Thankfully, the second round of beers was delivered, and Charlie stood to say hi to a bartender he knew.
“Okay, guys,” I said. “I want to talk about you doing some work for Theo’s case. Officially.”
My dad and Mayburn looked at each other. My dad seemed to drop his gaze for the slightest of seconds before he returned it to me.
I told Mayburn about Eric’s suicide attempt, told him about going through his office, but how we really didn’t know what to look for, how I still didn’t understand really why Theo was arrested and, more important, what in the heck-fire he had to do with the Cortaderos.
“Can you please help?” I asked. “Dad, I know you were checking out the situation. Would you continue? Would you guys take it on together like a real case?”
They just looked at me. Finally, my father adjusted his round copper glasses and spoke up. “We’ve decided to cease the amount of pro bono work we’re doing.”
Mayburn said nothing.
“Okay.” A beat went by, then I understood. “You consider me pro bono work.”
“If we’re going to make this a business, we need to make everything business,” my father said.
“I did the bank visit with Tatum Reynolds for free,” I pointed out.
“Yeah,” Mayburn said, “but you were still paying me back for a bunch of work I did for you over the summer.”
I was about to take issue with that, but when I opened my mouth, I saw Mayburn giving me a wide-eyed stare, trying to tell me something without saying anything. I paused. He shot his eyes to my dad and back. Right then, in his gaze, I read something. Go with it. It dawned on me suddenly that my father had probably brought in little in terms of business. Rather, he had been helping Mayburn with his cases. Mayburn, I saw then, might have taken my father on as something of a project, in kindness to me, even though he had done a lot of gratis work for me. As Mayburn glanced at my dad once more, I saw something else there, too. He liked my dad. And he wanted him to get some confidence in his new city. It was more than Charlie and I had been doing for my dad.
I nodded.
My father spoke. “Actually, we could swap services, as long as they’re relatively equal assignments. We do need you again with Tatum Reynolds.”
“No, we don’t,” Mayburn said. “He deposited the extra cash that he was supposed to give Izzy that day.”
“But not until the weekend. And after he had played a poker game where he could have taken in that kind of money.”
“Yeah, but the bank said that we had him. That was enough.”
“They sent an email saying they would need more after all,” my dad said.
“When?” Mayburn sounded a little irritated. “When did you see an email that said that?”
“About five minutes ago.”
Silence.
“I read it on my phone,” my dad said.
Mayburn and I looked at each other, then back at my dad. I’d seen no phone since he arrived. But then again, I hadn’t been looking at him when I was talking to Mayburn, and even if I had, my father had ways of doing things under the radar.
Mayburn made an impressed face. “Okay, well then, Izzy, we do need you. Are you ready to go to Tru with Tatum Reynolds?” He looked back at my dad. “I assume you set this up already.”
A single nod from Christopher McNeil. “Tonight.”
40
When I got home, Theo wasn’t there. I looked at my watch. Seven o’clock. An hour before I had to meet Tatum Reynolds at Tru.
I looked around for a note from Theo. Nothing. I tried to think about whether he’d said he had any plans that evening. But Theo and I hadn’t talked about plans of any kind. Not since he was arrested.
I tried to call him, but no answer. I texted, Hey, where r u @? I heard nothing in reply.
I changed into a charcoal knit dress that had a wide collar. Then I remembered Tatum Reynolds checking out my cleavage, so I pulled the collar lower, and threw my curls over my shoulder. I put on some sparkly silver earrings that hung almost to my shoulder and zipped up my gray high-heel boots.
I still had about fifteen minutes until I had to leave. I went to my home office, thinking I might as well look over the records I’d brought home on Friday. I’d gotten nothing done over the weekend due to the news about Eric.
I stopped completely as I was hit with a wallop of sadness at the thought of Eric Deringer. How was he? Maybe Theo was with him. I hoped so. I hoped Eric would be all right. And, God, if I had anything to do with it, I was so, so sorry.
I got myself moving again, went into the office and sat down, pulling the bag I’d left at the side of the desk toward me, the one I’d carried home from the office last week.
From the bag, I lifted the stack of research. But as I sifted through it, planning to make different piles for the various documents, I realized the coke-in-a-boat file wasn’t there, the one that said Cortadero on its file folders. I looked in the bag again. Definitely not there.
I scrolled my mind back to when I’d brought the file home. Last Thursday, before we knew about Eric. On Friday, I’d hit on the idea of picking up Theo’s spirits by planning a party. I’d spent most of the day cleaning my house, running to Treasure Island grocery for booze and snacks, making phone calls and emails, telling people to come over.
But before all that on Thursday, I’d definitely taken the Cortadero file from my office desk and put it in my bag. It was the first thing I’d put in there. The research on Theo’s case had gone in after that. I’d come home, put the bag down and not opened it until now.
Which meant one of three things. Either we’d had another break-in. Or someone from the party took it. Or Theo did.
41
“She’s going into Tru.”
“You fucking kidding me? She’s going to that place?” José Ramon was at home, trying to take some time off for Christ’s sake.
He strode across the glossy floors of his penthouse apartment. It was in a building he loved, a building that had said fuck you to the rest of the Chicago skyline by soaring above it, just like he did.
He reminded himself what a star he was, much more than his brother. Except now his professional jealousy was flaring. Even though the restaurant was a cover, he took whatever he did seriously. And goddamned Tru got way more PR than his place did, and way better reviews and way more little motherfuckers on Yelp who didn’t know anything, blah-blah-blahing about how great it was. Goddamned Tru.
“Yeah, so anyway…” The kid was clueless to his emotions. Which was good. He didn’t like the people who worked for him to know he had any.
“I don’t know how I can follow her in that place. It’s too hard to be inconspicuous in the restaurant itself. Maybe what I could do—”
“Don’t do anything,” José said, “I’ve got it.”
“You’ve mean ‘you’ve got it,’ like you—”
“Don’t ask questions.” He stopped in front of the huge window that allowed no one to look inside, even if they could get this high. Yet he could see everything. Although it was dark now, he could picture how it was in daylight, when he could see over the Wrigley Building and over the river and over all the hotels and even over the band shell at Millennium Park, right to Lake Michigan. He had everything in his sights right here.
To top it off, Lucia was coming over later. She’d been cat-and-mouse with him. Coy. Knew just when to blow his brains out with a night together and then she disappeared for a while.
“I just think you should—”
“Do not think!” José barked. Now he was annoyed. And it was distracting him from his view.
“Hey, you told me that you appreciated it when I—”
“Shut the fuck up!” He was yelling now, his view blurred by anger at the insubordination. “I’m getting Freddie on this,” he said.
He hung up then, because he was afraid of the anger he was directing outward. His father and mother had conducted many a discussion with him about lashing out. It was why Vin
cente, his brother, got to get his MBA and live in fucking Barrington Hills and buy fucking ponies for his kids.
He had been in control of it for a long time. But sometimes when people were defiant, when people didn’t give him the respect he deserved, this was when it flared. The fury came back to him with a taste so familiar, it almost felt a relief to bring it forward into his consciousness.
And now this situation with HeadFirst was almost taken care of. Almost. One kid had tried to kill himself. It was perfect! Now he needed the other one to go away so that no one would testify, no one would name them. But it would be too obvious if the other kid just happened to get caught with a needle in his vein in an alley in Lawndale. Way too obvious. So he would handle it another way.
But still there remained the unrelenting pressure of that anger that he’d let come forward—wanting to be let out even more. He knew he would walk around feeling like a live wire, twitching and waiting for it to bring ruin to someone eventually.
He forced himself to see again, see through the shining lights to the blackness that was Lake Michigan at night. He looked into the depths of that black. Then he lifted his phone again and gave Freddie a little more latitude than he had last time. Last time, a warning was all that was needed, in the form of a break-in.
This time he only had one rule. No one dies. They both heard the other side of that admonishment—Don’t kill anyone, but other than that…
42
I felt guilty. So very guilty. Because Tatum Reynolds looked so very happy.
The staff at Tru were such experts they made Tatum feel like a man of industry, a man of wealth, a man of power. And then I added to that aura for him—flirting by leaning across the table, showing a little cleavage, sharing funny stories, asking him about his family and his friends.
In the spirit of getting him to confess about his client-incentive money hoarding, I’d made some “confessions” of my own. Such as how I had fallen for him right when I walked in his office.
And boom, just like that he started talking. He told me about the money he was supposed to give me for the client incentive program; divulged that instead he’d pretended it was money for Tru. “Because I wanted to go with you,” he said. “I knew there was something between us when I first saw you, too.”
Oh, I felt terrible. I was positively stringing the poor guy along. Not to mention the fact that I had a boyfriend! And even though this was just a job, it didn’t feel right acting like this with someone other than Theo. (The thoughts of Theo kept making my mind go around, back to the Cortadero file. That Theo seemed to have taken from my bag. Or someone from the party had lifted.)
The necklace cam I wore was just amping up the situation. The camera wouldn’t work unless I stayed still, so whenever I found the right cleavagey angle, I halted, frozen as if caught gazing at Tatum, in love and unawares. And while I was in such poses, sweet Tatum Reynolds described how he had taken the bank rewards that he was supposed to be giving new customers for himself—and then deposited it into his account.
“I was doing it for fun,” Tatum said, staring back at me with these big brown eyes from his thin frame, “until I met you.”
He’d said it with such earnestness, which he then followed up with a sideways look that I could tell immediately made him feel mysterious. He started telling me then about the issues he had with his mother, who hadn’t been around much, with an older brother who “just doesn’t get me.”
I didn’t want to get Tatum Reynolds’s hopes up and I didn’t want to break the already fragile heart he seemed to be offering up to me.
“So,” I said, trying to take a sideways dash out of the conversation, “this wasn’t the first time you did something like this? Take some of the money and get a date out of it?”
He looked at me, his eyes pained. “No,” he choked out. “I feel so bad now because I know you and I will be together for a long time, and I’ll never stop feeling bad that I did that with other women. Because you’re the only one that matters.”
Now I didn’t feel as bad for him. The kid was a bullshitter.
“I bet you say that to all the girls,” I said, allowing the nasally voice to come back a little.
He shook his head fast. “No, no. I’ve never said that to anyone. Honestly!” His eyes looked in mine, waiting for a response, and I could see there that he was being honest.
“I’ve never felt like this in my life.” He took my hand. “I think you’re…” Those earnest eyes kept searching mine. “I think you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”
Oh, Tatum, I thought. Poor Tatum. My heart wrenched for him because he was going to get fired and arrested. And he was also about to lose what he seemed to believe to be the love of his life.
I couldn’t make it worse for the guy. I had to go to the bathroom to break the spell, then I needed to finish dinner quickly and get out. Luckily, we only had the dessert course left.
I stood. “I’ll be right back,” I said, slipping his hand from mine.
“I’ll be waiting,” he said, a happy smile on his face.
On the way to the bathroom, I thought of Mayburn and my father in Mayburn’s white van parked at the corner, the one that, lately, was stenciled with the name of a faux construction company on its side. I raised the necklace cam to my face. “Ladies’ room,” I said. “See you guys later.” I reached behind me, felt for the quarter-size panel that operated the camera, which was held with a strip of Velcro inside my dress. When I found it, I pushed the tiny button along its side that turned off the camera.
I wondered what they talked about, sitting in that van. Did they talk at all? My father, I knew, could go days without speaking and without even feeling uncomfortable about it. From the minimal information I knew about his life, it sounded like he had probably gone months without speaking to anyone.
I stepped into the bathroom. I was about to lock the door when it got kicked back open and someone pushed inside.
“Hey!” I said reflexively, but I wasn’t scared right away. I thought it was probably the too-eager Tru waitstaff.
But then one of us moved and the mood lighting in the bathroom shifted and I saw him. Holy shit, that’s a big guy. That’s not the Tru waiter.
“Hey!” I said with an accusatory tone, my nerves zinging.
“So how’s it going?” he answered, as if we knew each other, as if we’d simply bumped into one another. He was maybe fifty, with a square jaw and towering heft. He seemed the size of two of me. Easily.
And yet with some kind of insane optimism telling me this situation wasn’t as alarming as my nerves were telling me, twanging through my body, making me almost shake, I answered him.
“It’s going great,” I said. “You?”
But then. But then—words that, in my mind, always preceded something bad happening.
But then he snatched one of my arms and twisted it behind me. “Pretty,” he said, just that one word. He locked the door. Then he repeated the word, drawing it out. “Pre-e-etty.”
The guy’s hands were on both arms now, clamping them to my sides, and he spun me, faced me to the opposite wall and then shoved me against it. A hard oomph escaped my gut.
I tried to quickly assess, to decide.
Mayburn and my father were out in the van, ready to give me ten more minutes of blackout time before they thought anything was amiss. Due to what was surely state-of-the-art acoustics at Tru, I could hear nothing outside the bathroom, and I was sure it would be tough to hear me if I screamed. Anyway, I wasn’t sure if screaming was the best thing to do with this man, who was big and violent and volatile. You could just tell.
“How’s Theo?” he said. Just those two words. He shoved me hard from behind so my ribs were crushed against the wall. Some fearful sound came out of my throat, a sort of moan.
“How’s Theo?” the man demanded, louder. Another push, so my lungs felt smashed, deflated. I tried to suck in air, but it was nearly impossible. I was thinking about picking up my
high-heeled boot and smashing it down on his instep, just to get him off me for a second, but then he spoke again. “When you go home tonight, I want you to tell him something,” he said, with another hard shove against my back, now making it impossible for me to get any room to lift my feet.
“What’s that?” I managed to squeak out. I hoped that speaking out loud, in a rather calm way, would make me feel as if the situation weren’t desperate, making my mind panic and scream along with it. No such luck.
“Tell him it’s not his fault,” the guy growled. “We know that. But in business, when you have partners, you gotta accept responsibility.” Another shove. “Ya hear that?”
“Yeah.”
“You understand that, right? You’re a lawyer. Big firm, now a small firm.”
Great. The guy knew my bio.
His hands gripped my dress harder. He shoved me again. “You tell Theo to take responsibility and figure out how to pay everyone. Then it’s all good. You get it? This doesn’t have to happen.” He yanked my long hair. I felt tears sting my eyes, whether from pain or fear, I wasn’t entirely sure, but it made the wallpaper blur into a streaky portrait of yellow and white.
“This doesn’t have to happen.” He pulled me back and dropped me, and I crumpled to the ground.
I sucked in air finally, tried to concentrate on his retreating back as Mayburn yelled in my head, I don’t give a shit if you’re in pain. Memorize him. Details! Details!
But all I got was dark clothing, big height and build. All I got was a hard knot of fearful certainty that this had all gotten way, way, way out of control.
43
He handled the downstairs security system like he’d been told—he ripped the goddamned thing off. And it had felt good.
He climbed the stairs, taking them as quietly as possible. He was a little short of breath when he reached the top, and that disappointed him. He wasn’t a big guy, but standing for his job for so many years was making him get a little fat. He had to get himself back into the gym. Back to his fighting weight. Or so he liked to call it.
Question of Trust Page 15