Tom sat mesmerized as the song closed with a slide guitar solo and the sparse audience gave up an appreciative round of applause. Was that about his kid brother?
And then he saw Gia lean close to Jack's ear. Tom caught her whisper.
"I don't know what you did for that man and I don't want to, but to have that kind of effect on a life, to make someone want to sing about you… that must be indescribable. I can see why you keep going back for more."
And then it all came together.
Dad's remark about calling on Jack if he needed someone to watch his back… then that character Joey this morning asking Tom if he could "hack" what Jack hacked… and now this blues singer talking about a ghost named Jack who slips through the cracks, and singing about a "repairman" named Jack…
Somewhere along the line Dad had come up with the idea that Jack was a repairman… an appliance repairman. But the "R-J Blues" was about someone who fixed other things.
R-J… Repairman Jack? Was that what it stood for?
Had to be. Little brother was some sort of urban mercenary.
Taking it further, Tom realized that might explain why Jack had needed him to claim Dad's body. It wasn't that he hadn't wanted to claim it—he couldn't. Because he was probably living under a false identity.
Ho-lee shit.
FRIDAY
1
"Well," Tom said as they walked away from the grave, "that's it then. Still hard to believe he's gone."
Jack only nodded. He felt drained, emotionally and physically spent.
He was now an orphan. That had struck him like a blow as he'd watched his father laid to rest beside his mother.
Gia clung to his arm, wiping away tears for a man she'd never met. Vicky held her mother's hand, cheery but bewildered.
Everyone else had left. Tom's current wife, Terry, a shapely brunette about ten years his junior, had fled the chill to wait in their car.
During the past twenty-four hours Jack had encountered a dizzying array of new names and faces. The parade of mourners telling him how sorry they were, what a terrible tragedy it was, how his dad would be missed. He'd met his sister's kids and had almost lost it when he saw how closely Lizzie resembled Kate when she was a teen. Like going back in time.
Tom's two ex-wives—the oft-referred-to Skanks from Hell—showed up. Their splits from Tom apparently hadn't lessened their affection for his father. Tom's two sons from his first marriage and the daughter from his second had come along. Jack still wasn't sure what name went with what face. Not that it mattered. Small chance he'd see any of them again.
As they reached the curb at the bottom of the slope, a white Lincoln Navigator raced up and screeched to a halt. Four young black men jumped out, all dressed in snappy-looking suits.
The tallest of the four, who'd emerged from the front passenger seat, looked at Jack and said, "Are we too late? Did we miss it?" His quick, dark eyes shifted between Jack and Tom. "You guys Tom's boys?"
Jack nodded. "Uh-huh. And you gentlemen are…?"
He stepped forward and extended his hand. "Ty Jameson."
He quickly introduced his three companions. The names blurred through Jack's brain.
"We're really sorry about your father. An awful fu—"—a quick glance at Gia and Vicky—"an awful, awful thing to happen to anyone, but your father…" Was that a catch in his voice? "He was one of the good ones. We would have been here sooner but we only heard this morning."
Tom cleared his throat. "What's your connection to my father?"
Our father, Jack thought.
"He taught us computer programming back when we were in middle school." He checked with his companions. "About fourteen-fifteen years ago, am I right?"
They all nodded.
Jack tossed Tom a questioning look.
He shrugged. "News to me."
"We belonged to a Boys Club in Camden where he used to volunteer. He donated two PCs—used but still in great shape—and every Wednesday afternoon after school he'd be there to teach the rudiments of BASIC to anyone who was interested. We were interested."
The three others nodded. One of them said, "Word. Changed our lives."
Jack remembered Dad's fascination with the home computer, remembered the time he'd bought and assembled an Apple I—back in the antediluvian days when data was stored on cassette tapes.
Ty nodded. "He infected us with the bug. We joined the computer club in high school, took programming courses there and in CCC. Finally we decided we didn't need degrees to do what we wanted, so we dropped out and started our own Web design company."
Jack nodded toward the big, spotless SUV behind them.
"Looks like you're doing okay."
He grinned. "More than okay. We flush." The smile faltered. "Everything I have I owe your dad. Did more for me than my own father ever did. I tried to get in touch with him last year to, you know, thank him and let him know how he'd changed our lives, but he'd moved away." Ty swiped at a tear starting to roll down his left cheek. "And now he's gone, and I can't tell him. He'll never know."
Ty's voice choked off. Jack heard Gia sob, and he wanted to say something but couldn't speak past the baseball-size lump in his throat.
Ty recovered first. He pointed up the hill toward the gravesite.
"We want to go up and pay our respects, but first…"
He reached into a pocket and came up with a small gold case. He handed business cards to Jack and Tom.
"Either of you ever need anything a computer can do—anything—you just give us a call."
All four again shook hands with Jack and Tom, then trooped up the slope.
Jack watched them, trying to get a handle on this stunning revelation. Never in a million years would he have guessed…
"Can you believe that?" Tom said.
"I'd like to. I want to."
"No, I mean dear old Dad, Mr. Conservative, charter subscriber to the Limbaugh Letter, doing something like that."
During his Florida trip, Jack had realized that his father's conservatism was neither political nor ideological.
"Dad was mostly a traditionalist. You know, this is the way we've always done it, so this is the way we should go on doing it. But he was never racist."
"Hey, he retired because of the company's affirmative action policy."
"Yeah. He told me about that. Called it 'profiling.'"
During Jack's last night in Florida he and his father had had a long, rambling, scotch-fueled talk about all sorts of things. Some of it touched on his career as an accountant.
"But that's only half the story. Do you know the hell he caught back in sixty-one for hiring a black guy for his department—the angry calls he got from his fellow employees, calling him a commie and a nigger lover?"
Tom shook his head, his expression confused, surprised. "No, I—"
"He told me he wanted to hire this particular guy because, of all the applicants, he was the best qualified. Dad didn't care what color he was, he wanted the best. So he hired him. The result? The fast track Dad had been on suddenly slowed. That hire cost him promotions and position. I won't say he didn't care, because I sensed he was still a little bitter about it. Then in the nineties things exploded when he was directed to hire a black guy over a white guy. Dad refused because this time the white guy was better qualified. He still wanted the best guy. Dad hadn't changed, but the world had. The former commie nigger-lover was now a right-wing racist bigot. He couldn't take it, and refused to be part of a system that put ability second, so he opted out."
Tom looked hurt, but his tone was angry. "How come he never told me any of this?"
Jack shrugged. He had no answer.
He put his arm around Gia's shoulders and they looked back at the four young men standing around his father's grave with bowed heads and folded hands.
Gia whispered, "I guess that's proof the good a man does isn't always interred with his bones."
Jack, not trusting himself to speak, could only nod.
&nb
sp; 2
When they reached the cars Tom signaled his wife to roll down the window of their Lexus.
"Terry, would you mind driving Gia and Vicky to the restaurant? You can follow us. Jack and I need to talk."
Gia looked at Jack. He shrugged and nodded. This was news to him.
He held the doors for them—Gia in the front, Vicky in the back—then led Tom to his Crown Vic.
"I've been trying to get you alone for two days now, Jack," he said as he slipped into the passenger seat.
"Yeah?"
"Need to talk to you about something."
"Like?"
"I need your help."
Jack did not know if he wanted to hear this. Hell, he was pretty damn sure he didn't.
"What kind of help?"
"I'm in trouble. I've screwed up my life, Jack. I mean I could give a course in screwing up a life."
"In what way?"
"Every way imaginable. First off, I am, for all intents and purposes, broke. The Skanks have been sucking me dry for years. And you've met Terry. See the way she dresses? She's never seen a pair of shoes she didn't love. Doesn't believe in sales, either. Only shops boutiques. Three wives… can you believe I've been married three times? The triumph of stupidity over experience. And whatever's left behind after they're through with me goes for legal expenses."
The last two words startled Jack.
"Legal expenses? But you're a lawyer… a judge."
"I'm a judge in trouble. Big trouble. The Philadelphia DA is after my ass, but he's got to wait in line, because the state attorney general and the feds, not to mention the state attorney ethics commission, all want a piece of me too. At the very best, I'm looking at disrobement, disbarment, huge fines. If I had some hope, any hope of getting off with only that, I'd be a much happier man. But it appears I won't be that lucky. Things aren't going my way. I'm looking at jail time, Jack."
Dumbfounded, Jack could only stare at his brother. Tom? In the joint?
Finally he found his voice. "Why?"
A harsh, forced laugh. "Why? I can look back now and say hubris and poor impulse control. But back when I was at the top of my game—what I thought was the top of my game—it was all just a big puppet show and I was one of the string pullers. As for what … you want a list? Got an hour? How about kickbacks and influence peddling? How about indictment for judicial malfeasance and conspiracy?"
"Jesus, Tom."
"I did some shady things when I was in private practice, but it was the stuff most attorneys do. Padding the billable hours was a biggie. Double, triple, even quadruple billing was another. If I had to visit clients, I'd try to set up two or three meetings in the same area on the same day. My clock started running when I started the car, and I'd not only bill each client separately for the same travel time, but along the way I'd be talking to still another on my cell phone. Hell, I sometimes billed twenty-plus hours for an eight-hour workday. And on the side I was playing fast and loose with trust accounts. Had some close calls, but never got caught."
Jack wondered why Tom was telling him all this. Had to have a reason. If he wanted a loan, why didn't he just come out and ask for it?
"The judgeship did me in. Being appointed for life wasn't a good thing for me—at all. If I'd had arrogance and hubris before, I now became positively regal. My biggest risks were errors in rulings, which could be changed by an appellate court; but otherwise I pretty much ruled the roost. I was the lord of my courtroom, a king. In reality I was a petty satrap with a big head."
"I did the usual time-honored gray-zone stuff—you know, using marshals to pick up my dry cleaning, taking trips on city money, beguiling attractive lady lawyers or clerks. And then of course I engaged in the time-honored judicial practice of 'leaning.' It's very easy to shade rulings. I leaned toward my old cronies, and against my old rivals. But I really stepped over the line when I started accepting gifts from parties related to cases I was involved with, and then shading rulings their way."
My brother the crooked judge… jeez.
Part of Jack wanted to shut this off now, but another part, the part in everyone that slows down when passing a car wreck, wanted more.
"Bribes?"
"If you're talking envelopes stuffed with cash, no. At least not at first. No, what I'd get was, say, an all-expense trip for me and the current skank to Bermuda or Grand Cayman or San Juan where I'd collect a fat speaker's fee to address some convention. All done through third and fourth parties, all very circumspect, all ethically questionable but almost impossible to prove."
"Trouble started after my second divorce when I had not one but two skanks with siphons in my jugulars. With alimony and child support payments up the ass, I had to do something. So I started accepting cash. Got to the point where I might as well have had a 'For Sale' sign on the door to my chambers. 'The Finest Judge Money Can Buy!'"
Jack was shaking his head. "Sounds like you were asking for it."
"I was. I was caught in this spiral but I didn't see it. I was into that sovereign mind-set of being a judge, of having the power to decide the fates of people and companies… heady stuff."
Jack said, "Where do the feds come in?"
Tom grimaced. "A tragedy of errors, that. It all goes back to certain trust fund conservancies I was involved with."
"Want to run that by me in English?"
"When there's a large settlement, say from a medical malpractice case where a birth is botched and the kid's going to need special care for the rest of his life, the money—often millions, sometimes tens of millions—is put into a trust fund which is overseen by a conservator. The conservator is an attorney appointed by the judge in the case. In a number of cases that judge was moi. A conservancy is like an annuity. The conservator has legal duties and he's paid out of the fund for the hours he bills. If he works it right, he can bill a lot of hours."
"Skim off a sick kid's funds?"
"It's all perfectly legal. But I got to thinking, why should I drop these valuable conservancy plums without getting something back? So I made arrangements: You want a conservancy, you cut me in."
"Jesus, Tom."
"Yeah, I know. Risky."
"I wasn't talking about the risk."
Tom waved him off. "Everybody does it."
"Obviously not, or you wouldn't be in trouble."
"I'm only in trouble because I was sold out. That was partially my fault for appointing a jerk named Marty Bieber to a particularly juicy fund. You've got to have a little subtlety in these matters, and it turned out Bieber had none. Not only did he overbill outrageously—enough to start the kid's parents smelling a rat—but he was also gambling with the funds. And losing. A complaint to the local attorney ethics committee turned up shortages. To partially save his ass, he rolled over and pointed a finger at me."
Jack shook his head. This was so scummy it was scary, this was… he didn't have the words…
"Okay. But that's all local stuff. I still don't see how the feds got involved."
"Since the damage had happened in a Philly hospital, it was tried there. But the kid's parents lived in Jersey, in Camden. Bieber's office was in Camden but he was licensed in both states, so he seemed like a good choice. Unfortunately the tribute he was paying me crossed state lines and the feds used that as an excuse to horn in."
Tom slammed a fist against his thigh.
"Fucking feds! If I'd stayed local, I might have been able to work something out. You know, use some connections here, spread some cash there. But once the feds got involved and started a taxonomy of my infractions, it was like raising the Yellow Jack over my career. It was as if I'd developed an advanced case of leprosy. Nobody returned my calls, everybody was always busy when I wanted a meeting. Hell, I couldn't even get people to make eye contact!"
He glanced at Jack with a hunted look in his eyes.
"I'm cooked, bro. I've been released on my own recognizance because I'm a member of the club and because I have such 'strong ties to the community.' H
a! If they only knew!"
"Why are you telling me all this?"
Instead of answering, Tom pointed to the left. "Turn here."
"But the restaurant's—"
"I just want to swing by the old neighborhood."
Not a bad idea. Jack complied. He kept an eye on the rearview mirror to make sure Terry was following. He caught the puzzled look on Gia's face.
A wave of nostalgia swept over him as he turned the corner by Mr. Canelli's old house. Jack had cut many of the lawns in the old neighborhood, but not Mr. Canelli's. He did his own. Cutting didn't describe what the old guy did: more like manicuring.
But old Canelli was gone now. Just like Dad.
Jack slowed as they passed the three-bedroom ranch in which he,
Kate, and Tom had grown up. He remembered it had started out with asbestos shingles, which Dad had later replaced with vinyl siding. He was saddened to see that the new owner had torn out all the old junipers and replaced them with hydrangeas. Dumb. From fall to spring, hydrangeas were little more than bunches of brown sticks. Junipers stayed green all year round.
"Remember playing catch in the backyard with Dad?"
Jack nodded. "I remember you winging the ball hard enough to knock me down."
Tom smiled. "But you always caught it, always held on to it."
Tom was laying it on thick. Jack knew he was being set up, but was curious as to where Tom was heading.
"You said you need my help. I'm baffled as to why? What can I do?"
"Help me disappear."
Jack suppressed a groan. "That wasn't easy before nine-eleven. It's a hell of a lot harder now."
"But it can be done—if you've got enough cash."
Yeah, it could.
"You have enough?"
Jack held his breath, waiting for Tom to put the touch on him. But his brother nodded instead.
"Yeah. I think so. Enough for a new identity and a start as someone else."
"I still don't see where I come in."
"I need you to help me get it."
"All right. I'll bite: Where is it?"
"In a secret account in Bermuda."
"Whoa. Hold it right there. Bermuda? I don't have a passport."
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