Saving Jason (7 page)

He wrote:
Barstow & Co. We need to talk.

Barstow? The name meant nothing to me.

I texted back:
Buzzy. Will call in am.

I thought I had turned off autocorrect.

Sorry. Busy.

Besides, it was Sunday night. What couldn’t wait until morning? My phone chirped again.

Be home 9 am.

T
he next morning the Kid and I were back to what I had learned to think of as normal. All troubles forgiven or forgotten. I could never be sure which system was the operative one in moments like this. The Kid had hung up the phone abruptly when our dinner was delivered, eaten every bite, and gone to bed almost immediately with no hint of a hangover to our drama. I took the reprieve as a gift from the parenting fates and privately vowed never to burn his grilled cheese again.

I dropped the Kid at school, and I made it back to the apartment with plenty of time to shave and shower before Brady’s deadline. He surprised me by showing up with two other agents.

“I inserted myself in their case, Jason, because of our past relationship. I told them that if I were here you’d be more willing to cooperate.”

Sirens were going off in my head like a three-alarm fire. “Do I say ‘Thank you’? I’d like to know where this is going, Agent Brady.” I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he had called me by my given name. I didn’t want to play.

“May I?” The agent who had introduced himself as Brown indicated the couch.

“Sit, please,” I said.

“Thank you.” Brady and the other agent—I hadn’t caught the name—stepped back and gave us a bit of room. I took a seat on my ancient broken-spring armchair. The room expanded again, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were all poised to grab me if I made a run for the door.

As he lowered himself onto the couch, Brown plucked his suit pants an inch or so higher, so as to maintain the perfect crease. He was
both careful and vain. Ex-military, I guessed. I could imagine him making the same gesture in full dress uniform. “Mr. Stafford, you recently made a request to the SEC for information on a certain stock. As it turns out, the U.S. Attorney has also had an interest in that stock. That is the kind of coincidence that makes people in our line of work uncomfortable.”

I wanted to throw all three of them out, with an especial kick in the seat of the pants of Special Agent Brady. He had sandbagged me. My lawyer, the wonder-worker Larry, would have cut this guy off before he sat down. That was the smart move. On the other hand, if I called in a lawyer, I would learn nothing about what they knew. I decided to play the game for a bit longer.

“I work for Virgil Becker at Becker Financial. In my line of work, I often find it necessary to request public information from various government agencies.”

“Yes, but not very often in these kinds of microstocks.”

“‘These’? More than one?”

“Right now we are focusing on only one stock. If there are others that happen to overlap, we would see that as more than coincidence, wouldn’t you agree? Suspicious, possibly.”

Initial public offerings in microstocks don’t have to file with the SEC the same way as larger companies. A week earlier, I had requested information on the penny stocks I was concerned about. Only one, I found, had any substantial documentation available. Researching the rest had taken me days.

“I guess it’s time for you to open up a bit,” I said. “I’m not supposed to guess at which stock we’re talking about, right? Maybe you could act it out. How many syllables?”

He favored me with a forbearing smile that held no humor. “What’s your interest in McFee Plumbing?”

“That’s easy,” I said. “Nothing. Recently, I did request public documents relating to the company, but I have lost interest.”

“And why is that?”

“Because my boss told me to hand it over to the compliance department. And that’s what I did.”

“And Ms. Devane is handling the inquiry at this point?”

He knew the name of the head of compliance at Becker. He was telling me that he had already done some homework. Larry would have clamped a hand over my mouth at that point and stopped the proceedings. I wanted to push it just a step further.

“I don’t know what the compliance department is doing. They don’t answer to me. I work for the CEO only. He wanted me to work on something else—unrelated—and that’s what I’m doing now.”

“And what would that be?”

“I don’t think I can say at this point. I know of no reason to think the cases are related.”

“Did you at any time have personal contact with a Mr. Barstow?”

He used the past tense. That was interesting.

“Barstow? I don’t think so. Who was he?” I said.

“That’s interesting. You use the past tense.”

“Only because you did. I don’t know the guy.”

“You’re familiar with a financial advisory firm called Peconic Capital?”

That was the name of the company that traded in the penny stocks.

“Them I’ve heard of. This guy Barstow? No. What’s this about?”

He named two other stock-trading firms that I had never heard of. I admitted as much and turned to Brady.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

Brady had on his poker face. Brown looked over at his partner. None of them liked me asking questions.

“Hey, if it’s public information, I’m going to find it, right? Why go all cute on me? I don’t know the guy. What else don’t I know?”

Brady had to clear his throat to answer. “He’s dead. He had agreed to talk to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and go before a grand jury. It’s securities fraud. In return for immunity on the pump-and-dump, he was going to give up his partners, plus the Jersey bucket shop that was
fronting the scam. He also claimed to have something ‘really big.’ He hinted that it had to do with Virgil Becker and his firm. Then, the night before he was slated to testify, he died in a botched assassination.”

That was a troubling circumlocution. How was an assassination both “botched” and successful?

Brown didn’t stop Brady from talking, but he was doing his best to send lightning bolts from his eyes. The drive back downtown with the three of them in the car was going to be a tense one.

“Then, all I can say is that I am so glad not to be involved in any investigation of his firm right now.” I spoke the truth, if only partial. Someone was dead.
Assassination
was the word Brady had used. This was what Skeli was most afraid of, and she was right. If I had any brains at all, I would stay well clear of it. Aimee could take care of it. She’d probably bite the bullets in half and spit them back. I was sure her steel-plated heart would keep her safe. I stood up, walked to the door, and held it open. “We’re done, folks. I am now officially frightened. If that was the point of your visit, you may leave knowing your message was received loud and clear.”

No one moved.

“I’m serious,” I said. “If you have anything else to discuss, I’ll give you the name of my lawyer. Set up an appointment and I’ll be there.”

“We may be back,” Brown said, standing and shaking his suit pants back down over his shoes. “Or we may ask you to come to the U.S. Attorney’s Office to tell your story. You wouldn’t have a problem with that, would you?”

“I don’t have a story.” Those sirens were back, screaming in my head.

“Or you could wait and tell it to the grand jury.” He made it sound like the Spanish Inquisition.

“Talk to my lawyer.”

“That’s your right,” Brown said.

I could see that he now believed beyond any question that I was somehow deeply involved in something illegal. The picture was painted. He just needed to fit the frame.

They filed out. Brady went last.

“I’ll call you,” he said.

I wanted to say something cutting, smart, and cynical, but he looked so hangdog and embarrassed, I swallowed the words before they got to my lips.

“Good-bye, Marcus,” I said.

I slammed and locked the door. If only it had been that easy.

I
needed to talk to Larry, my longtime lawyer, but he was in court all morning. I made an appointment for the afternoon and headed downtown for a different form of comfort.

Skeli’s office was in the basement of an older building in SoHo. The street level was a storefront, home to a clothing designer whom I had never heard of, which wasn’t surprising. Even when I had been married to a model, I had rarely been able to recognize one designer from another.

One floor down, the door opened onto a quiet, comfortable waiting room with indirect lighting. The walls, floors, and furniture were all in shades of gray, from light cloud to dark charcoal. The achromatic look forced one’s eyes to focus on the massive flower arrangement that stood on a pedestal next to the reception desk. I smiled. Skeli associated cut flowers with her ex-husband’s infidelities; he had brought home flowers whenever he had an attack of conscience. I had been working on rehabilitating her viewpoint, but it was a work in progress. The office manager was my co-conspirator. Kasey was a dark-haired, brown-eyed woman with a permanent case of good spirits. She managed the office, maintained the schedule, and corrected all the mistakes of the billing company. Whatever Skeli was paying her, she was worth double.

“Hey, Kasey. You’ve outdone yourself. What are these things?” I asked, pointing to a tall, spiked, yellow, bulbous-shaped flower on a long stalk.

She gave me a skeptical look. “I could tell you, but you won’t remember for more than a second or two.”

It was true. I never did.

I looked around the empty waiting room. “So, is business this slow all the time?”

As one of the three investors in Skeli’s upmarket pain therapy clinic, I could have claimed a financial interest in the answer. But I preferred to keep a low profile, appearing solely as Skeli’s constant companion. My interest was less for the investment—which none of the three of us would miss—than for her success and happiness.

Kasey gave a half snort, half laugh. “Not likely. Every treatment room is being used right now and we are booked solid right up until nine tonight. Dr. Tyler hates having more than two or three people waiting at a time. She says clients who have to wait use the time to get angry.”

“Is she available?”

She checked the monitor. “You’re in luck. She’s got a break in five minutes. You want to wait in her office?”

I walked around Kasey’s desk and entered the inner sanctum. There was a long corridor with closed doors on either side—the treatment rooms—that led, on one side, to a larger room with various weight machines, stationary bikes, and other therapeutic equipment. On the other side were offices and a small employee lounge. The lounge area was empty, so I stopped and made myself a cup of tea before letting myself into Skeli’s office.

It was small, but bare enough so that it did not feel cramped. I sat in one of the two swivel chairs facing her desk and waited. She had added a painting to the wall since my last visit, a smiling golden Buddha, seen through multiple layers of gauzy veils and surrounded by shadows that, upon closer inspection, were revealed as representations of birds, fish, and various animals. The facing wall held four framed documents, all attesting to Dr. Wanda Tyler’s right and ability to run a physical therapy office. The desk itself was empty except for a black flat-screen computer monitor and a framed photograph.

I turned the picture a bit so that I could see it from where I sat. The shot had been taken on a beach in the British Virgin Islands at the end
of last year—just a few months ago. Skeli and I were kneeling next to the Kid, all three of us slightly sunburned and smiling into a late-afternoon sun. The Kid looked relaxed and happy. Content and unafraid. All rare emotions in my son. Skeli was beautiful, of course, but she also looked relaxed. Not exactly blissed-out, but definitely in vacation mode.

I was the odd man out. The long-brimmed ball cap, which identified the wearer as a fan of the Denver Outlaws, hid the bandage on the side of my head and shaded my eyes. I didn’t know if anyone else could have seen it, but I saw the residual anxiety there. The fear for myself and those I loved. The guilt over those who had suffered or died.

It had not been a vacation, or at least not solely a vacation. There had been evil, scary men after me, and I had been afraid they would use my loved ones to get to me. It had happened before. My father and his fiancée had escorted Skeli and the Kid to a private island while I dealt with the bad guys. I joined them only when I was sure they would be safe.

The door opened and Skeli came in. “What a treat,” she said before leaning down and giving me a long kiss. As kisses go, it was close to a ten.

“How’s the newest member of the family treating you?” I asked.

“I’m getting fat.”

“You’re not getting fat.”

“Not yet. I am getting anticipatorily fat.”

“There’s no such thing. You just made that up.”

“Actually, other than the nausea, the bloat, the sweats, and the occasional heartburn in the middle of the night, I feel really great. I think I’m enjoying being pregnant.”

Every woman responds differently. Angie, my first wife and the Kid’s mother, had fought every change that her body inflicted upon her, taking them all as attacks or, at the least, intrusions. She had spent months red-faced and haggard. Skeli, on the other hand, emanated a secret contentment. And when she smiled, she was smiling for two.

“So why am I honored with your presence in the middle of the morning?”

“How’s ‘I couldn’t bear to be away from you a minute longer’?”

“You have no idea how lovely that sounds. I know you’re full of it, but that doesn’t alter the effect of the words. But it’s a safe bet that there is another reason.”

“I do have a downtown meeting later today.”

“With the lawyer?”

“A-yup.”

“Good luck. How’s the little guy?”

“He had a rough night. His father tried to poison him with a burnt grilled cheese sandwich.”

“Oh, boy,” she said, rolling her eyes for emphasis.

“Right. But we both survived and we had a good morning. Sometimes that’s the best I can hope for.”

“You know what Camus says about hope?”

“Camus?”

“That the torture for Sisyphus was that he kept
hoping
that one day the frigging stone would not roll back down.”

“Mmm?”

“Turn it around. If Sisyphus just comes to love pushing the stone uphill, he will be a happy man.”

“I do love my son—it’s the autism I hate.”

“Maybe you need to learn how to love it, too. You’re back to the Pinocchio thing again, that someday your little guy will be a real boy—normal. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t do it to him. He’s going through a rough patch. You are both doing your best. And if this is what it is—what it will always be—then what are you going to do?”

I was going to go on loving him and doing whatever his doctors thought best for him, no matter what it cost me in money, time, or pain. She gave me another great kiss. It reminded me of Valentine’s Day.

Skeli had been forced to cancel our date because of a scheduling snafu at the office. I was home, enjoying a post-Kid bedtime twelve-year-old Irish
whiskey and reading
The Anti-Romantic Child
when there was a knock at the door. It was Skeli. She was dressed in a midthigh-length pink plastic raincoat with a pink bow in her hair.

“Happy Valentine’s Day. I brought you a present.”

I opened the door and let her make her entrance. I noticed her shoes were a very un-February pair of pink sling-back sandals, not much more than some sequined straps and a medium heel. She vamped in, pirouetted in the middle of the living room, and cooed at me.

“Well, how do you like it?”

Her legs were bare. She was not carrying anything. My brain shrugged off the whiskey mist and focused on the mystery.

“Are you my present?” I said, not even attempting a show of being in control of the situation.

“Aren’t you going to unwrap it?” she asked, moving toward me with a catlike glide. She took my hand and placed it on the tag of the zipper. I pulled it down slowly. There was nothing but Skeli underneath. I slid one arm around her.

“Weren’t you cold out there?”

“Shhh,” she said and took my hand. She led me toward the bedroom.

“And those shoes?”

“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to wear heels,” she said. “I did a test this evening.”

“And?”

She stopped and turned to me. “Three blue squares. You’re going to be a father again.”

Joy. Some trepidation. And relief. I knew how badly she wanted this.

“We need to celebrate,” I said.

She let the open raincoat slide off her shoulders and drop to the floor. “Aren’t you a bit overdressed for this kind of party?”

I pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it on the couch.

“Better,” she said, turning and heading for the bedroom again.

I kicked off my shoes and followed.

“What about your shoes?” I asked again, wrestling my pants off.

“We’ll pretend these are my spurs.”

The kiss ended. “That’s a nice smile,” she said.

“Thank you. That was just what I needed. Let me repay you by buying lunch.”

“I’ve got clients all day. However, I’ll let you buy me a yogurt and we can eat together right here.” She leaned over and kissed me again. It was a quick consolation kiss, but still not bad. “Kasey can run out and get. What will you have?”

I gave Kasey some money. Skeli turned off her computer screen, and the two of us luxuriated in companionable silence for a few moments.

She spoke first. “So, what are you and Larry cooking up?”

“I may need his help again. I had the FBI around this morning. They were asking about my interest in penny stocks.”

“I thought you dropped that inquiry.”

“I did. Now I’m thinking I should have stuck with it.”

“I thought you looked a bit stressed when I walked in here.”

“I have a nasty feeling that this case is going to circle around on us. Virgil’s preoccupied. I’ve got to cover his back.”

She nodded in understanding and the two of us lapsed back into silence.

“You should get a massage,” she said eventually.

“Are you offering?”

“Sorry. I don’t do massage, but Bric is very good.”

“Is Brick a boy or a girl?”

“Bric is a woman. She is a licensed masseuse with ten years’ experience and she doesn’t do happy endings.”

“No. I want no woman but you to touch me.”

“Jennifer Lawrence?”

“Nope.”

“What’s-her-name? Kate.”

“Winslet?” I asked.

“No, but I like her. The Kate I don’t like,” she said.

“What Kate don’t you like?”

“The actress. The blonde,” she said.

“I don’t think her name is Kate,” I said.

“No. Not that one.”

“I don’t know who you are talking about, but if you don’t like her, neither do I.”

We sat and smiled at each other. Another enjoyable minute passed.

“What are you smiling about?” Skeli asked.

“I’m thinking.”

“About what?”

“Jennifer Lawrence.”

She threw her head back and laughed. It was a very unladylike laugh. I loved it.