Look Closer

51

Saturday, October 22, 2022

You wanted the weekend to think, Lauren, and I’ve been doing some thinking, too. I’ve decided to show you how important you are to me. I’m going to do as you ask. I’m going to file for divorce now, before November 3. It will cut off Vicky’s marital right to the money.

I can’t wait to tell you. I wish I could do it now. But I know you went up to Wisconsin this weekend, and I know you wouldn’t have brought your pink phone. So I’ll have to wait until Monday. I can’t wait to start a life with you!

Sunday, October 23, 2022

I can’t do it. Whatever I tell myself, I picture telling Vicky, and I picture the look on her face, and I can’t betray her like that. The symbolism alone, that I made a point of getting that divorce petition filed just under the deadline. It sounds so diabolical and spiteful. I can’t do it. I can’t crush Vicky like that.

I know you’ll understand. I hope you’ll understand. You’ll understand. Or you’re not the person I thought you were.

Monday, October 24, 2022

You wanted to meet on neutral ground, the south end of the parking lot at the Grace Country Club, which I took as a bad sign.

I arrived first, early, sweating despite the cool morning air, my heart drumming. But I was hopeful. Deep down, I felt sure you’d understand, even if you didn’t like it. And I know you don’t care about the money itself, but even if I give Vicky half, that’s still ten million dollars! That’s more money than anyone needs.

Your car pulled up and parked next to mine. When you got out, you looked tired. You looked . . . different, couldn’t really put my finger on it.

I had nothing to say. The ball was in your court. You looked like you were about to cry.

“Whatever you have to say, it’s okay,” I said, touching your arm.

You let out a humorless laugh and wiped a tear from your cheek. “Sure about that?” you said.

“I’m sure.” I was sure. Or at least I thought I was.

“I’m pregnant,” you said.

52 Simon

Dawn. I couldn’t sleep, with everything coming to a head now, with the cliff fast approaching. I’m drawing up the document myself. It’s not rocket science, after all. I’m a lawyer, and I know all the information, and it’s not that difficult to figure out the elements of a cause of action to terminate a marriage. You’re married, you don’t want to be anymore, you tried to make it work, and it’s not going to work.

I slurp some coffee and review what I have so far:

“Irreconcilable differences,” the phrase that launched a thousand ships, the legal term that describes in bland terms the countless different complexities that compel a couple once in love to go their separate ways.

“I’m not right for you,” Vicky said, the first time I proposed to her, though in hindsight, I think she meant that I wasn’t right for her. “Our differences would be irreconcilable,” she might as well have said. And she would have been right.

I walk down the hallway from my home office to the bedroom. Vicky is asleep, her face buried in the pillow.

“The best part of my life is you,” my mother said to me on what ended up being the last day I saw her alive, sitting in our kitchen, her wheelchair parked next to the dinner table. It was difficult for her to speak. It came out like her tongue was heavy, like she was intoxicated, which might not have been far from the truth if you consider the painkillers she was taking.

I took her hands and kissed them. “The best part of my life is you.”

She made a disapproving sound, closed her eyes, and shook her head. “I hope one day . . . that isn’t true. Prom—promise me . . . you’ll have children. You’ll never know . . . such love.”

“Sure, Mom, I’m sure I will,” I said, having no idea she was giving me parting advice. Looking back, it should have been more obvious to me.

At that point, at age nineteen, the concept of having a serious relationship, much less children, was not on my immediate horizon. My one and only attempt at romance, with Lauren, had failed in spectacular fashion. I hadn’t just gotten my hand too close to the stove. I’d dropped my hand flat on the burner and watched it sizzle. So I gave my mother those reassurances without much feeling. Sure, I’d have kids. Yeah, sure, someday . . .

She was no longer herself, no longer that boisterous, energetic soul with the wide smile and singsong voice and infectious laugh. But the stroke hadn’t robbed her of all her mental faculties. She knew when she was being coddled, dismissed with empty words.

Her weak right hand gripped mine with force. “Promise . . . me.”

“Okay, I promise, Mom. I promise I’ll have kids.”

I do want children. I told Vicky that the first time I proposed to her. I gave her a little speech, how I wanted to marry her and have babies, to be a family that was honest and open and took care of each other. Us against the world—a team, a mighty, happy team.

And her words: “I’m not right for you.” It took me too long to realize she was right.

I wish it could have been different for us, Vicky. I really do.

I return to the office and open my green journal.

Tuesday, October 25, 2022

I was beginning to think it would never happen, that the promise I made to my mother would never come true. I’d become okay with it, actually. Time had passed, I wasn’t getting any younger, as they say, and I came to think that my life was fine just the way it was.

You have redefined everything for me, Lauren. You have shown me what is possible. You’ve made me realize how much more I wanted from life.

I promise you this: I will do everything I can to make sure our child feels loved and protected. I will give you and our child everything I’m capable of giving.

You didn’t even have to say it, Lauren. Everything is different now. I’m editing the divorce petition right now. My lawyer needs me to fill in some personal information and details, but I’ll be sure to get it ready and filed before—yes, before—November 3.

Wednesday, November 2, to be precise, the day before, just one day before D-Day, Anniversary 10. I already have the date locked in with my lawyer. He couldn’t do it earlier, but that’s okay, one day before is just as good as one week before. We will finalize the divorce petition and file it.

It feels good, locking that in, cementing the plan.

You’re right, Lauren, about everything. I shouldn’t have to settle. I shouldn’t have to settle for someone who doesn’t love me. I shouldn’t have to settle for someone who refuses to have children.

And I shouldn’t have to give Vicky half the money. It’s not her money. It’s our money. Yours, mine, and the baby’s.

And you’re right about when I should break this to Vicky.

“Tell her after you’ve filed,” you said to me.

That hadn’t been my plan. “I shouldn’t tell her beforehand?”

“File it first,” you said. “Then tell her. Trust me.”

I guess that’s the old adage, right? Better to seek forgiveness than permission.

As I finish the entry in my green journal, I tap my phone to see the time.

“Oh, shit.”

It’s after seven. I’m late, very late for my eight a.m. class. I guess I got caught up in what I was doing.

I hurry out of the office, pass the bedroom, and peek in. Vicky is still asleep, a slight whistle in her breathing.

I do wish things had been different.

53 Vicky

I wake from a nightmare, the sound of an anguished cry fading away as I open my eyes. I pop up in bed and grab my phone. It’s nearly nine in the morning.

I stretch, use the bathroom, and walk out of the bedroom. Down the hall, the light is still on in Simon’s office. I can’t help but smile. He knows how much I hate wasting electricity, how much I pinch pennies, a vestige of years of living payday to payday. Sometimes, I think he leaves on lights just to needle me, a little joke.

I go downstairs to the kitchen. There is coffee, the remnants of a pot that Simon made when he first got up at the crack of dawn. Usually, he makes a fresh thermos that awaits me when I get up. And usually, his travel mug is gone.

This morning, no fresh coffee. And his travel mug is resting on the kitchen island, top off, empty. He must have lost track of time and hurried out the door. I thought I heard him bounding down the stairs in a rush. Simon hates, hates, hates being late.

I make my own coffee and carry a cup upstairs. Glance at that light on in Simon’s office.

When I enter his office, his personal laptop is open on the desk, a green notebook sitting next to it.

The screensaver is on, a cartoon of Uncle Sam as Pac-Man, Pac-Sam, gobbling up constitutional rights as he moves about the screen.

I sit down at the desk and tap the keyboard. The password box appears.

I don’t need to rummage through his sock drawer to find his list of passwords. I already know the password to his laptop.

It’s I_Love_Vicky.

54 Simon

After class, I walk to the Chicago Title & Trust Building. The usual routine, the Starbucks, sitting down in the lobby, powering on the phone, inserting the SIM card. At ten, I send a text:

She replies quickly:

The word “charming” is not a word usually associated with me. I reply:

She responds:

I text:

I shut off the phone, remove the SIM card, and close my eyes. We’re really doing this.

On my way back to my office at the law school, I see my favorite person coming from the other direction. On any given day, I’d rather eat bark off a tree than force myself to have a conversation with Dean Comstock.

But I’m not in the mood to run or hide. Not now.

His expression changes when he sees me.

“Hello there, Simon,” he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets, lest I be under the impression that a handshake is in our future. “Aren’t you full of surprises.”

We haven’t talked since I submitted all my materials in the closing hours of the application period. I would’ve loved to see the look on his face when he heard.

“I thought we had an understanding,” he says.

“I don’t remember ever agreeing to anything, Dean.”

“No, that’s right. But I thought you understood that I was looking out for your best interests. What with your . . .”

“My what? My sordid history?”

“Since you put it that way, yes.”

I glance around, as did he, making sure we are alone in the hallway. I lean in slightly and lower my voice. “You’re going to trash me to the faculty, Dean? That your plan?”

“Well, as I said before, Simon, in any kind of a close contest between applicants, people will naturally look for—”

“Tiebreakers, yes, I remember,” I say. “You and I both know I’m the better professor. I’m the better scholar. I’m the one who deserves the job.”

“You’re certainly entitled to your opinion.”

“So is everyone else. On the merits. On the merits, Dean. Not rumor or gossip or innuendo.”

“Well, Simon, I don’t dictate to the faculty what it should or should not deem relevant—”

“You don’t have the balls,” I say.

The dean draws back. “Say again?”

“Sure, I’ll say it again. You, Dean, do not have the balls.”

I’ll say this for the old chap, he has a good poker face. His eyes glisten and his jaw steels, but otherwise he keeps up a good front. He even lets out a small chuckle.

“My friend, do not make the mistake of underestimating me,” he says.

I pat him on the shoulder. “Funny,” I say. “I was just about to say the same thing to you.”

55 Christian

I come into work like every morning. A quick hello to my receptionist, Emily, and then I go into my office. As I am not actually a financial guy, I don’t really need this office, but appearances are appearances. Besides, I’ll go crazy spending the entire day at home every day. A change of scenery is nice.

Sometimes I do actually work. Though “work” isn’t checking the markets and forecasting investments; it’s scouting for targets and considering other cities for the next venture. But now that I’ve found Vicky and her twenty-one million dollars, I won’t need any other targets. I’m going to be done soon.

For Emily, a nineteen-year-old I found from a temp agency who is going to college part-time, I play the same role I play for Vicky, a rich, genius money guy who only has a few hugely wealthy clients. Most of these clients have been with me for years, I’ve explained, they live all around the world, and they have my personal cell number, so this office of mine downtown doesn’t really function as much of an office.

I imagine Emily thinks I’m one of those uber-rich, uber-brainy eccentrics for whom the expense of an office and receptionist is just pocket money, who just wants a place to call an office. But she doesn’t complain. Why would she? It’s a perfect fit for her. She has morning and night classes at DePaul and only works afternoons for me. She spends almost all her time doing homework at her desk. To keep up appearances, I let her pay the company’s few bills and give her research assignments now and then. But this job is a walk in the park for her.

Just after eleven, my phone rings. Not my regular cell phone. My burner, the one I use for Vicky. She doesn’t know that I have a special phone for her, but it’s necessary. Once I take her money, I need to cut off all connections between us, remove any trace of myself from her life, and hers from mine.

“I need to talk to you,” Vicky says, breathless.

“What’s up? You okay?”

“No, I am definitely not okay. Where are you?”

“At the office.”

“I don’t want to come to your office. Can we meet somewhere else?”

Vicky is standing in the alley by my garage when I pull my car in. She is dressed in a sweatshirt and blue jeans, no makeup, her hair a mess. I’ve never seen her like this. I don’t mind it—I actually dig the look—but the tight expression on her face is making me nervous.

She hikes a blue bag over her shoulder and says, “Upstairs,” when I get out of the car.

I follow her up the stairs to my apartment. She pulls a laptop and a green notebook out of her bag, places them on the kitchen table, and points at them like they’re kryptonite.

“He’s going . . . to leave me,” she says, her voice shaking. “He’s going to file for divorce before November . . . November third.”

“Wait, what?” I say. “Just . . . hold on a second.”

“‘Hold on a second’? Okay, I’ll hold on a second while that tramp steals Simon and his money. My money. My fucking money.”

“Who—who’s a tramp? Will you just—”

“Lauren,” she spits out. “Lauren Lemoyne. That skank he dated when he was a teenager. Remember?”

“Um, yeah, you said somebody broke his heart—”

“Well, apparently, she won it back. She’s back in town and they’re together and they’re going to get married!”

“I’m sure you’re overreacting.”

“I’m overreacting?” She opens the laptop, the screen dark, and types in a password. The screen comes alive.

It’s a court document. I’m not an attorney, but I’ve seen my share of divorce filings in my day, among the many women I’ve targeted. It says “Petition for Dissolution of Marriage,” the official phrasing. Simon Peter Dobias, petitioner, v. Victoria Lanier Dobias, respondent, in the Circuit Court of Cook County. “Irreconcilable differences have arisen between the parties that have caused the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage. Past efforts at reconciliation have failed, and future attempts at reconciliation would be impracticable.”

Fuck me. Simon’s divorcing Vicky.

“Still think I’m overreacting?”

“Hang on, hang on.”

I open the notebook with a green cover. Some kind of a diary, handwritten in pen. With dated entries. The first one, the Fourth of July.

“God, I can’t believe this,” Vicky says. “I am nine days away from our tenth anniversary. Nine days!”

I clear my throat and read from the first entry. “‘The whole reason I came to the club today, my first time in several years, was that I thought you might be at the Fourth of July festivities,’” I read. “‘I’d been thinking about you since that day in May—’”

“Oh, yeah, apparently he spots her on Michigan Avenue last May, and his pathetic little heart goes pitter-patter. And then he’s rehearsing lines in the mirror for when he sees her again.”

The next entry, July 15. Simon and Lauren are meeting at some café. “‘And then the kiss,’” I read aloud. “‘Had it been up to me to initiate it, I’m not sure it ever would have—’”

“Had it been up to him.” Vicky snorts. “It never would’ve been up to him. She set her sights on him. She gamed out this whole thing. She’s playing him like a fiddle. She wants his money!”

“You don’t know that,” I say. “Let’s—”

“Um, I think I do know that. Keep reading. Cut to the end if you like, so I don’t have to listen to more descriptions of that little slut spreading her legs for him and talking dirty to him and manipulating the shit out of him. She has him wrapped around her skanky little finger.”

I read the last few entries, sitting down now, the initial shock ending and a growing ache forming in the pit of my stomach.

“She’s pregnant?”

“That’s what she told Simon,” she says. “My ass, she’s pregnant.”

“You think she’s making that—”

“Anyone could say they’re pregnant. You read those last few diary entries? She’s trying to convince him to file for divorce before our tenth anniversary. And he keeps resisting. She keeps pushing, he keeps saying no. Then suddenly she’s pregnant? No way. No fucking way.” She shakes her head, a bitter smile on her face. “She knows that’s what’s splitting up Simon and me. I don’t want kids. He does. So when all else fails, she pulls the pregnant card, that conniving little—”

“Just let me read this, Vicky. Let me read all of it.”

“Read fast,” she says. “I don’t have much time.”

I read fast, trying to digest the highlights. The start of the romance, where Simon’s sounding like a lovestruck puppy. Lauren was his first love, apparently, as Vicky told me before. He’s acting like it on these pages. She broke his heart but came back to Chicago, nearly two decades later. Back to Chicago, to Grace Village, where she feels like she’s in a doomed marriage and so, apparently, does Simon.

I wonder how long it took her to get the goods on Simon’s trust money? Couldn’t have taken long. Says here she used to work at Simon’s dad’s law firm, so she must have known ol’ Teddy was loaded. And no doubt she learned at some point that Teddy was dead. She must have known early on that Simon had inherited a lot of money.

Oh, and then she turned on the charm.

By the sixteenth of August: “Do you want me to be your whore, Professor Dobias?”

The thirtieth of August, even Simon knows he’s hooked, he’s struggling with it: “Are you my addiction, Lauren?”

But still, Simon’s conscience is getting the better of him. Recounting, in the September 12 entry, how Teddy cheated on Simon’s mother, and how Simon was repeating the cycle. “I have become the man I despise.” Looks like he spilled all that to Lauren, and she must have sent him some cryptic text message on that pink phone he bought her, one of those we-have-to-talk messages that left Simon in agony until they met. And then, yep, Lauren is good—she said we won’t be cheating if we’re married!

Well done, Lauren. She let him dangle for a night about the prospect of losing her, wondering what he’d do without her, and then she springs the idea of marriage on him, making it seem like the idea actually came from him.

So then she had her hooks in him. Simon was on cloud nine. He was fantasizing about it. He was dreading telling Vicky, yes, but otherwise happier than he’d ever been.

Lauren was smart. She wasn’t too obvious about it. She waited until mid-October, just last week, to start talking about the trust money.

And then, these last entries, the end of last week and this week. Vicky’s read on this is right. Simon was agonizing over when to file the divorce petition. Lauren was giving it the old college try, coming on pretty strong at times. “You two aren’t in love and you never were,” Lauren said. “She never loved you, Simon. She needed someone to take care of her. And you did. And now she’s eyeballing that trust money that’s so close she can taste it.”

Well, Lauren wasn’t wrong about that. Vicky can taste that money.

So can I.

But yeah, Lauren gamed this whole thing out. Manipulated Simon every step of the way. Dropping that pregnancy bomb was a thing of beauty. A Hail Mary if all else failed, and all else had failed. Simon’s loyalty to Vicky was too deep, so Lauren pulled out the nuclear option—the one thing Vicky wouldn’t give him.

I could learn to like this Lauren. Checking her out on Facebook, I could definitely learn to like her. She is Grade A, no question.

But she’s in my way. She may have gotten to Simon before I got to Vicky, but I don’t play fair. That money’s mine, and I’m not letting her beat me to it.

Vicky’s been pacing around, cursing under her breath, sometimes not under her breath, nearly punching a hole in my living-room wall at one point. When she sees me close the notebook, she walks into the kitchen, anxiously nodding her head.

“I’m screwed, right?”

I’m surprisingly calm, staring at the loss of all my hard work, the loss of my retirement money. But panicking isn’t going to help me get that money. I have a competitor, and she appears to be formidable, but this isn’t my first time in competition.

And I’ve never lost.

“He’s not filing until the day before your anniversary,” I say. “November the second. That’s, what, a week from tomorrow?”

Vicky nods, chewing on a nail.

“So the question is: What we do now?”

“I’ll tell you what I’d like to do,” she says. “I’d like to break his neck.”

“And what if that happened?” I ask.

Vicky blinks, her expression changing.

“You said you care about him,” I say. “How much do you care about him?”

Vicky walks to the window, looks out over the alley. My guess is she’s spent the last forty-five minutes asking herself that very question.

“If he dies before our tenth anniversary,” she says, “the money stays in the trust. I don’t get a cent. It won’t be marital property.”

Interesting answer. Interesting because she didn’t say, I could never do something like that, I could never hurt Simon. She’s just saying that it wouldn’t work. That means she’s keeping an open mind.

“Lauren’s married,” I say. “Someone named Conrad?”

She flips a hand. “Apparently.”

“How about we tell him about the affair?”

“He probably already knows,” says Vicky, turning to me. “And if he doesn’t, so what? Sounds like their marriage is in the dumper, too.”

I sit down at the table. I’m not coming up with many answers here.

“He’s been different,” she says.

“Simon has?”

She nods. “He’s been more distant the last few days. I didn’t—didn’t think much of it. He gets that way a lot, lost in his thoughts. I didn’t think anything of it.”

I blow out a breath. “What if— What if Simon were injured but not killed?”

“C’mon.”

“What do you mean, ‘c’mon’? I’m serious.”

Vicky takes a moment with that. “Like, injure him enough that he’s out of commission but not kill him, just to buy us a week until November third comes and goes?”

“Exactly,” I say.

“Exactly? And how exactly does that happen? Hit him with a car hard enough to hospitalize him but not enough to kill him? Shoot him but miss all vital organs? Hit him over the head hard enough to put him into a coma but not enough to end all brain activity?”

“Okay, okay.”

She touches my arm. “Believe me, if I could pull that off— But it’s not feasible.”

“Well. Then maybe, Vicky Lanier, maybe it’s time you started being really, really nice to your husband?”

She takes a moment to catch my meaning, then rolls her eyes. “That won’t work.”

“You can be charming.”

“Not that charming. Not with Simon.”

“No? Says in those pages that he loves you, but you don’t love him back. Maybe you show him you do?”

She thinks about it but shakes her head. “It’s too late. If I’d had any idea this was happening, that’s exactly what I would’ve done.” She thumps her forehead with the butt of her hand. “How did I miss this?”

You missed it, Vicky, because you were counting dollar signs in your head, and you were falling for me.

We go silent, thinking. Dead air filled with desperation, bordering on outright panic. I’m watching everything I’ve worked for circle down the drain.

“What if I confront him?” she says. “Be direct? I could beg him. I’d do that. I’d beg. For ten million dollars, I’d beg.”

Yeah, but that’s only half. You want it all, Vicky. So do I.

Anyway, I’ve already considered her idea and rejected it in my own mind. “The one thing you have going for you,” I say, “is that he’s dreading the thought of doing this to you. That tension, that pressure, works for us. If you tell him you know, then the ice is broken, the tension is broken. He might as well just file for divorce at that point.”

“But you read what that bitch said to him. File first, tell me later.”

“I know, I know—but you’ll make it worse if you confront him. It’ll open the floodgates. He can’t know that you know.”

She grips her hair, letting out a low moan.

“I have to go,” she says. “If he comes home, and the laptop and notebook are missing, he’ll know I’ve seen it.”

“When does he come home?”

“Probably not until later.”

“Probably? ‘Probably’ isn’t much to bank on.”

She agrees, nods her head. “He has a lot of flexibility with his job. He had a class this morning, early. Nothing in the afternoon. He usually works into the late evening, writing his law review articles and blog posts. But yeah, he could come home in the afternoon if he wanted.”

“Especially if he realizes he left his laptop and diary at home.”

“Shit.” She touches her forehead. “You’re right. I’m gonna go. I can come back around six.”

I follow her down the stairs and let her out through the garage.

“Hey, Vicky,” I say as the door grinds open, Vicky with one foot in the alley. She raises her eyebrows at me.

“They’re using burner phones, the diary said?” I say. “His is green—”

“Hers is pink, yeah. Ain’t it cute.”

“See if you can get a look at his phone. It’s probably hidden somewhere.”

Vicky thinks about that. Slowly nods. “His phone,” she says. “That’s a good idea.”

“And remember, above all,” I say. “He can’t know that you know.”

Vicky will be back in about five hours. I need to figure out a plan between now and then.

I dial my phone. Gavin answers on the second ring.

“I’m coming to you,” I say. “I need your brain.”

56 Christian

Gavin is quiet, eyes closed, sitting on the bench in Wrightwood Park, his hands together as if in prayer.

We’ve gone over this for the last three hours, starting with lunch, then beers, now walking around the park near his condo in Lincoln Park. I had to violate our vow not to share names, that wall we put up to keep our scams from each other. He’s only known Vicky as “Number 7” and Simon as “Number 7’s husband,” but running through all my options now with this new development, it was just too hard to keep using titles, especially with a third person—“Number 7’s husband’s mistress”—entering the equation.

So now Gavin knows the names Vicky Lanier, Simon Dobias, and Lauren Betancourt.

Finally, Gavin opens his eyes, spreads his hands, and says, “I can’t think of another option.”

“Jesus, really?” But I can’t think of another one, either.

“You tell me, Nick,” says Gavin. “You’re the one in the middle of it. I hardly know a thing about any of these people.”

Truth is, I don’t, either. “I know Vicky,” I say. “Vicky, I get. No problem.”

“And what about this Lauren?”

I shrug. “I barely knew she existed until today. Vicky mentioned once or twice that Simon had a serious girlfriend who broke his heart or whatever when he was young. But reading that diary of Simon’s, I mean—Lauren’s me. She’s a female version of me. She has her eye on that pot of money and she’s not gonna let anybody get in the way. She’s doing to Simon what I’m doing to Vicky.”

“Okay. Fine. What about Simon?”

“Yeah, that’s trickier,” I say. “Most of what I know about Simon, I got from Vicky. But now I’ve read his diary, too, and it pretty much confirms what she says about him.”

“Which is?”

“Brainy in that useless, academic way,” I say. “Kinda guy who could recite the freakin’ quadratic equation or something from memory but wouldn’t know how to operate a can opener.”

Gavin likes that one, nods along.

“He lets himself get led around by women, that’s for sure,” I say. “Falls head over heels in love, that kind of thing. He recognizes he’s in a bad marriage, but never did anything about it until Lauren started batting her eyes at him.”

“But it sounds like he can go pretty dark,” says Gavin. “Like the St. Louis thing.”

“That’s the thing. That’s the X factor. The guy holds a grudge, that’s for sure. I mean, he’s all pissed off at his father for years and years and plans out this whole thing to kill him. He drives down to St. Louis during his college finals week, stabs him in the gut, pushes him into a swimming pool, then drives back here and takes his final exam the next morning.”

“That’s pretty cold,” Gavin agrees. “But you know something, that works both ways.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, on the one hand, you have to be very careful with him. You don’t want to get on his wrong side.”

“That’s an understatement.” I stretch my arms, releasing nervous tension.

“But on the other hand, you said the St. Louis cops still think he did it. They couldn’t prove it, but they think he was the guy?”

“That’s what Vicky said. And that’s what I’ve read about the case.”

Gavin cocks his head, a gleam in his eye. “So that could be helpful. That could be very helpful.”

“Let’s go over the ideas again,” I say. We are back at Gavin’s townhouse, a one-bedroom with a nice view west, a bachelor’s pad if you ever saw one.

“Option one,” Gavin says, ticking off a thumb. “You sideline Simon for a while. You can’t kill him, because then Vicky gets cut out and so do you, but you hurt him just enough that he’s hospitalized or unconscious or something past November third.”

“If we could somehow pull that off, it would be perfect,” I say. “But it’s way too hard.”

“Agreed. A firm ‘no’ on option one.”

Gavin is good with this kind of stuff, the plotting and planning. He organizes his thoughts well. I’m a pretty damn good player, but he’s a better coach.

“Option two, you do what you do best and try to get between Simon and Lauren,” he says. “You use that pretty face of yours and play that role of the multi-multimillionaire superstar investor, and you sweep Lauren off her feet and away from Simon. She dumps Simon, he crawls back to Vicky. And that might be doable,” he adds, “but there’s no time. This all has to happen in a week.”

“Very doable,” I say. “But yeah, no time.”

“Third option,” says Gavin. “You threaten Lauren. You scare her off. But that’s dicey. I’m not even sure how you’d do it. Put a gun to her head and tell her to break up with Simon? Then what? I’m not at all sure how that would play out.”

“Right, it doesn’t work.” I sit down next to him on the couch. “He’d assume Vicky sent me. Who else would’ve sent me? And then he’d file for divorce immediately.”

“So that only leaves one option, my friend.” Gavin pats my back. “And the question is: How bad do you want that twenty-one million dollars?”

57 Vicky

“So that leaves only one option,” says Christian, standing in the living room of his condo.

“What’s that?” I say, seated on the couch, having listened to him discount other options that were never really options at all.

It’s half past six. I’m back at Christian’s for the second time today, after going back to Grace Park, returning Simon’s laptop and green journal to their spots on the desk in his home office, then doing some work on the shelter’s website from home, or at least trying to do some work, wondering what Christian will come up with.

“And I’m not saying we’d do it,” says Christian. “But I can’t think of any other way—”

“Spit it out,” I say.

“Okay.” He puts out a hand, as if to calm me. “I took all afternoon going through every possible plan, and this is the only one, in my opinion, that could accomplish our objective.”

“Speak,” I say.

“Well, we . . . y’know.” He makes a gun with his hand, points it at his head. “Y’know.”

I stare at him.

“We . . . make her go away,” he whispers.

“You mean kill Lauren?”

“I . . . yes. Yes,” he says.

It took him all afternoon to come up with that?

It took me ten seconds.

“I was afraid you might say that,” I say.

Actually, I was afraid he might not say that and I’d have to raise the idea. But it’s much better that it came from him.

“I know it’s extreme.” He opens his hands. “I don’t think there’s any way of just scaring her off. The only viable option is to take her out of the equation entirely. I’m not saying we’d do it, just that . . .”

“It would be the only way to stop this.”

“Yeah,” he says.

“Uh-huh.” I nod. “And . . . hypothetically—”

“Right, just hypothetically.”

“—how would that happen?” I peek up at him. “If Simon’s been having an affair with her, he’s probably left a trail all over the place. If she dies, if she gets shot or stabbed or strangled or whatever—the first person they look at is the man who was having an affair with her. The second person they look at is that man’s wife.”

“Yeah, I figure Simon, you, and Conrad would be suspects,” says Christian. “You’d be right in there. And if you’re a suspect in any way, or even if Simon is—you wouldn’t be in a position to take Simon’s money. There’d be too much scrutiny on you.”

“You’re right,” I say. “You’re absolutely right.”

“Which is why I think . . . I have to be the one who does it,” he says.

“You . . . ?” I look at him. “But . . .”

“But what?” he says. “You said yourself, you can’t be anywhere near this. They’ll look hard at everything about you.”

“I know, but—Christian, you’re like this successful— You have all this money and you’re so successful. You don’t have to get mixed up with something like this.”

He moves over to me, kneels down, takes my hand. “This money means everything to you. It’s a chance for a new life.”

“For me, yes. But you? You have more money than God.”

“I wouldn’t be doing it for me,” he says. “I’ll do it for you.”

“I can’t . . . I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t ask.” He touches my face. “You still don’t get how I feel about you, do you?”

I look down and shake my head. “I’ve never been in . . . I’ve never—”

“Me neither,” he says. “Until I met you. I didn’t think I was capable.”

I laugh. “I didn’t think I was capable.”

He reaches for my shirt, starts to unbutton it. “I’ll do this for you,” he says. “If you’re okay with it. You have to be okay with it.”

If I’m okay with it?

I am one hundred percent, absolutely, totally, completely okay with it.

Why do you think I’m with you, Christian? Because I care about you? Because you’re hot? Because I’m a “lonely wife” who can’t get enough of your giant, throbbing manhood?

Please. I picked you for this very task. I’ve known about Lauren since before I first met you. Today was just the day I decided to tell you. I’ve been planning this since the first time I walked into your office.

You’re not a successful investor. You’re Nick Caracci, a two-bit swindler, a con man, a grifter, who thinks he’s hit the jackpot with me.

You were never going to invest that money. I was never going to let you near that money.

I just need you to help me kill Lauren Betancourt.

58 Christian

Good. So far, so good with Vicky. I have buy-in. She’s willing to go along with this.

I let it simmer for a while. I don’t want to hit her with the entire plan all at once and overwhelm her. But Gavin and I have put together an initial outline.

For one thing, it has to happen on Halloween. Between now and November 2, when Simon goes to his divorce lawyer, there’s no other day that makes sense. Today is Tuesday the twenty-fifth. Tomorrow or the next day—Wednesday or Thursday—is too soon. I need more time than that. The weekend is not going to work. Friday, Saturday, those nights are too unpredictable, and based on Lauren’s Facebook page, she seems to reserve those nights for her girlfriends, usually downtown.

And Monday the thirty-first—Halloween—is perfect, right? Most people are home so they can answer the door to trick-or-treaters. I can wear a costume that lets me waltz around in anonymity. I can hide a weapon in a costume or in some fake trick-or-treat bag. It’s the only day of the year that a woman would open her door to a man wearing a disguise over his face.

But like I said, I don’t want to hit Vicky with this all at once, so I give her a Nicky Special, fucking her upright, holding her up, pinned against the wall, her legs wrapped around my back, drilling her until she cries out in climax. I’ll bet Simon never did that to her. I’ll bet he couldn’t hold her up. It doesn’t take long to make her come. It usually doesn’t. And all the talk about murder is probably an aphrodisiac on top of it. I know it is for me.

That should help remind her what a great deal she’ll be getting down the road, after she’s done with little Simon.

She’s nice and loose afterward, wearing my shirt and nothing else while sitting on the couch with a bottle of water.

“Halloween? That’s . . . that’s brilliant,” she says after I lay it out for her. “Oh, and Grace Village—you know that town goes dark at seven o’clock.”

I didn’t. But now I do, as she explains the ritual.

“Everyone goes lights-out at seven,” she says. “So maybe you could show up right before that. She might open the door for one last person.”

Maybe. I still can’t believe I’m doing this. I’m going to shoot someone. Kill someone. I repeat those seven syllables in my head.

Twenty-one million dollars.

Okay. That part was easy. The next part might not be. Gavin and I debated it, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right.

Here goes.

“Listen, one other thing,” I say. “I’m thinking about the police. What they’ll think when they find Lauren . . .”

“Dead. Fucking dead.”

A little more zeal in her than I expected. But I like the anger. The anger is good. She’s all in.

“Yeah,” I say. “What you said is right, Vicky. How hard will it be for them to figure out that Simon was having an affair with her? Probably not very. He has history with her, even if it goes pretty far back. And he’s going to her swanky downtown condo building for afternoon love sessions? That building has staff, they have security and doormen and—”

“I’m sure it won’t be hard for the police to figure that out,” she says. “That’s what worries me. When they look at Simon, they’ll look at me, his wife.”

“So that’s where this thought comes in,” I say. “If they’re already going to be looking at him, and therefore at you . . . maybe we could help keep the focus on Simon?”

She sits up, snapping to attention. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying . . . Maybe there’s a way we can help nudge the police in Simon’s—”

“Are you saying we frame Simon?”

I raise my hands. “I’m just trying to protect you, Vicky,” I say. “That’s all—”

“Hm.” Vicky gets up and starts pacing.

That isn’t a no. Seems like she’s thinking about it, strolling slowly, looking far off, picturing it.

“I know you care about him, but—”

“That was before I knew he was fucking Lauren,” she snaps. “And fucking me out of my money.”

I’ll have to keep that reaction in mind when I steal all of Vicky’s money. I better fly somewhere far away.

I let the idea marinate with her. I put on some coffee and drink a cup while Vicky strolls around, mumbling to herself, occasionally shaking her head, still in disbelief at this turn of events. Wavering between anger at Simon, anger at herself for letting it happen, and deciding how far she’s willing to go to correct the situation.

Halfway through the living room for the twentieth time, she stops, pivots, hands on her naked hips, nodding her head. “Let’s do it. Let’s make sure the cops’ eyes never wander past Simon to me. Let’s set that cheating fucker up.” She wags her finger. “And I know exactly how to do it.”