Found Money (29 page)

Sheila was beginning to worry. Rusch wasn’t happy with her work. One little mistake—a stupid cocktail glass left behind in a Panamanian hotel. It was such a tenuous link to Kozelka anyway. Even if the FBI got a match on her fingerprints, they would still have to make her buckle under pressure and finger Kozelka. She was no snitch, but her roots as a hooker must have made Rusch nervous. Clearly he was assuming she would deal with the FBI the way she used to deal with him.

Everything
was negotiable.

Her survival instincts were kicking in. When Rusch had said they would “reevaluate,” she knew what that meant. If the frame-up didn’t keep Ryan Duffy from taking that glassful of fingerprints to the FBI, Sheila was dead. One way or another, Rusch would make sure she was never subjected to FBI interrogation.

Sheila herself had been reevaluating things all afternoon, ever since she and Rusch had stopped to rest in a cheap roadside hotel. It was time to get out of Dodge. But not without a piece of the action.

Late Sunday afternoon, she picked up the phone in her hotel room and dialed Ryan Duffy. She tried his clinic, but no one answered. She tried his mother’s house and hit pay dirt.

“Remember this voice?” She used the same
seductive voice she’d used in Panama.

Ryan felt a chill. He was alone in his mother’s kitchen, standing by the counter. “Where have you been?”

“Closer than you think. I’ve got something for you.”

“What?”

“Your father’s gun.”

His pulse quickened. “I want it.”

“How bad? Or should I say, how much?”

“Are you saying it’s for sale?”

“That’s a keen grasp of the obvious you’ve got there, Doc.”

“How much?”

“A bargain. According to my sources, you’ve got another two million dollars cash somewhere. Just a hundred grand is all I want.”

“How do I know you really have it?”

“Because I took it.”

“From Kozelka’s thug? Right. The guy’s a Goliath.”

Sheila glanced over her shoulder. Rusch lay naked on the bed behind her, flat on his back. He was still erect—a bigger stud unconscious than he was wide awake.

“He’s not so tough,” she said with a smirk.

Ryan’s interest piqued. He sensed a crack in the alliance. But he also feared a trap.

Sheila said, “What’s it gonna be, Doc? You want the gun or don’t you?”

“Of course I want it.”

“Then you gotta pay.”

He froze, undecided. Then an idea struck. This was a chance to pull it all together—to put Marilyn Gaslow and Kozelka’s goons at the same place at the same time. It would be telling indeed to see
how they treated one another. “All right,” said Ryan. “Meet me at Cheesman Dam. Two
A.M
.”

“See you then,” she said, then hung up the phone.

Yeah,
thought Ryan.
See
us
then.

The phone rang in Marilyn Gaslow’s bedroom. She hadn’t moved from the edge of her bed since dialing Joe Kozelka’s pager. She checked the caller identification box on her nightstand. It was him.

“Joe, thanks for calling back.”

“What’s going on?”

“Trouble.” She told him about the faxed invitation to Cheesman Dam.

He was silent, the way he usually was whenever he got angry. Hundreds of times during their marriage, Marilyn had watched him internalize his rage. Joe was a pressure cooker that totally blew about every ten years. The first time, she’d forgiven him. The second time she’d decided not to wait for a third. She was afraid she wouldn’t
live
through the third.

“Who sent it?”

“It came from the seven-one-nine area code. I assume it’s from the Duffys.”

“Probably. But Amy Parkens was down that way this morning, too.”

“How do you know?”

“We know. Rusch put a tracking device on her truck.”

“Amy wouldn’t send a fax like this.”

“No, but she and Duffy could be cooking something up.”

“Let me call Amy.”

“No,” he said sternly. “Just let me handle it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Leave your Mercedes in the driveway with the keys in the glove box. I’ll arrange for someone to pick it up this evening and drive it to the dam.”

Marilyn blinked nervously. “And then what?”

“Whoever sent this has to be taught a lesson. I had a deal with the old man. Frank got five million dollars. His family was never supposed to see the letter. He obviously broke his end of the deal. Now the family has to deal with the consequences.”

“Please don’t get carried away here.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he said, his voice tightening. “I’ve paid a lot of money to call the shots, Marilyn. Five million to Duffy. Millions more in campaign contributions to get you in line for some useful presidential appointment. It took a long time for the right opportunity to come along. To be honest, the Board of Governors was even beyond my expectations. But now that it’s for the taking, we are not going to be denied your one and only shot at the chair.”

“You mean
your
shot,” she said bitterly.

“I will never influence a decision of yours, Marilyn. I just want to know what your decisions are. Before anyone else does.”

Her stomach wrenched. A man as wealthy as Kozelka could make billions of dollars knowing that the Fed was going to raise interest rates a day before the public announcement. “Do you have to rub it my face? I’m well aware that you’re the one who stands to gain.”

“And if you resist me, you’re the one who stands to lose. That’s the real beauty of it, Marilyn.”

She said nothing, knowing it was true.

“I’m counting on you,” he said. “Study hard for your confirmation hearing. And leave the rest to me.”

The dial tone hummed in her ear. Marilyn felt numb as she hung up the phone. She was poised to assume one of the world’s most powerful positions, yet she was a puppet. Worst of all, a puppet under the control of her ex-husband. In hindsight, she would never have paid the extortion. Once she did, however, there was no going back. She knew of no public official who could survive a teenage rape scandal that involved the payment of hush money.

Back then, saving her career had seemed like the only thing to do. Right now, however, it wasn’t her career she was worried about. It terrified her to think that Amy might show up with Ryan Duffy at Cheesman Dam. Had she known Amy had been in Piedmont Springs this morning, she would never have called Joe. As it turned out, she might well have signed Amy’s death warrant.
That
was something she could never live with.

She reached for the phone, then put it down. There was too much to tell, too much to explain. She grabbed her purse and started for the door.

It was time she and Amy had a very frank talk.

It was Amy’s first trip down Holling Street since the night her mother died. For over twenty years she had avoided the old house, the street, and pretty much the entire neighborhood. She recognized the contradiction—a
scientist
who refused to look at the data. As much as she wanted the truth, her intellectual curiosity had always yielded to emotion whenever she came too close to her past. The house had become like the Ring Nebula, the dying star she had captured on that tragic night in her telescope. She just couldn’t look at it again.

Until tonight.

Amy parked at the curb, beneath a streetlight. The two-story frame house sat in relative darkness on the other side of the street. Just one light was on. It came from the dining room, or at least what used to be the dining room. As her eyes adjusted to the moonlight, she noted all the things that had changed. The tiny Douglas fir she and her mother had planted in the front yard was now over twenty feet tall. The front porch where they used to swing had been enclosed in makeshift fashion. The clapboard siding needed a fresh coat of paint, and the lawn needed mowing. Cracks in the sidewalk seemed more plentiful. Amy remembered how she used to skip over them as a child, determined not to break her mother’s back.

“You sure you want to do this?” Gram asked from behind.

Amy nodded. She started up the sidewalk, ignoring the cracks, letting her feet fall where they may.

As she climbed the front steps, the night could no longer hide the telltale signs of aging and neglect. Several broken windows had been boarded rather than replaced. The front door bore the scars of a previous break-in, or perhaps just a tenant who had forgotten his key. The porch railings had nearly been consumed by rust. The basement window was framed with water damage. Amy had expected some disrepair. Her mother’s violent death had stigmatized the property. Gram had tried to sell it after the funeral, but no one wanted to live there. An investor finally picked it up for less than the remaining mortgage. For the past twenty years, it had been rented to college students for less than half the going rate for a three-bedroom house. The owner was apparently content to let it deteriorate to the point where it could be razed and replaced by ghost-free new construction.

Amy knocked firmly. Gram touched her hand as they waited. Finally, the chain rattled on the door, and it opened. A young man wearing blue jeans and a white UC Boulder T-shirt stood in the open doorway. Something that resembled a mustache covered his upper lip. He was like a big kid who had grown a little facial hair to make him look like college material.

“You’re the lady who called?” he said.

“Yes.” Amy had called in advance to explain who she was. The students who lived there had no qualms with her visit. They actually thought it was pretty cool. “This is my grandmother,” said Amy.

“Cool. I’m Evan. Come on in.”

Amy stepped inside. Gram followed. Amy stood in the foyer, nearly breathless. It looked almost as bad as Amy’s apartment after the break-in. The fireplace had been boarded up to keep out the weather or worse. In traffic areas, the vintage seventies shag carpet had worn through to the floorboards. Wires dangled from the ceiling where there used be a chandelier. A collage of posters covered the cracked and dirty walls. A mattress lay on the dining room floor.

“You sleep in the dining room?” she asked.

“No, there’s three of us. We made that into Ben’s room. Jake gets the back bedroom downstairs. I get the small bedroom upstairs.”

“Who gets the master?”

He made a face. “Nobody. No offense, but nobody even goes in there.”

“None taken,” she said, seeming to understand.

“Is there anybody upstairs now?”

“No. My roomies are out sucking down margaritas at Muldoon’s.”

“You mind if I have a look around?”

“That’s what you came for, isn’t it? Be my guest.”

“Thanks.”

Gram asked, “You want me to come with you?”

“Oh, by the way,” said Evan. “Don’t mind the pet tarantula at the top of the stairs. He looks mean, but he’s okay with strangers. Well, most strangers.”

“On second thought,” said Gram, “I’ll wait here.”

Amy said, “I think it’s best I do this alone anyway.”

Gram gave her a hug. Amy turned and started up the stairs.

She climbed slowly, deliberately. With each step, she felt a rush of adrenaline. Her pulse quickened. Her hands began to tingle. The feelings were coming back to her. She remembered having lived there. Flying down the stairs on Christmas mornings. Racing up the stairs to her room each day after school. She stopped on the landing at the top of the stairway. Down the hall to her right was her old room. To the left was her mother’s. She tried to pinpoint her memory and focus on that night. Her mind wouldn’t take her there. Too much distraction. A strange mountain bike in the hallway. The pet tarantula in the tank. The lights had to go. There had been no lights on that night.

She flipped the switch. The present disappeared. She stood alone in darkness.

Fear filled her heart. Not the fear of tarantulas or other things that were there. She was feeling the fear of an eight-year-old girl. She stood frozen in the darkness, waiting for it to subside. It wouldn’t. As her eyes adjusted, the fear only grew. She could see all the way down the hall, through the darkness, right up to the door that led to her mother’s room. The fear was much worse than it had been twenty years ago. This time she knew what lay on the other side.

Her foot slid forward and she took the first step.

She felt the carpet between her toes, even though she wore shoes. She was eight again and barefoot, creeping down the hall toward her mother’s room. Her knees felt scratched from the crawl through the attic—the escape from her room. Another step forward and she could hear the oscillating fan. The door was now open. She saw the clump of blankets atop the bed. Finally, she saw the hand again, hanging limply off the mattress.
Words stuck in her throat, but her mind heard them anyway.
Mom?

A chill went down her spine as she was sucked from the room. She was spiraling down the hall, screaming helplessly, caught in some kind of cosmic explosion that lifted her from the hallway, the house, the planet. Dust and debris clouded her vision as she raced though the night at such incredible speed that the stars converged into an endless beam of light that seemed to bend with her movement and wrap around her fears. It wrapped tighter and tighter, until the fear subsided and she could make herself think. Thinking slowed the pace. Thinking dimmed the intensity. She was no longer going anywhere. She was back on the planet, a distant and dispassionate observer, a scientist logging what she’d seen on that horrible night.

The Ring Nebula. M 57. The fifty-seventh object in Charles Messier’s eighteenth-century catalog of fuzzy objects in the sky.

“Amy?”

She turned. Gram was right behind her on the steps. She had never left the landing.

“You okay?” asked Gram.

Amy’s hands were shaking. She was sweating beneath her jacket. She wanted to lie and say yes, but she was too overwhelmed.

Gram asked, “Are you going to go in?”

Amy looked at her grandmother, her eyes filled with emotion. “I already did. Come on,” she said, taking Gram by the arm. “Let’s go home.”