“Ma’am,” he said as he continued to mop up puddles of coffee with some ineffectively thin paper towels, “I’ve been on duty all night. And I relieved a man named Ernie who is about five-two, weighs about a buck-ten soaking wet, and is bald. So, I’m not quite sure who you’re talkin’ about.”
“No, the woman, who was here, I don’t know, like an hour and a half ago. She was reading a newspaper. Sitting exactly where you are now.”
The man narrowed his eyes at me and took in my whole appearance. He gave an impatient huff, like answering nonsensical questions from annoying strangers was just another perk of manning a street booth outside the prison in the jungle that was Manhattan. “My shift started three hours ago. I’ve been right here, in this exact seat, from the moment I clocked in.”
“I don’t understand. I was released from this prison, didn’t have a ride, and she said it was against policy for her to call me a taxi. So instead, she handed me a business card and sent me on a wild-goose chase.”
“Look, young lady, I don’t know who you spoke to, but I can call you a cab right now, it ain’t against any policy we have, and I’ve worked here for more than thirty years.”
This didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t have dreamed it or made it up. I had, no have, the card she gave me. I called the number. I ended up at Gabe’s front door. That all really happened. So what the ever-loving hell was going on?!
I pushed in closer to the window, practically fogging it with my breath as I continued, “Are you sure you can’t think of anyone that fits the description I gave you? I need to know who it was I spoke with.”
He just shook his head and shrugged, reaching for the phone. “So, do you need help getting home or not?”
I held up my ink-stained hands as the emotion and frustration welled deep in my chest. Tears were springing to my eyes and the guard’s posture softened as I explained, “Yes, I do . . . but I don’t have any money on me.”
The old man set his lips into a sympathetic half-moon and reached into his back pocket for a tattered brown leather wallet, from which he drew a familiar yellow MetroCard with blue writing and slid it through the slot in the tempered glass window.
“I don’t think it has all that much on it, to be honest, but should be enough for one ride,” he offered. “Merry Christmas. Now get yourself home safe, ya hear?” He smiled as he returned his wallet to his back pocket, resituated himself on his seat, and resumed sipping his coffee.
I clutched the card firmly against my chest and looked back at the prison gate, the one I’d emerged from only a couple of hours earlier. I exhaled, confusion and fatigue hitting with the force of a one-two punch from a prizefighter, and nodded. “Thank you, sir, and Merry Christmas to you too.”
Chapter Six
After sleeping for eighteen hours straight, and then spending almost another week in bed both out of sheer exhaustion and not wanting to face reality beyond my duvet, I found myself being led through the tight maze of hallways and cubicles of my defense lawyer’s firm, Webber, Wyse & Associates.
My father used to say rock bottom will teach you the lessons the mountaintops never could. Throughout my whole relationship with Adam, I was Maria-freakin’–von Trapp twirling through the highest peaks of the Swiss Alps. And now, here I was, alone in my defense attorney’s office in the deepest trench of the valley, the lessons almost burying me alive. As tempting as it was to pull a Scarlett O’Hara and punt every single one of my problems to tomorrow (which I actually tried to do for the past week while I wallowed in bed), unfortunately, that just wasn’t an option anymore.
“Can I get you anything, Ms. Lawrence? Coffee? Tea? Water?” a smartly dressed assistant asked.
A pile of Xanax? “No, thank you. I’m fine.”
“Mrs. Webber should be joining you shortly,” he said, closing the door softly behind him.
I nodded and crossed the room to the window. It was a cold but clear day, and you could see straight across the river to Jersey City.
“If you arch your neck a little bit to the right, you can see the Statue of Liberty,” said a voice from the doorway. I pivoted sideways as directed and looked out to the famous New York monument in all her spectacular glory.
Mrs. Webber set a coffee and stack of papers down on a large mahogany desk. “I waited close to fifteen years for a partner to retire and this office to open up. I jumped on it the first chance I got.”
“I can certainly see why,” I said, taking a seat across from her, noting that we were more than thirty stories high—just perfect if I felt the need to leap out the window to dodge this endless nightmare.
“I’m glad you called me. It took a few days to sort through the charges, but I cashed in a few favors and think I have the whole of it now that the indictments against Adam have been filed. The holidays caused a bit of a backlog.”
I hesitated, not certain I wanted to hear the answer, but in spite of myself asked, “And the charges against me?”
“I’ll get to those, but let’s start with Mr. McDaniels, a.k.a. Mr. Daulton, a.k.a. Mr. Wright, a.k.a. Mr. Fields . . .”
My head was spinning, but all I could think of was the unbelievably annoying Lou Bega song “Mambo No. 5” . . . A little bit of Daulton in my life, a little McDaniels by my side, a little bit of Fields in his prime, a little bit of Adam serving time.
“Is this for real? Just how many aliases does he have?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around which one of his many faux personas I’d fallen in love with.
“Just one more, Mr. Oldham. He’s been using different names and different social security numbers as a means to secure loans.” She looked up from the stack and sighed. “For simplicity’s sake, I’ll just refer to him as Adam. It seems Adam’s been charged with several federal crimes. One count of conspiracy, two counts of mail fraud, four counts of wire fraud, four counts of money laundering, and several violations of the Senior Citizens Against Marketing Scams Act of 1994, all of which carry fairly hefty federal sentencing guidelines.”
Somewhere after the words money laundering I lost count of the charges. I closed my eyes and uttered, “Can you just give it to me straight? In layman’s terms, please?”
She sighed and allowed her face to show more sympathy than I’d ever seen between lawyers and their clients on TV. “Your fiancé was part of a very sophisticated ring of scammers that operated multistate telemarketing and in-person sales teams who knowingly and intentionally sold their victims, mostly close-to-retirement small business owners, nonexistent internet marketing services.”