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36

Bern spent a moment punishing himself by revisiting the old man’s traps in orderly succession: the offer of a job, a big salary, the contractual guarantee that he’d inherit fifty-one percent of the company if it remained solvent for two years after his grandfather’s death. The requirement that he and Shirley sign over their piss-poor savings to a company worth several hundred million dollars…

Now this.

Bern balled his fist and hit himself on the side of the head. Really fucking dumb, that’s how dumb he could be. He’d been suspicious of his grandfather’s generosity from the first. The grandfather who Bern, at the age of thirteen, had tried to kill by sneaking up from behind with a ball-peen hammer. The grandfather who, more than once, referred to him as “a failed experiment,” and “an embarrassment to the race.” But he’d gone ahead and accepted the deal anyway.

Bern was thinking: I am fucked. I am an embarrassment to the race.

He’d probably been adopted from some half-wit floozy, courtesy of a little town in southern Indiana where he was related to a whole population of village idiots, including his long-lost retard brother, Moe.

Bern turned his face to the ceiling and screamed, “Why are you doing this to me?!”

He stood, knocking over the chair, lifted the beer mug and shattered it against the wall. Marlissa Dorn stared at him from the table. He was about to lose everything because of this woman’s relative, some lawsuit-happy bitch named Mildred Engle. Bern grabbed the photo, balled it into a wad—You whore!—and hurled it at the window.

His hands were sweating.

He felt a roaring pain in his head. Bern paced for a few minutes, and got another beer, before he took the letter and finished reading.

Jason wanted him to contact the lawsuit-happy bitch and attempt to negotiate a settlement. “Treat her with respect, charm her if you can,” the twerp suggested. Bern had until the family’s Appleton Christmas reunion. That would give the board time to agree on the best method of dissolving the company.

We must have the original promissory notes. Without them, Ms. Engle has no claim. She lives on Sanibel Island, Gulf Drive, at an estate named Southwind…

Bern crumpled the letter and punted it like a football—and damn near fell on his ass, he was so furious.

Perfect.

Oh, he’d charm the bitch, all right. She was threatening to ruin his life with some damn old pieces of paper? An introduction to a game named Caveman, that’s what the woman needed. Have an oil drum open and ready, the Viking packed, waiting to cruise to his own private island. Get the woman naked, all worked up, then jam her in the barrel while she was still alive…

Bern stopped, head cocked, then looked out the condo’s front window. A small boat was coming down the canal, no lights. Looked like a mullet boat.

The mood he was in, he hoped it was somebody coming to rob the place. He got his Luger, checked to see if it was loaded, and rushed outside ready to shoot the shit out of whoever it was. Say the wrong word, give him any lip at all, and bang.

Turned out to be Arlis what’s his name, the old man they’d just fired, bringing Augie and his worthless butt-buddy, Oswald, home from Dinkin’s Bay.

The Viking must have broken down or run out of fuel.

Why else would the little shit need a ride from Sanibel?

A rlis Futch was a perfect example of someone who got his rocks off being negative. The old man sat by the seawall in his shitty-looking mullet boat, laughing like a loon, while Augie told Bern that the nerd biologist, Ford, and his Dinkin’s Bay buddies had stolen the Viking from them.

“Did you call the cops?” Bern asked.

Augie was in a smart-ass mood after a long day on the water, almost drowning, and also aware he was being laughed at. Old man Futch had been riding his ass relentlessly for the last hour. “Call the cops and tell them what?” he asked Bern. “Tell them that they salvaged the same boat legally that we salvaged illegally? Fuck ’em. They stole the Viking from us, I’ll steal it back. I’ve got a spare set of keys in my condo.”

Bern didn’t grab the snotty little brat, or slap him as he had before. He stepped and raised his left hand, causing Augie to flinch, then hit him in the face with his fist, a crushing overhand right that busted the kid’s nose flat, opening flesh cheek to eye.

“You oversized bully. You son of a bitch, you hurt him!” Trippe Oswald, the bubble-butted twerp, showed some spunk for once, kneeling beside Augie, who hadn’t moved except for a muscle spasm that was causing his right foot to twitch.

Bern was still furious, having just learned that everything he owned was about to go down the shitter because of promissory notes in the possession of some old lady. Now Augie was telling him his last hope of escape, the Viking, was gone?

“Where’s the key to Augie’s condo? Don’t lie to me, you little fairy, where’s he keep it?”

Oswald didn’t answer, he was so scared.

“Goddamn you, I am about at the end of my rope. Where?”

Bern grabbed Oswald by the T-shirt, the German Luger in his hand now, the gun he’d grabbed thinking the boat with no lights coming down the canal was a robber, wanting to shoot somebody. Anybody.

Oswald formed words. “All our shit’s on the Viking, man. Keys, wallets, everything. It wasn’t our fault!” Bern drew back the Luger as if to pistol-whip him. “But there’s another key! At Augie’s condo, the key to the door’s hidden under a flowerpot! The boat key is somewhere in his room.”

Bern wanted to shoot the disgusting little snitch. But old man Arlis Futch was there, still watching and laughing. Probably for the best, too. Knocking Augie unconscious would be tough enough to explain at the Christmas reunion in Appleton. But then killing his boyfriend?

That kind of talk, an ex–professional football player didn’t need.

Instead, Bern smacked Oswald aside the head with the pistol. Not hard, but the snitch went down like he’d been poleaxed, looking like he was unconscious but was faking it.

The old man thought that was hilarious.

Bern swung the pistol at Futch and held it there, taking aim. The old man saw it but continued to laugh. Forced himself to laugh for a while longer so Bern could see that if he stopped, it was only because he wanted to.

Arlis Futch stopped laughing a moment later, and said in a low voice, “Go ahead and shoot, you fat fuck. Being old’s a lot scarier than dying. You’d be doing me a favor.” And meant it. Sounding like he had been a serious hard-ass in his younger years.

Then said, looking at the marina docks, all the boats sitting near the collapsed barn, “You shot and murdered Javier? I heard about it on the VHF. Did you, you fat asshole?”

Bern was thinking: I squeeze the trigger, then tell the cops the old bastard was attacking me.

But two corpses in one day?

That would only produce more trouble, more bad luck, which was typical of all the negative crap he’d been dealing with lately.

The old man wouldn’t shut up. “If it turns out you murdered a fisherman, what you better do, boy, is pack your shit and run back to whatever hole you crawled out of. Don’t be surprised if someone torches this place in the next few days. The way I picture it, you’ll be tied up inside one of the buildings when we light the match. All that fat you got, I bet you sputter!”

A very negative guy, this Cracker fisherman. Scary, too, for an old man.

B ern left Arlis Futch in the boat, and Oswald to tend to Augie, while he drove his Beamer to Augie’s condo. The place was a mess: crushed beer cans, ashtrays, porno DVDs. Bern found the keys to the Viking in Augie’s room. He looked around: a king-sized water bed, half the closet filled with Oswald’s clothes, some weird-looking stuff in a jar by the nightstand.

He also found several FedEx envelopes, addressed to Augie from Jason Goddard. It appeared that Augie received a package every time Bern did—but different stuff inside, cover letters included.

An example:

…confidentially, your great-grandfather asked me to send his personal effects, along with his reassurance that your inheritance will be substantially increased once your uncle, Bernard Heller, is proven incompetent.

Once our board is convinced…

So…the little bastard had been sabotaging him all along; Jason, too—which explained a lot.

The promissory notes were mentioned. They were real, not bullshit. Soon to be in the possession of the old lady who was living on Sanibel. None of this too surprising.

In another FedEx envelope, though, was a major shocker—as shocking as the passport that verified his grandfather was a Jew.

The envelope contained yet another passport, plus a letter. They confirmed his grandfather wasn’t a Jew.

Bern took the passport, and all the papers—screw Augie, screw Jason Goddard. Let the whole family know the truth. Spring it on them at the Appleton reunion and watch their faces. See how many would be surprised.

Bern’s guess: Zero.

T he next morning, Sunday, Bern went to church before kicking back to watch the Packers play Cleveland, mostly so Shirley wouldn’t call and have a reason to bitch at him, but also because he decided it wouldn’t hurt to try to change his life by being more positive.

This run of bad luck was getting scary. He’d awoken in the middle of the night, his heart pounding, feeling as if he was suffocating. His world was collapsing around him, so maybe thinking positive would help.

His football coaches had often said that: Think positive. Visualize. Surround yourself with positive people.

There. That was another possible cause for all this trouble. He was surrounded by negative people.

Moe, being an uneducated redneck, was not a positive thinker, even though he knew it was a role business types were supposed to play. Augie, his own nephew, had been stabbing him in the back all along. His grandfather? Whatever the opposite of positive was (negative wasn’t strong enough), he was that to the umpteenth degree.

Evil. That came closer.

Bern went to the Lutheran church in Cape Coral, the one on Chiquita, although he actually wanted to attend Temple Beth Shalom, which was closer, in fact, because it was off Del Prado.

Wanted to attend Temple despite finding out the truth about his grandfather: He not only wasn’t Jewish, he had been a card-carrying Nazi, one of the elite. A Nazi medical student and research assistant who, in 1944, saved his own skin by catching a Swiss freighter to Miami.

Finally, something that really did explain why the old man was such a world-class asshole.

Good to know. But also kind of disappointing.

The last few days, Bern had gotten into it—the idea of being Jewish. Reading the history, finding out they had some famous athletes—even an all-time great list that he, as a former All Big Ten lineman, might have had a shot at. So he thought, screw it, he’d go to Temple anyway, no one else knew the truth, plus it was yet another way to get back at his grandfather.

Temple Beth Shalom, however, was closed on Sundays, according to the nice Jewish ladies who were there setting up for a charity bake sale. Quite a surprise, but it made the religion even more attractive, Saturday being a more logical day to worship because Sunday, of course, was when the NFL played.

It was a positive start to the day.

All that week, Bern worked at it. Staying positive. Visualizing. He even wrote down a list of goals. The promissory notes—he had to get those. They were his only protection. Jason Goddard and the corporate directors could fire him, dissolve the land company, but it wouldn’t matter if Bern had the loan promissories in his possession.

Those old loan contracts were all the leverage he needed.

That meant several trips to Sanibel Island to check out the lady’s residence, Southwind. Which he did, and got his first look at Mildred Engle. Goddamn, she was better looking than he expected. A lot better looking.

Sanibel—that’s where the Viking was, too. Handy. More positive visualization: him on the Viking, water nice and calm, sailing off to an island where there wasn’t so much pressure he woke up at night, gagging for air, thinking he was having a heart attack.

Staying positive meant waiting patiently until the Sanibel lady had the papers in her possession—they were being shipped down from New York, according to Jason. It meant visiting Augie in the hospital, acting like he was sorry he’d busted the asshole’s jaw. Which he wasn’t, but it gave Bern an opportunity to inform Augie that if he squealed to Jason, he, Bern, would tell the family about Oswald and the sleeping arrangements at Augie’s condo.

Staying positive also meant keeping an eye on Moe. Not only was Moe a very negative person, even for a redneck, he was also a very weak person.

On Monday and Tuesday, cops showed up unexpectedly at the marina, saying they wanted to ask the Hoosier “just a few more questions.” Moe was so scared his hands shook when he tried to light a cigarette.

Moe left work early those days, Bern noted, probably so he could find a good parking spot at the Sandy Hook and start drinking early.

On Thursday, cops arrived at the marina once again, but this time didn’t ask to speak to Moe, who wasn’t around, anyway. Plainclothes cops. Bern watched them stroll around the marina property, pausing an uncomfortably long time near the hill where Bern had seeded grass after burying two fifty-gallon drums containing women who hadn’t been worth the little bit of fun he got out of them.

Shit.

Talk about scary.

On Saturday, Moe called and asked Bern, “Did you hear about the hurricane warning? I’m gonna stay home today and help the girlfriend board up her windows because of the storm. Trailers don’t do good in storms, and she’s nervous. It’s supposed to be here Monday night or Tuesday.”

Using his friendly voice, showing a smile, Bern had replied, “Your fiancée’s residence? You do whatever it takes to make sure that young lady’s safe. We want our administrative people happy, meaning you, mister.” But thinking that Moe was lying again. It had been storming nonstop for nearly ten days, so what was the big deal?

They call this place the Sunshine State?

All it ever did in Florida was rain and blow until about noon, which is when the ground heated up like a sauna bath.

Bern reminded Moe that commercial fishermen were saying the storm wasn’t going to be bad; that TV stations were full of baloney, telling people to evacuate when there was no reason.

Moe said he wanted to board windows, anyway—sounding more nervous than his trailer-trash girlfriend could have possibly been.

The Hoosier was telling the cops stuff, that’s what Bern was afraid of. Maybe the truth about the Cuban. Maybe the truth about what was to be found packed in oil if authorities dug in the right place.

Bern tried to stay positive, though. Went to church the next day, Sunday, second week in a row.

On Monday, the last week of September, Bern decided there was yet another positive step he should take. Something that might give him peace of mind. He’d get Moe alone and find out the truth.