The Grift

by Debra Ginsberg

  Although he’d known it was a losing proposition, he called Tina to tell her he was finished with her bullshit and that he was coming home to his own goddamn house. Tina told him that if he tried, he’d be entertaining the police before he had a chance to get inside the front door. When he thought about it later, Eddie thought it might have been that threat alone, coming from his wife, that pushed him over the edge.

  Eddie ran through his short list of options that weren’t really options. He couldn’t go knocking on the door of his Doberman-owning employee now that he wasn’t the guy’s boss anymore. He’d sleep in the street before he’d lower himself to go see Cassie, who was probably already fucking someone else in every sense of the word. Sleeping in his truck was just too depressing to think about. So it was time for another motel. Unfortunately for Eddie, North County had hardly any cheap fleabag motels. The sleaziest dive in these parts (barring those that charged by the hour) would set you back at least a bill. Feeling much like a cornered rat, Eddie checked into a motel at the northern edge of Encinitas whose bizarre backstory hadn’t helped to bring down its rates.

  Ten years before, the Heaven’s Gate cult had staged a mass suicide in Rancho Santa Fe. Six weeks later, two others who hadn’t gotten on that crazy train attempted to take themselves out the same way in that very motel. One succeeded. The other survived but ended up killing himself nine months later in Arizona. Eddie knew about all of this because everyone who lived in San Diego at the time—not to mention the rest of the world—knew every detail, but he was especially familiar with this little bit of the story because he and Madeline had spent more than one scorching afternoon between the sheets at this motel. It was sort of a joke between them: how Madeline lived where the big group had offed themselves, and now here they were at the site of the two pathetic losers who came after.

  Eddie lay on the bed in what might have been the very room where those two sad souls had put on their Nike running shoes and prepared to meet the rocket ship that would take them to Jesus, and all he could think about was what a total fucking stuck-up bitch Madeline was. She had the house, the husband, the money and now (oh yes, Eddie believed) she had his baby, too. He thought about it all night: how hot she’d been, how she just couldn’t get enough. There was nothing he could do that was too freaky or weird. She wanted everything. And then she’d dropped him cold, that ice queen persona taking over as she rode her Mercedes back to Rancho Fucking Santa Fe. He thought about her face, her perfectly done cool blond hair and all her white shirts, skirts and pants. He’d never seen her in any other color. She had that kind of money where you could wear only one color and then spend vast sums to match your whims. He remembered the first time he’d seen her—not when Marina had introduced them at Darling’s, but months before in that very same place. He’d been sitting there waiting for his first appointment with Marina and Madeline had run in with some friend of hers, the two of them soaking wet and laughing. She wouldn’t give him the time of fucking day then. Too good for him, she was. But Eddie hadn’t remembered that little scene until much later, when they were naked and sliding with sweat and she scraped his back with her iceberg-size ring. He remembered the ring then and that she’d been attached to it. He should have known; they were all the fucking same in the end.

  Eddie rolled these thoughts around and around in his head until they picked up enough speed and mass to become angry boulders crashing into his brain. What gave someone like Madeline the right to steal from him? And steal is what she’d done. She’d stolen his very essence, his manhood. And now she thought she was going to dump his ass and cut him out of his own kid’s life? No. She was going to pay somehow. Eddie was sick to fucking death of being taken advantage of. It was his turn to get a piece of the pie.

  It had taken some doing to figure out exactly where Madeline lived. She hadn’t been forthcoming about specific names and addresses during their motel sessions. But over the course of their time together she’d slipped enough details for him to put a map together in his head. He didn’t know what he was expecting once he got there or what the hell he would say to the husband if he happened to be around. But Eddie was pretty sure he was only going to find the missus at home. How many times had Madeline whined to him about how her husband was never there, didn’t love her, etc., etc., etc.? The way he was feeling now, Eddie couldn’t blame the guy.

  Damn, it was one of the biggest McMansions he’d ever seen, Eddie thought as he approached the front door. He’d had no problem getting in, because the large iron gate at the bottom of the long driveway was wide open, just waiting for him to drive through. He recognized the quality of both the work and the materials on and around the house. Those were imported Chinese tiles he saw on the roof. Must have cost them a fortune. And that was a genuine Italian marble bath that the birds were shitting in. Nice. The landscaping alone, Eddie mused, looking at the rosebushes, bougainvillea trellises and wisteria vines, had to cost a grand a month in upkeep. A grand easy.

  He rang the doorbell and heard absolutely nothing from inside the house. Soundproofed, no doubt, as well as wired for armed response lest intruders appear. Eddie leaned on the doorbell again, anger rising up in his craw. He wanted to kill something. When nothing happened after the second ring, he just started pounding the door with his fists. Finally, he heard it: “Just a minute! I’m coming!” Yeah, Eddie thought, he’d heard that before, too. She opened the door and Eddie watched as the quick succession of incomprehension, surprise, shock and finally fear flashed across her face like little bursts of lightning.

  “Nice to see you open your own door,” he said. “I would have thought you’d have help for that kind of thing.”

  “What are you doing here?” There was real panic in her voice. He was glad.

  “Woman,” he answered, “you’d better let me in.”

  “This isn’t part of the deal,” she hissed back. “You’re not supposed to be here.” She put her hand on the door frame as if she was going to slam it shut, but Eddie leaned against it with his full weight.

  “Well, I am here,” he said. “And having my baby wasn’t part of the deal, either.”

  If there had been any doubt in Eddie’s mind, it was put to rest as he watched Madeline’s reaction. Her surprise and acknowledgment was so instantaneous and genuine that even she knew she’d given herself away.

  “What do you want, Eddie?”

  “To start, I want you to let me into your house. And then…” Eddie paused for effect. “Then I guess we’ll see how it works out.” That was what she’d said to him the first time they’d been together. He searched her face for evidence that she remembered those words but found none. She was distracted, trying to figure out what to do with him, he guessed. He pushed his way past her and into the house. Inside, even the air felt more expensive; it was heavier somehow and smelled of money. Madeline closed the door and leaned her back against it, her arms crossed reflexively across her chest as if to protect herself.

  “This was a stupid thing to do, Eddie. My husband…”

  Eddie flashed on his meeting with Marina. “Don’t go there. You’re going to get hurt.” He felt a quick chill run through his body, a sense of foreboding that made him hesitate, but only for a second. What did it matter? Everything had gone to shit and he had so little left to lose.

  “Is he here?” Eddie asked.

  “No, but…”

  “Then don’t you worry. I’ve got some tools in the truck. If he shows up, we’ll just tell him I’m the gardener.” Madeline’s eyebrows drew together in frustration and she bit her lip.

  “Fine,” he said. “Have it your way. I’m the plumber. Come to fix the sink.”

  Chapter 35

  It was amazing, Madeline thought, how one’s situation could go from delicate to desperate in the space of five minutes. It was some kind of insanely bad luck (Madeline refused to think of it as karma) that Eddie Perkins had chosen this moment to track her down and ruin everything.

  Madeline had never be
en much of a plotter, and complicated patterns of cause and effect were not her strong suit. She was the type who needed to follow directions step-by-step in order to do anything, whether that was baking a cake or setting up a DVR. She enjoyed reading suspense novels because, unable to unravel even the simplest plots, she could never figure out who did it ahead of time. For the same reason, Madeline had never been able to play chess worth a damn. Twister was more her game.

  But now, watching Eddie stalk around her house like a lost moose, Madeline realized that she was going to have to think not only fast but also strategically. It was a challenge she wasn’t sure she was up to. She started with the most obvious approach and prayed it would work.

  “What about your wife, Eddie? Aren’t you worried about her? I don’t think she’d like to hear that you’re over here.”

  “Funny thing about her,” Eddie said, running his hand along her stone mantel. “She told me someone called her and told her I was having an affair. You don’t know anything about that, do you? Hey, just out of curiosity, how much did this fireplace set you back? Because this is some really fine work here.”

  “Are you crazy?” Madeline said, starting to think that maybe he was. It wasn’t as if she really knew him, after all. “You think I had something to do with that? Why would I call your wife?”

  “I don’t know,” Eddie answered, fingering the inlaid edge of an antique walnut sideboard. “But I’m a guy. I can’t figure out how women think anymore. It’s a big mystery to me. Oh, this is a nice piece. Where’d you get it?”

  “So what does that mean, Eddie? Did you and your wife break up? Is that what this is about?” Eddie didn’t seem to be listening to her. He was now picking up silver-framed photographs and studying each one as if he was looking for clues. She wished he would stop touching her things.

  “Is this your husband?” he asked, holding a recent photo of Andrew she’d taken with the digital camera he’d given her for some occasion she couldn’t remember.

  “Yes, that’s him,” Madeline said. “Why?”

  “Not what I expected,” Eddie said.

  “And what was that?”

  “I don’t know—fat? Bald? Short?”

  “Why?”

  “Rich man, pretty woman. You know that story.”

  “Eddie, can we talk about why you’re here? What is it you want?”

  “He looks really familiar,” Eddie said, still scrutinizing the photo. “I’m sure I know him from somewhere.”

  “I don’t think so,” Madeline said. “You two don’t really run in the same circles.”

  Eddie finally turned his head away from the photo to look at Madeline. She saw immediately that she’d made a serious tactical error. His face was full of bruised manhood and wounded pride. And he was angry.

  “But that’s not totally true, is it, sweetness? There seem to be some circles your husband and I do both run in. I’m looking at one of them right now.”

  Madeline was starting to feel panicky, and that was very bad, because if she lost it she would make a scene, and if she made a scene, this whole thing was going to blow up. The caterers were going to arrive any second—she couldn’t believe they hadn’t gotten here already—and Andrew could come home at any time.

  “He sees her too, doesn’t he?”

  “Who? What do you mean?”

  “Your husband. I know why he looks so familiar. I’ve seen him at Marina’s place.”

  “What?”

  “I mean at her office, before it burned down. Outside. I’m almost positive.”

  Several anxious thoughts crisscrossed Madeline’s brain at once. One of them was that if Andrew had been hanging around Marina’s office he’d been spying on her, in which case he might already know about Eddie. Then it occurred to her that Eddie himself might have been spying on her. But maybe Eddie was making all this up to scare her.

  “Eddie, what is it you want?”

  “Well, for starters, I want to know why you haven’t told me about the baby.”

  Madeline felt her gut twisting, all that rich Hawaiian fruit churning around in her stomach. How could he possibly know that she was pregnant? She hadn’t told anyone at all. It had to be a lucky guess, but why guess at that? Men never wanted to claim paternity. Unless, of course, they had something to gain by it.

  “What baby? I still don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s no baby. Did your wife come up with that, too? Maybe some other woman you’ve slept with…”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “No, it isn’t! But even if it were, what difference would it make? You want me to leave my husband and marry you?”

  Eddie shook his head as if she just wasn’t getting it. “You can’t just take, take, take,” he said. “At some point you have to start giving something back.”

  “You want money,” she said flatly. “Is that it?”

  She saw something change in his face, as if he hadn’t thought to ask her, but now that she’d brought it up it seemed like a good idea. Or maybe he was just an idiot and was surprised that she’d guessed. Eddie moved out of the sitting room, where Madeline had led him earlier to keep him out of the way, and into the main living room, where the palm trees and pikake filled the air with the smell of the islands. “Look at this,” he said. “You have a whole jungle in here. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “Actually, it’s supposed to be Hawaii,” Madeline said before she could stop herself. “It’s a luau.”

  “Is that a beach on your back porch?”

  “It’s not a porch,” Madeline said. “It’s a patio.”

  “What does something like this cost?” Eddie asked. “I have to know.”

  “Stick around,” Madeline said, “and you can ask Andrew when he gets home. He’s the one who pays for this, not me.”

  The wheels were turning in Madeline’s head. She finally had some clarity, and a semblance of a plan was starting to emerge in her calorie-laden brain. Eddie was obviously angling for a share in the life she’d worked so hard to get, but he was a fool, and much stupider than she’d given him credit for, if he thought he was going to get it by intimidating her this way.

  “Why a beach?” Eddie asked, still awestruck by the scene in front of him. “What the hell would you need a beach in your living room for? That’s the thing with you people, isn’t it? You live a few miles from the ocean but that’s not good enough.”

  “I don’t think you heard me, Eddie. If Andrew shows up and you’re here you’re going to fuck everything up.” She lowered her voice to a fierce whisper. “If he finds out about you, I’ll be done—all this’ll be gone. Don’t you get it? I have a prenuptial agreement. Do you know what that is? I’ll get nothing. I’ll have to come live with you.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “You think you can take anything you want, but I’m here to tell you that you can’t. You’re not going to have my kid—”

  “You don’t give a shit about your kid, Eddie, so just shut up about that. I know what you want. But I’m trying to tell you I don’t have it to give you.”

  Eddie fondled the leaves of a fake palm tree. “Well, then, I guess I’ll just wait here until you find a way. Things have gotten a little difficult for me lately, Madeline. I’m going to need a little help getting on my feet.”

  Madeline studied Eddie’s face to see if he was bluffing and decided he wasn’t. She was also guessing that Eddie wasn’t a very complicated man and that what you saw with him was pretty much what you got.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she said.

  “Not good enough.”

  “I can’t write you a check right now, Eddie.”

  “Can’t you?”

  “I’ll have to get money from Andrew.”

  “When?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  He laughed. “Try again,” he said. “I need it now.”

  Madeline got a quick vision of her possible future. She could put him off now, but he’d be back. He
could make a real nuisance of himself and request a paternity test. He wouldn’t stop, Madeline thought, once he got a taste. And she’d spend the rest of her life dodging bullets. She chewed her lip in frustration, that desperate feeling coming back like a tightening vise around her head, but then, in a stroke of inspiration, the answer came to her.

  “I have to get ready for this party, Eddie. It’s all planned; I can’t change it. You have to go now. Just give me a few hours. Come back tonight, after the party’s over. I’ll meet you…I’ll show you where, and I’ll give you some help. Okay, Eddie? Okay?”

  The sound of the doorbell made Madeline jump, an exaggerated reaction that betrayed how nervous she’d become. “Shit, that’s the caterers,” she said. “Eddie, you have to go.”

  He hesitated, but finally started making some movement toward the door. “Okay,” he said, “but I’m coming back, Madeline. I’m coming back tonight.”

  “Not that way,” she said quickly. “I’ll show you another way out where I’ll meet you later. Come back at…at midnight would be good. Everyone should be gone by then and Andrew should be passed out.” As she spoke, she guided him out through the patio doors and around to the side entrance near the garage and their many rosebushes. The doorbell rang again. “Just a minute!” Madeline called. “Okay, Eddie, go. Midnight, okay?”

  “I hope you’re not yanking my chain,” he said, “because that would suck for you.”

  “I have to go,” she said and turned, leaving him staring into her American Beauties.

  Chapter 36

  As small as Marina’s orbit was, in order to get anywhere she still had to contend with the traffic that was slowly driving the populace into a state of collective insanity. Rush hour never started; it was constantly in progress. And there were no back roads to take to avoid the crush of cars whose drivers all had to get there now. Those shortcuts, the byways that locals always found to avoid the freeway-bound hoi polloi, had become as congested as the interstates. Everyone was now a local.