I thought about the figure he had mentioned. All those zeros. I said, “What can I do about this?”
“Do? I don’t understand.”
“How can I get rid of everything?”
There was a long pause before he said, “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“I can’t accept these things.”
“You don’t need to accept anything, Mr. Cutter. The trust arrangement is quite clear. It’s already yours. And if I may say so, now that you’re feeling better, it would be wise for us to get together to discuss a few administrative issues. I’d like to introduce you to my partners and some key attorneys from our trust department. We would be very pleased to come your way if you’d rather not meet here in Manhattan.”
I said, “I hope you haven’t told your partners or your trust department or anyone else about my marriage to Miss Lane.”
“Why, no, of course not. She has a personal attorney there in California who knows, a Ms. Silverstein, who has worked with me on a few matters. But Miss Lane directed me to keep your marriage confidential, and of course, as her attorney I’m bound to do so. It’s only that I had assumed since she…well, given these new circumstances…”
“Nothing has changed, Mr. Williams. I still want the marriage kept secret.”
“I see. And of course I’ll do as you say.”
“And there’s one more thing.”
I paused. It was such a huge decision. I wanted just a few more seconds to be sure.
“Mr. Cutter,” said the lawyer, “are you there?”
“I’m here. Here’s what I want you to do. Set aside fifty thousand dollars for me. I want to sell everything else and give the proceeds to charity. I mean everything. Houses, cars, yachts, jets, and whatever else I own. And this is extremely important: I don’t want my name involved in any of the transactions. Nobody must ever know I inherited Miss Lane’s estate. Can you arrange all that?”
“Are you sure you mean—”
“Mr. Williams, can you do it nor not?”
“Why yes, it’s certainly possible. We’ll need a little time to think through the details, but are you sure you—”
“Good. Please figure out how to do that and get back to me as soon as you can.”
8
The sense of unreality was stronger than ever as I made my way back through the mansion to the kitchen. Teru and Simon sat at the table as before. I took a seat in the same chair as before. I said, “You guys mentioned a detective… Russo I think you said, right?”
“That is correct, sir,” Simon replied.
“He knows about our marriage?”
“There was no way to keep it from him,” said Teru.
“No. I suppose not.” I took a sip of the lemonade Simon had prepared for me. Condensation from the glass dropped onto the kitchen table. I set the glass back down on the ring of water it had left behind. I slouched in the wooden chair. It was as if the air around me had turned to lead, pressing in from all directions.
The patients in the mental-health ward hadn’t been allowed to watch television or listen to the radio. The doctors said it would have been unsettling. And in the week since I had been out, I hadn’t been following the news. I had been avoiding it without really understanding why. But this was why. In my heart I knew the secret must be out, but as long as I avoided knowing that for certain, there was still a chance, a reason for slight hope. Now the time had come to face the truth. The thought of people knowing that Haley had been married to me made my stomach roil, but I had to ask the question.
I said, “I guess the whole world knows about us now.”
“No, sir,” replied Simon. “I believe your secret is still safe.”
I sat up a little straighter. “You mean Russo didn’t tell anyone?”
“It would appear not. At least there was no hint of it at the time.”
“But… why not?”
“Maybe he’s a gentleman,” said Teru. “When he interviewed me, I asked him to keep it quiet if he could. I explained that you and Haley wanted it that way. He said he’d do his best.”
Simon said, “I told the detective the same thing, sir. He said he would keep your relationship to Miss Haley secret if the progress of his investigation allowed it.”
I closed my eyes and said a little prayer of gratitude. If it was true, if the detective hadn’t revealed the truth about the marriage, then the only people who knew about Haley and me were a couple of her lawyers, Detective Russo, Simon, Teru, and Higgins, who was Haley’s closest friend. My grandparents in Texas also knew, but Haley had no family, so that was it. Eight people, plus me. Which meant there was still a chance that Haley’s reputation would be safe.
“Malcolm, can I ask a question?” Teru said.
I opened my eyes to look at him. “Sure. Anything.”
“Okay. You know I never asked why you wanted it to be a secret. It wasn’t any of my business. You two didn’t want me to speak to anyone about it, so I didn’t. But now that Haley’s gone, is there still a reason why we shouldn’t know the reason for the secrecy?”
Simon and Teru sat silently while I trailed a finger in the puddle of condensation that had collected around the sweating glass of lemonade. I asked myself if there was still a reason not to tell them, but the only decent excuse to keep the secret had been buried with my wife. Still, I wondered what they would think of me when I was done.
Simon said, “Mr. Fujimoto, perhaps we should leave Mr. Cutter to his thoughts.”
“No,” I said, looking up at them. “No, it’s okay. You guys were Haley’s friends. You have a right to know.”
I took a deep breath. It was very hard.
“So… a few years ago I was on a road outside a village in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan, the middle of Indian country, about seven clicks from the Pakistani border. We were done for the day, heading back to base. I was in the last vehicle. I remember the temperature that day was a hundred and two. I was wearing a bandana over my lower face because the road dust was getting in my nose. The sweat was stinging my eyes too. I was in a lousy mood.
“The MRAP ahead of me in the column took a direct hit from an IED, and then all hell broke loose. The enemy had mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Two more MRAPs lit up in the next ten seconds. They call those things ‘mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles,’ but the Taliban can open them up like sardine cans with antitank mines. They had us flanked from higher ground on both sides of the road. It was pretty grim.
“I ordered the guys to fall out to a drainage trench beside the road. A couple of us got hit on the way over. There wasn’t much cover, even in the trench. They were picking us off with rifle fire until I called in a couple of Kiowas. The helicopters cleaned things up pretty quickly, but we had eight killed in action in those first five minutes.
“My guys stewed about it overnight. The next morning we went back to the village. There was another firefight, but this time all the casualties were on the other side. There were a lot of KIAs in that village. Mostly Taliban, no question, but a few were women, and there were a couple of boys, maybe ten or eleven years old. Of course, that will happen when they come at you with AK-47s, but you feel pretty bad about it later.”
I had slumped low in the kitchen chair. Teru was watching me closely. Simon was looking out through the window.
I said, “I had been hit in the right thigh early on that second day, so I set up a command position in this little mud-brick house in the center of town and let our corpsman work me over while most of my guys went door to door through the village. They sent in a chopper for me and dropped me off at the battalion aid station. I lost a ton of blood, but otherwise it wasn’t too bad. They had me up and around in a week. I figured that was that. It was just a couple of bad days. There had been a lot of bad days, so I tried not to think about it too much. Then about a month later, my captain came over to the hooch one morning to ask questions about a video on the Internet.”