Simply Lies

Chapter 38

After a mostly sleepless night, Gibson woke early, got the kids up and fed, and then called her dad. She had decided that she could either assume the fetal position and wait for bad things to happen to her and her family, or she could use her skills and her brains and her work ethic to get ahead of the tidal wave she felt coming at her. And Silva had called the night before. She had taken ill and would not be coming over.

“Yeah, Dad, if you and Mom could watch the kids for a few hours, that would be great.”

“Sure we can, honey, but where are you going?”

“Just to run some errands.”

“You haven’t gotten any better at lying to me since you were fifteen and said someone snuck that gin into your water bottle and those joints into your backpack.”

“Okay, okay, I’m just running down a few leads.”

“Harry Langhorne leads?”

“What else.”

“My buddy Art any help?”

“Oh, yeah, he was. Thanks for setting that up.”

“He’s apparently doing okay.”

“Sounds like he’s doing very okay. Hey, Dad, what do you know about a guy named Nathan Trask?”

He didn’t answer for such a long time she thought the connection had ended.

“Please, God, don’t tell me you’re getting mixed up with that guy.”

“No, I’m not. I swear. But what can you tell me about him?”

“He’s scum. Richer than God, and twice as evil as the Devil. And smarter than Einstein because not even the Feds have ever managed to lay an indictment on him. He’s got this fortress down in Virginia Beach.”

“Oh really? Didn’t know that,” she lied, hopefully better this time.

“How does he figure in things?”

“I was told that Langhorne might have had dealings with him, but I think that was just bullshit.”

“Well, don’t you go poking around that guy, Mick. You will not be coming back.”

“Amazing how a scum like that gets to walk around free while some poor sap cracks the skull of his friend in a drunken argument and gets twenty years in prison.”

“This is America. Poor and stupid go to prison while money walks. We’ll be over around eleven thirty if that works. Your mother’s getting her hair de-grayed at nine.”

“ ‘De-grayed’? I hope to God you’ve never used that term in front of her.”

She could imagine her father’s shit-eating grin over the phone connection.

“I’m still alive and kicking, ain’t I?”

When her parents arrived, Gibson’s father went for Darby, swooping her around in the air and making silly noises, while her mother automatically brushed Tommy’s hair out of his eyes and straightened his shirt and wiped off his dirty chin with a Kleenex and sanitizer.

Mars versus Venus, thought Gibson.

Her father finally set Darby down and looked at his daughter, while she stared resolutely back at him.

Rick Rogers was built like a tank, and as a cop he had the rep of being firm but fair. He knew what living paycheck to paycheck was like, and what that sort of stress made people do.

“You got scum everywhere, but you don’t know anybody till you’ve walked in their shoes. And a hungry belly or a sick kid or losing the roof over your head, or being the wrong color and having to live your life with that unfairly hanging over your head every damn day, can make bad things happen to good people, Mick. It doesn’t mean the law won’t be enforced. It just means they’re human beings who you know very little about. You ever lose that bit of truth, go do something else for a living.”

And she had never lost that sense of truth. If anything it had been more forcefully thrust upon her, since, at ProEye, she spent most of her time chasing folks with far too much money who not only didn’t want to pay their fair share, they didn’t want to pay anything because they thought they were above it all.

“Well?” he said to his daughter. His wife was now smoothing down Tommy’s cowlicks as the boy gamely fought back.

“Well what?”

“You know what. You want to go somewhere and talk about this?”

“No. But when I get back we can talk, if you want.”

“How about I go with you wherever it is you’re going?”

She looked at his waistband that was hidden by his jacket and arched her eyebrows.

“I’m not packing,” he said in a low voice, casting an anxious glance at his wife. She was now trying to corral Tommy, who was clearly done with her attempts to clean up his appearance.

“Then what good are you?” she replied.

“You really are a piece of work,” her father said, but he tacked on a grin.

“I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Call if you need help, okay?” he said, no longer grinning.

“You’re first on my speed dial, Dad, always have been, always will be.”

His smile came back with extra force.

She snagged her keys, hugged her kids, and drove off in her mommy van.