Severance Package (2 page)

Oh, Molly, he thought. Forgive me. Your life, changed forever because I was stupid enough to spoon some potato salad into my mouth on a Saturday morning. Your sweet potato salad, a mayonnaise-soaked symbol of all the kind things you’ve done for me over the years.

My sweet, sweet Molly.

The kitchen faded away.

The kitchen they’d redone a year ago, ripping out the old metal cabinets and replacing them with fresh-smelling sandalwood maple.

She’d picked them out. She liked the color.

Oh, Molly …

Molly?

Was that Molly in the doorway now, her beautiful red hair dripping wet, a white terry cloth towel wrapped around her body?

God, she was no hallucination. She was really standing there. Looking down at him, strapping jewelry to her wrists. Thick silver bracelets. Paul couldn’t remember buying them for her. Where did they come from?

Wait.

Why wasn’t she trying to save him?

Couldn’t she see him, choking, trembling, jolting, scratching, pleading,
fading?

But Molly simply stared, with the strangest look on her face. That look would be the last thing Paul Lewis would ever see, and if there were an afterlife, it would be an image that would haunt him, even if his memories of earthly life were to be erased. Molly’s face would still be there. Perplexing him. Who was this woman? Why did she make his soul ache?

So it was probably merciful that Paul didn’t hear what his wife said as she looked down upon his writhing, dying body, “Well, this is ahead of schedule.”

… and he had been up most of the night, tag-teaming with Andrea, marching back and forth into the tiny bedroom at the back of their apartment.

What hurt the most, after being awake so many hours, were his eyes. Jamie wore daily-wear contacts, but lately he hadn’t bothered to take them out at night. Without them he was practically blind, and he was too new a father to risk changing a diaper or preparing a bottle of Similac with impaired vision. Bad enough they had to work in the dark, so Chase could learn the difference between night and day.

Sunlight.

Darkness.

Sunlight this morning, which was turning out to be a blazingly hot Saturday in August. Their window air-conditioning unit was no match for it, and Jamie had to get dressed and head into the office. His eyes swam with tears.

Life with the baby was now:

Day

Night

Day

Night

Melting into each other.

Nobody told you that parenthood was like doing hallucinogenics. That you watched the life you knew melt away into a gray fuzz. Or if they did, you didn’t believe them.

Jamie knew he shouldn’t complain. Not after having a month off for paternity leave.

Still, it was strange to be going back on a Saturday morning, to a managers’ meeting led by his boss, David Murphy. Last time he’d seen his boss was late June, at Jamie’s awkward baby shower in the office. Nobody had brought gifts. Just money—ones and fives—stuffed into a card. David had provided an array of cold cuts and Pepperidge Farm cookies, which were the boss’s favorite. Stuart ran to the soda machines for Cokes and Diet Cokes. Jamie gave him a few singles from the card to pay for them.

Being away from that place had been nice.

Very nice.

And now this “managers’ meeting.” Jamie had no idea what it could be about. He’d been gone for a month.

Never mind that Jamie wasn’t a manager.

There was nothing to do about it now, though. What could he do? Change jobs and risk losing medical insurance for three months? Andrea had left her job in May, and with it went the other benefits package.

Besides, David wasn’t so bad to work for. It was everybody else who drove him up the wall.

The problem wasn’t hard to figure out. Jamie’s job was “media relations director,” which meant he had to explain to the rest of the world—or more specifically, certain trade publications—what
Murphy, Knox & Associates did. Thing was, not even Jamie was entirely clear on what their company did. Not without it making his head hurt.

Everyone else, who did the real work of the company, formed a closed little society. They put up walls that were difficult, if not impossible, to breach. They were the driving force of the company. They were the Clique.

He was the staff word nerd.

Murphy, Knox & Associates was listed with Dun & Bradstreet as a “financial services office” that claimed annual sales of $516.6 million. The press releases Jamie wrote often dealt with new financial packages. The information would come straight from Amy Felton—sometimes Nichole Wise. Rarely did it come from David, though every press release had to pass through his office. Jamie would drop a hard copy into the black plastic bin on Molly’s desk. A few hours later, the hard copy would be slid under Jamie’s door. Sometimes, David didn’t change a thing. Other times, David would rework Jamie’s prose into an ungrammatical, stilted mess.

Jamie tried to talk him out of it—taking the liberty of rewriting David’s rewrite, and presenting it to him with a memo explaining why he’d made certain changes.

He did that exactly once.

“Repeat after me,” David had said.

Jamie smiled.

“I’m not joking. Repeat after me.”

“Oh,” Jamie said. “Um, repeat after you.”

“I
will
not.”

“I
will
not.” God, this was humiliating.

“Rewrite David Murphy’s work.”

“Rewrite your work.”

“David Murphy’s work.”

“Oh.
David Murphy’s work.”

So yeah—David could be a tool every once in a while. But that was nothing compared with how the other Murphy, Knox employees treated him on a daily basis. It wasn’t a
lack
of respect; that would imply there had been respect to begin with. To the Clique, Jamie was just the word nerd.

To be dismissed completely, unless you needed a press release.

Worst of all: Jamie could understand. At his former job, a reporting gig at a small daily in New Mexico, the editors and reporters were tight. They pretty much ignored the newspaper’s controller—the bean-counting cyborg. What, invite him out for a beer after work? That would be like inviting Bin Laden home for turkey and cranberry sauce.

And now
Jamie
was the cyborg. The press release–writing Bin Laden. No wonder he wasn’t exactly rushing back to the office this morning.

Somehow he pulled it together. The memory of Chase, sleeping, reminded him of why.

The air-conditioning quickly cooled the interior of Jamie’s Subaru Forester. The vehicle was newly equipped with a Graco baby seat in the back. The hospital wouldn’t let them leave without one; both of them had forgotten about it. He’d had to run to a Toys “R” Us in Port Richmond, then spent the better part of a humid July night trying to figure out how to strap the thing in.

He looked at Chase’s seat in the rearview. Wondered if he was up yet.

Jamie reached into the front pocket of his leather bag. Grabbed his cell, flipped it open. Held down the
2
key. Their home number popped up.

Beep.

No service.

What?

Jamie tried it again, then looked for the bars. Nothing. In its
place, the image of a telephone receiver with a red hash mark across it.

No service.

No service here—a few minutes from the heart of downtown Philadelphia?

Maybe David had canceled the free office cell phone perk since he’d left. But no, that couldn’t be right. Jamie had used the phone yesterday, calling Andrea from CVS, asking if he had the right package of diapers for Chase.

Jamie pressed the button again. Still nothing. He’d have to call Andrea from work.

… and his Ford Focus was halfway up the white concrete ramp before he saw the sign. He hit the brakes and squinted his eyes to make sure he was seeing right. The Focus idled. It didn’t like to idle, especially on such a steep incline. Stuart had to rev it to keep it in place.

Weekend rate: $26.50.

Unbelievable.

The Saturday-morning sun blazed off 1919 Market, a thirty-seven-story box of a building. You couldn’t call it a skyscraper, not with Liberty One and Two just two blocks down the street. This was where Stuart reported for work, Monday through Fridays. He had no reason to know the garage rates. He almost never drove. The regional rails carried him from his rented house in Bala Cynwyd to Suburban Station, no problem, all for just a few bucks. But this was a Saturday. Trains ran much slower. And without much traffic downtown, it was faster to drive. Apparently, it was more expensive, too.

You’d think a cushy government job would come with free parking.

Then again, you’d think that a cushy government job wouldn’t haul you in on a Saturday.

Hah.

But really, he had no idea why he was being dragged in on a weekend morning. Stuff he did—erasing bank accounts, leaving your average wannabe jihadist with a useless ATM card in one hand, his dick in the other—could be done anywhere, really. He could do it at friggin’ Starbucks. There was nothing more simple and yet nothing more satisfying. Maybe some guys got off on the idea of picking off towel-heads with a sniper rifle. Stuart loved doing it by tapping
ENTER.

Guess he’d find out what this was about soon enough.

Stuart threw the Focus in reverse, gently lifted his foot off the brake. The car rolled back down the ramp. Another vehicle turned the corner sharply, ready to shoot up the ramp and, judging from its speed,
over
the Focus, if need be.

Brakes screamed. The Focus jolted to a stop, pressing Stuart back into his seat.

“Man,” he said.

He slapped the steering wheel, then looked into the rearview.

It was a Subaru Tribeca. With a woman behind the wheel.

Stuart crouched down into his seat, checked the rearview again. Squinted.

Oh.

Molly Lewis.

Stuart allowed the Focus to roll backwards. The Tribeca got the hint and reversed back down the foot of the ramp and backed onto Twentieth Street. Stuart steered the Focus until it was parallel with the Tribeca. Traffic was light this morning. It was only 8:45. Stuart rolled down his window. The Tribeca did the same, on the passenger side.

“Change your mind about work?”

“Hey, Molly. Yeah, I wish. I’m just not paying twenty-six fifty to park. I’ll find something on the street.”

“Then you’ve got to feed the meter.”

“Then I’ll feed the meter. I’m not paying twenty-six fifty.”

“David told me we’d be here until at least two o’clock.”

“What? I thought noon.”

“He e-mailed me this morning.”

“Man. What is this about anyway? I’ve got my laptop at home. I can do whatever he wants from my living room.”

“Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Stuart watched the Tribeca—fancy wheels for an assistant, he thought—shoot up the ramp. He continued up Twentieth, turned left on Arch, then Twenty-first, then Market down to Nineteenth. He drove past the green light at Chestnut, then hung a right on Sansom. There were no available spots on the 1900 block, or the next. Didn’t look like much farther down, either.

He flipped open the ashtray. One quarter, a few nickels, many pennies.

“Man.”

But then, movement. The red taillights of a Lexus. Pulling back. McCrane pressed his brakes. Slowed to a stop. Watched the Lexus maneuver out of the space.

Even better, it was a Monday-through-Friday loading space. Weekends, it was fair game.

“Yes,”
Stuart said.

… and she eased the Tribeca into a spot on an empty level in the 1919 Market Street Building’s garage. The nearest car was at
least ten spots away. She turned off the engine, then opened the suitcase on the passenger seat. Inside, on top of a yellow legal pad, was David’s package.

Molly’s cell phone played the guitar riff from “Boys Don’t Cry.” She put in the earpiece and pressed
ANSWER
. A voice spoke to her.

She said: “Yes, I remembered.”

And a few seconds later: “I know. I followed the protocols.”

The packages had arrived last night. Paul had asked what she’d ordered
now
—smiling as he said it—and Molly truthfully replied that it was something for David. She had carried them to the glassed-in patio and sat down on a white metal garden chair. Then she carefully clipped away the masking tape with a pair of blue-handled scissors and then opened the flaps of the first box.

She had put the contents—David’s delivery—into her own briefcase, then gone back to order dinner from the gourmet Chinese place a few blocks away. Paul hated calling it in, and always complained until Molly did it.

Then she went back out to the patio to open the second box. She was staring at the contents now:

A Beretta .22 Neo.

Ammo—a box of fifty, target practice, 29 gr.

“I am,” she said now. “See you soon.”

Molly opened a white cardboard box, dumped most of the doughnuts and cannoli out onto the concrete floor of the parking garage. Let the pigeons enjoy them. She quickly assembled and loaded the pistol, then nestled it between the two remaining doughnuts. Sugar jelly.

Paul used to love sugar jelly.

… and they were driving toward downtown Philadelphia.

“We’re closing,” Roxanne said.

She’d been waiting all morning to say that.

“We’re not closing,” Nichole said. “Our kind of business doesn’t close. Not in this market.”