Everything to Lose: A Novel

by Andrew Gross

  Ann actually leaned forward and put her hand against the senator’s wrist. Landry’s daughter rested her head against his shoulder.

  Ann said, “You loved your wife deeply, didn’t you, Senator Landry?”

  “Of course. We all did. Everyone who knew her did.”

  “And you hold yourself accountable for what happened?”

  “I do.” Landry inhaled a deep, penetrating breath and nodded.

  “In your eulogy, you called her your rock. Your own personal salvation.”

  “She was. I didn’t come from very much. I was kind of a rootless kid until I got in the service. The army, and my wife, turned me into whoever I am today.”

  “And you’ve had to deal with tragedy before . . .”

  “Yes. My brother was killed in a helicopter crash at Camp Lejeune. When I was fourteen. He’d enlisted in the marines. And my younger brother, Todd. He died of AIDS a little over ten years ago now.”

  “You were raised by a single mother . . .”

  “I was.” Landry forced a smile. “A great lady. I grew up in New Dorp on Staten Island. My father wasn’t around from the time I was six. Though we moved away to live with an uncle in Connecticut in my last year of high school, I still feel close to the place. It’s something you never lose. Believe me, I never thought I would end up doing what I do. In government. No one in my family had ever even gone to college before me. We were poor. My mother had to work multiple jobs. She’d say, ‘Frank, I’m doing this for you and Todd. One day you’ll see why.’ ” He smiled; his eyes seemed to glaze over. “Well, of course she didn’t exactly say ‘Frank . . . She always called me by a nickname back then. Everyone did.”

  “A nickname . . .” Ann Curry smiled. “Do you mind sharing what it was?” A sympathetic twinkle in her eye that Sheila knew was designed to build rapport.

  Landry shrugged. “Just something silly.” He looked at his kids. “I don’t even know if these guys ever heard it before. I ran fast back then, in the third grade. Somehow it just stuck. They called me Streak.”

  At first there was simply silence, as if everyone in the world would have heard the very same thing, and Sheila O’Byrne felt like an electrical switch had turned to off in her body.

  Her eyes bore in on him, almost climbing out of their sockets in shock and disbelief. Had she heard it right? The walls of her chest shuddering.

  Streak.

  She fixed on the senator’s face. Did he really say what she thought he’d said? Or was it her imagination playing tricks on her, her desperate longing that had been buried inside and had been dry so long?

  Streak.

  She wanted to shout. Anger bubbled up like lava. But no sound came out.

  She wanted to reach in and pull him through the screen into her shaking hands. He had lived in New Dorp. He was around Deirdre’s age. Then he moved away. She’d waited for this moment for so long. Who else could it be?

  “Streak?” Ann Curry asked him again.

  “Yes.” Landry nodded. “I just ran fast, so from then on that’s what everyone called me.” It was almost as if he was looking directly at Sheila when he said the word one last time.

  “Streak.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  I knew it was him, and I knew, watching him, what he had done.” Sheila looked up from the table, her cheeks the color of granite. “I only wish Tom, God bless him, was here to see it too.”

  In the kitchen, Patrick sat back, suddenly seeing how it all fit together. Mrs. O’B. His father. Landry. Deirdre.

  “I knew with all my heart that he was the one. The one who had killed my Deirdre. That name. That he was from here. And how he had left. That very same year. I could see in those eyes what he was. They were so lifeless and lying. A mother can see that, Patrick, when it comes to her child. See right to the core.

  “And I knew we had him cold. He had incriminated himself. Because I had her diary. It was like God had sent it back to me in the storm to bring him to judgment. After all this time, I could finally make him pay.”

  “Why didn’t you just take it to the police?” Patrick pulled out a chair and sat across from her. “Or to me . . . ?”

  “To the police . . . ? A nickname his family used to call him. Over twenty years ago. A buried body no one even remembered but Tom and me. We knew what we had would never hold up in a trial. Not against this man, who had the sympathies of everyone. Joe said they could exhume her body and test for DNA. Maybe they could. But I could do something else. I could ruin him. I could bleed him dry like he bled me. Like I said, spite is a hard teacher, Patrick. It’s a hard thing to rid yourself of when you’ve held it in like I had for over twenty years.

  “And I could make him confess. That was your father’s idea. The only reason we even asked for the money. If he paid it, it would be as good as a confession. Then we could take it to the police.”

  “So you went with it to my dad?”

  “Who else did I have? Tom was gone. Joe would do anything to help protect me. He even claimed that the diary was his. That he’d found it at a niece’s. Joe was like that, you know. Stand-up. Landry probably didn’t even know that I was still alive.”

  “Yeah, he was,” Patrick said with a smile, “stand-up.”

  Mrs. O’B looked at him. “Yes, he was letting me know he had the money on his way back. Then I called and called and it just seemed like he had disappeared. When you told me he was dead, it was like God saying again, It’s your fault, Sheila. You did a bad thing. And maybe I did.”

  “That’s why you didn’t come to the funeral? Not just because it hurt. But because you felt responsible. Complicit. In how he died.”

  “One way or another that storm took everything I had left that I held dear,” Mrs. O’B said. “The storm, or what I held on to in my heart. But I still want him. Landry.”

  Patrick understood. He nodded.

  “So how did you come to find out?” Mrs. O’B asked. “About the money?”

  “Someone took it.” Patrick told her how Hilary had come upon the accident scene. What she had done there and how she had come to him.

  “Joe told them, if anything happened to him, anything, he still had a way of getting everything out. We held on to parts of it. A few pages from Deirdre’s journal. As a kind of insurance. So they tracked who took their money and somehow it led to you?”

  “In a way.” Patrick knew now that things had changed. That this could no longer remain a secret. “If this man is a killer, Mrs. O’B, it has to come out.”

  “I know that. I already placed a call to the people who did that interview with him. I haven’t heard back yet. But I will. It’s going to get bad.”

  “It’s already gotten bad, Mrs. O’B. Someone else has been killed. The person who first came upon Joe’s accident, at least according to the police. They tried to frame his death as a suicide. But we found out. He was killed by the man who gave Dad the money. Who’s done some very bad things. And they tried to get to someone else the other day. The woman who took the money, who came to me. They want the rest of what you’re holding. Your insurance, as you say.”

  “You know what the irony is?” Her eyes were glazed over. “We were never even going to keep it anyway. The money. The money was simply his confession. Once we got it we said we were always going to hand over the rest. We were going to go to the media with the money and the diary.”

  Patrick looked at her. “Well, I’m afraid now it’s gotten a lot more complicated than that.”

  He told her about Hilary and Brandon, and the part of the money she had already spent. Over sixty grand. And then about Rollie. Just a Good Samaritan who tried to help the wrong guy. Sheila crossed herself and shook her head. “That money’s got blood on it. Deirdre’s blood,” she said. “And it’ll infect anyone who touches it.”

  “I’m not done,” Patrick said. He told her about his sister, Annette, and the fraud she’d committed after the storm. Annette had grown up with Sheila too. And how he had paid off her debt
to keep her from being charged, but had implicated himself with some very bad people. The Russian mob.

  “It just doesn’t end, Patrick. The evil my daughter’s death caused. So keep the money. I don’t want it anyway. I’m glad if it can do some good for you and this girl. It won’t bring Deirdre back.”

  “It’s too late to keep it, Mrs. O’B. Now that we know what’s behind it.”

  “I don’t understand.” She looked at him. “You want this to all come out?”

  “Yes, it has to.” Patrick nodded.

  “If it does, then it’ll all come out, won’t it? Everything. What you did for Annette. The Russians.”

  He nodded again. “I suppose it will.”

  “What about your job? Your father was so proud of you. And this woman, you said she has a young son. Handicapped?”

  “Asperger’s syndrome,” Patrick said. “It’s like—”

  “I know what it is,” Sheila O Byrne said. “My legs may not move as they used to, but my brain still manages just fine. You said she did this to keep him in school. He’ll be affected by this too?”

  “He will. But too much has happened, Mrs. O’B.” Patrick reached forward and took her hand. “So where are they? Those pages?”

  “I can’t bear that anyone else is hurt on account of them. As much as I want this man to be accountable for what he did, it won’t bring Deirdre back.”

  “Other people are dead, Mrs. O’B. Where are they?” he asked again. “Please.”

  She got up and went to a cabinet above the dishwasher where canned goods and sauces were kept and reached to the back of the shelf. She came out with a wooden box. A floral design, hand painted, lacquered. “Deirdre made this. In the fifth grade.”

  She put it on the table and took out some photos and a few other things from inside. A piece of blond hair. Some baby shoes. Then some handwritten pages that she paged through and folded together, then handed to him. “It’s all I have of her. What’s in here means everything to me. But use them. Do whatever you have to. Just promise me one thing.”

  “Whatever you want.” He nodded.

  “Promise me you’ll make him pay.”

  Patrick held the pages in his hands. He remembered Deirdre. She was two years older. She had sunny blond hair and blue eyes and played soccer for the Purple Eagles and liked to write. “I promise, Mrs. O’B. I knew Deirdre too.”

  “Not just for Deirdre.” She reached out and latched onto Patrick’s wrist, a different glimmer in her eyes. “There was something else I saw as I listened to what that man described and looked into those eyes. That scared me just as much as what he did to Deirdre . . .”

  Patrick looked at her, and his stomach clenched as he realized what she was saying.

  “You know that wasn’t any accident, what happened up on that river. He can say it, and he can tell the world, but you can see it in his eyes, what he is, no matter how deep or how long he’s kept it buried. You see what I’m saying, don’t you?”

  Her eyes were lit up like lava.

  “You make him pay, Patrick. But not just for Deirdre.” She tightened her hold on his wrist and looked into his eyes. “For that poor woman who’ll never have anyone to speak for her. You make him pay for what he did to his wife too.”

  LANDRY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  The thought never entered my mind until I saw her dangling there.

  This time, at least.

  There had been a hundred other times over the years when I might have thought, what if I just let the car slip into reverse as she unloaded the groceries from the trunk, or pulled out her air piece when we were scuba diving in the Caribbean.

  But then I’d stop myself. Like maybe how the rest of the world brings themselves back from fantasizing about someone they find attractive they’ve been staring at. I fought against those kinds of thoughts all the time.

  And it wasn’t just Kathi. It could be anyone. In the middle of a golf game. Or during a committee meeting. Or peeing next to someone in the men’s room.

  My thoughts just went there.

  But then I’d always bring myself back. Remind myself of how crazy it was. I was a public figure. She was the mother of my kids.

  Or a committee member who could help me pass a bill. Or the guy who just filled up the car.

  It could be anyone.

  But watching her there, latched onto that branch, seeing her helpless, her life in my grasp, everything came hurtling back.

  The things that held me together fell away.

  My first instinct was to pull her up. And I tried to at first. She clung to the roots of a small tree, her feet grasping for traction on the slippery rock. Nothing below her but the slashing current of the rapids. “Frank, oh my God, quick! I fell!”

  I ran over and took her by the hands. Her palms were slick and wet from the soil and rain. I set my feet to steady myself. I even yelled out, “Help! Anyone, Jesus, is anyone there?”

  I wanted to save her.

  But no one heard me over the thundering roar of the falls and the echo of the rapids.

  “Pull me up! Frank, pull me up, for God’s sake, please!” Kathi begged. Fear lit up her eyes.

  I had her in my grasp and started to pull. “Just hang on.”

  Then something came over me. Something I always tried to push away. Banish.

  I looked around. Through the trees, I could see specks of bright-colored jackets back at the point where everyone was observing the falls.

  “Help me, Frank. Pull me up. I’m slipping. Please, don’t let me fall, Frank. Don’t.”

  I just looked in her eyes. That’s when I knew that this time was different.

  I know I gave a hoist, Kathi whimpering, her legs cycling to catch some footing on the rock, which made it harder for me to lift her up.

  I felt it again.

  Like a fingernail brushing ever so slightly across my skin. A tingling down my arms and into my thighs. I knew it would put everything I’d built in my life at risk. Completely wrong, self-destructive. The devil talking.

  Yet as I watched her dangling there, her life in my hands, I knew it was the one course of action I would take.

  I just snapped.

  “I’m not gonna make it, Frank. I know it,” she whimpered in the grip of panic. “Please, pull me up. Please . . .”

  She looked down.

  It was as if a hypnotist had snapped me out of a spell. I tried to push the thought away, but this time it didn’t leave. Until I was no longer Frank there, the architect of this new, successful life. The father of these kids. With my beautiful wife.

  But John.

  John. Who I was before. And all the things he had done.

  “Frank, what are you doing? I can feel myself falling. I—”

  Our eyes met. Hers white and large with fear. Mine, I knew now, filled with something else. I felt her slip. Suddenly I stopped trying to pull her upward.

  In that moment I think she saw me. She saw me for the first time. Not Frank.

  But someone she had never met. Or even knew existed.

  She screamed, “Frank, can’t you see I’m—”

  I just let her go.

  There was a shriek, a piercing, stretched-out “Noooo . . . !” as she toppled out of my grasp and disappeared into the foam. I watched her come to the surface, her red Windbreaker sticking out from the white, frantically trying to grasp something as the river carried her away. People no doubt seeing her now, pointing.

  Over the falls.

  And I felt something as I watched. Watched her disappear. The sensation far too brief, too short-lived.

  Not a thrill. Or what you might call pleasure.

  Or a sense of horror at what I’d done. Or even remorse.

  All of that came a bit later; it just took time.

  What I felt was something that I hadn’t felt in years, maybe since that hot August night on Staten Island in the shadow of the Goethals Bridge. My blood racing. My heart alive.

  And it broug
ht the tiniest smile to my lips as I saw people running, shouting, pointing toward the falls.

  I felt like myself.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  I know who’s behind it!” Patrick said, his voice fired up. “And why.”

  My cell had rung and I’d picked up expectantly. I’d been trying to reach him for the past hour, to no avail. “Who?”

  “It’s that state senator from Connecticut whose wife fell into the river in South America. Landry. He’s the one up in Hartford Charlie’s working for. I know what he’s done and what it is he wants to keep quiet.”

  I wanted to interrupt him and say, “Patrick, I’ve got something you have to hear!” I was desperate to tell him about Brandon. But I found myself answering almost involuntarily, “What is it?” And “How did you find out?”

  He told me about his neighbor, Mrs. O’Byrne, the one who’d lost her house and husband, and the murder of her daughter, twenty years ago. How Landry had been there as a kid on Staten Island, and the nickname he was called by back then. Streak. The only name her murdered daughter knew him by and had written in her diary.

  How an interview on TV after his wife’s death had brought it all back.

  “They were using Deirdre’s diary to extract the money from Landry with Mirho as the go-between. That’s what he’s really looking for, Hilary—that book. Or at least the pages from it that tie Landry to that murder. Just raising the possibility of it could cause people to investigate and blow apart any chance of him becoming governor.”

  “Patrick, that’s good. It really is. But there’s something you have to hear . . .”

  “This has to come out, Hilary. Whatever happens, the money doesn’t matter anymore. Because it doesn’t end with that murder. There’s more . . .”

  “What do you mean, there’s more . . . ?”

  Patrick paused. “There’s what happened to Landry’s wife in South America.”

  I thought back on what I knew about that horrifying accident. A man watched his own wife fall out of his hands, into a river, and over a fall. His kids nearby. And then the reality of what Patrick was suggesting came clear to me, like something icy pressed to my skin. “Oh God, you’re saying he killed her. That it wasn’t an accident? What kind of monster could let his wife fall to her death in front of her own family?” My stomach turned at the thought.