B009XDDVN8 EBOK (42 page)

“I bet he did,” I said.

“He found us two interest-only loans, one for the old house and one for the new. The rate was slightly higher than we had been paying because of my credit score and the nature of the loan, but the payments were much lower. I fudged my income figures to qualify, and suddenly I was back in the black.”

“How long until they converted?”

“Five years.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“But by then my credit score would have been scrubbed clean, the houses would both have gained enough that I could refinance again, and we could keep it all going with an even lower rate.”

“Magic.”

“And things were okay,” said Ben. “I was making it work, we had the kid and then another. Everything settled down, until the second divorce.”

“What happened the second time?” I said.

“She found me cheating.”

“With who?”

“Sylvia.”

“Jesus, Ben.”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to you? You were always so careful.”

“I don’t know, something changed in me. I just never could stop feeling alone, no matter how many wives, how many children. It made me do these crazy things.”

I didn’t have to ask when that feeling started.

It was with the second divorce that the serious troubles arose. Two houses and an apartment and child support and alimony. He pleaded poverty but neither the wives nor the judges believed him, and the money started draining out of the safe-deposit box as if a hole had been drilled into the galvanized steel. He started hitting up his friends for cash. He borrowed from me, he borrowed more from Augie. But he was pretty sure he would make it through okay. He was up for a promotion at work that could stabilize his finances. And with a bump up in the value of the houses, he soon would be able take out ever-larger loans at ever-lower rates to pay everyone what he owed and get back on his feet. That was his plan, and he had a wily mortgage broker available to make it a reality.

Until everything changed.

When the mortgages were about to convert, with a radically higher rate and a crushing payment of principal and interest amortized over twenty-five years, the mortgage broker wasn’t wily enough to refinance two houses that were suddenly worth less than their loans. And Ben’s company started downsizing, laying off employees and cutting the hours and pay of those who remained as its business fell flat. Ben was one of the lucky ones who kept his job, but his pay was reduced and the drain of the stolen cash became a sucking swirling wound until it was gone, all of it.

“All of it?” I said.

“I was like the worst loser at the craps table,” said Ben, “throwing in that last handful of chips just because it was easier than picking up and walking away.”

“All of it?”

“Gone,” said Ben. “I guess I was hoping I’d die of a heart attack before it all came to a head. But even with all the weight I
gained, no such luck. I thought maybe I should be a little more proactive about dying. And that’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands.”

A few years back he had spied a man at a shopping center, a man he didn’t ever recall seeing before but the sight of whom evoked in Ben a strange, almost existential terror. The man looked like your average Florida businessman, gray haired, clean-shaven, with nice shoes and a long-sleeved shirt open at the collar. So why had the very sight of him struck such a nasty chord? Curious and terrorized all at once, and always on the lookout for danger, Ben followed the man from one store to the next, trying to figure it out. And then he recognized the tattoos.

Ben spun around in fear on the very spot. Derek Grubbins, in Ben’s city. It was Ben’s worst nightmare come true. He thought of slipping away unnoticed, he thought of running for the hills. But what would that achieve? Safer than running was to learn all he could about what Derek Grubbins was up to in Fort Lauderdale. So he kept following, through the shopping center and to Grubbins’s car, a blue Corvette. Ben took down the license plate number.

“How come you didn’t tell us you found Derek?” I said.

“What good would it have done?”

“Augie and I should have known.”

“You would have panicked and Augie would have done something stupid and everything would have blown to hell. But I lived here. I couldn’t have you two screwing it up for me.”

“That’s crap,” I said. “You were saving him for yourself, weren’t you, Ben? He was your ace in the hole.”

“Maybe, but not like you think.”

“You had betrayal up your damn sleeve for all these years.”

“No,” said Ben. “It wasn’t betrayal I was thinking of. But over the years, as everything fell apart, I did come up with an idea of how to make money off the bastard. From what I knew of his story after Pitchford, he was in hiding for his life. There were
plenty who would pay to find him. I figured he might pay more not to be found.”

“You were going to blackmail Derek Grubbins?”

“I was at the end of my rope, J.J. I was so blinded by my circumstances, I didn’t see any other way out.”

“You’re insane.”

“I was, yes,” said Ben. “Every night, lying alone in that crappy apartment, the debts pressed down on my chest until I couldn’t breathe. And every morning, when I woke to another day of failure, I thought how much simpler it would be if I just killed myself. I figured if it went bad, Derek would just save me the trouble. I had found out he was the general partner of a real-estate development firm downtown. So I drank a few midafternoon Scotches for courage and I paid him a visit.”

“My God.”

“Yeah.”

“How did he react?”

“Not like you’d expect,” said Ben. “Not like you’d expect at all.”

Derek Grubbins’s office was large and rich, with a seating area like in a hotel lobby. Giant maps of a planned golf community hung on the paneled walls. It took Ben a while to get past the secretary, but when he did, Derek Grubbins greeted him with a warm smile and open arms, as if he were genuinely glad to see an old face from the old neighborhood. Derek was preternaturally calm, his rasp of a voice was soft, his weathered eyes warm.

“Of course I remember yous,” said Derek, still neighborhood rough in his manner and accent. “Big Ben. The only kid on the street tough enough to stand up to my beast of a brother. And then you played football for Pitchford High, right?”

“That’s right,” said Ben, perplexed by Derek’s utter friendliness.

“You was going to be a superstar, turn pro. How’d that turn out for you?”

“Not so good,” said Ben.

They sat in the easy chairs by a wide window and spoke amiably, about their old life in Pitchford and their new lives in Fort Lauderdale. They talked about the two old friends Ben always used to hang out with, the kid in the Bernstein house and that Augie Iannucci with the skateboard. They even talked about Tony. It was weirdly pleasant, like chatting up an old friend, even though it was the first words that had ever actually passed between the two of them. When Ben finally tried to make his blackmail demand, with the hesitation and stammers of the natural-born noncriminal, Derek just laughed him off. “Who the hell still cares about an old broken-down biker like me?” said Derek. And then, most improbably, he started asking Ben about Ben. How was the family? How was the job? How were the finances?

“If there’s anything I can do to help yous out,” said Derek Grubbins, “you let me know. We Pitchford brats, we need to stick together.”

And when Ben, eager to talk to anyone, started in on his money problems, Derek Grubbins gave him a smile and a wink and told Ben that he had some banking contacts that might be able to help. “Get me all the details,” said Derek Grubbins, “and your financials. I’ll see what I can do.”

Four weeks later, after an astonishing appraisal on both houses and a strangely spiffed-up credit report, Ben was ready to close on two new mortgages with rock-bottom interest rates and terms that would lower his monthly payments dramatically while putting $10,000 cash money in his pocket. It was like a gift from on high, it was like a favor from a best friend.

To celebrate the approval of the loan, Derek invited Ben to his house for a preclosing drink. The house was in Harbor Beach, a huge spanking-new Moorish castle right on the Intracoastal. Lucille, Derek’s live-in girlfriend, was tall and young and blonde, with a mouth that looked designed by a committee for sucking
dick. The cigars were smuggled from Cuba, the Scotch was well aged. Derek Grubbins had hit the jackpot of life. After the pleasant pleasantries, Derek took Ben out back, past the pool, right to his deepwater dock where, floating like a sleeping shark, was his thirty-five-foot Bayliner dubbed the
Second Chance
.

“Yous up for a cruise?” said Derek.

“Sure,” said Ben.

Down the Intracoastal, under the Seventeenth Street Causeway, out into the ocean, zooming by boats crawling with bikinis. There were a couple fishing rods, which they didn’t use, and a cooler full of beer stashed inside a bench seat, which they certainly did. Feeling the lift of the engines, the heat from the sun, the unsteadiness of his stomach as the boat lurched in a wave, and an unfamiliar optimism about his future, Ben felt like he was floating in a haze. They talked more about the old days, the old friends. Ben told him that he used to have a boat before he ran out of money and that his friend J.J., a mortgage broker, still did. He told him that Augie now lived in Vegas. He told him that they still all stayed in touch. Derek smiled and piloted the boat deeper into the ocean and told Ben to have another beer. And another beer. And that’s when Derek made his offer.

“You know, Ben,” said Derek, “things is working out pretty swell for me down here. My business is growing like a cancer, and I’m always on the lookout for talent. I can use a man with the guts to take a risk in exchange for a big enough payoff.” They were sitting now on the benches at the stern as the boat drifted sweetly far out in the ocean. “I’m working on a new development carved out of the Everglades west of Fort Lauderdale, called Everfair.”

“Everfair?”

“That’s the ticket. It was tricky and expensive getting the permits, but that’s finally been taken care of. We’ve already begun building and I’m telling you, the place looks terrific. Right now I could use an engineer to help with some drainage issues, entertain the local inspectors at the local strip clubs, that sort of thing.
The pay is twice what you’re making now, and you’ll have shares in the corporation.”

“Twice what I’m making?”

“It’s a risky enterprise, now, it’s no sure thing. If it was, who the hell would need you, right? We got issues still and the inspectors are making noises. But if we get enough sweaty tits in their faces, if we can keep this deal going like it’s headed, we’ll all be rich as kings when it’s done. You interested?”

“Absolutely.”

“Thought so.”

“But I have to ask. Why me?”

“You want me to be honest here, right, Ben? We trust each other, right?”

“Sure,” said Ben.

“It’s not just your engineering smarts we’re looking for. There’s a boatload of federal money we can tap into if we have sufficient, you know, minority ownership. My partners are whiter than me. We need some color in the boardroom. That would be you. We’d be using you to check off a box. Any problem with that?”

“I’ve been waiting a long time for my forty acres and a mule,” said Ben.

“About time your face got you more than a traffic stop, hey? But I want you in the deal for more than just the obvious reasons. I also want the Pitchford in you, Ben. You’re a neighborhood kid, you know what it is to claw your way up the ladder, you know what it is to take unbelievable chances.” Derek looked at his beer, downed the rest of the bottle, and then tossed it overboard so that it bobbed in the ocean. “Like you and your pals did that night in my basement, twenty-five years ago.”

The alcohol in Ben’s blood froze; the haze of the day suddenly sharpened into tacks buried in his eyeballs. His head swiveled. If there was another boat in sight he would have dived and swum to it; if there was so much as a buoy he would have been in the
water. But there was nothing around but water and more water, a desert of water.

He tried to speak, but his stutter returned and his denials floundered like a dying fish in his mouth. “Wh-wh-wh—”

“Come on, Ben. You gave me your financials, remember? There’s no way in hell you could have made the payments on those two mortgages with only legitimate money. Your salary didn’t cover half. You had to have another source. And you’re not skinny enough or ugly enough to be a meth dealer. That friend of Tony’s, Diffenfuck or something, spread the word a long time ago it was you guys what took the cash. Two of my boys even paid your friend Moretti a visit to check it out. But they came up empty because you guys was too damn clever.”

“It’s n-n-not true,” said Ben.

“Ben, I thought we trusted each other.”

“We do, but it’s not…it’s not…we didn’t…”

“Look at me,” said Derek Grubbins. He pasted on a wide, comforting smile. “It was long ago, in another life. For both of us, another life. You obsess about the past, you end up lost there, I know. It took me a long time in prison to figure that out. But you see everything I have now, the house, the boat, the girl. What do you think of her?”

“She’s something.”

“And young, too. You don’t get a prime piece like that by holding old grudges. I’ve moved on, Ben. We’re sitting in the
Second Chance
, right? I look forward now, not back. That’s been the secret to my success. And that’s why I need to know.”

“I don’t—”

“Everfair. That’s my future now. I need a crew of pirates to bring it in. Are you a pirate, Ben?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ben? Cut the shit and tell me truth. Are you a pirate?”