It's a Crime: A Novel

by Jacqueline Carey

  When the swift, ugly moment had passed, the woman with the clipboard approached Lemuel. “We’ve set a place for your friend at table seven next to you.”

  “Did you hear that, Lydia?” Lemuel boomed.

  Pat nodded, wondering if he’d forgotten her real name.

  In the next, much larger, better-lit room were dozens of round tables covered with white linen. At the far end was a podium flanked by tall, crane-like orange and purple flowers.

  “Who’s the girl?” asked a skinny blond woman with lots of silver rings on her fingers, even her thumbs.

  “Lydia Bunting,” said Lemuel before Pat realized they were talking about her. She started to say something, but it came out wrong, so she decided to shut up.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself,” said the blonde. Pat wasn’t sure whom she was speaking to—Lemuel or Pat herself.

  Later she pecked at a round of steak with brown sauce. People kept getting up and speaking into the microphone at the podium, and it was a while before she realized that prizes called Edgars were being given out in different categories, just like at the Academy Awards. Feeling a bit more balanced, she sipped her wine and looked around. How extraordinary, to be sitting here with all these mystery writers! A surge of joy suffused her heart and even splashed into her head. She realized she recognized the name on the blonde’s name tag from the shelves back at Hart Ridge Books.

  Then Lemuel won. The new book, Road Kill, was named Best Mystery of the Year. Various cries could be heard over the applause: “Samuel! Samuel!”

  His acceptance speech was short. “Who’s ready for a road trip!” he roared, lifting the little statue. “What a great hood ornament this’d make!” An explosion of applause.

  Later they were in the elevator with a fleshy, pumice-cheeked, closed-off man Lemuel Samuel said was a famous Hollywood director.

  “Is that true?” asked Pat.

  “Yes,” said the man. He was wearing an open-collar shirt under a safari jacket. Something unpleasant rested just below his genial tone.

  “Call him Mister Hollywood,” said Lemuel. “That’s what I do.” He rolled around a bit as if unaccustomed to standing on his hind legs. “This is Lydia Bunting.”

  Mr. Hollywood’s insincerely affable smile remained unchanged. The name obviously meant nothing to him.

  “We have to humor him,” said Lemuel. “He’s going to give me a lot of money.”

  “That’s the plan,” said Mr. Hollywood. At a dark bar on the West Side, he spoke in a kind of singsong: “Follow me…channel the violence…Follow me…capture the power…Follow me…feel the glee…Follow Me is the best book about freedom ever written.”

  “Damn right,” mumbled Lemuel, shaking his wrist.

  “People think it’s about crime, but it’s not,” said Mr. Hollywood. “There are lots of different freedoms, and you have captured the sweetest of all, which is the freedom to act without consequences. Not without fear of consequences—without any consequences at all. Think about it. What would you do if you could do one thing without consequences?”

  “Drive across country without stopping once,” said Lemuel, “not even for gas.”

  Sleep with Lemuel, thought Pat, although maybe it was the consequences that she wanted.

  “Not even for gas,” repeated Mr. Hollywood. “What a detail. That’s what makes you a genius.”

  “Geniuses come to this bar,” said Lemuel, with an odd swift sweep of his forearm flat across the table. “And jazz musicians. Stuntmen. It’s so dark in here you can pass counterfeit money. No one’s going to question them.”

  “Stuntmen?” said Mr. Hollywood.

  “You can pass counterfeit money here,” said Lemuel. Suddenly the words seemed to be sloshing out of his mouth. “Counterfeit. Money. And race car drivers.”

  “What are you going to do now?” asked Mr. Hollywood.

  “We’re gonna go to California tomorrow,” said Lemuel. “Right, Lydia?”

  CHAPTER

  4

  The heat was awful the summer after Frank was arrested. Pat periodically checked the large outdoor thermometer, which was as big as a wall clock and decorated with painted cardinals. She watched in dismay while the hand approached and then rose past a cardinal’s beak, where the nineties began. The house on Douglas Point had central air, of course, but Frank spent Memorial Day weekend in his shirt sleeves at a Days Inn in Queens, combing through LinkAge financial documents and separating out numbers that he described to the FBI as “wild,” “risky,” or “really out there.”

  He had not intended to cooperate with the authorities. The night of his arrest, he tried the Rumson number and left a message. He figured Neil would soon set the government straight. Neil could explain the difference between stretching the limits and something downright wrong, like embezzling. Whatever he and Neil had done was only temporary, after all, designed to guide the company over a few rough spots. Neil would know exactly how to phrase it. As soon as Frank hung up, the phone rang in his hands, but it was a reporter, and so was the next caller, and the next. Pat ordered caller ID, as she should have ages ago, given her husband’s field of employment.

  LinkAge’s stock price, which had been falling all spring from a high of sixty-two dollars, stopped trading at sixty cents. Frank’s meeting with the Justice Department was scheduled soon after the company declared bankruptcy. His attempts to reach his old boss became frantic. Finally he called Ellen, who said, “Tell me what to do. There are FBI agents everywhere. They’re rummaging through all your papers, and they put your computer in a box.”

  “I guess there’s not a whole lot you can do,” said Frank.

  “No?” said Ellen.

  He learned that on the advice of counsel Neil wasn’t talking, but did that mean he wasn’t talking to Frank, who had always done anything for him?

  Then Frank’s case was switched from New Jersey to New York—not a good sign, according to his lawyer, a local man named Lou Lugano. Political pressure was demanding a hard course. Too many accounting irregularities had been revealed at major companies recently; too many bankruptcies had been declared; too many top executives had sailed off in yachts bought with the impoverished shareholders’ money.

  When Pat got home from Whole Foods the next day, she found Frank standing in the middle of the kitchen, sipping cabernet.

  “Where have you been?” he asked, although it was obvious, because of the name on the bags, and he didn’t wait for her to answer. “There’s a message for you.”

  “Oh, really?” said Pat, afraid from his manner of what it might be. But she went ahead and hit the button.

  It was Yolande Culp, who said that given the circumstances, she was going to put off their landscaping project for now. The only unusual thing about the message was how late Yolande had left it. Other LinkAge-related clients had already canceled. But Yolande had probably been reluctant because Pat had given her such a big discount on the job. Frank had suggested that Pat undercharge her for the design of a garden because it would pay off at bonus time, which it already had—to the tune of half a million dollars last Christmas. And since it was the company that paid Frank the bonus, no one was out of pocket.

  Yolande’s message went on: “Neil’s attorney says it’s better right now if there’s no communication between him and Frank. I’m sure you both understand.” Yolande’s self-absorbed tone was so usual that at first Pat had trouble taking in the meaning of the words, but then Frank said, “Am I crazy? Or is that the kick in the pants I think it is?”

  “Oh dear,” said Pat, as he followed her into the pantry.

  “I have to decide what to do here,” he said. “Dominic tells me he’s going to cooperate.” Dominic Cerise was Frank’s lieutenant and the most senior of the High Risk boys. “And he’s a stand-up guy, if you know what I mean.”

  Frank obviously meant to invoke Mafia terminology, but his inner turbulence was such that he was beyond irony. Pat hoped she wasn’t supposed to laugh.

&nb
sp; At five o’clock Frank switched to single malt, saying, “Wherever Neil is, he’s playing it smart. You can count on that. He’s always got something up his sleeve. Clearly he expects me to talk to the feds. So all right. I will. I just have to figure out what to say. I can’t go too far wrong if I simply recite the facts. I will put my own construct on it if I can, but mainly I will confine myself to what happened when. Neil is the one who’s good at interpretations. I’ll leave that up to him. He’ll eventually cast the right light on all of this.”

  “There’s certainly nothing wrong in describing what you did,” said Pat. “No one can expect any more or less of you. Tell them exactly the way you told me! It doesn’t matter what Neil does.”

  She and Frank used to interrupt each other all the time—it could be a problem at dinner parties—but now their conversation started as abruptly as a windup toy and tapered off the same way, jingly.

  Frank ended up cooperating with the government as a condition of his plea bargain. In June he spent his weekends at the Days Inn. Because he was home during the week, and he wasn’t paid for any of his tasks, it was as if he had the opposite of a job. Later in the summer, he was moved to a government office in downtown Manhattan. That was worse, because he had to come in during the week, just as if he were commuting to a job, and he still wasn’t being paid. He continued to pore over documents looking for fixes. Now he described numbers as “questionable.” It was a less boastful characterization than his earlier ones, and it signaled a new air of resignation. Neil never did call.

  Pat spent the early mornings watering. If she left the house later, the hard heat of the day would hit her in the face. Many of the plants, particularly the rhododendrons, had swooned; there was no starch left in them. At cocktail hour she fed ice cubes to those that were suffering the most. Even the leaves on the few pathetic weeds fell straight down the sides of the stems, minimizing the surface area exposed to the direct sunlight. She’d never expected to feel sorry for weeds.

  Rose was in Dublin working at a private clinic Gibbs and Culp had contributed heavily to, so she must have been okay. But Ruby called from her camp in the Catskills to say that a bunkmate had collapsed from dehydration. “I tried to put a Popsicle in her mouth, but she was so out of it she didn’t know what it was,” said Ruby with unsavory excitement.

  It was in August that the feds finally okayed Frank’s trip to the Foy’s country house in Lenox, Massachusetts. Even Pat had grown somewhat impatient. She loved the house, which they’d bought shortly before Ruby was born. It had been struck by lightning the year before. A ball of sparks flew out of the TV at the children. The floor lamp in the living room fried, as did the answering machine, which was in the hall. The electric burner that had been on high to boil water for pasta remained so permanently; the only way to turn it off was to unplug the whole stove. Pat looked back at this tame adventure with great fondness. All the tumult was suffused with the blessed cool damp dimness that she associated with every summer house.

  The first evening in Lenox, Frank walked to the end of the communal driveway to put out the garbage from dinner, mainly corn husks. Although the walk was a half mile over uneven ground, and many of their neighbors routinely drove it, Frank had always liked the leisure of the slower stroll. But this time, as soon as he returned, Pat knew that something had happened. She could not think what it might be, however. “Frank?” she said. Instead of answering he snuck to the closest window and peered around the edge of the café curtains, careful not to disturb them. Then he started to scratch his back and chest and shudder dramatically. He told her that he was sure he’d been watched the whole time he was taking out the trash. The Foys returned to New Jersey the next morning.

  Back in Hart Ridge, Frank stopped running; he was crossing paths with too many people, some of whom he knew, which was bad, and some of whom he did not know, which was worse. “If they’re not at work, why aren’t they out in the country?” he asked irritably. “They must be FBI. They can’t all be housewives and househusbands.” This last was accompanied by an irritable look at Pat, who, it was true, had not consulted with a client since the arrest. She didn’t even know where to find her tote bag with its tattered clippings and thumbed-through plant books and discarded blueprints. But why should he care, since he swore up and down that his lack of employment would make no real dent in their financial status.

  Frank stopped leaving the house, and when one of those talking heads on TV said that everyone at LinkAge should go to jail, he stopped watching television as well, except for baseball. Even Pat started scrutinizing the people she ran into. Didn’t they realize who her husband was? But the gas station attendant, who was from Trinidad, smiled as much as ever. The cleaning ladies were as cowed as ever. And the nurseryman, crusty old Whit Beck, never had noticed anything that wasn’t stuck in the soil.

  It was almost a relief when the summer was over and it was time for Frank to go to court. Pat would never have said this, because you didn’t know how he was going to take things these days, but she thought it would be good for Frank to put the plea behind him, even if it did mean paying a fine, a possibility he spent a lot of time parsing out. There were few clues as to how much it would be. Sometimes he would write various numbers on pads of paper, cross a few out, then add more in, and figure out the range, the mean, and the average. It could be nothing, of course, but the more likely low estimate was, say, a few thousand dollars. On the other hand, it could be as much as…well, it couldn’t be infinite. Maybe a half a million. Or a whole one, at the very, very outside. “No exotic plants until we know how much it’s going to be,” warned Frank. He was less worried about the length of the suspended sentence he was going to receive. He’d have to stay out of trouble, but that shouldn’t be difficult for a man who’d have no opportunity to get into it. “I’ll stay away from offices and confine myself to pool halls, where there won’t be as many temptations,” he said, shaking the ice in his glass.

  Pat and Brenda Cerise, Dominic’s wife, were not friends. Brenda rarely talked about anything but the darling clothes and furnishings she bought. But Frank and Dominic shared a court date, so Pat called up Brenda beforehand to find out what she was going to wear and to figure out how long it would take to get into the city. “It’s not like we can be late,” said Pat. “Maybe we should spend the night in one of those new SoHo hotels.”

  She wasn’t serious, of course, but Brenda said, “Dominic is living on chocolate-covered doughnuts.”

  The non sequitur was disquieting.

  “I think she’s upset about her kids,” Pat told Frank as he fought traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel the next day. “Brenda told me they were going to take them out of Catholic school. I don’t know why. Lots of Catholics are criminals.”

  “That’s a comforting thought,” said Frank sarcastically. He had a suit on for the first time in months, and already there was something indefinably wrong with the way it hung, more than could be explained by the few pounds he had gained recently. Pat, too, was wearing a suit but it was short and red.

  “It’s not?” said Pat.

  “Dominic probably can’t afford the tuition,” said Frank. “He didn’t cash in his stock the way I did. He sold some a while back, maybe thirty thousand dollars’ worth, but he owned millions on paper at the time. It all disappeared during the bankruptcy. Why he kept it in one stock, even LinkAge, I will never know.”

  “That’s so sad!” said Pat. For some reason her heart was stuttering like a jackhammer.

  They parked at a lot near the South Street Seaport and started walking toward Foley Square with plenty of time to spare. The day was hazy and cool. As they turned the corner onto Centre Street, Pat could see in front of the shallow steps of the federal courthouse a half dozen men with cameras slung over their shoulders. The cameras were black, with long lenses. Although both Frank and Lou had talked about how to deal with the newspeople, Pat didn’t realize right away that they were waiting for Frank. In the few moments before they spotted hi
m, she kept walking in vigilant ignorance. Then they were on him—and Pat—sidestepping and pivoting, the cameras in front of their eyes clicking and clattering. The cloud of nervous energy they kicked up was frightening. Pat managed to match Frank’s slow and steady pace although she thought she was going to walk right into them. Somehow she never did.

  A security guard stopped the more persistent of the photographers at the bottom of the steps, and Pat said, as she and Frank continued their numbed ascent, “Wow. We’re okay, right? I think we’re okay.”

  Lou Lugano, a round-faced man perpetually short of breath, was in the courtroom already, near the door. Although he had never touched Frank before, now he couldn’t stop. He shook Frank’s hand, brushed his arm, and clapped his shoulder, saying all the while that there was more media interest than he had anticipated. This touching must have been a show for the audience, which consisted of about twenty people, but Pat couldn’t imagine why Lou thought it would help.

  When he and Frank moved to the other side of the railing, Pat dropped into the front row beside a middle-aged buxom woman with waist-length blond hair, who immediately began to sketch on a board propped up in front of her. She was drawing Frank.

  The background (brown bench, blue wall) was already filled in. Now she was working on Frank’s hair. His face did not yet exist. “Hi,” said Pat.

  “Hi,” said the woman, switching pastels. She was swathed from head to toe in black leather.

  “How are you?” asked Pat.

  The clocklike swing of the artist’s attention between Frank and drawing board was momentarily interrupted. She let loose a wide and bashful smile. “I’m fine,” she said.

  Brenda Cerise, in a beige suit, took the seat on the other side of Pat, who said, “What a nice blouse.” It was printed with demure little daisies, or maybe they were supposed to be asters.