Read The Dark Tide Free for a Limited Time Online
Authors: Andrew Gross
The Dark Tide Free for a Limited Time (26 page)
Afterward they lay on the bed, spent, Karen’s body slick with lovely sweat, still radiating fire. Hauck cooled her, blowing on her chest, her neck. Her hair was a tangled mess.
“Must be your lucky day,” she mused, with an ironic roll of her eyes. “Normally I never give out until at least the third date. It’s a hard-and-fast rule at Match.com.”
Hauck laughed, lifting a leg up on his other knee. “Listen, if it means anything, I promise I’ll still come through with a couple of meals.”
“Whew!”
Karen blew out a breath. “That’s a load off my mind.”
She glanced around the cramped bedroom, looking for things about him she didn’t know. A simple wooden bed frame, a night table with a couple of books stacked—a biography of Einstein, a novel by Dennis Lehane—a pair of jeans tossed over a chair in the corner. A small TV.
“What the hell is
that
?” Karen said, pointing to something against the wall.
“Hockey stick,” Hauck said, falling back.
Karen propped up on her elbow. “Tell me I didn’t just sleep with a man who keeps a hockey stick in his bedroom.”
Hauck shrugged. “Winter league. Guess I never moved it.”
“Ty,
it’s fucking June.
”
He nodded, like a little boy discovered with a stash of cookies under his bed. “You’re lucky you weren’t here last week. My skates were in here, too.”
Karen brushed her hand against his cheek. “It’s good to see you laugh, Lieutenant.”
“I guess we could say we’re both a bit overdue.”
For a while they lay like two starfish on the large bed, barely covered, just the tips of their fingers touching, still finding each other.
“Ty…” Karen raised herself up. “There’s something I need to ask you about. I saw something when I came to your office that day. You had a picture on the credenza.
Two
young girls. When I saw you at the game that day, I met your daughter and you told me she was your only one. Then tonight I saw another of her, outside.” She leaned close to him. “I don’t mean to open something up—”
“No.” He shook his head. “You’re not opening anything up.”
Facing the ceiling, he told her. About Norah. At last. “She’d be nine now.”
Karen felt a stab of sadness rush over her.
He told her how they’d just come back from the store and forgotten something and had been in such a rush to get back there. There was his shift, he was running late. Beth was mad at him. They were living out in Queens then. He had bought the wrong dessert. “Pudding Snacks…”
How he had somehow left the car in a rush, his shift in half an hour, rushing back in to grab the receipt.
“Pudding Snacks,” Hauck said again, shrugging at Karen, an empty smile.
“They’d been playing on the curb. Tugboat Annie, Jessie told us later. You know the song—‘
Merrily, merrily, merrily…
’” He inhaled a breath. “The car backed out. I hadn’t put it in park. All we ever heard was Jessie. And Beth. I remember the look she gave me. ‘Oh, Ty, oh, my God!’ It all happened so suddenly.” He looked up at her and wet his lips. “She was four.”
Karen sat up, and brushed her hand across his slick face. “You’re still carrying it, aren’t you? I can see it in your eyes. I saw it there the first time we met.”
“You were the one who was forced to deal with something then.”
“Yes, but I still saw it. I think that’s why I thanked you. For what you said. You made me feel like you understood. I don’t think you ever let it go.”
“How
do
you let that go, Karen?”
“I know.” Karen nodded. “I know…. What about your wife? Beth, right?”
Hauck leaned up on his side, hunched his shoulders sort of helplessly. “I don’t think she’s ever forgiven me. The irony was, she was the reason I was running back to the store.” He turned and faced her. “You know how you always asked me why I’m doing this, Karen?”
She nodded again. “Yeah.”
“And one reason is that I think I was drawn to you from the first time we met. I couldn’t get you out of my mind.”
Karen took his hand.
“But the other,” he said, and shook his head, “that Raymond kid, lying there on the asphalt. I knew there was something about it from the get-go. Something about him just brought me back, to Norah. I couldn’t put it away…his image. I still can’t.”
“Their
hair,
” Karen said, cupping Hauck’s curled hand close to her breast. “They both had the same red hair. You’ve been trying to make up for that accident all this time. By solving this hit-and-run. By playing the hero for me.”
“No, that part was just my plan to get in your pants,” he teased, deadpan.
“Ty.” She looked into his sorrowful eyes. “You are a good man. That part I could see the first time we met. Anyone who knows you can see that. We all do things every day—walk off the curb into traffic, drive when we’ve had a bit too much to drink, forget to blow out a candle when we go to sleep. And things just go on, like they always do. Until one time they don’t. You can’t keep judging yourself. This happened a long time ago. It was an accident. You loved your daughter. You still do. You don’t have to make up for anything anymore.”
Hauck smiled. He pressed his hand to her cheek and stroked Karen’s face. “This from a woman who walked in here tonight having found out that her once-deceased husband was her new AOL pen pal.”
“Tonight, yes.” Karen laughed. “Tomorrow…who the hell knows?”
She dropped back onto the bed. Suddenly she remembered why she had come. The frustration that bristled in her blood.
Hello, baby…
It all overwhelmed her a little. She grasped his hand.
“So what the hell are we gonna do now, Ty?”
“We’re gonna let it drop,” he said, running his finger along the slope of her back and letting it linger on her buttock. “Anyway, it’s not exactly conducive, Karen.”
“Conducive? Conducive to
what
?” she asked, aware of the renewed stirring in her belly.
He turned toward her and shrugged. “To doing it again.”
“
Doing it again
?” He pulled Karen on top of him, their bodies springing alive. She brushed her nose against his, her hair cascading all over his face like a waterfall, and then she laughed. “You know how long it’s been since I’ve heard those words?”
In the morning Hauck put on coffee. He was out on the deck when Karen stepped outside after nine, wearing an oversize Fairfield University T-shirt she’d grabbed from the drawer, wiping sleep from her eyes.
“Morning.” He looked up, his hand brushing against her thigh.
She leaned against him and rested her head on his shoulder. “Hi.”
It was a bright, warm, early-summer morning. Karen looked across the row of modest homes to the sound. Boaters were readying their crafts in the marina. An early launch to Cove Island was going out. A few gray gulls flapped in the sky.
She went over to the railing. “It’s nice out here.” She nodded toward the painting, still on its easel. “Feel like I’ve seen this before.”
Hauck pointed to a stack of canvases against the wall. “All the same view.”
Karen raised her face to the sun and ran a hand through her
tangled hair against the breeze. Then she sat down next to him, cupping her hands around the mug.
He said, “Listen, about last night…”
She put out her hand and stopped him. “Me first. I didn’t mean to throw myself at you. I just couldn’t face being alone. I—”
“I was about to say last night was a dream,” he said, winking into her sleepy eyes.
“I was about to say something like that, too.” Karen smiled back sheepishly. “I hadn’t been with anyone else in almost twenty years.”
“It was crazy. All that pent-up energy…”
“Yeah,
right.
” She rolled her eyes.
He shifted himself around to her. “You know that yoga move, where you arch your spine back like that and—”
Karen slapped at his wrist, rebuking. “Oh, you’re a stitch!”
Ty caught her hand. He looked at her, directly now. “I meant it, Karen. What I told you about why I started in on this. Because of you. But you knew that. I’ve never been much of a poker player.”
Karen leaned her head on his shoulder again. “Ty, listen, I don’t know if this is such a smart idea for us right now.”
“That’s a risk I’ll have to take.”
“There’s just too much going on that I have to sort out. What we do about Charlie, my kids? My goddamn husband’s out there, Ty!”
“Have you made up your mind?”
“About what? Help me out. It’s like a fucking Costco of things to choose from.”
“About Charles,” Hauck said. “About what you want me to do.”
Karen drew in a breath. There was something firm in her gaze, replacing the coiled anxiety of last night. She nodded. “I’ve made up my mind. He owes me answers, Ty, and I want them.
When
he first started lying to me. When whatever it was he was chasing became more important to him than me or the kids. And I’m not gonna turn the page on almost half my life without hearing them. From him. By letting him off the hook. I’m want to find the man, Ty.”
A
FTER SHE GOT
home and took a shower and brushed out her hair, Karen sat back down at the computer. All the anxiety she’d been feeling last night had hardened into a new resolve.
She clicked onto AOL and found Charlie’s reply to her. She read it over one more time.
Hello, baby….
She started to type.
I’m not your “baby,” Charles. Not anymore. I’m someone you’ve terribly hurt—beyond what you could ever imagine. Someone very confused. But you already know that, Charles, don’t you?
You knew that when you wrote me back. You must’ve known that since the day you left. So here’s the deal—
I want to see you, Charles.
I want to hear why you did this. Why you used us, Charlie, the people you supposedly loved. Not over the Internet. Not like this. I want to hear it directly from you. Face-to-face. Who you really are, Charlie.
She had to hold herself back.
So you tell me—how. You tell me where I can meet you, Charlie. You make it happen, so I can go
forward in my life—if that’s something you at all might still care about. Don’t even think about saying no. Don’t even think about hiding, Charlie. Tell me how.
Karen.
Charles was inside the South Island Bank on St. Lucia when Karen’s message came in over his BlackBerry.
Her words stopped him like a shot of epinephrine into his heart.
No. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t see her. This wasn’t going to work. He had opened the door, but that had been a moment of weakness and stupidity. Now he had to slam it shut.
He had made out an account-transfer form. Filled in the routing numbers and the new accounts. He was cleaning house here, transferring the funds he kept to the Banco Nacional de Panama in Panama City and the Seitzenbank in Luxembourg, and from there on to safer ground.
It was time to be leaving.
Charles waited for a brightly clad local woman to finish, then sat down at the manager’s desk. The manager was an amiable islander he had worked with before, who seemed pleased to see Charles again, as he did every few months.
And she was disappointed to see him closing out his accounts.
“Mr. Hanson,” the manager said, dutifully fulfilling his request, “so it seems we will not be seeing you here anymore?”
“Maybe not for a while,” Charles said, standing up. “Thanks.” The two shook hands.
As he left, his mind weighing Karen’s urgent message—resolving to tell her no, not to contact him anymore—Charles never noticed the manager reaching for a slip of paper he kept hidden in his desk. Or picking up the phone before Charles had even stepped out the door.
K
AREN WAS STILL
at the computer when Charles’s reply came in.
No, Karen. It’s way too dangerous. I can’t let that happen. The things I did that you may think you know about…you simply don’t. Just accept that. I know how you must feel, but please, I beg you, just go on with your life. Don’t tell anyone you found me. No one, Karen! I loved you. I never meant to hurt you. But now it’s too late. I accept that. But please, please, whatever you may feel, don’t write me anymore.
Anger bristled through Karen’s blood. She wrote back:
Yes, Charlie, I’m afraid you ARE going to let that happen! When I say I know about what you’ve done, I don’t just mean that you’re alive.
I know….
I know about Falcon and all the money you were managing offshore, Charlie. That you kept from me all those years. And Dolphin. Those empty tankers, Charlie. That person in Pensacola who uncovered your fraud. What the hell did you try to do to him, Charlie?
This time his reply came back in seconds—a tone of panic:
Just who have you been talking to, Karen?
What does it matter who I’ve been talking to, Charlie?
Now they were going back and forth, real time. Karen and the man she had thought was a ghost.
You’re not seeing it. All that matters is, I know. I know about that boy who was killed in Greenwich. The day you disappeared. The day we were up here bleeding for you, Charlie. And I know you were there. Is that enough yet? I know you came up here after the bombing. The bombing when you were supposed to have been killed, Charlie. I know you called him under an assumed name.
How, Karen, how?
And I know who he was, Charlie. I know he was that man from Pensacola’s son. What your own trader, Jonathan Lauer, probably found out himself and was trying to tell me. Is that enough yet, Charlie? Fraud. Murder. Covering it all up.
Seconds later Charlie wrote back:
Karen,
please…
She wiped her eyes.
I haven’t told any of this to the kids. If I did, it would surely kill them, Charlie. Like it’s been fucking killing me. They’re away now. On safari with my folks. Sam’s graduation present. But people have been threatening us, Charlie. Threatening THEM! Is that what you wanted, Charlie? Is that what you wanted to leave behind?
She drew in a breath and went on typing.
I know there are risks. But we’re going to take those risks. Otherwise, I’m going to pass all this on to the police. You’ll be charged, Charlie. We’re talking murder. They’ll find you. If
I
could, believe me, so can they. And that’s what your kids will think of you, Charlie. That you were a murderer. Not the person they admire now.
Karen was about to push send, but then she hesitated.
So that’s the price, Charles, for
my
silence. To keep all this quiet. You always loved a fair exchange. I don’t want you back. I don’t love you anymore. I don’t know if I have any feelings for you. But I am going to see you, Charlie. I am going to hear why you did this to us, from your lips, face-to-face. So you just tell me how it’s going to get done. Nothing else. No apologies. No sorrow. Then you can feel free to disappear for the rest of your miserable life.
She pressed send. And waited. For several minutes. There was no reply. Karen began to grow worried. What if she had divulged too much? What if she had scared him away? For good. Now that she’d finally found him.
She waited for what seemed forever. Staring at the blank screen.
Don’t do this to me again, Charles. Not now. C’mon, Charlie, pretend that you once loved me. Don’t put me through this again.
She shut her eyes. Maybe she even dozed off for a while, totally enervated, spent.
She heard a sound. When Karen opened her eyes, she saw that an e-mail had come in. She clicked on it.
Alone. That’s the only way it happens.
Karen stared at it. A tiny smile of satisfaction inched onto her lips.
All right, Charles. Alone.