent six weeks plotting a way we could steal the painting. We decided on a small explosion in the men’s bathroom as a diversion and then, of course, we’d need a counterfeit painting to put in its stead. We even commissioned the best artist in our school. But it’s not like we went to an arts school. His rendering looked nothing like the soup cans. And seriously, how hard is it to paint soup cans, if painting is your thing?”

  “I take it the attempted theft never came to be or we wouldn’t be having this chat,” Damien said.

  “The exhibit ended before we could get all our ducks in a row. And that lousy artist demanded payment. Five hundred bucks. We paid him because he knew what we were up to and it would have been hard to explain in small-claims court why two teenage girls who had no interest in fine arts commissioned a copy of a Warhol when you could buy a poster that looked just like it at the gift shop for twenty-five bucks.”

  “One final question,” Damien said. “Why did you plan the diversion for the men’s restroom?”

  “Because then the cops would automatically assume the thieves were male.”

  Damien managed to seem amused, horrified, and confused all at once. Of course, I don’t normally confess to strangers crimes or plans to commit crimes from my past, but I was hoping to open a dialogue on past misdeeds and see whether I could get Damien to provide some information I could not acquire through a database search, a surveillance, or interviewing his known as
sociates (strictly off-limits, according to Slayter).

  After the tower view, we went to the Plough and Stars for beer and fish and chips. I got the feeling the fish and chips were a rare indulgence for the trim lawyer, because he was enjoying them the way I hear people enjoy a meal at the French Laundry (yeah, I’ve heard of the place. Never been). Once the lawyer had a beer and a half a pound of fried goods in him, it was time to see what kind of information I could glean from Damien Thorp. I turned on my digital recorder to reference later, if necessary.

  The transcript reads as follows:

  DAMIEN: These are like the best fish and chips ever.7

  ISABEL: So your first fish and chips. Congratulations. Have you ever committed a misdemeanor?

  DAMIEN: Sure. Who hasn’t?8

  ISABEL: What kind?

  DAMIEN: I don’t know. Several, I suspect.

  ISABEL: Smoked pot?

  DAMIEN: In college.

  ISABEL: Hallucinogens?

  DAMIEN: Maybe once or twice.

  ISABEL: In college?

  DAMIEN: Yes.

  ISABEL: Have you ever stolen money from petty cash?

  DAMIEN: No.

  ISABEL: Cheated on a girlfriend?

  DAMIEN: I guess I did once. But she was very mean.

  ISABEL: Then why didn’t you break up with her?

  DAMIEN: Because I was afraid of her.

  ISABEL: Was she extremely attractive?

  DAMIEN: Yes.

  ISABEL: Why did you apply for this job?

  DAMIEN: Because it was an excellent opportunity and I was looking to move.

  ISABEL: You wanted to move from Boston?

  DAMIEN: Yes.

  ISABEL: Why? I hear good things about Boston.

  DAMIEN: I needed a change.

  ISABEL: Something go wrong at your last job?

  DAMIEN: No.

  ISABEL: Leaving someone behind then?

  DAMIEN: This is beginning to feel like a deposition.

  ISABEL: Okay. I’ll stop.

  DAMIEN: Just like that?

  ISABEL: Sure. A subject on the defensive is useless to me.

  I like to think of myself as something of an interrogative savant. However, most lawyers have mastered that skill set as well. Damien returned the interrogation with one of his own.

  DAMIEN: Were you a difficult child?

  ISABEL: Extremely.

  DAMIEN: What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

  ISABEL: Can I get back to you in a few days?

  DAMIEN: How did you and Edward meet?

  ISABEL: At the de Young Museum.

  DAMIEN: You just ran into him at the museum?

  ISABEL: I was surveilling him.

  DAMIEN: Why?

  ISABEL: His wife hired me to surveil him so she could keep track of his whereabouts while she had an affair with her trainer.

  DAMIEN: That doesn’t explain how you met him.

  ISABEL: I found the wife suspicious, so I surveilled her instead, saw what she was up to, and ratted her out to Edward.

  DAMIEN: You’re a snitch.

  ISABEL: Ouch. That hurt. I am not a snitch, but I don’t work for people who hire me under false pretenses.

  DAMIEN: Are your parents speaking to you again?

  ISABEL: Edward has been a bit more loose-lipped than I thought.

  DAMIEN: We’ve had a few lunches.

  ISABEL: Typical lawyer. Never ask a question if you don’t know the answer.

  DAMIEN: Ever been arrested?

  ISABEL: Yes.

  DAMIEN: How many times?

  ISABEL: Once or twice.9

  DAMIEN: Tell me about your last relationship.

  ISABEL: It was good. He understood me.

  DAMIEN: What went wrong?

  ISABEL: Me. That’s what always goes wrong.

  The conversation pretty much died after that. We ordered another round of beers and then attempted small talk, which neither of us had a particular aptitude for.

  “How’s the new job working out?”

  “Have you always wanted to be a PI?”

  “The apartment to your satisfaction?”

  “You have family in the city?”

  “So, how long do you get to use the company car?”

  “Is it always this foggy?”

  Once we started talking about the weather, we knew it was time to go. Damien insisted on driving because in theory men hold their booze better than women. It had been a long night and I didn’t feel like launching into an explanation of my supernatural liquor tolerance. He drove me back to David’s house in mostly silence and parked in the driveway.

  “Sorry,” I said. “That wasn’t so great.”

  “The fish and chips were good, and the beer.”

  “Both of those things are often good.”

  “Are you always like this?”

  “With strangers? Yes.”

  “I’m still a stranger?”

  “I think so.”

  “What would make me not a stranger?”

  “I’d have to think about it.”

  While I was thinking about it, Damien leaned over and kissed me. Since I was staring at a streetlamp, thinking about what would make him not a stranger, I didn’t see the kiss coming and turned at the last minute toward the door. So, he actually kissed my ear.

  “Were you aiming for my ear?”

  “No.”

  “Should we just call it a night?”

  “I think that would be best,” he said.

  “Good night, stranger.”

  “Night, stranger.”

  * * *

  1. Four, per child. They had vitamins in them or something. And Sydney only ate one and then asked for Melba toast. She’s permanently damaged.

  2. Because of this phenomenon David doesn’t keep peanut butter in his house anymore, even though no one in his house has a peanut allergy.

  3. No, I’m not going to tell you what kind, because I’m uninterested in providing any extraneous advertising for luxury vehicles. If any luxury-vehicle manufacturer would like me to plug their vehicle, I’m open to a quid pro quo situation.

  4. On the coffee side, it’s as good as None-of-Your-Business Bakery. Just the lines aren’t as outrageous.

  5. I became much less judgmental about people carrying little dogs in purses when I heard that story.

  6. Riptides. Seriously, don’t swim there.

  7. So not the best fish and chips ever.

  8. Answer: no one.

  9. Actually four to six times. I like to pretend two of them didn’t happen.

  THE VISITOR

  MEMO

  To All Spellman Employees:

  Do what you want. I give up.

  Signed,

  Isabel

  The next morning, when I dropped by Edward’s office, I found him huddled on his couch next to his accountant, Arthur Bly. Charlie was serving them tea with a formal tea set.

  “Hey, Charlie,” I said.

  “Isabel, would you like some tea?”

  “No thanks. Tea reminds me of my grandmother.”

  “One lump or two, Mr. Bly?”

  “No lumps,” Arthur said.

  I used to think that Arthur had some kind of social phobia, since he rarely made eye contact and often left the room as soon as I entered. He also mumbled everything he said to me. But after I saw him having an animated chat with Evelyn, who has the personality of a ceramic doll, I realized that Arthur just doesn’t like me.

  So I overcompensated, by which I mean I gave him a reason not to like me.

  “Arthur, it’s so great to see you,” I said as I entered Slayter’s office.

  “Isabel,” he said, making eye contact for exactly point four seconds.

  “You look great. Have you been working out?”

  “No.”

  “Have you been to the beach?”

  “No.”

  “A tanning salon?”

  “No. That’s all I can tell you now, Edward,” Arthur sa
id, getting to his feet. “I’ll put in a request with the bank for information on the offshore account.”

  “Thank you, Arthur,” Edward said.

  “Great catching up,” I said to Arthur as he was scurrying out the door.

  He ignored me.

  “Leave the poor man alone,” said Edward.

  “Why does he hate me?”

  “Because you’re obnoxious. Clearly he hasn’t been out in the sun in over a decade. Knock it off.”

  “Did I hear ‘offshore account’?” I asked with maybe a little too much enthusiasm.

  Edward flopped into his swanky, yet ergonomic, desk chair.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Over one hundred thousand dollars has been embezzled from the company in the last month.”

  “How was it done?” I asked.

  “Wire transfers. Uneven denominations. Three separate occasions.”

  “So anyone with access to the company’s routing numbers could accomplish this, correct?”

  “Yes,” Slayter said.

  “I hate to say this, but in cases of embezzlement, isn’t it always the accountant?”

  “It’s not Arthur. Why would he bring it to my attention?”

  “It’s the perfect alibi. Or a perfectly mediocre one.”

  “I’ve known Arthur for fifteen years. He’s not that kind of man,” Edward said.

  “About how much money does Arthur make?”

  “I’m not comfortable sharing that information.”

  “Does he have any hobbies, like going to the racetrack? Or expensive stamps. I could see him losing the bank over a stamp collection.”

  “It’s not Arthur,” Edward said in that tone that meant he wanted me to stop.

  “Who has access to the company financials?”

  “There’s an entire accounting office, but the information could be accessed by a hacker, another member of the staff. It’s hard to say. We need the cooperation of the Cayman Islands bank to identify the owner of the account the funds were transferred into. That information could take up to ten days.”

  “Maybe you should call the cops.”

  “We’d have to get the FBI involved and that would make the company look unstable.”

  “Do you want me to look into the financials of your employees?”