by Frank Zafiro
“What’s the matter? Truth hurt?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “It does.”
That seemed to surprise her because she didn’t answer right away.
I took advantage of the lull to try to get in an apology. She was a decent woman who didn’t deserve to be hurt. And I’m not the kind of guy who goes around hurting women.
“Look, Cleo…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“To hell with your sorry.”
“I mean it. I didn’t plan this. It just happened.”
“Whatever, Jake. Like I told you at your shitty little house, I don’t really care a whole lot. Being made a fool of is the only part that hurts. And I thought that part was over with after I walked in on you and your bimbo. But it wasn’t. There was more to come.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your detective friend. He called me at the hotel before I checked out. We met for coffee. He told me about how you got kicked off the force. How you were a corrupt cop. And how you’re a thief now.”
“He’s full of shit.”
“No, he made perfect sense,” Cleo snapped back at me. “It all fit, everything he said. I was a fool for not seeing it, but I guess that’s my nature. I trust people. Like a fool.”
“Cleo, he’s got an axe to grind. That’s all. He’s making things up.”
“No, he’s not. You’re exactly who he said you were, Jake. A liar and a thief.”
We were silent again for a few moments. I glanced at the doorway to the kitchen again, but it was empty. Apparently Helen was going to wait this one out for the duration.
“What did you tell him?” I asked quietly.
“Nothing,” Cleo answered. “Because, unfortunately, I don’t know anything. He told me a lot but I didn’t have anything helpful to say in return.”
“Good.”
“No, it’s not. It sucks. I wish I knew your entire fucking scam, Jake. Because I would tell him everything.”
Hell hath no fury, I thought.
“Then why are you calling me? Are you trying to warn me about this guy? Because I –”
She laughed derisively. “You know, you’re not as smart as you think you are. Warn you? Not even close. I called to tell you I hope this cop arrests your lying ass and throws you in jail. That’s it. That’s the only reason I called.”
“He’s trying.”
“Yeah? Well, I wish him all the success in the world.” She paused, then said, “You know what? You should probably know the whole truth, since I’m the kind of person who actually does tell the truth. Unlike you.”
“Cleo—”
“After we had coffee down in the lobby, I did take him back up to my room.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did. We went up to my room and I fucked him. He gave it to me hard, Jake. And you know what? He was better than you. Way better.”
“Cleo—”
“Have a nice life, you piece of shit.”
The line went dead.
I put down my phone and walked back into the kitchen. Helen remained at the table, pouring more whiskey into her glass. She topped off mine as I sat down.
“Who fucked who?” she asked me.
“No one. She was just hurt and trying to hurt me because of it.”
“Did it?”
“No,” I lied.
“Tell me something, Jake. Are we going to have many of those?” she asked. “Angry ex-girlfriends?”
I was too tired to argue about it. I gave my head a short shake despite the pain it caused. “I think we’re about done with that shit.”
“Good,” she said. “Because we need to talk.”
“No, I need to think,” I told Helen. “I need to figure out what I’m going to do.”
“That’s what we need to talk about.”
I put my hand on the glass of whiskey but didn’t lift it. The liquor I drank before was starting to kick in, and I didn’t want to end up rip-roaring drunk. A steady buzz actually helped me think. It gave me clarity in a way that sober meditation did not. I think the booze cleared out all the noise that didn’t matter, leaving just what mattered to chew on and ruminate about.
Jack Daniels Zen, I suppose.
I waved my free hand toward her. “Go ahead. At this point, I’m all for suggestions.”
Helen bobbed her head nervously. Then she took a small gulp of whiskey from her glass and swallowed forcefully. “Okay. Here it is.”
I waited but for the life of me I could never have predicted what came out of her mouth next.
NINETEEN
When she was finished, I just stared at her. A strange mixture of incompatible emotions swirled around in my chest and gut.
“So you’re saying this…” I waved my fingers back and forth between us. “…this is just bullshit?”
“No!” she said forcefully. “You are why I came back. Not for anything else. For you .”
“It’s awful fucking convenient,” I said, shaking my head. “And you know the worst part? I knew it. I knew something was up.”
“I know it might look that way, but it’s not,” Helen said. “Things just came together, that’s all. In a good way.”
It was karma, I thought. I did Cleo ugly, and now Helen is doing me the same.
“You have to believe me,” she persisted. “Of course my Mom dying would have brought me here, whenever it happened. But I would have come anyway. And sooner rather than later.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “You say that but then you throw out this business offer, too? I mean, how can that just come together?”
“It just did.”
“Tell me how.”
“I didn’t plan on my mother dying,” she said.
“No shit. Tell me about the business piece again.”
“I knew a guy,” she started.
“Knew him how?”
She hesitated.
That answered my question. “So what you actually meant was you were fucking a guy. Okay. Continue.”
“No,” she insisted. “It wasn’t like that.”
“How was it then?”
“He was a friend of a girl I knew. She and I worked together. I wasn’t with anybody, so I ended up being a third wheel with the both of them quite a bit. That’s how I learned what he does.”
“So your girlfriend is dating a drug dealer, and he just shares that with you?” I shook my head. “People don’t do that, Helen. Not smart ones, anyway.”
“I was with them a lot,” she said patiently. “And it was better than a year before I figured it out. Even then, it wasn’t a big deal, at least not in the circles I traveled in at the time.”
“Were you into dope?”
“No. Not really. But I did a little bit sometimes. And in the world I lived in, some of the people I dealt with, they expected either sex or dope from me. It was easier to let them down on the sex part if I had dope.”
I shook my head, stunned. “What…business? I thought you went to Minneapolis and worked as...” I trailed off, realizing she hadn’t ever told me what those jobs were. It didn’t matter, because she was probably lying.
“I did. I worked in Minneapolis for a few years.”
“Doing what?”
“In banking.”
I blinked. “In… banking? ”
“Yes. I started as a teller at one bank, then moved to another. Then I became a loan officer.”
“Banking,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Whores and coke. I don’t see it.”
“It wasn’t like that,” she said. “But it w
as intense. I was in the real estate side and there was a lot of competition. Brokerage firms wrote the loans cheap and my job was to buy them almost as cheap. But a lot of banks and credit unions were trying to do the same thing.”
A strange jealousy stirred in my chest. “So you were expected to fuck people and get them high to do business with you?”
“No!” She gave me a mortified look. “Of course not!”
“That’s what it sounds like.”
“You’re not listening to me.”
“I’m listening just fine. I just have a hard time believing all this drug use goes on in a business setting.”
“Please,” she snorted. “Do you think the police care if a bunch of rich people get stoned?”
I thought about that. I knew that when I was a cop, it seemed like we cared an awful lot about poor people getting stoned.
“All right,” I conceded. “But I didn’t know bankers were so wild and crazy. I mean, excuse me for thinking so but I always thought it was a conservative profession.”
“It is. But mortgage brokers aren’t bankers.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know the difference.”
“Most people don’t. And it doesn’t matter, anyway. The point is, my job was to get those loans. In some cases, that meant offering the best price. Other times, it meant schmoozing. Occasionally, and I won’t lie to you about this, it meant dressing sexy and flirting a little. Sharing a little coke. That was the way of it, and if I wanted to be successful, I had to play the game like everyone else.”
I didn’t answer. Everything she said should have blown my mind, but the last few days had inoculated me against revelations like this.
“The thing is,” she said, leaning forward. “I was good at it. I was really good. And eventually, I got a promotion and a transfer down to the Phoenix branch. That’s where I met Kyra.”
“Your friend who’s with the drug dealer.”
“My friend, yeah.” Helen looked at me beseechingly. “I know this is a lot to digest but think about this, Jake. Think about how much I’ve had to digest since I came back to Spokane. My mom dying, Kyle stalking me again, and everything that’s happened with you. But I’ve stuck by you, and I’ve listened to you. I’ve trusted you. Can’t you at least return the favor?”
I swallowed, suddenly chagrined. As crazy as everything seemed, she was right in this. I owed her a thorough listen. For the night in the hospital if nothing else.
“Go ahead,” I said, waving her on.
She gave me small, hesitant smile, took a deep breath and continued. “Kyra worked at the bank in Phoenix with me. We became friends. I met her boyfriend, Arturo.”
“The dealer.”
“Yes,” she conceded. “Although I didn’t know that until later. When I found out, I was able to get what I needed from him at a better price, so it worked out pretty well.”
“Sounds like things were perfect.”
She stopped, tears welling up her eyes. “No, they weren’t. I worked all the time. When I wasn’t at work, the only people I really knew were Kyra and Arturo. I made all kinds of money and I found out how much I like nice things, how much I like easiness of life that comes with wealth. But I wasn’t happy. I was lonely.”
She reached for her glass and took another sip. Then she wiped away her tears.
“I was a greedy, lonely, manipulative bitch.”
I didn’t reply. I just looked at her.
“That’s my story,” she said. “That’s where I went when I left here what I did, that’s what I found out about myself, and that’s how I realized that I needed to come back. I want to find the good part of myself again.”
I looked away. Goddamn, I wanted to believe her. At every stage of the game, I’ve wanted to. I suppose that says more about me than I’d want to admit.
“Jake? Talk to me.”
I stared at her hard for a long while. Finally, I said, “Listen to me. I need to know something. Put all of this other business aside. Forget whether you would have come back if your mom hadn’t died. Forget all of it. I just need to know one thing.”
“I know,” she said. She reached across the table and took my free hand. “And the answer is that I love you, Jake. I did before I ever left and I never stopped. That would have brought me back no matter what else happened.”
I didn’t move. I stared into her eyes, looking for the truth there. Her grip on my hand was sure. She didn’t waver.
“I believe you,” I finally said, squeezing her hand.
And I did.
For better or worse, I did.
“Thank you.” She whispered, smiling at me through new tears. “Thank you.”
TWENTY
We sat and drank some more while we talked business. And Helen was right. She was good at it.
Once Arturo had confided in her, he slowly became more open about his business. She helped him by suggesting ways he could launder his money. Eventually, he told her he had too much product.
“How do you have too much dope?” I wondered aloud.
“The drug market is just like any other economic market,” she said. “Supply and demand reign supreme. Too much supply equals less demand which results in prices dropping. That meant Arturo either had to accept less profit or move more product.”
“Which, in turn, drives down the price even further,” I said, finally understanding.
“Right. So what he wanted was a new market. That’s when I told him about Spokane. And about you.”
“What made you think of me?”
She shook her head. “You still don’t get it, do you? I thought about you all the time, especially after I got to Phoenix. I did some research on the ‘net—”
I groaned.
“Yeah,” she said. “It wasn’t pretty. The newspaper crucified you. But I could read between the lines, too. I saw Kyle’s name as the case detective, so I knew what had really happened.”
“Ancient history now,” I said.
“It didn’t seem too ancient about an hour ago,” Helen said. She held up her wrists, still red from the flex cuffs.
I didn’t reply, though the fact that I was sitting there with a broken face did cross my mind.
“Anyway,” she said. “I told Arturo about you. At first, he thought it was a horrible idea. Then he said he’d think about it. A few weeks later, I got the news about my mother. Before I left Phoenix, he called and told me I should talk to you and see if you were interested.”
“Why’d he change his mind?”
“I’m sure he had someone look into you. In fact, I know he did because he told me you’d changed careers and that you were in a related field to his. He used a few more metaphors but I got the point. He also said you were crafty and stayed below the radar. That, he said, was exactly the kind of person he’d want to run a franchise.”
“Jesus,” I said. “You talk about it like it’s a Burger King.”
“It’s not very different.”
“It’s a whole lot different.”
She shrugged. “I guess it depends on how you look at it. Anyhow, I told him I’d see if you were interested. But I also told him I probably wasn’t coming back. I’d been thinking about coming home to see you for a while at that point, and all of this just made it easier.”
She took a final sip of her drink, draining the glass.
“It’ll work,” she said. “You even have staff already.”
“Yeah, let’s leave them out of it for now.”
She cocked her head at me. “Problem?”
“Just being careful.”
She smiled slowly. “Smart. You were always smart.”
; I grunted.
“So there you have it,” she told me. “All my cards are on the table, Jake. It’s all there. I came home for you. I love you. I will stand by you. And if you want to take Arturo up on his offer, I will help you set up a franchise here in Spokane.”
“Wow,” I said. I reached for my own glass. There was considerably more than a sip left, but I downed it anyway. Then I poured us both another. I raised my glass in the air. She lifted hers tentatively.
“Fuck it,” I said. “Here’s to beating all of them at their own game.”
She smiled and clinked my glass. “I’m in.”
“We’re both in,” I said. “All in.”
And we drank.
TWENTY-ONE
That night, I sat in the living room chair until late.
After all of the talking we’d done, it seemed as if both Helen and I craved silence. We ate a quiet meal together, me chewing slowly and wincing occasionally. Helen kissed me and took a shower. When she was finished, she said she was exhausted and was going to sleep. I nodded but said I’d be up for a while.
I sat and thought.
I listened to the small sounds my house made. The muted sounds outside on the street. Cars driving by. Every sound registered while I sat and worked on the beginnings of a plan. I stayed up until I had walked through every possibility I could think of happening, and then I stayed up longer, trying to think of new possibilities.
When I was finally satisfied that my idea was the best shot, I dumped the remaining whiskey from my glass into the kitchen sink and limped into the bedroom. I slid between the covers and let the warmth of Helen’s body envelop me.
I woke to an empty bed. When I wandered out to the kitchen, I found a full pot of coffee brewing and a note.
Went to the store. H.
I poured a cup and woke up. When my brain felt keen enough, I flipped open my phone and dialed Matt.
He answered in a groggy voice after five rings. “H’lo.”
“It’s me. We need to talk.”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Okay. Uh, now?”