Nobodys fool, p.6
Nobody's Fool, page 6
“Who are you?” he asks.
I lock the door behind me. If someone needs a toilet, they can always find another one.
“That doesn’t matter,” I say.
His face goes as white as that crisply ironed shirt. “So this is, what, a shakedown?”
The only shaking I see is his hands. He has the envelope. The photos of him with that other man, the ones I took near Rose to the Occasion, are back in the envelope as though he doesn’t want to see them again.
“I was hired by your wife’s attorney to see whether you were abiding by the infidelity clause of the prenup you and your wife signed.” I point at the envelope in his hand. “This is the evidence that you were not.”
“So how much?”
“Pardon?”
“To keep this quiet. How much?”
I’m genuinely curious now. “How much are you offering?”
He raises his chin, the businessman again, back in control. It’s a business deal now, a corrupt one, and that puts him back on terra firma. “Give me a number.”
Yep, master negotiator. Or so he thinks. Negotiation 101: Never be the first to give a number. Let your opposition make the first move. You can learn this from reading pretty much any book on negotiating or watching repeats of Pawn Stars. Rick and Corey always ask, “How much do you want for it?” as they launch into making any deal.
“How much do you want for it?” I try.
“You go first.”
“Ah never mind,” I say. “I can’t think of a price, so let’s just move on.”
I start for the door.
“One hundred grand,” he says.
Whoa. That’s the opening bid. I could probably get a lot more. That would change everything, wouldn’t it? Get me out of debt. A better apartment for Molly and Henry. Maybe some babysitting help so Molly can go back to work. I’m tempted to counter at a million, but I’ve let myself get distracted with this long enough.
“Here’s what’s going to happen, Peyton,” I say to him. “You’re about to head into a meeting. You are going to agree that your prenup is null and void and then you and your soon-to-be ex will negotiate what one hopes will be an equitable deal for you both.”
He waits for me to say more. Another negotiating tactic. I don’t bite.
“And then?”
“That’s it. I was hired to see if you broke the infidelity clause of your contract. You did. Mission accomplished.”
“And what becomes of these…?” He can’t say it so he just raises the envelope in the air. He keeps his eyes on me as though he’s afraid to make eye contact with what’s inside. Just to clarify, I gave him my three clearest photos of him with the man. I also left him a note to meet me here and not to say anything to anyone. To make sure, I wrote on the envelope, “Look at these right away but don’t let anyone else see.” Seems he abided by that.
“I destroy them,” I say.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“How do I know you won’t keep a copy?”
“You don’t. Come to think of it, I had planned on deleting everything, but you’re kind of scaring me now, Peyton. So I’ll keep a set with my will. Just in case something happens to me.”
“Suppose something happens to you and it’s not because of me.”
“Too bad now,” I say. “You should have thought of that before you made that veiled threat.”
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“We don’t really have time for this,” I say. “If we aren’t back soon, someone is going to think you have a case of constipation that would take down a mule. Simply put, I’m okay with exposing that you committed infidelity per your prenup. That’s my job. That’s what you signed on for when you drew up the deal with your wife. What I’m not okay with is unnecessarily outing you. I’ll do it if I have to—to prove that you broke your prenup. It gets morally hazy if we swim into that space, and I’d rather stay on dry land. Does that make it clear?”
“That photo is blackmail,” he says. “You’re not the good guy here.”
I think about that. “Yeah, I kinda am.” I turn and unlock the door. “Either way, I’ll see you out there.”
The Booth divorce mediation does not take long.
It takes place in a conference room with a big glass wall, so I’m able to watch from down the corridor. I can’t hear, of course, but I find it odd how many conference rooms have glass walls that both intrude on privacy and cause unnecessary distraction. There are six people in the conference room. Husband Peyton and wife Courtney sit across from one another, their lawyers on both flanks. The body language tells me everything. Peyton caves quickly. This surprises his wife. I can see a stunned Courtney Booth turn to Arthur, seemingly unhappy in victory. The lawyers all shake hands. Husband and wife avoid eye contact.
Team Peyton exits first and briskly. Arthur follows. He beams and gives me a thumbs-up. Courtney Booth is right behind him. She looks perturbed.
“Thank you,” Arthur says to me.
I nod. I’m ready to move on, but Courtney Booth has other ideas.
“What the hell was that?” she snaps.
“A win,” Arthur replies. “Your husband just agreed to rip up your prenup.”
“Right, sure. Out of the goodness of his heart?”
“This is a divorce action,” Arthur says. “No one does anything out of the goodness of their heart.”
“I don’t like it,” she says.
“This was a good meeting, Courtney. A really, really good meeting.”
She turns to and on me. “You’re the one who took the photos?”
“Yes.”
“Was he screwing Britney Griffin?”
I don’t say anything.
She glances back at Arthur. “Didn’t we hire a private investigator to take photos?”
“We hired him to break the prenup. Mission accomplished.”
“So that whore Britney gets off scot-free? Oh no. I want that bitch outed. She was my neighbor for God’s sake. My friend. And then she—”
Here I make a mistake. I say, “It wasn’t Britney Griffin.”
That surprises her. “It wasn’t?”
In for a penny… “No.”
“So who was it?”
“I don’t know a name.”
She steps up closer to me. Courtney Booth is very attractive and far taller than I—statuesque, modelesque, and I confess she smells great. “Why haven’t I seen the photos?”
I look toward Arthur.
Arthur says, “It doesn’t matter, Courtney.”
“Don’t tell me what matters, Arthur. You work for me, correct?”
“Yes.”
Courtney is still glaring at me. “I want to see the photos. All of them.”
“There are a lot,” I say. “It’s a big file.”
“I don’t care.”
I nod. “Fine,” I say. “I can email them to you.”
“You do that.”
With one last glare she must have learned at soap-opera-acting school, Courtney spins and struts away. Arthur moves next to me. We wait until she’s in the elevator.
Arthur asks, “Did you watch Tad Grayson get released?”
“I did.”
Neither one of us says anything for a moment.
“The head lawyer ELI assigned to overturn his conviction,” Arthur says. “She works here. Her name is Kelly Neumeier.”
I flash back to the lawyer who spoke at the prison. “I know.”
“She worked the case pro bono.”
“I know.”
“Kelly is good, Kierce. Ethical. Principled. I like her.”
I don’t care, but I don’t say that. I don’t blame the lawyer. I don’t blame the system. I blame mostly me, but I don’t bother with that right now. “His conviction wasn’t overturned,” I say.
“Right,” Arthur says. “It was vacated.”
“So the DA could retry him.”
“They could,” Arthur says with great care. “But…”
I know. He knows. They won’t. There isn’t enough evidence anymore. It would be impossible to reconvict, and the DA’s office doesn’t really have the stomach to try. It would be embarrassing and an unpleasant reminder for all. I get all that. No one really cares anymore.
Arthur reads my mind. “It can’t be you, Kierce. Anything you find, any evidence you dig up, will be dismissed.”
I nod. “I better go.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
I wait.
“Courtney Booth’s email address,” Arthur says. “Do you want it?”
“No.”
“You’re not sending her the photos?”
“I’m not sending her the photos.”
“She won’t be pleased.”
“I gather that.”
“She probably has a legal right to them.”
“You’re the one with the law degree.”
“Work product on her case. She could sue you.”
I shrug and start toward the elevator. “What’s one more?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I pick up Debbie on the way out to Connecticut. She wants a day out of the city, and I figure that maybe I could use her. We follow my late-night pin drop back to the lush estate of Maybe Anna. I don’t have much of a plan here. I consider trying to make some kind of approach as a delivery man, but that won’t work here. Whatever packages get delivered here are left at the gate, I’m sure. I debate casing the place from down the street, parking and waiting for a car to come out and then following it, but my guess is, the local authorities notice old beater cars held together by duct tape idling on these fair streets. Debbie might help with that. It’s one thing when a guy is in a car by himself. It’s a little less conspicuous with a couple.
Debbie has her window down and sticks her nose out of it like a golden retriever. “Can you believe all this green?” she asks in wonder.
“Is there no green where you’re from?”
“Not green like this,” she says. “It’s like even the trees smell like money.”
I get what she means.
“Can we go for a hike, Kierce?”
“This is all private land.”
“For real?”
“Yep.”
“There must be some walking trails nearby though, right?”
“I guess,” I say.
“You like hiking?” she asks.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s boring,” I say. “It’s hot. It’s dusty or muddy. And then it’s all ‘Oh, look honey, there’s a tree! Oh, and there’s another tree! And another! Oh, I wonder what’s around that bend… Oh wow, looks like a tree!’ I get thirsty and hungry and, I mean, if you want to take a long walk in the city, yes, sure, I’m with you. You see people’s faces. You can window-shop. You can gaze upon architectural wonders or meander through a bookstore or head up to that flea market on Columbus Avenue. That’s stimulation. That’s interesting.”
Debbie smiles and sits back in her seat. “I like you, Kierce.”
“I like you too.”
“I still want to try hiking someday,” she says. “Get some fresh air.”
“Fresh air is overrated. Your lungs are strong from a lifetime of street fights.”
She laughs at that. “So what’s our plan?”
I shrug. “I’m open to ideas if you have any.”
We circle the streets and hope something comes to mind. Nothing does right away, but I’ve learned that there is something to literally and figuratively spinning your wheels. Patience is a virtue and all that. Wait enough and sometimes something happens.
Or this is what I tell myself to excuse the fact that I’m a shit planner.
We drive around like this for about twenty minutes when I see a car, a Mercedes-Benz CLE convertible with its top down, pull out of the driveway down the road from Maybe Anna’s. There are four young women in the car. They wear sunglasses and wide smiles and give off major “not a care in the world” vibes.
“Speaking of smelling like money,” Debbie says.
“How old do you think they are?” I ask.
“Like, I don’t know—high school seniors, college maybe? Why, you interested?”
I make a face at her and swing the wheel so that I’m following the Mercedes.
“You got a plan?” she asks.
“I do.”
“Care to share it?”
“They live across the street from our target house.”
“So?”
“So they probably know who lives there.”
“You think they’ll tell you?”
We follow the car to the outskirts of town. The Mercedes pulls up to some fancy converted barn, the kind of place you’d find an overpriced pottery store or those upscale wine-n-paint party joints. Molly went to one of the wine-n-paint parties last year. She brought back a painting of what might be a nature scene and gave it to me. It couldn’t be uglier and I think Molly knows that, which is why I hung it in our bedroom and I’ll be damned if I ever take it down.
A valet takes the convertible and the four—can I call them girls? teens? women?—head inside. I look for a sign telling me where I am. There is none. Debbie is on her smartphone trying to look the place up.
“It’s called the Ivy,” she says.
“What is it, a restaurant?”
She shakes her head. “A rejuvenation center.”
“Does that mean spa?”
Debbie shrugs. I pull my Ford Taurus up to the valet. The valet crinkles his nose and looks at my car as though it just plopped out of a dog’s backside. We get out and I toss him the keys.
“Don’t scratch it,” I say.
The valet looks at the exterior. “Might make it look better,” he replies.
“Good one,” I say. “If I had cash, I would tip.”
“I take Venmo and Zelle.”
“Let’s chat later, shall we?”
Debbie and I enter a sea of white. The barn has high ceilings and big picture windows. Plush white leather chaise lounge chairs line all four walls, with what looks like a round cocktail bar in the middle. The clientele wear white terrycloth robes and lie on the chaises.
They have IVs in their arms.
Debbie leans toward me and says sotto voce, “You know what this reminds me of?”
“What?” I ask.
“My mother getting chemo.”
I say nothing for a moment. This is the first time Debbie has ever revealed anything even slightly personal.
“Except this is way more ritzy.” She thinks about it. “Do you say ‘more ritzy’ or ‘ritzier’?”
“‘Ritzier,’ I think.” Then I add, “I’m sorry about your mom.” I’m thinking about asking how her mom is or if she’s dead or alive or still going through chemo or in remission, but Debbie shakes me off like a baseball pitcher who doesn’t like what the catcher is signaling.
“Do you think that’s what this is?” Debbie asks. “Like rich-people chemo?”
“No,” I say.
“Me neither. Everyone at chemo had brittle yellow skin. These rich people glow like rich people.”
A receptionist with a constant blink, as though midseizure, steps in front of us. “May I help you?”
“My dad wants to buy me a treatment,” Debbie says. “It’s my birthday.”
“Oh wow, how wonderful.”
I smile at her. The proud father. In my peripheral vision I see the four girls from the convertible come out in white bathrobes. They are led to four chaises on the right wall. They sit-lie, and four women dressed in pink scrubs like pediatric nurses put IVs into their left arms. They sip what might be piña coladas from cocktail glasses with small umbrellas.
“Ivy,” I say softly. “Like IV.”
“Yes, that’s our service,” the receptionist says. Her voice turns a tad condescending. “Our IV therapies start at eight hundred dollars.”
“American dollars?” I ask.
“I have a brochure.”
She opens it. There are treatments called Super Immunity and Beauty Boost and Elite Energy. There is something called a Myers Cocktail and HydroBlast and VeinVitalizer and HornyHelper. I look at Debbie and then toward the Convertible Girls. Debbie understands my meaning.
“Can we talk about the options over here,” Debbie says, trying to look embarrassed, “like away from my dad?”
“Oh, of course.”
They move away, leaving me be. The girls are all lying back as though tanning on a beach. Now or never.
I stick out here like a snowman in a sauna. Still, the initial looks I’m getting from the four girls are more curious than accusatory. They are in a peppery, animated conversation punctuated with an indiscernible blend of young exclamations including “I know, right”s and “sus”es and “it’s giving”s and “sending me”s and “mid”s and “simp”s. They barely look up until I am standing over them. I don’t say anything. I wait. The conversation fades away like the end of a song more than it stops. Then a few “what the f” giggles start up as I just stand there and give them my warmest smile.
The girl who was driving is the first to speak. “Uh, can we help you?”
“My name is Sami Kierce,” I say. I hold up my phone with the photo I took of the gate blocking Maybe Anna’s driveway. “Could you tell me who lives here?”
Sometimes you try subtle. Sometimes you just dive right in.
The girls all share a glance, but the convertible’s driver keeps her eyes on mine.
“Are you a cop, Sami Kierce?” she asks.
“Used to be.”
“Why aren’t you one anymore?”
“Got thrown off the force.”
Again the other girls turn their heads and mutter. They are almost background noise now. It’s just the driver and me.
“Why do you want to know who lives there?” she asks.
“More than twenty years ago, when I was probably around your age, I fell hard for a girl when I was backpacking through southern Spain.”
“Like a summer romance?” one of the girls says.
“Exactly like that,” I reply.
The other two girls say “aww.” The driver keeps her eyes on me.
I continue: “Anyway, like I said, I fell for a girl in Spain. Up until last night, I thought she was dead.”
