B009XDDVN8 EBOK (40 page)

“The number itself won’t be much help. It’s the number for a local US Marshals Service office, most likely the office charged
with keeping tabs on the protected witness. Will that address help?”

“It’s a start.”

“Good. Two-Ninety-Nine East Broward Boulevard.”

“East Broward? What is that, Florida?”

“Fort Lauderdale,” he said.

“Son of a bitch,” I said. And suddenly, the one thing that had puzzled me through the whole of this mess became clear. “Son of a bitch.”

“Is that valuable to you, Mr. Moretti?”

“It’ll do,” I said. “Now, can you relay something to my grandfather for me?”

“Off the record?”

“Yes, definitely off the record.”

“That can be arranged.”

I looked at my kids staring at me as I stared at them. The scene blurred, like a film had been placed over a lens to soften the image.

“Tell my grandfather thank you.”

“Of course.”

“And tell him that I love him, still. That I always have. And that I miss my father.”

By the time I left the ocean’s edge and reached my children I thought I had gotten myself under control, but that was a mirage.

“Dad?” said Shelby, as if she was seeing an apparition, and I suppose she was. What could be more ghostly than watching your father cry? How could my children know that I was finally mourning my own father’s death?

“Is everything okay?” said Eric.

“Of course everything’s not okay,” said Shelby. “Look at him.”

“He’s crying, so what?” said Eric. “If I have to spend another day in this pit I’ll be crying, too.”

“What’s wrong, Dad?” said Shelby.

“It’s nothing,” I said, my jaw trembling still. I reached out and hugged them. “It’s just that I love you both so much. And I screwed up so badly. And worst of all, now I have to go to Florida.”

“Have you ever noticed, boys, everyone who finds themselves living in Florida ends up dying?”

—Augie Iannucci

I
WAS ALONE
in the room I had rented in Fort Lauderdale. The refrigerator rumbled like it was still digesting. The faucet in the kitchenette dripped liked a Chinese torturer: drip, drip, nothing, drip. There was a brown hot plate, a mold-stained shower I wouldn’t walk into without boots, two beds with stained plaid covers, a television with a picture tube that painted everything a sickly shade of green. This is what I had done to myself, this is what my existence had been whittled down to: scratching my skin raw in the Sea Queen Motel. The way things were going, there was a pretty good chance that this was the first day of the rest of my life.

And I had earned every inch of it.

Outside the traffic poured through the sunlight with bleats and roars up and down Atlantic Avenue. There was an apartment building across the street and beyond the apartment building another, finer motel and then the beach. The lovely beach. If only they didn’t have so damn much of it. I sat with the lights off, in a tattered chair, facing the doorway, waiting. When I left Kitty Hawk I had been filled to the brim with a host of emotions, and not all of them were negative, emotions like hope and love and even a twist of optimism. But the positive emotions had been burned out of me by the reality of the situation facing me now, and I was stewing in a toxic mix of anger, fear, and self-loathing as I waited.

The trip down the day before had been sixteen hours in Harry’s truck. I had been battered in Vegas, I had been in a brutal collision in Virginia, I had been cracked and beaten like a scrambled egg in Pitchford, where my chest and stomach had been purpled with bruises, and still all of it had been just a prelude to the pounding I took in Harry’s truck. We had showed up in Fort Lauderdale well after midnight, cruised the strip until we saw a V
ACANCY
sign, and bought this hole for a couple of nights. Sixty-five a day, snapping bugs included for no extra charge. Harry, though, seemed to like the accommodations. “Living like princes,” he had said before collapsing in his bed and snoring gloriously through the rest of the night. I understood, I had been in his boat. But I hadn’t slept as soundly, tossing and turning and scratching until the night bled into the bleary morning.

When Harry finally awoke with a snort and a start, we found a diner and ate our hash and eggs as we hashed out our plans. “Any questions?” I said.

“Not that I can think of,” said Harry, “though thinking was never my strong suit. You mind I take a couple beers with me while I wait, just for the company?”

I looked at my watch. “It’s not even noon.”

“Just for the company, Johnny, not for any real drinking.”

“Do whatever you want. You’re about all I’ve got left to trust, so I’ll trust you’ll take care of business.”

“You know I will, Johnny. With me, business is business, and beer is still just beer. I’d drink water if it wasn’t so damn wet.”

“I don’t know exactly what he’ll look like. It’s been a long time.”

“I got enough to find him, don’t you worry.”

“And don’t scare him or anything, keep it nice and calm. Just show him what I gave you to show him and don’t let him make a call before you bring him back to the motel.”

“And if the varmint don’t want to come?”

“You show him what I gave you to show him and he’ll come.”

There was really only one way to play it anymore, which was why I was waiting in the motel room while Harry did the legwork. It wasn’t enough that we had ditched my car. I had made it clear to Clevenger that I was coming for Derek and now we knew that Derek was here. If Holmes had my picture, they all had my picture, and who knows how many of them were trolling Fort Lauderdale looking for me. But Harry, an old beaten-down drunk in an old beaten-down truck, could float through the city as unnoticed as a hyena on Wall Street. He could go to the house and wait, he could follow, he could make contact, he could say just what I told him to say and show what I told him to show in order to lure our quarry to this motel room, where I waited.

“What are you going to do?” Caitlin had asked just before Harry and I left Kitty Hawk.

“End it one way or the other.”

“How long will you be?”

“Not too long. Either it happens or it doesn’t.”

“We won’t be here when you’re finished.”

“I know.”

“I went a little crazy last night.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

She looked at me and sighed. I had seen that same look before, and that same sigh, from every girl who ever broke up with me. “Just make the deal, Jonathon. Just end it.”

“If I trusted the man on the other side, I would. But I don’t. My grandfather gave me another option and I’m going to take it. I’ll call you when we get down there, just so you know we’ve arrived.”

“We won’t leave until you do.”

“Are you ready to start over?”

“Yes, I am,” she said.

“With me or without me?”

“Nothing’s changed.”

“What about last night?”

“What about it, Jonathon?”

“It was something, wasn’t it?”

“Something like good-bye,” she said.

“It would be different with us from now on, you know that.”

“But that’s not enough, is it?”

And she was right, it wasn’t enough just to be different. What kind of husband and lover would I be, shorn of my secret? A bigger bore than I was already? Just like every other father at the Little League games, just like every other parent at the choral concerts, just like Thad? Was that what she wanted? Evidently.

And yet still, even in the squalid Sea Queen Motel with its hot- and cold-running chiggers, I was clear-eyed enough to see in this whole brutal crisis not just danger but opportunity, too. With my secret blown, and my whole life at risk, I had the opportunity to re-create my marriage, my relationship with my children, to re-create myself and my future. I had spent the last twenty-five years dreading exactly this moment, and yet now that it was here it felt less like a curse than like a benediction. Augie was crying in his last days, so said Selma, and I understood. How long had he felt trapped by his life? Twenty-five years and running, no doubt. And so had I, in a way I had never seen before, but not anymore. It had all come crashing down at the exact right moment.

But why now? That was what had puzzled me through all of this. They had found us out, fine, maybe it was inevitable, but why at this moment? There had to be a singular event that cascaded into disaster. I tried to learn what I could from Clevenger, but he was just a shade. I had thought Tony Grubbins would have the answer, but the only answers he had were in
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
. It was all a mystery, until my grandfather gave me his gift of information and sent me hurtling down to Fort
Lauderdale. I now knew who could tell me what I needed to know. And that’s whom I was waiting for.

The beach beckoned, but I ignored it. I made coffee in the crappy motel coffee machine, drank it hot, pissed it out warm. When my legs grew restless I paced. When my nerves got the best of me I did push-ups. Whenever I heard footsteps approach on the walkway outside my room I sat up in the chair, but they always passed by. Passed by. I sat and stewed and waited. I was ready, I had to be ready, I had no choice anymore. It had moved beyond just wiping out my debt, far beyond.

“She’s gone,” Caitlin had said through panicky tears when I called her from a pay phone off the beach shortly after Harry had left with the truck.

“Who’s gone? What?”

“Shelby. She was at the library. She was using the computers there.”

“But I told her not to—”

“Oh, Jon, when does she ever listen? She was messaging on Facebook with that Luke. They were getting back together, that’s why she was so happy. And then, yesterday, she never came back. No one saw anything. She left the library and disappeared.”

“How could she be so stupid?”

“She’s sixteen, that’s how. And why should we be running like convicts, anyway, when we did nothing—”

“Call the police,” I said.

“Jon, you bastard, what have you done to us?”

“Call the police. Have them try to find her up there. Tell them her abductors might be taking her to Florida and they need to check the roads, put out an Amber Alert, whatever. I’ll do what I can to find her down here.”

“Jon?”

“They’ll be taking her to Florida, I’m sure of it. I’ll find her, Caitlin. I’ll get her back.”

“Jon?”

“They don’t want her, they want me. I’ll trade myself for her, give over everything I have. Caitlin, I’ll get her back. Trust me.”

When I hung up I was shaking, with fear, with frustration, with resolve, with disgust at every mistake I had ever made.
Trust me
, I had said to my wife. It’s always good to leave them laughing.

I went back to the room in a daze and tried to figure out what to do, how to deal with the escalation, because whatever had been between this Clevenger and me it had suddenly, drastically, escalated. I thought through my options, all the possibilities, and came up with only one that made some sense. Clevenger wanted to see crazy, well, he would see crazy, all right; I’d dial the crazy up to eleven. I went out once again to the pay phone and made a series of calls and then, back in the room, I sat down in the tattered chair, stared at the door, and waited. And waited. Someone was going to give me answers or someone was going to die, and just then I didn’t much care which one it was.