by Hugh Dutton
“Bus station, Brady. Sorry ’bout that, and thanks.”
“You got it. What happened to your Beamer? Breakdown?” He timed a gap in the traffic and scooted the Jeep out into the flow.
“Naw, can’t afford it anymore,” Macken said, his gaze averted. “That puppy is sitting on a consignment lot, hopefully selling before it gets repo’d. Lost my job.”
“How come, if it’s any of my business?” Brady asked. Wow, this dude has seen it all. His wife is in jail for killing his mistress because the two women were having an affair of their own while he carried on with both of them, and now his job. Whew.
“Hell, I don’t mind,” Macken said. He unwrapped a stick of gum and shoved it in his mouth, tucking the wrapper in his shirt pocket. “Supposed to be good to talk about it, right? Already spilled my guts to you once. And hey, thanks also for being a stand-up guy that day. I was some hammered.”
Macken brooded out the window for a moment, then said, “They screwed me. Told me it had come to their attention that I had a pattern of charging minorities a higher rate than white folks. When the whole damn bank does, and not on purpose, necessarily. But I got no chance of my word against theirs on that hot an issue. And I can’t turn around and blow the whistle on them if I ever want to work again.”
Dang, this sounds familiar. “What, Leo Burgess owns your bank?” Brady asked, laughing.
Macken turned and looked at him cockeyed. “How the hell did you know that? I worked there, and I only just found out because I had one buddy who wanted me to get the real story.”
“I didn’t. I thought I was cracking a private joke,” Brady said. An idea began growing, snowballing in his brain. Woo-hoo, Grant Thibideaux, you are going to par-tay. “Now you say the whole bank does this thing with the rates. How does that work? Is it provable?”
Macken eyed him, suspicion knitting his brow as a visible process of animal cunning connected things in his head. “Why do you care, you ain’t got a dog in this fight, do you?” Then his eyes widened. “Leo Burgess, huh? He send you here to fuck me over some more?”
“No, nothing like that,” Brady said, snorting at the idea of Leo sending him anywhere besides jail. “Maybe I’m just curious to know more about his bank.”
Macken kept the stare on him a moment, then a smirk tugged at his lips. “I’m on you, Brady. If you can find a way to twist his tail, give him one for me, okay? So here’s your deal. Doing a mortgage, you can usually make more spread on a young buyer than an older one, right? Well, over half of our young buyers are minority, but almost all the old geezers are white, see? Now do the math. You break it down by race, the average rate for whites is always gonna come out lower if you don’t figure age. Hell, nobody does it on purpose, it’s not even a discrimination thing, it’s just making rate where you can. It might not stand up in court, but it would make a hell of a big stink, and that alone can ruin a mortgage lender.”
“And they canned you for it, knowing you can tell all this?”
“Aw, hell,” Macken said, fanning a hand in the air. “By the time they get done, my name will be on all the high-rate paper and they can claim they got rid of the bad apple. No, they canned me because Leo said to. Can’t have the husband of his daughter’s murderer working for him.”
“Yeah, pretty rough deal there,” Brady mumbled, embarrassed for the guy but dying to know more. Too embarrassed to ask, though.
They waited at a crossroads while a gigantic yellow tractor-trailer stacked with glistening new cars jockeyed back and forth to squeeze into a narrow turn.
“Hell, it’s all my fault,” Macken said firmly after a moment. “You know I had a thing with Lexy, I blubbered my guts out to you that day. And Lexy, not to speak ill of the dead, Lexy loved stirring the shit more than anything. The idea of having an affair with a husband and a wife without them knowing about each other until it blew up in their faces would be irresistible to her. I’m just sorry it got her killed. I’m sorry for Ellie, too, because I brought Lexy into this and treated Ellie like shit, basically pointed Lexy at her like a gun. Ellie needed someone, and never stood a chance against Lexy’s idea of fun.”
“Man, that’s pretty heavy stuff,” Brady dropped into the sudden silence. Yeck, what could he say to the wreckage of so many lives? It called to mind Maggie’s remark about a horrible disease catching up to them. The big rig finished its turn and Brady punched the gas. “Trailways or Greyhound? Might as well drop you at the right one.”
“Greyhound,” Macken answered, pointing. “I gotta go up to the women’s prison, find an apartment near there. Hopefully a job, too. But I’ll be back. Ellie’s still here until her sentencing, I just want to be all set up.”
“You’re sticking with her?” Brady could not hide his surprise.
“I’m all she’s got, Brady. And like I said, it’s my fault she’s here. Least I can do is be there when she gets out. Even her own mother won’t talk to her. So I’m her family now, in a way I never have been for her before. Even if she’s sworn off of us boys.” He grinned.
Brady gave him a little half-shrug, half-nod, not ready to buy Ellie Macken as a tragic figure. Maybe a lover’s quarrel wasn’t as reprehensible as Anna Burgess and that whole rotten deal for Pete, but murder just didn’t make his list of defensible acts. Even Lexy didn’t deserve it. He did appreciate the intensity he heard in the man’s declaration of allegiance to his wife. Sounded genuine, like maybe it was a recent revelation for him.
“Funny, ain’t it?” Macken mused, rubbing his chin between a thumb and two fingers. “All this time I’ve been waiting to get rich off of her nutty old lady, and now I never will. Yet here I go, planning the rest of my life as a poor man and you know, it’s the first damn thing I’ve ever done right.”
Brady pulled up outside the bus terminal, and Macken reached across his body to grab Brady’s hand. Shook it, snagged his bag from the back seat, and climbed out.
“Thanks for the lift, amigo,” he said, leaning down into the doorframe.
“Sure thing, thanks for the ammo. Hey wait, I don’t even know the name of the bank.”
“Oceanic Bank and Trust.” Macken grinned again. “Thought you’d never ask.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Gerry Terence stood motionless in the familiar shadows of the palms lining Oak Street across from the blue corner house. This was it, and man oh man, he’d better be right. Hidden around the corner, two vice guys sat in their souped-up but hard-used Camaro, awaiting his signal. Zack and Ace were their names, which sounded like a late-night cable comedy act, but they were the closest to sane of anyone he knew on vice detail.
They had trusted Gerry’s guess on the drugs and came to take down the resident of the blue house, one Cameron Degardo. But Gerry nurtured his own private agenda, one he was ready to risk twenty-five years of reputation on. He wanted Nick Burgess wrapped up and had chosen this night of the week on the hunch that Nick’s usage rate made him a creature of habit.
“Gerry, I see one up there,” Zack’s voice came over the cell connection they were keeping open for the stakeout. “We’re going in.”
“No, wait, I don’t recognize the car,” Gerry whispered quickly, eyeing the Acura pulling into Degardo’s drive. Most likely a customer, but not Nick.
“Look, numbnuts, we can’t wait all night for you to recognize somebody,” Zack said. “A buyer’s a buyer, we only need one. And Ace is sitting here farting his lunch all over the car and I just don’t think I can stand it anymore.”
“Yeah, but you go in now, you get one dealer and one possession,” Gerry wheedled, hearing Ace giggling in the background. “I’m telling you, this other guy’s coming tonight and he’ll buy enough to be tagged for intent. Then you’ve got two dealers and you’ll get credit for taking down a network instead of one dealer, okay? So you children behave and keep your pants on.”
“Okay, okay, but hurry it up,” Zack bitched.
Gerry heard the phone rattling as Zack set it down, heard him sayi
ng something indistinct to Ace in the background. He willed himself to remain still, be patient. Come on, Nicky boy. He wished he could tell Angie the story, have her see him doing something good, something needed, and betting his whole stack on it. He knew he could call her up and tell her, and she’d probably listen, but it just wasn’t the same as talking, like over dinner or in bed.
At last he heard the unmistakable twin-pipe rumble of the Porsche as it burbled around the corner and swept into Degardo’s drive. Gerry crossed his fingers. If he was wrong, if this turned out to be two queens playing house on the down low or something, he’d never have an in with anyone on the job again.
“It’s our boy,” he said, loud enough for Zack to hear him and pick his phone back up. “Remember, time it right and we’ll catch the buyer holding.”
Zack didn’t answer him, just disconnected. Moments later, Gerry spotted the two of them crossing the lawn, staying in the shadows. For all their zaniness, they moved nice. He had not told them that the buyer was a Burgess, unsure whether it would scare them off of his plan. He did feel sure they wouldn’t care who they’d bagged once they were psyched up from the bust.
His angle of view didn’t allow him to see all the details of it going down. He saw Zack and Ace poised by the door and saw it swing open, presumably Nick coming out. Zack took him down right there on the stoop as Ace went in, moving fast in a low crouch. He heard the shouting, the guys identifying themselves, but no shooting or sounds of a struggle, thank God. He waited, realizing that he absolutely did not miss doing doors.
After the scene settled down, the two-way on his cell chirped and Zack came on, loud and breathless. “Got him holding a whole half. You da man, G.”
Gerry released the breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He’d set this up without any concrete indications of Nick’s buying habits, just his experience leading him to expect a rich punk with a monkey on his back to be a volume buyer. Not like Zack and Ace would have been disappointed if they only got possession on Nick, because it would still be a good collar on Degardo, but they sure would have razzed him for it.
More importantly, it guaranteed a felony rap for Nick Burgess. He might never spend a night in jail, people like the Burgesses rarely did. But intent was something that even a Burgess shouldn’t be able to plead down to a misdemeanor. And once he had a prior in his jacket, no one in law enforcement would ever give him the benefit of a doubt, regardless of Leo Burgess. The next time Nick slipped up, which guys like him always did, he was going to be doing a stretch.
And that’s the best I can do for you, Pete, Gerry thought as he wound his way through the trees to where he had stashed his car. Whatever you had on him died with you, and your will tells me there’s a rape story somewhere in there that I’ll never know. I got exactly nowhere on the peeping, but this is the first step in taking him off the street eventually, inevitably. Sleep well, bro.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Brady slammed the Jeep’s door, just for the sheer joy of creating an unseemly racket in front of the Burgess home. He followed the walkway up to the door that didn’t feel nearly as imposing anymore, wondering if Anna would answer his ring. What would pop out of his mouth at the sight of the woman who put Pete out there in front of that drunk driver?
He had to wait a good ninety seconds to find out. He spent it admiring the lazy rollers crashing down on Burgess’s beach, wondering how someone could willfully do harm to such a beautiful force of nature.
No Anna. Instead, a short little brown woman of indeterminate age pulled the door open. Indeterminate language too, since she merely looked at him in question and waved him in when he asked for the mister. Why did this place always feel like the set of a paranormal mystery series?
He followed her to the same luxurious office where the same hulking presence of Leo Burgess stood stirring what might as well have been the same drink.
“Thank you, Juana,” Burgess rumbled. He watched her leave and turned to face Brady.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Spain. I make it a policy to never refuse a caller, but I cannot imagine what business you and I can possibly have to discuss.”
Brady strode to the seating area where he’d met with Burgess a thousand years ago, slipped an envelope from his hip pocket, and tossed it on the table. “The money I owe you. No, let me rephrase that, I don’t think I owe you anything. But it is the money I committed to when I wrote that hold check.”
“You may keep it.” Burgess pointed his stirrer at the envelope. “To use your words, I couldn’t care less about the money. You are going to pay me with something much dearer.”
The urge to laugh welled up in Brady’s chest, surprising him. Guy used to scare him speechless. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Believe you’re out of ammo there, pardna.”
Burgess’s face darkened. “I hope that is not a tasteless reference to the tragedy that forestalled testimony by the victim of your swindle.”
Brady stared at him, round-eyed. “Really? You just said that?” He shook his head. “Actually, the only reason I brought your money in person is, just like back on Labor Day, I had the idea that I would offer my condolences about Lexy. Because she mattered, regardless of what’s between you and me, and she was your daughter. But both times your attitude has talked me out of it inside of thirty seconds.”
He moved to the center of the room, stopped and stood, feet apart and hands hanging, amidst the rich burgundy leather furnishings that projected the same vibe of imperial prerogative as the indomitable man before him. But fear of Burgess wasn’t in him any longer, not even the slightest tremor of adrenaline remaining. “I have a friend who told me this and at first I thought she was exaggerating, but she nailed it. Everything is about you. I gotta tell you, man, Lexy dying wasn’t about you. It was about her.”
“You are not fit to discuss my daughter,” Burgess said, the familiar merciless glint of blue ice showing in his eyes. “If that is the purpose of your visit, you may leave.”
“Oh, I will,” grinned Brady. He’d gotten over feeling like a fool after Burgess’s scared rabbit speech, thinking he’d lived through this bad dream for nothing, once he realized that it embodied the difference between them. A victory defined by exploiting the vagaries of the legal system was a bullshit substitute for what was right. Brady knew now that he would’ve fought like this anyway. “For the first time since I met you, I can go anywhere I want, anytime I want. It’s a nice feeling to be done with you.”
Seeing Burgess’s raised eyebrows, he added, “Yeah, I know, you got this warrant you want to threaten me with. Well, let ’er rip. I’ve got a guy from Uncle Sam just hoping for a chance to intervene for me.”
“If you are quite finished,” Burgess growled, “I will not pretend to bid you good day.” He waved his drink toward the door in an abrupt slashing motion that slopped the top third of it onto the bar.
“He’s the same guy who’s heading up the investigation into the lending practices at Oceanic Bank,” Brady went on, as if Burgess hadn’t spoken. “Yep, exactly. Investigating your bank. Oops, I guess that was a secret, it being your bank. Well, not anymore. You might get a little mud on you in this deal.”
Burgess neither moved nor spoke, just eyed him impassively, and Brady saw why the guy had become so ultra successful. Talk about your poker face. After a stare-off that felt like a week, Burgess shifted his gaze to the door and back.
“I know, I know, get out,” Brady said. “Make sure and read tomorrow’s Trib, too. There’ll be a really cool column on the EPA opening its own investigation of you. This one’s about your Taj Mahal here being the source of all the runoff that’s choking the channel. I don’t know, maybe they make you tear this garage down, but it’s going to set you back a little change either way. By the way, the article is written by Jeanette Voyes. You probably don’t remember her, but boy, she remembers you.”
“You are a little man, Mr. Spain,” Burgess said, each word bitten off bone-hard, his face turning an ugly magenta. “Running aro
und in an infantile attempt to harm me because your little man’s ego has been offended. If any of your rabble-rousing is actionable, I can promise you I will pursue it.”
“See, that’s what I mean.” Brady laughed at the hopelessness of it. He’d come here with his mood wavering toward compassion for this man who’d tried to destroy him, who’d lost his daughter to a murderer and his wife to incarceration for committing a murder, but the guy’s arrogance was staggering. Maybe Maggie was onto something with that whole bad blood idea. “It’s all about you. But what you don’t get is that this is not your planet, Burgess. You’re just a resident. You can’t just do whatever you want to.”
He took a step closer to Burgess, then another, enjoying the reckless heat firing through his body. “Because you’re right. I am a little man. So are Maggie and Grant and Gerry and Pete and Jeanette and all of us. I guess you think all the little ants look up to you, but I’ve got news for you. You kick over enough anthills and, no matter how big you are, they can put together an army to drag your ass off for dinner. So I think it would be wise for you to do that ‘be in contact with my attorney’ thing. You’re going to need it.”
Burgess strode to the door and held it open. “Since a civil request does not seem to reach your ears, I have one word for you, Mr. Spain. Out. I can assure you, you will regret this day.”
“Trust me, brother, I already regret everything about you,” Brady answered as he brushed past on his way out. He stopped in the hall and turned back. “Oh, I thought you would like to know, I made a call to your cronies over at Beach Haven Resorts to explain your problems with the EPA, figuring they might be interested in hearing how you won’t be able to get any permit for anything for a while. I guess I scared them off that deal you had incubating.”
Brady found his way back to the foyer without seeing Juana and let himself out. He sat in the Jeep a few minutes, collecting his breath and shaking off the irritation that came with hearing another dose of Burgess’s endless supply of condescending crap. He noticed the voice-mail light blinking on his phone and grabbed it up, thinking Peggy. No such luck.
