The Return: A Novel (3 page)

“Sorry … It’s just hearing your voice after all this time. I’m a little rattled. Getting dumped with the three-line email was a little harsh.”

“Nina, maybe this was a mistake. Should I call someone else?”

“Oh, not at all. Frankly, I could use the commission. Second homes in Mexico—you know, a slightly shrunken market since the crash. And the violence. Not to mention the mortgage situation—”

“I don’t need a mortgage. I’ll pay cash.”

“Oh, in that case, I tell you what—let me do some research, we’ll have a drink somewhere, and I’m sure I’ll have something nice for you to look at.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Nina.”

Another, shorter pause. “Well—all business, then. As a matter of fact, something just came to mind. Are you near a computer?”

“Yes, I’m in my office.”

“Then I’m going to let you look at the Guzmán property. Did you know Manny Guzmán at all?”

“The name’s sort of familiar but I can’t quite place it. Who is he?”

“Was. He came up here from Michoacán in the eighties, made a fortune as a lawyer and property developer. He went back home a few years ago and built a big house on the coast in Playa Diamante. He had plans to build a resort, poured some concrete for rental units, but … he sort of disappeared. The house has been vacant since, but apparently it’s been maintained. I’m sending the photos and specs now.”

Marder waited in front of his computer, while Nina chattered on, trying and failing to generate a conversation. Marder liked Nina Ibanez well enough, a charming and sexy woman, but he never wanted to see her again. Images rose unbidden, her face and body, yes, but it hadn’t been just about sex. It was the lack of all the tangles, the relief from what his life with Chole had become since some men had snatched his father-in-law from his car and chopped him into pieces and left them in a pile on the side of a road in Playa Diamante. And, being careful about witnesses, they’d shot her mother too.

Which was Marder’s fault, ultimately, he having removed Chole from Mexico all those years ago. Marder had not been prepared for that, for his wife going crazy, and he’d cracked a little himself, the fling with Nina Ibanez being one result.

A shudder ran through him thinking of it, and then the email tone pinged. Marder opened the attachment and studied the set of pictures. One was an aerial view of what appeared to be a small island connected to the mainland by a short causeway; the property was listed as 112 hectares—277 acres. The other photographs were exterior and interior shots of what the accompanying copy described as a two-story six-bedroom concrete-block stucco house with a separate unit for the servants, a four-car garage, and a swimming pool. Some hundred yards distant from the house, built on a curve facing the sea and a broad shining beach, were what looked like bungalows in various stages of construction and behind these an excavation for another, much larger swimming pool. The listing claimed the house had seven bathrooms, a modern kitchen, air-conditioning throughout, a desalinization and sewage treatment facility in operating order, and a diesel generator in its own little building. The house was square, with a flat roof and a squat tower at each corner. It looked like a Spanish colonial fortress, which suited Marder very well. The asking price was a reasonable $1.2 million.

“This is available immediately?” he asked.

“They’ll kiss your hands. The family, I mean. They’ve been paying maintenance through the nose ever since Manny disappeared. They’re terrified it’ll be looted and stripped. There are some people living in the servants’ wing, watching the place, but you don’t need to feel responsible for them. The taxes are practically nothing. If you let me talk to them, I’m sure they’ll come down a little.”

“No, I’ll take it,” said Marder. “I’ll have my accountant send you a check for the asking price.”

He heard a sigh over the line. “It must be nice to have money,” said Nina Ibanez.

After that they discussed the details of the sale in a businesslike way and then Marder’s phone buzzed with an incoming call. He said a quick goodbye and pressed the call-accept button.

“Hello, babe,” he said to his daughter. “I’m not interrupting anything important, I hope.”

“No, I was just in the fabrication lab, running some trials. Is anything wrong?”

She always asked that when he called, and he wondered why. Perhaps he should have called her more often. He knew other parents had more contact with their kids, but he’d always felt that after they were grown, excessive contact was an intrusion. Or maybe it was because his own father, in his madness, had called Marder oppressively often, full of paranoid complaint and mad schemes to reform the world. Chole had always been the caller, the main contact with the children.

And even though something
was
wrong now, and even though he’d always tried not to lie to his kids, he replied in a cheerful tone, “Not at all. I just called to find out how you were doing and to tell you that I’ll be traveling for a while.”

They’d had enough misery dealing with their mother’s sickness and death, and he told himself he was actually doing them a favor.

“Where are you going?”

“Not determined yet. I thought I’d buy an open ticket and take some time off. There’s a lot of the world I haven’t seen, and I’m not getting any younger.”

“But you hate to travel. You’re always bitching about airports and the food.”

“I changed my mind. Anyway, I’ll be leaving in a day or so and I didn’t want you to worry.”

“You’ll keep in touch, though, right?”

“I always do. How’s work?”

“We’re having tempering problems. Three-D printing in metal’s easy if you’re only doing art stuff or prototypes, but if you’re trying to manufacture actual machine parts, it’s a different story.”

“I’m sure you’ll solve the problem, dear,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll be in at the end of mass production as we know it,” and she laughed. Marder was constantly amazed at how both of his children, the spawn of two literary types, had become engineers, and brilliant ones by all accounts. Carmel was in grad school at MIT; Peter taught at Caltech, as far as possible from New York and his father.

“Still keeping up with the swimming?” he asked.

“Every day. Still with the shooting?”

“Every week. How are your times?”

“Static. I’m devoted but not
that
devoted. Don’t expect me at the Olympics. I hope that doesn’t break your heart.”

“As long as it doesn’t break yours. Meanwhile—anything new on the social front?”

“The usual. Don’t rent a hall.”

“So you’re saying no grandchildren anytime soon.”

“When they have cloning maybe. I’d kind of like an instant ten-year-old with freckles and a gap-tooth grin.”

He couldn’t think of any response, couldn’t think of any final paternal words of love or advice. “Well, I’ll let you go now. You’ll let Peter know, yes?”

“You could call him yourself,” she said.

“I could. But if he doesn’t take my call…”

He heard her sigh. “Okay. Have a great trip and keep in touch.”

He said he would, said he’d loved her, said goodbye, pushed the button to end the call. For an instant he felt he’d switched himself off, as if he’d already died. Not staying in touch was the whole point.

*   *   *

As he often did when he was annoyed with himself and the world, Marder decided to go shooting. He packed his two pistols and their magazines and ammunition into their customized aluminum case and took a cab to the Westside Shooting Range on 20th Street. On the ride, he thought of a way to save himself a trip, so he called his accountant and told him to have the money he’d asked for ready at his office in an hour. The accountant asked him if he seriously intended to carry a hundred fifty thousand dollars in cash through the streets of Manhattan. Marder told him not to worry about it.

Marder had been coming to Westside for years and paid in advance by the month so he was always assured a lane. The firing line was crowded with nervously chattering newbies taking a firearms class, and he was glad he was wearing ear protectors.

He clipped a small paste-on circle target to the line and sent it a-flapping to the seven-yard marker, then loaded the first of the two pistols he was going to fire. This was a .45-caliber Kimber 1911, a high-tech, super-accurate version of the sidearm that American soldiers had carried throughout most of the twentieth century. He loaded it, took a stance, and fired a shot. A hole appeared in the center of the bull’s-eye, rimmed by the fluorescent-yellow paint built into the target’s paper. He fired again. No change was apparent, and he fired five more times, then placed the pistol on the little shelf and drew the target back. On examination, the hole had become slightly larger than the original puncture, which meant he had shot six bullets through the hole made by his first one. It was a feat he’d accomplished often. He loaded another magazine and shot at ten yards and again at twenty, each time blowing the center out of the target.

He now took from his case the elder brother of the Kimber, an actual military .45 his dad had brought back from the Pacific. It was still formally the property of the United States Army, but he thought they probably weren’t looking for it too hard. He shot three magazines with this, not as accurately as before but still well enough: at seven yards, all the holes touched.

Marder then did something he hadn’t done before. He slipped a fresh magazine into the old .45 and he stuck the pistol into his waistband, where it hung heavily, concealed by the raincoat he wore. Feeling a little foolish at this precaution, and in violation of the laws of New York, he cased the other pistol and left the range, for the last time, he supposed. He walked to Sixth Avenue, and in one of those miscellaneous-goods stores he purchased an aluminum suitcase and then took a cab to his accountant’s office uptown. He gave the driver a fifty and told him to keep the meter going, then went in and and collected his cash. Packed in his new suitcase, it felt heavier than he’d expected.

From the cab he called the last person he needed to contact before leaving. Patrick Francis Skelly was not at home. An old-style answering machine picked up, and Skelly’s voice said, “Skelly isn’t here, obviously. Leave a message.” Marder called back several times on the ride downtown but reached only the machine. From home he called several more times, then gave up for the moment. He hadn’t eaten all day, had fasted before the doctor’s visit and found that, though dying in a way, he still liked eating. He liked cooking too. He grilled a steak and made a Caesar salad with a soft-boiled egg and lots of anchovies and ate it while watching the news, rather enjoying the idea that he no longer had to pretend interest in what was going on in the world.

He tried Skelly a few more times, then called the car dealer and learned that the check had arrived and that he could pick the vehicle up anytime. He spread an old towel across the kitchen table and cleaned his pistols, an activity that always calmed him, although not tonight. Perhaps it was the money. He placed the cash in his gun safe, double-locked his door, left the loft, and hailed a cab.

The driver was not enthusiastic about going to Long Island City, but Marder waved some large bills and off they went. At a small lot on a dull commercial boulevard, he bought his camper and truck. Marder had never actually been in a truck camper before and was favorably impressed when he stepped inside. To the right as he entered was a clever shower–toilet combination and to the left a large wardrobe. Along one side were arranged a three-burner propane stove and a sink, with a refrigerator below. On the other side was a padded bench with a dining table that swiveled out of the way so that someone could sleep on the bench. There seemed to be plenty of storage in the overhead cabinets. Up a stepladder, extending out over the truck’s cab, was a sleeping loft equipped with a full-sized bed. The thing was full of light and smelled faintly of plastics.

Marder had spent nearly all his life in the city and so was not much of a driver, and the bulk of his new vehicle was a little daunting. But after a bit of awkwardness and overcautious driving, he got used to the smooth power of the V-8 and the inability to see what was directly behind him. By the time he drove onto the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway, he had started to enjoy himself.

He soon became confident enough in his driving to use his cell phone but achieved the same irritating result. Skelly was the only adult of his acquaintance who refused to own a cell phone, and so it was always a pain in the ass getting in touch with him. Marder left the expressway at Brooklyn Heights and drove slowly through the prim green-shaded streets. He parked illegally in front of a modest brownstone, got out, and pushed the bell button next to a slot with no name in it. The door issued no welcoming buzz. He looked up at the top floor, where Skelly lived. It was dusk now, but no lights shone there.

When he returned to the truck, he realized he had forgotten that the previous day was September 19, and so of course Skelly would not be at home. He would be on his annual commemorative journey to oblivion on the anniversary of Moon River. Marder always forgot; Skelly always remembered.

Oblivion was in any case a regularly scheduled stop for Skelly. It was something they occasionally did together, but this anniversary trip was one that Skelly did alone. Skelly was Marder’s longest-surviving continuous relationship. Forty years now they’d known each other, but they were not what most observers would have called best friends. Skelly spent a lot of time out of town. He called himself a security consultant but was closemouthed about what he actually did, and Marder had learned not to inquire. Skelly must have made decent money at it, for Brooklyn Heights apartments were not cheap, and he always paid for more than his share of drinks and meals and tickets. Skelly did not like going to movies and sporting events alone, and Marder was happy to accept his invitations. Marder did not have many friends in his profession, and these few were not the sort to go to hockey games at the Garden and then tour the saloons, usually ending the evening in some bucket of blood in Greenpoint or Red Hook, at which Skelly often got into fights. Young men or bigger men would take him on and find themselves pounded into the ground. Marder often had to pull Skelly off a surprised and bloody opponent and scatter cash around to assuage complaints.