They heard that Neil put his house on the market. His kids would complete the school year in Gillam, but then he was moving to Westchester, to be near his mother, who would watch them after school. Jess heard it from Siobhán, who heard it from some other parents. Siobhán added that she never said hello to him if he was at pickup. She’d noticed other parents had followed suit, maybe sensing her dislike of him.
“Don’t do that,” Jess said as a wave of shame came over her. “Don’t mobilize people against him.” These waves came at moments she expected but also out of nowhere, and sometimes left her momentarily paralyzed. She was reaching for a bag of coffee beans at the grocery store one recent morning when a woman passed by pushing a cart with a boy around Ethan’s age sitting up top. It hit her, what she’d done, and she withdrew her hand from the coffee like she’d been bitten. The reverberations went on and on.
Patrick said to Malcolm, “Thank God he’s leaving. You won’t have to worry about running into him.”
“He’s the one who should be worried,” Malcolm said, but almost every time he went to Dunkin’ or the deli or any of his usual spots, he searched for a white SUV in the lot. And if he spotted one, he kept driving.
One morning, late May, Malcolm ran into Jackie Becker at the bagel shop. She was in plainclothes, her day off, and he didn’t recognize her until he lined up behind her and she turned.
“Malcolm,” she said. “I was thinking of you the other day.”
“Oh yeah? What’s going on with the investigation? I’ve been curious.”
She turned to face him. “You didn’t hear? Charles Waggoner was killed a few weeks ago. An accident in Panama City. He was in a taxi.”
Malcolm’s stomach seized. “That’s insane. After putting together that plan he had?”
“Exactly. The Feds have their doubts. I think Rob has his doubts, too, but the family is fighting for the insurance money, so having an actual death certificate makes it a lot easier.”
“Ah,” Malcolm said. “Makes sense. Seems like it would be an easy fight, no? Given all the evidence of a fraud in the making?”
“You would think so, but”—she shrugged, was looking up at the sandwich menu—“it’s entirely with the Feds now, so I don’t have the full story but I think it got pretty complicated once Mark Duro filed. There was a tiny window—if he’d waited another few days the case would have been flagged up the line—but he filed and got a partial payment. Apparently when a policy is beyond a certain dollar amount, they release some of it immediately and the balance a month later. So the rest is being held but, boy, he got a chunk.”
“Sorry. What?”
“What what?”
“Mark Duro did what?”
“Filed his claim. Got a partial payment.”
“I’m confused.”
Jackie looked at him closely. “I assume he’s out of the country at this point.”
She leaned over the counter to order her sandwich. Malcolm tried to remember if someone told him that Roddy was staying at his mother’s or if that was something he’d decided in his own mind.
“But the reason I thought of you was because I was at a rooftop bar the other weekend. There was this wall of ivy, and when I peeked around to see what it was hiding, there was this really ugly parking lot below. I thought of what you said about a rooftop bar at the Half Moon. I saw it’s under construction. You going for it?”
“Oh,” he said. This had been happening lately. “I sold, actually.”
“Are you opening a new place?”
“I’m still figuring it out,” Malcolm said, stepping forward for his food when they called his name.
But as she turned to leave, he stopped her. “Will they catch him?”
“Catch Duro?”
“Yeah.”
“Honestly? I doubt it. They’re interested in Duro only insofar as he might lead them to Waggoner, but from what I understand, it’s cheaper for the insurance company to just eat a fraudulent claim than hire an investigator to chase a ghost all over the world. Waggoner’s old partner is in prison. He insists that Waggoner is alive and probably living in Peru. They seem way more interested in that.”
Walking to his car a moment later, his coffee warming his hand, he scrolled through his phone to call Roddy’s uncle.
“He’s traveling,” the uncle said, and Malcolm heard frustration in his voice. “Backpacking through Asia. There’s some famous route. I honestly don’t know what to do about this kid, Mal. What’s he doing with his life? He’s lost. I tried to help him but he won’t listen. He warned us we wouldn’t hear from him for a while, but I can pass on a message when we get word?”
“No,” Malcolm said. “Don’t worry about it.”
* * *
Management offers came in but he declined. He bartended the wedding of a friend of a friend, and they handed him a nice stack of cash at the end of the night, so he worked two more weddings. He looked at a place in Yonkers that was for sale. Another in Riverside. Both were total wrecks. He didn’t even know why he’d gone to look. They were a long way from making that leap again. On the way home from the place in Riverside, he stopped to watch a Little League game on the field where he’d grown up playing. The boys were young, maybe nine or ten. In another life he’d be standing among the dads, coaching first base, maybe keeping the book. In another life he’d watch his boy walk up to the plate and hope he remembered the speech he’d given him about courage, the fortitude and mental strength it takes to keep trying your absolute best. He remembered stepping up to the plate as a kid, already having struck out twice, wondering what the hell he was doing, how embarrassing, standing up there by himself just so twenty kids could watch him whiff again. And then, a moment later, connecting, the perfect thwack of bat to ball, the feeling of rightness in the palms of his hands as the ball flew down the third base line.
* * *
“Are you happy?” he asked Jess one night after she came home from work and changed into leggings and a hoodie. He made salads and had roasted a chicken. It was Memorial Day weekend, warm; they decided to eat outside. It was the exact question she had asked him years ago and he hadn’t known what she meant. He told himself on the day she came home that whenever he was in doubt, he’d ask.
“I think so,” she said. “I’m working on it. I don’t regret being here if that’s what you mean.”
But it wasn’t what he meant, exactly.
“Do you ever think about what Tripp pulled off?”
Malcolm had been checking the papers to find out if there was news of his arrest. He googled Charles Waggoner and Mark Duro and Roddy Horan almost daily. He searched Tripp Waggoner and Roderick Horan and also Rodney because he’d never asked what Roddy was short for. He searched Tripp’s company. He tried to understand Tripp’s crimes.
Jess looked surprised. “No. Do you?”
“All the time. Almost from the moment I wake up until the moment I fall asleep. He has a totally different life now, wherever he is. We would have heard if he’d been caught.” He kept expecting to see Roddy’s face on the news. His dumb Tshirts. He kept thinking of how disappointed his uncle would be, how he’d decide that the kid’s father was right about him after all.
“You really do?”
“Yup.”
“You have to pay attention to that.”
“I know. I think that’s what I’m getting at.”
* * *
And then, the first week of June, he was at his mother’s trying to remove some stubborn vines from her side yard when out of nowhere he thought of Adrian Walsh. He went inside to get a glass of water, and as he drank it, he looked through recents on his phone until he found Adrian’s number.
“Malcolm?” Adrian said when he picked up. “About time. I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”
Malcolm liked Adrian and had no idea why it took him so long to return his call. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s been a crazy few months. But I saw your place in Neat and I wanted to say congratulations. How cool is that?”
“That’s what I was calling about. But now it might be too late.”