Everything to Lose: A Novel

by Andrew Gross

One day he just said he couldn’t handle this anymore and I never saw him again.

  Once, when he was six, I had him in the bath. It was just me then, and the two kids. Todd was just two. He had a laugh, my Todd; that boy’s giggle could leave the whole family in tears.

  His brother was in a good stage at that time. I grew to trust him more. Things had changed in the two years since Todd was born. I was always busy with him, feeding, changing diapers. Tickling him under his chin, trying to produce that giggle. And I had work.

  His older brother suddenly had to work to get everyone’s attention. The tantrums grew louder and more frequent. He was always stealing things; then somehow they would miraculously reappear. He always looked to be the hero.

  I remember he was supposed to watch over Todd that day. “C’mon, Toddie,” I recall him saying, “c’mon in here with me till Mommy gives you your bath.”

  I ran after some laundry that needed folding and he brought in one of Todd’s favorite toys. And I heard the two of them playing in the tub. That infectious giggle.

  And I remember thinking for once, that’s so, so nice. Could it be he’s finally growing out of it? It had been so long since he’d gone off in a big way. Maybe it was just like I always said.

  And I allowed myself to imagine a world in which he was a normal boy. Where we were a regular family. Instead of living in fear and worry about the next outburst. Always hiding things.

  “Look, Toddie, it’s Mr. Duckie . . . ,” I heard him saying. In that singsong voice he used when he wanted to be nice. The little one cooing and giggling. Water splashing.

  Then after a while no laughing or giggling.

  Just quiet. Damning quiet.

  Then for a long time, nothing at all.

  My gut told me something had gone wrong. I ran up the stairs.

  “Where’s Todd?” I burst into the bathroom. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t there. That boy could sneak away at the drop of a dime once he learned to crawl. Fear seized up in me. “Where’s the hell’s your brother?”

  He merely looked up at me from the tub. “We’re just playing, Mom.”

  I saw an air bubble pop up from under the water. It took a second until it dawned on me—bludgeoned me!

  “Oh my God, Todd!”

  I dove to the tub, but he lifted the baby out of the water like he was a toy. “Here he is!” he crowed.

  Todd was blue. At first I was sure he wasn’t breathing. My worst fears rose in me. I screamed.

  But then he was suddenly crying and spitting water out of his lungs.

  “You’re okay, you’re okay, baby . . . ,” I said to him, patting him against my shoulder, tapping his back as water leaked out of his mouth. But he was crying and spitting, and his eyes were somehow clear. The color came back into his face. I could see he was okay.

  “What were you trying to do?” I screamed, wrapping Todd in a towel, staring at his brother in the tub as if he was some kind of monster. “What kind of person are you?”

  He just stared back with that innocent look of his, as if he didn’t understand.

  “Don’t be mad, Mommy,” he said. “I just wanted to see what it was like when someone drowns.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I stared at it for most of the night.

  I put the satchel on the ottoman of the upholstered chair in my bedroom and never touched it again for the rest of the night.

  I never even counted it. The money was kind of an abstract thing that part of me didn’t want to admit actually existed as much as another part needed it to solve my problems. The conflict I felt in having taken it was real.

  Not taken, I had to remind myself. Stolen.

  I just let it sit, partially feeling a sense of relief. That I could breathe now; that for the time being my son could stay at Milton Farms. That I could pay the mortgage, the house taxes, and get out from under this cloud. That if I wanted to I could even help my folks get out from under theirs. I kept telling myself I’d won the lottery. That no one had actually been harmed by taking it because it was probably ill-gotten gains and no one seemed to miss it or even know it was there.

  At least no one I knew, right, Hilary . . . ?

  But I hadn’t won the lottery. I’d taken something that belonged to someone else. I was sure I’d crossed the legal line. Tampered with evidence. A foreboding crept in, like in the movies when the bass track starts to drone and the unsuspecting girl opens the back door, letting the killer in. As if the same urge to save my son had also put him in danger.

  No matter how victimless it seemed. Someone would miss it.

  Someone always missed it.

  At some point I dozed, and in the morning my eyes blinked open. Brandon was by my bed, staring at me. “Remi wants to go out.”

  Remi. Our caramel-colored toy poodle. I glanced at the clock: 6:41 A.M. I’d probably only gotten a couple of hours of sleep.

  “Let her out the back, sweetie,” I said, and shut my eyes again. The yard was totally closed in back there. “Mommy will be up in a little while.”

  “You’re going away?”

  “No, I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

  Then I realized what he was talking about.

  Brandon’s eyes were on the satchel. My heart lurched, praying that I hadn’t left it open and he had peeked inside. The last thing I needed was him going on at school about this or to a teacher. Or worse—if it ever happened at some point—to Jim.

  I shot up out of bed.

  With relief, I saw that the zipper still was closed.

  “No. I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart,” I said, my heart regaining its normal pace. “I’m staying with you. Forever. And you’re staying with me, right?”

  “I guess.” He just sort of nodded blankly. “I’m going to watch TV.”

  “Let Remi out!” I yelled after him.

  As soon as he’d left, I jumped out of bed and threw the satchel in my closet. I had to find a place for it. Elena had access to all the usual storage areas and I didn’t exactly need her to inadvertently come upon it either.

  I grabbed a nylon ski bag from the basement, shut my door, and transferred the cash from the satchel. If I ever got caught, that leather satchel was the only thing that could tie me directly to Joe Kelty’s car. An hour later, after breakfast—it was Saturday, no school—I lugged the nylon bag outside and around the back of our deck.

  It was freezing. The ground was covered with a fresh layer of frost. I was just in moccasins and my robe. I opened the latticed wooden door that led underneath the deck, where we stored the outdoor furniture for the winter. I crawled inside and dragged the bag amid the chaises and pool toys—the crawl space was less than five feet high. A large red Styrofoam drinks cooler was lying next to a folded-up outdoor umbrella. I kneeled and opened the nylon bag. For the first time I started counting what I had. As I’d thought, the first, elastic-bound packet of bills contained a hundred hundreds. Ten thousand dollars! The rest all looked about the same. One by one I took them out and stacked them on the tarp next to the umbrella. I counted fifty of them. $500,000! The sight of so much money filled me with both awe and fear. Fear that I had already crossed a kind of line. Though I felt certain I’d covered my tracks well. I hadn’t given Rollie my name. And he was the only one there. I was just being paranoid, I told myself. Anyone would be. Still, I packed the money back into the nylon bag and zipped it shut. I opened the cooler tub and packed it all in. Then I wedged the whole thing behind a stack of chaises and shut the top.

  No one would find it in a million years.

  Later I drove down Route 22 toward White Plains until I spotted a house under construction. I got out—no one around—and hurled the black satchel into the half-filled Dumpster. I was glad it was gone. I drove to a Family Discount store and bought a padlock, and when I got back secured the latticed door under my deck.

  Maybe it was wrong, I thought, but the real wrong had already been committed. Over a week ago.

  I didn’t go back for it a
gain for ten days.

  PATRICK

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Patrick Kelty put down the debris-filled wheelbarrow and caught his breath against the February chill.

  It had been more than three months since Sandy destroyed his family home, along with much of his neighborhood. Three months since the bay swept over Father Capodanno Boulevard that terrible night, filling up Midland Beach like a giant tub, reducing the place where his family lived to an abandoned, demolished war zone and the house he grew up in to rubble.

  Three months and still no power, apart from generators. No settlement from the insurance companies; not a dime yet from FEMA to help any of them build back their lives.

  It was on the way, he was told. Always on the way. Congress had just approved an aid bill. Last night it snowed and people were shivering in their homes, protected only by taping blankets over their windows to keep out the frost. Those who hadn’t had their homes torn apart by the sea.

  A few of the heartiest returned as soon as the waters had receded. Amid the morass of mud and bricks, cars washed into others’ lots; downed trees and power lines; boats tossed around like bath toys. There was the overwhelming deflation of having everything you had in your life ruined. Every possession; every item of value; every memory, lost. Those who hadn’t lost their parents or friends. No shelter or clothing against the cold.

  Most of them had nowhere else to go. For weeks no one could even get near their gutted homes. Midland Beach, like Tottenville to the south, and Oceanside, was barely more than a debris-filled lake. For a week, the only way to even get around was by an inflatable raft or a small powerboat. When the water finally receded, there was nothing for the eye to see in every direction but ruin.

  Patrick took a leave of absence from the NYPD. His career didn’t matter now. Not as much. Everything he knew, had grown up with, traced his roots to, was in shambles. His father was in failing health and completely on his own. The rebuilding was massive and slow. And it wasn’t just Patrick’s home. It was the whole block, Baden Avenue. The entire neighborhood. Everything was down. Friends he’d grown up with, those he’d gone to Father Aquinas with and mass at St. Margaret Mary’s; played CYO hockey and touch football with on Midland Field. All down. A lot of those who were left behind were older and couldn’t fend for themselves. Like Mrs. O’Byrne. She’d lost everything. Everyone felt cold and abandoned. There were mouths to feed. The Jersey shore and Breezy Point, where that terrible fire razed a hundred homes, captured all the attention.

  The world seemed to forget they were even here.

  The way Patrick figured, it wasn’t just homes that had been battered and destroyed. It was their lives. Everything they had all grown up with and looked at as a way of life. Their history.

  Like the Giorgios two houses down, who were in their eighties and whose kids had long moved away. Or the Flynns, who bought the white Queen Anne across the street and whose son suffered from Down syndrome.

  Who would help them rebuild?

  Or his dad. A proud man who’d never taken more than a week off at work until the day he called it quits. Who now picked up scattered photos of his wife, their home in ruin, holding back tears. “Just feel blessed that Paula is no longer around to have to see this.” He shook his head. She’d lived on Baden Avenue for forty years.

  So Patrick had volunteered to come back. That had always been his way. He’d gone to Cornell on a hockey scholarship, majored in government. Then it just seemed right to join the force after he graduated, a year after 9/11. There was such a gaping hole in the world and he felt it was his calling to help fill it in just a bit. He went straight into the Street Crime Unit and not too long after, married Liz, who he’d known in college, but she didn’t see life going quite the same way—the force, Staten Island—and it didn’t last. A couple of years later he moved into social services as an NYPD liaison to the mayor’s office, specializing in community relations. Before he left he’d been the department’s point person on the controversial Stop and Frisk program.

  He’d put in a solid month helping his dad, believing that by now they’d be able to start the rebuilding.

  But to date, whatever had been done had been borne solely on their own backs. And money. The building department still hadn’t even finalized the new requirements for how many feet homes must be raised to ensure this wouldn’t happen again.

  So they pretty much just cleared—their houses and their neighbors’. In place of cranes and bulldozers, they had shovels and Dumpsters. They found their own people to help pitch in: carpenters and electricians, neighbors and volunteers. Patrick watched his father age in front of his eyes—angry and heartbroken.

  But mostly it was like it was today. Shoveling rubble into trucks against an endless tide of debris. Handing out blankets and food to those who remained on the street. Helping whoever needed help, like making sure Mrs. O’Byrne’s portable generator worked or that her food delivery had reached her.

  Then ten days ago his dad said he had something to take care of up in Connecticut and he never came back.

  It was sad. His father was a proud and lonely man who kept trying to find a reason to live without his wife or his job. Then the storm took the rest out of him. Who knew what he was even doing all the way up there? Joe had grown withdrawn and secretive over the past few weeks, and Patrick was so wrapped up with the house and helping out, maybe he hadn’t paid the closest attention. His dad had made it his mission to try and help Mrs. O’Byrne, who’d lost everything. For thirty years, he and Paula and Tom and Sheila had been the closest of friends. Patrick grew up with the sight of the four of them playing euchre on Friday nights, going to Mets games, and putting their American flags out on Fleet Week when the ships sailed under the bridge into New York Harbor.

  What had Mrs. O’B said when Patrick told her about the accident? “Then it was all for nothing,” she said. “Nothing.” Then closed the door and went back into her shambles of a house.

  Now he could see in the cleared-out streets the houses starting to be framed again. Families coming back—even those still living with portable heaters and plasterboard covering the windows to protect against the cold.

  He could see that there finally would be an end to this. That one day Midland Beach would be back like it was—that was the type of people they were. With rebuilt homes and kids playing ball in the parks again. The flags flying. But the task was endless. Every home was freezing and damp. Everyone was wearing down.

  Patrick bent and noticed something under a pile of bricks. He dug with his pick and pulled out a child’s teddy bear. Filthy and soaked, one beady black eye missing. These things that had washed ashore turned up all the time.

  “Hey, guy . . .” He wiped off the caked mud and grime.

  Yes, the storm had cost them all a lot. Most everyone in Midland knew someone who had died.

  But when he looked around—the rubble, the broken lives, the now empty house he had put his own life on hold to rebuild—Patrick knew that while his old man might not have been washed away that night like so many others, or struck down by a falling tree, the storm had taken something personal and vital from him that could never be rebuilt.

  He propped the bear up against a post on the porch and waved. “Keep an eye on things for me, Joe, would ya?”

  It had taken his dad.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It isn’t exactly easy to convert a large amount of unreported cash into money you can spend.

  The Patriot Act of 2002, and the subsequent Bank Security Act that followed, regulated the amount of cash that could be taken out of the country, deposited into a bank account, or even paid for goods and services at $10,000.

  Anything larger was likely to show up on someone’s radar.

  I checked online, on the IRS’s website under federal statutes for money laundering. It only reminded me of what I already knew.

  There were various ways to get around this. I could make deposits in banks in amounts under ten thousand
dollars; that was the simplest way. But then I’d have to make a lot of them, and I wasn’t sure if the IRS or some regulatory agency checked that kind of thing, or looked for trends. Who knew if they had the means of tracking someone going around the region opening multiple new accounts with cash?

  I could go to a casino. Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods were ninety minutes away. I could convert several thousand dollars into chips, play an hour or two of blackjack or the slot machines, and leave. Then come back a week later and cash them in.

  But again, how often could I do that? Twice, three times, before my face was known and on some kind of visual recognition list? This was high-stakes poker, so to speak. I’d only been in a casino maybe twice in my life and the thought of having my picture flashed at a cashier’s window or people behind screens following my moves didn’t sit well with me.

  I wasn’t exactly a pro at this.

  There were money orders. I could drive around to bodegas and post offices, handing over cash and coming back with money orders that I could deposit instead of cash.

  And then there were prepaid credit cards. They were everywhere now. Every CVS, every big box retailer, every tobacco store. I could plunk down several thousand and walk out with something akin to cash. I could even pay down the mortgage with them.

  I knew I had to do this cautiously and in small amounts, so as not to attract attention. And only when the need became dire. Justifying how I took the money was one thing. Explaining to the feds how I’d broken umpteen federal laws was another!

  I started with my own bank. The local Chase in Armonk. They knew me there. The day after I took out the cash I brought in $8,600. One of the managers there, Desi, who’d handled a number of transactions for me over the years and who had two kids herself, was happy to handle it, counting out the cash in front of me, eighty-six hundred-dollar bills with random numbers and in varied condition. I told her I’d just kept some cash around the house since the divorce.

  I was nervous to begin with, watching someone count out thousands of dollars that I knew, if it came out where I had gotten it, could land me in jail. But as I was sitting there keeping it all in, my heart began to pound through my chest. I suddenly had the fear that the entire cache was stolen. Kept track of by traceable numbers on some FBI hot list somewhere. Some junior agent just out of Quantico would be flagging my deposit within the hour. My eyes kept darting to unsuspecting Desi and then back to the cash, one hundred-dollar bill at a time, trying not to show the unrest that was raging inside me.