The moment they saw me they jumped up and ran toward me. “Daddy's home!” screamed Chandler. Then Carter chimed in: “Daddy! Daddy!”
I crouched down and they ran into my arms.
“I missed you guys so much!” I said, showering them with kisses. “I think you got even biggerin the last three days! Let me look at you.” I held them out in front of me, and I cocked my head to the side and narrowed my eyes suspiciously, as if I were inspecting them.
They both stood tall and proud, shoulder to shoulder, their chins slightly elevated. Chandler was big for her age, Carter small, so she was a good head and a half taller than him. I compressed my lips and nodded my head gravely, as if to say, “My suspicions were confirmed!” Then I said accusingly: “I was right! You didget bigger! Why, you little sneaks!”
They both giggled deliciously. Then Chandler said, “Why are you crying, Daddy? Do you have a boo-boo?”
Without me even knowing it, a trickle of tears had made their way down my cheeks. I dried them with the back of my hand and then offered my daughter a harmless white lie: “No, I don't have a boo-boo, silly! I'm just sohappy to see you guys, it made me cry tears of joy.”
Carter nodded in agreement, although he was quickly losing interest. He was a boy, after all, so his attention span was limited. In fact, Carter lived for only five things: sleeping, eating, watching his Lion Kingvideo, climbing on the furniture, and the sight of the Duchess's long blond hair, which soothed him like a ten-milligram Valium. Carter was a man of few words, yet he was remarkably intelligent. By his first birthday he could work the TV, VHS, and remote control. By eighteen months he was a master locksmith, picking Tot Loks with the precision of a safecracker. And by two years old he had memorized two dozen picture books. He was calm, cool, and collected, entirely comfortable in his own skin.
Chandler, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. She was complex, curious, intuitive, introspective, and never at a loss for words. Her nickname was the CIA, because she was constantly eavesdropping on conversations, trying to gather intelligence. She had spoken her first word at seven months, and at the age of one, she was speaking full sentences. At two, she was having full-blown arguments with the Duchess, and she hadn't stopped since. She was difficult to cajole, impossible to manipulate, and had an unusually keen sense for seeing through bullshit.
And that created problems for me. My ankle bracelet could be explained away as some sort of advanced medical device, something that the doctor had given me to make sure my back pain never returned. I would tell Chandler that it was a six-month therapy regimen, and I was to keep the bracelet on at all times. She would probably buy that for a while. However, being under house arrest was going to be much more difficult to conceal.
As a family, we were constantly on the move—running and doing and going and seeing—so what would Chandler think about my sudden compulsion to not leave the house? I ran it through my mind and came to the quick conclusion that, in spite of everything, the Duchess could still be counted on to cover for me.
Then Chandler said, “Are you crying because you had to pay people back money?”
“Whuh?” I muttered. That dirty little Duchess! I thought. How could she! Whywould she? To try to poison Chandler against me! She was waging a psychological war, and this was her first salvo. Step one: Let the children know Daddy's a big fat crook; step two: Let the children know there are other, bettermen, who aren't big fat crooks, who will take care of Mommy; step three: The moment Daddy goes to jail, tell the children Daddy abandoned them because he doesn't love them; and, finally, step four: Tell the children that it would be appropriate to call Mommy's new husband Daddy, until hisgold mine dries up, at which point Mommy will find an even newer daddy for them.
I took a deep breath and conjured up another white lie. I said to Chandler, “I think you misunderstood, sweetie. I was busy working.”
“No,” argued Chandler, frustrated at my denseness. “Mommy said you took money from people and now you have to pay it back.”
I shook my head in disbelief and then took a moment to regard Carter. He seemed to be eyeing me suspiciously. Christ—did he know too? He was only three, and all he cared about was the fucking Lion King!
I had a lot of explaining to do, and not just today but also in the days and years to come. Chandler would be reading soon, and that would open up a whole new can of worms. What would I say to her? What would her friends say to her? I felt a fresh wave of despair wash over me. In a way, the Duchess was right. I had to pay for my crimes, although on Wall Street everyone was a criminal, wasn't that true? It was only a question of degree, wasn't it? So what made me worse than anybody else—the fact that I'd gotten caught?
I chose not to follow that train of thought. Changing the subject, I said, “Well, it's really not important, Channy. Let's play with your Barbie dolls.” And after you go to sleep, I thought, Daddy is going to head downstairs to his study and spend a few hours figuring out a way to kill Mommy without getting caught.
CHAPTER 3
EVAPORATING OPTIONS
It was Tuesday morning, the day after Labor Day, and I was on my way to my criminal attorney's office in Midtown Manhattan with my electronic monitoring bracelet on my left ankle and this babbling Pakistani behind the wheel. Yet, despite those hindrances, I was still dressed for success, in a gray pinstripe suit, crisp white dress shirt, red shepherd's check necktie, black cotton dress socks—which, on my left ankle, concealed the electronic monitoring bracelet—and a pair of black Gucci loafers with tassels on them.
Dressing for success; that had seemed important this morning, although I was certain that even if I wore a diaper and a bow tie, my trusted criminal attorney, Gregory J. O'Connell, would still tell me that I looked like a million bucks. After all, this morning's first order of business would be to hand him a check in that very amount: one million bucks. That was a priority, he'd explained, because there was a better than fifty-fifty chance that the U.S. Attorney's Office would be making a motion to freeze my assets this week. And lawyers, of course, need to get paid.
It was a little after ten a.m., and the morning rush hour had just ended. Off to my right I could see the low-slung hangars and terminals of LaGuardia Airport, looking as grimy as usual. Off to my left I could see the burgeoning Greek paradise of Astoria, Queens, which had a higher concentration of Greeks per square foot than anyplace on earth, including Athens. I had grown up not far from here, in the Jew paradise of Bayside, Queens, a neighborhood of safe streets that was now in the process of being overrun by well-heeled Koreans.
We had left Old Brookville thirty minutes ago, and, since then, the closet terrorist hadn't kept his mouth shut. He'd been going on and on about the criminal justice system in his beloved Pakistan. On most days I would have simply told him to shut the fuck up. But on this particular morning I was too worn out to throttle him. And that was the Duchess's fault.
True to her word, the blond-headed scoundrel had flown the coop on me that weekend, spending three days and nights in the Hamptons. I was pretty sure she had crashed at our beach house at nighttime, but I hadn't the slightest idea what she had done during the day and, for that matter, whom she had done it with. She didn't call once, painting a clear picture that she was busy! busy! busy!prospecting for a new gold mine.