“No way. Besides, a mob hit in Central Park? Fuhgeddaboudit.”
Everyone laughs.
Except Howley, who’s looking at his watch again. He knew Jeff Gale-not well, but he knew him, saw how the man operated, could read him like a book, read all his moves. Gambling and escorts? It’s about as far as you could get from a plausible explanation for this.
That’s what bothers him, the seeming randomness of it, the casualness.
He glances across the room and catches Jessica’s eye.
Ten minutes later they’re in the car and on the way to dinner at Mircof’s in East Quogue.
Sitting alone in a booth at Dave’s Bar & Grill, Frank Bishop sips his second Stoli. It usually takes more than one for that exquisite hot-coals-in-the-belly sensation to hit, but it’s coming now, he can feel it.
Slowly, he takes another sip.
Blue. Icy. Viscous.
This is the sweet spot, alright, portal to a brief sun-kissed season of illumination and understanding. It won’t last very long, a few minutes at most, but that’s fine. In a while he’ll order some food-chicken, fries, plenty of carbs, a club soda-because if he orders a third Stoli he’ll only order a fourth and then a fifth and that’ll be it for the night. He won’t eat and he’ll get stupid and sloppy. He’ll end up feeling like shit and be hungover all day tomorrow. Then, before he knows it, it’ll be Monday morning again and he’ll be back at work.
For now, though, it’s Saturday evening.
He holds up his glass of filmy liquid.
To the LudeX console upgrade, and a long, strange day at Winterbrook Mall.
He takes a sip.
Frank used to be an architect.
Up to a couple of years ago, and for a couple of decades-designing office buildings and airport terminals, frozen music, he ate, drank, and slept the stuff. Worked for Belmont, McCann Associates and had an office in Manhattan. But now? Now he manages an electronics store in a second-tier mall in upstate New York.
WTF.
It’s not as if he’s the only one, though. A dozen others were let go at the same time, and most of them, as far as he knows, are struggling. The younger ones, still in their twenties, either take it on the chin and go off in an entirely different direction, or they obsessively hone their résumés and send them out to anyone they’ve ever come into contact with, co-workers, classmates, contractors, people they meet on fucking Facebook. The older ones, like Frank, mid-forties and beyond, either manage to hang on by trading their experience and skills for much-reduced salaries, or they take anything at all, whatever they can get, retail, driving a cab-it doesn’t matter, really (except for the serious damage this will do to their marketability if they ever want to get back in the game). Frank is one of these, and he figures the damage is already done. The idea of getting back in the game is remote to him anyway, a little intimidating even.
This job he got as a favor. It was through an old connection, a middle-management guy in Paloma he dealt with when Belmont, McCann were doing their new regional headquarters over in Hartford. And he only got it because it was Winterbrook Mall. If it’d been anywhere else, chances are he wouldn’t have been hired. Like Dave’s Bar & Grill, which is beside it, Winterbrook Mall is a relic of the 1980s, morning in Mahopac, and will very probably not survive this recession. In fact, it’s hard to know what’s keeping the place afloat right now. It’s vast, but more often than not deserted, with a distinctly creepy feel to it, especially at night when you could imagine B-movie zombies emerging from behind the fake backdrops of some of the empty retail spaces to search for stragglers and lost shoppers. However, Winterbrook’s biggest problem lies two miles down the road in the shape of the sparkling and relatively new Oak Valley Plaza Outlets Center.
That’s where it’d make sense for Paloma to have their store, but if they did, Frank would be out of work.
He looks into his glass.
The truth is, he’s hanging on by a thread here. There are over eight hundred Paloma stores across the country, and this is probably the only one he’d be able to hold down a job in. And that’s because-with the exception of today-it’s probably the only one that’s empty most of the time.
Which suits Frank just fine.
Not because he can’t do the job, or he’s lazy, it’s just that dealing with people, customers, members of the public… he’s not cut out for it. Heavier foot traffic than the store gets and he’d more than likely crack up. It might take a while, a few weeks, a month or two, but he wouldn’t last-there’d be an incident with someone out on the floor, he’d raise his voice, they’d file a complaint, and who’d end up with their second pink slip in as many years?
For the moment, though, this position he’s got at ghostly, creepy Winterbrook Mall seems secure enough.
Which is a big relief.
He finishes the drink and orders some food.
Because as long as he’s able to meet his basic financial obligations, as long as he’s able to-
Phone.
Vibrating in his pocket.
He pulls it out and looks at it. Lizzie. Pretty much on cue. “Hi there.”
“Hey Dad.”
Tone alert.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m… I’m fine.”
Lizzie’s at Atherton, and even though she got a scholarship it’s still costing him a fortune. She wants to be a Web… something, he can’t remember what exactly. He finds it hard to keep up, to stay in the loop, especially the tech loop. When she was starting out, he was all over it, but that was two years ago.
“So… what’s happening?”
“Not a whole lot. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
Frank looks up, slowly, and out over the dusty, wood-paneled expanse of Dave’s Bar & Grill.
Hear my voice?
“You can hear my voice anytime you want, sweetheart, you know that.”
He swallows. Was that the right thing to say? Lizzie is extremely smart, but she’s hard work sometimes, and you have to know what you’re doing. When she was small, he and Deb had to choose their moments with her. She could be charming, too, of course, and some of the stuff she came out with would blow your socks off. Unfortunately, Lizzie’s teenage years are a bit of a blur to Frank, because after the divorce he burrowed down and didn’t do much else besides work. Then, a year or so before he was laid off, things changed again, and he started making more of an effort to see both her and John. It seemed like a new phase, a new era-college looming, Deb married to someone else, their early lives together as a family in the house in Carroll Gardens receding like a brittle dream. Lizzie hadn’t changed, though, not really, and her renewed presence in his life, her occasional attentions-e-mails, phone calls-sustained him in a way that he hadn’t expected.
“I know, Dad.”
Silence.
Well, at least that’s settled.
“So,” he says, trying again. “Saturday night. What are you up to?” But why does he want to know that? Doesn’t he worry enough about her as it is? With nothing at all to go on? Now he’s fishing for ammo?
“No plans. Just working. I’ve got a paper due.”
He’ll settle for that. Moving his empty glass around the table like a chess piece, he proceeds to tell her about his day, the LudeX upgrade, the early torrent of excited geeks, the subsequent stream of disappointed ones. Trying to make it funny. But at a certain point he realizes she’s not laughing, and then guesses she’s probably not even smiling. Which is when he remembers that Lizzie hates hearing about his job. It freaks her out. She thinks of her old man as an architect who works in Manhattan, not as some loser sales guy in a suburban mall. Either that or she’s racked with guilt about what he has to do to keep her and her brother in their good schools.