The Cake House (33 page)

“No,” my mother said. She covered her face with one hand. I felt her stomach push against my back, and then the staccato of her racing heart. “So finally. We’ve come to this. I’m glad,” she said. “How do you keep it up?”

“What? What do you mean?”

“You forget who I was married to. I’ve seen every kind of scam, every scheme imaginable. When Robert wanted to work for you, I knew then. I knew it all.”

“But you came to me. You left him and came to me. Why would you do that if you knew, if you weren’t okay with it?”

“Oh, that’s convenient. Look at yourself. Look what you’ve done here. You suggested I leave him. You’re the one who insisted we marry. Fewer questions that way, right? Think of my daughter? What would I live on? Where would I go?”

“You still could have said no. If you’ve known all this time about the company, what Robert and I did, what I do now, you could have said no if this wasn’t what you wanted.”

She gazed out to the garden as if looking out to the past, to that early part of the summer. The golden light painted over her skin. “You’re right, of course. I needed to be free of him. I needed to get away and I didn’t know how to do it. And I wanted to believe in you when you said you could help. Just once, I needed to believe in someone.”

He took a step toward her. “You can still believe in me. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I need you to believe in me.” His voice cracked. “There’s still time.”

She shook her head, sorrowful, as if finally, right at that moment, she’d come to understand the man she had married. “They’re probably watching the house,” she said, her voice shaky but calm. “You can’t run, Claude. And if you do, I’m not going with you.”

His face twisted in anger, in fear and shock. Something pushed and pulled between them, zinging over my head.

“Was it you? Did you talk? Did you tell about Robert and me?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she said, honeyed hair swept back, her voice as rough as if she’d smoked a thousand cigarettes.

“Someone talked. Someone gave me up.”

“It wasn’t me,” she said with false calmness.

He crossed the room, and I felt my mother tense beside me. We backed up against the wall. She had been calm a moment ago, but she was afraid now.

“I’m not sure I believe you,” he said, looking at her hard.

“She already said it wasn’t her.” I spoke up, pushing between them. “It was Alex,” I said. “And Tom Nuñez.”

Alex wasn’t here anymore, and Tom was safe with his brother, but I still felt sad and shamed to tell Claude the truth, as if by doing so I had betrayed them all.

“You’re lying.” Claude was pale, brow creased. “You’re mad at Alex. You want to blame him.”

“No. I’m not.”

He shook his head, closed his eyes, crumbling as if in pain, and perhaps he was. It hurt me; I could only imagine how much it hurt Claude. He was saying, “No, no, no,” quietly to himself.

“You can’t tell me you didn’t have fair warning.” My mother spoke, and I marveled at the understanding in her voice. “That you didn’t see the writing on the wall. You
couldn’t have kept it up much longer. Was it arrogance?” She continued in her calm, smoke-raspy voice. “That you couldn’t believe it would ever end?”

Behind where Claude stood, the duffel bag sat on the dining room table, like a black hole sucking the light that streamed in through the sliding doors: all that money and none of it his.

Claude went back over to the money but didn’t pick any of it up, answering with a dull inflection. “It was a ride,” he said, with a hint of a shrug to his shoulders. “Wild and crazy. I knew it would end one day,” he said. “But I thought I could get out before then.”

“Robert thought the same thing,” she added.

Then he flushed red and his eyes grew soft. He pleaded. “It wasn’t only about the money.”

She closed her eyes. “You can’t stop for one minute, can you?” And her voice was almost a whisper. “You tell that to everyone you ever hurt.”

He looked stricken; then his expression hardened. Claude didn’t move, didn’t take his eyes off hers. “You’re my
wife,
” he said through clenched teeth.

She shook her head and stepped back. “Yes, I guess I am.”

A strong knock on the front door shook the entire house. I felt lightheaded. The knock came again, accompanied with shouts. They called Claude’s name.

None of us moved. Claude breathed hard and fast. He closed his eyes. Blindly, he reached out for my mother, and in mercy, she took his hand and held on.

A bullhorn shattered the illusion of intimacy. A man’s voice filled every corner of the living room. The place was surrounded. Please come out with your hands above your head.

Claude only stood there with my mother before him.

Wood splintered. The door broke open, orders were shouted, and men washed into the house through the front, the first wave crashing in. I turned toward the sliding glass doors and saw a second wave of men in the garden. My mother had her arm around me, the three of us standing close together in the center of the living room. Claude kept his eyes on her, even as an ocean of men spread out through the living room with their guns raised.

Deputy Mike held his hand up and the other men lowered their weapons. “Mr. Fisk,” he said. “Could you please come with me?”

Claude didn’t resist when they took first his right arm behind his back and then his left arm. He said nothing when his rights were read, silent when they clicked the handcuffs on.

Harold entered the living room, no longer the weak old man I had known in Claude’s office, but taller now, strong, with his dark, heavy gaze taking in the room. He wore an FBI vest and a badge that swung from a chain around his neck.

When Claude saw Harold, something electric snapped through the air. He took a step toward Harold, hostility burning in his eyes. Deputy Mike yanked him back, blocking Claude with his body. He spoke in a whisper until Claude shifted his attention back to my mother.

Two men in FBI vests went through the contents of the
desk and the dining table, gathering paperwork and putting the money into evidence bags. I flinched when I heard things being moved in the darkroom, realizing for the first time that it was more than Claude who would lose everything. I would too, and my mother as well. My camera was in the darkroom, but I squelched the urge to run and get it, already knowing that I wouldn’t be able to keep it.

I wanted to feel betrayal—at both Claude and my father, at their selfishness that kept on taking from me and my mother—but the blade of fear in Claude’s eyes only made me sad.

“It’s time,” said Deputy Mike to Claude in a low voice. He put a hand on Claude’s shoulder, another on his back, guiding him to the front door. Outside a crowd gathered. The police had set up a barrier to keep the crowd back. Two agents, one on each side, marched Claude across the lawn. He kept his head down and stumbled. I turned away when they put him into the backseat of an unmarked car. The windows were tinted, so I couldn’t see if Claude watched us as the car drove out of sight, down the hill, around a corner. And he was gone.

SANTA CLARITA OFFICERS MIXED IN
with the FBI men. My mother sat on a chair in the dining room while men in boots stomped through the house. I sat near her, afraid of her ashen face, her flat, distant expression.

Deputy Mike sat down at the table across from my mother. “I’ve been asked to speak with you, if that’s all right.” When she didn’t answer, he looked down at his pad, tapped his pencil against the wood of the table. He reminded
me of Tom, with dark rings under his eyes and an aura of unkemptness.

“Will we have to leave?” I asked, already making plans, thinking of what my mother and I would need to do.

He shook his head. “Not for a while. But,” he said, lifting his gaze back to my mother, “all of Mr. Fisk’s money will be frozen, pending the investigation. There were a lot of families affected by his business, a lot of people hurt. It’ll take a while to untangle it all.”

“Are we in trouble?” I asked, but all I really wanted to know was if my mother was in trouble.

Deputy Mike shook his head. “I don’t think so, but we do have questions.”

When she didn’t answer, he looked down at his pad. “Did you know the nature of your husband’s business?”

She shifted in her seat, gazing toward the living room.

“Your first husband, he also worked for Mr. Fisk, is that correct?”

Her cheeks turned pink. “Isn’t there something about a spouse not being compelled to testify against her husband?” she asked.

“These are just questions, ma’am.”

She put her hand down on the table, one finger tracing over the grain of the wood. “I think I’d better speak with an attorney before answering any questions.”

Deputy Mike placed his pencil down across his notepad. “Of course. But if you’re willing to listen, we’re hoping you can help us. The investigation is ongoing. We’ve got a pretty good idea of the scope of Mr. Fisk’s operation, but we’re still missing some key information. The domestic bank accounts tied to Global Securities are nearly empty, as are his personal
accounts. However, there may be more money, hidden somewhere.”

I turned to the cash, now in labeled evidence bags on the table. It already seemed like a mountain of money.

“No,” said Deputy Mike, noticing where I was looking. “More than what’s there. That man”—he pointed to a short man with thinning hair searching through the contents of the rolltop desk—“is the SEC fraud examiner. He believes there might be more. Anything you can tell us would be helpful.”

My mother shook her head. “Claude never shared anything with me. We never spoke about his work or where he got his money. I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“Please, Mrs. Fisk,” said Deputy Mike. “Anything at all.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said with a quiet, exhausted voice. “Call me Dahlia.”

They both fell silent. Deputy Mike seemed reluctant to leave. I watched the SEC fraud examiner speak into a phone he held to his ear with his shoulder while he wrote on a notepad.

“How much money did he steal?” I asked.

Deputy Mike took a deep breath. “We’re not sure yet. Somewhere between two and three million. It might be more—they’re still figuring it out. He’s been running this scam for about ten years. That’s enough time to do quite a bit of damage.”

I envisioned a circle of greed like a roundabout or a Ferris wheel going faster and faster until people couldn’t hold on anymore and got flung off, tossed aside and left broken. No one was safe from the force of that spin; not my father, not Claude, no one.

“There is one thing,” said my mother. “But I don’t think it’ll give you much more. You’d probably find it on your own.”

“That’s all right. Everything helps at this point.”

She rose, and we followed her as she ascended the stairs to the third floor, into her bedroom. There were a few uniformed men inspecting the dresser drawers, checking the mattress, rifling through the clothing in the closet. The men stopped when we entered. Without a word, she went into the walk-in closet. An agent stepped aside. At the far back, she went down to her knees, almost as if to pray, and reached into the forest of coats and dresses, pushing them aside. She pulled up part of the carpet that had been cut, revealing a hidden compartment.

“I found it when I was cleaning,” she said, meeting my eyes, and I remembered that long-ago day when she’d been searching for her notebook, frantic to find it one moment, then ordering me out of the room the next.

Deputy Mike opened the compartment and pulled out a stack of documents. I saw the first page, I saw the written notes, and I knew even without reading it that it was written in my father’s handwriting, that my father’s name and Claude’s name were there.

My mother gathered her dress to her body, as if she didn’t want any part of her, even her clothing, to touch anything else. When she eased out of the closet, I took her hand.

“I hope it helps,” she said.

He turned his head to speak into his walkie-talkie. I heard his voice echo throughout the room, throughout the house. He ordered the carpets pulled up and the walls checked; he said, “Knock them down if you have to.”

It was strange to think of Claude tucking money into
every hole in the Cake House. I visualized him sneaking around at night with bags of cash, searching for unlikely and obscure hiding places. Had that been my father’s suggestion? Or perhaps the idea came from the ghost, whispering in Claude’s ear. But that was who Claude was, a man who hides.

WHEN THEY LIFTED THE CARPET
in the third-floor bedroom, they discovered a second hidden cubbyhole by the bed, beneath the floorboards, that held more cash. They found a safe hidden behind the new drywall in the darkroom. It took them all day to crack it open, but eventually they did. The safe held evidence of bribes and false SEC filings and computer disks. A thorough search of the house revealed more hiding places: in the second-floor bathroom under the sink, in Alex’s room underneath his bed.

The closets were molested, bookshelves left ruffled and flustered, bedclothes stripped, leaving shamed, naked mattresses. Officers picked through every drawer and every cabinet, upended every vase big or small, went through each room until all of Claude’s secrets were revealed. They found my mother’s notebook, still wrapped in its plastic, underneath their bed. They tore the plastic off, flipped through its pages. Already so fragile, the pages came loose, scattering across my mother’s mattress. I collected all the pages and put it back together again.

That night, I slept with my mother in the unfamiliar darkness of her bedroom, in the bed she had shared with Claude. They had made love in that bed. They had held each other. Next to me, she lay taut and rigid on her back, sometimes with her eyes closed, sometimes with her eyes
open. Her breath was even, steady, a constant metronome in the shadows.

“Is it wrong?” she said in the darkness. “Is it wrong that I can’t cry for Claude?”

I took her hand and lay on my back to stare at the ceiling with her.

“Maybe, in some ways, this is a blessing.” The words were spoken under her breath, like a prayer to some god she couldn’t ever believe in. “I don’t have a husband anymore. I don’t have a home. Nothing. Clean slate.”