by Greg Smith
“Sheil, if you want me out of your life, I understand. Just say the word and I’m gone. I, uh…I wouldn’t blame you.”
Sheila’s New Yorker survival instincts told her to run. Run fast. Run far. But her heart wouldn’t allow that. She needed to know she hadn’t fallen for some diabolical, fast-talking conman who’d targeted her hoping to get his hands on a 9/11 widow’s payday so he could pay off an alleged debt to a Russian mobster who planned to kill him if he didn’t repay the money he’d lost while laundering it for him. She needed to know that the man she’d fallen in love with wasn’t preying on her emotions, hoping she’d be willing to forfeit her life savings to save his life. She couldn’t accept that the tall man could be that devious. That calculating. Or that she could that bad a judge of character.
“I…I don’t have any money, Oshkosh. If that’s what you’re after, I can’t help you.”
Though he understood why the brown-haired woman would think it, the implication that he’d befriended her for her money hurt Aleks to his core.
“If that’s what you think this is, you’re wrong, Sheil. I…I truly have feelings for you. I only told you about that because I wanted to be completely honest with you.”
Sheila could see the tall man was genuinely hurt by her accusation. She wanted to believe him. With her whole heart, she wanted to believe Oshkosh was sincere.
“Why were you using his driver’s license?” she asked abruptly. “Where’s yours?”
Aleks was taken aback by the unanticipated question.
“I, uh, I’d grabbed Step’s coat by mistake. At the office that night. I was in such a hurry to get out of there, I grabbed the first coat I saw. Turns out it was Step’s. I accidentally left my coat there. With my wallet and my phone in it.”
He recounted how he’d planned on returning to the office in the morning to retrieve his coat, leave Step’s, hope the police would think Step and Connie had killed each other during a lover’s quarrel.
“That is, assuming the, uh, the bodies weren’t found before I was able to go back and switch coats.”
“Who would have found them? Did you have employees?”
“No. I dunno. I wasn’t thinking clearly, Sheil. I’d just murdered my brother. I was in a panic.”
“If the bodies had been discovered, Wouldn’t the police have found your coat, with your ID and assumed it was you that was dead?”
“Huh. I never really thought it through,” Aleks admitted. “Yeah. Maybe. Then they would have thought I was Step…”
Sheila picked up his train of thought.
“…and that you’d murdered your brother –Aleks – because he was having an affair with your wife.”
Aleks gave her a look of exasperation.
“You think I actually am Step? That I’m a jealous husband who murdered his wife and her lover in a fit of rage? Her lover who happened to be my twin brother and business partner? And…and I got away with it? Because all the evidence was destroyed when the North Tower collapsed? Is that what you think?”
Sheila didn’t think that at all. She really didn’t know what to make of the tall man’s story.
“No. If that were true, why would you even bother telling me? Why make up a lie to cover up a crime I’d have known nothing about? A crime that never happened–”
It was Aleks who picked up the train this time.
“Because all the evidence was destroyed. No bodies. No murder weapon. No evidence. No crime. Just two more victims of 9/11.”
Sheila studied his face, searched for any hint that he was holding something back.
“Is that everything, Oshkosh? No more secrets?”
“That’s everything, Sheil,” he said, hoping the brown-haired woman couldn’t tell he was lying.
Sheila snuggled close to him. He held her tightly.
“Doesn’t matter to me whether you’re Stepan or Aleks. Either way, I’m pretty sure I’ve fallen in love with you.”
He kissed the top of her head.
The relief he felt from having confessed to Sheila was overwhelming. He felt cleansed. Reborn. He could live with the fact that he hadn’t been one hundred percent truthful.
As he considered that Sheila didn’t need to know every detail about the night that had changed his life forever, an idea was beginning to form in the back of his mind. Something she’d said had planted the seed. He wasn’t sure whether or not Sheila was clever enough to have said it deliberately, but it bordered on genius.
• • • • •
CHAPTER 67
Two days later, Sheila, Jacqui and Aleks enjoyed Thanksgiving together in the Cahill home. They had a modest, though traditional, dinner. Sheila had gotten birthday sundaes from Jahn’s for dessert, all three topped with a mountain of whipped cream and a cherry. Aleks’s mountain had also been impaled by a birthday candle.
They spent the day playing cards and board games, the television quietly broadcasting America’s traditional Thanksgiving football games in the background. Despite his unremitting anguish over the loss of his twin brother, Aleks’s mood was much improved over the sullenness he’d experienced on their birthday two days earlier. In part, due to his confession to Sheila.
Aleks’s revelations about his past hadn’t affected any change in his relationship with Sheila. Maybe her experiences as an FDNY wife and her work as a nurse at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center had fostered a tolerance of the problematic situations people sometimes find themselves in. Maybe 9/11 had hammered home the fact that bad things often happen to good people. Or maybe she was just too tired to give a damn. She accepted Aleks’s explanation. Like the day at Coney Island when she’d learned her tall friend wasn’t Russell Kummerhall from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, she’d elected to throw caution to the wind. To trust Fate. Karma. Kismet.
They decided not to tell Jacqui about Aleks’s true identity. As far as the teen-age girl was concerned, he was Stepan, which Sheila would continue to call him. If and when the time came to tell her the truth, they’d deal with the consequences then.
In the days following the Thanksgiving holiday, both Aleks and Sheila had new campaigns on which to focus their individual attention. Unbeknown to Aleks, Sheila had petitioned the FDNY for John’s line-of-duty death benefit, along with his pension and life insurance. She’d also filed VCF claims for both herself and Jacqui. The process involved much paperwork and personal interviews, took up a lot of her time. But Sheila Cahill believed she was in line to become a 9/11 Millionaire Widow. To get the money she’d thought Aleks might have been after.
Aleks continued to work on The Pile. The seed Sheila had planted, whether knowingly or unintentionally, began germinating immediately. He ruminated over the idea.
Pretend to be Step. Pretend Aleks was the one who had died.
The words Sheila had spoken on the porch that night after dinner, after too many glasses of wine, gamboled through his mind. The words inspired by the Bottle of Wine song.
He could close his eyes at any moment and hear them singing.
Let me go back and start over.
Followed by Sheila’s soft, wishful words.
Maybe we could both go back and start over.
Starting over sounded good. Sheila had already begun. He’d told her so that night. He could start over as well. Make a new life with Sheila and Jacqui. A do-over. As Step.
Anyway, I already have, he thought. Started over. The only people I really know now know me as Step.
The longer he existed as Step, the easier it was to continue that way. In many ways, he believed it would be better to bury Aleks Bagdasarian anyway. Begin anew using Step’s identity. Step wouldn’t have to worry about the Russian.
As he deliberated over life beyond The Pile, a stray thought nagged at his subconscious. Like a pesky fly, it just wouldn’t go away. No matter how many times he swatted at it.
Call Oak.
He knew he should squash the fly. Contact his best friend. Let the poor bastard
know he was alive. That he hadn’t died on 9/11. He missed the old banter with his large friend. The witty, derogatory razzing he and Oak engaged in. Missed watching his large friend guzzle beer from a pitcher.
Problem was, he didn’t have the large man’s phone number. Had lost it with all his contact information when he’d left his cell phone in his coat pocket in his office in the North Tower on the night of September tenth. He wasn’t even certain Oak was still in New York City. The unpredictable Polack could have moved back to California. To be close to his son and his ex-wife. Last Aleks knew, the big guy was working as an insurance agent for some company from Phoenix.
Uh-uh, he quickly corrected himself. The Phoenix Insurance Company. Headquartered in Hartford. Connecticut. Oak was their New York rep. He sold us business insurance.
His next thought was accompanied with a twinge of cautious hope.
Wait a minute. Oak also talked us into life insurance. Partnership policies. Million-dollar partnership policies. On both me and Step.
He’d unexpectedly unearthed another upside to re-connecting with his large friend. A million upsides!
The seed had taken root. Aleks couldn’t let it just wither up and die. Blow away in the wind. He couldn’t not water it. Not the kind of money tree it could conceivably sprout. He nurtured the notion, mulled over all its possible ramifications.
He worked it out over and over in his head as he labored on The Pile.
There’s a million-dollar insurance policy on Step. I’m his beneficiary. Assuming he didn’t change it when he married Connie. There’s also a million-dollar policy on Aleks. Step is my beneficiary.
He weighed the pros and cons of each twin’s situation.
As Aleks, I can collect a million dollars on the partnership policy. I can also file a VCF claim for the loss of my brother slash business partner. I can get my identity back. But I have that weird Russian to deal with.
As Step, I collect a million dollars on the partnership policy. I might also collect on any life insurance policy Connie had. I can still file a VCF claim for the loss of my brother slash business partner. Another VCF claim for the loss of my loving spouse. And the problem with the Russians goes away.
Sounds like a no brainer, Step, he told himself.
So, I go to the authorities. I tell them my brother, Aleks, and my wife, Connie, were in the office on 9/11. That they’ve been missing ever since. That I’m certain they died in the collapse. I file VCF claims. I contact Oak and file claims on the life insurance policies.
And I become Step.
He thought the story leaked like Bonnie and Clyde Barrow after their infamous run-in with Frank Hamer and his posse. He continued playing devil’s advocate, posing possible incriminating questions, pleading his case. Why has it taken you so long to come forward? Where have you been for the past three months? What have you been doing?
I’ve been in shock. I was confused. I’m suffering from depression. From PTSD. I didn’t want to benefit financially from the death of my wife and brother.
Then why have life insurance policies?
They were part of our business plan. Having life insurance policies isn’t a crime.
No. But trying to collect on one fraudulently is. How do we know they’re dead? Maybe they’ve run off together.
They haven’t been seen since 9/11. Ask Winsy. Ask Gwensy. Ask Oak.
Who’s to say you haven’t killed your brother and wife because they were having an affair and disposed of their bodies somewhere?
Though he was positive he could refute every question, he was certain he’d cave under the pressure of any serious interrogation. In desperation, he defaulted to a defense of defiance.
I haven’t committed any crime. At least, no crime that can be proven. There’s no evidence. No bodies. I can’t be charged with a crime no one can prove ever took place. Not coming forward with information that my twin brother slash business partner and my wife were in the Towers on 9/11 isn’t a crime.
While he could accept benefitting from Connie’s death with a clean conscious, the thought of benefitting financially from his brother’s death, a death for which he was responsible, was unsettling. Yet there were a million reasons for going through with his plan.
In the end, greed reared its ugly head, whispered in Aleks’s ear.
“Take the money, Aleks. They’re dead. There’s no bringing them back. Take the money.”
• • • • •
CHAPTER 68
The holidays were particularly emotional for both Aleks and Sheila. Aleks no longer had any family. Sheila was having a hard time escaping her extended family. The Dead Wives Society.
With each passing week post-9/11, her Dead Wives sisters had become more and more exclusive to each other, often bullied one another into attending group functions. Eventually, however, the petty jealousies, envy, insecurities, sniping and criticism from family and strangers – feelings the widows had initially used to grow more tight-knit – began seeping inside the group, fracturing their bonds.
The more time she spent with Aleks, the less time Sheila had for The Dead Wives. She began weaning herself away after receiving strong criticism for not joining the group for Thanksgiving. The icing on the cake had been overhearing remarks about the inappropriateness of her relationship with “that tall freeloader.”
With Thanksgiving shrinking in the rear-view mirror and Christmas lurking just around the next bend, Sheila’s emotional turmoil reached a peak. She wouldn’t miss John Cahill’s annual holiday melancholy. His increased drinking spells. His constant carping. It would be Mikey’s absence that would leave a hole in 2001’s year-end celebrations.
Christmas Day fell on a Tuesday, exactly fifteen weeks after 9/11. Neither Aleks or Sheila were churchgoers, neither felt the need to gather in a house of a god they no longer believed in. Aleks had upchucked any religious conviction he’d been force-fed by his parents after Jill’s death. Katie O’Shaunessy’s brutal murder had caused Sheila to abandon acceptance of any supreme being whose master plan she was not allowed to question. Mikey’s death had solidified her resolve.
The extent of any religious observation in the Cahill home on Christmas morning 2001 was limited to a moment of silence for Uncle Mikey Zimmerman, John Cahill and…
“Step’s twin brother, Binyak,” Jacqui finished.
And Jills. And Nene and Baba, Aleks added silently, preserving their commemorations for himself.
He felt some guilt at having taken Christmas Day off from The Pile while others sacrificed their holiday to volunteer. He returned the following day, then did penance by working both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
He’d become disenfranchised with volunteering, however. Was tired of breathing human remains. Tired of being tired. At the same time, the function of the volunteer bucket brigades was diminishing as the cleanup effort shifted more and more to skilled metal workers and other tradesmen. With the distraction of the holiday season behind him, and with his role as a volunteer approaching obsolescence, Aleks focused his attention on his seedling.
It was obvious Aleks had to be the one who’d died in the North Tower. Step stood to collect considerably more money. And Aleks’s death eliminated the problem with the Russian.
It was time to contact Oak.
Aleks couldn’t believe it had been four months since his life had been torn apart. He felt negligent for not having made any attempt to connect with his old friend during that time. Let him know he hadn’t died when the North Tower came tumbling down. He now needed to get in touch with his best friend to tell him just the opposite. That Aleks had died when the North Tower collapsed. Of course, he’d have to tell Oak the truth. His large friend was sure to see through Aleks pretending to be Step. Despite the fraudulent nature of his ruse, he was certain Oak would go along with it. In fact, Oak would probably come on board because of the illegality of the plan.
An internet search turned up Oak’s information.
Tony Kowalski. Account Representative. Phoenix Home Life Mutual Insurance Company. With a Manhattan address and phone number. Aleks was somewhat surprised to find Oak was still in New York City.
“Phoenix Mutual. This is Tony. Our insurance is your assurance. How can you help me?”
Aleks smiled to himself. It was good to hear Oak’s thunderous voice.
“Phoenix Mutual. This is Tony,” the voice repeated. “Anyone there?”
Aleks hung up, handed Sheila her cell phone. He hoped Oak wouldn’t bother to use the phone’s call back feature for a number he shouldn’t recognize, was glad when the phone didn’t ring.
“I…I’m not ready,” was all he could say.
The following Monday, Aleks arrived at the Cahill home to find Sheila sobbing, her eyes red, swollen.
“What is it, Sheil? What’s wrong?”
Sheila waved the letter she’d received in the day’s mail at him.
“The FDNY is denying me benefits because New York doesn’t recognize common-law marriages!”
Aleks didn’t understand.
“But…you said John was your husband. That you were an FDNY wife.”
Sheila sighed.
“John and I never ‘officially’ married.”
Still holding the letter in one hand, a tissue in the other, she made quotation marks in the air with her fingers.
“We lived as husband and wife. Any reference I made to being an FDNY wife was just for the sake of simplicity.”
She slammed the hand holding the letter against her thigh.
“He didn’t have a will, Step. They’re not gonna give me the line-of-duty death benefit all the other wives are getting. It’s two-hundred-and-sixty-two thousand dollars! And…and they’re gonna deny my claim for his life insurance. And my VCF claim. All the other wives are getting crazy money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Becky Sanders got almost two million! I’m getting nothing,” she cried in a voice of tired resignation.