The Deal

by Adam Gittlin

  I inadvertently squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter 32

  Following a tumultuous three or four seconds Mattheau smoothly corralled the vehicle. My ears were ringing. Pangaea-Man, lifeless, was slumped back awkwardly on the rear seat bank, leaning slightly to the left. His arms were down at his sides, mangled finger no longer an issue. His left eye was gone. In its place was a hole from the bullet that went clean through his head and out through the small rear window, which didn’t shatter since it was tempered glass. A narrow stream of blood flowed down his left cheek onto his shirt. The eye that remained intact was still open, staring straight ahead at nothing in particular. The extended gun was still smoking.

  I froze. My mouth fell open. My breathing became ragged.

  “Holy fucking shit,” I whispered to myself.

  Slowly I sank backward into my seat. I rested my arms at my sides, mirroring Pangaea-Man. Completely shell shocked, my gaze fixated, I tried to process what had just happened. What was yet to happen.

  “Oh my fucking Lord,” I squeezed out, still whispering.

  In the midst of my ensuing perplexity, a question that was startling in its own right firmly took hold.

  Had I really just done that?

  Another humbling concept, query staggered me.

  How many lives had I really just ended?

  Feelings of loss, adrenaline, guilt, and relief became so tangible I could almost taste them in my mouth. I had not intended to pull that trigger.

  Thought fragments, scattered around my brain like puzzle pieces, slowly began to slide into place. I was driving around New York City in the back of a limo with two million dollars in cash from God knows where, a freshly killed New York City cop, and the gun that executed him covered with my prints. The magnitude of the situation firmly took hold.

  I shook my head and forced myself to focus. My eyes squinted. I let out a slow, slightly choppy breath.

  “Fuck,” I said, sharply, this time a notch above a whisper.

  I clenched my upper and lower molars so tight, as Pangaea-Man had only minutes earlier, that I could feel my flexing jawbones trying to blast through my cheeks’ skin. In a flash, reality torched me like a campfire flame catching a marshmallow. I didn’t have time to panic. I wouldn’t have any more opportunities to correct wrong decisions.

  My hands still shaking, I put the gun back in my inside jacket pocket, never taking my eyes away from the dead man. Mattheau and I didn’t exactly have a signal for what had happened. With as much poise as possible under the circumstances, I reached my left hand up behind me and started knocking on the divider. To my surprise Mattheau didn’t lower it. I knocked some more. Nothing.

  I would have yelled his name, but the rear of the vehicle when sealed off was nearly soundproof.

  “What the fuck?” I mumbled to myself.

  I reached for the passenger control button. The barrier slowly descended. As it did, I felt the car slowing down. I peeked through the divider. Just as my eyes crossed the threshold, Mattheau’s hand clamped around my neck from out of nowhere like a bear trap.

  “What are you doing?” I pushed out through gasps.

  Mattheau was low in the seat. I remember being shocked that such a mild-mannered gentleman in such an odd position could garner such a stranglehold. His hell-bent expression both surprised and scared me.

  “Jonah!” Mattheau exclaimed as he let go, his gaze bouncing back to the road in front of him. “Jonah, I’m so sorry! I—”

  “Don’t slow down,” I continued, rubbing my neck. “Keep going.”

  “I thought...I heard a...I expected the other guy to come through here.”

  “Just keep going.”

  Mattheau, relieved that it wasn’t me who had been shot, picked up the pace.

  “Jonah, are you all right?”

  He jerked his head right again to check on me. When he did he found me still staring at him in wonderment.

  “I’m fine.”

  I quickly turned around and took another look at Pangaea-Man then the duffel bags. I dipped my chin and looked down at the seat under me before returning my attention forward to Mattheau. His eyes were shifting back and forth between the road ahead and the rearview mirror. He was trying to get a glimpse of what had happened behind me.

  “I’m all right. Head back to the brownstone,” I instructed him.

  I hit the button and the divider went back up.

  Speckled among the townhouses on the Upper East Side of Manhattan are a few with garages. My father’s home is one of them. It had room for his two cars. His weekend Benz S600 convertible, always in the space closest to the door leading inside the house, and the limo even though it was usually with Mattheau. I knew Pop was still sleeping. Mattheau pulled in then closed the garage door behind us and shut the car’s engine down. He had been a very loyal employee for many years and had always proved completely trustworthy. At this moment I couldn’t have hidden what had happened from him if I tried. There was no choice. We both got out of the car.

  Mattheau slowly walked to the rear of the vehicle, looking at the tinted glass even though there was no way for him to see through it. Then he saw the cleanly formed bullet hole in the rear window.

  “Jonah, what happened?”

  Neither of us said a word. Then he must have realized that not only had Pangaea-Man not gotten out of the car, he wasn’t even stirring.

  “What happened?” he repeated.

  “I was just protecting myself, Mattheau. The gun going off was an accident.”

  Mattheau was processing, thinking.

  “Why were you protecting yourself from this man?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said rubbing my neck again. “All I know is that this is quickly becoming too much. All of it.”

  “Jonah?”

  I started to pace. I ran through my options only to see how few there seemed to be. Mattheau leaned into the limo for a look.

  “My God,” he exclaimed with his head still in the vehicle before standing back up, “he was a police officer.”

  “This was not supposed to happen. I’m telling you. When he got in that car this morning, I had no idea he was a cop. I had no idea about a lot of things.”

  My feet stopped.

  “I would never knowingly drag you into something like this. You know that!”

  “I do know that, Jonah.”

  I stepped to the limo, ducked my head, and took in Pangaea-Man’s face again. His lone eye was still beaming yet completely drained of life.

  “Jonah,” Mattheau went on, “perhaps your father would—”

  “No!”

  I snapped back into the upright position. The note. What did it mean?

  “Forget about my father. Involving him won’t do either of us any good. I’ll just end up dragging him into my mess like I did to you.”

  “I understand your apprehension, Jonah. I do. But with all due respect, he knows—”

  “I said no!”

  I took a deep breath.

  “I can’t.”

  I had always treated Mattheau with the dignity he deserved. Honoring that, honoring me, he moved forward.

  “What about the authorities? Are there other officers who—”

  “No cops either. Yes, it was self-defense, but it’s complicated. Going to the cops is just another dead end.”

  “I never said to go to the police. You didn’t let me finish. My full question would have been, are there other officers who know the two of you were together?”

  I thought for a second, but not about the question.

  “What’s going on with you, Mattheau? Why don’t you seem the least bit scared by all this?”

  “Because like you, Jonah, I don’t have the time.”

  An overwhelming sense of guilt washed over me. Mattheau was a good man, a good employee, a good keeper of secrets. Which all made me realize one thing. This was one secret he shouldn’t have had to
keep.

  “Go!” I blurted out. “I mean it, Mattheau. Take off!”

  “What? Jonah, what the heck are you—”

  “There’s no reason you need to be a part of this. You can disappear into the house and I’ll just...I’ll just...”

  “You’ll just what?”

  “I can handle this. You don’t have to worry.”

  Mattheau looked at the door leading inside, but instead of moving he returned his attention to me.

  “I can’t take that chance, Jonah.”

  “What the fuck does that mean? I’ve earned your trust the same way you’ve earned mine! I would never let anyone think that—”

  “You don’t understand. It isn’t about anyone thinking I was involved or not. It’s about any of them, the police or anyone, thinking about me at all.”

  I didn’t get it. I had nothing to say. Mattheau started for the driver’s door, opened it, and reached inside. In one motion he pulled out the garage clicker.

  “It is you who needs to go. Leave me to clean all this up.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’ll cover you, Jonah. I’ll cover both of us. But the only way I can do that is if you leave. Now.”

  “How? Cover us how?”

  “The duffel bags in the car and the contents of the cellar—”

  The townhouse’s cellar, a wide-open, unfinished space, was comprised of nothing more than a washer and dryer, a tool chest any of us hardly ever used, and my old high-school bench and weight set.

  “— It’s more than enough.”

  “Enough what?!”

  He didn’t answer me.

  “How could you possibly have any idea how to take care of this?”

  Mattheau held the garage clicker in the air as if to light a fire under my ass. I raised my arms in submission.

  “Okay! Okay, fine. One more question and I’ll go.”

  He nodded.

  “Why?”

  “No time for that right now, Jonah. But I’ll tell you what—”

  Mattheau finally clicked the button. The motor began whirring and the door began to rise.

  “— Next time we’re alone, ask me why I left Haiti.”

  I pulled my briefcase out of the car, crawled under the half-raised garage door, and dashed out into the city.

  Chapter 33

  The elevator doors closed behind me. My floor was barely stirring. Instead of my office, I headed for the bathroom. Once inside I jumped into a stall, locked it, and opened up my briefcase on the toilet.

  All of the stress from keeping my emotions under wraps was starting to take its toll on my body. My mind was still sharp, acute, but I was starting to feel undeniably tired. I was used to little sleep, but this was different. My shut-eye the night before had totaled only minutes as opposed to hours in anticipation of my meeting with Pangaea-Man. I had spent the last hour or so adding cop-killer and obstructer of justice to my résumé. My mind and body were starting to play tug-of-war. My body was asking for a brief reprieve but my day was only just starting.

  I needed time to figure out how to approach my father. I thought, do I do a little reconnaissance first? Or do I just come straight out with it and ask him? I needed to be sure.

  I pulled my vial of coke from one of the leather pockets in my briefcase. I bounced a huge bump up each nostril. I closed the vial, put it away, shut the briefcase, and let myself out of the little drug pen. Once in front of the mirror I placed the case at my side.

  I studied myself in the glass. I couldn’t believe what was happening, what had transpired on so many fronts in such a short amount of time. I looked the same. In fact, I thought, I looked pretty damn good. I was exuding the kind of glow, confidence that went with rising up in the face of great challenges. I had chosen a terrific suit that morning. Canali head to toe. Three-button navy suit, sky blue herringbone shirt, and solid gold silk tie. Powerful. I took a deep breath.

  I made eye contact with my image in the mirror. As much as I wanted to feel safe, the reflected room behind me appeared to be closing in, clamping down. I reminded myself that I still hadn’t uncovered all of the facts, which meant an ironclad vision of how to get myself past all of this hadn’t yet formed. I was definitely both exhausted and living in fear. But the show needed to go on.

  I turned on the faucet and collected a small puddle of water in my hand. I snorted it up my nose to wash all of the coke down then let out a quick choking cough and headed for my office.

  I closed the door behind me and put my briefcase down next to my desk. I usually took off my suit jacket when I was in the office, but had suspended that practice out of my need to have the gun as close to me as possible at all times.

  Before settling in, I noticed a small, thin package on my chair. I leaned forward to have a closer look without touching it. It was sent to me with no return address. And it was marked with the same lettering as the initial hair package from the Angie Sheppard imposter.

  Now she was really starting to piss me off. Instead of feeling nervous I became angry. I had recently joined the ranks of a death-row candidate while at the same time my team was still trying to close the deal. I picked up the package and tore into it fearing nothing.

  It was a DVD of the movie Fatal Attraction. The fact I had thought and spoken of this movie when I was looking at her in Pastis made me uneasy. Fuck! I hated that she was actually paying attention to me! Just leave me alone!

  There was a Post-It secured to the front of the unopened DVD package. It read,

  Thought you might enjoy this since you feel like you are living it. Please give me another chance. Please. Don’t make me do anything we’ll both regret. Please.

  Krissy

  Krissy?

  “What’s that?”

  I hadn’t seen or heard Perry come in. She startled me. I straightened up, wide-eyed.

  “Too much coffee again?”

  “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  I picked up my briefcase and placed it on my desk like everything was business as usual.

  “What’s your story this morning?” I went on.

  I opened the briefcase and placed the DVD inside. I looked at my watch. It was 7:25 a.m.

  “I didn’t expect to see you for another twenty minutes or so.”

  I closed the briefcase and returned it to the floor next to my desk.

  “Well there’s this little half a billion dollar deal I’m trying to put together. My mother came by extra early to watch Max.”

  The deal. I still didn’t know how to handle the deal. All I knew was that everything had to go on as business as usual. I couldn’t let anyone, and that meant anyone, especially Perry, know what was happening with me.

  “Hubby couldn’t be there for him to wake up?”

  “Hubby was out by five. And if it’s all right with you, I’d rather not mention his name again today.”

  Point taken.

  “Any word from Auerbach?”

  “You might say yesterday’s events served as a serious motivator. He called me late last night to apologize for the tenth time. In between pleas for regaining my friendship he threw in that the board definitely wants to make a deal and they seem very happy with the number offered. He explained to them that it was the number of a very eager buyer and that they should jump on it instead of trying to negotiate.”

  “The time constraints?”

  “He outlined it all for them. He then said they’d have a consensus by Monday. I explained that I needed the weekend to get my inspection team on the premises, and that I didn’t understand why so much time was needed if it was such an obvious no-brainer.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “That he was only concerned about being able to reach enough board members in such a short amount of time.”

  “And?”

  “And I told him that I had a little story his board might find very interesting if he d
idn’t figure out how to get me the go-ahead by the end of the day today.”

  Perry, dressed in a gray Armani skirt suit with a pink top underneath, sat down in one of the chairs facing my desk.

  “Thanks, Jonah.”

  I sat down as well.

  “For what?”

  “For helping me to avoid being completely sandbagged by Auerbach. Normally I would have seen that coming.”

  “Is that so?” I asked, sarcastically.

  “You know what I mean. It’s just that these last few days have, well—”

  “Don’t you mean these last few months?”

  Perry let out a semi-sad laugh.

  “Besides, I thought you didn’t want to talk about him today.”

  “I don’t,” she said back.

  My cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. It was Krissy, formerly known as the Angie Sheppard imposter. Perry must have been able to tell from the look on my face who it was.

  “What’s this girl’s problem?” she asked.

  All I could do was raise my hand into the air and shake my head.

  “Not now,” I said.

  My organs, my feelings, my soul, everything inside was dancing the tango. Yet in spite of all that was happening, I remember, randomly, feeling thankful for Perry. Thankful of the fact that her face could, even for a few needed moments as my mind was again speeding up, calm me.

  “You know, Per—”

  “What?”

  I had started speaking without even knowing what I wanted to say.

  “You should wear pink more often.”

  At that instance Tommy blasted into my office.

  “My office, now!”

  “What’s going—”

  “Now, Jonah!”

  “What about Jake?” asked Perry.

  “He’s on his way upstairs,” Tommy answered.

  Two minutes later the four of us were in Tommy’s office.

  “Cold, buddy?” asked Jake, referring to the fact I still had my jacket on.

  “Not now, Jake,” scolded Tommy. “It’s time for all of us to focus. We seem to have a potentially serious problem on our hands.”

  I sat there outwardly looking concerned, inquisitive. Inside I was a nervous wreck. Was this impromptu meeting about me? About Pangaea-Man? Was Tommy just keeping me still until the cops could get to me? Had Mattheau gone straight to the police? I shifted in my seat.