No Way Back

by Matthew Klein

  I’m here to take the fall. I’m the mark. I’m going down.

  I jog through the bullpen towards the reception area. Ahead, I see Amanda through the door. She is talking to someone. She looks anxious.

  But this barely registers. I’m moving fast, and I’m desperate to leave this place and go home to my wife. Three steps into the reception room, I hear the man’s voice – familiar, dripping with Southern honey – an accent so thick you could spread it on cornbread with a fork.

  ‘Mr Thane!’ Agent Tom Mitchell calls. Then I see him, standing in the corner, practically hiding from me. ‘There you are, Mr Thane! I’m so glad I caught you.’ An emphasis on the word caught. Or maybe I’m imagining it. ‘I have a few things I need to discuss with you. How about me and you have a private chat?’

  He lassoes me into the boardroom, where he takes a seat at the end of the conference table. I remain standing, as if to show him that I’m not fully committed to being here, not at all, and that I might just choose to flee.

  Agent Mitchell slumps back into his chair. He stretches his legs, and clasps his fingers behind his head, revealing dark ovals of perspiration under his arms.

  ‘How’ve you been, Mr Thane?’ he asks, peering down his nose at me.

  ‘Not bad,’ I say.

  ‘You look... ’ He pauses, staring. He considers. He says, finally, ‘Piqued.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It’s been pretty stressful around here.’

  ‘I was surprised that I didn’t hear from you. Not since we last spoke.’

  ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘Have you?’ He smiles. ‘It’s just that I thought you might call. On the chance that you remembered something. You know, about our friend.’

  ‘Our friend?’

  ‘Our Russian friend. The man I’m looking for. You remember his name, I’m sure. Have you heard from him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You would have called me if you had,’ he says. ‘Right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I knew I could count on you, Mr Thane. You’re a true gentleman.’ His face changes – becomes clouded. ‘Actually,’ he says, ‘I’m here for another reason. I’m looking for one of your employees. A Mr Dom Vanderbeek.’

  It takes me a moment to process this. I was expecting – even dreading – a question about the house on Sanibel. Or about the money in my bank account. Or about some combination of those two things. Such as: ‘Did you take cash from an attic on Sanibel and deposit it into your bank account?’

  But that’s not what Agent Mitchell asked. He asked about Dom Vanderbeek. He continues, helpfully, as if my silence were caused by forgetfulness: ‘Mr Vanderbeek is your VP of Sales, I believe, Mr Thane.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘He was. But I terminated him.’

  ‘Terminated?’ He raises an eyebrow. He leans forward in his chair. ‘Now, just checking, Mr Thane. When you say you “terminated” him, that means you fired him. Am I right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Because Mr Vanderbeek is missing.’

  ‘Missing?’

  ‘Disappeared,’ he says. He snaps his fingers. ‘Just like that. Ten days ago. Wife found his car in the driveway, engine running. But no Dom Vanderbeek inside.’ As if he can hear my thoughts, he adds, ‘Yes, it’s quite a coincidence. So many people leaving their cars running. As if we don’t have a terrible oil shortage in this country already.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him,’ I say.

  ‘Not since you terminated him?’

  ‘Fired him.’

  ‘Fired him,’ he agrees, pleasantly enough. ‘I was just speaking to that gal in your office – the Spanish one? Big fat girl?’

  ‘Rosita.’

  ‘That’s the one. She told me that when you fired Vanderbeek, you two had words together. You threatened him.’

  Thanks, Rosita.

  ‘That’s not true,’ I say, keeping my voice even. ‘Dom was very upset when I fired him. But I didn’t threaten him.’

  ‘Why did you fire him, Mr Thane?’

  Because he was too curious about my company’s cash flow, I think.

  ‘Because I didn’t like him,’ I say, looking Mitchell directly in the eye.

  He smiles. ‘I respect your honesty,’ he says. ‘I suppose it’s none of my business who you fire or why. Chances are, Mr Vanderbeek is just taking a long vacation, and he neglected to tell his wife. Happens more often than you think. Usually the husband turns up in the Keys, with a young lady, and they’re drinking margaritas and singing Jimmy Buffett.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘I’m sure I am. In fact, if I was a betting man, I’d put money on it. I wonder, Mr Thane... are you a betting man?’

  His smile, which was friendly just a moment ago, has curdled. Now it’s lupine and sly.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  From his shirt pocket, he removes a spiral-bound notepad and taps it on his hand. It’s already opened to a page of interest. ‘See, now, that’s an answer I didn’t expect. Do you remember, Mr Thane, the last time we met, I asked you about Ghol Gedrosian?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You told me that you didn’t know him.’

  ‘I don’t know him.’

  ‘That’s not what I hear.’ He leans closer. ‘We made an arrest on Thursday. Out in California. A nasty little Armenian fella. I won’t even try to do justice to his name. I would just embarrass myself. This man was in charge of Ghol Gedrosian’s loan sharking and gambling. A money man. Sort of like your CFO.’

  I picture mousy Joan Leggett in a fedora, holding a Tommy gun, wearing a Donna Karan outfit. No, probably not much like my CFO.

  ‘We found documents,’ Mitchell says. ‘Computer files. There were a lot of names in those files. Who owed money. Who paid money. Generally speaking, when you deal with a man like Ghol Gedrosian, if you’re on the first list, you better hope you’re on the second. You catch my meaning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He’s staring at me with an open, friendly expression, as if inviting me to confess something. The boardroom – which is usually air conditioned to meat-locker chill, suddenly feels quite hot, and for the first time, I think I might actually pass out, standing right here, with my head going thump against the polished conference table.

  ‘Do you know where I’m going with this yet, Mr Thane?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your name was on that list. You owed money to Ghol Gedrosian. You paid him money. Not pocket change, either. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Amounts that would stick in a man’s memory. You are a good customer of his. Gambling, call girls, and – as far as I can make out – I don’t really read Russian too well, so I could be wrong about this – a hell of a lot of drugs. Is any of this starting to sound familiar, Mr Thane? Or should I say’ – he looks down at his pad – ‘“J.R. Thane of 22 Waverly Drive” – that was your address back in California – 22 Waverly Drive – wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. I reach for the edge of the table, and I’m grateful when it’s actually there.

  ‘Anything you want to tell me? Now might be a good time. A really good time.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you an addict, Mr Thane?’

  As soon as he asks the question, all the old feelings come back. I don’t answer him, not with words, but my body betrays me, and I feel it deflate in front of his eyes. So many months of trying to appear strong, of trying to impress people – all the people in my life – Tad, Libby, Gordon Kramer, Doc Curtis, Dr Liago, even myself; it has been an endless struggle, really it has, every hour of each day – pretending to be someone I am not – and, finally, at this moment, in this hot room, with a hayseed cop glaring at me and accusing me of something, although I’m not sure exactly what, it all catches up with me, and I just want to retreat into my dark bedroom, and have a drink, and maybe smoke a pipe, and curl into a ball, and call it a day.

  ‘Gambling?’ he asks, gently.

  ‘Sure, gambling,’ I agree. My voice
is hoarse. ‘And drinking. And drugs. And whores, too, if you got any. You offering?’ I glance at the door, make sure that it’s closed, that no one outside can hear. ‘I’ve been clean for over two years.’

  ‘Good for you,’ he says, but he doesn’t sound very congratulatory. ‘Tell me where can I find Ghol Gedrosian, please, Mr Thane.’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘Can’t? Or won’t?’

  ‘I don’t know the man. I’ve never met him. And I certainly don’t know where to find him. That’s the God’s-honest truth.’

  He stares. Maybe he does believe me, after all, because he shrugs, and closes his pad, and drops it into his pocket. He stands.

  When he speaks, his voice has become gentle again. ‘My daddy was in AA. So I know a little bit about what you’ve gone through.’

  Unless his daddy ever woke up in the Mission District, with an empty wallet and a crack pipe in his hands, he probably doesn’t know what I’ve gone through. But it was humane of him to try.

  He leans across the table and gives me his business card. ‘You ought to keep this, Mr Thane,’ he says. ‘Keep it handy. I think you’ll be wanting to call me soon. You’ll be needing my help. Probably sooner than you like.’

  CHAPTER 33

  But Agent Mitchell is wrong. There is only one person in the world whose help I need. There is only one person in the world to whom I want to talk.

  We’ve had our problems, Libby and I; that is true. We’ve suffered. I have betrayed her. I have wrecked her life. I have destroyed what she loved. Yet, after all that, she is still my wife, and we are still partners. We are partners, no matter what comes.

  When I arrive at home, though, my partner is gone. Her Mercedes is missing from the driveway. I walk into the house and call her name. ‘Libby?’ My voice echoes in the empty hall.

  It’s just past four o’clock. She wasn’t expecting me home this early, and I doubt she left a note. But I look for one anyway – on the kitchen table, the refrigerator door, anywhere she might have left a clue.

  There is no note. There is no clue.

  I try to recall my recent conversations with Libby. Did she mention to me that she had plans this afternoon?

  Now, standing in the middle of the kitchen, something occurs to me. It occurs to me that, in fact, I have no idea how Libby spends any of her afternoons. She lives alone in a house, in a strange town, in a strange state. She has no job, no friends, no family.

  She lives in a house. That is the only thing I know about her, and how she spends her time.

  It is as if Libby is a prop on a Broadway stage. When the audience arrives and the spotlight goes on – that is, when I return home from work – the curtain goes up, and her life begins. But when the audience files out at the end of the show – when I leave the house in the morning – things go dark, and her story pauses.

  I step outside, onto the porch. Across the street, my neighbour with the bulging forehead and overcrowded teeth waits on his own porch. He stares at me.

  I wave to him.

  A pause. An uncertain look. He waves back, tentatively.

  For a moment, I consider heading across the road, with an outstretched hand, and introducing myself, maybe even asking if he’s seen my wife. We’ve lived across the street for months, in the only two houses on a deserted cul-de-sac, and yet we have never exchanged a single greeting.

  Before I can act, though, he takes a cellphone from his pocket, presses a button, and raises it to his ear. He says something I can’t hear. He turns his back to me, and disappears into his house, shutting the door.

  Back in my own living room, I sit on the couch. Waiting.

  I listen to the tick of the grandfather clock. I think about the conversation with Agent Mitchell – about how my name was found in Ghol Gedrosian’s list of customers.

  Before I took the job at Tao, I never heard the name Ghol Gedrosian. Of this, I am certain. Yet according to Tom Mitchell, I have been a customer of his, a customer of long standing and great value.

  How can that be?

  Being an addict doesn’t mean living in a haze, unaware of your actions, oblivious to people around you. Even today, I have vivid recollections of those mean bad years, those years when I was using – searing and bright memories – as if captured by an old magnesium flash from a 1940s movie: of snorting lines of coke off two hookers’ flat young abdomens; of standing outside a Wells Fargo at ten a.m., with trembling hands, waiting for the bank to open, so that I could withdraw the ten Gs that I owed to scary bookies by noon; of touring a backyard in Woodside, under a camo tarp, where a tin Gulfstream hid the portable meth lab from which I was buying in bulk – a drug addict’s peculiar approximation of home economy.

  These are all very real recollections – indelible and intense. With these memories come specific names: Hector the Bookie; Johnnie Deadpan, who boasted that he played with Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, and who, forty years later, sold me crank from his trailer; Angel, the hooker who would do anything, and I mean anything, to share my stash of meth. Many memories, and many names, from that long and not-so-glorious catalogue.

  But from this list one name is conspicuously missing.

  His name is so peculiar – with its odd jumble of consonants and vowels – its sound so foreign and frightening, like a curse in an ancient tongue – that surely I would recall it, had I heard it even once in those years.

  Before coming to Florida, I never heard the name Ghol Gedrosian. So how can I be his customer? How can the name Jimmy Thane appear in his files?

  And another thing.

  Do mobsters keep computer spreadsheets? Is it common for them – after a hard day breaking legs and selling girls into slavery – to fire up Microsoft Excel, and draw little pie charts with coloured slices for each line of business – red for meth, say, blue for hookers, and green for loan-sharking – like earnest McKinsey consultants slouched at the back of the airport Admirals Club sipping Chivas on the rocks? How many criminals keep computerized lists of their customers, anyway? How many of these lists are ever found by police?

  None, of course.

  Unless the lists are meant to be found. Unless they’re planted, designed to incriminate.

  I hear the tinkling of keys in the front door, and then Libby stands in the doorway, clutching a single grocery bag. She peers into the room.

  ‘What are you doing home?’ she asks, sounding not exactly pleased to see me.

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Groceries.’ She lifts the bag in her arms, as if to corroborate this story.

  Something about the way she does this makes me feel an intense curiosity to examine the contents of that bag. I get up from the couch and approach. Before I can reach her, though, she walks away, into the kitchen, taking the bag with her.

  I follow.

  ‘We needed milk,’ she explains. She lifts a gallon jug from the bag, to demonstrate, and carries it to the refrigerator.

  She puts the milk inside. My eyes flit past, to the top shelf, where I see a gallon already sits, nearly full.

  ‘Libby,’ I say, ‘we need to talk.’

  She turns.

  I say, ‘I’m being set up.’

  She stares at me with a blank, uncomprehending expression.

  I continue: ‘This job. This city. This house—’ I lift my hands to encompass it all. ‘It’s not real.’

  ‘It’s not... real?’

  ‘It’s a con, Libby. I’m the patsy.’

  She looks dumbfounded.

  I realize that our marriage has reached a dubious new low. For the first time in ten years – ten years of mistakes, and heartaches, and betrayal – for the first time, I have done something completely new. I have befuddled her.

  ‘You’re a... patsy?’ she repeats, not quite sneering at the word, but coming close.

  ‘They arrested a man. A dealer out in California. Guess whose name they found in his papers. Guess whose name was in his list of customers.’

 
; ‘Yours,’ she says, right away, not sounding surprised.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘You’re an addict, Jimmy. You buy drugs.’

  ‘Used to.’

  She shrugs. ‘Used to.’

  ‘The man they arrested, I never bought from him. And his boss – this guy named Ghol Gedrosian.’ I spit the name. ‘I never bought from him, either. I’m sure of that.’

  ‘How do you remember who you bought from back then? You can’t seem to remember who you fucked.’

  ‘I do remember,’ I say, and add, ‘who I bought from. Every single person.’ Which is true. When you’re an addict, one of the things you never forget is your dealer. You might forget to pay your bills, or to call your family, or even to come home at night – but that Rolodex of phone numbers and secret knocks and names you need to mention – those are never forgotten. Never.

  ‘They planted my name, Libby. How else can I be a customer of someone I’ve never met?’

  ‘I love wearing Gucci. But I never met Tom Ford.’

  ‘Be serious.’

  ‘Fine.’ She makes a dour face. ‘I’ll be serious.’

  ‘There’s something else. Something I haven’t told you.’

  I take her hand, and guide her to the living room. We sit down on the couch, in front of the grandfather clock. It ticks metronomically.

  ‘They gave me money,’ I say.

  She looks puzzled. ‘Who gave you money?’

  ‘Tad. Tad and his partners. They gave me money. A lot of money. I took it. I didn’t ask any questions. I just took it.’

  ‘How much money?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I think it does.’

  ‘Two million dollars.’

  ‘They gave you two million dollars?’ She can’t keep the surprise from her voice. ‘What for?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Two million dollars,’ she says again, mostly to herself, considering. She looks at me. Her eyes narrow, and I see something new in them – something I haven’t seen recently in my wife. Something I haven’t seen for years. What is it exactly? Respect. Yes, that’s what it is.

  ‘Two million dollars,’ she repeats.