Lights Out Read online

  “Just taking a virtual-reality check,” Eddie said. “Not my thing.”

  Jack nodded, but absent, blank. He paced, glanced out the window, let cigarette ash flutter down to the rug.

  “What’s wrong?” Eddie said.

  “Nothing.”

  Eddie noticed that Jack’s feet, once high-arched and strong, had changed. They were almost flat now, and the toenails were thick and yellowed with fungus.

  “I don’t believe you,” Eddie said.

  Jack rounded on him. “Nothing’s wrong that you can help with. Let’s put it that way.”

  Eddie nodded. He took out what was left of the $350 and laid it on the TV. “I’ll send you the clothes.” He moved toward the door.

  Jack bounded toward him, spun him around, held him by the shoulders. He was still strong.

  “I don’t need any shit from you, bro.”

  For a moment Eddie just stood there, like a rabbit mesmerized by a predator, like an inmate who knew the pecking order. Then he raised his hands, placed them on Jack’s chest, and pushed him away. Not too hard-Jack was his brother; but he didn’t want to be handled.

  Not too hard, maybe, but it was hard enough to send Jack to the floor. He bounced up, came at Eddie with his hand raised for a backswing across the face. Eddie was tired of that; he caught Jack’s wrist in midair and held it. Jack wasn’t like Raleigh. He was much stronger, much tougher. Still, he couldn’t move his arm at all. When he saw that, he showed he was much smarter too-the resistance went out of him completely and at once.

  Eddie released him. Jack gave him a long look. “You’ve changed.”

  “That’s a pretty stupid thing to say.”

  “I know. Shit. I can’t think straight.” Jack rubbed his forehead with the heels of both palms, as though that might unscramble whatever was going on inside.

  “What’s the trouble?” Eddie said.

  Jack sighed, turned to the window, glanced out. “When’s this fucking rain going to stop?” He picked his smoldering cigarette out of an ashtray and started pacing again. He took powerful strides, three or four one way, three or four back. Rain made spidery streaks on the window, arpeggios to his rhythm section. “Money trouble, Eddie. What other kind of trouble is there?”

  Eddie knew lots. “You’re talking about Windward Financial?”

  “What else?”

  “I thought it could be your personal money or something.”

  Jack laughed; an unfunny two-track sound, harsh and ironic. “Other people are likely to make the same mistake. And when they do it’s finito. I’m not just talking about fines I can’t pay, I’m talking about jail, bro. Is that clear enough?”

  Jail was clear enough to Eddie, but he still didn’t know what Jack’s problem was. “Explain,” he said.

  Jack took a deep drag of his cigarette, deep enough to burn off half an inch of it. Eddie felt a strong desire for a smoke himself, suppressed it. “The way this business works,” Jack said, “I make money for people. I invest what they give me as I see fit, within parameters we establish at the beginning. Follow?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “In addition, Windward has its own account.”

  “Meaning you.”

  Jack squinted at him through a cloud of smoke. “Yeah, meaning me. Sometimes, just for simplicity-you wouldn’t believe how complicated this can get-money from the investor accounts gets pooled for a while with Windward money. Nothing wrong with it, as long as everything’s kosher by the time the quarterlies go out. Sometimes mistakes happen.”

  “Like with J. M. Nye and Associates?”

  Pause. “That’s right. Raleigh fucked up, but it was just a technicality. If it hadn’t happened when it did, at the end of the eighties when everybody got so righteous all of a sudden …” He took another drag, and then a deeper one, as though he couldn’t get enough smoke inside him. “And of course we were an easy target. A boutique, right? Not Drexel or some big dick like that. So they got in a pissy mood and took a swing at us and now Raleigh’s the way he is. But it wasn’t the end of the world. There was still lots of money around, money to cover. Now there isn’t.”

  “Where did it go?”

  “It didn’t go anywhere. That’s the point. There’s this flow of money, Eddie. You’ve got to tap it-like maple sap up at the sugar bush when we were kids. Remember?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you weren’t there that time. It must have been with Mom.” Jack’s eyes assumed an inward look for a moment. “What I’m saying is that the money’s not flowing anymore,” he continued. “There are a lot of reasons-you can find them in the part of the paper that interesting people don’t read. I got into a situation where I couldn’t wait anymore. I tried a few things-copper futures, that was one.” He paused, took another drag, resumed pacing. “Copper futures. It’s all controlled by three or four ball busters in London. I got in a hole. It led to some … maneuvering in the accounts. Technical stuff. The quarterlies were coming up and I was going snake.”

  “What about selling the houses in Aspen and Connecticut?”

  Jack’s gaze went to the coffee table, where the Windward brochure had lain the night of Eddie’s arrival. “They’re gone, bro. They were mortgaged right down to the Jacuzzis anyway. I tried everything, even the banks, that’s how bad it was.” He looked out the window. “I hate this city now. If I get out of this …” His cigarette was burned down to the nub. He lit a new one off it, kept smoking, staring out at the rain. “Then you know what happens?”

  “What?”

  “Karen de Vere calls, out of the blue. Potential investor from upstate. I’d heard of the family. Potential, that’s all. Meaningless. But two days later she’s here with a check in her hand, big enough to get me through the quarterlies. She’d heard good things about me, blah blah blah. Looks like a Manhattan she-wolf who knows her stuff, but she’s just an upstate girl with a lot to learn. No matter. To me she was Jesus Christ, in his role as savior.”

  Eddie thought: What about the hockey game you and Karen went to? One of them was lying. He said: “So what’s the problem?”

  “She called last night. She’s changed her mind. Wants to close her account.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning take back her goddamn two hundred and thirty grand. What could be clearer?”

  “You’ll have to give it to her then, won’t you?”

  Jack turned. “You know something, Eddie? You’re slow.”

  “Out here, maybe.” In the real world. It hit Eddie then that prison, an unreal world, was like virtual reality. Instead of sticking your head in a helmet you stuck your whole body behind walls. “I’m quick in the VR world.”

  Jack shook his head. “You didn’t lose your sense of humor.”

  “I keep hearing that. Tell me why you can’t give Karen the money.”

  “Because it’s gone, most of it. That’s why. I had a lot of debt, the kind that couldn’t wait.”

  The Mount Olive Extended Care Residence and Spa? The Palazzo bill? What else was there? Eddie didn’t know enough about Jack’s world to even imagine. Raleigh: how much was he owed? He remembered the way Raleigh had emerged from his talk with Jack behind the closed bedroom door, smoking a cigar.

  “What was left over I stuck in a really hot thing in Singapore that’s going to earn it all back by the next quarter,” Jack went on. “It’s locked in till then, of course.” He made a fist again, stared at it, then hit himself in the forehead, hard.

  “Don’t,” Eddie said.

  “Why not?” A welt rose on Jack’s forehead; his whole face reddened. “It’s all over.”

  “I don’t see that.”

  “Don’t you? Karen wants her money back. I don’t have it. She’ll call her lawyer. He’ll go right to the SEC, the D.A., everybody. Then it’s what I told you-fines I can’t pay and jail. I’m talking about prison, Eddie.”

  That had no shock value for Eddie. He felt the balance shifting between his brother and himself. It
had begun to move when he’d caught Jack’s arm and stilled it. Now what had always been static was suddenly in motion.

  “What was her reason?” Eddie said.

  “For what?”

  “For wanting the money back.”

  “She doesn’t have to give a reason. It’s her money.”

  “But she gave one anyway.”

  Jack looked at Eddie, nodded. “She said there was a family emergency.”

  “Whose family?”

  “Hers, of course. Do you find something funny about this?”

  Eddie almost did, felt that if he could see a little better he surely would. Or maybe if he could see it from Karen’s point of view. “When do you have to pay her?”

  “Yesterday, today, tomorrow. Now. She wants it. I can stall for a day or two, that’s it.”

  “How much do you need?”

  “The whole bundle. Two thirty. I told you already. And that’s just to get to next week. To get out of this hole, I need twice that. And I could have made it in Singapore. It was a sure thing.” Jack formed another fist but this time did nothing with it.

  The phone rang. Jack picked it up. “Hello?”

  The person on the other end spoke. Jack flinched. Eddie had watched a lot of men go down without letting it affect him; but he was having trouble watching this.

  “There are a few technicalities, Karen, that’s all. Paperwork. We’re going as fast as we can.”

  Karen said something that made him flinch again. She wouldn’t make it easy, Eddie knew that from those cool blue eyes. He knew too that Karen had lied about that hockey game, just so she could get in that line about Jack never mentioning him, in the hope that Eddie would reveal something damning.

  “I will,” Jack said. “You have my word.” He put down the phone.

  “Just an upstate girl with a lot to learn,” Eddie said.

  Jack glared at him. “You’re taking some pleasure from this, aren’t you, bro?”

  “No,” Eddie said. “But it’s worse than you think.”

  “How can it be worse?” Jack said, with contempt in his tone but fear in his eyes.

  “She’s a cop,” Eddie said.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Or something like it,” Eddie continued. “You can trust me on that. We ran into each other at your health club. Actually, it was a setup. We talked. This and that. Your business came up, but of course I knew nothing about it. Then she took me to see Evelyn.”

  Jack sat down on the couch. It was more like subsiding, as though his legs couldn’t support him any longer.

  “She’s not in good shape,” Eddie said. “My long-lost sister-in-law.” Jack flinched again. “When did you two get together?”

  Jack took a deep breath. “After the Galleon Beach fiasco. She left Packer, and I couldn’t stick around. Brad blamed me for what you-for what happened. Didn’t she tell you all about it?”

  Eddie remembered that Evelyn had placed the beginning of her relationship with Jack a little earlier: What a nasty suggestion. I couldn’t help myself. But he let it go. “She didn’t make much sense,” he said.

  “No. She doesn’t. I did everything I could for her, Eddie, believe me. The best shrinks, the latest medications, you name it. Nothing did any good.”

  “She wasn’t like this before.”

  “It was there. I just didn’t see it.” Jack closed his eyes. Eddie saw the exhaustion on his face, digging out an engraving of how he would appear as an old man.

  “What happened to your seven and a half percent of Galleon Beach?”

  Jack’s eyes opened. They gave Eddie a look that revealed nothing. “Seven and a half percent of zilch is zilch.” Jack untied his tie, unfastened his belt, loosened his pants. “What does any of that matter now? Nothing matters. They’ve got me by the balls. It’s a sting, Eddie. I can trace it back to the Associates thing. They wanted me, not Raleigh.”

  “Why didn’t they get you?”

  “I told you-it was just a bullshit technicality.”

  “But Raleigh took the fall.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  Jack didn’t answer.

  “It goes all the way back to USC, doesn’t it?”

  Jack shook his head. “USC’s like some dream place to you, El Dorado. It’s just a school in a bad part of town. Drop the subject.”

  “I can’t do that,” Eddie said. The balance had shifted between them. It opened a new way of talking. “You and Raleigh got into some kind of trouble there. They kicked you out. A few months later you were a partner at Galleon Beach. Fill in the blanks.”

  “Blanks are what you’re firing, bro. I didn’t get kicked out of USC. I left because I wanted to.”

  Eddie crossed the room, stood over his brother, lowered his hand, laid it on Jack’s cheek, just touching him. “Don’t call me bro,” he said.

  Jack jerked his head away. “You’ve turned into a fucking crazy man, you know that?”

  “A crazy man who doesn’t like being lied to,” Eddie said. “I know for a fact you were kicked out. I’ve known it all along. Now tell me why.”

  He didn’t want to hit Jack. Jack wasn’t some degenerate in the next cell, some rapist, murderer, thief. He was his brother. But now, with the balance shifting, he could do it if he had to.

  Perhaps Jack realized that. He sighed and said, “All right. Why not? I’m in the toilet anyway.” He lit another cigarette, inhaled. The smoke puffed him up a little, restored some of his confidence. “It was just child’s play, really. Raleigh and I started a little business. Raja Research. Raleigh and Jack, get it?”

  “What kind of business?”

  “The essay business. We sold essays. In a gray area, I suppose, but so are Cliffs Notes and Monarch, right?”

  “Monarch’s all right.”

  Jack looked puzzled for a moment. “We bought product from fraternities all over the country,” he went on. “Brad lent us a grand to get our library stocked. We paid him back in a month. Everything was going great. We had a sliding price scale, depending on subject, difficulty of the course, length of the paper, all that. Then one day Raleigh sold one to the wrong guy. They took it so seriously, threatened to take us to court, held an investigation. Brad was afraid his name was going to get dragged in-they wanted to know where the start-up money had come from.”

  “So you blackmailed him for the seven and a half percent.”

  “That’s a prejudicial way of putting it, br-Eddie. I’d decided by then, this was February or March, that college wasn’t for me. I knew what I wanted. The opportunity presented itself. I kept Brad out of their tinpot investigation, made them think that Raleigh was just an underling who didn’t know what was going on, and got on with life.” Jack paused; he watched Eddie. “There. The whole truth and nothing but. Is that so bad?”

  “What about swimming?”

  “Swimming’s not a life, Eddie. I wanted to get started.”

  “Started at what?”

  “Making money. Besides, the practices were endless and I wasn’t getting any better. Up and down those lanes for hours-it’s pretty dumb when you think about it.”

  “The point is not to think about it.”

  “Ah,” said Jack with a little smile, “the Zen approach. That’s not me.”

  Eddie liked that smile. It almost distracted him. “And now Raleigh’s taken a fall for you.”

  “More or less.”

  “What deal did he make?”

  “That’s a moot point now. He’s not going to be happy. That’s about the only satisfaction I’ll be able to salvage from this.”

  “How much did you offer him?”

  “A hundred grand.”

  “Did he really do a year?”

  “We didn’t expect anything like that. Three months at most, maybe even a suspended sentence.”

  “I’d have been rich at the same rate.”

  “A million five? That’s not
rich.”

  “What’s rich, Jack?”

  “We’ve been through that.”

  “You want to be rich, don’t you?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  Eddie had never thought much about money. Was there any mention of money in “The Mariner”? No.

  Jack rose from the couch. It took some effort. He fastened his pants, buckled his belt, went to the window. Eddie was reminded of Karen steeling herself before the visit to the Mount Olive Extended Care Residence and Spa. Jack held up his finger and thumb, spaced about an inch apart. “I came this close. That’s what kills. It’s not failure, it’s getting so close you can smell it and taste it. That’s what kills.” Rain ran in sheets down the window. “Did you have much rain … down there?” Jack asked.

  “The weather wasn’t a factor.”

  Jack nodded. He looked at the phone. “What’s the best way of doing this?”

  “Doing what?” Eddie said. This was the first time Jack had ever asked him for advice, with the exception of play conversation in their pirate games.

  “Surrendering to the inevitable. What do you think-call my lawyer, call Karen, call the SEC?”

  “Are we at that stage?”

  “Thanks for that we,” Jack said. “Christ, I can’t get used to you with no hair.”

  “I’m growing it down to the ground.”

  A smile crossed Jack’s face, almost too quickly to see. He stubbed out his cigarette hard, against the window. “Yeah, we’re at that stage. Where are we going to find two hundred and thirty grand?”

  “Funny thing,” Eddie said.

  “Funny thing?”

  Eddie didn’t reply at first. It was justice, in a logical sort of way. He had done penance for a crime he hadn’t committed. Punishment without crime left a void, waiting to be filled. And if that was just a debating trick, then he could always say that what he was about to propose wasn’t criminal at all, that the money belonged to no one. And if that too was tricky in some way, he could call it reparation, the way the Japanese had been compensated for their internment, and the Jews for the Holocaust. The idea took hold of him. It was right.

  Jack was staring at him. “What funny thing?” he said.

  Eddie smiled. “We’re going to shoot the albatross,” he said.