The cab took us uphill along a gravel driveway, where the house—a white two-story colonial with dark trim—appeared to the left, upon another small hill. To the right there was a barn, and past that, a far stretch of grass that disappeared into a forest.
We stepped out of the cab just off the house’s front porch, and there was Robert welcoming us, glass of bourbon in hand, wearing khaki shorts, loafers, and a striped polo. I’d never seen his knees before, and I was having serious trouble focusing on anything else. His wife (Avery, a former Texas Longhorns cheerleader) was at his side. She was the same age as Robert but didn’t look a day over fifty-five, dressed casually in white cotton shorts, sandals, and a sleeveless top. Her auburn hair looked like she’d just stepped out of the salon.
“Y’all have a smooth ride getting here?” Avery Barlow had been to the office on a few occasions so this wasn’t my first time meeting her, but when I looked into her bright hazel eyes, I still couldn’t help but think: You are married to Robert. You knew him when he was nothing but a brassy college boy who read too much James Lee Burke. You married him before his first billion. What was he like back then? Did he always speak in commands? Was he even the natural leader of your friend group?
“Getting here was a breeze,” Dillinger said in response to Avery’s question. “The train ride was a pleasure.”
Already he was laying it on a little thick.
Robert pointed toward the backyard with his drink. “Come on around back.”
We did as we were told, and, reaching the backyard, the stunning swimming pool was the first thing to catch my eye—followed by red-faced Glen Wiles lounging poolside, smoking a cigar.
Shit.
Wiles struggled up from his chair and over to us. He was wearing a T-shirt, which he’d already mostly sweat through; cargo shorts; and no shoes. I thought Robert’s knees were bad. Glen Wiles’s feet were like two ham hocks past their sell-by date.
I was beginning to wonder what the hell I was doing here.
“Tina, you’re hanging with the big boys now, huh?” Wiles gave me a smack on the back with his big bear-paw hand. “That’s my wife, Carolena, over there, she’s catching some sun. Say hi, honey.”
Carolena, in a gold lamé bikini that she absolutely had to have bought at a store for strippers, looked like a Real Housewives of New Jersey reject. Her skin was the blackened bronze of a tarnished penny, the kind of pennies I used to dunk in Taco Bell hot sauce to make them shiny again. She peeked at us over her enormous sunglasses, waved, and then turned over to sun her back.
“She’s not a big talker, that’s why I like her,” Wiles said, before re-pacifying himself with his cigar.
I followed Dillinger to the patio bar and poured myself a glass of white wine. Dillinger had bourbon because Robert was having bourbon. Kathryn, who’d finally stowed away her Kindle, disappeared into the house with Robert’s wife for a tour—because that’s what women did. They looked at house stuff. Though biologically I, too, was a woman, I had zero interest in oohing and aahing over period details and antique linens, so I stayed put and took a seat at the patio table.
Robert pulled up a chair beside me, slid my wineglass aside, and placed a tumbler of bourbon in front of me. “You want this,” he said.
I looked at him with owl eyes.
“That’s twenty-three-year-old Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve.” Robert urged the glass to my hand. “Best bourbon you’ll ever drink.”
I took a sip. He was right; it was good. And I wondered how he got it.
During the workday, Robert would often shoot me an e-mail along the lines of: Can you run down to the liquor store and get me a bottle of Famous Grouse forty-year-old blended malt . . . And I would then spend the next four hours calling every liquor store in New York trying to locate the rare bottle, which I’d go pick up myself or have rush-messengered. He had no idea how much effort went into fetching such things, or how much money it ended up costing. All he knew was by six p.m. the bottle was on his desk.
So it blew my mind when Robert stood and fired up his own barbecue grill. He planned to do all the grilling himself, just like a regular person. And his wife started bringing out side dishes—carrying them herself—from the kitchen. Avery Barlow was serving us? I was expecting maids and butlers, white gloves. Maybe even someone on standby to chew the bigger pieces of food for us, I don’t know. Instead, Robert ordered Dillinger and me over to the grill to show us exactly how he buttered the steak.
“You have to do it this way,” he said, dipping a brush in a bowl. “This here is a mixture of butter and oil.” He painted each slab of thick meat on both sides, while Dillinger snapped photo after photo of the process with his phone.
I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why now, after six years, I’d finally been invited here to be fawned over and schooled in the essentials of barbecue grilling. And why I thought it was okay to come given the present (criminal) circumstances.