No Way Back (32 page)

‘Yes,’ I say. I reach for the edge of the table, and I’m grateful when it’s actually there.

‘Anything you want to tell me? Now might be a good time. A really good time.’

‘No.’

‘Are you an addict, Mr Thane?’

As soon as he asks the question, all the old feelings come back. I don’t answer him, not with words, but my body betrays me, and I feel it deflate in front of his eyes. So many months of
trying to appear strong, of trying to impress people – all the people in my life – Tad, Libby, Gordon Kramer, Doc Curtis, Dr Liago, even myself; it has been an endless struggle, really
it has, every hour of each day – pretending to be someone I am not – and, finally, at this moment, in this hot room, with a hayseed cop glaring at me and accusing me of
something
, although I’m not sure exactly what, it all catches up with me, and I just want to retreat into my dark bedroom, and have a drink, and maybe smoke a pipe, and curl into a
ball, and call it a day.

‘Gambling?’ he asks, gently.

‘Sure, gambling,’ I agree. My voice is hoarse. ‘And drinking. And drugs. And whores, too, if you got any. You offering?’ I glance at the door, make sure that it’s
closed, that no one outside can hear. ‘I’ve been clean for over two years.’

‘Good for you,’ he says, but he doesn’t sound very congratulatory. ‘Tell me where can I find Ghol Gedrosian, please, Mr Thane.’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘Can’t? Or won’t?’

‘I don’t know the man. I’ve never met him. And I certainly don’t know where to find him. That’s the God’s-honest truth.’

He stares. Maybe he does believe me, after all, because he shrugs, and closes his pad, and drops it into his pocket. He stands.

When he speaks, his voice has become gentle again. ‘My daddy was in AA. So I know a little bit about what you’ve gone through.’

Unless his daddy ever woke up in the Mission District, with an empty wallet and a crack pipe in his hands, he probably doesn’t know what I’ve gone through. But it was humane of him
to try.

He leans across the table and gives me his business card. ‘You ought to keep this, Mr Thane,’ he says. ‘Keep it handy. I think you’ll be wanting to call me soon.
You’ll be needing my help. Probably sooner than you like.’

But Agent Mitchell is wrong. There is only one person in the world whose help I need. There is only one person in the world to whom I want to talk.

We’ve had our problems, Libby and I; that is true. We’ve suffered. I have betrayed her. I have wrecked her life. I have destroyed what she loved. Yet, after all that, she is still my
wife, and we are still partners. We are partners, no matter what comes.

When I arrive at home, though, my partner is gone. Her Mercedes is missing from the driveway. I walk into the house and call her name. ‘Libby?’ My voice echoes in the empty hall.

It’s just past four o’clock. She wasn’t expecting me home this early, and I doubt she left a note. But I look for one anyway – on the kitchen table, the refrigerator
door, anywhere she might have left a clue.

There is no note. There is no clue.

I try to recall my recent conversations with Libby. Did she mention to me that she had plans this afternoon?

Now, standing in the middle of the kitchen, something occurs to me. It occurs to me that, in fact, I have no idea how Libby spends
any
of her afternoons. She lives alone in a house, in
a strange town, in a strange state. She has no job, no friends, no family.

She lives in a house. That is the only thing I know about her, and how she spends her time.

It is as if Libby is a prop on a Broadway stage. When the audience arrives and the spotlight goes on – that is, when I return home from work – the curtain goes up, and her life
begins. But when the audience files out at the end of the show – when I leave the house in the morning – things go dark, and her story pauses.

I step outside, onto the porch. Across the street, my neighbour with the bulging forehead and overcrowded teeth waits on his own porch. He stares at me.

I wave to him.

A pause. An uncertain look. He waves back, tentatively.

For a moment, I consider heading across the road, with an outstretched hand, and introducing myself, maybe even asking if he’s seen my wife. We’ve lived across the street for months,
in the only two houses on a deserted cul-de-sac, and yet we have never exchanged a single greeting.

Before I can act, though, he takes a cellphone from his pocket, presses a button, and raises it to his ear. He says something I can’t hear. He turns his back to me, and disappears into his
house, shutting the door.

Back in my own living room, I sit on the couch. Waiting.

I listen to the tick of the grandfather clock. I think about the conversation with Agent Mitchell – about how my name was found in Ghol Gedrosian’s list of customers.

Before I took the job at Tao, I never heard the name Ghol Gedrosian. Of this, I am certain. Yet according to Tom Mitchell, I have been a customer of his, a customer of long standing and great
value.

How can that be?

Being an addict doesn’t mean living in a haze, unaware of your actions, oblivious to people around you. Even today, I have vivid recollections of those mean bad years, those years when I
was using – searing and bright memories – as if captured by an old magnesium flash from a 1940s movie: of snorting lines of coke off two hookers’ flat young abdomens; of standing
outside a Wells Fargo at ten a.m., with trembling hands, waiting for the bank to open, so that I could withdraw the ten Gs that I owed to scary bookies by noon; of touring a backyard in Woodside,
under a camo tarp, where a tin Gulfstream hid the portable meth lab from which I was buying in bulk – a drug addict’s peculiar approximation of home economy.

These are all very real recollections – indelible and intense. With these memories come specific names: Hector the Bookie; Johnnie Deadpan, who boasted that he played with Dylan at the
Newport Folk Festival, and who, forty years later, sold me crank from his trailer; Angel, the hooker who would do anything, and I mean anything, to share my stash of meth. Many memories, and many
names, from that long and not-so-glorious catalogue.

But from this list one name is conspicuously missing.

His name is so peculiar – with its odd jumble of consonants and vowels – its sound so foreign and frightening, like a curse in an ancient tongue – that surely I would recall
it, had I heard it even once in those years.

Before coming to Florida, I never heard the name Ghol Gedrosian. So how can I be his customer? How can the name Jimmy Thane appear in his files?

And another thing.

Do mobsters keep computer spreadsheets? Is it common for them – after a hard day breaking legs and selling girls into slavery – to fire up Microsoft Excel, and draw little pie charts
with coloured slices for each line of business – red for meth, say, blue for hookers, and green for loan-sharking – like earnest McKinsey consultants slouched at the back of the airport
Admirals Club sipping Chivas on the rocks? How many criminals keep computerized lists of their customers, anyway? How many of these lists are ever found by police?

None, of course.

Unless the lists are meant to be found. Unless they’re planted, designed to incriminate.

I hear the tinkling of keys in the front door, and then Libby stands in the doorway, clutching a single grocery bag. She peers into the room.

‘What are you doing home?’ she asks, sounding not exactly pleased to see me.

‘Where were you?’

‘Groceries.’ She lifts the bag in her arms, as if to corroborate this story.

Something about the way she does this makes me feel an intense curiosity to examine the contents of that bag. I get up from the couch and approach. Before I can reach her, though, she walks
away, into the kitchen, taking the bag with her.

I follow.

‘We needed milk,’ she explains. She lifts a gallon jug from the bag, to demonstrate, and carries it to the refrigerator.

She puts the milk inside. My eyes flit past, to the top shelf, where I see a gallon already sits, nearly full.

‘Libby,’ I say, ‘we need to talk.’

She turns.

I say, ‘I’m being set up.’

She stares at me with a blank, uncomprehending expression.

I continue: ‘This job. This city. This house—’ I lift my hands to encompass it all. ‘It’s not real.’

‘It’s not...
real
?’

‘It’s a con, Libby. I’m the patsy.’

She looks dumbfounded.

I realize that our marriage has reached a dubious new low. For the first time in ten years – ten years of mistakes, and heartaches, and betrayal – for the first time, I have done
something completely new. I have
befuddled
her.

‘You’re a...
patsy
?’ she repeats, not quite sneering at the word, but coming close.

‘They arrested a man. A dealer out in California. Guess whose name they found in his papers. Guess whose name was in his list of customers.’

‘Yours,’ she says, right away, not sounding surprised.

‘How did you know?’

‘You’re an addict, Jimmy. You buy drugs.’

‘Used to.’

She shrugs. ‘Used to.’

‘The man they arrested, I never bought from him. And his boss – this guy named Ghol Gedrosian.’ I spit the name. ‘I never bought from him, either. I’m sure of
that.’

‘How do you remember
who
you bought from back then? You can’t seem to remember who you fucked.’

‘I do remember,’ I say, and add, ‘who I bought from. Every single person.’ Which is true. When you’re an addict, one of the things you never forget is your dealer.
You might forget to pay your bills, or to call your family, or even to come home at night – but that Rolodex of phone numbers and secret knocks and names you need to mention – those are
never forgotten. Never.

‘They planted my name, Libby. How else can I be a customer of someone I’ve never met?’

‘I love wearing Gucci. But I never met Tom Ford.’

‘Be serious.’

‘Fine.’ She makes a dour face. ‘I’ll be serious.’

‘There’s something else. Something I haven’t told you.’

I take her hand, and guide her to the living room. We sit down on the couch, in front of the grandfather clock. It ticks metronomically.

‘They gave me money,’ I say.

She looks puzzled. ‘Who gave you money?’

‘Tad. Tad and his partners. They gave me money. A lot of money. I took it. I didn’t ask any questions. I just took it.’

‘How much money?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘I think it does.’

‘Two million dollars.’

‘They gave you two million dollars?’ She can’t keep the surprise from her voice. ‘What for?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Two million dollars,’ she says again, mostly to herself, considering. She looks at me. Her eyes narrow, and I see something new in them – something I haven’t seen
recently in my wife. Something I haven’t seen for years. What is it exactly?
Respect
. Yes, that’s what it is.

‘Two million dollars,’ she repeats.

‘Don’t you see? That money is in our bank account. Anyone who looks will find it. Tad set me up. He played me. He left clues, to make me look guilty. He put money in my account, to
make it look like I’m stealing from Tao. He planted my name in a meth-dealer’s house, so it’ll look like I’m an addict.’

‘You
are
an addict.’

‘I am being set up.’

‘You sound paranoid, Jimmy.’

‘Libby,’ I say, trying to keep my voice very calm. It’s hard not to sound paranoid after someone tells you that you are. ‘Libby. Listen to me.’ I speak slowly.
‘We need to think about this very carefully. We need to go to the police. We need to give back the money. We need to tell them everything we know. We need to explain what Tad is up to. How
he’s stealing from the company. Who he’s working for. We need to tell them about Ghol Gedrosian.’

‘The police?’ Libby repeats. She is apparently still stuck on the very first part of my plan.

I take her hand. It is strangely cold. ‘Listen. Here’s what I think we should do,’ I say. ‘I think we should go home. I mean, our real home. I think we should go back to
California.’

I hardly thought about this idea before I started to speak it, but now, even before the words are out, I am excited by it. More details come to me. I blurt them out, almost breathless.
‘Let’s leave
tonight
. Let’s get on a plane and get the hell out of here. Fuck this job. Fuck this house. Let’s just leave. We won’t even pack. Let’s
just drive to the airport – right now – and take the first flight. When we get home, we’ll find a lawyer. We’ll go to the police. We’ll deal with whatever comes.
We’ll deal with it together. Whatever comes.’

Libby considers.

‘What do you think, Libby?’ I say. I’m relieved. Relieved that I’ve told her. Relieved that I’ve unburdened myself of the secret that I’ve been keeping.
Relieved – most of all – at the idea of escape – at the thought of walking out this front door, locking it behind us, and never seeing this house again. Never stepping foot in
Florida again. Going home. ‘What do you think, Libby? Let’s get on a plane. Let’s just leave. Right now. Let’s go.’

Libby stares at me. For a moment, I think that I’ve made quite an impression on her, that she’s considering this new plan, maybe even signing up for it: walking out the front door,
getting on a plane, going home, telling the police everything. Starting our lives again.

‘Think how nice it would be,’ I say. ‘To go home. Doesn’t that sound good to you, Libby? To start again?’

She prises her fingers out of my hand. She stands up and walks to the clock. She stares into its blank glass face, standing with her back to me. I can’t see her expression.

‘Libby?’ I say, quietly. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘Jimmy,’ she whispers, shaking her head.

She seems to consider her next words for a long time. Finally, when she turns to me, she says, ‘I never want to threaten you. I never want to be
that
kind of wife.’

‘What kind of wife?’ I ask, even though I know, because she
is
that kind of wife.