Playing Dead

CHAPTER 11

The high from the pink pill didn’t last. By eleven, my gut was back to churning. All I wanted to do was swallow another one, maybe two, and crawl back into bed.

Dream it all away.

But Sadie and I had agreed to meet at the bank and face down Ms. Billington together. She had an early rendezvous with her jewelry rep at the Dallas Market Center first, and by a miracle of God, the guys finally showed up about the same time to hook up my internet at the ranch.

I checked the parking lot for suspicious black trucks before dropping Maddie at a cheerleading day camp held four times a year by Ponder’s high school squad. The logical part of my brain assured me that Maddie would be perfectly safe here. She loved this camp, a fact Sadie and I were mildly distressed about. In Texas, girls take lessons in cheering on boys practically from toddlerhood. I dreaded the day Maddie headed to middle school with girls who carried tiny two-hundred-dollar Gucci bags and considered chewing gum and a laxative a good substitute for lunch.

I reminded myself that I’d survived.

Sadie was waiting for me in front of the bank, chatting up a homeless man sitting with his meager possessions against the brick wall near the austere glass door, which discreetly advertised Bank of the Wild West in small gold letters. I immediately felt guilty about the four-dollar Starbucks in my hand. He laughed at something Sadie said, and she slipped him some cash. He tipped his dirty Dallas Cowboys cap in thanks.

“Hey, there,” Sadie said, spotting me. “Let’s do this.”

Our feet had barely touched the marble floor when Ms. Billington, wearing an identical JC Penney suit, this time in brown, walked briskly over to us.

“You must be the sister,” she told Sadie, giving her a suspicious look. I couldn’t wait to see who won this battle. I’d put my money on Sadie.

“What a beautiful set of pearls!” Sadie exclaimed, putting out her hand.

“Why, thank you,” Ms. Billington said begrudgingly. And then, “They’ve been in my family for seventy-five years.”

Ten minutes later, Ms. Billington was “Sue” and Sadie was the niece she wished she had, instead of the one in New Jersey who never called. Personal information flowed forth like a Las Vegas fountain-her cat, Shiloh, was diabetic; her Princess Diana roses were eaten up with black spot this year; she had almost saved enough for an over-forty singles cruise to Cabo.

Just who was the psychologist here? I asked myself.

Comfortably pulled up to Sue’s pristine desk, we signed our names on the dotted lines, scribbled our initials in the right places, and showed our driver’s licenses.

My hand shook a little; my signature was scraggly, uneven. I hoped Sadie didn’t notice.

As a final show of kinship with Sue Billington, Sadie pulled a Kleenex out of her pocket and wiped off a drip of coffee that spilled from the lid of my Starbucks cup.

Sue beamed.

Sadie whispered, “She’s not so bad.”

I wondered, What would life be like if I was as nice to adult people as I was to kids and horses?

We trooped behind Sue in an obedient line, past wrought-iron teller windows and a life-sized Remington sculpture of a cowboy flying on a bucking horse. Surely it was a copy. I hadn’t noticed any of this yesterday.

When we reached the far back wall, Sue discreetly pulled out a keycard and slid it into a near-invisible slot in the oak panel. A small door slid open. I was beginning to think Mama knew what she was doing when she left her secrets in the hands of the Bank of the Wild West.

The door shut behind us and we stood inside a wood-paneled room, large enough to hold about ten humans with very little breathing room. It was otherwise bare of anything except for cameras on spidery black arms hanging from the corners and a flat screen glowing like a blue aquarium window. It was positioned near a steel door. Sue punched six numbers into a keypad and placed her hand flat on the screen. It scanned her whorls and lines in seconds. James Bond technology still amazed me, although even Disney World scanned thumbprints at the front gate these days to assure that customers weren’t sharing passes and avoiding Mickey’s ninety-dollar-a-day fee.

The lock on the door clicked, Sue braced her hips and pulled it open, and we walked right into the muzzle of a gun.

Instinctively, I jerked Sadie’s arm and yanked her behind me.

“Didn’t mean to scare ya,” the man drawled, as he replaced his gun into a holster. “It’s just procedure. Hi, Sue.”

The ID hanging off a cord around his neck read “Rex Ferebee, Security Systems Manager.” We now stood inside a glass box, the working digs of the overzealous Rex.

Through the glass, on three sides, we could see into a much larger room lined floor to ceiling with hundreds of metal boxes, each embossed with a large number and the same insignia of the Wild West bank that had been stamped on the Yellow Pages ad: two derringers crossed over each other to make an X. Pendant lights hung from the ceiling, giving the room a cozy, modern glow. A gleaming maple conference table swallowed most of the floor space, along with a dozen overstuffed leather chairs.

“How much is it to own a security box here?” I asked, thinking this room was like something out of a John Grisham novel. His characters often started in hell and wound up on a sunny beach, I reminded myself.

Sue’s smile was smug. “They cost a lot. But our customers can well afford it.”

Rex waved his badge over a sensor. The glass wall on the right slid open enough for us to walk through. Sue marched over to Box 1082 and stuck in her key. I recognized this routine from the movies. I pulled out my keychain, inserting Mama’s key into the other keyhole. We heard a loud click. Sue pulled the box easily from the slot, placing it on the table.

“Toodle-loo,” Sue said, and she and Rex exited the room. I imagined their leaving was just for show. They were probably pulling up chairs to TV monitors with enough angles to see up my nose.

“Hey, I’m Pee-wee Herman,” Sadie said, twirling her chair in circles.

“Wave to the cameras,” I replied, trying to match her light tone, as I slid open the top of the box.

And then I hesitated, the dread ramping up again, and Sadie stopped her game with the chair. Her head reached about halfway up the back of the plush burgundy leather; her feet dangled a good six inches off the floor. I would have laughed on any ordinary day.

“Maybe this is where professional basketball players keep their stuff,” she said. “Or billionaire giants. Are those newspaper clippings?”

I reluctantly turned back to the box. Not a million dollars in hot cash. Not a cousin of the Hope Diamond. Instead, an odd collection of old newspaper clippings cooked with age to a golden brown. None of them appeared to be from the same newspaper, or from the same town, for that matter.

They seemed perfectly benign, which is exactly why they scared me.

I glanced quickly through several of the headlines: GARDEN CLUB MEETS THURSDAY, JOE FREDERICKSON WINS DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S RACE, WOMAN FOUND DEAD IN LITTLE RIVER.

The box held no clue to Mama’s fascination with these particular articles or why she felt compelled to safeguard them. I set aside the rest of the clippings to look at later, and pulled out the last item in the box, a sealed plain white business envelope, thick with whatever was inside.

“Rip it open,” Sadie instructed. “And then let’s get out of here.”

I slid my nail under the flap and pulled out a wad of checks. Seven of them were made out to Ingrid Mitchell and the rest to Ingrid McCloud. My head was spinning. How many identities did my mother have? The checks were issued from the Shur Foundation, whatever the hell that was. They ran consecutively for five years starting in March of 1980, written on the first of each month for exactly the same amount of $1,500. I quickly multiplied: $90,000. Was it blackmail money? But she’d apparently never cashed them. Mama hid these checks for thirty-two years. Coincidentally, the same number of years I’d lived on this planet.

Sadie opened a large manila envelope helpfully provided by Sue Billington, gathered everything up, and placed it inside her backpack.

Then she pressed the red buzzer underneath the center of the table as we’d been instructed, so Sue and Rex could release us from this prison of sleeping secrets.

Blood pounded in my brain, drowning out every thought but one.

Mama was a liar.

After a quick lunch with Sadie at a new sushi joint, we parted ways so she could pick up Maddie. Nothing like eating questionable raw fish on a hot Texas day chased by an icy Dr Pepper.

Ten minutes later, I stood nervously at the front desk of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a venerable 106-year-old institution in mortal combat with iPhones and iPads like every other metropolitan newspaper in America.

One foot in front of the other, I told myself. Don’t trip.

It was hard to say I trusted any newspaper completely, but I was counting on trusting one man inside this one with my life. He stepped off the elevator in a bright orange University of Illinois T-shirt stretched tight across his belly, barely topping sagging Dockers that displayed signs of the something Italian he’d had for lunch.

Lyle Matyasovsky, managing editor for print and new bullshit media (the “new media” was added in the publisher’s fit of modernization; Lyle added the “bullshit” in a fit of disgust), was old school all the way. I suspected that Lyle, nicknamed by reporters for his poofy Lovett-style hair and his poetic way with the language, bought his T-shirt wardrobe at the Dallas flea market.

He enjoyed letting Texans butcher his name before telling them that the first y and the v were “kind of” silent. His résumé included stints at The New York Times and the National Enquirer, where he made big bucks to write headlines like DAUGHTER FINDS MOMSICLE DEAD IN BASEMENT FREEZER AFTER 20 YEARS. No one knows why this Yankee chose to land here. It’s all part of the mystery of Lyle.

But the main thing: Lyle was an FOD. Friend of Daddy. Favors had been passed back and forth between the two for years. Daddy had insisted I carry Lyle’s card in my wallet since high school, along with W.A.’s and, of course, Victor’s. Like the spark that made the universe, no one knew how or why the relationship between Lyle and my Daddy began, just that it thrived.

“When you’re a McCloud in trouble, you need a friend in the press, a friend in the court, and a friend on a horse,” Daddy used to say.

Lyle, W.A., Wade.

As soon as I saw Lyle, my face crumpled. Lucky for me, Lyle was an old hand at face crumples, because 60 percent of newsroom journalists are currently on a cocktail of antidepressants.

He ushered me into the elevator to the third floor, past the prying eyes of reporters shocked and hopeful that the newspaper might be hiring again (but surely not someone who wore red boots), and into his office, located in a tiny space in the corner. Lyle required nothing fancy.

Although I’d met Lyle fifteen or so times in my life, I’d never been in here. The 1950s-era metal desk-at least the parts you could see under the reporter notebooks, memos, and press releases-looked like chickens had two-stepped across it every night for years. The fluorescent lights were off, and a small antique desk lamp on a corner table was on. A brown and pea-green easy chair of indeterminate age sat crunched into one corner, possibly containing the contagion that would take out the Star-Telegram before technology did.

Framed newspapers lined the walls, not with Lyle’s impressive honors and projects, but with headlines from other papers that struck him as worthy:

IRAQI HEAD SEEKS ARMS.

TYPHOON RIPS THROUGH CEMETERY; HUNDREDS DEAD.

DISCIPLES OF CHRIST NAME INTERIM LEADER.

IS THERE A RING OF DEBRIS AROUND URANUS?

I blubbered uncontrollably in the bio-disaster chair while taking in the satirical Onion headline MIT RESEARCHERS DISCOVER EACH OTHER.

Lyle shut the door, fiddled with the string of the dusty vertical blinds, then rolled his desk chair around to sit next to me, a clear sign the world was turning on its axis, because his reputation wasn’t that of a touchy-feely guy. I hoped he wouldn’t pat me on the head and trigger another round. A hug or any form of sympathetic body contact is the worst thing you can offer a Southern woman in tears if you’re looking for her to stop.

Lyle kept several inches of distance and handed me a dusty box of unopened Kleenex resting on the top of his desk. Maybe journalists were all cried out.

“I’m sorry about your father. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you at the funeral. I’ll miss him. He had a way… with words.”

Lyle avoided my face, polite of him, because I could feel salty snot running down my nose into my mouth. Mascara bled into my eyes, stinging. I blurted out, “That’s not why I’m here.”

He watched impassively as I pulled my life’s portable accessories out of my purse: a greasy bottle of Water Babies 30 SPF sunscreen, a half-eaten Hershey’s bar, two mini-bottles of Germ-X (one empty), an envelope of outdated coupons, two sets of keys, a prescription bottle filled with Xanax (another of my discoveries in Daddy’s medicine cabinet), a new horse hoof pick with the requisite curved metal hook that I’d purchased on sale the day before leaving Wyoming, and, finally, before I hit bottom, the letter from Rosalina Marchetti.

In Lyle’s pudgy hands, the piece of stationery looked fragile. My life, in his hands. The cliché of all clichés. He read it quickly, read it again, then swiveled his chair back to his computer and spent a few minutes at the keyboard.

“She’s the wife of Anthony Marchetti,” he said thoughtfully. Not, What a nut or I wouldn’t worry about this.

But then, that’s why I was here. Daddy said that Lyle would always tell it like it is, that he had a way of shutting out anything but the truth.

“You know him?” My voice sounded weak. “Marchetti?”

“I know his history. Chicago Mafia, fraud, embezzlement, murder, up for parole. I know he’s sitting down the street in one of our jail cells. Part of a new prisoner exchange program with Illinois and four other states. They’re about to move him out to Odessa. Or at least that’s the crap my reporter is getting. This makes me wonder. I assume you’ve looked him up yourself?”

I nodded, thinking that Texas had few reasons to say yes to Anthony Marchetti. The Odessa facility was in hot demand, a cushy place to hold such a violent offender, especially one Texas didn’t have to take credit for.

Only two years old, the prison was touted as the most high-tech in the world, with room enough to hold five thousand male and female prisoners. The operation was funded by a complicated equation of state and federal funds, making it a hodge-podge of inmates and a political nightmare, especially since Texas governors didn’t play nice with Washington all the time. Or ever. One governor liked to remind everyone that the state could secede from the union at any time because that was the agreement in 1845 when Texas joined up, which, by the way, isn’t technically correct. (Yep, the same governor whose name rhymes with “scary” and who entered the presidential arena sounding like he jumped out of Bonanza.)

And then there’s Trudy Lavonne Carter, the billionaire widow of a Houston oilman, who offered to donate the $600 million and fifty acres on which to build the Texas spectacle, but with a tangle of controversial strings attached.

The Texas legislature almost rejected her financial gift “on moral grounds.” This was ironic like only things in Texas can be ironic. Trudy was a devout foe of the Texas death penalty and inhumane prison conditions. She informed her congressmen and state senators she’d only write the check if she could choose the architect and approve the plans. She insisted on skylights, air-conditioning, and enlarged cells. She’d once visited a distant cousin stuck in a suffocating Texas prison with no air-conditioning in the middle of July. It left quite an impression.

Trudy, bless her or not, won out.

“A guy named Jack Smith keeps… running into me,” I told Lyle. “He claims he is a reporter working on a story about Anthony Marchetti for Texas Monthly. He says Marchetti bribed his way here.” For now, I left out the encounter in the garage.

“Never heard of him,” Lyle grunted, dismissing Jack as he rolled through his mental address book of Texas journalists.

“He claims that my mother is involved somehow.” Lyle’s face was unreadable, as usual. “I also got this anonymous email. It’s probably nothing. But the subject line bothered me.” I pulled my phone out of an outside purse pocket and pressed on the screen. “The third email down.”

He took it from my hand and read the subject line from madddog12296 aloud: “Don’t let this happen to your loved one.”

“Click the attachment,” I said. “It’s a blur.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “it is.” He reached across to set the phone on the desk in front of me. I rummaged in my backpack, found the envelope from the bank, and tossed it across the desk.

“All of this is from a safe deposit box of Mama’s that she never told us about.”

“Tell me this is off the record,” Lyle said.

“Why? I don’t think you’d ever betray me.”

“Just say it.”

“This is off the record.”

“It’s like handing a dollar to a lawyer. Just a little safeguard for you that I can repeat to anyone above me. There’s Rupert Murdoch and then there are the rest of us, who will forever adhere to a code.” He slid over to his computer. “Forward that email with the attachment to llmat@fwstar.com.” I fiddled with my phone and we watched the email pop up on his screen in seconds.

“I’ll have someone check this out. See whether we can follow the IP address and get this picture in focus.”

“So you think it’s something,” I said.

He grunted in his characteristic Lyle way, which could mean yes, no, or maybe.

“Who will check it out?” I persisted. “One of your reporters? A photographer?” He didn’t answer. I knew from Daddy that Lyle maintained a few hacker contacts on the darker freelance side of journalism.

I inserted another question into the silence, this one personal.

“What do you think I should do next?” My voice wobbled a little.

“I think that you should sit here and tell me every burp and fart of what has happened to you, leaving nothing out, not even the damn color of Mr. Jack Smith’s eyes. I’ll start digging around. You could tell the police about all of this, but I’m not sure at this point that they’re going to be that helpful.”

He paused, taking in the tattered state of my being, the red eyes, the kidnapped Xanax bottle, the hair piled up on my head like an exhausted maid. I realized he was still considering my question.

“You should think about hiring bodyguards for your family, Tommie. Then get on a plane and grant Rosalina Marchetti her wish.”