Dan’s knuckles are swollen and bent. He rests his forearms on the edge of his desk and raps the knuckles gently on the edges of his blotter. Outside I hear the muted banging of a garbage truck emptying a Dumpster.
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, taking a card from my pocket and pushing it across the desk. “My name is Arthur Bell. I’m an attorney and I have a client who wants to help you.”
“Bob Rangle?” he says.
I have to swallow before I say, “Rangle?”
Dan shrugs and says, “No, I didn’t figure. He was the congressman. I put that son of a bitch in office and I went down to New York a few weeks ago to ask for a loan. He runs a fund now.”
“No,” I say, “I have nothing to do with him. My client is Seth Cole. He was friends with Raymond White.”
“What?” he says. His eyes narrow.
“My client was in prison for a time,” I say. “Raymond White saved his life. When he heard that Raymond died, my client wanted to do something for the people who were good to him.”
“Raymond died?”
I nod.
Dan’s eyes lose their focus and he looks down at his hands. They are clenched tight like his teeth.
“No one told me,” he says, as if speaking to himself.
“No,” I say, “they probably wouldn’t. You weren’t actually related to him.”
His eyes snap up at me. He scowls and says, “He was-”
Then he drops his eyes again and says, “It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“My client wants to pay off your debt,” I say. “He thinks Raymond would have wanted that.”
“I’ve got this dream, you know,” Dan says as he massages the fingers of one hand with the other. “I got this dream of starting it over. Parsons amp; Parsons. My son’s gonna be a lawyer, you know?
“Mister,” Dan says, looking up again. “I appreciate your coming here. But I owe them thirteen million dollars… I’ve got an insurance policy for ten, and to be honest I’ve been thinking about taking a fast drive, maybe hitting a bridge. Problem is, my wife would still owe the bastards three more and you better believe these people don’t negotiate.”
“Mr. Parsons,” I say. “Seth Cole has authorized me to pay the IRS in full.”
“Hey. Get the hell out of here,” he says, shaking his head in disgust. He rises up out of his chair and draws himself up nearly straight. “Who sent you?”
“Believe me,” I say. “Thirteen million dollars to Seth Cole isn’t what it is to most people. Who’s your bank?”
He stares at me for a long time. I hold his gaze, fearful that he will see me.
Finally, he wags his head and says, “Next door.”
“Let’s go,” I say. “You’ll see.”
Together we go down the back stairs and into the single-story bank next door. I ask for a wire number and I call Bob Mancini, my contact at Goldman Sachs. The girls at the bank are twittering behind the counter and the manager comes out from his office as well.
“What is it?” Dan asks.
The manager is shaking his head. He looks up with a wide grin.
“Mr. Parsons,” he says. “Goldman Sachs just put thirteen million dollars in your account.”
“Can they take it back?” he asks, shooting a glance at me.
“No sir,” the manager says. “It’s there. No one can take it but you.”
Dan Parsons utters a cry. He grabs my hand and gives it a quick strong shake, then he races out of the building. Bert and I walk outside. I stand on the sidewalk and watch Dan make his way up the street in a ragged jog while Bert gets the truck. When Bert picks me up, I have him drive to Elizabeth Street.
There is a big bay window in the front of the small saltbox house where Dan lives. We stop out front and I roll down my window. Through the bay window, I can see him hugging his wife and swinging her around. I can see the sparkle of tears running down his face. His mouth is open in wild laughter that I don’t have to hear.
I roll up the window and stare straight ahead at the snow-covered street that is lined with four-foot banks.
“Back to New York, Bert,” I say.
“What about Mickey Mouse and Space Mountain and all that?”
“No,” I say. “You liked when I played God, right? Reward a loyal friend? A kind old man? Make his dreams come true? That’s like Disney World. You take the ride, get a little scared, then you get off and have some cotton candy or a turkey drumstick. Take your picture with Snow White. But God’s got a night job too. God is a judge. Yeah, he rewards the good guy, right? Supposedly… But what about the bad?
“God makes a call. Good, you get Disney World. Bad?”
I look Bert in the eye and say, “You go to hell.”
BOOK THREE. ASCENSION
It was time for him to go back among men and take up the rank, influence and power which great wealth gives in this world.
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO
34
I KNOW THAT SOMEONE like Frank Steffano doesn’t get to where he is by destroying just one man. People like Frank are tumors. They feed off everything decent within their reach. They are worse than parasites who fatten only themselves. Tumors like Frank grow stronger and stronger until they can metastasize. They create other tumors that also grow and thrive. Villay. Rangle. Russo. I’m sure there are others.
I hire Vance International, a private investigative and protective agency made from the cream of the Secret Service, the FBI, and all four branches of the military. I put up a five-million-dollar retainer, which gets their attention. They are my diagnostic team.
You would be shocked at how easy it is to invade someone’s privacy. I’m not talking about getting someone’s phone records or financial statements, or hacking into their e-mails. I’m talking about seeing and hearing what goes on in their bedroom and the table where they eat breakfast.
Vance International isn’t bound by any laws. They have employees who are welcomed into Frank and Lexis’s home, into the Rangles’, into the Villays’. It happens to every American on a weekly basis. We open our doors to complete strangers, giving them access to our secret places. Cable TV workers. Appliance repairmen. The guy who delivers the dry cleaning. The more money people have, the more intruders enter their homes.
If that fails, Vance has other ways of getting in. Skeleton keys. Lock picks. Drills and glasscutters. Cameras and microphones the size of a pencil lead are easily inserted into ceilings and walls. Tiny transmitters send microwave digital data to receivers that are connected into fiber lines and fed to monitoring stations that gather everything. Then Vance boils it down to the good stuff.
For six months they chronicle for me not only every symptom of the disease, but its complete pathology.
Am I collecting information because I want to destroy the tumors perfectly, or because I want justification for what I’m going to do? Maybe I’m really not as comfortable filling in for God as I make myself out to be. It makes me sick to be this weak, but I think that’s the truth. Even after everything that’s happened to me, I need something more. A justification to make my judgment. A rationale to dole out my punishment. As if I didn’t already have enough of both.
And, just like I figured, Vance International digs up other ruined lives besides mine. None of them are as bad as what happened to me, though. None of them except one. A girl named Helena. At first, I decide to look for her because she could serve an important role in my plan. But the more I learn, the more I feel as if we are somehow connected through our losses and our pain and I wonder if she might also be able to take the edge off my loneliness.
It’s late summer when I track her down in a men’s club in Fairbanks, Alaska. She’s emotionally battered and bruised and so bitter that she’s almost wicked. I don’t blame her. She was sold off as a prostitute when she was a child. They used her in some movies and then they just used her. She was fifteen when she escaped a flophouse in West Hollywood. It took her a year to steal her way up to Alaska. Someplace she must have fantasized as being safe.