Offside (58 page)

I just nodded.

“He’s still at your service if you want to keep him handy,” Lucas informed me. “We still have a contract, but we can work all that stuff out later.”

He smiled, and the corners of his eyes tightened a little when he did. I thought about the slight, unintentional movement, and I knew it didn’t exactly indicate honesty. There was nothing about the Lucas family that was on the up-and-up. Max Lucas had been my go-to person for shady dealings and information since I got my first cell phone.

“The will?” I prompted. I didn’t want to be here any longer than I had to. I almost wished I had let Nicole come with me. Almost. I didn’t want her around Lucas. He was a seriously underhanded character and used to dealing with all kinds of nasty shit. Once, Dad said that Lucas was connected to bigger crime in Portland but only as one of their informants or something.

“Very basic, actually,” he said. “I’d been trying to get your father to update it for some time, but it hasn’t changed since your mother passed. No trust fund, nothing complicated—you are the only offspring. You are over the age of eighteen, and you get it all.”

“What’s
all
?” I asked.

“The bank accounts, stock portfolios, house, the three cars—one of which is already in your name—the summer place in Michigan, the island…”

“Island?”

“Yes,” Lucas said with a short nod, “your father bought an island some years ago. Just off of Saint Thomas.”

“I have an island?” I was a little taken aback. How could I not know he bought a fucking island?

Lucas chuckled and went on, tallying everything that was worth mentioning. The assets came up to about nine million, plus the stock portfolio, which was another six and a half. Lucas continued to babble.

“Give me the bottom line, Lucas,” I snapped, interrupting him. He bristled a little, but he seemed to remember whose son he was dealing with, at least. I knew how to be an asshole. I’d learned from the best.

“Your father had three insurance policies,” Lucas said. “One from the hospital, one through the mayor’s office, and his whole-life insurance through Arden Mutual. They are all still valid since they’ve been in place for several years. The suicide clause has elapsed, so you’ll get it all.”

“How much?”

“Well, the mayor’s policy isn’t very big, and it will take a while for them to get off their asses and write a check. I did get a copy of the death certificate for them—I didn’t want you to get delayed. The hospital will be more of a nightmare than the city—their administrators are kings of delay tactics—”

“How much, Lucas?” I said through clenched teeth. I did not want to be here all day, listening to him babble.

He looked across the desk at me and wiped the back of his sweaty neck with his hand.

“Combined, once they’ve all gone through and you pay a bunch of taxes on it, about twelve million. Twenty-seven mil with everything else.”

“Damn.”

Lucas smiled, and I was reminded of great white sharks with their rows of threatening teeth.

“That’s a lot for a kid to deal with, Thomas,” he said. His voice got soft, like he was trying to buddy up to me. “My retainer is already paid through the end of the year, and I’m going to make sure you and your money are taken care of properly.”

“I bet,” I said under my breath.

He tilted his head to hear me better, but I didn’t repeat myself.

“Is that all you wanted to tell me?” I asked.

“There are a few other points,” he said. His voice dropped a bit. “How much do you know about your father’s other businesses?”

I shrugged. I knew he did other shit on the side, but I never really paid much attention to it. I didn’t have the details, but considering it tended to be done at very strange hours, I knew it wasn’t legal.

“The vultures have already descended on some of it,” he said. “I could…set things up for you. You and I could continue to do business as your father and I had. I know what’s involved. I know the contacts. That twenty-seven mil will look like nothing if we play this right. The gambling and bookkeeping alone will double that if we’re careful.”

The gambling. Of course. A couple more puzzle pieces clicked together. No wonder he was so hell-bent on me playing for Real Messini. All the people he would meet, the inside information he would have access to—the gambling ring he ran on the side would become huge. I ran my hand through my hair and tried to take it all in.

Twenty-seven million dollars.

Fuck me hard.

I didn’t even have to wait until I was twenty-one or anything. It was mine now. I closed my eyes for a moment, rubbing my fingers into the sockets. I thought about the tiny room Greg and Nicole set up for me. I thought about their little house and Nicole’s dead Hyundai. I thought about Jeremy and how his father had to file for bankruptcy after his mom had a heart attack. Dad could have helped them, worked something out with the hospital, but he wouldn’t. I thought about the kid Nicole babysat for—Timmy—and the shitty prospects his mother faced for her future. I thought about how Sophie had to hide him, completely because of money.

And when it came right down to it, despite all the shit they struggled with regarding bills, they were all pretty happy.

I looked up at Lucas and smiled.

“You are a shifty little bastard, aren’t you Lucas?” I kept smiling.

He chuckled softly, and I saw his posture relax. He thought he had me.

“When should all this go through?” I asked.

“By the end of the month.”

“Good.” I pushed my chair back away from his desk. “Once the transactions are all completed, you’re fired. I’ll give you the information on my new lawyer before then so you know where to send everything. Max is fired
now
—tell him not to contact me again. If I hear any more about this shit, I’ll turn you in. There’s plenty of evidence in Dad’s study to fuck your whole agency about six times over. I bet you’d do jail time.”

I had no idea if that was true or not, but I figured it was. I continued to smile as I watched Lucas go pale.

“I buried my father’s body two days ago,” I told him. “Today I bury the rest of his shit.”

He only stared at me with his palms flat against his desktop.

“Are we clear, Lucas?”

“I suppose we are,” he replied.

I left.

Shakespeare advised: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” But I was more intrigued by the idea of giving the shit away. I had the feeling a lot of people were going to resist it, but I also knew I could be pretty convincing. I’d win in the end.

I always did.

I wheeled myself out of the office and back to the car and my Rumple.

It was time to meet my real father.

“How did it go?” Nicole asked as she helped me back into the car. I shook my head.

“Can we save it for later?” I asked. “I’m kind of overwhelmed right now. If you want, though, you can warn Greg that I just won the fight over the bills.”

“What does that mean?”

“Forget it,” I said. “What time is it?”

“Almost noon.”

“Shit—will I be late?”

“I don’t think so.”

Nicole drove us over to the little restaurant where I was supposed to meet my biological father. I called him yesterday evening and set it all up. Nicole told me to take as much time as I wanted. She was going to the bookstore in the next block, and she could pretty much stay there all day without getting bored.

Nicole took me into the restaurant where we saw my newly-revealed father dancing from one foot to the other next to the hostess’s station. Nicole kissed my cheek and told me to call whenever I was ready to head home. I nodded and looked up into Thomas Gardner’s eyes.

Like a fucking mirror.

“Hey,” he said, and his hand went for his hair at the same time mine did. We both paused, smirked, and dropped our hands.

“This is kind of weird,” I said with a shrug.

“Yeah,” he agreed. His chest expanded with a deep breath, which he then let out through his nose. “Should we get a table?”

“Probably.”

The hostess came over and sat us down in a corner near the windows. She moved a couple of chairs out of the way, and I ended up looking right at the window with Thomas Gardner across from me. It gave him a surreal glow around his head and shoulders, and I tried not to read anything into it.

We spent about a minute and a half talking about the weather, ordering two waters, and then finally gave up on the small talk.

“So, uh…how did you know my mom?” I finally asked. However, the server returned, took our lunch orders, and walked off. I sighed and tried again. “You met her in college?”

“Yeah,” he replied. His brow furrowed and he twisted his fingers together around the water glass.

“Well…?”

“I guess I should start at the beginning,” he said. He took a sip of his water and looked down at his hands. “I met Fran at school. It was my last year, her first. I was into all the art stuff then—drawing, painting, theatre—and I even played guitar in a band. We weren’t that great, but we had a decent local following. We performed mostly covers of whatever was popular at the time. We played at local bars for the most part, and almost every weekend, we had a gig.”

He took another quick drink.

“There were four guys in the band,” he said. “We ended up with…um…a bit of a…um…well, there was this group of girls…shit.”

He coughed into his hand and sat up a little straighter.

“We called them our groupies. They were basically there every time we played. Fran was one of them.”

He glanced up at me for a second, probably wondering what I was thinking. My mom was a band groupie? For some shit college cover band? It didn’t fit my image of my mother at all. I shook my head, trying to clear it of the very idea.

“I was…kind of shy,” he said. “I would never talk to them, really, but sometimes after we played a set, they’d buy us drinks. We were actually about to break up the band. The semester was almost over, and two of us were graduating. It was about over, you know? That last night, I had a couple extra…It was my birthday—and uh…Fuck! I don’t know how to say this!”

“You and my mom hooked up,” I said. My voice was way too calm, even for my own liking.

“Yeah,” he replied softly. “It was just that one night, and school was almost over. I left a couple weeks later. I went to Chicago Art Institute to start my master’s program. I was going early to get settled in. About a week after I got there, she showed up.”

“And she was pregnant?

“No,” he said. “At least, I don’t think so. She said she just had to see me again. I couldn’t…fuck…I couldn’t even remember her name right away! But there she was, claiming I was the only man for her and…and…shit!”

He slammed his hand down on the table, making me jump. He leaned forward and pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“I was…flattered. She told me how much she loved my art…and how she had come to every performance of
Hamlet
when I played the title role. She thought the band’s music was awful, but she just wanted to see me. I didn’t know what to do. She had come all the way from the west coast and didn’t even have a way back. I let her stay with me…it was only a couple of weeks. I knew it wasn’t going to work out. I was going to be in school constantly. I wasn’t looking to have a relationship…”

He paused, dropped his hands to his lap, and leaned back against the booth.

“I told her she needed to get on a bus home, and she started crying. I think….I mean, looking back…I think she wanted to tell me…but she didn’t. We fought, and she left. I didn’t see or hear from her again.”

“How did you…? You ended up at her memorial service. How?”

A sharp pain ripped through my temple all of a sudden, and I rubbed at the spot. How did I know he was there? My mind raced…the letter…I read it over and over again, but it didn’t say anything about the memorial service. In my mind—in the far reaches of my memories, I saw a flash of light brown hair and my father…Lou…blocking my view…leading him away.

“I was in Portland,” he said. “I was an adjunct professor for a semester. My mentor was out on maternity leave, and she asked me to take over her classes. It was a class in how to teach art, and one of the students was from here in town. Class was over, but we were still talking about…I don’t even remember what. Charcoal versus ink…something like that. Somehow she got on the topic of having to return home for a memorial service. She told me the name, and I knew it was her.”

He stopped and looked into my eyes, his gaze running all over my face.

“I just went to pay my respects,” he whispered. “But when I saw you…when I saw you—I knew. I
knew
you were mine.”

“It is a wise father that knows his own child,” I muttered.

“Yeah,” he agreed with a chuckle. “Exactly.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and held on to my biceps with my hands. I was cold even though it was really pretty warm out that day. Maybe the restaurant already had the AC on or something. I shivered.