by Hal Ackerman
“I’m really glad we’ve had this conversation,” Angie said. “It shows me that your entire family is fucked. Them for doing it and you for thinking it’s no big deal. I never want to have anything to do with any of you.” She rooted through her pockets and found the car key she was looking for, pushed his confused and imploring arms aside and strode toward the Camry parked at the curb.
“Angie, what are you doing?”
“I’m going to drive up to where my father is and tell him what a bitch cunt he has for an ex-girlfriend.”
“It’s the middle of the night. You’re in a crazed state.”
“Get your brain-diseased hands off me.” She backed against the cold dark contours of her father’s car.
“Where are you going to drive? You don’t know where he is.”
“He’s at that stupid place he kept talking about. Las Something or other. It’s not your problem.”
“Look … just stay here tonight. Go in the morning, okay?
“I’m not going back in that house. Ever.”
“You can stay at my mother’s.”
It confused her that Matt could be so completely fucked on one hand and yet care about her. She would not give him the relief of telling him she had already decided she would call her friend Alyssa and stay there.
She got into Stein’s Camry and started it up. “Do not follow me,” she ordained. “Even if you think it is to protect me.”
He nodded a sincere okay. Which she appreciated. “I’ll go back to the museum in the morning and pick up the head … if you’re still into it.”
She had forgotten all about Sunny Cataluna’s head.
“I could call you when I get it and you can tell me where you are.”
“Why are you pretending to be so nice?” She started to drive away. He called her name urgently. She stopped and cranked her window down halfway. He gave her the sandwiches he had bought.
She gave him a grudging smile. It was enough.
Alyssa wasn’t home. Angie parked in the driveway and fell asleep until Alyssa got home at around four A.M. from the release party of the new video by Gym Creaux. She seemed remarkably awake and coherent and unwasted after the night of indulgence and revelry she described. “I have a vulture’s immune system. We eat road kill and don’t catch disease.”
Angie needed to borrow some money and a couple of good outfits. Alyssa fished a few twenties from her purse; some change and gum wrappers and an ossified half-eaten ham sandwich; a can of Mace, empty; and keys to someone’s apartment, she didn’t know whose. She didn’t give a shit about getting the money back, but promised Angie bodily harm if she lost her Chanel jacket or her Louboutins.
***
Matthew was upset by his blowup with Angie. He took a long drive, not to follow Angie but to clear his head. He realized that his cavalier acceptance of Lila’s ongoing affair with Richard was not exactly how he felt. On the one hand, yeah, it was their business what they did. But still …
He did not return until he was sure Richard had gone back to his hotel. Then he did something he’d never done before. He knocked on Lila’s bedroom door and asked if he could talk to her. She was not in bed but on it, engulfed in many pillows, a thin robe over her waxed legs, her glasses down on her nose, with two novels open in her lap.
He said it was he who had come in earlier and seen Richard coming out of her room. She closed both her books.
“How long have you known?”
“I don’t know. It always just seemed like there were different rules for him.”
“That’s probably how I think of it too.”
“It’s probably not how everybody would think about it, though. It wasn’t me who came in before. It was Angie.”
“Oh, God.” Lila pulled the robe tight around her chest. Her eyes went wild. She could barely look at him. “You probably think I’m a horrible person.”
“No.”
Lila reached out to have him linger a moment. She took a long deep breath and hugged her knees. She knew it wasn’t exactly right to use the boy as a confidant, but there he was, and she had drunk one more glass of red wine than usual. “If it were going anyplace permanent with Angie’s dad, I’d end it with Richard. But he’s not going to marry me. He hasn’t given up his bachelor apartment. He’s been paying rent on it the whole time he’s been living here. He doesn’t know I know. I’m sure Angie doesn’t know about it.”
Her nose was snuffling. Matthew handed her a tissue from the night table.
“Has she told her dad?”
“She’s driving up there to find him in the morning.”
Her chin dropped to her chest. Matthew hadn’t seen her cry since his father died.
***
So when the phone rang that morning and Mercedes told Miss Leela that it was Meestir Estine, relief triumphed over other feelings but only by a narrow margin and only briefly. Lila was standing five feet away from her and waved her hands No. “Ask him where he is,” she mouthed. And she jabbed her finger toward the speaker button on the phone. Mercedes pressed it so Lila could hear Stein’s reply. His voice sounded haggard. He said he was at a place called Family Farms and that things had gotten a little bit strange.
Lila grabbed the phone away from Mercedes. “And that’s why you don’t call for two days?” All her grief and worry rendered down into rage.
“I was unconscious.”
“Stop lying to me.”
“I know it sounds crazy. Is Angie there?”
“You haven’t spoken to her yet?”
“No.”
“You will. I can promise you that.”
“Lila, what the hell is going on?”
“Call after you talk to Angie. Her number is programmed into my phone.”
“I’m not calling from your car.”
A fishing line with a barbed hook tugged at a snagged memory. Her car. Her car. He had left it at Henny Spector’s.
Stein got off the phone and found Brickman outside supervising beehives of activity. Work crews were setting up for the big party. Long buffet tables were being dressed with expensive china. A movie screen was being bolted into place on a large stage behind which dozens of music stands were being set. He grasped Barry’s shoulders and said, “I need you to do something for me.”
“In addition to saving your life?”
“Now that was funny!”
***
Both of Brickman’s six-car garages were accessible from the central circular hub that he called the cyclotron. Stein and Brickman took a steel and glass capsule down one level and headed into a garage that looked more like a showroom. Six brightly shining classic sports cars sat at the ready. Brickman selected the tan ’64 XKE 3.8 Roadster. The interior was plush, perfectly restored. The sound of the engine starting in the confined space was volcanic. Hydraulics spun the car around to face the garage door. Brickman pushed the manual shift into first and wound up the rpms. The door was still closed. Stein grasped the passenger side handhold and caught his breath. They were abruptly whooshed up, straight through the retracted roof. Barry released the clutch before the door sprang open. They hit the pavement going sixty. Stein’s gasp of relief sounded embarrassingly like an orgasm.
The car’s legroom was amazing. Stein could stretch to his full length. Brickman had decked himself out in a jaunty sports car driver’s cap and a pair of tan kid gloves. All he needed was a scarf to be the Great Waldo Pepper. Still, he looked like a kid sneaking his father’s car out for a joyride.
“You seem to know where Henny lives?” Stein noticed.
Brickman shrugged. “Lived.”
“Do you work with him?”
“My subsidiary companies may have used him. I don’t get involved on the micro level.”
“What about this pollination season? Right now.”
“Who knows?”
“All this land and you don’t know?”
Brickman turned up his smooth, open palms. “Do I look like I get my hands dirty?”
Both sides of the road were flanked by his orchards: mile after mile of barbed-wire fence, posed with warnings to would-be trespassers and illegal pickers.
“This is all you?”
“I’m the largest producer of almonds in the state of California, which means in the entire world. I’m the largest producer of pistachios, the largest producer of avocados, the largest producer of pomegranates—I bet that’s a surprise. I own the largest chain of movie theaters in North America. The largest chain of gyms.”
“I notice a theme here.”
The road doglegged abruptly to the right, revealing a building that looked like a predatory animal hunched over a partially devoured carcass. Three chimneys belched smoke.
“What is that thing?” Stein asked.
“Processing plant. All the growers in the valley bring their almonds to me to be shelled. You know what our motto is? ‘We Crush Your Nuts.’”
“Cute.”
Brickman rotated a dial on the dash. “Seat okay for you? I can heat it.”
“I’m good.”
“You’re going to think I’m bullshitting, but I owe all my success to you.”
“Fine. I’ll take half.”
“Aren’t you interested to know why?”
They were approaching a railroad supply train at a forty-five degree angle; a long tapeworm of open gondola cars stood under supply chutes. A thunderous load of oranges tumbled down the sluice into the last car’s empty belly. The sluice retracted and the train bore itself forward. The front of the locomotive, a quarter mile in the distance, was a hundred feet from the crossing of the road that Stein and Brickman were approaching. The engine was much closer and beginning to gain speed. It did not take an MRI to see what Brickman was thinking.
“Please don’t prove your manhood to me,” Stein implored.
“You don’t buy a fast car to come in second.”
The Jag accelerated to warp speed in seconds. From no chance there was now the possibility of chance. Stein liked their chances better when there was no chance. If there was no chance, Brickman would have to stop and let the train go by. But if there was any chance at all, Brickman was going to take it. He patted Stein’s knee. “You’re always safe when you’re with somebody who has more to lose.”
The train, with its long heavy load, would never top forty and it was making less than half that now. The needle on the Jag wavered at three figures. It was going to be close and a tie would be worse than a loss. The Jag hit the track first. The steel snout and single eye of the locomotive loomed gigantic in the side window. The train whistle blasted a screaming Doppler. They shot across the grading, missing impact by molecules.
Brickman downshifted matter-of-factly into their previous conversation. “Aren’t you curious how I owe it all to you? I hated you in high school. I used to go home and tear pictures of you. Hold half in each hand and ask you if you thought that was funny. Do you remember that time in junior year you ranked me out? It was fifth period in the cafeteria. They had Salisbury Steak that day, which I loved, but they always ran out of it by sixth period lunch so I cut English and I was sitting at your table with Calkins and Delberg and Annunziata’s brother and a couple of other people I didn’t know. And we got into it, you and me. You don’t remember this?”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway at one point you said ‘Oh, Brickman, why don’t you just eat shit and die?’ I knew you were going to say that. I was waiting for it. And I nailed you with ‘What should I do with your bones?’ which was always the winner. But then you came back with ‘Make a cage for your mother,’ and the whole table cracked up. I had never heard that comeback. I always wondered if you knew it already or just made it up on the spot.”
“I can see why you’d want to give that a lot of thought.”
“You jest but it’s true. The worst was watching the girls flock to you. Watching you make them laugh. Having all that power over them. You weren’t that good looking. Then one day I had my epiphany. I realized that the only girls you got were girls who went for guys who were funny. None of them were the top girls. The top girls went for the guys with the money. Once I knew that, it became simple. Make money, get laid. And as you can see, I get more ass than a toilet seat at Grand Central Station.”
“You get women who want men with money,” Stein said, thinking he was modifying. Qualifying. Narrowing. Diminishing. But Brickman saw it as a celebration of his life. He challenged Stein. “Did you ever fuck Miranda Mickens?”
“No. Not even close. She went out with college guys.”
“What about Barbara Gunnels?”
“Don’t I wish.”
“I fucked both of them.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Not then. But after I had money. They weren’t sixteen any more but I got them.” He leaned to Stein with a conspiratorial grin. “You know who Winona Ryder is?”
“The actress Winona Ryder?”
“I fucked her four nights ago.”
“You didn’t fuck Winona Ryder.”
“Yeah, I did. I mean, I could if I wanted to. She always shows up at my parties. I think she steals ashtrays. Is that possible?”
“As long as we’re being honest, there’s something I’d like to know.”
“Shoot.”
“Did you have a deal with Henny Spector to rent depleted bee colonies?”
Brickman’s answer was ambiguous in its unsuppressed glee. “People are idiots. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Wouldn’t the idiot be the person paying top dollar for depleted colonies?”
Brickman grinned. “This is the beauty of it. It’s not me paying. I mean, at first it is but … dig it: All of us growers insure our crops. Premiums are based on average yield per acre. I have twelve thousand acres of trees too young to produce. If I rent bees for those acres, on paper it makes those acres look like productive land. So it lowers my OPA.”
“Your OPA?”
“Output per acre. And yes, you’re right. The few hundred grand it saves me is chump change. But here’s where the real fun starts. Some of the investment banks are bundling debt obligations and selling them to high-echelon customers. High-risk, high-yield stuff. Eighteen to twenty-two percent profit overnight. It’s about hedging. I buy the instruments that carry the highest risk and then buy insurance against their failure. Are you seeing the beauty?”
“I’m still back at chump change.”
“You could get in on this too. All you need is two or three million for seed money. I swear to you, this is the road to riches. My little subsidiary company, which is impossible to trace back to me, makes a bogus insurance claim. The instrument that debt was bundled into, along with a hundred others, goes into default. It just takes one bad piece to sour the whole pie. So I lose the few hundred thousand I used to bet on it. Which, incidentally, is the same money that the insurance company paid me for the other scam. But, now I collect my insurance policy on the full face value of the instrument. Which is eight to ten million. That’s right. Million.”
He grinned up at Stein to see his reaction. “I happen to be insured by Lassiter and Frank. In two years I’ll own all their resources.”
“Lassiter and Frank, did you say?”
“Once they fall I’ll own all the little fish inside of them. And then the fun really starts.”
“What more can you possibly want?”
“Whatever there is.”
“You want everything?”
“Everything I can get.”
“But why?”
“So that I’ll have it.”
***
Yellow crime scene tape was stretched across the entrance to Henny Spector’s place. The whole property was cordoned off. Stein explained as they drew closer that he had left his girlfriend’s car there, a 2001 Lexus that had his daughter’s cell number programmed into its phone.
“A white Lexus coupe?” Brickman asked.
“I think that’s what it’s called.”
&nb
sp; “Like that one?” Brickman indicated a car that was roaring past them, off the unguarded grounds.
Stein whipped around in the seat. “God damn it!”
“I’ll take that as a yes?”
Brickman made an unhurried Y-turn and then hit the Saturn rocket thrusters full ahead. Landscape whizzed past the window in a blur. The driver of the Lexus was no slouch either. He whipped through tight turns without a brake light coming on.
Brickman stayed right on his tail. Stein noted that people here were surprisingly good drivers.
“Give him the horn,” Stein exhorted.
“You don’t think he knows we’re behind him?”
Around the next tight S-curve the Lexus was suddenly gone. There was a break in the road, a turnoff into an orchard like the one where Stein and Hollister and Doc Moody had to wait for the kid in the truck. Brickman zoomed past it. Hit the brakes. Spun out into a one-eighty.
“Nicely done.”
“Thank you.”
A cloud of dust rose up a quarter mile ahead of them from the narrow road between rows of blossoming almond trees. They jounced in mad pursuit. The lane was not a lot wider than the car. They swerved to avoid a cluster of bee boxes.
“Incidentally,” Brickman asked, “what’s your plan when we catch him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You ought to think of something. Because he’s probably the person who killed Henny Spector.”
“Thank him then, I guess.”
Gravel sprayed at their windshield as the Lexus blew out of the orchard and onto a paved road. It leaped across the oncoming lane and made a stunning ninety-degree left, drawing the wrathful blast of an air horn from the double trailer that hugged the inside lane.
Brickman was going to try to shoot the gap. But Stein reached his left leg across the boot and rammed his foot onto the brake. They spun to a stop between two blossoming trees. The truck slowed down vindictively and made them wait. They had to wait for yet another passenger car that was driving behind the truck. The Lexus was gone from sight by now. “Are you happy?” Brickman sniped at him.