“I want to hear about your secret family, Paul. Not some stupid hotel bar story,” I spat.
“I’m getting there,” Paul said. “Every time there’s a first down, this character has another shot of orange brandy. In the middle of the fourth quarter, he downs his eighth or ninth shot and proceeds to throw up all over the bar.
“I’m talking projectile action! As the bartender tosses him out, I look over and Veronica, who was standing on the other side of the guy, is staring at me, wide-eyed as I am. And I said, ‘Let’s just be glad he didn’t stay for the postgame celebration.’ That’s how we met.”
“Wow, that’s sweet and kind of funny,” I said with a sneer. “You really had your groove on that night, huh?”
Paul looked at me.
“I can argue or I can explain. Not both.”
“Or get shot in the testicles,” I said. “You left that one out.”
“Shall I continue, Lauren?” he asked.
“If you please would,” I said. “I can’t wait to hear the rest of this riveting tale.”
“So, basically, she invites me to have a drink with her. It was innocent, I swear. I wasn’t trying to do anything. I don’t expect you to believe that, but it’s the truth. After a couple of more drinks, we’re just sitting there, talking, telling our life stories, and this stocky guy walks in.
“Veronica keeps staring at him, and then she says that she knows him. Turns out, Veronica used to be a Tampa Bay Buccaneers cheerleader.”
“Football?” I said, tilting my head. “That’s funny. Considering the basketballs under her shirt, I was leaning more toward the NBA.”
“She used to go out with one of the Tampa Bay assistant coaches,” Paul continued, “and she said she remembered the guy at the bar buying Super Bowl tickets from her old boyfriend. She tells me the stocky guy is some kind of bigwig shady ticket broker. She points to the briefcase the guy is carrying and says it’s probably full of hundred-dollar bills. We drink some more and talk about what we would do with that kind of money. Finally, Veronica stands up to go.”
Paul stopped walking and peered at me.
“You sure you want to hear this?”
“You want to protect my feelings now?” I said. “Of course I want to hear the punch line.”
Paul nodded as if pained.
“ ‘I dare you,’ she whispers in my ear. ‘I’m in two-oh-six.’ And off she goes.
“So, I sit and drink. Three scotches later, I see this stocky guy get up, carrying his briefcase. I let him leave. But then I find myself on my feet, following him. Just as a joke, I kept telling myself. No way I’m going to rob anybody. But I follow him to his room.
“Then, I don’t know what got into me. I was wasted, upset, alone, and excited all at once. A couple of minutes later, I knock on the guy’s door, and when he opens it, I’m punching him in the face.”
Paul and I both stepped out of the way as a bike messenger zipped between us.
“Wait a second,” I said. “The report said you had a gun.”
Paul shook his head.
“No, we just fought. He must have made that up in order to make himself look better. He was strong. He bloodied my nose with a shot, but I was too scared to lose. I just teed off on him until he went down. Then I grabbed the briefcase, and I ran.”
“To two-oh-six?” I said.
“To two-oh-six,” Paul said with a grim nod.
Chapter 108
I STUMBLED ALONG the path like the sole survivor of a terrorist bombing. I remembered where we were in our marriage at the time. Not a good place. It was after we’d learned we couldn’t become parents. A year of having sex like it was a science experiment. Paul having to humiliate himself with plastic cups in specialist after specialist’s bathrooms. All for nothing.
We’d turned on each other then. We didn’t announce it, but I could see it now, vividly. That was what had happened back then.
I decided that I couldn’t care less.
I suddenly stopped short and slapped Paul. Hard! As hard as I could!
“Keep going?” he said as he rubbed his jaw.
“Good guess,” I said.
“I wake up the next morning, and at first I have no idea where I am or what’s happened the night before. On the desk are two neatly divided piles of hundred-dollar bills. Veronica is sitting there in a bathrobe, pouring coffee. Fifteen minutes later, I’m walking out of her room with a gym bag full of four hundred thousand dollars.”
I shook my head. I was actually asleep, wasn’t I? Dreaming this.
No, I realized. I was tripping. Somewhere along the course of this bizarre day, I’d been drugged. I rubbed my eyes. Paul goes off on a business trip and pulls off a heist?
I asked the next logical question. “What did you do with the money?”
“Caymans,” Paul said. “A buddy of mine on the trading desk was going down there. He set it up for me. If there’s a good side to this, it’s that. Four-plus years of extremely aggressive investing later, we’re looking at a little over one point-two million.”
I tried to let that rather large sum sink in. I was experiencing major difficulties, though.
Paul continued, “Three months after I stole the money, I get a call that puts ice in my blood. It’s Veronica. She tells me she’s pregnant. At first I’m insane. I tell her I want a paternity test, I want to talk to my lawyer, but she says to calm down, she’s not going to boil any rabbits. She just wanted to be nice. She thought I should know that I had a daughter coming into the world. Whatever I wanted to do was up to me.
“So I debated and didn’t do anything for a long time, but eventually I went down to meet Caroline. One thing led to another, and well . . . One day a week, I take the shuttle down here and become Daddy.”
“For the past four years?” I said. “Work knows about this?”
Paul shook his head.
“I just telecommute.”
“What about Veronica? You want me to believe you’re not still screwing her?”
“It’s true,” Paul said.
A second later, I found myself screeching with my hands around his throat. “Bullshit! You married her!” I screamed. “I saw the pictures in the hall!”
Paul pulled my hands off him.
“No, no, no!” he said, holding his hands out before himself protectively as he backed away. “That was all for Caroline’s sake. We wanted her to think she has a regular daddy like everybody else. We had a photographer take some pictures. That’s all. She thinks I’m a pilot.”
My eyes felt like they were filled with acid, burning deep into the sockets.
“And who does Veronica think you are?”
Paul shrugged. “She knows who I am,” he said.
“That makes her in the minority, Paul, don’t you think?” I said. “Does she know about me?”
“From the start.”
“You fucker!” I said. I was insane with rage. I felt like biting him. “Do you know who you are? Because I don’t. Is your new job a bullshit story, too?”
“No, that’s actually real,” Paul said, suddenly sitting down on an empty bench.
“Let’s face it, Lauren,” he said after a little while. “When you and I found out we couldn’t have children, our marriage started sliding badly. We both were feeling hurt, screwed up. Then you got promoted to Bronx Homicide, Lauren, and that was all she wrote. Turnaround after turnaround. Double, triple shifts. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t blame you. I just never saw much of you. I really didn’t think there was a chance in hell of us getting back together.
“But things are so different now, Lauren. You’re pregnant. It was like somebody hit a ‘pause’ button, then remembered the two of us after four years and just hit ‘play’ again. Caroline is in my heart, but I’d be willing to give up even her for you. There’s an actual ‘us’ again, a future. I’m ready to do anything for that.”
Paul gripped my hand.
“I’ve always just wanted us. You know that. From the
first time I set eyes on you. We can work it out, Lauren. This . . . shit — It’s just a stupid, horrible detour. All the lies are over now.”
“That sounds really sweet, Paul,” I said, pulling my hand away. “Really wonderful and nice, except for one thing. One small detail.”
He looked at me quizzically. Now it was my turn to hurt him. Let’s see how he liked getting his heart napalmed.
“You left something out. Something really important, Paul. The cop I watched you kill. I was there when you killed Scott, dumbass.”
Chapter 109
PAUL’S FACE SEEMED TO CRUMBLE in front of me. “You were where?” he asked.
“At Scott’s place in Riverdale,” I told him. “You must have read our e-mails, but guess what? You were too late. He’d just been with me, Paul. Right before you cracked his skull open, we’d been in bed together. Turnabout is fair play, no? So how does it feel?”
Apparently not too good. Paul’s mouth was gaping wider than The Scream’s. “So you were . . . How did . . . ,” he stammered.
“That’s right, Paul,” I said. “Surprise, surprise.”
I grabbed his wrist, squeezed with all my might.
“Who the hell do you think has been keeping you out of jail all this time? Your fairy godmother? I covered things up for you, destroyed my career — everything I was — in order to keep you out of prison. I actually felt sorry for you. Can you imagine that?”
Paul put his hand out toward my face. I slapped it down.
Other strollers started making a wide berth around us.
“And come to think of it,” I snarled. “How dare you kill Scott when you knew you were being unfaithful to me? Who the hell are you? Thief. Murderer. Bigamist. What am I missing?”
I slapped him again, and it felt so good.
“Scott had a wife and three kids!”
Paul broke my grip, then walked away. He stood along the other side of the path so that I wouldn’t hit him again, I assumed. After a while, he did something astounding. He started laughing.
“You want to let me in on the joke?” I said, red-faced, walking toward him. “I could use a real rib-tickler right around now.”
Paul turned to me.
“Sure,” he said. “Here’s the punch line: I didn’t kill Scott because he was sleeping with you. I had no idea about that, Lauren.”
He folded his arms across his chest and gave me another smile. I didn’t get it, not a word he was saying.
“I killed him because he was blackmailing me,” said Paul.
Chapter 110
NOW IT WAS MY TURN to put my head down between my knees.
“Blackmailing you?” I asked.
Paul nodded.
“A year ago, Veronica came up to New York. She has a friend who’s a model or something who gets her work. Eleven o’clock in the morning, she finds herself in the middle of a drug raid, and I get this frantic call at work to go and try to help her out.
“I walk into this apartment down in SoHo, expecting a million cops, but there’s only one. Scott Thayer. I’d gotten there too late, though, because Veronica got scared and told him we had money. He takes me into the kitchen and tells me he’s a reasonable guy. He’ll let everybody go free for ten grand cash.”
I felt a sharp pain in my neck. My skin felt clammy.
“So I gave it to him,” Paul said. “A month goes by. One day I’m coming back to my desk after lunch, and Thayer’s sitting at it, holding a picture of you. He tells me that you two work out of the same precinct house, and for another twenty grand, not only will he not turn me in — nice guy that he is — he won’t tell you about Veronica.”
Paul looked at me. I stared back at him, my mouth gaping.
“So I give him that. It was when he came back the third time that I realized it would never end. He wanted fifty thousand. Instead of giving it to him, I decided I’d rather take a shot at wrapping things up my own way.”
I listened to flute music from somewhere in the park. It sounded like a dirge at my own funeral.
I’d thought Paul had fought for me. That his killing Scott had been about me. But it was over money, blackmail.
“You understand that Thayer wasn’t content to keep on blackmailing me,” Paul continued. “He wanted all of it. He came after you to get another hook into me. That’s all he wanted with you, Lauren.”
“So you killed him, Paul?” I said bitterly. “You’re a gangster now? Robbing people and shooting cops. Maybe you should cut a rap album.”
Paul squinted down at the ground, then shrugged. “Things just kind of kept on happening. One thing led to another.”
A scintilla of compassion rose inside me. The same thing had happened to me, hadn’t it? I pushed the sympathy away as quickly as I could. The last thing I would do was feel sorry for Paul.
“Listen, Lauren,” Paul said. “Why don’t we call it the mother of all midlife crises? I’ll do whatever you want now. Give the money back. Or we can just go. We’ll drive to Reagan International straight from here. A million point-two dollars tax free is a lot of money. Why don’t we just go and spend it? Raise our kid on a sailboat. You’re mad now, but you betrayed me, too, remember? Let’s just . . . go. C’mon, Lauren. We can do this together.”
Chapter 111
I SAT THERE, staring at my incredible con man of a husband. What an amazing liar he was. Then I dropped my eyes to the pavement, my shoulders slumping. The world seemed to slow suddenly, the music in the air, the sound of traffic.
It was official. I had given Paul everything that I possibly could. My love, my work, my reputation. And now I had absolutely zero left.
I was still sitting there, agonizing, when Paul’s daughter appeared again. The nanny Paul had spoken to stood waiting a few feet away with another toddler and Caroline’s bike.
“Daddy!” she said. “Pictures! I want to show Imelda the pictures.”
“Not now, love,” Paul called to the girl. “Later, sweetheart.”
“But they’re my brothers,” the girl said, pulling a black-and-white photograph out of Paul’s jacket before he could stop her. It fell to the ground as he tried to snatch it back.
“You’re mean, Daddy,” the four-year-old said with a pout. “I want Imelda to see the picture of my new twin brothers.”
My eyes strained in their sockets. What!
Paul stared down at the small, square photograph, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Show her later, Caroline,” Paul snapped. Imelda took one look at him before quickly grabbing Caroline’s hand and pulling her away.
I bent and lifted the precious picture off the pavement. I nodded once, twice.
It showed a sonogram. Two fetuses. Twins. I pictured Veronica again. Of course she looked like she’d recently put on weight. She was pregnant!
I looked at Paul’s face, almost with fascination. He’d lied so effortlessly to me. Again and again.
He would never stop, I realized. There was something deeply, incredibly wrong with Paul. He would say anything, do anything. How could anyone tell lies like this? How could anyone do the awful things he’d done? Even the way he’d just snarled at his little girl. I’d protected a monster.
“I know exactly what we’re going to do now,” I said, letting the black-and-white picture fall to the cobblestones. “What I should have done when this whole thing started.”
I whisked out my cuffs and snapped them onto his wrists. “Paul, you’re under arrest.”
Chapter 112
NANNIES, CHESS PLAYERS, AND JOGGERS were outright gaping as I dragged a handcuffed Paul out of the park. Of course they looked at us. Good God, he was twice my size.
“You sure this is the right thing to do, Lauren?” he whined as I perp-walked him two long blocks back toward my Taurus.
“A million dollars? You still love me or you wouldn’t have covered for me. Which isn’t going to go well for you, either. You’ll get charged as an accessory to murder. The baby will be born behind bars. You’re no
t really thinking this through.”
“Unfortunately for you, Paul, I’m tired of thinking,” I said. “Thinking is what got me into this mess. I’m just doing what’s right. Trying to, anyway.”
I stopped suddenly as we passed Paul’s parallel-parked Jaguar. “Where are the keys, Paul? Let’s end it in style. Give me a taste of that million dollars. Maybe I’ll change my mind and drive to the airport.”
I jabbed Paul in the small of his back. “But don’t bet on it.”
I took the keys from his jacket pocket and then pushed Paul into the passenger seat. I went around to the other side. I was sliding the key into the ignition, when Paul popped open the glove compartment.
A second later, I felt something hard sticking under my right armpit.
“Time to cut all the bullshit, Lauren,” Paul said, digging a small revolver into my ribs.
Idiot! I thought. Of course, he had a gun. The ticket broker hadn’t lied about that. Paul had.
“Hey, I thought you said you didn’t have a gun,” I said.
“You still haven’t picked up on the theme here, Lauren?” Paul said. “I tell you only what you need to hear. Now get the cuffs off me. Right now!”
“Then what? You’re going to shoot me?” I said as I did what he asked. I didn’t have a choice. “Might as well, Paul. You’ve done everything else to me.”
“Hey, you’re the one who started this game. Slapping cuffs on me,” Paul said.
“That’s what you think this is, don’t you?” I said. “Some kind of game? News flash, Paul. You killed a man. You’re a mur-der-er.”
Paul’s face scrunched in rage. He turned bright red, his eyes glittering with fury.
“News flash? Let me tell you something. You know what it’s like to have a wife with bigger balls than you? While you were out kicking ass, I was busy downtown kissing asses, so you could have nice things. But that’s JUST NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!!!”
Paul pistol-whipped the dashboard savagely, then pressed the gun barrel to my temple.