Red Shirt

by A. J. Stewart

  And then I was on my patio, back on Singer Island, on a lounger looking across the Intracoastal, and I turned to the side and saw Danielle. She smiled that smile she does with just one half of her mouth, the one that gets me every time. I realized I was home.

  And I had the beginnings of a plan.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Sally went to Brett Pickering’s office first thing in the morning to finalize the numbers. I called him from the Dunbars’, and he told me that it wasn’t getting better the more he knew. He also told me that a black town car, not dissimilar from his own, was sitting in the near empty lot when he had arrived. There had been two guys in the front but he hadn’t gotten a good look. We agreed that Nurlan was watching, and that Sal turning up to Brett’s office was probably not going to help sell our story, but we needed the number so there was no other option.

  I waited for the rush hour traffic to die down before I tackled the Merritt Parkway. There were patches of blue sky which sent shards of bright light down through the autumn leaves, lighting them from within. It was like a neon show, and I had plenty of opportunity to enjoy it, since the traffic was lighter than I had expected it to be. Early on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving was a good time to be on the road. Lots of people had taken the week off, and the big travel day was yet to come, so I enjoyed the cruisey conditions knowing it was all going to get worse from this point on.

  I pulled into the circular driveway at the Pickerings’. There was a red Mercedes sedan in the driveway, and the garage door was open. I stopped behind the Mercedes and got out and wandered over to the garage. What I saw was three empty bays. The paving stones were wet, as if it had rained overnight in New Canaan. I stepped back to the front door and rang the doorbell.

  Ellen Pickering answered. She was in tight trousers that had a stretch to them, and a twin set, which gave her a bit of a Stepford feel. She smiled, not like she was elated to see me, but not hostile, either. As if we were working on a project together that had mutual benefit, but once completed, would see us never lay eyes on each other again.

  “Good morning, Mr. Jones,” she said. Mr. Jones felt oddly formal coming from a woman her age, and I had considered telling her to call me Miami, since everybody did. I had remembered, however, that in this part of the world that wasn’t the case, and I had visions of some kind of Abbott and Costello routine happening over the confusion between Miami and Redshirt. He was a redshirt in Miami? Miami isn’t wearing a redshirt, that shirt is blue. I just left it at Mr. Jones.

  I stepped in and found a hive of activity. Men in pressed khakis and polos were placing sticky tags on everything within sight. It was like a stocktake at a museum. I noticed the polo shirts because they weren’t wearing any sweaters or jackets, and I noticed that was the case because the heat was turned way up. It was like a fine Florida winter’s day inside. I took a look around the large double story entry foyer and wondered what the heating bill would be like. Most of the old places in Connecticut still ran just one step forward from the stone ages, where delivery trucks full of heating oil would visit homes and pump the noxious stuff into a giant tank in the basement. It was a horribly antiquated way of delivering energy, and it hadn’t stuck around as a tradition because it was so much cheaper than anything else. It wasn’t. Some of the deliveries came with an invoice that could feed a family of four for six months, as long as that family didn’t live anywhere near here.

  Ellen led me to the kitchen where she offered me coffee.

  “What’s all this?” I nodded at the men striding around the house.

  “Consignment,” she said. “Everything will be sold at an estate auction.”

  “You don’t mess around, do you?”

  “There is a sense of urgency, don’t you think? I don’t want my husband in jail.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t a criticism.”

  A woman in a woolen suit that was the exact same color as the Mercedes outside walked into the room with an air of regality. She had pearls around her neck and diamonds on her fingers. She held her hands out to Ellen like she was consoling her for her loss.

  “Oh, darling, are you sure about this?”

  “Unfortunately, I’m positive. We need to sell, and we need to sell asap.”

  “Of course, you’ve kept the place in immaculate condition. We’ll have no trouble getting a good price.”

  Ellen glanced at me. “Petunia, this is Mr. Jones. He is assisting with our downsizing.”

  Downsizing. I assumed that was what you called it when you stole a lot of people’s money and then had to sell your stuff in order to pay them back and keep out of prison. I nodded at the woman in red and she offered me a raised eyebrow, like I was the cause of all Ellen’s problems.

  In this part of the world, bankers and real estate agents were like priests. They accepted confession and knew the truth of all circumstances, the numbers that hid beneath the stories that people told about their downsizing and such misadventures.

  “There won’t be a commission on this one,” I said.

  Petunia raised her other eyebrow at me to give me a full-on look of puzzlement, as if I had spoken in Swahili.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Circumstances don’t allow for it,” I offered. “But I’m sure the Pickerings will be back on their feet in the future, and they’ll happily make it worth your while then.”

  “Sir, you may value your time so little that you work for free, but I know what I’m worth.”

  “So do I,” I said. “In this market, you’re worth an ad in the property pages of the newspaper. No more.”

  Now the eyebrows dropped but the expression was no more hospitable. Ellen put her hand on Petunia’s arm and directed her away from me.

  “What Mr. Jones is saying, for want of tact, is that we will need every penny from this transaction. But what I really need your help on is finding us a townhouse to rent.” Ellen led Petunia into the hallway that led to the foyer, and the last thing I heard was Petunia exclaiming a townhouse?

  Ellen was back a couple of minutes later. I was finishing my coffee, which should have warmed me, but with the heat up so high it overheated me instead. I felt like I was back in Riviera Beach.

  “That was rather tactless,” she said as she poured me some more coffee.

  “Sorry, but I didn’t want you signing an exclusive contract or anything like that. My friend Sal can look over any sale contract, and we’re going to have to price to sell fast, so there’s not a lot of work to do. Plus, you really will need every penny.”

  “We will? It’s that bad?”

  “It’s well over a million bucks, let’s put it that way.”

  A look flitted across her face that gave me the distinct impression that she didn’t think that was all that much money. I guess everything is a matter of perspective, except when being sentenced to prison for financial fraud.

  “Maybe closer to two,” I said for additional impact, but the punch didn’t seem to land the way I thought it might.

  Ellen looked past me, out through the French doors into the backyard. There was more manicured lawn and a kid’s playhouse, and a gazebo at the rear. I wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she took her time doing it. Then her eyes focused in on me.

  “Is this going to work?” she asked.

  “That depends on the outcome you’re looking for.”

  “I want my family to stay together. I want my husband to not be in jail.”

  “I think that’s up to you. What are you prepared to sacrifice to get that result?”

  “Everything,” she said.

  “That’s easy to say, harder to do.”

  “I know that. But it’s true. I love this house, and I love this life. But I love my family more. You probably don’t believe that, but it’s true.”

  “Actually, based on what I’ve seen so far, I do believe it. But it’s going to get harder before it gets easier. You’ll lose your house, you’ll have to move to somewhere a lot more modest, and Brett will h
ave to get a job. Maybe you, too. If there’s a short fall in the money we raise, you’ll have to pay it off as you earn it, for as long as it takes. You’re going to lose friends, and you’re going to lose prestige, and your girls are going to wonder if their lives are over and their parents are failures. And after all that, maybe you get through.”

  “I spoke to my therapist,” she said.

  “You have a therapist?”

  “Yes, what of it?”

  “Nothing, it’s fine with me. You need a doctor, you go to a doctor. But you might have to put the brakes on that, is all I’m saying. Those guys aren’t cheap, are they?”

  “No, but I’ll find a way to pay. You don’t see a therapist?”

  “No. If I need someone to talk to I talk to my fiancée, or I talk to my business partner, or I talk to the woman who works behind the bar at my local watering hole.”

  “And if they don’t have the answers?”

  “Then there is no answer. But this isn’t about me. What about your therapist, what does he or she say?”

  “She says I need to look at this as an opportunity. A chance for growth. She said what you said, that I might lose people, but the people that I lose were never truly friends. She says the good ones will stick around, regardless.”

  “Smart lady.”

  “And she said it’s a chance for all of us to reassess what is important. Not things. People. That’s what’s important, to me, anyway.”

  I nodded. I could see that. She was taking charge partly because she needed to keep busy lest she collapse, and partly because she knew what was important to her. I admired that.

  “Well, you keep doing what you’re doing, you might come out of it a better person,” I said. “Your husband, however . . .”

  “You don’t think much of him.”

  “I think he has poor judgment.”

  “You were friends at high school, is that right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Not close, but tight enough. We were both quarterbacks.”

  “So, rivals?”

  “Not really, not from my side, anyway. He may have seen it differently. He was two years behind, so we trained together and discussed tactics with the coaches together, but we were never really rivals.”

  “Who was better?”

  I wasn’t sure why she was asking it, but I gave her my version of the truth. “I don’t know. I got a scholarship to college and he didn’t, but he got to the state finals and I didn’t. So I really don’t know.”

  She watched me for a moment, and then she said, “He didn’t want a scholarship.”

  I shrugged. “I think everyone wants a scholarship, even if they don’t want to play football.”

  “He knew where his future lay, and he knew the time commitment would be better put into his study.”

  I shrugged again. “If you say so. All I know is, without my scholarship, I probably can’t afford to go away to college at all. And Brett’s family didn’t have any more money than mine.”

  “He got through.”

  “Were you there, at NYU?”

  “That’s where we met.”

  “Were you on the Dean’s List?”

  She frowned. “I was, but what difference does that make?”

  “None to me. But your non-scholarship husband wasn’t. So you were college sweethearts.”

  “Not so much. We didn’t get together until we were at Lehman’s.”

  “You worked at Lehman Brothers?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Both of you?”

  “Yes.” She lifted her chin and watched me, waiting perhaps for me to draw some conclusion between current circumstances and the failure of the Wall Street investment bank they had both worked for. A PhD candidate could write volumes on it. About psychology and learned response and culture. I went another way.

  “Where you there when they filed for bankruptcy?”

  “No,” she said. “Brett had moved to a management fund in Greenwich and I was at home with two young daughters.” And a nanny, I didn’t say.

  “Can I ask you something blunt?”

  “About Lehman’s?”

  “No. About now.”

  “If you feel you must.”

  “You don’t seem to have wavered one bit, in all this. It’s fair to say that your husband has messed up royally, to the point of breaking the law, but you don’t seem to be in any doubt. A lot of women would cut and run, especially women as smart as you.”

  “You think I should cut and run?”

  “I’m not offering an opinion on it, just an observation based on past experience.”

  “Do you have a family?”

  “You mean kids? No.”

  “Married?”

  “Not yet. Engaged.”

  “Congratulations,” she said. “Then perhaps you get it a little, but not completely. When you have kids, then you might understand.”

  “Ellen, I understand that people stick together for their kids. I also understand that it rarely turns out as well as they had hoped. And I’m not saying that I’m surprised that you want to see it through, I’m just saying a lot of people wouldn’t, kids or no kids. And I’m saying you haven’t shown any doubt when even Brett has doubted himself.”

  “You won’t believe me if I told you.”

  “I’ve believed some pretty crazy stories in my time.”

  She let out a long, slow breath. “All right. It’s not about him messing up. I know he’s done that. But I love him, Mr. Jones, pure and simple. I always have. And he’s always done a great job of providing for me and the girls. I understand the pressure to perform, and I understand when you have other people’s money at stake just how ruthless it can be. They can hate you not because you lost their money, but because you didn’t make them enough. It’s a cutthroat business.”

  “There are lots of cutthroat businessmen that don’t resort to theft.”

  “Yes, of course. That was an error in judgment, I agree. And he’ll pay for that. He’s going to lose everything. His business, his house, his reputation in our little society. But he’s also going to come out of it a better man. He has already learned something about what’s really important, as have I. I got caught up in it just as much as he did. I liked having a nice car, a big house. I liked not having to think about where the money was coming from. I see this as a wakeup call, not just for Brett, but for all of us. Our girls, too. We must do what we must do, Mr. Jones. We fall down, we get up, we dust ourselves off, we pay our debts, and we move on, honor intact and heads held high. All of us, as a family.”

  She was doing it, too. Her chin had lifted as she spoke, and she looked as defiant as all hell. She appeared to be a new breed, but really, she was an old-fashioned model, a real Connecticut Yankee, Katherine Hepburn type. I didn’t have a ton of faith in Brett, so I was keeping a close eye on him. But I believed Ellen could divert the Mississippi if she had to. Which was reason enough to keep a close eye on her, too.

  I was finishing my second coffee, which was two more than I normally drank, when we heard the front door open. It didn’t close. We heard footsteps across the foyer and then Brett appeared in the kitchen. He looked at the two of us. We looked at him. He looked terrible. Like he’d just seen a ghost.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Ellen.

  Brett looked from Ellen to me and back again before he spoke.

  “He’s going to kill me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Who’s going to kill you, Brett?” I asked.

  Brett stumbled to the counter and fell onto a stool.

  “The Russian,” he said.

  “What Russian?”

  “The Russian. Nurlan.”

  “He’s from Kazakhstan.”

  “Whatever. What’s the difference?”

  “Geopolitically, I don’t know. Culturally, plenty from what I hear.”

  “Do you hear?” spat Brett. “Do you hear me? He’s going to kill me.”

  “Okay, calm down. Wh
at happened?”

  “I dropped the girls off at soccer camp.” He looked at Ellen. “They’re not ecstatic about the new car, by the way.”

  “They’ll live,” she said. “What happened?”

  “I’m in the parking lot at the fields, and I’m about to get in the car, and someone grabs me from behind and pulls me into a car.”

  “A car?” I asked.

  “Yeah, like a limo. A black limo.”

  “A limo or a town car?” I asked.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Think, Brett. It might be important.” I was thinking of the town car in the lot at Brett’s office.

  “It could have been a limo, it could have been a town car. I wasn’t taking snapshots.”

  “All right, go on.”

  “One of Nurlan’s goons is in the back. He says Nurlan isn’t happy about his investment. I said I’d get his money, and he said he wasn’t happy about bringing the Italians into the deal. He told me to get rid of the Italians, and if I didn’t, he’d kill me and make sure there was no deal for anyone.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Ellen.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “I said the Italians were out because the deal wasn’t looking good. He didn’t believe me. He just repeated himself. Get rid of the Italians or he’ll kill me.”