Everything to Lose: A Novel

by Andrew Gross

  Patrick leaned back against the booth. “You didn’t answer my question. How much money?”

  “This is hard,” I said, ignoring what was in his mind. “Just hear me out.” I took a sip of iced tea. “The past two years I’ve paid for everything entirely on my own. I had a job as a divisional comptroller for an advertising agency. It was hard, but I made enough, barely, and when I didn’t, I tapped into whatever savings I had. Which is basically gone now. My son’s care has taken everything.

  “Two Wednesdays ago I got let go. We lost our lead account and the entire division I worked for was shut down. I basically got four weeks’ severance and a couple of months on the health plan, which is crucial to me because of Brandon. That was the day before your father’s accident.”

  “Which brings us to the cash,” Patrick said, beginning to put it all together. “You took it.”

  “I took it.” I nodded, my throat suddenly dry as parchment. “I heard Rollie making his way down the incline. It was just one of those split-second things. You have to understand, I’ve never done anything like this before in my life. It was just—” I looked at him and shrugged, with the slightest, self-recriminating smile. “I was just so damn desperate that I didn’t see any other way. It was like this gift had fallen into my lap. Your dad was dead. I saw a way to keep my son in school and get out from under some debts that were crippling us.

  “So, yes, I zipped the satchel back up and hurled it as far as I could into the woods so no one would find it. Then Rollie made it down. He never knew a thing about it. I guess my plan—such as it was—was to let it sit there until I knew for sure who it belonged to or if anyone was looking for it. Which was why I came to the funeral. I swear I intended to give it back.

  “But it didn’t seem that anyone was . . . looking for it. So I guess I just convinced myself that it was somehow okay. Because how would anyone ever know? No one would know. Except they always know, don’t they? And no matter how well you think you handled it, they always find a way. Back to you . . .”

  Patrick’s tone took on an edge of impatience. “I guess they do . . .”

  “I waited over a week before I went back for it. I actually prayed I’d see something like it was your dad’s life savings or the proceeds from a business, and I was honestly going to write you and let you know where it was. I swear. I begged my ex-husband to ante up for the school. I did anything I could so I didn’t have to go back for it. But he basically just blew me off. He was out in fucking Vail, skiing. His new kids’ spring break. All the while he was telling me he was penniless and that his wife was going to have to take a job. My options were to take his ass to court, which would have taken weeks, if there was even anything to get. Or . . .” I looked at Patrick and it was clear what was in my eyes. “The next day I went back. I swear I didn’t want to ever see it again. But it was just there . . .” My eyes moistened over with guilt and shame. “I’m sorry.”

  “How much money?” Patrick asked a last time, fixing on me

  I drew in a breath and met his gaze, pushing myself back against the booth. “Half a million dollars.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Patrick’s eyes grew wide, his expression a mix of stupefaction and utter disbelief. “You just said half a million dollars.”

  “I did.”

  I could see the gears start to turn. His father was an MTA worker who’d spent a lifetime in the soot and darkness of the New York City transit tunnels. Where would he ever lay his hands on a half-million dollars? He cleared his throat, his voice barely a notch stronger than mine, his eyes tunneling in on me. “Exact?”

  I nodded. “In bound packs of hundred-dollar bills. Fifty of them.”

  “In a satchel? On the seat of his car?”

  “That’s right.” I nodded again.

  “Jesus son of Mary.” He sat back and blew out his cheeks.

  I said, “I guess it’s safe to say I don’t think he was up there to see any building supplier, Patrick.”

  He nodded almost reflexively, then his gaze fell back on me. “You’ve got a lot of balls, coming in here and telling this to me.”

  “I realize that,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “So where is it all? Now?”

  “I’d rather not say exactly where it is, if that’s okay. Until I have an idea what you’re going to do about it.”

  “What I’m going to do about it?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s safe. It’s more yours than mine. Or someone’s—I’m not exactly sure who it belongs to.”

  “What do you mean, who it actually belongs to?”

  “Patrick, please, you know it wasn’t his. You said at the funeral you didn’t even know what he was doing up there.”

  “I’m trying to make sense of this . . . My father, who spent his whole life repairing tracks; who left a pension of seventy-nine thousand dollars after removing most of it to pay for his wife’s medical treatments; and who paid off his mortgage twenty years ago and never had a dollar in debt—somehow had half a million dollars in hundred-dollar bills in his car? And now you have it, hidden somewhere?”

  “Actually, it’s down to four hundred and thirty-seven thousand.” I shrugged. “I told you about the school. I also paid my house taxes for half the coming year. And my mortgage. And part of a business note for my parents. I know I’ll have to pay it all back.”

  He looked at me without telling me much. The air seemed to go out of his anger.

  “Look, I don’t know how you want to handle this . . . You want to arrest me, go right ahead. I guess that seems right. It’s just that before you do, there’s more . . .”

  “More money?” His eyes grew wide again.

  “No. More to the story.” I let out a painful breath. “There’s Rollie.”

  “Rollie?”

  “Yeah.” I swallowed guiltily. “I’m afraid so.”

  Rollie. The person who, according to all the reports, had been first on the accident scene. And who was now dead. On top of a missing half-million dollars.

  I watched Patrick slowly fit the pieces together.

  “I told you this was hard. I’ve no idea if he truly killed himself or not. As much as I could find out, he didn’t suffer from depression, he wasn’t sick, he was happily married, he didn’t have financial problems. I mean, I’m not a detective, but anyone who might be looking into that accident, say, from the point of view of trying to find something that didn’t end up on any police report or in the press—say half a million dollars—would discover that Rollie was first on the scene. Before the cops and EMTs even got there. The only one. Not me.”

  “I think I’m starting to see where this is heading.” Patrick exhaled somberly. “And I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t like it either. It nearly scared me to death when I first read about it. I’d waited ten days to see if the missing money appeared anywhere. I started to think he was the first one anyone would go to, if the police report didn’t mention a satchel of cash being found. Certainly the newspaper never mentioned anything.”

  “So you’re suggesting that this wasn’t a suicide? That this guy was what, murdered?”

  “The people closest to him certainly didn’t see it as a suicide. I went on a family grief page and anyone who knew him seemed to be at a loss for words. And nothing’s come out since to change that. At first I just thought maybe I’d been watching too many detective shows. I mean, I’ve been on total edge about this since I took the money. Then something else happened. Last night. Something that made me think maybe it wasn’t my imagination running away with me after all.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “My house got broken into. I don’t know if you’ve heard—why would you?—but there’s been a string of burglaries going on up in Westchester. So at first, when I came home, I thought that’s all it was. Not all, of course—I mean it freaked me out. Brandon and I live there alone. The place looked like a neutron bomb had gone off inside. Things were missing. Drawers rifled through,
turned upside down.”

  “What made you think it wasn’t just a normal robbery?”

  “I have this ring. My diamond engagement ring. Jim gave it to me. A nice one. Almost four karats. All I could think of was that I’d worn it the day before and never put it away, and I’d left it right out in the open on my dresser. A blind thief would have found it.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “But when I ran up to my room, the place was just as I’d left it. Nothing up there had been touched. I figured we must’ve come home just as whoever it was had gotten up there, and when they saw us drive up they took off. The door to the deck was open. And I found my ring. Sitting there, right on the dresser. At first I couldn’t believe my luck. Then I saw what it was on . . .”

  “What what was on?” Patrick furrowed his brow.

  “The ring. What it was sitting on. Right there on my dresser for me to see.”

  This time he just sat there, waiting for me to fill in the blank.

  And I did.

  “It was on a crisp new hundred-dollar bill.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I know it was a warning.” I leaned forward, my palms on Patrick’s side of the table. “I know the whole robbery thing was just a sham, and what they wanted me to see was that bill. To let me know they knew, or at least suspected. That it was me. Either way, put together with Rollie, someone’s looking for that money. Which is why I’m here. I don’t know how they could have traced it to me or whether they know for sure—they can’t know, only suspect. Otherwise I’d probably be just like Rollie. But I have a son. A son who’s the most important thing in my life, and who all of a sudden I’m just a little scared I’ve put in danger.”

  “And what exactly were you thinking I would do?” Patrick squinted at me. “Clearly, you’re aware I work for the New York City police.”

  “You said that at the funeral. And I said that I’m prepared—whatever you have to do, go ahead. I just want him to be safe. But before you do, you might want to hear me out. I’m pretty sure that no one knows this money even exists. No one meaning the police, of course. As far as they would be concerned, so far there’s not even been an actual crime that’s been committed. Rollie’s death was deemed a suicide. Which I suppose there’s still one chance in hell it just might be.

  “So you can have me arrested. But what happens then? The money gets looked into, and I’m pretty certain it’s not going to come back as clean. I can hand it over to you. By rights, I’m guessing it belongs to you more than anyone else. But that isn’t going to get these people off my back. Or Brandon’s. So I guess there’s part of me that hoped, if I came here”—I looked at him, rotating my glass on the table—“there might be a way we could handle this ourselves.” I shrugged. “Privately . . .”

  “Privately?”

  “I need to know where that money came from and who’s behind this. If it’s someone I have to be afraid of. If they killed Rollie. If someone broke into my house and is after me.”

  “And if there is . . . ?”

  “If there is, then I don’t know. Maybe the police are the best answer. I surely committed a crime. I don’t know what that means for Brandon and me. But I can’t put my son at risk. No way.”

  “And if we do . . .”—Patrick waited a beat or two, then looked at me—“handle it privately, as you say. What works in that for me? Other than risking everything I’ve built my life on.”

  “Only one thing.” I swallowed and held my breath. “Four hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars.”

  “Of my father’s money,” he replied.

  “Of someone’s money, Patrick. If you want to take the chance on who that someone might be.”

  He drew in a breath, and for a second I was sure he was going to take out his phone and dial up his superiors on the force right then, right in front of me, and say, You’re not gonna believe the story I just heard. Instead he just shook his head with a kind of befuddled expression. “You want a drink?”

  “A drink?”

  “I think I need a shot of something. Tequila, maybe. I’m thinking you probably need one too.”

  I looked deep into his eyes and smiled. “I’d love a shot of tequila right about now.”

  “Steph!” He called over the waitress. “Two Don Julio Añejos.” He looked back at me. “I think it’s fair to say this is going to be it, as far as work is concerned today.”

  “Trust me, I won’t be the one turning you in.”

  It took just a couple of minutes and the drinks arrived. Patrick raised his glass. “Hell with the salt and limes.”

  “Right behind you.” I lifted mine too.

  He downed his in a gulp. I shut my eyes and swallowed mine too. I blew out my cheeks, feeling my throat on fire, the sharp but pleasurable burning settling into my chest.

  For a moment we just looked at each other, Patrick’s back against the booth, running his hand across his scalp. Me, not certain if I was about to spend the night in a New York City jail, and potentially a whole lot after.

  “So if you were so prepared to hand yourself over,” he asked, “why didn’t you just take this to the local police up there?”

  “I couldn’t.” I explained how I wasn’t completely sure about any of this: The break-in. What happened to Rollie. And if I admitted to the police what I’d done, not just about taking the money, but laundering it as well, I knew I’d definitely be brought up on something, and that scared me, what with Brandon.

  All with the possibility, the remote one maybe, that an actual crime hadn’t been committed other than mine.

  “That’s why I needed to know about the money. And even if they let me off,” I said, “say on the desperate-single-mother thing and never having committed a crime before, and I agreed to pay it all back, there’d still be this person out there—and I don’t have a clue in hell who it even is!—who’s already clearly shown what he’s willing to do to get back his money. We’d never have a comfortable night again in our lives.”

  Patrick nodded, tapping his tequila glass against the table. “I guess my next question is, why me?”

  “You mean other than I saw you at the funeral, and you seemed like a nice enough guy, and I couldn’t not tell you, after last night, that your life might be in danger?”

  “I appreciate the 911. But, yeah, since you brought it up, other than that, I guess.”

  I slowly slid my glass on the tabletop, then looked back up at him and shrugged. “Maybe because I couldn’t think of anyone else who might have a vested interest in keeping all of this quiet.”

  Patrick stared. “By ‘quiet,’ ” he said, giving me a wistful smile, “I assume that’s another way of saying, ‘handle it privately.’ ”

  “Your father got that money from somewhere, Patrick. And I think we both know it’s not likely it came out of some secret savings account he’d been keeping from you.”

  “So you’re saying why unnecessarily cast a stain on the reputation of a man everyone loved and looked up to?” It sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

  “All I want is to be able to go back to my life and take care of my son. I made a mistake. And I’m prepared to hand the money over and return, over time, every penny I spent, if that’s what you want. And the only way I have a chance of achieving this—without an electronic bracelet around my ankle for the next ten years—is if you see it that way as well.

  “I know you work for the police. I realize where your obligations lie. But I’m also pretty certain that if that money ends up in police hands, it won’t be yours or mine—and there’ll be an investigation into where it came from and just why your father had it on him that night. And that won’t be pretty.”

  Patrick smiled, the kind of mirthless smile a chess master might show when his opponent pulls off a completely unpredictable, game-reversing move and corners him. “There’s just one thing.”

  “That you’re a cop.”

  “I work for the department now. In the office of community af
fairs. And this goes against anything I’ve ever sworn.” He looked at me, continuing to tap his finger. “You’re sure you left no trace of yourself at the accident scene?”

  “Maybe some prints in the car. But my fingerprints aren’t in the system.”

  “And Rollie . . . Tell me again what you told him.”

  “I only gave him my middle name. Jeanine. He asked how to reach me and I said I’d leave my info on his windshield, but I didn’t. He made the 911 call to the police. He stayed with your dad’s car until they arrived. I was gone by then.”

  “Still,” he said, twisting his mouth, “somehow they found you.”

  I pressed my back against the booth and shrugged. “Yeah, somehow they did.”

  Some other customers had come into the café. Patrick waved at one, then turned away.

  “I have to think this over. You said you made a bad decision and it may be costing you your life. I don’t want to do the same thing.”

  “Just not too long, okay? I’m kind of hanging out here. Poor choice of words,” I said, seeing his face curl into a tight smile. “Sorry, Rollie . . .”

  “So where’s your son?”

  “With my housekeeper. I can keep him there for a couple of nights. I think it’s safe.”

  “Don’t go back to your house until we decide what’s right.”

  I nodded. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

  “Do you have a place to stay?”

  “You mean anywhere as cozy as the couch at your father’s place? I’ll figure something out.”