No Second Chance

Regan headed over to the window and looked out. “When did you move into your current residence?”

“Monica and I bought the house four months ago.”

“Not far from where you both grew up, no?”

“That’s right.”

“Had you two known each other long?”

I was puzzled by the line of questioning. “No.”

“Even though you grew up in the same town?”

“We traveled in different circles.”

“I see,” he said. “And just so I have it straight, you bought your house four months ago and you hadn’t seen your sister in six months, correct?”

“Correct.”

“So your sister has never visited you at your current residence?”

“That’s right.”

Regan turned to me. “We found a set of Stacy’s fingerprints at your house.”

I said nothing.

“You don’t seem surprised, Marc.”

“Stacy is an addict. I don’t think she’s capable of shooting me and kidnapping my daughter, but I’ve underestimated how low she could sink before. Did you check her apartment?”

“No one has seen her since you were shot,” he said.

I closed my eyes.

“We don’t think your sister could pull off something like this by herself,” he went on. “She might have had an accomplice—a boyfriend, a dealer, someone who knew your wife was from a wealthy family. Do you have any thoughts?”

“No,” I said. “So, what, you think this whole thing was a kidnapping plot?”

Regan started clawing at his soul patch again. Then he gave a small shrug.

“But they tried to kill us both,” I went on. “How do you collect ransom from dead parents?”

“They could have been so doped up that they made a mistake,” he said. “Or maybe they thought they could extort money from Tara’s grandfather.”

“So why haven’t they yet?”

Regan did not reply. But I knew the answer. The heat, especially after the shooting, would be too much for crack-heads. Crack-heads don’t handle conflict well. It is one of the reasons they snort or shoot themselves up in the first place—to escape, to fade away, to avoid, to dive down into the white. The media would be all over this case. The police would be making inquiries. Crack-heads would freak under that kind of pressure. They would flee, abandon everything.

And they would get rid of all the evidence.

But the ransom demand came two days later.

Now that I had regained consciousness, my recovery from the gunshot wounds was proceeding with surprising smoothness. It could be that I was focused on getting better or that lying in a quasi-catatonic state for twelve days had given my injuries time to heal. Or it could be that I was suffering from a pain way beyond what the physical could inflict. I would think of Tara and the fear of the unknown would stop my breath. I would think of Monica, of her lying dead, and steel claws would shred me from within.

I wanted out.

My body still ached, but I pressed Ruth Heller to release me. Noting that I was proving the adage about doctors making the worst patients, she reluctantly gave me the okay to go home. We agreed that a physical therapist would come by every day. A nurse would pop by periodically, just to be on the safe side.

On the morning of my departure from St. Elizabeth, my mother was at the house—the former crime scene—getting it “ready” for me, whatever that meant. Oddly enough, I wasn’t afraid to go back there. A house is mortar and brick. I didn’t think the sight of it alone would move me, but maybe I was just blocking.

Lenny helped me pack and get dressed. He is tall and wiry with a face darkened by a Homer Simpson five-o’clock shadow that pops up six minutes after he shaves. As a child Lenny wore Coke-bottle glasses and too-thick corduroy, even in the summer. His curly hair had a habit of getting outgrown to the point where he’d start resembling a stray poodle. Now he keeps the curls religiously close cropped. He had laser eye surgery two years ago, so the glasses are gone. His suits lean toward the upscale side.

“You sure you won’t stay with us?” Lenny said.

“You have four kids,” I reminded him.

“Oh yeah, right.” He paused. “Can I stay with you?”

I tried to smile.

“Seriously,” Lenny said, “you shouldn’t be alone in that house.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Cheryl cooked you some dinners. She put them in the freezer.”

“That was nice of her.”

“She’s still the world’s most godawful cook,” Lenny said.

“I didn’t say I was going to eat them.”

Lenny looked away, busying himself with the already packed bag. I watched him. We have known each other a long time, since Mrs. Roberts’s first-grade class, so it probably did not surprise him when I said, “You want to tell me what’s up?”

He’d been waiting for the opening and thus quickly exploited it. “Look, I’m your lawyer, right?”

“Right.”

“So I want to give you some legal advice.”

“I’m listening.”

“I should have said something earlier. But I knew you wouldn’t listen. Now, well, now it’s a different story, I think.”

“Lenny?”

“Yeah?’

“What are you talking about?”

Despite his physical enhancements, I still saw Lenny as a kid. It made it hard to take his advice too seriously. Don’t get me wrong. I knew that he was smart. I had celebrated with him when he got his acceptance to Princeton and then Columbia Law. We took the SATs together and were in the same AP chemistry class our junior year. But the Lenny I saw was the one I desperately cruised with on muggy Friday and Saturday nights. We used his dad’s wood-paneled station wagon—not exactly a “babe trawler”—and tried to hit the parties. We were always let in but never really welcome, members of that high school majority I call the Great Unseen. We would stand in corners, holding a beer, bopping our heads to the music, trying hard to be noticed. We never were. Most nights we ended up eating a grilled cheese at the Heritage Diner or, better, at the soccer field behind Benjamin Franklin Middle School, lying on our backs, checking out the stars. It was easier to talk, even with your best friend, when you were looking at the stars.

“Okay,” Lenny said, overgesturing as was his custom, “it’s like this: I don’t want you talking to the cops anymore without my being present.”