My mind leaps ahead to the summer after my freshman year in college. Tommy and I are sitting in the backyard, watching our father cooking on the grill and coughing. I tell Tommy I’m transferring to Millersville, the local state college, so I can help care for Dad. For the next three years, I live at home, and Tommy and I together share the burden of caring for our father. We are both there when he passes, without our help. Then Tommy enlists in the military, becomes a Navy SEAL. He serves heroically, risking his life in one dangerous black-ops mission after another. When he accepts his discharge, the other men in his unit lament the loss of their best man. Tommy comes home, and I take a few weeks off from my job as an assistant district attorney to vacation with him somewhere hot and hopping with other young people. Then Tommy heads off to the federal law-enforcement training center to become a federal agent. He falls in love with a woman he meets undercover, a frank-talking Italian with a crooked smile and a black belt in kickboxing. They get married, have three boys—roughnecks like their father.
I meet and marry Piper Gray. She supports me in my career as an assistant district attorney. The years roll by, and I advance in the prosecutor’s office. Gabby does well in school, and Piper and I share a strong and happy marriage. We go on long vacations, have date nights, talk in bed after we make love. I eventually jump ship to the defense side, but I give my staff plenty of warning to prepare themselves. And I make sure to preserve plenty of time for Gabby and for Piper.
On the straight and narrow, Tommy never becomes a mule for the crooked policemen. Never meets Jennifer Yamura to tell her about the drug ring. And Jennifer herself, having no story to print, never winds up at the center of a storm, never has need of a slick criminal-defense attorney, and never ends up dead on the stairs.
These visions from an alternate life only double my anguish over what I have done. I plant my elbows on my desk, bury my face in my hands. My eyes flood.
“I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”
Sometime later, I pass out. In the morning I awaken, still at my desk, to the distinct feeling that I’m being watched. I lift my throbbing head, look around. The light stinging my eyes, I bring Piper into focus. She’s standing in the doorway, a cup of coffee in her hands. She studies me, then moves into the room, sits down across the desk, tentatively slides the cup to me. “Here,” she says.
I shake my head slowly. I’m sorry—that’s what I want to say, but my throat is so raw and dry I can’t push the words out. So I cough, reach for the cup, and take a sip of coffee.
“I can only imagine what you’re feeling,” Piper says. “But try to remember . . . Tommy was so young. He did what he felt was the right thing to do. And it broke him. It shattered him into pieces.”
I look across the desk at Piper and then down at my cup of coffee, nodding. “I know.”
“You have to forgive him, Mick.”
My eyes begin to tear up again. “There’s nothing to forgive. He did the right thing.”
“Then you tell him so.”
I slide my hand across the desk, reaching for Piper. She takes it in her own.
“Mick,” she says, her eyes filled with what seems to me to be sadness, bottomless sadness. I push myself off my chair, walk around the desk to meet my wife. Piper stands, reaches around me as I kiss her forehead, caress her hair, more tenderness between us than we’ve shared for years.
“Tommy’s going to be all right,” I promise. “We’re all going to be all right.”
Piper looks up at me, forces a smile. She lowers her head against my chest, and I feel a shiver run through her.
“Daddy, you look awful!”
“Gabby!” Piper and I shout in unison, and Piper adds, “How many times have I told you not to sneak up?” Gabby’s face contorts like she’s going to cry until she sees Piper smiling, and we all begin to laugh.
Seeing that she’s brought the house down, Gabrielle goes on. “You smell really bad, too. You should go get a shower.”
I look at Piper, who says, “Yeah, you really should.”
So I do. And when I’m done, I join my wife and daughter in the kitchen, and we eat a big breakfast and tell stories and laugh, and I do something I haven’t done in years. I take a weekday off from work.
21
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11
The clock on my dashboard reads 7:15 p.m. Tomorrow, I am meeting Anna Groszek. Tonight, I visit David Hanson to pick up the money. One of the doors to his four-car garage opens, and I pull inside. Once my car is stopped, I hear the garage door close behind me. I get out, look around. To my right is David’s black BMW 760Li and, beyond it, a gray two-door Bentley Continental GT. To my left is a red Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet. I know there’s another garage on the property where David keeps his super-high-end cars.
What I don’t see is David. Instead, to my surprise, I spot Marcie at the back of the garage. “Something came up at the last minute, and David had to leave,” she says. “You’ll be happy to know he’s driving my Audi A6,” she adds. “It’s white and small. He hates it.”
She’s referring to the warning I gave David about not driving any of his sportier or more luxurious cars. I don’t want potential jurors to see a picture of him in the newspaper climbing out of a Lamborghini.
I remain standing next to my car, unsure what to do, until Marcie taps one of the two black Tumi suitcases sitting on the floor next to her. “I think these are what you came for.” With that, Marcie extends the handle and pulls one of the two wheeled bags to the back of my car. I walk over and get the other suitcase, then join her by the trunk. I press the button on my electronic key, and the trunk opens. I lower the handles on the two bags and deposit them into the trunk, then close the lid.
“Just so you know,” Marcie says. “Coming up with this much cash isn’t as easy as you’d think. David had to take the company jet so he could secretly leave the country and fly to the Caribbean and Mexico. He pulled the first two million from numbered accounts in Grand Cayman. The second half he ‘borrowed’ from some HWI slush fund in Mexico.” Marcie smiles at the last part, probably thinking that David’s withdrawal in some way put the screws to Edwin.
I don’t know what to say to this. I’ve seen it speculated that David’s net worth is close to $100 million. The amount I told David he had to turn over is a small fraction of that. Still, I guess it would be a chore to convert millions of dollars from entries on a balance sheet into cash.
Marcie and I stand face-to-face for a long minute. Then she smiles and asks if I can stay for a bit. I hesitate, but she says, “Come on. I just gave you two suitcases full of money; the least you can do is share a drink with me.” She turns, and I follow her out the door and across the roofed pathway leading to the large mudroom at the back of the house. Marcie takes off her jacket, hangs it on a hook, and slips off her shoes. “Come on,” she says again and leads me down a long hall to the great staircase by the front door.
We ascend the steps to the second floor, walk down another long hallway. Marcie opens a door to what she tells me is her personal sitting room. “Luxurious” doesn’t do the space justice—it’s like a beige-and-tan fantasy out of the Arabian Nights: plush wall-to-wall carpet; low-to-the-ground, U-shaped Roche Bobois sofa; six-foot candle stands; walls adorned with pastel paintings.
“I designed it myself.”