Silver Girl (5 page)

There were no messages and no texts. This presented its own kind of misery.

She dialed the law firm and said a Hail Mary, which was what she always did when she dialed the law firm. She could hear the sounds of Connie making dinner downstairs.

Meredith had thought she might feel safer on Nantucket, but she was plagued by a low-grade terror. Nantucket was an
island,
thirty miles out to sea. What if she needed to escape? There would be no hopping in a cab uptown or downtown or across the bridge or through the tunnel into New Jersey. There would be no hightailing it to Connecticut if Leo or Carver needed her. She felt both exiled and trapped.

Meredith had $46,000 of her own money. This was the savings that she’d tucked away in a CD earning 1.5 percent, from her teaching job in the 1980s. (Freddy had ridiculed her for this.
Let me invest it,
he’d said.
I’ll double it in six months.
) But Meredith had kept rolling over the money in that CD for no reason other than personal pride—and how relieved she was now! She had something to live on, actual legitimate money that she’d earned and banked. Forty-six thousand dollars would seem a fortune to many people, she knew, but to her it felt like a pittance. She had run through that much in an afternoon of antiques shopping.
Disgusting!
she thought as the phone rang.
How had she become that person?

The receptionist answered.

“May I speak with Burton Penn, please?” Meredith asked.

“May I ask who’s calling?” the receptionist said.

Meredith cringed. She hated identifying herself. “Meredith Delinn.”

The receptionist didn’t respond. The receptionist never responded, though Meredith had called and spoken to this selfsame receptionist dozens of times.

The phone rang. Although Meredith had asked for Burt, the person who answered the phone was Dev.

“Hi Dev,” Meredith said. “It’s Meredith.”

“Thank God,” Dev said. “I was just about to call your cell. Where are you?”

“I’m on Nantucket,” Meredith said.

“Nantucket?” Dev said, “What are you doing on Nantucket?”

“I’m with a friend,” Meredith said.

Dev made a noise of surprise. Clearly, he had been under the impression that Meredith didn’t have any friends. And he was right. But Meredith had Connie. Was Connie her friend? Connie was something; Meredith wasn’t sure what.

“What’s the address there?” Dev asked.

“I have no idea.”

“Phone number? Please, Meredith, give me
something.
The Feds want us to have contact information for you on the ground.”

Meredith had written down the phone number at the house. She recited it to Dev.

He said, “First things first. I’m glad you’re safe.” Meredith smiled. Dev was one person, aside from her sons, who didn’t want to see her jump off the George Washington Bridge. Her other attorney, Burt, would never have expressed this kind of sentiment. Burt didn’t dislike Meredith, but he was detached. She was a case, a legal problem. She was work.

Dev said, “I heard from Warden Carmell at the
MCC
, and he said Mr. Delinn was shipped out on the bus at noon. Ten hours down to Butner. He’s due to arrive tonight.”

Meredith closed her eyes. When her attorneys had called her to tell her Freddy had been given the maximum sentence, Meredith hadn’t been sure what they meant. She had turned on the TV and saw Freddy being led out of the courtroom in his light-gray suit, which no longer fit. The banner across the bottom of the screen read:
Delinn sentenced to
150
years.
Meredith had run for the kitchen sink, where she vomited up the half cup of tea she’d managed to ingest that morning. She heard a noise and she thought it was the TV, but it was the phone. She’d dropped the phone on the ground, and Burt was calling out, “Meredith, are you there? Hello? Hello?” Meredith hung up the phone and shut off the TV. She was done.

She had gone into her bedroom and fallen back onto her king-size bed. She had sixteen hours until federal marshals came to escort her from her home and she would have to give up the sheets, which were as crisp as paper, the luscious silk quilt, the sumptuous down-filled duvet.

One hundred and fifty years.

Meredith had understood then that Freddy had taken her hand at the edge of a giant hole, and he had asked her to jump with him, and she had agreed. She’d jumped without knowing how deep the hole was or what would happen when they hit the bottom.

“Okay,” Meredith said to Dev now, although obviously the fact that Freddy was going to prison for two or three lifetimes wasn’t okay. She was so angry with Freddy that she wanted to rip her hair out, but the thought of him on that bus crushed her.

“The sticking point with your investigation…”

“I know the sticking point.”

“They can’t seem to get past it,” Dev said. “Do you have anything to add?”

“Nothing to add,” Meredith said.

“Anything to amend?”

“Nothing to amend.”

“You know how bad it looks?” Dev said. “Fifteen million dollars is a lot of money, Meredith.”

“I have nothing to add or amend,” Meredith said. “I told it all in my deposition. Do they think I
lied
in my deposition?”

“They think you lied in your deposition,” Dev said. “Lots of people do.”

“Well, I didn’t,” Meredith said.

“Okay,” Dev said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “If you think of anything you want to add or amend, just call. Otherwise, we’ll be in touch.”

“What about Leo?” Meredith said. “Please tell me about Leo.”

“I didn’t hear from Julie today,” Dev said. Julie Schwarz was Leo’s attorney. It was her job, now, to help federal investigators find Mrs. Misurelli, and to prove that Deacon Rapp was lying. “And days that I don’t hear from Julie are good days, much as I love her. It just means there’s no news. And as they say, no news is…”

“Right,” Meredith said. She wasn’t going to utter the words “good news.” Not until she and Leo and Carver were free and clear. And together.

Goddamn you, Freddy!
she thought (zillionth and first).

A voice rang out from downstairs: it was Connie, calling her for dinner.

They sat at a round teak table on the deck and gazed out at the indifferent ocean. The ocean didn’t care whether mankind lived or died or cheated or stole; it just kept rolling and tumbling over itself, encroaching, then receding.

Connie had poured herself a glass of wine. She said, “Meredith, do you want wine?”

“Do you have any red?”

“Of course I have red,” Connie said, standing up.

“No, wait. I don’t want it,” Meredith said. The chicken was cooking on the grill, and it smelled far more delicious than anything Meredith had eaten in months. Meredith would have loved a glass of red to go with the chicken and the fresh, delicious salad that they were now eating—Connie had whipped up the vinaigrette while Meredith looked on, astonished—but drinking a glass of red wine would put Meredith right back at her usual table at Rinaldo’s, next to Freddy.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” Meredith squinted out at the water. She saw a sleek, black head out about twenty yards. “Do you have seals?”

“That’s Harold,” Connie said. “Our seal. He’s always here.”

Meredith watched Harold swim through the breaking waves, then she noticed Connie’s downcast eyes.

“Are you okay?” Meredith asked.

Connie took a sip of her wine and nodded, but her eyes were shining.
Our seal:
she was thinking about Wolf. Meredith wanted to take Connie’s hand, but she wasn’t sure how that kind of gesture would be received.

Connie sniffed. “Tell me something.”

“What?” Meredith said.

“I don’t know. Anything,” Connie said. “We have to start somewhere.”

Instinctively, Meredith checked her wrist. For her birthday in October, Freddy had given her a tiger-striped Cartier watch, but Meredith had been required to leave behind any personal effects purchased in the past twelve months worth more than three hundred dollars. She said, “Well, as we speak, Freddy is on the bus for Butner. He’ll get there at ten o’clock tonight.”

“Jesus,” Connie said.

“What he did was awful,” Meredith said. She swallowed, and wished for that wine, but she took a sip of ice water instead. Her glass of ice water had a paper-thin slice of lemon in it. Things at Connie’s house were nice like that. What had Meredith done to deserve this? Freddy was, at that very moment, on some bus to North Carolina, his hands and feet shackled in heavy iron cuffs. The bus driver probably stopped for bathroom breaks every four hours or so. If Freddy couldn’t hold it, he would wet himself, and the other prisoners would love that. Meredith tensed with worry, as she might have for one of her children. Freddy suffered from a weak bladder. Recently, Meredith wondered if this had been a side effect from carrying around so much stress, fear, and guilt. Maybe now that he’d confessed, his bladder was sturdier. “I went to see him in jail.”

“I know,” Connie said. “I saw it on TV. I mean, I saw you headed down there.”

“It was a disaster,” Meredith said. “In retrospect, I shouldn’t have gone. But I wanted to see him.”

After the police hauled Freddy away on the afternoon of December 8, Meredith had found herself thinking of him in the past tense, as though he were dead—but he was alive, only a few miles away at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, which was connected to the federal courthouse by an underground tunnel. Meredith could go visit him. But should she? As the weeks passed, she went back and forth on this question. Absolutely not. But yes, she had to; there were so many things to ask. She wasn’t sure how it would look to the rest of the world. She couldn’t decide. She asked her attorneys.

“Should I go see Freddy in jail?” she said. “Or should I follow my sons’ example and cut him out of my life?”

They stumbled over each other trying to answer. Dev, she could tell, wanted her to forsake the old man.
What can he do for you now? He’s ruined you along with everyone else.
Burt, on the other hand, was more orthodox.

“I’m not your publicist,” Burt said. “I’m your attorney. So it’s my job to tell you that you have a legal right to visit your husband.” He handed her a sheet of paper. “Visiting hours are Mondays between nine and eleven. The visit can last up to an hour.”

“Can I bring him anything? What does he need?”

Burt cleared his throat. “They’re pretty strict about what will make it through security down there.” The way he said this sounded vague. It sounded as if there were pages and pages of regulations, but Burt had yet to grow familiar with them. Had Burt ever
had
a client in jail before? Meredith wouldn’t embarrass him by asking point-blank. “Quarters are good.”

“Quarters?”

“Rolls of quarters,” Burt said. “For the vending machines.”

“For the vending machines,” Meredith repeated. She thought about Freddy selecting a bag of Doritos or a package of Twinkies from a vending machine, and a part of her died. But what did she think he was eating in there? Salad caprese?

She decided not to go. The only way she could ever hope to save herself was to do what her children had done: denounce Freddy and the life they’d led together. When Leo and Carver found out about Freddy’s crimes, they had roared in anger, and Freddy sat impassively, offering them nothing to combat the fact that they were the sons of a thief and a pathological liar. They had stormed out of the apartment, and Meredith understood now, though she hadn’t at the time, that the boys had expected her to go with them. But she had stayed by Freddy’s side, because that was where her rut had been dug for the past thirty years. She couldn’t leave Freddy until this was figured out. Leo had said,
What precisely do you need to figure out, Mom? Dad is a thief. He’s a criminal! He has committed financial genocide!
Carver said,
We’re changing our name. You should, too.

Meredith knew she should make a statement, do an interview with Barbara Walters, if Barbara would have her. Explain the truth as she understood it, even though nobody on God’s green earth would believe her.

Weeks passed, then months. Meredith stuck to her resolve. Don’t think about Freddy. Pretend Freddy is dead. But as the evidence materialized against her, and then against Leo, Meredith realized her best hope lay in going to see him. She needed answers. There was the matter of the money: The money the Feds knew about, and the money they didn’t. He had to give it back—all of it. He understood this, right? How long had the Ponzi scheme been going on? Since the beginning? Had Delinn Enterprises
ever
been fully legitimate? Wasn’t there some way to prove that Leo was innocent, that Deacon Rapp was lying about Leo? Couldn’t Freddy give up the names of the people who had conspired with him in order to save his son? Meredith started scribbling out a list of questions. She had eighty-four. Eighty-four questions that required answers, including a question about why Freddy had been touching Samantha’s back that day.

To the jail, Meredith had worn jeans and a white button-down shirt and suede flats and her trench coat, and she carried a clutch purse with two rolls of quarters inside. Her hair hadn’t been colored in months, and there had been no trips to Palm Beach, so she was graying and her skin was the color of paste. She wore no makeup—she couldn’t insult the American public by bothering with mascara—although she knew that by not prettying herself, she would invite the press to comment on how worn-out she looked. Well, she
was
worn-out. The mob of photographers and reporters was waiting for her, snapping pictures, sticking microphones in her face, but Burt and Dev were there to fend them off and hail her a cab.

Later, she would wish she’d stayed in the relative safety of her apartment.

There had been a terrific wait to get in to see Freddy, during which Meredith experienced thirty-one flavors of anxiety. Burt and Dev were with her—together, they were costing her nine hundred dollars an hour, though how she would ever pay them, she had no idea. Burt checked his BlackBerry with a compulsivity that unsettled Meredith. Dev paged restlessly through an outdated
National Geographic
from the sad, wobbly lounge table that was scarred with other people’s initials. He then set the magazine down and studied the other denizens of the waiting room—the men and women who looked even more hopeless and lost than Meredith felt—as though he were going to put them in a novel. They didn’t speak until Meredith was called to go through security, when both Burt and Dev wished her luck. They weren’t going in with her. Security was another long and arduous process where Meredith and her clutch and trench coat were subjected to scrutiny. Meredith was patted down—roughly—by a female officer twice her size. The woman did everything but pick Meredith up, turn her upside down, and shake her. She didn’t say so, but she must have recognized Meredith and felt the predictable contempt. At the end, she shoved Meredith, just for fun.