Red Shirt

by A. J. Stewart

  They couldn’t. They never did. I turned back to the door and found Nurlan’s round henchman standing on the doorstep.

  “Look who I found,” he said, with an expression that might have been an attempt at a grin, but looked like a snarl.

  “You went too far,” I said.

  “Just found them wandering the streets,” he said, stepping inside.

  He waited for me to close the door, and then I led him back into the great room. When Brett saw Nurlan’s man he pushed Ellen and the two girls behind him, back into where the sofas sat. It was that gesture, more than anything else he had done, that gave me hope that he would make it through, and maybe come out of it a better man.

  Nurlan’s round man said, “Found them wandering around. You should be more careful.”

  Brett made to say something but I shook my head to ward him off.

  “You got lucky this time,” said the round man, “but remember—”

  There was another knock at the door. Three heavy taps.

  “Your guy?” I asked Nurlan’s man.

  He shook his head.

  “You get it,” I said to Brett.

  He hesitated, not wanting to move from his position between Nurlan’s man and his family, but eventually he did. He watched the round man all the way into the hallway, and then he walked to the front door. We couldn’t see, but we heard the door open, and we heard the voice from outside.

  “Good evening, sir,” he said in a heavy Bostonian accent. “Sorry for the late hour. My name is Special Agent Jeffrey Prager, FBI. I wonder if I could come in.”

  The mouth on Nurlan’s man dropped open.

  “You need to not be here,” I said. I looked around the room. There was the sliding door, but that wouldn’t do, for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which was the FBI agent could probably see it from the front door. There was a pantry in the kitchen, a small room with an etched glass door just beside the wall oven. The word pantry was etched in relief, such that the word was the only part of the window that could be seen through.

  “Quick, in there,” I said, half pushing the round man into the pantry. The round man didn’t argue. He wasn’t keen on coming face to face with the FBI, any more than I was keen for him to be seen in the Pickerings’ house. I closed the door and saw him peeping through the “a” and the “n” in pantry.

  Brett fumbled his speech but failed to come up with a good reason to deny the agent access, so he told him to come in, and he led him into the room. He looked around for the round man, and was thoroughly confused to see him gone.

  We were a strange-looking bunch. The two girls and Ellen were standing—not sitting—right in front of the sofas. Brett stood to the side of them to allow the agent to come in. I was in the kitchen, standing in front of the pantry as casual as you like.

  “Evening all,” he said. “I’m Special Agent Jeffrey Prager, FBI.”

  He looked FBI. It’s a gross generalization to say that all FBI agents look the same. They are a diverse organization, it being in their interests to cultivate a force that can infiltrate all sectors, races and religions. But despite that, people still have an image of a G-man, tall, good-looking but not too much so, square-jawed and clean cut. This guy was all that. He looked like a recruitment poster. For some reason he pulled off a pair of sunglasses as he entered the room. He did it with panache, but I think I was the only one who wondered why he would wear sunglasses when it was dark out.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” he said, “and thought I would drop in.”

  “What’s this about?” asked Brett. I could see his mind spinning, wondering how word of his daughters’ kidnapping had reached the FBI, but not completely certain that it didn’t involve his business.

  “I was hoping we could have a chat. You see, I am heading a taskforce that is investigating some irregularities with a major project in Boston.”

  “B-B-Boston?” Brett stammered.

  “That’s right.”

  “What are you doing in Connecticut?”

  “Looking for you,” he said.

  “You’re a long way from home,” I said.

  “We’re a federal agency, we go were the cases take us. And you are?”

  “Jones,” I said.

  He nodded like he was filing this away for later but wasn’t overly concerned about it just now. He looked back to Brett.

  “I understand you held an event in the Bahamas?” asked the agent.

  I saw Brett considering saying no, so I nodded to prompt him to not lie to a federal agent.

  “I did,” he said. “What about it?”

  “There are some dealings we would like to discuss with you. Certain people who may or may not be involved. Certain investors, for example.”

  Brett licked his lips. “I’d be happy to cooperate,” he said, which was not what I expected to hear. “But I don’t think this is the time or place. And I think it would be best that further conversations take place in the presence of my attorney.”

  Special Agent Prager nodded as if he had heard this many times before, and he was resigned to it. It was worth a door knock, on the off chance that the canary squealed, to mix a metaphor. But he looked like a guy who knew his way around a white collar investigation.

  “I’ll call your office in the morning. I would like to meet before the holiday, if it’s all the same with you.”

  “Okay,” said Brett.

  The special agent nodded to us all. “Goodnight folks. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  I had to admit, I had dealt with the FBI before, and they were always polite to a fault, even when they were trying to put you behind bars.

  Brett ushered Prager out and then returned. I didn’t let Nurlan’s man out of the pantry until I was sure that the agent was gone. He looked straight at Brett when he stepped out into the kitchen.

  “You mention us to the feds, you’re a dead man,” he hissed.

  “Time to go,” I told him.

  I walked him to the door and he turned to me as he stepped out.

  “We’ll be in touch.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said. In fact, I was banking on it.

  I closed the door behind me and went back inside. No one had moved.

  “Well that’s it, then,” said Brett.

  “The large lady hasn’t sung yet,” I said. “We need to give them nothing to look at. You pay back everyone, there’s no point to spending the public’s money on a trial.”

  “But we’re short,” he said. “Half a mil.”

  I nodded. That was true, and I wasn’t sure how we were going to get around that. Not yet.

  “Brett, why don’t you put the girls to bed,” said Ellen. I wasn’t too sure how much sleep they would get. I hadn’t been kidnapped and I didn’t think I was going to get any, but Ellen ushered the girls over to Brett, and he put an arm around each of them and took them out toward the staircase.

  I watched them go. Brett hunched in defeat, the girls seemingly not as bad for the experience as I had thought they might be. But a child can stare at a ceiling for a long time, and their minds can go to a lot of dark places, and eventually sleep would come, and dreams were not always kind.

  I let out a long breath and looked back to Ellen. I didn’t know what to say. But she did.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Ellen strode to the back sliding door and opened it. I felt the pressure and the temperature drop, and she gestured for me to step outside. I would have preferred to chat by the fire, but I got the feeling she didn’t want to be overheard, so I stepped out into the cold. There were no lights on in the backyard, and the glow from inside extended to the edge of the paved patio. Ellen stepped away so she was just in darkness, as if the night would mask her words.

  “I can make up the shortfall, to pay the debts,” she said.

  “How?”

  “I have another house.”

  “You have another house?”

  “Yes. Me
and my sister. It’s technically in a trust, and we are the beneficiaries. Our grandparents left it to us.”

  “They didn’t leave it to your parents?”

  “No, they left their family home to Mom and Dad. This place was a vacation place. A lake house up on Candlewood Lake.”

  “Why hasn’t this come up before?”

  “I had hoped we wouldn’t need it, and well, Brett doesn’t know about it.”

  “He doesn’t know you have a vacation house? Do you vacation without him?”

  “No, we don’t vacation there. It’s a cabin, and it needs a good bit of work. Look, I didn’t tell him because, well, I don’t really know why. I guess I wanted to hold something that was mine, not ours, something from before. Something that proved I was once Ellen Hastings, not Mrs. Brett Pickering. You know? He has the career, he has the life. I don’t. I gave that up when I got pregnant, and I don’t regret it, not for a second. But something inside me just wanted to hold onto a piece of who I was before all I was was a wife and mother.”

  “Okay. I can understand that. So the question is, will your sister want to sell?”

  “She has always wanted to sell. She lives in Chicago, she’ll never go back to the lake house.”

  “Then the next question is, how quickly can we find a buyer?”

  “I already have one.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. The next door neighbor. He has always wanted to buy it, even when my grandparents were still with us. It’s waterfront, you see. Prime location. He has the lot next door, but only has a small piece on the water. Our place would triple or even quadruple his frontage.”

  “And you think he’ll buy? Like, quickly?”

  “Yes. I called him today. He said he could have documents and a bank check to us tomorrow.”

  “How do these things happen so quickly? It usually takes months to close on a place.”

  “If you take a loan. If you pay cash, it’s like buying a can of soda. You pay, it’s yours.”

  “There’s a bit more paperwork.”

  “There is, but our neighbor up there, he runs one of the largest real estate investment funds in the world. He has the cash, and he has lawyers on tap to write up the paperwork.”

  “Sounds like a useful guy to know. And it will cover the debts?”

  “Mostly. He’ll offer fair market value for the land and nothing for the house. He’ll knock the house down anyway. Based on his price, after costs and 50% to my sister, plus the consignment furniture, I think we cover everyone on Mr. Mondavi’s list, with one exception.”

  “Which is?”

  “Coach Dunbar. You said you had a plan for that?”

  “I did. I do. I think.”

  “Mr. Jones, my children were taken from me today, and now the FBI wants to interview my husband about his dealings, which we know will lead them to finding out what he did. I’ll do anything to keep my family together. What if you can’t get Coach’s money?”

  “Then you will.”

  “How?”

  “Brett’s looking for work, right? Once he finds it, you’ll have to pay Coach back, little by little. If there’s one person we can be sure won’t call the feds or do you harm, it’s Coach.”

  “So the good guys lose. That doesn’t feel right.”

  “It never does.”

  “And what about this man, this Nurlan? His money isn’t on Brett’s books, so it isn’t on Mr. Mondavi’s list either.”

  “I suspect that’s where the money from this house will go.”

  “The sale of this place should be more than what he’s owed.”

  “And I think it’s going to take more than he is owed to make him go away.”

  “Well, our neighbor on the lake, I asked him about work. He said he might have something.”

  “That’s good. No, that’s great. You could use the money moving forward, and Brett could use the distraction.”

  “Distraction. Yes.”

  She crossed her arms. It was cold and she wasn’t wearing a jacket, but there was more in it than that.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. “I mean, relatively speaking?”

  “No, not really. I’m in a spin, to be honest. I’m just trying to keep putting one foot in front of the other, but I keep tripping. My husband has lost his business by dealing with criminals and breaking the law himself. My children have been taken from me. I know they’re back home now, safe inside, but how do I know it won’t all happen again? How do you know this will work?”

  “I know because I know these people. I know how they operate. I’ve seen them before. Despite what you think about hoods like Nurlan, they are only successful if they are risk averse. Sounds crazy, I know, a risk averse criminal. But the ones who aren’t are in jail. The thing keeping him in this deal is Brett’s relationships in Boston, which we know are good for nothing. The negatives for Nurlan keep mounting up. FBI involvement isn’t good for him, either, so we just need to show him that his best bet is to take the money and run, and we need to make sure he understands that the other option is no Boston, no money, and the FBI knocking on his door.”

  “Can you do all that?”

  “Of course.”

  I was going to give her my best matinee smile, but I didn’t. For starters, my matinee smile wasn’t exactly George Clooney, and it was dark out so she really wouldn’t have appreciated the full effect anyway. But mostly I didn’t do it because she didn’t deserve it. The matinee smile was filled with deceit. It always hid something. And I had a decent feeling that Ellen Pickering was as a smart an operator as I was likely to meet. She’d see right through me, the way Danielle always did, because in many ways she was like Danielle. I wouldn’t have taken either of them on in Trivial Pursuit. Or a ten kilometer run. But the difference between them was stark, too. One had forgone her career to care for her children—even if she did have the help of a nanny—while the other had not. I couldn’t say who was better off. Life is a series of opportunity costs, there’s no way around it. It’s being happy with the choices rather than being consumed by the regret that’s the real trick to living well.

  So I just smiled and nodded, like I could do it, like I had it all under control. That was a look I had perfected on the pitcher’s mound, and I still had it. It projected a sense that I knew something the batter—or in this case, Ellen—didn’t know. And that gave off the glow of confidence. Confidence that I didn’t really feel.

  “I want to go and lie down with my girls,” she said, and she turned to go back inside. I followed her. We walked across the great room and down the hallway, and she turned for the staircase and I headed straight for the front door.

  “Let me know,” she said.

  “I will. You do your part, and I’ll do mine, and I’ll bet we have this fixed before Thanksgiving.”

  I stepped outside and closed the door and then walked over to my car, thinking about Thanksgiving. And how it was less than thirty hours away.

  Chapter Thirty

  I returned to New Haven. There was nothing else to do. I figured Nurlan would be at his warehouse the following day, or at least I hoped he would, and perhaps we could talk. Or not. By the time I reached the Dunbars’ I was losing the power of coherent thought.

  There was another car in the driveway so I parked on the street. I could hear music—it sounded like the Vince Guaraldi Trio—coming from inside. I stepped up to the front door and for a moment I hesitated with my finger over the doorbell. Then I returned down the steps and wandered around the back of the house and came in through the screened porch.

  The house was warm. I slipped off Coach’s jacket and hung it on the back of a chair in the kitchen. The adults were in the dining room. There was wine and charcuterie and deviled eggs. I stopped at the doorway unnoticed for a moment and watched them. They were talking about the food they were eating, the way people do. Asking how each of them liked it, how Mrs. D had tried a little more curry powder in the eggs this time, and how Kerry had found a great new
French-style sausage in a new deli in Hartford. Kerry’s husband, Ray, had arrived. He was sitting across the table, in the seat that I had once occupied. For a moment I felt something that I suspected was jealousy, that this man had taken my place at the table. But I let out a long, slow breath and that feeling left me on the air. That was the way the world was supposed to work.

  Coach sat in his spot at the end of the table. Beyond him I could see the kids sitting on the floor in the living room, eating chicken nuggets and watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Coach sipped some wine. He was subdued but he looked happy, like a shepherd looking over his flock and finding satisfaction in everything and everyone being as they should. Then he glanced toward the kitchen and he saw me standing there. He smiled and jinked his head as if to say, come on in.

  So I did. Ray stood and shook my hand across the table and asked if I wanted a glass of red, and Mrs. D wondered where I had been. I didn’t get into it. Kidnapping is not good holiday conversation fodder. I said I had seen parts of Connecticut that I never knew existed, and I got knowing and faux-impressed looks when I said I had been in Darien.

  After the initial hubbub of my arrival we fell into a comfortable pattern, the familiar rhythms that families have. I sipped some wine and Mrs. D made me a plate with some meat and cheese and a deviled egg. I watched Coach listen as Ray told about the latest rumor he had heard coming out of Patriot Place, and as the conversation flowed, I wondered what the Pickerings were doing. Perhaps lying all together in the same bed, all four of them, holding on tight. I heard the kids giggle at Charlie Brown in the living room, and I couldn’t help but muse at how fragile it all was.

  And then there was a knock at the door. Once again I recalled how only two sorts of people knocked rather than rang the doorbell, especially around here, where anyone you actually knew would have come in through the back. I stood and said I’d get it.

  It was Nurlan’s round man. He took up the entire doorway, except for above his head. He was in a thick coat and as he spoke, his breath collected in great clouds before his face.