The New York Times
, lined the office walls. Almost everyone in the pictures wore tuxedos or evening gowns. Many held tumblers of scotch and flashed toothy grins for the cameras. Betty and Sam sandwiched hard against Charlie in one photo, and all three howled at the lens. It had been a great moment, like many others.
Why does the house seem so different?
I searched for my favorite shot. It was seven or eight years old, one of the few taken outside. A fishing captain, with three days’ stubble and enough wrinkles to make prunes look taut, bunched in tight against Sam, Charlie, Evelyn, and me. We had chartered his boat. That day the old salt guzzled peach schnapps and regaled us with marlin memories from his “storied” career. Neither the peach schnapps nor the fish tales had comforted us on the open seas then, but I liked seeing Evelyn now.
Sam caught me lingering. Perhaps she read my mind. She rubbed my shoulder, her touch a cease-fire to earlier hostilities. The near caress said,
Let’s get this over with.
“Our 1040s are in here.” Sam opened the bottom drawer of an old office file. Mottled grains, black from time and abuse, occasionally interrupted the rich mahogany patina. The file looked like a trophy from one of Charlie’s Saturday afternoon forays. He had exquisite taste, and Sam knew just where to look. She handed me a thin folder. “I came across this file while looking for bank records.”
The Kelemen tax return bore no likeness to the filings of the wealthy. There were no K-1s or supporting attachments. There were no fat exhibits designed to make IRS agents go away. The couple had not even itemized deductions on Schedule A. The whole world itemized. The adjusted gross income, line 37 of the 1040, startled me.
Sam saw my double take. “What did you find?” she asked.
“You reported fifty-three thousand dollars in income last year.” In that instant I erased any lingering doubts about Charlie’s innocence. The image of Fred Masters, the star of home run derby, haunted me.
Game over, Carlo.
“Damn him,” Sam howled. “Charlie spent fifty-three thousand dollars a month.”
He had help.
Spending $53,000 a month took effort. And Charlie “Carlo” Kelemen was the master. He shopped compulsively and bought expensive gifts bordering on the absurd. He once presented an air conditioner, a massive window unit that cranked out 12,000 BTUs, to his host in Georgia. “Their guest bedroom is hotter than road tar in July,” he had complained to Sam. No doubt her estimate was right.
“There are probably no assets at the Kelemen Group,” I finally said. “Investor money paid for all your things.”
“Oh, come on,” she objected. “My parents invested.” Then Sam slumped like a marionette with its strings cut. She slid evenly, her back to the wall, and plopped hard against the wooden floor.
Charlie duped her,
I decided.
Seated, she drew her knees to her chest. The protective fetal position shielded Sam from my words and Charlie’s secrets. I sat and put my arm around her, suddenly the ambassador of kindness and sensitivity.
Or hard-nosed shit. I piled on the supporting evidence. It was the only way to stiffen her resolve. Sam’s troubles were just starting. “Take a look at this.” Reaching into my pocket, I unfolded Lila Priouleau’s letter as well as the “Investors” spreadsheet. I told Sam the whole story: my misgivings about redemptions, the forged testimonial, and the conversation with Susan Thorpe. I spared no detail.
“What should I do?” Sam asked.
“I’d start by hiring a lawyer. Popowski can refer you to the right litigator.”
Sam looked at me curiously. “Why do I need one? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“No, but Charlie did. People will be pissed,” I said, displaying the spreadsheet for emphasis. “They’ll sue, everybody except for two. Maybe.”
“My parents?” Sam ventured.
“Right.”
“But why me?”
“I don’t know which is worse, losing money or feeling stupid because somebody flimflammed you.”
“Why me?” she repeated.
“Vengeance. Charlie’s gone, which makes you the target. The courts may force you to sell all your possessions: paintings, Oriental rugs, and even your jewels.”
“I can’t find my jewels.”
“Oh, right.”
We sat in the silence underneath all those pictures of good-time Charlie. We sat for a long time and said nothing. We broke our silence only once, and I was the person who initiated the conversation. “I’ll take care of calling the police.”
“Why are you calling them?”
“The people on this list all had a reason to feed Charlie to the sharks.”
“Is my name there?” she asked angrily, her voice oozing menace.
“Don’t go there,” I scolded. “And there’s one other thing.”
How do I tell her?
“Which is what?” she asked.
“I wonder if Charlie’s killer thinks you were involved?”
Sam grabbed my shoulder, hard and urgent. She bore into my eyes, and it seemed her moist blues had never looked more beautiful. “What do you think, Grove?”
It’s a no-brainer.
“There’s one thing about old-school Yankees,” I replied. “Money never motivates you. It’s always something else. I bet that’s why Evelyn and you were such good friends.”
In that instant she released her grasp, perhaps comforted by the memory of her friend, my wife. Sam and I sat for a long time in Charlie’s office, our backs against the wall, figuratively and literally. It was only after a lifetime of silence that I realized what had changed.
The dogs.
“Where are Un, Deux, and Trois?”
“On their way to Boston,” she replied. “To my parents.”
“Really?”
“They were too much.”
Sad.
I loved how the three dachshunds lined up in a row, sat bolt erect on their haunches, and hammed for food.
So fragile,
I thought, considering Sam’s upheaval. Fifteen days ago she had been rich, however artificial. Now she had no money and would soon face a slew of lawsuits. My fears about Charlie’s killer, I decided, had been an overreaction.
All the vengeance in the world won’t get the money back.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
There was no bike race on Sunday. I woke before six A.M. anyway, immediately alert and mad as hell. Clarity was grinding my brain into hamburger. One person dominated all my thoughts.
Fred Masters.
In my head I saw only Fred. There was Fred swinging at a softball, Fred laughing when I hit the deck, and Fred waving good-bye. How could anyone with a conscience hurt him? How could anyone embezzle his hall-of-fame mother? Betty had scrimped and scraped for the day when she was gone.
Kelemen looted that nest egg. He gorged his fat face on $3,500 dinners with her money. The 1040, specifically the adjusted gross income of $53,000, confirmed the Ponzi scheme and with it my realization that Charlie Kelemen had cheated his friends. He disgusted me.
A colostomy bag in wingtips.
Charlie had no interest in Fred. His offer to help was crap. Charlie studied Down’s syndrome for one reason—to bilk Betty for $250,000. That money repaid Thorpe. And Susan’s money probably paid for the octopus chandelier, the $125,000 Oriental, and who knew what else.
Charlie’s offer at Virgil’s haunted me more than ever. “Why don’t you
join me at the Kelemen Group?” he had asked over lunch. “I need people to grow the business.”
Jon Stewart has the word for that train wreck. “Catastrofuck.”
My thoughts intermittently returned to Sam. She was broke, vulnerable, and disillusioned. As soon as I briefed the police, news would spread like fire. Investors in the Kelemen Group would react with first disbelief, then horror, and finally fury as details came to light. They would go ape shit.
Who could blame them? Charlie had stolen their money and preyed on their trust. They had dropped their guards, greed suffocating reason. I could hear echoes from another era.
“Rat bastard. Rat bastard.”
Investors needed a scapegoat. They would sue, and Sam would lose everything as court-appointed trustees liquidated the Kelemen plunder. She was collateral damage on the come, another victim of Charlie’s chicanery.
There was no way to bury the story. Charlie Kelemen had flimflammed friends and family. He had targeted a young boy with Down’s syndrome. Charlie’s crimes bordered on the satanic, and soon the sordid details would fill newspapers across the nation.
The New York Times
would run a terrific exposé on their front page and seal his status as Wall Street’s anti-Christ. And the
New York Post—
they were something else.
Mandy Maris will have a field day.
Sam would pay the price. Reporters might measure their words at first. They might chronicle a young widow’s grief. Inevitably, the media would go for her jugular.
The wilderness is always calm before a slaughter.
“Is the widow an accomplice?” That would be the question on everyone’s mind, the one asked by reporters, the one inviting a guilty verdict from the court of public opinion. I had already reached my decision. Sam Kelemen, friend and emotional nurse, was no con artist. She was a victim, and she was helpless.
After leaving her town house, I had debated whether to tell the police. The revelation of a Ponzi scheme would ignite Sam’s problems. It would be impossible to defend her. Telling the police would start her dance with the press, her fifteen minutes of shame.
So what. I had no choice. Charlie Kelemen had pissed off the wrong person. Someone on the “Investors” spreadsheet had discovered the crime. Whoever it was had the motive to murder Charlie. I no longer believed Sam
was in danger. She had no money, no jewels, and nothing of value for a defrauded killer.
Fitzsimmons and Mummert need to know anyway.
That Sunday morning I decided the police could wait a few hours more. It was still early, and I did my best thinking on a bicycle. Thirty, maybe forty miles, I would hammer out the distance before waking up Boston’s finest. I wondered whether Fitzsimmons and Mummert had even stayed in town over the weekend. I needed to think and pedal hard. The cocktail of speed and lactic acid would focus my mind and make me more articulate.
Living alone fuels eccentricities. Consider my case. Around 6:30 A.M. I talked to my bicycle: “Let’s roll, Colnago.”
The July air, still fresh from an overnight rain, hinted at the fierce humidity to follow. Traffic, the City’s daily regimen of driving anarchy, had not yet kicked into gear. Yellow cabs were nowhere in sight. With a city sleeping and New Yorkers still recovering from Saturday night, it was a great time to start riding. Motorists would multiply. Their impatience would surge as the day progressed.
The only moving vehicle was a creamy green Vespa. The color, though metallic, reminded me of my mother’s key-lime pie. As the scooter buzzed down Central Park West, its driver looked cartoonish. He was huge and ripped, his monster pectorals bulging through a black polo shirt. The diminutive scooter labored under the hulking weight above, its engine whining like a pesky mosquito.
For just a moment I laughed at the incongruity. No other vehicles navigated the streets. The tranquility, early morning and empty city, proved comforting as the mosquito engine drowned in the distance.
With a twist against the pedal, I snapped my cycling cleats into place and headed south toward Seventy-second Street. The park felt safe inside. It was closed to autos on the weekends, and there were few potholes on the well-paved roads. There was little need to stay vigilant, no ruts to fold $800 bike wheels like origami. Central Park was the perfect place to wake up and get the heart pumping. My favorite loop started in the park and included a spin around the West Side of Manhattan.
At first I pedaled with a slow, measured cadence, no more than sixty-five
turns of the crank every minute. The pace was just fast enough to fold comfortably into the flow of Central Park’s traffic. Joggers to the left. Riders to the right. My carbon handlebars, padded with blue cork tape from Cinelli, felt like warm handshakes from old friends.
Up ahead a mini-peloton of cyclists wore blue spandex togs. I hit the gas and raced alongside. All their jerseys screamed “Italia” in bold white letters. The last rider in the pack rode a silver-black Serotta with Dura-Ace components, brakes, crankshaft, and wheels.
“Nice bike,” I volunteered, falling into the ad hoc camaraderie that unites all cyclists. We loved our bikes and reveled in the shared experiences of pain, flat tires, and bad dogs. There were no strangers among our ranks.
“Thanks,” Italia said.
We passed the Guggenheim, visible through sweeping foliage on our right, and then veered west. The road tumbled, the steep descent abruptly ending my conversation with Italia. Every cyclist in the pack concentrated, tucked aerodynamically, and barreled downhill with the wind whistling in our ears.
At the base I waved good-bye, said, “Arrivederci,” and pulled right to the park’s exit. Italia touched his helmet and saluted farewell.
Pedaling hard on 110th Street, I stood out of the saddle and pulled against the handlebars, rocking the bike side to side to gain leverage. British cyclists called this motion “honking.”
As I raced west toward Riverside Drive, my thoughts returned to Sam. Would she inherit civil liability from her dead husband? It was a legal question, and I had no idea. Would investors in the Kelemen Group sue Sam? Or would they sue Charlie’s estate? Did it make a difference? I planned to call Popowski on Monday. He would know.
