Now, though, he wondered.
He’d been so worried about how he’d be perceived during the time he was losing Audrey that now he was at risk of losing Jane.
Aw, fuck it. It’s not like she’s my real daughter or—
Maybe not. But damn it, he loved her. From the moment Audrey came into his life, dragging Jane along with her, there was something about the kid. Tough, but vulnerable at the same time. She’d been hurt so often by other men who’d come into her mother’s orbit, starting with her own dad, who’d never been there for her. She’d stopped looking for any sort of father figure. As far as she was concerned, all the men her mother had taken up with over the years were assholes.
Vince was willing to concede that maybe he wasn’t much different, but at least he cared about Jane in ways the others hadn’t.
He’d had a daughter once.
Briefly.
It had always haunted him. He’d often thought about the girl that never was. Who would that baby have grown up to be? What would she have been like at five years of age? Ten? Fifteen. When he and Audrey began living together and Jane was around all the time, he could easily imagine her as the embodiment of what his own daughter might have been.
Headstrong. Stubborn. Not afraid of a fight. Goddamn intimidating at times. Sneaky, too, when it served her purposes.
And a pain in the ass, let’s not forget that. But if his daughter had turned out like Jane, he would have been proud. This is a kid who can take care of herself. A kid who doesn’t take any shit.
He didn’t try to be her friend. From the beginning, he just tried to treat her with respect. Didn’t bullshit her. When she asked him once — this was more than seven years earlier, before he got shot — whether he was going to marry her mother, he could have said something like, “Well, we’ll see, your mother and I care about each other a great deal, and we don’t know at this point where it will lead blah blah blah.”
But instead he said, “I got no idea. If I had to make up my mind today, I’d say there’s no way. I got enough people nagging me as it is. But I like her. And you’re okay, too.”
Another time, she asked him flat out whether he was a criminal.
“That’s how you make your living, right? I mean, this body shop thing, that’s just bullshit. A legit business to cover up all the other stuff that you and Bert and Gordie and Eldon are up to. Am I right or am I right?”
He took a second. “You’re right.”
Jane nodded appreciatively. “That was a test.”
“Huh?”
“I just wanted to see if you’d lie to my face. I don’t like what you do, but at least you’re honest about it.”
A pistol. That’s what she was.
Maybe he was a fool to believe this, but he thought his directness had, over time, won her respect. And once he had that — and it sure as hell didn’t happen overnight — he believed she came to feel something stronger. Was he kidding himself, or did she love him back?
Vince thought she did.
He knew he didn’t come across as an educated guy. He’d barely finished high school, and never attended any institution of so-called higher learning. But he liked to read, and the shelves of his beach house were lined with books. History and biography, mostly. Vince liked to read about how important people made decisions, and took comfort in the fact that even smart people, as often as not, made the wrong choices.
Whenever it was his birthday or Christmas, Jane bought Vince a book. Everybody else tended to buy him scotch. He’d said to her once, “You know I’m a thinker, not just a drinker.”
But what had really touched him was that last year, when her mother was still alive, before things got bad, Jane had bought him a book for Father’s Day. The huge Keith Richards memoir Life. She’d written inside: For a guy who rocks, a book about another guy who rocks. Love, Jane.
She’d never bought him anything for Father’s Day before.
This year, Father’s Day had come in the weeks preceding Audrey’s death. Jane’s opinion of him had clearly taken a hit. There was no gift this time.
She hates me.
She hated him because he’d let his mother down. Let Jane down, too. Plus, there was the business of the house. A nice two-story up in Orange, on Riverdale Road, just off Ridge, not far from the shopping center. Audrey had owned it when she met Vince, and after moving in with him kept the place and rented it out.
When she died, Jane assumed the house would go to her, but her mother had willed it to Vince. Jane figured he’d do the right thing and give it to her, and in the normal course of events he would have, except for one thing.
Bryce. Bryce Withers.
There was something about that kid Vince didn’t like. It wasn’t just that he was a musician. No, that was giving him too much credit. He played in a band. Calling him a musician, that suggested schooling and training. Talent. Vince didn’t believe Bryce needed any of those things to play in a band.
Turned out Vince was right. One night he’d wandered into a bar where they were playing. Energy Drink, they called themselves. What the hell kind of lame-ass name was that? Vince never told Jane he’d seen them play. He wanted to get a handle on this guy who was sleeping with his stepdaughter. What he heard convinced him Bryce was more of a noisemaker than a musician. You could put a guitar in a monkey’s hands and it’d produce the same kind of music.
No, that was unfair to the monkey.
Jane was making something of herself. She’d landed a good job with a local advertising agency. Not making a fortune, not yet, but doing better than her boyfriend, who Vince had pegged as a first-class mooch. Someone willing to live off his girlfriend’s earnings. And, by extension, any money or property she happened to come into.
Like her mother’s house.
If she married this clown and they moved into that house, and then split up and had to sell the place, this dickhead would end up getting half of what had been left to Vince in the first place.
Vince was okay with everything going to Jane. But not Bryce.
So he hung on to it and endured Jane’s disdain. Soon as she broke up with Bryce — and sooner or later she’d have to see the light — he’d sit her down, tell her the house was hers.
It had been weighing on him.
But now there were new problems. Chief among them was the money missing from the attic of the Cummings house.
“Vince?” More rapping on the frosted glass.
“What?”
“Bert here.”
Vince put the glass and bottle away, slid the drawer shut, took another couple of deep breaths. He was okay. He was a rock again. He could see this through. Start what you finish, his father used to tell him.
He came around the desk and opened the door. “Gordie told me you had some trouble.”
“Yeah. I thought nobody was home.”
“Cops?”
“I don’t know what happened after I left.”
Vince needed to know.
“What’s happening with Eldon?” Bert asked. Gordie was standing right behind, looking anxious.
“Eldon’s dead,” Vince said.
Stunned silence for two seconds, then “Fuck me” from Gordie.
“What happened?” Bert asked.
“He took the news badly,” Vince said. “He started acting crazy. Making threats. Blaming me for what happened. Accusing me. I think he was getting ready to call the cops.” He took a breath. “I did what I had to do.”