The cell phone pressed against his ear,Mike leaned back in the front seat of his truck and said, “You said Weinstein wouldn’t take the case unless he got the go-ahead from you.”
“Your father left a message with Miranda—”
“Who?”
“Miranda is Martin’s secretary,” Sam said. “Your father left a message with her saying that if Martin took the case, he’d be looking at a twenty-five thousand cash bonus. If Martin got your father off, then he was looking at a bonus of a hundred grand. The operative word here is cash. You understand what I’m driving at?”
He did. In addition to whatever percentage the firm would give Martin Weinstein for taking on the case, he was looking at a potential $125,000 bonus—all of it tax free since Lou agreed to pay him in cash. No records, no way for the IRS to come knocking.
“And let me guess,” Mike said. “Martin won’t be sharing any of that bonus money with the firm, will he?”
“Martin will throw some money Miranda’s way to keep her quiet, and she will. She’s been with him for a long time. Wherever Martin goes, Miranda goes. He pays her well for her loyalty.”
“So far she’s not doing a very good job at keeping quiet.”
“Miranda didn’t tell me any of this. Martin did.”
“Martin care where this money came from?”
“No. He needs it. He’s got his eye on a new Bentley.”
“Sounds like a hell of a guy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me your father had that kind of money on hand?”
“I had no idea.” Lou was never a flashy guy. Sure he wore suits, but he didn’t dump money into fancy cars or big vacations. His house in Belham was a one-floor ranch, and there was a time, during those first few years back from Vietnam, when money was tight.
Sam said, “When you and I first talked about this, I said that if you used Martin’s name as bait—and you clearly did—then there was a possibility that your father would pick up the phone and call Martin directly.”
“Which is why I thought we had a deal in place.”
“You didn’t tell me your father was going to throw around wads of cash. If I had known that, I would have tried another tactic.”
Mike wasn’t pissed at Sam; he was pissed at himself. He had been so consumed with the idea of having Lou cornered that he hadn’t thought about the money. Sure, Mike knew about the armored car jobs, about the load that had totaled close to two million. His error had been in assuming—incorrectly—that Lou had blown through the money. Mike hadn’t figured Lou to be a guy who would have a lot of dough socked away somewhere.
And don’t forget all that time Lou spent in Florida. What, you think he didn’t do any jobs while he was down there?
Sam said, “Why is this bothering you so much? I thought you wrote him off.”
“It doesn’t matter now. How much I owe you for all of this?”
“No charge.”
“Let me take you out to dinner then. I’ll come into town and we’ll go someplace nice.”
“Nice could be dangerous to your wallet.”
“What are we talking about here? Salads that cost fifty bucks a plate?”
“Oh no. Much, much higher than that.”
“And I suppose I’m going to have to dress up.”
“You bet your ass.”
“Pick a time and place. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Mike hung up and looked out the window at Lou’s house—and make no mistake about it, it had always been Lou’s house,mother and son nothing more than extended guests. The last time Mike was here, he was just shy of eighteen. After Lou had left for work, Mike packed up his stuff—what he owned fit into two boxes—and drove over to his room at the O’Malley house, the room vacated by Chuck and Jim O’Malley, the two of them enlisting in the army at the same time.
That was two decades ago and now the old neighborhood had undergone a conversion. The ranch homes had been leveled and replaced with nicely sized Colonials, a few of them with two-car garages. Two decades and during that time Lou hadn’t spruced his place up, made it look a little cheery instead of like a brooding hideaway for a serial killer.
Mike sat in his truck, staring at his old home and thinking about Lou’s note. Lou was giving him a one shot deal. If Mike didn’t show up with the cash tomorrow morning, it was over. Lou would gladly take all of his secrets with him to the grave. Like Jonah.
No good can come of this. You know that.
It was that rational, sensible voice that had kept him out of a good deal of trouble most of his early life. Sensible and rational. Just like his mother.
Mike stepped outside, shut the door, and walked up the sloping lawn to the front door, fishing the key out of his jeans pocket. He unlocked the door and stepped inside the living room, his right hand sliding up the wall on his right for the light switch.
The living room still had the same low-pile tan carpeting, the walls still painted white, not a mark on them. No pictures, no framed prints. Beyond the living room was a small kitchen—same white linoleum floor, clean and polished, spotless as always, the green counters, sink and kitchen table absent of any clutter. The air lingered with traces of ammonia and bleach—harsh, antiseptic smells that went right along with the cold furniture: hard, functional pieces that could have been plucked from a hospital room, places where you were forced to ponder your bruises and scars.
Mike shut the door behind him. Six steps and he had walked through the living room and part of the kitchen. He flipped another wall switch and moved down the narrow hallway, about to head to his old bedroom when he passed by Lou’s opened bedroom door and caught a glimpse of what looked like picture frames displayed on top of a bureau.
Mike turned around, walked into the bedroom and flicked on the light.
The framed pictures were of Sarah.
Four of them, all taken outside, all of them capturing Sarah at various ages: Sarah wearing a sundress and walking barefoot next to Fang, her hand on the dog’s back for support; Sarah smelling a dandelion; Sarah playing with Paula O’Malley at the jungle gym at the Hill; Sarah dressed in her pink snowsuit, holding Mike’s hand as they waited for their turn to go down the hill.
The pictures looked familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Mike had never given his father any pictures—and neither had Jess. No way in hell. Mike was the designated family photographer, Jess having no patience with cameras, more concerned about keeping her hands free to catch Sarah in case she fell.
Mike hadn’t taken these pictures. Lou had. Lou had been told to stay away and instead had watched Sarah through a camera lens and stolen these moments.
There had to be more photos of Sarah, more rolls of film.
Mike searched through Lou’s bureau drawers first. When he came up empty, he moved onto the nightstand drawers, the shoeboxes on a shelf in Lou’s closet and then finally under the bed. Nothing.
Maybe the pictures were in the safe.
Mike walked into his old bedroom and flicked on the light. The room was completely empty. So was the closet. He removed the Swiss Army knife from his front pocket, a Christmas gift from Bill’s kids last year, and after selecting the blade, got down on both knees and used the knife to pry up a corner section of the carpet. Once he got a strip, he grabbed it and gave it a good, hard yank.
Lou had gone all out with the floor safe. Mike knew a thing or two about safes. A few years back, when Jess wanted to store some important documents inside the house instead of making trips to the safety deposit box, Mike had a guy from Trunco Safe in East Boston come out and run through all the different models and options. While Lou’s safe appeared to be a similar model—square, made of solid steel with a flush cover plate that was perfect for concealment under carpet—Mike was willing to bet Lou’s model had drill-proof plates and was built to provide protection against forced entry with something like a sledgehammer. The safe had been set in concrete, making it impossible to pull out unless you happened to have some serious heavy machinery.
This safe hadn’t been here when he was a kid. It was also less than five years old. When Sarah disappeared, and before Jonah became a suspect, Merrick and crew had locked their sights on Lou and had ripped apart every square inch of this house, the thinking being that Sarah was kidnapped because of one of Lou’s past associations. Slow Ed had never mentioned anything about finding a safe full of cash—or pictures of Sarah for that matter.
Mike worked the dial. The combination entered, he turned the hinge and heard the safe click open.
Two rows, two stacks each of crumpled hundred dollar bills bound together by elastic. Mike grabbed one stack, counted through it. Ten grand—and that was just one stack. There’d be a hell of a lot more, depending on how deep the safe was. Five minutes later he knew.
“Holy shit.”
Half a million—in cash.
Of course, a voice said. If he placed it in a bank, the government could come in and freeze the accounts.
An insane thought flashed in Mike’s head: Donate it. Yeah, Lou, I found the money, only I got to thinking about how it would be better off in someone else’s hands. You know, give it to someone who really needed it. So I gave it to the ASPCA. They’re a group that works with lost and runaway dogs. No need to thank me, Lou. The look on your face is thanks enough. Priceless as that moment would be, if he did that, Lou would stick around and haunt him forever.
At the bottom of the safe was an elastic-wrapped envelope. Mike reached inside, pulled out the envelope and removed the elastic.
Pictures, but not of Sarah. The top picture, the colors slightly off and yellowed with age, was of people walking through a crowded alley of brick and white buildings filled with lights. At first Mike thought the place might have been Faneuil Hall in Boston. But this area was more enclosed and had a foreign feel to it.
Like Paris.
Mike studied the faces in the pictures. He didn’t recognize any of them. By the way people were dressed, it was either spring or summer. He turned the picture over and saw the developer’s date stamped on the back: July 16, 1976.
July. The month Lou went to Paris. Next picture: a woman with frosted blond hair sitting at an outdoor table under a white awning covered with ivy, a pair of round black sunglasses covering her eyes as she read a newspaper. People sat around her, reading newspapers and books, talking, drinking coffee. Mike flipped to the next picture, a close-up of the same woman, only she had taken off her sunglasses and was smiling at the man now seated across from her. The man’s back was toward the camera, but the woman’s face was as plain as day.
It was his mother.
He flipped through the rest of the pictures. His mother was in every one of them, as was her companion, this unknown man who was a good deal taller than her and had a very sharp, hawk-like nose, long sideburns and thick, wavy black hair—a banker or investor of some sort given the suit. Hard to say. What was clear was how much his mother cared for him. In every picture she either held his hand or arm. In the last picture, the man had his arm wrapped around her shoulder as they walked down a crowded street, his mother’s wide smile turned away from him, his mother safe and happy, relieved to be back in Paris, lost in the streets of her birthplace and hometown.