His thoughts kept returning to the months he’d spent in federal prison, where he’d met several inmates who had served very hard time in state penitentiaries. One of them told Raleigh that comparing Club Fed to state prison was like comparing hemorrhoids to colon cancer, and the inmate was a man who had suffered both.
There was still time, Raleigh thought. He could pick up the phone and call Nigel Wickland, using both his given name and surname just to piss him off, and cancel the whole thing. After all, his life in the Brueger house was pretty good, and he’d never been a greedy man. Why should he risk arrest and trial and a sentence at one of the nightmare factories run by the state of California, where each hour of each terrible day his life would be put at risk? This was madness, this fantasy that had been sold to him by one of those “toffee-nosed poofs,” as his fellow workers in the London bistro used to call the upper-crust homos.
He went to the butler’s pantry and got a notepad and pen and began making a list of all the ways in which this thing could go sideways. When he got to number six, he tore it to bits and then set fire to the paper scraps in the sink. He sat down again. Then the phone buzzed, and he picked it up, knowing it was the cottage line.
“Yes, Mr. Brueger?” he said.
Marty Brueger’s morning voice said, “I’m sick of this fucking place, Raleigh. With Lorena away, I feel like a prisoner in solitary confinement.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Brueger,” Raleigh said. “Maybe we can take a drive later this morning? Is there somewhere you’d like to go? We can take any one of Mrs. Brueger’s cars. How about the big Mercedes? You could sit in back with a flask of whiskey and take in the sights and I’ll be your chauffeur.”
“I was thinking about a longer drive,” Marty Brueger said. “I was thinking maybe you could take me to Palm Springs and I could look at all the old places I used to know when Sammy and me were young bucks.”
And there it was! One of the ways things could go sideways, and it wasn’t even on his list. Palm Springs was three hours away. He couldn’t take the geezer to Palm Springs and be back by 1 P.M.
“Mr. Brueger,” he said. “It’s still too hot in Palm Springs. In a couple of months it’ll be nice there and we can go and get a hotel for an overnighter. You could gamble in the Indian casinos. Maybe catch a show. But you don’t want to go to Palm Springs now.”
“I’m lonesome,” Marty Brueger said. “Come on over and let’s talk about it. Or I can come up to the house.”
“I’ll come to you, Mr. Brueger,” Raleigh said.
He hung up and thought about this. Was it fate, destiny, or divine providence? Today of all days, something had made that old man decide he wanted to go to Palm Springs. Something or somebody was trying to help Raleigh out of the incredible scheme concocted by Nigel Wickland. All he had to do was call the man and tell him that Marty Brueger wanted to go to Palm Springs today, which was the truth. After that, he could tell an untruth and say that Marty Brueger had decided to move into the main house because he was lonely. And with Marty Brueger in the main house, it would effectively end Nigel Wickland’s plot to make a million dollars. Raleigh could save face with that pompous limey, as if he needed to, and the bad dreams would be over.
Suddenly he felt like a free man. He felt wonderful. He sauntered down the walk to Marty’s cottage and literally stopped to smell the roses. He knocked twice, as he always did. He entered and found Marty Brueger on the floor in the bathroom, wearing only urine-soaked underpants.
“Mr. Brueger!” Raleigh ran to the old man, stripped off his underwear and carried him to his bed.
Marty Brueger looked at him and said, “Wa-wa-wa…”
“Are you trying to say my name, Mr. Brueger?” Raleigh said in panic. Then he muttered, “My god, it’s a stroke!”
Raleigh Dibble picked up the phone and dialed 9-1-1.
Megan Burke was shocked to be awakened by the smell of actual food. She opened her eyes and found Jonas sitting on the bed, fully dressed, with a glass of orange juice in a Styrofoam cup and an Egg McMuffin on a plate.
He said, “I got up early. This is the first day of our new life as successful people. I went out and had breakfast and brought yours home. We gotta be healthy and strong today. Eat, baby, eat.”
Megan rolled out of bed with her feet on the floor, stood up painfully, and lurched into the bathroom. Jonas went to the kitchen, and she could hear water running. When she finished in the bathroom, she saw the plate of Egg McMuffin on the kitchen table with the orange juice. And he was actually making the coffee, another first.
“We ain’t doing drugs today, Megan,” he said. “We’re working and we ain’t coming home till we hit a target. We’re aiming for nothing but bull’s-eyes today. We’re finding a likely crib and we’re going in. Nothing can stop us.”
Megan sat and sipped some orange juice and nibbled at the Egg McMuffin without interest. She thought, Right, I don’t get to do any drugs today, but look at him! She figured he’d had a taste of something, the way he was amped. It made her surly and resentful. She always got the short end because he was the man, or so he thought.
“Come on, sweetie, take bigger bites,” he said. “And chew, chew, chew.”
She had a momentary fantasy of picking up a kitchen knife and cutting his throat.
Raleigh’s panic had subsided before the ambulance arrived, and after they’d loaded Marty Brueger in and taken him to Cedars-Sinai, he went into the main house and took a shower. He had the old man’s piss on his clothes and he wanted to stand under hot water for a long time. The paramedics had verified that it looked like a stroke, and they had wasted no time in getting their patient out of there, so now Raleigh was alone for the first time in Casa Brueger. He needed to think, but first he needed the shower.
When he finally was out and had toweled off, Raleigh stood before the mirror and thought about all the things he had planned to do with his five hundred thousand tax-free dollars. He was going to be physically transformed, easily losing ten years from his appearance, thanks to the cosmetic magicians on the west side of Los Angeles. He had also planned to purchase a modest condo, his own home at long last. And there was the dream of hooking up with an older wealthy woman, like the kind he’d met through his catering business. And why not? He could cook and he knew food and wine. He could manage a house and he could drive. And he was, if he did say so himself, a presentable companion who could converse with anyone. But what was going to happen now that Marty Brueger had suffered a stroke? Was this yet another act of providence, or fate, or destiny? If so, what did it mean?
Then again, if he did go forward with Nigel Wickland, it would make it all far easier and less stressful with Marty Brueger off the property and in the hospital, wouldn’t it? Things would be simpler and safer in many ways. But he didn’t dare keep the fact of Marty Brueger’s hospitalization from Marty’s sister-in-law, Leona Brueger. He had to phone Tuscany. That much was certain. But what would she say and do?
Ten minutes later Raleigh made a call, but he did not phone Leona Brueger in Tuscany. He phoned Nigel Wickland’s cell phone.
When Nigel answered, Raleigh said, “The old guy’s had a stroke. He’s at Cedars.”
Nigel Wickland did not speak for several seconds and then said, “All right, that doesn’t change anything.”
Raleigh said, “Doesn’t change anything? What if she decides to come home? He’s an old man in poor health. He might die at any time.”
“She doesn’t care about him any more than she cared about his brother,” Nigel said. “Tell her it’s a stroke but downplay it. Let her know that you think he’ll be fine and that they should continue with their long holiday and you’ll let them know if something untoward happens.”
Untoward, Raleigh thought. The supercilious asshole always had to use his boarding school vocabulary. “What if they still decide to come home right away?”