The three women and Alex were sitting at the kitchen table discussing it, and the two policemen had retreated to a discreet corner of the room and were playing with the dog. It had been a hell of a night. And Sasha had to see the head of the residency program to explain it to him before she went back on duty that night.
Morgan went to work at the restaurant then, and Alex went out for a while to get some air and pick some clothes up at his apartment. He was going to stay at the loft with Sasha until the killer had been found. He was back later that afternoon and went for a walk with the dog, while Sasha slept and Abby worked at the computer.
And at five o’clock, Claire came home from San Francisco and was confused. There were two men she didn’t know hanging out in the kitchen. Sasha looked like someone she’d never seen before, and there was a dog the size of a horse snoring on the couch.
“What the hell is going on here?” she asked Alex, who looked at her ruefully.
“Good question. Valentina turned our life to shit last night, and nearly got herself killed.” Sasha explained it to her, and Claire was stunned. It was the worst story she’d ever heard. And on a lighter note, she couldn’t believe the size of the dog Abby had brought home, but she admitted that he seemed sweet. And he held out a paw to her too, and then licked her hand with a tongue the size of a ham. She sat down on the couch after a while and laughed.
“Well, at least it’s not boring around here,” she said, and Alex laughed.
“No one would ever accuse this place of that.” They were allowed no contact with Valentina, and as far as he was concerned, that was a relief. Sasha had told her they were engaged, and Claire congratulated them both. And shortly after, Valentina called from the hospital with a tearful goodbye.
At seven o’clock that night, Sasha went to meet with the head of the residency program, who wasn’t happy about the situation, but agreed to let her work since she was heavily disguised, and she would be accompanied at all times by armed undercover policemen. But he warned her that he wanted no disruption for the patients or staff, and Sasha promised him there wouldn’t be. All she wanted was to do her job.
And at eight o’clock, she met the others at Max’s restaurant, and they had a relaxed dinner, with the two policemen at a nearby table. Claire talked about the shoe business she was starting with her mother, and they were all excited for her. Sasha and Alex had traded their shifts that night, and it was a relief to be together and act like normal people, even though Sasha didn’t look like herself, but she got to show off her ring. They all agreed it had been a crazy month, which included an engagement, a murder, and a dog. Not to mention Claire’s broken heart, getting fired, and the business she was starting with her mother.
“And what are we all doing for New Year’s Eve?” Oliver asked when he and Greg showed up for dessert, and everyone looked blank.
“We’re working,” Alex and Sasha said in unison. Morgan always helped Max at the restaurant, which left Claire and Abby free, without dates. Greg suggested the four of them go to Times Square to watch the ball drop and then go to Max’s restaurant for supper with Max and Morgan when things calmed down.
“Sounds like a plan,” Oliver said, smiling at the two women.
“Let’s hope it’s the start of a great year,” Max added, and they all raised a glass to that, and then toasted the newly engaged couple again.
Chapter 17
Two days after Valentina was taken to an unknown location for her protection, Abby was peacefully writing at her desk, with Charlie asleep at her feet. Her cell phone rang. It was Josh Katz, the producer she had met at her parents’ on Thanksgiving. She hadn’t thought of him in a month, since she’d met him.
“I’m in New York for New Year’s.” He said he had moved back to L.A. since he’d seen her, but was visiting friends in New York for the weekend. “I read what you sent me. It’s strong.” She wasn’t sure if that was bad or good, but she thanked him for reading it, and told him she’d been working on additional chapters of her novel that were even more cinematic. “That sounds interesting. Do you have time to get together?” he asked her, and she thought about it. She wanted to finish what she was writing that afternoon.
“Sure. When?”
“How about today? Now? I’m staying in Chelsea, and I could come over in half an hour. I’m sorry I didn’t give you any notice. I wasn’t sure I could get away. I had to meet with some postproduction people for the film I’m finishing right now.”
“That’s okay. I’m just sitting here working. I can take a break.” She wasn’t sure if the meeting was business or social, but she could make the time.
He was there half an hour later. He was taller than she remembered, and he was wearing a ski parka and a heavy sweater. He noticed Charlie immediately, and stroked him.
“Great dog.” He was the kind of dog men loved.
“He adopted me a few days ago. We’re still getting acquainted.” She smiled at Josh, and offered him a glass of wine, and he accepted a cup of coffee instead. He didn’t waste time getting to the point. He wasn’t much for small talk, and was all about his work. And now hers.
“I’m here to make you an offer. I liked what you sent me. You write great stuff, a little dark, but I like the genre. I’m working on a movie now, and it’s right up your alley. We have a script, but I don’t like it. I need someone to take another crack at it. It’s based on a book I bought years ago. I’ve never done anything with it, but I think it’s a good time for it. It fits into the mood of the country at the moment. And the minute I read your work, I knew you were perfect for it. I want to hire you to write the script.” Her eyes grew wide at what he said.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” He smiled at her. “I’ve got great instincts for matchmaking. You’re perfect to do the script based on this book.” He told her the title, and she laughed.
“That was my Bible five years ago. I used to read it every night.”
“Then I was right.” He smiled.
“But it’s not a little dark. It’s very dark,” she corrected him.
“So is your work, but there are little touches of levity in it that I like. You know how to laugh at yourself, and it comes through.”
“So what would I have to do?”
“You have to come up with a script we can work with. I can show you how. And you told me yourself that you’re getting more cinematic. We can work on it together when I finish postproduction on this one. I need you in L.A. for a year, starting in March.” Her face fell as he said it, and he saw it. “You can come back here in a year. You don’t have to move back to L.A. forever. You can just live there for a year while we do the movie. Then you can do whatever you want, but you’d have an indie film to your credit, and you can call the shots on the next one, if the one we make together is a success. This film could give you a name people will want to hire.” He was a good salesman, and for a minute she wondered if her parents had put him up to it, but he was too independent for that. He was kind of a maverick, and she liked that about him. And he seemed like an honest man.
He told her how much he wanted to pay her, and it was more money than she’d ever hoped to make, especially at this stage of her career, with an unpublished novel.
“Why are you giving me this chance?”
“Because I think you’re good, and you’re fresh. You’re not jaded by Hollywood, and you haven’t sold out. There’s a raw openness to what you write that I really like. Will you think about it?”
“What if I get stuck in Hollywood forever?”
“That would mean that what you’re doing is a success. There are worse fates than that, my friend. And you can live wherever you want between films. I do. It’s not a bad life. And I don’t mind L.A. when I’m working. Everything you need is there.” She could hear Ivan’s voice in her head screaming “sellout” as she listened to him. But was that so wrong? To make an indie movie with a guy who wanted to pay her real money for her work? And he seemed to
genuinely respect what she wrote and want to keep her style intact.
“I’ll think about it,” she told him, and he stood up. “How are your boys?” He smiled when she asked him.
“Thank you for remembering. They’re great. We just spent the holidays together. They’re a good age. I can take them anywhere, and they’re fun. I wish I’d had more.”
“Maybe you will someday,” she said kindly. He certainly wasn’t too old.
“Probably not the way I work. It drove my wife insane when we were married. She said I worked all the time, and she wasn’t wrong. I’m a little mellower now, but not much. I like spending time with my boys, though. And the rest of the time I’m busy.”
“Me too.” She smiled at him. And now she was writing what she loved, not to please Ivan, but herself.
“Then come work on my movie. Make it our movie,” he said, sounding very convincing, and she laughed.
“I’ll think about it and let you know.” The money alone was enticing, and she loved the book the movie would be based on. But she wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to leave New York, but his indie film would be perfect, just what she wanted. If it had been in New York, she would have said yes on the spot. She had shared her reservations with him.
“You can always come back here,” he reminded her again before he left. She sat for a long time afterward, thinking about it, and stroking the dog. He looked up at her with a questioning look, as though he knew something was going on.
“Do you want to move to L.A.?” she asked him, and he wagged his tail and laid his head down again, as though he was too tired to figure it out and was leaving it up to her. “Thanks a lot,” she said to him. “What do you mean, make up my own mind? If I move, you do too, so you’d better think about it. L.A. is hot and nasty.” But so was New York. But Josh was right, she could always come back, with an indie film under her belt. She was twenty-nine years old, and maybe it was time to take a real job and make some money, and not just talk about it and write for herself. It was a big decision for her, and could be the start of a real career.
The next day was New Year’s Eve, and Greg and Oliver picked Claire and Abby up to walk over to Times Square. The crowd was massive when they arrived, and it was a festive atmosphere. When the countdown started, everyone screamed as the brightly lit ball came down, televised around the world. The four of them wished each other a happy New Year, and made their way to Max’s restaurant, where he had saved them a table, and he and Morgan joined them at one A.M. It was a perfect way to spend the evening, with good friends.
They drank champagne and were all a little drunk when they left at two o’clock. And Abby found Charlie snoring in her bed when she got home. She gently pushed him aside, and climbed into bed next to him, and thought about the movie Josh had offered her the day before. And just before she fell asleep, she knew she had made up her mind. The champagne had helped. It was a terrific opportunity, and she couldn’t pass it up. It was a chance to become financially independent and make a name for herself. What more could she ask? And it was time to grow up. What she’d done with Ivan had been amateur hour. She couldn’t do that anymore. She had to take this project and see if she could make it in the real world. And an indie film based on a book she loved was a gentle way to start a serious career. She couldn’t ask for anything better. And when she finished the movie in a year, she’d come back to New York. And she wasn’t going “back” to anything. She was moving forward. And she didn’t have to leave till March. She had two more months with her best friends, in the apartment. And then she’d go to L.A. for a year. Just a year. And she already sensed that she’d learn a lot from Josh. She promised herself before she fell asleep that if she still felt the same way in the morning, she’d call him.
Charlie nudged her at nine o’clock. He wanted to go out, and he didn’t care how hung over she was. She walked him around the block and came back, and then she picked up her cell phone and called. Josh picked it up immediately and sounded as bad as she felt.
“Sorry to call you so early,” she said apologetically.
“No worries,” he said in a gruff morning voice, deepened by too many shots of tequila the night before. He was staying with a writer who drank a lot. And he sensed that what he was about to hear was important. He had known it the minute the phone rang, just as he had known it when he read the material she sent him. Something huge was about to happen, to both of them.
“I’ll do it,” she said in a small voice. “I want to. I really want to. And I can always come back.”
“Yes, you can. I’m leaving tomorrow. Do you want to have dinner tonight? We can talk about it.”
“That would be fine. Do you want to come here? We’re all having dinner around seven o’clock, with my roommates, at my apartment.”
“I’d like that. And Abby, just so you know it, you’re a great writer. We’re going to make a fantastic movie together.”
“I know. That’s why I said yes.”
“See you later,” he said. He already knew the address since he’d been there to make her the offer. It was just the beginning. Great things were going to happen. And when he hung up, he lay on the bed smiling, knowing he had just made the best deal of his life.
Chapter 18
When they gathered at the apartment on New Year’s Day, everyone was hung over. Max brought leftovers from the restaurant. He didn’t have the energy to cook dinner. Josh Katz joining them for dinner came as a surprise, but the biggest surprise of the night was when Abby told them at the end of the meal that she had agreed to work on Josh’s next movie, and she would be leaving for L.A. in March. There was a moment of shocked silence when she said it, and then a sudden babble of questions. How long would she be gone? When was she coming back? When was she leaving? And Josh felt a pang of guilt as he saw the sadness on her roommates’ faces. It suddenly dawned on all of them that Sasha would be moving out in June after the wedding, and now Abby was going to L.A. to make a movie. And there were tears in Abby’s eyes when she said she’d be gone a year. But she promised to come back for visits. Suddenly half of the home team would be gone, and they could all figure out that if the movie was successful, she would probably stay in L.A. It cast a pall on the end of the evening. They were happy for her, but it was a shock to realize that in six months, only Claire and Morgan would be living in the apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, which had been home to two of them for nine years, and all of them for the last five. It was going to be a big change.
“I think your friends are going to hate me,” Josh said quietly to Abby as he was leaving.
“They’re happy for me. It’s just going to be different.” But she was still sure she had made the right decision. And she was taking Charlie with her.
“See you in March,” Josh said when he hugged her goodbye. He was glad he had come to dinner and met her friends. He liked them all, they were good people.
The two plainclothes policemen assigned to Sasha had joined them for dinner too. It had been the usual noisy, friendly family dinner, although everyone was quiet after Josh left, at the thought of Abby leaving. With Sasha getting married, and Abby going to L.A. for a year, there was change in the air, which saddened them all. It was a bittersweet way to begin the year.
—
Morgan slept through her alarm the next morning, and rushed out the door before the others were up. It was their first day back after vacation, and she had a thousand things to do. But when she got to the office, two unfamiliar men opened the door, and when she walked in, there was pandemonium. Half a dozen FBI agents were removing boxes from their file room, and another five men were taking out their computers.
“What the hell is going on here?” she asked one of them, with a rising wave of panic. And then she saw two more agents walk out of George’s office with him. He was in handcuffs, and he looked right through her as he walked past her, as though he’d never seen her in his life.
They used the conference room to interrogate the employees, while Morgan
waited in her office. They had told them that no one could leave. Their cell phones had been taken from them, and they said they would be returned later, and people were standing around in clusters whispering all over the office. No one knew what was going on. And she didn’t know much more after they interviewed her. There were two FBI agents taking notes, and a third one to interrogate her.
They asked her if she knew anything about their bookkeeping system, and the accounting, and precisely what her duties were. They wanted to know which clients she had seen with George, and on her own. She remembered the irregularity she’d seen recently and told them about it, and they wanted to know if she had reported it to anyone, or discussed it with George, and she said she hadn’t. She said they had seemed strange to her, but even though the money was in different accounts than she expected it to be, nothing was missing, so she thought maybe it had been a mistake in accounting that had been corrected. And at the end of a two-hour interview, they told her that she was under investigation and could not leave the city. She asked them directly what George was being charged with, since he had been taken out in handcuffs, and they told her he was going to be indicted for running a well-concealed Ponzi scheme, similar to Bernie Madoff’s, but on a much smaller scale. He had been cheating his investors, taking in money he didn’t actually invest and was never going to return.
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