Die for You (9 page)

His father frowned on this type of behavior. “The heroes are the guys that come home every night to their families,” he used to say, “who protect themselves and their partners so that they can live to be the men their wives and children need.”

Crowe heard the wisdom of this, but when you were doing eighty on Broadway, and the sirens were wailing, and some guy was bleeding out in a liquor store, shot by the punk trying to get away with it, you just forgot.

I had the dark thought that I wished that blow to the temple
had
killed me. It would have been easier than swimming the ocean of grief and fear and wonder that surely lay ahead. I squeezed Emily closer to me, drew in the scent of her shampoo.

The pain medication I took after the detective left the night before had successfully erased the questions he’d asked and their implications for the remainder of the evening. Now the physical pain had returned, and with it, his words. My agitation grew and, finally, I slipped from the bed. Emily didn’t stir but Brown lifted his sad Labrador eyes. He issued a grunt to let me know I’d disturbed him and then moved into the space I’d occupied before closing his eyes again. He was Emily’s dog; where she went, Brown followed.

I took off the pink flannel pajamas I was wearing—Linda’s “mommy pajamas”—unflatteringly baggy, ultra soft from a thousand washes, with some kind of indeterminate washed-in stain on the sleeve. I didn’t remember putting them on. I climbed into my clothes from yesterday, which were lying on the chair by the window, and quietly left the room. It was my plan to leave without waking anyone; otherwise, I knew they’d try to stop me and probably succeed. I needed to leave, get back to my own apartment, start trying to understand what was happening. But Erik was already up, drinking coffee at the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room.

Their home was a spacious loft, with high ceilings and tall windows. The morning sun, bright and warm, entered unabated by blinds. The room, decorated with simple, low furniture in bone and brown tones, large-format oils painted by my sister—a talented painter as well as a gifted photographer—on the walls, eclectic pieces of sculpture from their various travels, was once as clean and elegant as the interior of a museum. But they’d been invaded, their evolved sense of style sacked and pillaged by the smaller members of the family.

Trevor’s T-shirt was draped over the chaise. A tall pile of Emily’s books threatened to topple from the suede couch (which also sported a grape-juice stain that had never been successfully removed). There was a small stuffed chair shaped like a hippo and a video game system attached to the large flat screen, an unfinished game of Monopoly on the cocktail table. Brown’s doggy bed was covered with his hair. The stainless-steel refrigerator, visible from where I stood, was covered with drawings, magnets, pictures, and stickers.

I didn’t say anything to Erik, just moved over to my bag, which slouched by the door, checked to see if my keys and wallet were in there. It was then that I noticed my ring was gone. I stared at my naked hand, the indentation on my finger. How could I not have noticed it before? I looked up at my brother-in-law, who was watching me from the stool where he perched.

“Did you take it off at the hospital?”

He didn’t ask what I meant. “No,” he said gently. “It was gone when we first got to you. I’m sorry, Iz. Your sister realized right away. We just thought—why say anything until you noticed. Insult to injury.”

I saw her face again, the woman at Marc’s office—that pitying, disdainful expression.
That bitch took my ring
.

Erik had come over to me while he was talking. I let him put his arm around my shoulders and lead me over to the couch. As I sat down heavily, Emily’s pile of books softly tumbled to the floor. We let them lie. In the corner of the room a massive Christmas tree was a riot of ornaments and multicolored lights. Its manic twinkling was too much for my tired eyes.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to leave,” he said. I noticed purple circles under his eyes, an unfamiliar stiffness to his mouth.

“I have to go home, Erik,” I said. “I have to …” I let the sentence trail.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” I snapped. I wanted to rage but I managed to keep my voice low. I didn’t want to wake my sister; I didn’t want to look into her worried face. “Search the apartment? Look for clues? Find out what the hell happened to my husband?”

He nodded his understanding. “The police are working on that. You need to take care of yourself right now.” He tapped his temple, reminding me of the wound on my head. “Let
us
take care of you.”

I stood suddenly and moved back toward the door. He didn’t try to stop me; it wasn’t his style. He was the kind of guy who said his piece and then backed off, let people make their own decisions. He sank into the place where I had sat a moment earlier.

“There’s something, Izzy” he said as I was lifting my bag and reaching for the lock. He rubbed his eyes and released a breath. “I’ve been debating whether or not to tell you.”

I felt a thump of dread in my center. “What?”

He kept his head down for a second and then looked up, not at me but at a point above me. Something about his expression caused me to return to him, to sit kitty-corner from him in the chair. He’d been a brother to me since he fell in love with Linda. I loved him for that, for the father he was, and for the husband he was to my sister.

“I gave Marcus money. A lot of it.”

He was fair like Marcus, but with a boyish sweetness to him, a bright, open look to his face, where Marcus might seem stern. Marcus’s body was hard, no fat, sinewy. Erik’s body, while lean and toned, had a softness to it. His embrace was a comfort in a way that Marcus’s wasn’t. You could sink into Erik; he enfolded you. Marcus’s body held its boundaries, almost pushed you away. I noticed these things about my husband and my sister’s husband. Was I comparing them? Only in the way of the observer, defining things by their differences, seeking the telling details.

“I don’t understand,” I said. But I was starting to, slowly.

He cleared his throat and I noticed that his hands were shaking a little. “About a month ago, he came to me and said he needed investors. He had a new game in development and when it was finished it was going to revolutionize gaming, take things to a whole new level of realism.”

I shook my head slightly. I had no idea what he was talking about. Marcus had never mentioned anything like that to me.

“He showed me,” he said, pointing over to the flat screen mounted on the wall. “The graphics, they were …
amazing
. There’s no other word for it.” He kept his eyes on the screen as if he was still seeing the images there. “He said people in on the ground floor stood to double their investment, at least. He wanted Linda and me to benefit from that. I had no reason to doubt him, you know? He was family. His business was already a big success.”

“How much did you give him, Erik?” I said, reaching for his hand.

“A half a million,” he said, pulling his hand back and resting his head on it.

He knocked the wind out of me; I released a big rush of air. I thought about a recent conversation I’d had with my sister—about private-school tuition for Emily and Trevor, about building maintenance, taxes, health insurance, life insurance, car insurance, even the parking space for their car—how their cost of living was so high it was painful, even though by most standards they were wealthy people. She said it was crushing her. That was the word she used:
crushing
.

“You guys don’t have that kind of money do you?” I asked. “Just five hundred K lying around?”

“Uh, no,” he said. “We don’t.” He swept his arm to indicate the space around us. “We do okay, but it’s not like that. I borrowed against the loft.”

My sister was
not
a financial risk taker. She’d paid off the loft years earlier, after her first major gallery show, and the property had steadily been growing in value ever since. My sister was more successful than most, but an artist’s income was unpredictable year to year. That loft was her security blanket, her “lifeboat,” she called it. It had appreciated wildly over the last decade and was worth a fortune. If everything went to hell financially, they could sell it and live off the money for a good long time. She
needed
that kind of security to be happy, to feel like a good mom. She needed to know that she’d always be able to provide for Trevor and Emily. I knew all the reasons why this was so critical to her mental well-being—and so did Erik.

“Linda would never agree to that,” I said.

The color had drained from his face and he’d pressed his mouth into a thin line. Then I understood.

“She doesn’t know?” I said.

“You know how Linda is,” he said, hanging his head. “She doesn’t like to talk about money.”

“You did this without
talking
to her?”

He lifted a hand. “It was supposed to be short term, Izzy” he said. He stood up and walked over to one of the tall windows. I glanced uneasily at the door to their bedroom, imagining that I saw Linda there, her hair tousled, her eyes bleary with sleep.
What are you guys talking about?
But the door was firmly closed. He went on, talking so softly that I could barely hear him.

“In two months, Marc said, they’d make the sale, the biggest in the history of Razor Tech. They’d had early interest from two of the big game companies; he expected a bidding war. I’d have my principal investment back plus five hundred thousand more, at least. I’d pay off the loan on the loft and put the rest in the bank. Then we’d have that; she’d have the security she needs. She’d never have to worry again. That’s what I was thinking.”

“But you couldn’t get credit like that without her signature, Erik, could you?”

He’d given up a successful career in information technology after Trevor was born so that Linda could work and the kids wouldn’t be cared for by strangers. He’d managed her career, everything from sales to publicity to Web site design and maintenance, taken care of the accounting, helped with the kids. It always seemed like the perfect arrangement, one that made them both very happy. Everything was joint; there were no separate accounts, separate incomes.

“She signed,” he said, resting the heels of his hands on the windowsill. The window looked out onto another building of artists’ lofts, where many residents shared my sister’s aversion to blinds. “She just didn’t read what she was signing.”

“Oh, Erik.” Crushed. I knew my sister; she was going to buckle under the weight of this.

“If it had been
anyone
else, I never would have even considered it,” Erik said urgently, turning back to me. He must have seen the look on my face, wanted me to understand. “But Marc’s a genius, you know? And he’s
family
.”

His reverent tone reminded me of a peculiar energy I’d always picked up on between my husband and brother-in-law. Linda had laughingly claimed that Erik had a
boy crush
on Marcus, like Marc was the cool kid at school and Erik just wanted to hang around him. I’d noticed it, too. I’d also observed that Marcus seemed to realize it as well, and how he appeared to enjoy it. But I figured it was harmless—at least they got along. They were buddies, met for drinks after work, took the kids to the country so that Linda and I could spend the day at Bliss, our favorite spa.

“I wasn’t trying to deceive her, Izzy Understand that. I was trying to surprise her.”

I didn’t know what to say. So I didn’t say anything, just stared across the street.

“He was supposed to pay me back yesterday, Izzy. I was supposed to meet him for lunch and he was going to give me a check. But he never showed.”

I watched a woman in a loft across the street move through a series of yoga poses, her impossibly thin body limber and strong. Another young woman chased a naked toddler across an apartment on another floor, both of them laughing. It wasn’t that I hadn’t heard him. I was just waiting for the words to sink in. Their implication echoed all the things Detective Crowe had said and not said the night before.

“He wouldn’t cheat you, Erik,” I said, my voice sounding weak. “He wouldn’t. Something’s happened.”

Erik nodded, seemed unable to find words. I didn’t like the expression on his face. Something dark. Something desperate.

“Did you tell the police?” I asked.

He nodded. “They know; I’m sorry. It felt like a betrayal but it could be … relevant.”

I wish I could say I was numb from the shock but I wasn’t. I felt as if I was standing in the middle of a city that was being bombed from above. I didn’t know where to run as everything solid around me crumbled to dust. My body was flooded with adrenaline, in full fight-or-flight response.

Erik rested his hands on my shoulders. “I’m sorry, Izzy. This is not your problem. You have too much to deal with right now. I just didn’t want you to find out from the police.”

“It is my problem. Of course it’s my
problem
, Erik.”

“No,” he said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “No.”

“Does she know yet?” I asked him.

He released a heavy breath. “Not yet. I need to figure out how to tell her. I …” He just kept shaking his head, his eyes opening and drifting over to the closed door of their bedroom where she lay sleeping. He never finished the sentence.

“Don’t tell her,” I said, leaving him. I grabbed my bag and unlocked the door. “Give me a little time.”