The Spellman Files

by Lisa Lutz

  While the rest of the camp was distracted by the parade of future American Idol contestants, my sister roamed the woods draining the battery on Director Webber’s mobile phone. This time she didn’t call my brother, my mother, or my father. Rae had a plan and she was only interested in talking to one person: me. There were three messages on my cell phone, one at the office, and five on my home phone when I finally decided to pick up the latest call from a 707 area code. It was my plan to put an end to this once and for all.

  “Rae, if you don’t stop calling me, I’m going to file harassment charges with the police.”

  “I don’t think you can file those charges against a minor. You might have to file them against Mom or Dad on behalf of me. And I think they’d get mad at you if you did.”

  “Rae, where are you calling from?”

  “A cell phone.”

  “I thought your phone was confiscated.”

  “It was.”

  “So where’d you get the phone?”

  “I borrowed it.”

  “Is ‘borrow’ in quotes?”

  “Remember the Popovsky case?” Rae asked coolly.

  My hand tightened over the phone, wondering where she was going with this. “Yes,” I said.

  “You told Mom and Dad not to take the case. You said Mrs. Popovsky was a horrible woman and Mr. Popovsky didn’t deserve to be hounded by PIs.”

  “I know what I said, Rae.”

  “Do you remember calling Mr. Popovsky to warn him that he was going to be under twenty-four-hour surveillance?”

  “I remember.”

  “Do you remember driving Mr. Popovsky to the airport in the middle of the night and telling him that his soon-to-be-ex wife was hiding assets in an offshore account?”

  “I said I remember.”

  “Do you remember giving him the account number?”

  “Get to the point, Rae.”

  “I don’t think Mom or Dad would take kindly to this information.”

  I knew my sister was capable of many things. But this did, in fact, surprise me.

  “Are you blackmailing me?” I asked point-blank.

  “That’s an ugly word,” Rae replied, and I wondered what movie she’d gotten that line from.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Rae said and hung up the phone.

  My drive through the wine country breezed by. Rage kills monotony better than any book on tape. I screeched to a halt in front of the camp office, a building fashioned after a log cabin. Through the dust that billowed around my car, I spotted Rae sitting on a collection of duffel bags. When she saw the car, her eyes lit up and she raced toward me for a hug.

  “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

  I pried her arms off me and pushed her away. “Do I need to sign you out?” I said as roughly as I could.

  She tentatively pointed to the office. I settled the paperwork and returned to the car. I popped the trunk and told her to put her bags inside.

  “I’ll never forget this, Izzy.”

  After I slammed the trunk shut, I grabbed Rae by her forest-green Camp Winnemancha T-shirt and twisted the collar into a mild choke hold. Then I slammed Rae against the side of the car. (If you’re thinking this is harsh, trust me, she can take it.)

  “Now you want to play nice? I don’t think so. I will not live like this. I will not have my thirteen-year-old sister playing me like a puppet. Blackmail is a crime, Rae. It’s not a game. Manipulating people is wrong. Sometimes life isn’t perfect and you just have to suck it up and deal. Can you do that? Or do you want to keep playing games with me? If you do, we’re on. But I should warn you: Fucking with me is an extremely bad idea. So what’s it gonna be, Rae? Are we gonna play nice, or do you want to see how dirty I can fight?”

  Sometimes you can just feel eyes upon you. Two camp counselors and two campers were frozen in their tracks, internally debating whether they should call the authorities. I released my hold on Rae and walked around to the driver’s-side door. Rae turned to our audience and broke the tension with a shrug of the shoulders.

  “We’re actors,” she said, and then hopped in the car.

  Rae remained silent for the first seven minutes of the drive, breaking her previous record by five-and-a-half minutes. I wasn’t surprised when she finally spoke.

  “I love you, Isabel. I really, really love you.”

  “No talking,” I answered, wondering how long I could realistically enjoy the quiet.

  Five minutes later, Rae asked, “Can we get ice cream?” as if nothing had happened at all.

  Lawyer #4

  When David learned that I had retrieved Rae from camp, he immediately grew suspicious and invited me out to lunch. Over mussels and pommes frites at Café Claude, David asked a question that would have been obvious only to him.

  “Does Rae have dirt on you?”

  “Excuse me?” I replied, playing innocent.

  “You wanted her to go to camp more than anyone else and then out of the blue you change your mind and bring her home. She’s got something on you. That’s the only logical explanation.”

  “You’re wrong—”

  “Deny it all you want, but since Rae has got dirt on you, I in theory have dirt on you, since I could reveal Rae’s dirt to Mom and Dad without actually knowing what the specific dirt is. Then it would only be a matter of time before they got it out of Rae. And I have a feeling you really don’t want them to know. Therefore, whatever power Rae wields over you, I do, as well.”

  “Where are you going with this?” I asked nervously.

  “Saturday you’re going on a date with my friend Jack. You don’t get a last name. He’ll pick you up at seven. Please wear something clean and brush your hair.”

  I slowly gathered my belongings and headed for the door. At the last moment I turned back and said, “This is not normal.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying for years,” David replied.

  Jack Weaver, Lawyer #4, arrived at 6:55 P.M., which rendered the parent-lawyer introductions inescapable. My mother gushed over the cashmere-clad attorney with the transparent tact of a campaigning politician. I checked my watch every minute or so and suggested it was time to go, until my mother snapped, “Give it a rest, Izzy.” My father gave Jack his cell phone number and told him to call should I give him any trouble and then laughed himself silly over his little joke.

  By 7:45 P.M. we were on the 101, heading south to Bay Meadows Racetrack. Apparently Jack liked to gamble with more than just his time.

  I became suspicious immediately. Jack was clearly not a man in need of a matchmaker. He had a clean-scrubbed messiness about him that I associate with men who try to downplay their looks. His clothes were just a bit untucked and his hair a touch uncoiffed, yet nothing seemed calculated for that effect. I became certain that there was no way in hell Jack willingly submitted to this date. Coercion was involved, yet there was no logic I could impose on David’s arranging this date. The only person who benefited was my mother.

  It is an uncommon condition, but my mother has a true and unwavering love for lawyers. I can cite only a few possibilities for why this is the case. Perhaps because her perfect son is a lawyer, or because we get most of our business from lawyers, or maybe it’s the nice suits they wear, or maybe she’s just a sucker for higher education. I am less concerned with the foundation for this fact than the fact itself. The fact cuts into my quality of life.

  As the evening wore on, my suspicion mingled more and more with attraction. What I discovered beneath the surface of this well-groomed attorney was a man with a serious gambling problem. It was his careful study of the morning line followed by outrageously inappropriate betting that gave it away. This would turn off most women, but not me. I’ve always preferred men with flaws; it’s simply easier for me to relate to them. But what made this discovery particularly sweet was that my mother had unwittingly sanctioned a date between me and a man who probably had a bookie on his payroll.

&
nbsp; While Jack placed yet another five-hundred-dollar bet on a two-year-old gelding that he had a good feeling about, my attention shifted to a suspicious male roaming the upper tier of the racetrack bleachers. I watched Suspicious Male from a distance at first and noticed that none of his movements indicated any real interest in the horse races themselves. When a race was on, Suspicious Male rarely looked at the track, just at the patrons. When I observed Suspicious Male bump into a man eating an ice cream cone by the concession stand, I approached the man eating the ice cream cone after the fact and asked him if he still had his wallet. He did not.

  I ran after Suspicious Male, who was now descending the bleachers in the direction of the men’s restroom. Jack caught up with me and asked me what I was up to. I explained I was following a potential pickpocket.

  I caught up with Suspicious Male and blocked his passage into the restroom.

  “Hey, asshole, hand it over.”

  Suspicious Male visibly paled and said, “Excuse me, ma’am?”

  “Don’t call me ‘ma’am.’ Just give me the fucking wallet,” I said, shoving Suspicious Male against the graffiti-coated wall. He eyed Jack and then me and decided it wasn’t worth the fight. Suspicious Male handed me the wallet and then raced into the bathroom.

  My sting operation distracted Lawyer #4 from race #7. His horse lost, which was statistically predictable since it was a long shot, but Jack was still disappointed at missing the race. Like many gamblers or habitual sporting-event watchers, he was convinced that his observation of an event could alter its ultimate outcome. After we returned the wallet to its rightful owner and offered a description of the perpetrator to the head of security, I asked Jack if he wanted to bet on another race, but he said no. He was no longer feeling lucky.

  The following Monday I dropped by David’s office to discuss an upcoming surveillance job and Lawyer #4. The fact was, this lawyer I could like.

  “What did he say about me?” I subtly inquired.

  “Who?”

  “Lawyer Number #4.”

  “You will never be in a normal relationship if you keep bar-coding your dates.”

  “I know he said something.”

  Struggling to control a smirk, David said, “He described you as a cross between Dirty Harry and Nancy Drew.”

  “Is that a compliment?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Lost Weekend #22

  Uncle Ray disappeared again. It had been twelve days since anyone in the city had seen him. My father tracked Ray’s credit card charges to a Caesars Palace in Lake Tahoe. Neither of my parents was able to break away for a trip to collect him. The responsibility then fell on me. I didn’t want to go alone, so I called David, thinking it was a long shot.

  “Will I have time to ski?” he asked.

  “Sure, while I’m prying the bottle of bourbon out of Uncle Ray’s hands and paying off his hookers, you have a ball.”

  “Okay, I’ll go,” David replied, ignoring my sarcasm.

  I saw the drive as an opportunity to find out what dirt my mother had over my brother.

  “Admit it, David, I embarrass you.”

  “I’ll admit that freely.”

  “There is no logical reason why you would want to set me up with your friends.”

  “I’m hoping some of their manners will rub off on you. Think of it as cheap charm school.”

  “This is all part of Mom’s master plan. And I know you. You wouldn’t do this just to please her. She’s got dirt.”

  “Are you suggesting that Mom has blackmailed me into setting you up with my colleagues?”

  “Can anyone in our family answer a straight question?”

  “Uncle Ray is pretty good at it.”

  Seven hours later, I found my uncle playing Caribbean poker in the Tahoe Harrah’s casino. I asked him what he’d been up to for the past two weeks and he replied, “Let’s see. I went on a five-day bender, sobered up during a forty-eight-hour poker game. Had a few dates in Reno. Another poker game. Three days, for the life of me, I can’t remember. And the last four days or so, I’ve been trying my luck at the tables. How are you, sweetie?”

  David was right. Uncle Ray was the only straight shooter in the family. On occasion my sister would come close, but she used deception when necessary. For my uncle, there was no stealth in his debauchery. He wore it like a crown.

  It had taken four hours of casino hopping to locate Uncle Ray. David, true to his word, went skiing and left the dirty work to me. In the last fortnight it turned out that Uncle Ray had lost everything—in fact, more than everything—his entire savings, his pension for the next six months, his fifty-dollar watch, a gold money clip my mother had given him for his last birthday, and a pair of shoes (I think), since he was wearing dime-store flip-flops. I tried to pry him away from the tables, but he refused to leave until he won something.

  “Something, Izzy. I can’t end it on a streak like this. It’s bad for my karma.”

  “What about your bank account?”

  “Izzy, there are more important things in life than money.”

  “You have to say that, since you don’t have any left.”

  “Sweetheart, I’d really like you to work on that negativity problem.”

  Ray played another hand and lost. But there were still chips on the table and I could think of only one way to disengage him.

  “Uncle Ray, how about we go to the bar and I buy you a drink.”

  “You got it, Izzy. But you’ll be buying me more than one.”

  Uncle Ray passed out the second we put him in the backseat of David’s car. We buckled in his chest and his legs and kept him sideways, should he decide to vomit.

  On the drive back to the city, David and I reverted to our adolescent pastime of ranking Ray’s Lost Weekends.

  “If that wasn’t a five-star weekend, I don’t know what is,” I said.

  “This may sound naïve,” David said, “but I always believed this was a phase. That one day old Uncle Ray would return.”

  “He’s gone forever,” I said with complete conviction. “And I should warn you, there’s a good chance he’s going to piss himself.”

  David sighed and answered with ease, “Yes, I know.”

  Uncle Ray’s Brush with Rehab

  Lost Weekend #22 was, fiscally speaking, more devastating than the rest. Uncle Ray really had lost it all. My father, at his wit’s end, arranged for Ray to go to a thirty-day rehab program that specialized in multiple addictions, called Green Leaf Recovery Center (David and I laughed convulsively for fifteen minutes when we heard the name), in Petaluma. Ray went along for the drive, but as they approached the verdant road lined with A-frame houses, Uncle Ray turned to my father and said, “It’s not gonna stick, you know.”

  “Will you try?” asked my dad.

  “Anything for you, Al. But it’s not gonna stick.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know myself. At least now I do.”

  “Tell me what to do, Ray.”

  “Keep your money.”

  “You can’t keep disappearing like that.”

  Uncle Ray had been waiting for the opportunity to ask the next question.

  “So maybe I can move in with you guys until I get on my feet? Pay off my debt. That sort of thing.”

  “You want to move in?”

  “I thought maybe I could have David’s old room. You don’t think he’d mind?”

  “No,” my father said laconically. The last thing in the world David would want was his old room back.

  Dad started up the car and then turned to Uncle Ray to solidify the deal. “No hookers, drugs, or poker games in the house.”

  “You got it, Al.”

  And that is when Uncle Ray moved in to 1799 Clay Street.

  THE INTERVIEW

  CHAPTER 3

  “Do you think it was wise,” Inspector Stone asks, “for your parents to allow an admitted drug- /gambling- /sex-addicted alcoholic into the home of an impre
ssionable adolescent girl?”

  “I don’t think Uncle Ray was a sex addict. He liked hookers—sure—but it wasn’t like a regular thing for him.”

  “Do I need to repeat the question?”

  “Uncle Ray was a disaster, but he wasn’t interested in taking anyone down with him. You couldn’t count on him to mow the lawn or do the dishes, but you could trust he wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “According to all sources, your sister’s reaction to his arrival was quite volatile. Do you care to elaborate?”

  “They were at war.”

  “So tell me about the war.”

  What Inspector Stone doesn’t realize is that there was not just one war, there was a series of wars, battles, and melees simmering constantly. It was endless. I could draw a diagram of all the family members on a piece of paper and map the conflicts until the page resembled a spiderweb. It is not just one war that is responsible for the one that we will all remember. Like a house of cards, if you remove one piece, the structure topples.

  Part Two

  The Spellman Wars

  THE SUGAR WAR

  The wave of familial discord, precipitated by Rae’s camp ordeal, soon settled into an eerie calm. A few weeks later, Rae was still feeling the gratitude of having been sprung and strived to be on her best behavior. I, however, was still feeling the sting from her shady tactics and needed a modicum of revenge. Since Rae is usually aboveboard in her activities, I had a single offense: to take away her one and only vice—junk food. I began noticing that her Pop-Tart breakfasts bled into Frito and Twinkie lunches. At family dinners, she picked at the main course, ate her vegetables under extreme duress, and then devoured dessert like a wild animal. I was irked by the fact that I was the only one who noticed this. But it was my fault, wasn’t it? I raised the bar on acceptable behavior in that house and Rae always managed to stay well under it.