Found money

by James Grippando

  “Of course I want it.”

  “Then you gotta pay.”

  He froze, undecided. Then an idea struck. This was a chance to pull it all together — to put Marilyn Gaslow and Kozelka’s goons at the same place at the same time. It would be telling indeed to see how they treated one another. “All right,” said Ryan. “Meet me at Cheesman Dam. Two A.M.”

  “See you then,” she said, then hung up the phone.

  Yeah, thought Ryan. See us then.

  The phone rang in Marilyn Gaslow’s bedroom. She hadn’t moved from the edge of her bed since dialing Joe Kozelka’s pager. She checked the caller identification box on her nightstand. It was him.

  “Joe, thanks for calling back.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Trouble.” She told him about the faxed invitation to Cheesman Dam.

  He was silent, the way he usually was whenever he got angry. Hundreds of times during their marriage, Marilyn had watched him internalize his rage. Joe was a pressure cooker that totally blew about every ten years. The first time, she’d forgiven him. The second time she’d decided not to wait for a third. She was afraid she wouldn’t live through the third.

  “Who sent it?”

  “It came from the seven-one-nine area code. I assume it’s from the Duffys.”

  “Probably. But Amy Parkens was down that way this morning, too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We know. Rusch put a tracking device on her truck.”

  “Amy wouldn’t send a fax like this.”

  “No, but she and Duffy could be cooking something up.”

  “Let me call Amy.”

  “No,” he said sternly. “Just let me handle it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Leave your Mercedes in the driveway with the keys in the glove box. I’ll arrange for someone to pick it up this evening and drive it to the dam.”

  Marilyn blinked nervously. “And then what?”

  “Whoever sent this has to be taught a lesson. I had a deal with the old man. Frank got five million dollars. His family was never supposed to see the letter. He obviously broke his end of the deal. Now the family has to deal with the consequences.”

  “Please don’t get carried away here.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” he said, his voice tightening. “I’ve paid a lot of money to call the shots, Marilyn. Five million to Duffy. Millions more in campaign contributions to get you in line for some useful presidential appointment. It took a long time for the right opportunity to come along. To be honest, the Board of Governors was even beyond my expectations. But now that it’s for the taking, we are not going to be denied your one and only shot at the chair.”

  “You mean your shot,” she said bitterly.

  “I will never influence a decision of yours, Marilyn. I just want to know what your decisions are. Before anyone else does.”

  Her stomach wrenched. A man as wealthy as Kozelka could make billions of dollars knowing that the Fed was going to raise interest rates a day before the public announcement. “Do you have to rub it my face? I’m well aware that you’re the one who stands to gain.”

  “And if you resist me, you’re the one who stands to lose. That’s the real beauty of it, Marilyn.”

  She said nothing, knowing it was true.

  “I’m counting on you,” he said. “Study hard for your confirmation hearing. And leave the rest to me.”

  The dial tone hummed in her ear. Marilyn felt numb as she hung up the phone. She was poised to assume one of the world’s most powerful positions, yet she was a puppet. Worst of all, a puppet under the control of her ex-husband. In hindsight, she would never have paid the extortion. Once she did, however, there was no going back. She knew of no public official who could survive a teenage rape scandal that involved the payment of hush money.

  Back then, saving her career had seemed like the only thing to do. Right now, however, it wasn’t her career she was worried about. It terrified her to think that Amy might show up with Ryan Duffy at Cheesman Dam. Had she known Amy had been in Piedmont Springs this morning, she would never have called Joe. As it turned out, she might well have signed Amy’s death warrant. That was something she could never live with.

  She reached for the phone, then put it down. There was too much to tell, too much to explain. She grabbed her purse and started for the door.

  It was time she and Amy had a very frank talk.

  58

  It was Amy’s first trip down Holling Street since the night her mother died. For over twenty years she had avoided the old house, the street, and pretty much the entire neighborhood. She recognized the contradiction — a scientist who refused to look at the data. As much as she wanted the truth, her intellectual curiosity had always yielded to emotion whenever she came too close to her past. The house had become like the Ring Nebula, the dying star she had captured on that tragic night in her telescope. She just couldn’t look at it again.

  Until tonight.

  Amy parked at the curb, beneath a streetlight. The two-story frame house sat in relative darkness on the other side of the street. Just one light was on. It came from the dining room, or at least what used to be the dining room. As her eyes adjusted to the moonlight, she noted all the things that had changed. The tiny Douglas fir she and her mother had planted in the front yard was now over twenty feet tall. The front porch where they used to swing had been enclosed in makeshift fashion. The clapboard siding needed a fresh coat of paint, and the lawn needed mowing. Cracks in the sidewalk seemed more plentiful. Amy remembered how she used to skip over them as a child, determined not to break her mother’s back.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Gram asked from behind.

  Amy nodded. She started up the sidewalk, ignoring the cracks, letting her feet fall where they may.

  As she climbed the front steps, the night could no longer hide the telltale signs of aging and neglect. Several broken windows had been boarded rather than replaced. The front door bore the scars of a previous break-in, or perhaps just a tenant who had forgotten his key. The porch railings had nearly been consumed by rust. The basement window was framed with water damage. Amy had expected some disrepair. Her mother’s violent death had stigmatized the property. Gram had tried to sell it after the funeral, but no one wanted to live there. An investor finally picked it up for less than the remaining mortgage. For the past twenty years, it had been rented to college students for less than half the going rate for a three-bedroom house. The owner was apparently content to let it deteriorate to the point where it could be razed and replaced by ghost-free new construction.

  Amy knocked firmly. Gram touched her hand as they waited. Finally, the chain rattled on the door, and it opened. A young man wearing blue jeans and a white UC Boulder T-shirt stood in the open doorway. Something that resembled a mustache covered his upper lip. He was like a big kid who had grown a little facial hair to make him look like college material.

  “You’re the lady who called?” he said.

  “Yes.” Amy had called in advance to explain who she was. The students who lived there had no qualms with her visit. They actually thought it was pretty cool. “This is my grandmother,” said Amy.

  “Cool. I’m Evan. Come on in.”

  Amy stepped inside. Gram followed. Amy stood in the foyer, nearly breathless. It looked almost as bad as Amy’s apartment after the break-in. The fireplace had been boarded up to keep out the weather or worse. In traffic areas, the vintage seventies shag carpet had worn through to the floorboards. Wires dangled from the ceiling where there used be a chandelier. A collage of posters covered the cracked and dirty walls. A mattress lay on the dining room floor.

  “You sleep in the dining room?” she asked.

  “No, there’s three of us. We made that into Ben’s room. Jake gets the back bedroom downstairs. I get the small bedroom upstairs.”

  “Who gets the master?”

  He made a face. “Nobody. No offense, but
nobody even goes in there.”

  “None taken,” she said, seeming to understand.

  “Is there anybody upstairs now?”

  “No. My roomies are out sucking down margaritas at Muldoon’s.”

  “You mind if I have a look around?”

  “That’s what you came for, isn’t it? Be my guest.”

  “Thanks.”

  Gram asked, “You want me to come with you?”

  “Oh, by the way,” said Evan. “Don’t mind the pet tarantula at the top of the stairs. He looks mean, but he’s okay with strangers. Well, most strangers.”

  “On second thought,” said Gram, “I’ll wait here.”

  Amy said, “I think it’s best I do this alone anyway.”

  Gram gave her a hug. Amy turned and started up the stairs.

  She climbed slowly, deliberately. With each step, she felt a rush of adrenaline. Her pulse quickened. Her hands began to tingle. The feelings were coming back to her. She remembered having lived there. Flying down the stairs on Christmas mornings. Racing up the stairs to her room each day after school. She stopped on the landing at the top of the stairway. Down the hall to her right was her old room. To the left was her mother’s. She tried to pinpoint her memory and focus on that night. Her mind wouldn’t take her there. Too much distraction. A strange mountain bike in the hallway. The pet tarantula in the tank. The lights had to go. There had been no lights on that night.

  She flipped the switch. The present disappeared. She stood alone in darkness.

  Fear filled her heart. Not the fear of tarantulas or other things that were there. She was feeling the fear of an eight-year-old girl. She stood frozen in the darkness, waiting for it to subside. It wouldn’t. As her eyes adjusted, the fear only grew. She could see all the way down the hall, through the darkness, right up to the door that led to her mother’s room. The fear was much worse than it had been twenty years ago. This time she knew what lay on the other side.

  Her foot slid forward and she took the first step.

  She felt the carpet between her toes, even though she wore shoes. She was eight again and barefoot, creeping down the hall toward her mother’s room. Her knees felt scratched from the crawl through the attic — the escape from her room. Another step forward and she could hear the oscillating fan. The door was now open. She saw the clump of blankets atop the bed. Finally, she saw the hand again, hanging limply off the mattress. Words stuck in her throat, but her mind heard them anyway. Mom?

  A chill went down her spine as she was sucked from the room. She was spiraling down the hall, screaming helplessly, caught in some kind of cosmic explosion that lifted her from the hallway, the house, the planet. Dust and debris clouded her vision as she raced though the night at such incredible speed that the stars converged into an endless beam of light that seemed to bend with her movement and wrap around her fears. It wrapped tighter and tighter, until the fear subsided and she could make herself think. Thinking slowed the pace. Thinking dimmed the intensity. She was no longer going anywhere. She was back on the planet, a distant and dispassionate observer, a scientist logging what she’d seen on that horrible night.

  The Ring Nebula. M 57. The fifty-seventh object in Charles Messier’s eighteenth-century catalog of fuzzy objects in the sky.

  “Amy?”

  She turned. Gram was right behind her on the steps. She had never left the landing.

  “You okay?” asked Gram.

  Amy’s hands were shaking. She was sweating beneath her jacket. She wanted to lie and say yes, but she was too overwhelmed.

  Gram asked, “Are you going to go in?”

  Amy looked at her grandmother, her eyes filled with emotion. “I already did. Come on,” she said, taking Gram by the arm. “Let’s go home.”

  59

  Trumpets blared. Violins wept. Joe Kozelka was seated in a leather wing chair, allowing a glass of Chivas Regal to help him through Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

  Music helped him sort out his thoughts. Whenever life seemed without order, he would put it to music. The Ninth Symphony was his favorite, particularly the fourth movement. Experts thought it contained some of the master’s ugliest music. Kozelka had only the highest admiration for a man who could successfully incorporate his most controversial moments into his greatest overall achievement.

  The music was suddenly soft. His thoughts turned toward Marilyn. In the nearly fifty years they’d known each other, they’d shared many memories. Strangely, the most memorable night for him was one of which Marilyn had no memory. It was the night Frank Duffy had driven them to Cheesman Dam. The night they’d all gotten drunk and parked on the canyon ridge.

  His eyes drifted toward a Russian cut-crystal vase on the mantel. It sparkled beneath the track lighting, like the blanket of stars reflecting off the Cheesman reservoir. He sipped his Chivas, but it suddenly tasted like Southern Comfort. He remembered everything about that night, every little detail. He could smell the sweet bourbon, feel the warmth of his own erratic breath. He could see Marilyn passed out in the backseat of Frank’s car, watch himself get out and walk up the path toward his unsuspecting friend…

  “Frank, hey,” said Joe.

  Frank Duffy and his girlfriend were sitting on a fallen log, facing the moonlit canyon beyond the ridge. Joe was out of breath as he caught up with them.

  Frank rose. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Marilyn. She passed out. And-”

  “And what?”

  Joe made a face. “She tossed her cookies all over your backseat.”

  “Aww, man.”

  “Hey, it’s not her fault. She never drank before.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Pretty bad. Look for yourself.”

  The boys ran toward the car. Linda followed behind. Frank opened the car door and immediately recoiled. The pungent odor was unmistakable. “Oh, gawd!”

  Joe looked inside. Marilyn was lying on her back across the seat. A pool of vomit lay on the floor behind the driver’s seat. “At least she didn’t get any on her.”

  “What about my car?” said Frank. “I’ll never get that smell out.”

  Linda stuck her head in, sniffed, and stepped back. “Yuck. You’re on your own, Frankie boy. I’m not riding all the way back to Boulder in that. I’ll catch a ride with the others.”

  “Linda, come on.”

  “No way. I’m squeezing in the other car.” She hurried away before Frank could stop her.

  Joe had an impish expression. “I think I’m going to ride back with the others, too.”

  “No way! She’s your girlfriend.”

  “Frank, I’m feeling kind of sick myself. If I ride back with you and that smell, I’m going to lose it, too. You want double the mess in your car? Just take her home for me, will you, please?”

  “I can’t believe you’re bailing on me like this.”

  “Come on, man. I can’t let Marilyn’s parents see me like this. They’re good friends with my old man. They’ll kill me.”

  “What about me?”

  “The worst that will happen is that her parents won’t let her double-date with Frank Duffy anymore. That’s no big deal. You’re not the one who wants to marry her.”

  Frank’s eyes widened. “You’re in love with this girl?”

  “Please. Just take her home. If her dad knows I got her drunk, I–I don’t know what I’ll do if he won’t let me see her anymore.”

  Frank groaned, then said, “All right. What am I supposed to tell her parents?”

  “I don’t know. Tell them she got food poisoning. Just don’t mention my name. Promise?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Frank dug for his car keys and opened the door. “But you owe me, Joe. Big time.”

  Joe slapped him on the back, nearly shoving him into the driver’s seat. “Yeah, buddy. You have no idea.”

  …The phone rang, drawing Kozelka from his memories. Beethoven’s symphony was in its fourth movement. The tumultuous Horror Fanfare had just begun when he
hit the mute button and grabbed the phone.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “It’s me,” said Nathan Rusch.

  “Where the hell have you been? I’ve beeped you a dozen times.”

  “I’ve been… indisposed.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Rusch shook his head. Ex-prostitutes were like walking pharmacies. The effects of whatever Sheila had slipped him had not yet passed completely. “Long story.”

  “I need you back in Denver tonight. Duffy contacted Marilyn directly. He expects her to show up at the Cheesman Dam at two A.M.”

  “Why there?”

  “Never mind, Rusch. Just get over here. I need you at the dam.”

  “You don’t suspect an FBI setup?”

  “No. It’s a clear case of like father, like son. The boy wants more money. He isn’t going to bring in the FBI to bear witness to his extortion. Besides, we have him boxed in so long as we have his father’s gun.”

  Rusch rubbed his throbbing head. “One thing I should tell you. The gun is gone.”

  “ Gone?” he said incredulously.

  “The girl stole it, I think. She’s gone and the gun is gone.”

  “Damn it, Rusch. The frame-up was our way of making sure that Duffy doesn’t talk to the FBI.”

  “I realize that, sir.”

  Kozelka guzzled the rest of his scotch. In a rare surge of rage, he squeezed the crystal so tightly it nearly crushed in his bare hand. “That leaves us one option. Scorched earth. Take out the targets who are pushing the hardest.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The lawyer and the ex-wife have to go. Preferably in one hit. Tonight.”

  “Easy enough. I’m thinking maybe an urgent package marked personal and confidential, addressed to Liz Duffy but delivered to Jackson’s house. The lawyer shouldn’t open it without his client’s permission. Decent chance they’ll open it together. I guarantee, it’ll be the last thing that twosome ever does.”

  “Good.” He tucked the phone under his chin and refilled his scotch. “Get it done before you meet Duffy at the dam. I want this to look like the boy went berserk. Killed his brother-in-law, his ex-wife, her lawyer.”