Getaway

[CHAPTER EIGHTEEN]

The last year with Tom, she’d promised herself that she was going to make some changes. It wasn’t enough, the way she’d been living; she wasn’t doing enough, wasn’t truly engaged in anything. She’d go back to school, maybe. Get more serious about the photography again. Or go in a completely different direction. Adopt a kid-someone who needed her, whom she could care for. Volunteer to do something, something hard and meaningful. Dig wells in Africa. Build orphanages in Peru. She’d drag Tom into counseling, and if he wouldn’t go or it didn’t help, maybe she’d leave him. What was even keeping them together anymore?

She was going to make some changes, she really was. As soon as things calmed down a little. When Tom’s business had improved.

When she figured out what it was she really wanted to be when she grew up.

Then Tom had died, and the changes weren’t choices anymore.

“Hey there, Michelle.”

“Hi, Ted.”

“Just wanted to touch base,” he said. “It’s been a couple days since we’ve talked.”

As usual, he’d called her early in the morning, six-thirty Vallarta time. He probably did it to keep her off balance, get to her before she’d had a chance to talk to anyone else, when she was still unused to speaking.

“I haven’t seen Danny, if that’s what you want to know.”

“Well, aren’t we cranky this morning?”

“You better fucking believe I’m cranky,” she spit out before she could stop herself. “Did you hear about Ned? Somebody lit him on fire. Like… like a fucking birthday candle.”

“Yeah, I heard about it. Listen, we don’t know who did it. It might not have anything to do with-”

“Oh, come on, Gary. He talks to Danny. I tell you. And the next day he’s dead.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line, then a raspy breath. “See, this is why we do the things we do, Michelle. I know you’ve felt… well, pretty put out by all this. But this is what’s at stake. The people we’re up against, this is what they do. You need to understand that.”

Michelle lay on her bed, holding her iPhone at arm’s length. “I do understand,” she finally said. “But you can’t expect me to go up against people who do this kind of thing. I’m not a cop or a spy. I’m just…”

A housewife, she almost said. That wasn’t really who she was, was it?

“Sure, Michelle. I hear what you’re saying. But you’re not going to be in any danger as long as you keep doing exactly what I tell you to do. Just give me another week, okay? Can you do that? I promise you, that’ll be the end of it. And you’ll be compensated for it. Trust me on that.” A snorted laugh. “Check your accounts in a couple of hours.”

After Tom died, she’d figured it out. How he’d used a credit card to put money into the household account. How he’d used another card to pay the first one off. Frantically moved money from one account to the other. Kept up appearances, while the mortgage went into default.

It was, on a much larger scale, what he’d done with his business.

Some of what Tom had told her was true. Financing on a project had fallen through, like he said, and he’d made some bad investments. A hedge fund was involved, the assets of which were “rehypothecated,” whatever that meant.

He hadn’t told her the rest. That he’d counted on the housing market’s continuing to rise to make up the difference, and when the bubble had started to deflate, how he’d taken clients’ money that was supposed to be reinvested into other real estate and instead used it to pay off clients he already owed.

Her lawyer had tried to explain it to her. How what Tom had done was something between a Ponzi scheme and a shell game. He’d started drawing a diagram, with various investment funds and projects, holding companies, warehouse lenders, brokers, “holders in due course,” “asset-backed pass-throughs,” “tranches.”

“Do you actually understand all this?” she’d finally asked him.

“Are you kidding?” he’d said. “No one does. Not even the guys who invented this stuff.”

The beach was brutally hot. She’d already gone into the water twice to cool off. The second time she stayed in awhile. Bobbed up and down in the surf, thoughts circling in her head like they were caught in some kind of whirlpool.

A week. Would that really be the end of it? How did she know that Gary wouldn’t just bury the evidence when he was done with her, like he’d threatened to do?

They find all kinds of things up at that dump!

When she retrieved her bag with her wallet and cell phone from behind the bar, she saw that she’d missed a call.

Unknown caller. A U.S. number, area code 561. No message.

Wrong number?

Her finger hovered over the touchscreen.

She tapped the number.

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice. Unfamiliar. American, she thought.

“You called me?”

A throaty giggle. “I did.”

“Who is this?”

“Emma. We met at María’s party.”

“Oh.” Michelle remembered her now, the pretty woman with the forties pinup look.

The one whose father Daniel worked for.

“Right,” Michelle said. “How nice of you to call.”

“Are you busy tonight? I thought we could get together for drinks. And conversation.”

Michelle hesitated.

It was one thing, she thought, to risk going over to Charlie’s. Charlie, whom she’d had no real reason to suspect of any involvement in the craziness that had somehow taken over her life.

Emma, however, she’d encountered in the thick of it, at María’s party.

“I’m not sure if-”

“Oh, come on,” Emma said. “Just meet me for a drink. It’ll be fun. Besides…”

There was a burst of music on the other end of the line, then silence, like someone had turned down a radio.

“I can tell you some things you need to know.”