by Dan Barden
Cathy fixed her with eyes terrible enough to back down a black belt. “My boss gave it to us,” she explained.
“I’m good with crappy computers,” Troy said. “It’ll be perfect for me.”
Cathy wouldn’t take Troy’s money, which was fortunate, because he didn’t have any. She handed me a check for the imaginary balance on the crib. After Paloma picked the colors and we waved goodbye, Troy and I returned to my truck, where I grabbed a FedEx envelope without disturbing a napping Emma. Who knew she would look so peaceful? I addressed the envelope to Cathy Acuña and placed her check inside. Once the crib was installed, it could happily join the fifty thousand dollars. Of everything that bugged me about the last days of Terry’s life, there was nothing bigger than this: why had he felt the need to hide this woman from his friends?
We sat in the truck for a few minutes without speaking. Troy seemed to respect my mood. I was in the process of being vastly humbled by my own life. What could I say about Terry’s death if this was what he’d left behind, this lovely little family? What was I doing trying to avenge him when I should be helping the mother of his child? When I’d reached the end of my thinking, I shoved my door back open and walked toward the apartment building. Fuck this, I’m going to just talk to her.
Cathy met me outside the security gate, where I removed the check from the sealed FedEx envelope. I gave it back to her. “You know who I am?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry I lied to you.”
“It’s okay,” Cathy said. “I didn’t say anything, either.”
“How come we’ve never met?”
“He talked about you a lot,” Cathy said. “He was proud of you. Maybe he wasn’t so proud of me.”
That was ridiculous. I shook my head. “I think maybe he wanted to protect something that was precious to him. I wish he hadn’t, but I understand the impulse.”
“It was a tough time,” Cathy said.
I told her what I knew about the hospital, about Terry freaking out. “Cathy,” I said, “what the hell happened?”
“I never saw him again after Danny was born. The doctor said he gave him something to calm down, I think, and he was gone. And then he did what he did the next day.”
“He didn’t take the Valium,” I said. “You should know that. Do you think he was taking anything else? I mean before the end?”
“I don’t think so,” Cathy said. “I never saw it. Maybe it turned out he didn’t want to be a father?”
“I think he wanted it more than anything,” I said. “I think he would have been good at it, too.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe we just want to believe that.”
She invited me back into her apartment. Paloma and Danny were quiet somewhere upstairs.
“Here’s something else,” Cathy said. “I think Terry would want you to have it.” She handed me The Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, third edition. Terry had left it at her house. I recognized his copy immediately, every nick and scratch on the cover. I bet I could have told you which pages the spine was broken at.
“Forgive me for asking,” I said. “I know you reported him to 911. How did you find out where he was?”
“I got a call,” she said. “He didn’t say who he was. Just that he was a friend of Terry’s.”
“Did you believe him?” I asked. “That he was a friend?”
“I didn’t know what to think. I just called 911.”
That was my cue to roll off the names. Mutt Kelly, who Claire claimed had been there. Simon Busansky, who seemed to have gone missing about the same time Terry died. Colin Alvarez, just to see. I felt only a little bit guilty when I asked about Troy Padilla, who was waiting for me in the truck. You never knew. But none of these names meant anything to Cathy.
“I think there’s something I should tell you,” she began again. “Terry left us a lot of money. That’s why we’re moving, and that’s how we’re buying nice things. I’m not going to manage this building anymore. I might go back to school.”
“I understand.”
As much as I wanted to question her about every detail of Terry’s last few months, I reminded myself that I’d stepped into a new world. In this world, it was becoming clear to me, I wasn’t responsible for just myself and Crash and MP, but also this woman and her children. I knew this like I knew that little Danny’s eyes were blue. I was already supporting them, to some extent, with the fifty thousand, but there would need to be more.
“Maybe this is out of bounds,” I said, “but fifty thousand dollars isn’t a lot of money these days. I can help you come up with a plan.”
“Fifty thousand dollars?” Cathy said.
“I know how much money Terry gave you,” I said. “I can also give you more.”
Cathy shook her head, smiling. “Terry never gave us money. He made us the beneficiaries of his life insurance policy.”
Oh.
“But the way he died?” I said. “They paid off?”
“They will,” Cathy said. “A million dollars. The man who owns this building? My boss? He’s a lawyer, and he says there won’t be any problem. He says that Terry committed a crime in shooting the heroin, but that won’t invalidate the policy.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
As much as I wanted such a great gift for this lovely family that Terry had left behind, I didn’t quite trust what I was hearing. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood for a fairy tale.
“Why is your boss so involved? Was he a friend of Terry’s?”
“My boss was the one who brought the policy to me. I didn’t even know about it. The money first came to him, but he didn’t want it, so he passed it down to me.”
“Terry’s policy paid out to him? Why?”
“He and Terry had done some business together. He said it was because of that. But he doesn’t need the money, so he—what did he call it?—he bounced it down to me.”
I took a moment to breathe. My heart was beating too fast, and I wanted to be careful about what I said next. “You’re the secondary beneficiary?”
“That’s right,” Cathy said.
“I don’t want to offend you,” I said, “but I have to ask: why would your boss pass up a million dollars? I didn’t think anyone was that rich.”
“I think it’s because of Paloma,” Cathy said. “I think he wants to make sure she’s taken care of.”
She smiled cautiously. Was I missing something?
“He and Paloma are close?” I said.
“Not really,” Cathy said. “Paloma hates him.”
I was still not getting it, and Cathy was trying not to spell it out for me.
“Your boss is Paloma’s father?” I said.
“It’s a long story. Maybe I’ll tell you someday when we’re old friends.”
“Wow,” I said. “But it sounds like this guy is stepping up to the plate. I like to see that in a man. And it sounds like you’re close to him.”
“Not so much anymore. Once I was. John looks out for us, though.”
“John who?”
“John Sewell. He owns this building, but he’s going to sell it.”
John fucking Sewell. My fishing buddy, my financial adviser, my hope for an end to alimony.
“Because he’s going to become a judge,” I said. “I know John. I think I might be seeing him later, actually. You want me to say hello for you?”
AFTER RETURNING TROY AND EMMA to my house, I called my daughter. I hadn’t spoken to her in a while, but I didn’t make any plans to see her. Crash knew something was off. When I asked if she knew where her mom was this afternoon, she hesitated before she told me that my ex-wife and her fiancé were at the Newport Bay Yacht Club.
It should have been my first question way back when: who stood to benefit from Terry’s death? A million dollars is a lot of benefit, particularly if you can shift that money away from yourself toward a former mistress who is now the mother of your ch
ild. John Sewell was suddenly my prime suspect for the business partner Terry had been ranting about while Cathy had their baby. I needed to know what business they had been in. It seemed like the most fun to simply demand that information from Sewell himself. He had offered to help me if I had any questions about money, right?
The Newport Bay Yacht Club. You’d think the gatekeeper to that exclusive Orange County institution would keep out tourists like me, but it goes to show once again what you can accomplish when you’re willing to wear your officiously blue Armani blazer. They were halfway through lunch when I arrived. John had some kind of club sandwich with an iced tea, and Jean was picking at a Caesar salad, the kind where each salad spear has been individually groomed. I noticed that she was drinking wine.
In that dining room looking out over the Newport Bay, I could see what California’s vast wealth had made possible: an infinite variety of ridiculously expensive Hawaiian shirts. Sewell looked more comfortable in his dark suit and tie, and Jean’s white Armani shift made me remember things I wanted to forget.
Reminding myself that a fistfight with my ex-wife’s fiancé wouldn’t help my custody suit, I slowed down a bit on approach. Jean looked unhappy to see me, but Sewell seemed, if anything, more at ease than the last time we’d pretended to be friends. I stood beside their table, glancing imperiously around until a waiter took the hint and brought me a chair.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jean said. “Please don’t make yourself comfortable.”
“John offered to give me some financial advice. Suddenly, I really need it.”
Jean turned toward her fiancé with disgust, but Sewell reached over to pat her hand while giving her a look that seemed to reflect calm masculine authority. Was this how you controlled a woman like Jean?
“I’ll give you five minutes,” Jean said, “while John does whatever the hell he does with people like you. But if you’re not gone when I get back, I’ll make you go away myself.”
She removed her napkin and started away from the table. I sat down beside Sewell.
“Is there something I can do for you?” Sewell asked. “Or did you just want to cause a scene?”
“Does she cut your meat for you?” I asked.
“Pardon me?”
“Once, when we were spending Thanksgiving with Jean’s parents, I was talking to her dad about Frank Lloyd Wright—Mr. Trask used to see him walking around Oak Park—and when I turned back to my plate, Jean had cut my turkey.”
It took Sewell a second. “No. She doesn’t cut my meat.”
“Thank God for that. You think Cathy Acuña cut Terry’s meat?”
“I don’t know where this is headed,” Sewell said.
“Let’s start over. You know that Terry had a kid with Cathy Acuña.”
“Cathy Acuña is an employee of mine. That’s the only piece of what you just said that I recognize. She manages some properties for me, a job she’s about to quit. I don’t know if she’s vacated her apartment yet.”
“Pregnancy is hard for an employer to miss,” I said. “The gals, they slow down a bit. You might have noticed this when she had your baby.”
Sewell adjusted his plate. “I’m sorry about your unresolved issues with Jean and whatever else is causing these delusions, but I’m going to request you change your tone. Otherwise, I’m going to get angry, too.”
He talked about anger like it was a distant planet that our great-grandchildren might visit in a spaceship.
“First things first, then,” I said. “You’re the beneficiary of a million-dollar life insurance policy that Terry took out before he died. How the hell did you pull that off?”
“A life insurance policy is always a good idea,” Sewell said. “I often encouraged Terry to behave in a more professional manner. Buying life insurance was only one of the suggestions I made.”
“Which doesn’t explain why it paid out to you,” I said.
“Terry never thought he would die, and he paid very little for it. I made a few calls, though, and it seems that sometimes even insurance companies can be brought to their senses by the threat of a lawsuit.”
“From a superior court judge,” I added.
“I’m sure that didn’t hurt. Look, I was helping Terry with all his affairs, and we were doing a fair amount of business together. It was his idea to put the policy in my name. He owed me some money at the time.”
“Cathy thinks you bounced the money down to her out of the goodness of your heart,” I said, “but I’m not feeling it.”
“Who cares what you feel?” Sewell said. “I don’t need the money, and she does. Terry had her down as the secondary beneficiary. I knew they had recently gotten involved. It’s always horrible to hear about a child who won’t have a father.”
“You’re sorry that Terry’s child won’t have a father. What about your child?”
“That’s a situation that’s none of your business. I’ve always done the right thing when it comes to Cathy and her daughter.”
“Your daughter’s name is Paloma,” I said.
Neither of us said anything for a long moment.
“Listen, Randy, are you accusing me of a crime? If so, I wish you’d start by telling me what the crime was.”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “Maybe you don’t want Cathy talking too much about what you and Terry were up to.”
“I have nothing to hide,” Sewell said. “And by the way, I know who you must have been asking me about at Jean’s house. Mutt Kelly? He did some work for me on my building. I think Terry might have suggested him to me. Do you need to get in touch with him?”
I gave myself a moment to process the fact that Sewell didn’t care how I could connect him to Mutt.
“Look,” I said. “I have no problem with you dating my ex-wife. Marry her, for all I care. And if your hands got dirty doing business with Terry, you can’t imagine my lack of interest. I just want to know what happened to my friend.”
“I didn’t speak to Terry for six months before he died. After proposing to Jean, that turns out to be the best decision I’ve made this year. I always got beaten up when I tried to help Terry.”
“Have I been beating you up, John?”
“Some would characterize it that way.”
“When I start beating you up, John, everyone will characterize it that way.”
For a second, I could see his anger, that distant planet. Anger, I knew well, equaled stupidity, and I wanted Sewell to drop some IQ points ASAP, to play on my level for a minute. Instead, he picked up his sandwich. Taking the kind of sensible bites you see only on TV commercials, he became his old I do well with this kind of investment self.
“I’m telling you this out of respect for your daughter,” Sewell said. “Terry was like an apprentice. I wanted to pass on some skills before I was offered the bench. I walked him across from real estate to criminal law. I thought the addiction issues were behind him. At a certain point, I couldn’t ignore the deterioration of his behavior.”
“You’re saying he was shooting heroin six months before he died?”
“I’m saying he was unnecessarily angry—like you are now—and it seemed like a good idea to put some distance between us.”
“What the hell were you two doing? I hope you weren’t stupid enough to get involved with this homemade pornography.”
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” Sewell said. “I have no connection to pornography.”
“How about marijuana?” I said. “Are you connected to any hydroponic pot farms?”
Sewell took another bite and began to chew without such precise mincing. He wasn’t going to answer any more stupid questions, but he also wasn’t calling security.
“I just figured something out,” I said. “You’re the reason no one has been busted for growing pot in Laguna Beach. You made it more profitable for the DEA not to bust them. The DEA confiscates all the related assets without the muss and fuss of criminal charges. You eventually neede
d a front like Terry so it wouldn’t interfere with getting ready for the bench. Terry was your partner.”
“There’s nothing illegal about anything you’re describing,” he said.
“But how good does it look for a future judge to be giving hand jobs to a federal agency on behalf of drug dealers?”
Sewell stopped chewing, swallowed. I noticed that he hadn’t touched his excellent-looking potato salad. “That’s what lawyers do. Keep people out of jail. Negotiate. In some ways, though, you’re right. I risked sullying my reputation. And apparently, it killed Terry.”
“How did it kill him?”
“You can’t rub up against that kind of business without some personal cost. Given his history of addiction—”
I smacked the table hard enough to spill some of Sewell’s iced tea. Every Hawaiian shirt in the dining room turned toward me. “Don’t give me a lecture on substance abuse. How did it fucking kill him?”
“Terry told me that the road gets narrower. That the longer you stay away from drugs, the riskier it becomes to ethically compromise yourself. Did I make that up? Isn’t that what you A.A. people believe?”
“So who was he rubbing up against?”
“I washed my hands of that business a long time ago. I’m not sending you off to bother any of my former clients.”
“Like Simon Busansky? Colin Alvarez?” I said. “What are you hiding? Why are you trying to put me back in my box?”
Sewell shook his head as he stared into me. Another gesture that would go well with the black robe. “I’m not the one who’s hiding. It’s not my life that’s this … swamp of resentment and fear.”
“My life is not the issue here.”
“If you say so, Randy. I’m sure you’re also not responsible for Jean being so angry that sometimes she can’t look me in the eye. For Alison working so hard to be perfect that I’m afraid her heart will seize. Maybe it’s time to start looking at your own behavior. What do you make, a couple hundred thousand on every house you design? More? I can’t get through one conversation with Alison without hearing what a great man you are. Why on earth would you want to prove her wrong? I know that Terry’s death put you off balance—that’s true for everyone who knew him—but let me be clear: I have no connection whatsoever with pornography or drug dealing or anything else you have in mind. And while it’s profoundly none of your affair, I will do the right thing by Cathy Acuña and her daughter. But if you continue this pressure, I’m prepared to file charges of harassment.”