by A N Bond
Chapter 8
“IS THIS seat taken?”
Ryan looks up from his copy of the Sunday New York Times in surprise. To his reckoning, there were at least four unoccupied tables outside De Angelo’s when he took his seat twenty minutes earlier, and yes, looking around now, he can still see at least three empty tables. The guy who posed the question, however, doesn’t seem to have noticed all the empty places and he doesn’t bother waiting for Ryan to give the go-ahead, but just sweeps the empty chair back and takes a seat, regarding Ryan with an insolent smile.
“You’re trying to place me, aren’t you?” the guy says. The voice is deep and low, the accent pure Texas. It’s oddly familiar, even though Ryan is pretty sure he’s never met him before.
“I can see it on your face,” the guy continues. “You’re trying to work out how you know me. Let me spare you the effort; I’m Jack McNeil. And you’re Ryan Paullson. It’s good to finally meet you, Ryan.”
Ryan gulps back his shock and stares at the man sitting opposite him. Of course. No wonder the face and the voice are so damn familiar. He’s seen this face on the TV, in newspaper reports, and all over the old McNeil Industries annual reports and publicity material. He’s been looking at this face almost every day for the past six months. He can’t believe that he didn’t recognize the guy right away. After all, McNeil has the kind of face and presence that you don’t tend to forget. He’s tall, tan, and imposing, with the air of someone who’s more at home on a ranch than in a boardroom, despite the expensive designer overcoat and the Rolex watch flashing at his wrist. Of course, McNeil actually does own a ranch just outside of Dallas and is reputed to be an accomplished horseman, and he’s definitely still got the broad shoulders, muscled chest and arms of an ex-cowboy.
It has not escaped Ryan’s notice that he’s handsome too, in that older-guy, weather-beaten kind of way—the gray hair peppering his temples and hairline, and the slightly haggard look around his eyes the only clues that this guy is nearer fifty than forty. His eyes are dark, shrewd, and piercing, and he’s meeting Ryan’s stare with a lazy arrogance that’s really grating on Ryan. It’s obvious, just by looking, that this guy is used to getting his own way, that he doesn’t like losing, and suddenly a whole lot of things about the case are making a whole lot more sense. Ryan can understand why the man’s employees might be frightened to go against him, why people like Phil Cartwright might chicken out of testifying, and why even his own father would be so reluctant to speak up. The guy is not used to hearing the word no.
“I know who you are,” Ryan says at last. His voice sounds weak in his ears, and he clears his throat, says more firmly, “What do you want?”
“Just a cup of coffee, like everybody else around here,” says McNeil. He lifts one hand, summoning the waiter with a lack of effort that reminds Ryan forcibly of Joseph. “Triple shot Americano,” he tells the waiter. “Would you like anything else, Ryan?” He hasn’t looked at the waiter, his eyes locked on Ryan the entire time. Mutely Ryan shakes his head. “That’s all,” McNeil tells the waiter, dismissing him with a curt wave of his hand.
“You should stay away from my father,” Ryan says after the waiter has left, narrowing his eyes on the man opposite. “No more meetings at the golf club.”
“Why?”
Ryan hesitates, and a smile spreads across McNeil’s face, showcasing perfectly even white teeth. It’s a sharklike, unpleasant smile, and once again, Ryan thinks of Joseph during the team meetings, Joseph enjoying seeing everybody squirm.
“Your father and I go back a long way,” adds McNeil.
“What do you mean?”
McNeil shrugs; he looks amused, eyeing Ryan like he’s an interesting sideshow attraction. “How about you ask him when he sold his McNeil Industries shares?”
“He’s never owned any McNeil Industries shares,” Ryan retorts.
“Really?” says McNeil, and Ryan is itching to wipe that mocking smile from his face. “Ask him about it; I dare you. Though you might not like his answer.”
“This is bullshit. You just don’t want him to testify against you.”
McNeil doesn’t say anything in response but reaches into his coat and draws out a plain white envelope. He places it on the table, looks at Ryan, and taps the envelope with one finger.
“What’s that?” asks Ryan.
McNeil smirks and tips the contents of the envelope onto the table. They’re two passport-sized photographs, the kind you can have done in any old booth in any public place, the kind Ryan has had done dozens of times. Slowly, McNeil pushes the two photographs across the table. The mocking smile drops off his face and his dark eyes narrow on Ryan.
“I’m doing you a favor, kid. You need to get out when you can. Go back to that sweet piece of ass if she’ll still take you.”
Ryan blinks at him, uncomprehending; then he lowers his eyes to the photographs. They’re old, faded, a little creased around the edges, but he has no problem recognizing the two people in them—McNeil, with a lot less mileage around the eyes, no gray in his hair, a huge beaming smile on his face; and with him Joseph, shockingly young and absurdly pretty with his long eyelashes and green eyes and big smile. Joseph is sitting in McNeil’s lap, with his lips pressed to McNeil’s cheek, his hand in McNeil’s hair—Joseph so young and innocent and beautiful and so obviously in love with the man sitting in front of Ryan.
“He kept the other two. I kept these. I expect he got rid of his copies a long time ago. Not me, though. I still carry them around with me like the sentimental old fool that I am.”
“How? How long? When?” His voice cracks into a whisper as he forces himself to look up from Joseph’s young, smiling face.
“He was eighteen there,” says McNeil softly. “And I was stupid and couldn’t help myself. I was married, but I couldn’t help myself. I left my wife and kids for him. I wanted him so badly. He just—he got in there”—he taps the side of his head—“and he never quit. Never, ever fucking quit.”
“But you broke up? You must’ve broken up?”
“More times than you can count. That first time, I went back to my wife. She was the mother of my kids. And Jesus, someone in my position couldn’t be seen with a teenager! So I gave him up—for a while. But it never went away.” He licks his lips, then shakes his head a little, looking almost rueful. “He never went away. A year or so later, I went looking for him again. He was at Harvard, and he took me back. God, I remember being so damn grateful that he took me back. This punk kid, not even old enough to drink in a bar and I was fawning around him like a bitch in heat, flying to Massachusetts practically every fucking weekend. He played me for all he could get. He got me to set him up here in New York after he’d finished law school, had me pay off all his college loans. I even bought him his first apartment, here in New York. You wanna know where he got those fancy expensive tastes from? Well, it wasn’t me. I was never into any of that crap. Give me a bar and a game and a couple of beers and I’m happy. But I was crazy about him, I lived for those moments when I was with him, and he’d bleed me for everything he could get.”
McNeil breaks off as the waiter comes to their table, depositing his coffee and the check. McNeil reaches into his coat again to draw out his wallet and another of those envelopes. Ryan barely notices. His mind is fixed somewhere else, picturing young Joseph with his perfect face, big green eyes, and curling wicked smile. Joseph, who had Jack McNeil, CEO of McNeil Enterprises, one of the biggest, most powerful companies in the entire country, wrapped around his eighteen-year-old finger, already so smart and focused and knowing exactly what he wanted from life.
The waiter glides away again, and Ryan watches McNeil open up the second envelope. He takes out another picture, a Polaroid this time, and pushes it across the table. Ryan seizes it, stares down at the two people grinning back at him. Joseph and McNeil again, an older version of Joseph than the kid in the passport pictures, maybe in his early twenties, but still looking so young and beautiful that it makes Ry
an’s breath catch. The two of them have their arms thrown around each other in the picture, faces flushed and rosy and beaming, McNeil’s face slightly turned toward Joseph, watching him like he can’t quite believe he’s that lucky.
“That was Valentine’s, 2001. He dragged me to this goddamned gay bar, all these queens in drag and twinky kids with their asses on show and guys in leather. Never felt more out of place in my whole damn life. I was terrified someone would recognize me, but he insisted. First and only Valentine’s I spent with him, and he made sure I hated every minute of it. He could be one vindictive bitch when he wanted. ’Course when we got back home, he made up for it. He got down on his knees and sucked my cock with that pretty mouth of his. God, no one can suck cock like my boy.” His mouth curls up at the corner, a gesture that reminds Ryan suddenly and sickeningly of Joseph. “You’ve probably noticed that,” he adds.
Ryan swallows, acid and bile choking the back of his throat. He feels nauseated, the coffee and cigarettes tasting rank and sour on his breath. He keeps his gaze on McNeil. He’s not letting the bastard see how much he’s affected by this—by the thought of this guy and Joseph—my boy—he’s not giving him that pleasure.
“When did it finish?” he says finally.
McNeil stirs a couple of sugars into his coffee, taking his sweet time to answer Ryan’s question. He sips his coffee, then resumes the narrative like he’s delivering a bedtime story. “He was doing work for me by this time. Nothing on the books, but I’d give him shit to read over. He was really fucking smart. He understood all that lawyer crap better than the useless sons of bitches I had on retainer. I never went in for a big deal without having Joseph go over the paperwork first. He knew my company as well as I did and I trusted his judgment completely. He never steered me wrong, not for fucking years. Until the Penrose acquisition. You probably know about that?” Ryan nods, and McNeil smiles ruefully.
“Yeah, that fucking deal. Joseph worked on that deal for me—off the books of course, as normal. But he insisted that he wanted real compensation for it. He said he’d been doing all this work for me for free and he wanted some real payment. For free? That was a fucking joke, like the apartment and the presents and the accounts at Bergdorf’s and Bloomingdales and every other fucking high-end tailor in the city didn’t count! Like the thousands I’d paid out on his fancy education counted for shit! No, he said he wanted real money this time. He’d already gotten himself an offshore bank account; Joseph was always good with money. And so I arranged to have the money channeled there as a consultant’s fee like he wanted. Only a couple of other people knew about it.”
“Phil Cartwright,” Ryan murmurs. “Was Phil Cartwright one of those people?”
“Yeah, Cartwright knew. He was one of the few people with clearance to set it all up.”
Everything is slotting into place with a terrifying, horrible kind of sense. The Penrose account payout, the one he’d seen in Cartwright’s paperwork that fateful day in Houston, the one he’d shown to Joseph, the one Joseph had insisted wasn’t important or part of the case. That was Joseph’s account, Joseph’s money. Joseph, who was supposed to be defending the ex-employees of McNeil Industries against their old boss, had secretly received payments—fucking huge payments—from the same company.
“I bought Penrose because of Joseph. I voted against the board to buy that company on Joseph’s advice because I trusted him. But it was a setup. He was playing me and I had no fucking clue. I was in love with him; I was crazy about that kid, and like a stupid fool, I listened to everything he told me. And he told me that company was good for the long-term.” He pushes out a breath and shakes his head. “It was all lies; that company was a poisoned chalice. Two years after I bought it, we’d made huge losses, the share price was sinking, and I was urging my employees to buy to prop us up.”
“So you admit it, then? You admit that you deliberately misled your employees? You threw them to the dogs to save your own sorry ass?”
McNeil takes another sip of coffee, eyes him over the rim of his cup. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, kid.”
Ryan leans over the table as he gazes into McNeil’s face. “I think I just heard the truth. If only I had a wire on right now, then our case would be over. You’d be found guilty and paying out the billion in compensation you owe them.”
“You know, I feel sorry for you, Ryan. You have no idea what you’re mixed up in here. Yes, I admit that I urged my employees to buy our stock when I knew we were tanking. But I genuinely thought I could turn us around. I thought that money would help us turn around, that it would just be a temporary thing to tide us over while the market recovered. And you might not believe me, but I regret it. I regret everything that happened to them. They worked for me—they put their faith in me and I let them down. But you need to talk to your new boyfriend about why he sold his stock—stock I gave him as a gift—before Penrose even went through. Why he deliberately misled me into buying that company when he knew it was worthless. He never thought once about all those employees he’s so nobly defending now back then when he was destroying my company.”
Ryan shakes his head, letting out a breathy, disbelieving laugh. “Bullshit. I don’t believe any of that crap. Why the hell would Joseph deliberately ruin your company? He was making money from it! That’s just fucking crazy.”
“Because I’d found someone else,” says McNeil flatly. “Joseph could cope with being the other woman when it was just my wife in the picture, but once he found out about Matty, he set out to destroy me.”
“What? Are you seriously implying that Joseph did all that to you because you’d gotten some new boy on the side? That’s ridiculous.” He shoves the photographs back across the table. “This whole thing is ridiculous. Take them back; I’m leaving.” He pushes back his chair, the metal legs screeching against the concrete as he gets to his feet.
“He told you his father was killed in a car crash, didn’t he?” says McNeil. Ryan pauses with his hand on the back of his chair. “Bill Van Aardt is not dead. He’s living in a fancy retirement home down in Corpus Christi with his fourth wife. Joseph lied to you, Ryan. He told you that story ’cause he wanted something from you. Hell, why’d you think he even hired you?” Ryan turns around slowly. McNeil’s got his head tilted back, that lazy smile back on his face again as he watches Ryan. “You might think it was for your smart brain or your good scores or even that hunky body and pretty face, but he knew about your father and me a long time before he even met you. He’d been looking for a way to get your father to testify against me when you popped up on his radar. So convenient, so impressionable, and as an added bonus, so fuckable.”
“That’s bullshit.” Ryan narrows his eyes on him. “It’s all bullshit.”
“What about Fiona Kyle?”
Ryan hesitates and swallows hard. “You going to tell me that Joseph was behind Fiona’s death too? She fell onto the subway. It was an accident.”
“You don’t believe that,” says McNeil.
Ryan leans over the back of his chair and hisses, “No, you’re right, I don’t. I know that you had something to do with it. You think you’ve fooled me with all this crap about twinky little Joseph ruining your life—but the truth is that you’re just pissed ’cause he dumped your wrinkly ass. You’re a pathetic scumbag who can’t keep it in his pants. Joseph did play you, and he’s gonna win now. That’s why you’re here, feeding me all this crap, trying to get me to turn against him! You’re jealous; you’re so fucking jealous, ’cause like you said, he got to you, right here”—he pushes his index finger up against his temple—“and you’ve never gotten over him. And now you’re trying to get between us!”
McNeil shakes his head, chuckles ruefully. “Oh you poor, deluded fool.”
“I’m deluded?”
“You have no idea who you’re dealing with here. You poor, stupid sack of shit. You’re in love with the little asshole. Well, good luck with that, because take it from someone who knows, my boy c
auses nothing but heartbreak.”
“He’s not your boy anymore.”
“That’s what you think. Here, keep this.” McNeil pushes the Polaroid picture of him and Joseph back across the table. “Ask him about it. See what lies he comes up with.”
Chapter 9
RYAN IS breathing hard by the time he makes it away from McNeil, pushing through crowds, oblivious to everyone around him. His heart is beating faster than a ten-mile run on the treadmill, his brain churning over and over with the same two thoughts: Dad, Joseph, Dad, Joseph, Dad, Joseph, Dad and McNeil, Joseph and McNeil.
He ducks into an alley to dial the number. His fingers shake as he fumbles with the keys on his phone. The call connects on his second attempt, and he sighs in relief when his father picks up on the third ring.
“Dad, it’s Ryan.”
“Ryan, now isn’t such a good time. I’m very busy right now with—”
“No! No—don’t you dare! You listen to me; don’t you dare hang up! I gotta… I gotta talk to you, Dad. I just had Jack McNeil, Jack fucking McNeil approach me at a fucking coffee shop and sit down and talk to me! And do you know what he talked about? He talked about you—about you and him. You had McNeil shares, Dad, and you never said anything—you never told me. Don’t you think that was relevant?” There’s a hesitation at the end of the line and Ryan feels his heart sink. He tilts his head back and closes his eyes. “Tell me the truth. Please, Dad. Is it true? Did you used to own McNeil shares?”
“Yes.”
He bows his head and nods. He can feel the prickle of heat and pain behind his eyes, his throat and nasal passages throbbing with the effort of holding so much back. “When did you sell them?”
“April 2008.”
April 2008, the special month, the magic time period—the one that really counts. He was expecting it, but it still hurts. It still makes his eyes ache and his throat throb to hear it in his father’s voice. To know that his own father lied to him.
