by Harlan Coben
Myron shrugged. “Help maybe.”
“Help how?”
He shrugged again, spread his arms. “I don’t know what to say, Bonnie. I’m flailing here.”
She looked at him a moment, challenging, then dropped her eyes. “I’m just lashing out at whoever’s in front of me,” she said. “Don’t pay any attention.”
“I don’t mind; lash away.”
Bonnie almost managed a smile. “You’re a good guy, Myron. You always were. Even at Duke there was something about you that was—I don’t know—noble, I guess.”
“Noble?”
“Sounds silly, doesn’t it?”
“Very,” he said. “How are the boys?”
She shrugged. “Timmy is only eighteen months old so he doesn’t have a clue. Charlie is four so he’s just pretty confused right now. My parents are taking care of them.”
“I don’t want to keep sounding like a bad cliché,” Myron said, “but if there’s anything at all I can do …”
“One thing.”
“Name it.”
“Tell me about the arrest.”
Myron cleared his throat. “What about it?”
“I’ve met Esperanza a few times over the years. I guess I find it hard to believe she’d kill Clu.”
“She didn’t do it.”
Bonnie squinted a bit. “What makes you so sure?”
“I know Esperanza.”
“That’s it?”
He nodded. “For now.”
“Have you spoken to her?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I can’t talk about specifics”—mostly because he didn’t know any; Myron was almost grateful that Esperanza had not told him anything—“but she didn’t do it.”
“What about all the evidence the police found?”
“I can’t answer that yet, Bonnie. But Esperanza is innocent. We’ll find the real killer.”
“You sound so sure.”
“I am.”
They fell into silence. Myron waited, mapping out an approach. There were questions that needed to be asked, but this woman had just lost her husband. One had to tread gently lest one trip an emotional land mine.
“I’m going to look into the murder,” Myron said.
She looked confused. “What do you mean, look into?”
“Investigate.”
“But you’re a sports agent.”
“I have some background in this.”
She studied his face. “Win too?”
“Yes.”
She nodded as if something suddenly made sense. “Win always scared the crap out of me.”
“That’s only because you’re sane.”
“And now you’re going to try to figure out who killed Clu?”
“Yes.”
“I see,” she said. She shifted in her chair. “Tell me something, Myron.”
“Anything.”
“What’s your priority here: finding the murderer or getting Esperanza off?”
“One and the same.”
“And if they’re not? If you learn Esperanza killed him?”
Time to lie. “Then she’ll be punished.”
Bonnie started smiling as though she could see the truth. “Good luck,” she said.
Myron put an ankle up on a knee. Gentle now, he thought. “Can I ask you something?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
Gently, gently. “I don’t mean any disrespect, Bonnie. I’m not asking this to be nosy—”
“Subtlety is not your strong suit, Myron; Just ask your question.”
“Were you and Clu having problems?”
A sad grin. “Weren’t we always?”
“I hear this was something more serious.”
Bonnie folded her arms below her chest. “My, my. Back less than a day and already you’ve learned so much. You work fast, Myron.”
“Clu mentioned it to Win.”
“So what do you want to know?”
“Were you suing him for divorce?”
“Yes.” No hesitation.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
In the distance the fax machine started its primordial screech. The phone continued beeping. Myron had no fear that they’d be interrupted. Big Cyndi had worked for years as a bouncer at an S&M bar; when the situation called for it, she could be as nasty as a rabid rhino with a bad case of piles. Er, even when the situation didn’t call for it.
“Why do you want to know?” Bonnie asked.
“Because Esperanza didn’t kill him.”
“That’s becoming something of a mantra for you, Myron. Say it often enough and you start to believe it, right?”
“I believe it.”
“So?”
“So if she didn’t kill him, someone else did.”
Bonnie looked up. “If she didn’t kill him, someone else did,” she repeated. Pause. “You weren’t just bragging before. You really do have a background in this.”
“I’m just trying to find out who killed him.”
“By asking about our marriage?”
“By asking about anything turbulent in his life.”
“Turbulent?” She let out a stab of a laugh. “This is Clu we’re talking about here, Myron. Everything was turbulent. The hard thing to find would be patches of calm.”
“How long were you two together?” Myron asked.
“You know the answer to that.”
He did. Junior year at Duke. Bonnie had come bopping down to the frat house basement dressed in a monogram sweater and pearls and, yep, ponytail. Myron and Clu had been working the keg. Myron liked working the keg because it kept him so busy he didn’t drink as much. Don’t get the wrong idea here. Myron drank. It was pretty much a college requirement in those days. But he wasn’t a very good drinker. He always seemed to miss that cusp of fun, that floaty buzz between sobriety and vomiting. It was almost nonexistent for him. Something in his ancestry, he assumed. It had actually helped him in recent months. Before running away with Terese, Myron had tried the old-fashioned approach of drowning one’s sorrows. But, put bluntly, he usually threw up before reaching oblivion.
Nice way to prevent alcohol abuse.
Anyway, Clu and Bonnie’s meeting was pretty simple. Bonnie walked in. Clu looked up from the keg and it was as if Captain Marvel had zapped him with a thunderbolt. “Wow,” Clu muttered, the beer overflowing onto a floor so coated with beer that rodents often got stuck on it and died. Then Clu leaped over the bar, staggered toward Bonnie, dropped to one knee, and proposed. Three years later they tied the knot for real.
“So after all these years what happened?”
Bonnie looked down. “It had nothing to do with his murder,” she said.
“That’s probably true, but I need to get the full picture of his life, travel down any possible avenue—”
“Bullshit, Myron. I said it had nothing to do with the murder, okay? Leave it at that.”
He licked his lips, folded his hands, put them on the desktop. “In the past you’ve thrown him out because of another woman.”
“Not woman. Women. Plural.”
“Is that what happened again this time?”
“He swore off women. He promised me that there’d be no more.”
“And he broke that promise?”
Bonnie didn’t answer.
“What was her name?”
Her voice was soft. “I never knew.”
“But there was someone else?”
Again she didn’t answer. No need. Myron tried to put on his attorney skin for a moment. Clu’s having an affair was a very good thing for Esperanza’s defense. The more motives you can find, the more reasonable doubt you can create. Did the girlfriend kill him because he still wanted to be with his wife? Did Bonnie do it out of jealousy? And then there was the missing money. Wouldn’t the girlfriend and/or Bonnie have known about it? Couldn’t that be an added motive for murder? Yep, Hester Crimstein would like this. Throw enough possibilities into
a trial, muddy the waters enough, and an acquittal is almost inevitable. It was a simple equation: Confusion equals reasonable doubt equals a not-guilty verdict.
“He’s had affairs before, Bonnie. What was different this time?”
“Give it a rest, Myron, okay? Clu isn’t even in the ground yet.”
He pulled back. “I’m sorry.”
She looked away. Her chest rose and fell, her voice fighting to stay steady. “I know you’re just trying to help,” she said. “But the divorce stuff … it hurts too much right now.”
“I understand.”
“If you have other questions …”
“I heard Clu failed a drug test.” So much for backing off. “I only know what I read in the papers.”
“Clu told Win it was a fix.”
“What?”
“Clu claimed he was clean. What do you think?”
“I think Clu was a marvelous screwup. We both know that.”
“So he was taking again?”
“I don’t know.” She swallowed and locked eyes with him. “I hadn’t seen him in weeks.”
“And before that?”
“He seemed clean, actually. But he was always good at hiding it. Remember that intervention we tried three years ago?”
Myron nodded.
“We all cried. We all begged him to stop. And finally Clu broke down too. He sobbed like a baby, said he was ready turn his life around. Two days later he paid off a guard and sneaked out of rehab.”
“So you think he was just masking the symptoms?”
“He could have been. He was good at that.” She hesitated. “But I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Wishful thinking, I guess, but I really thought he was clean this time. In the past you could almost see he was going through the motions. He was playing a part for me or the kids. But this time he seemed more determined. Like he knew this trade was his last chance to start fresh. He worked at it like I’ve never seen him work at anything. I thought he was beating it too. But something must have pushed him back off.…”
Bonnie’s voice tailed off, and now her eyes filled. She was wondering, no doubt, if she had been that push, if Clu had indeed been clean and if she had thrown him out of their house and plunged him back into the world of his addictions. Myron almost told her not to blame herself, but good sense kept the grating cliché at bay.
“Clu always needed someone or something,” she went on. “He was the most dependent person I ever knew.”
Myron nodded, encouraging her.
“At first I found that attractive, that he needed me so much. But it got weary.” Bonnie looked at him. “How many times did someone pull his ass out of the fire?”
“Too many,” Myron admitted.
“I wonder, Myron.” She sat up a bit, more clear-eyed now. “I wonder if we all did him a disservice. Maybe if we weren’t always there to save him, he would have had to change. Maybe if I had dumped him years ago, he would have straightened himself out and survived all this.”
Myron said nothing, not bothering to point out the inherent contradiction in her statement: She finally did dump him and he ended up dead.
“Did you know about the two hundred thousand dollars?” Myron asked.
“I heard about it from the police.”
“Do you have any idea where it might be?”
“No.”
“Or why he might have needed it?”
“No.” Her voice was far away now, her gaze drifting over his shoulder.
“Do you think it was for drugs?”
“The papers said he tested positive for heroin,” she said.
“That’s my understanding.”
“That would be a new one for Clu. I know it’s an expensive addiction, but two hundred thousand seems extreme.”
Myron agreed. “Was he in any trouble?”
She looked at him.
“I mean, besides the usual. Loan sharks or gambling or something like that?”
“It’s possible, I guess.”
“But you don’t know.”
Bonnie shook her head, still looking off at nothing. “You know what I was thinking about?”
“What?”
“Clu’s first year as a pro. Class A with the New England Bisons. Right after he asked you to negotiate his contract. Do you remember that?”
Myron nodded.
“And again, I wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“That was the first time we all banded together to save his ass.”
The late-night phone call. Myron swimming out of sleep and clutching the receiver. Clu crying, almost incoherent. He had been driving with Bonnie and his old Duke roommate, Billy Lee Palms, the Bisons’ catcher. Drunk driving, to be more precise. He had smashed the car into a pole. Billy Lee’s injuries were minor, but Bonnie had been rushed to the hospital. Clu, not a scratch on him, of course, had been arrested. Myron had hurried out to western Massachusetts, plenty of cash in hand.
“I remember,” Myron said.
“You’d just signed Clu to that big chocolate milk endorsement. Drunk driving was bad enough, but with an injury to boot, well, it would have destroyed him. But we took care of him. The right people were bought off. Billy Lee and I made a statement about some pickup truck cutting us off. We saved him. And now I wonder if we did the right thing. Maybe if Clu had paid a price right then and there, maybe if he’d gone to jail instead of skating by …”
“He wouldn’t have gone to jail, Bonnie. A suspended license maybe. Some community service.”
“Whatever. Life is about ripples, Myron. There are some philosophers who think that everything we do changes the world forever. Even simple acts. Like if you left your house five minutes later, if you took a different route to work—it changes everything for the rest of your life. I don’t necessarily buy that, but when it comes to the big things, yeah, sure, I think the ripples last. Or maybe it started before that. When he was a child. The first time he learned that because he could throw a white sphere with amazing velocity, people treated him special. Maybe we just continued the conditioning that day. Or brought it up to an adult level. Clu learned that someone would always save him. And we did. We got him off that night, and then there were the assault charges and the lewd behavior and the failed drug tests and whatever else.”
“And you think his murder was the inevitable result?”
“Don’t you?”
“No,” Myron said. “I think the person who shot him three times is responsible. Period.”
“Life is rarely that simple, Myron.”
“But murder usually is. In the end someone shot him. That’s how he died. He didn’t die because we helped him through some self-destructive excesses. Someone murdered him. And that person—not you or me or those who cared about him—is to blame.”
She thought about it. “Maybe you’re right.” But she didn’t look convinced.
“Do you know why Clu would strike Esperanza?”
She shook her head. “The police asked me that too. I don’t know. Maybe he was high.”
“Did he get violent when he got high?”
“No. But it sounds like he was under a lot of pressure. Maybe he was just frustrated that she wouldn’t tell him where you were.”
Another wave of guilt. He waited for it to recede.
“Who else would he have gone to, Bonnie?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said he was needy. I wasn’t around. You weren’t talking to him. So where would Clu go next?”
She thought about it. “I’m not sure.”
“Any friends, teammates?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How about Billy Lee Palms?”
She shrugged an I-don’t-know.
Myron tossed out a few more questions, but nothing of consequence was batted back to him. After a while Bonnie feigned a check at the time. “I have to get back to the kids,” she said.
He nod
ded, rose from his chair. This time she did not stop him. He hugged her and she hugged him back, gripping him fiercely.
“Do me one favor,” she said.
“Name it.”
“Clear your friend,” she said. “I understand why you need to do that. And I wouldn’t want her to go to jail for something she didn’t do. But then let it be.”
Myron pulled back a bit. “I don’t understand.”
“Like I said before, you’re a noble guy.”
He thought about the Slaughter family and how it all ended; something inside him was crushed anew. “College was a long time ago,” he said softly.
“You haven’t changed.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“You still need justice and neat endings and to do the right thing.”
He said nothing.
“Clu can’t give you that,” Bonnie said. “He wasn’t a noble man.”
“He didn’t deserve to be murdered.”
She put a hand on his arm. “Save your friend, Myron. Then let Clu go.”
CHAPTER
10
Myron took the elevator up two floors to the nerve center of Lock-Horne Securities and Investments. Exhausted white men—there were women and minorities too, more and more each year, but the overall numbers were still woefully inadequate—darted about, particles under blaring heat, gray phones tethered to their ears like life-sustaining umbilical cords. The noise level and the open space reminded Myron of a Vegas casino, though the toupees were better. People cried out in joy and agony. Money was won and lost. Dice were rolled and wheels were spun and cards were dealt. The men constantly glanced up at an electronic ticker, awe in their faces, ardently watching the stock prices like gamblers waiting for the wheel to settle on a number or ancient Israelites peering up at Moses and his new stone tablets.
These were the trenches of finance, armed soldiers crowded together, each trying to survive in a world where earning low six figures meant cowardice and probably death. Computer terminals twinkled through an onslaught of yellow Post-It notes. The warriors drank coffee and buried framed family photos under a volcanic outpouring of stock analyses and financial statements and corporate reviews. They wore white button-down shirts and Windsor-knotted ties, their suit jackets neatly arrayed on the backs of chairs as though the chairs were a tad chilly or preparing for lunch at Le Cirque.
Win did not sit out here, of course. The generals in this war—the rainmakers, big producers, heavy hitters, what have you—were tented on the perimeter, their offices running along the windows, cutting off from the foot soldiers any hint of blue sky or fresh air or any element endemic to human beings.