Lomax touched his glass to Nathan’s. “It’s going to be quite a project, Nathan.”
“The town is going to fight me.”
“Of course they will. But money always wins. It’s that simple. We could save millions on court costs and lawyers’ fees by simply comparing their tax returns of the litigants, and then settling things on that basis. It would be honest at least. But people don’t like the truth. That’s why it’s so easy to lie to them. And so profitable.”
“Speaking of profits…any word on that first check? I’m eager to break ground.”
“Great news. The money’s in place. But you know…it’s coming from Dubai, and the government is worried about terrorist connections. Ridiculous—they’re the good Arabs. Their Royal Family has done more to bring that country into the modern world in one decade than…well, in any case. There’s nothing to be done. The State Department due diligence on this money has been very intense, very detailed. But cash should be flowing by the first of the year.”
He set his empty glass on an end table. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to rescue my wife from the Board of Selectmen.”
Parrish watched him slip away into the packed living room. All this talk of Homeland Security and the Emirates soured his stomach. He knew that line of talk. This was his own trick, being used against him. Nathan never said, “I won’t have your money for eight months, if ever.” A jolt of reality like that could lead to lawsuits or even physical violence. More importantly, it violated the “Urge to Hope” which he otherwise exploited. Instead, he hedged: “The money will be in place by next Tuesday.” And next Tuesday he said, “The papers should be filed by the end of next week, and money flowing the week after that.”
And the week after that?
“One of the signatories has been in Europe, but he’s due back at the beginning of the month.” He just kept doing it: Things should be in order by the start of the new fiscal year, after the holidays, when the Chinese government signs off on the new loan restructuring…when the bubble payment rider is approved at the board meeting on the tenth…he kept people going for years this way, gradually Degrading Expectations until the interested parties actually lost interest and gave up, without ever forcing a confrontation.
Lomax was another master of what Parrish called “Tactical Delay”—maybe better than Parrish, himself. But that made sense. Lomax was a lot richer, too. Parrish let out a long tired breath. Then he drained his wine and went looking for a refill.
Chapter Eighteen
Full Disclosure
David Trezize arrived at the party just before ten. He had been drinking, which was a bad idea, and he’d been driving, which was worse, skidding on the icy roads and rehearsing what he was going to say. Words were his weapon. He had to use them for maximum effect.
He had approached the intersection of Vesper Lane and Joy Street too fast and slid right across it, brakes stuttering uselessly. He was stuttering himself by then, losing his nerve.
At the Eel Point house, cars were parked up and down the side of the road. It was a long walk in the cold, and the frigid air sobered him up. He slipped on the deck and landed on his elbow. He sat down in the snow, fighting tears of pain and frustration. But the fall turned out to be a good thing. It made him angrier. It got him moving.
He pushed into the warmth and the noise of the Great Room. He saw Lomax, squat and dissipated like some diseased Roman emperor just before the fall of the empire, standing by the French doors to the back deck. He was talking to Patty and Grady Malone. So he was going to have to confront Lomax in front of his ex-wife? Fine, fine, what did it matter? This concerned her anyway. David launched as soon as he and the tycoon were face to face.
“I hope you’re proud of yourself, you miserable shit.”
Lomax smiled. “Excuse me?”
“I read that piece about you in the Wall Street Journal. They called you a ‘far-sighted financial strategist.’ You’re not a far-sighted financial strategist! Unless you call destroying helpless people a strategy. You find companies in trouble, you buy them out cheap, fire everyone, sell everything, and move on to the next victim. You’re a scavenger. A repo man! You’re a vulture. You think you’re larger than life? You’re smaller than life! You’ve got no style—what are those fucking plaster mermaid sculptures holding up the mantelpiece? You’ve gotta be kidding.”
“Are you finished?”
“No! You want to wreck my newspaper, fine. But you leave my family alone. Fuck with them again and I’ll kill you. And I’ll get off because every member of the jury will be so happy to see you dead.”
“Sad, bitter little people keep saying that to me. But I remain happily alive, and immensely popular. This isn’t funny anymore, David. I want you off my property.”
“Yeah, it’s all about the property, isn’t it? This territory is sacred because it’s been sprayed with your money. Well fuck you. Fuck all of you. I wouldn’t give a Nantucket sawbuck for the whole useless bunch of you.”
He pushed someone aside, knocking their glass, and walked out the door, slamming it behind him. Gradually two dozen conversations began to fill the reverberating silence. Lomax handed a napkin to a guest whose drink had spilled.
***
Across the room, Bob Haffner was stealing caviar when Mike and Cindy started to argue. The caterer, Annette Sprague, was an old girlfriend of Bob’s. She had come full circle, from pushing him away and saying “I love you…but like a brother,” through a tumultuous love affair, a screaming, plate-smashing break-up and then the slowly accumulating affection growing back like wildflowers in a burned forest. At this moment she actually felt like Bob’s big sister, attached to him for life whether she liked it or not. So she gave him quick hug when he came into the Lomax kitchen and turned away while he shoveled the Sevruga into a plastic bag. She had to smile: the combination seemed to sum up her old boyfriend perfectly.
Just beyond the kitchen, Mike and Cindy Henderson were facing off, and Bob stepped to the door to listen.
“No wonder you didn’t want me to come to the party,” Cindy said. “You knew she’d be here. I mean, my God! It’s so trite. She’s a home-wrecker straight out of Central Casting.”
“She’s a pretty girl, Cindy. Should she wear a burka so you won’t feel threatened? Because that’s going to be a tough dress code to enforce six months from now, when half the pretty girls between Coral Gables and Prince Edward Island show up here for the summer.”
“They’re not working for you every day.”
“Some of them will be. I hope. And my dress code is shorts and a T-shirt. What do you want me to say? That I have eyes only for you?”
“So what’s the truth?”
“The truth? The truth is that I want every good-looking woman I see every day—the girls at the coffee shops and the landscaper girls and the rich women driving Range Rovers. So does every other man you’ve ever known, including the sainted Mark Toland, who’s living in Hollywood making movies with his own casting couch, that is, his bed—where he and today’s special wind up after a few drinks for a ‘private read-through’ of whatever script he’s flogging that week.”
“You don’t know anything about Mark Toland.”
“But I’m supposed to believe he’s the big exception. Well, we have one piece of evidence. He wasn’t interested in you.”
“I don’t want to talk about Mark.”
“Great, because I don’t want to talk about Tanya Kriel. If there’s anything else on your mind I’d be glad to hear it.”
Cindy looked away.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
“What?”
“I’m pregnant, Mike. I took the test three times.”
“Cindy—”
“I think it happened the night we had to stay over in Hyannis, just before Halloween. Remember that night? We had dinner at Bangkok Kitchen and we m
issed the eight-thirty boat.”
“I remember.”
They stood silently for a long moment. The band started up again—raucous bluegrass with a badgering banjo solo. Mike felt like they were using his nerves for the strings.
“How do you feel about this, Mike? Are you happy? Nervous? Pissed off or freaked out or all of the above or…what? Just tell me what’s going on in your head because I feel really horrible right now.”
“I don’t know.”
“Not good enough. Not even close.”
“So what am I supposed to say?”
“You’re not supposed to say anything! You’re supposed to grab me and hug me and howl with joy because we’re finally going to have a baby together.”
“It’s a shock, Cindy. I don’t know if I’m ready for this. I mean, it’s—how long have you known?”
“A couple of weeks. I didn’t want to say anything because…frankly? I was afraid we’d have a conversation like this one. Which I wasn’t ready for.”
“Do you want the baby?”
“Of course I want the baby! What kind of a question is that?”
“It’s practical. We’re on the edge financially, we’re fighting constantly, I’m not sure this is the right time.”
“There’s no such thing as the right time.”
“Yeah, that’s what everyone says.”
“You wish this hadn’t happened.”
“Well, I—”
“If I have this baby, you’ll have to really settle down. You’ll have to really make a commitment. We’ll be a family then. You can’t walk away from a child, not the way you can from another person. You’re stuck. It’s not a vow or a promise or some abstraction. It’s a whole other human being and you’re its world and you have to make that world a safe place. So screwing the cute girls on your crew really isn’t an option anymore.”
“Wait a second! I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie and make it worse, Mike. I heard her bragging to her friends while you were upstairs. Apparently you two invented a whole new use for drop cloths.”
“Cindy—”
She was watching his face the way a fox watches a bush, waiting for any tiny movement that will reveal its prey. She saw it and pounced. “So it’s true.”
“Listen, it was only one time and we—”
I don’t want to hear about it Mike.”
They stared at each other. The music jittered on. Mike shook his head. “I don’t understand how she could have said that.”
“She didn’t.”
“What?”
Cindy allowed herself a cold, thin little smile. “She didn’t say anything, Mike. You fell for the oldest trick in the book: tell one conspirator that the other one confessed.”
“But the drop cloths—”
“There’s been a rumor going around about those drop cloths for weeks, but no one knew who was using them as a love nest. Until now.”
“Christ. Cindy, you have to—”
“I don’t have to do anything! I certainly don’t have to have your baby and I really, really don’t want to at this moment. In fact just the thought of it makes me sick.” She eyed the room. “I’m taking the car and going home. Call yourself a taxi if you want. Or get a ride with your girlfriend.”
She pushed past a little clot of people who were actually clapping their hands to the relentless, machine-like bluegrass, and she was gone. He stood there until the song ended. Bob Haffner dodged out of the kitchen behind a waiter. Mike saw him and he held up his bag of caviar for an explanation.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” he said edging himself through the crowd in the slip stream of the waiter. “I got stood up and I’m outta here.”
Mike stepped back and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. He didn’t want to run into anyone else, or make conversation. He certainly didn’t want to go home. Maybe this could be his new home. On Nantucket, painters often lived in the houses they were painting, at least until the caretaker found them or the owners came up for an unplanned weekend. He glanced at the kitchen door casing. The thin edge against the wall needed another coat. He resented his mind for noticing crap like that at a time like this. When he was standing in front of the judge for his divorce hearing he’d probably be critiquing the finish on the bench. He closed his eyes. There was a rustle of movement near him and the nerve-sharpening smell of a familiar perfume. He could feel the little hairs stiffening on the back of his neck.
“Hi, Mike,” Tanya said softly.
He couldn’t speak; he couldn’t even look at her. Two out of five senses were more than enough. And then there was taste, you can’t leave out the information transmitted on the tongue.
She stroked his arm. “It looks like we’re busted.”
“Yeah.”
“But the good part about that is, we don’t have to worry about getting caught anymore. And I counted, Mike. There are at least six available beds in this house. Getting naked will be easy because I’m not wearing anything under my dress.”
She took his hand and placed it on the thin silk at her side. She led it down to where he could feel for himself that she was telling the truth.
The touch was like a drug that changed his body chemistry so all his desires were condensed into one and he craved nothing but the needle. Every cell in his body was raging for the next fix. How could you possibly fight that? He pushed the words up his throat: “This is wrong.”
“I don’t care. And neither do you.”
She led him upstairs as the band started their next set. They avoided the master bedroom this time. It was jinxed. Everyone got caught there. In the guest bedroom on the third floor they could barely hear the music. Tanya’s dress came off in a single gesture and she stripped him slowly, kissing him all the time. She pulled him down on the narrow bed. Once again Mike had the astonishing sensation of every sexual fantasy he’d ever imagined coming true.
And it proved to him, once again, just how puny and pedestrian his imagination really was.
Chapter Nineteen
Conspiracies
Mike and Tanya lost track of time. They even fell asleep briefly, before waking up and making love again. When they finally started to pull their clothes on, the party was over. They opened the door softly, listening. Even the caterers had left. The house was silent. They straightened the room up and started to creep downstairs.
On the first landing they heard Lomax talking. They couldn’t make out the words, but his nasal growl was unmistakable. They glanced at each other and tiptoed down a few steps.
He was with his wife in the living room. The high ceiling caught and amplified his voice.
“I don’t suspect anything, Diana. I don’t make guesses. I had you followed and I had you photographed. You still have enough residual notoriety from your modeling days to make those pictures very interesting to a lot of unpleasant people. I ran into Larry Flynt at LAX a couple of years ago. He told me that a good shot of you would double his newsstand sales. You should be flattered.”
“You don’t have to threaten me, Preston. I just want to know where I stand.”
“Where you stand? I would say…on the edge of a cliff, Darling. So step back, before you fall. Since you seem so fascinated with my will, I should tell you I’ve rewritten it. In the new version everything goes to charity. You get a small allowance, just enough to live on. Not enough to peel off a Nantucket sawbuck every time you want someone to help carry the groceries; sorry. And you’re cut off if you’re ever seen with another man. Which doesn’t mean you can’t carry on your little romance. But it will have to be furtive and tawdry, just like your late night phone calls. It’s ironic: there’s actually more money in the will for your surveillance than for your support. I’m sending the new will to the estate lawyers on the first of the year. That gives you less than three weeks to kill me,
if you think you can get away with it.”
“Preston—”
“In any case, I suggest you recruit a new accomplice. That little house-painter doesn’t have the balls. Not that I think you’re really capable of murder No, I just want you to count down the time until I legally foreclose on your future. Happy holidays.”
Mike looked over at Tanya. She tugged his arm, but he shook his head. He wanted to stay.
“Preston, please…what will I do now? Where will I go?”
“Read your pre-nup. You get nothing if you commit adultery. But I wouldn’t put you out in the cold. When I got rid of the Hilton Head estate, I made sure you had life residency rights to the guest cottage.”
“But that’s just two bedrooms! And that tiny kitchen! I can’t cook in that tiny kitchen!”
“You’ve never cooked in any kitchen! I bought you a thirty-thousand-dollar six-burner Aga stove, and you never used it for anything but the teakettle. The kitchen on Hilton Head has a micro-wave. You can heat up whatever you want. You can get mail under the name of Hodgson, and the phone in the cottage is in their name, too. It’s an excellent hideout and you’re going to want one, believe me.”
“But what about all the people here, the designers and architects and decorators and tradespeople? The plumbers and painters and electricians? Are you just going to run out on all those bills? Just—leave all those people high and dry?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘high and dry.’ There’s something obscurely comforting about that phrase, don’t you think? I prefer soaked and buried.”
“And then what? You vanish without a trace?”
“A trace would spoil everything.”
Mike and Tanya stared at each other. He grabbed her wrist like a lamppost in a hurricane. But this wind was too strong. Mike needed that final check. His mortgage, the IRS payments, his truck loan, the workman’s comp money, the overdue credit card bills…the whole preposterous balancing act was anchored by one thing, now, the twenty-three thousand, six hundred and forty one dollars from the Lomax job. He had assumed it was already in the mail. He’d been checking his post box with increasing nervousness for the last few days.
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