A Soft Place to Fall Read online

  He told himself that it didn't matter. His clients were only names and social security numbers attached to a dollar figure. Hell, he wouldn't know most of them if he bumped into them on the street. He had learned a long time ago that personal attachments had no place in his business. He didn't want to know about hospital bills or new grandchildren. He didn't want to see family photos or share any of his own. He had made that mistake early on in his career and it was a dangerous one. They were accounts, not friends, but sometimes it was hard to remember that.

  Ten more months, that was all he needed. Forty weeks longer and he'd be able to walk into Mason's office and say goodbye.

  And he almost made it. Nine weeks before the day he planned to hand in his resignation, he came home to find two guys in black suits waiting for him inside his apartment. He didn't ask how they got in and they didn't volunteer. He didn't need to ask why.

  It seemed he wasn't the only one who had caught onto what was happening at Mason, Marx and Daniels and, thanks to some clever planning, so far all roads led straight to Sam. The scope of what they were telling him almost made his knees buckle. While he had been busy looking the other way, someone had managed to erase one set of fingerprints from the scheme and replace them with another set: Sam's. The men in the black suits had a proposition for him, one he could refuse if he didn't mind going directly to jail without passing go. They needed information culled from the inside and they pointed out to Sam that it was in his best interests to become their number one source.

  He began to keep a detailed log of names, dates, and percentages and when that log became too hot to store on his computer, he started snapping photos of the data on screen with a tiny camera he kept hidden in his shirt pocket. He filled notebook after notebook with contemporaneous data, suspicions, and thoughts, then locked them away in a safe deposit box back in his old Queens neighborhood, along with the files and the photos and everything else he'd been able to lay his hands on. A second key to the box had been mailed to an address in Arlington, Virginia.

  He probably would have been able to pull it off if it hadn't been for Mrs. Ruggiero. Mrs. R was his first client, a widow from the old neighborhood where he'd grown up. Mrs. R was the one who'd made sure the Butler kids were fed and watched out for during those first few weeks after their mother's death and then again after their father died. Years later, she had come to him with the insurance monies from her late husband's policy and asked him to invest it for her "so I should be comfortable one day." Something came over him when he saw what was happening to her bottom line. It hit him in a way nothing else had. He thought of the box of homemade cookies that arrived at the office every Christmas, the invitations to Easter Sunday dinner that he always refused because the old neighborhood sometimes seemed light years away. He thought about his mother and how she and Mrs. R used to head out to All Souls Church on Francis Lewis Boulevard for the Friday night bingo games.

  Mrs. R deserved a hell of a lot better. And that was how he came up with the bright idea to move her monies back into the safer holdings they both preferred, a painstakingly laborious process made more so by the fact that he wanted to stay off the radar screen. So it began with Mrs. R and when that seemed to work he remembered the old guy in Brooklyn, Ben Ashkenazy, who had fought in World War II with their next-door neighbor, then worked his butt off at AT&T for thirty years. He deserved better than a year of diminishing returns, didn't he? And it worked for Ashkenazy too which got Sam thinking about Lila Connelly who took a buyout from IBM and now her entire retirement fund was in Sam's hands and disappearing. These clients were small fish in a big sea, the forgettable ones, the ones you practiced on before you moved up to the whales. Why in hell were they the ones who reminded him he had a heart?

  Lila used to get her hair done at the place where his mother worked and when his mother died, Lila was there at the funeral with a fifty dollar bill for the Butler kids and a promise of more. And now he was letting them screw her to the wall, take all of her dreams and run them through a giant shredder called business.

  The hell he was.

  So he began moving Lila's funds too – slowly so slowly -- and that was when the clock finally ran out.

  On a sunny Friday morning in early August, Franklin Bennett Mason, senior partner and occasional racquetball opponent, called Sam into his office and told him he was through. Mason gave him the company line about new directions and how much they appreciated everything Sam had done for them over the years but they both knew what was really happening. The stone cold look in Mason's eyes gave it away. They'd noticed that Sam was quietly shifting monies away from the questionable ventures and back into the blue chips and they were smart enough to know exactly what that meant.

  Lucky for Sam they didn't know everything.

  They cut him a nice goodbye check and he was out the door thirty minutes later. Sam knew the talk would start as soon as he stepped out onto the Street. Another head case, they would say. A burnout. You can't keep the heat turned up that high for so long and not pay a price. They would wonder over lunch where he would turn up next. Maybe Morgan Stanley. Maybe Salomon. Maybe he'd even pull a Jimmy Buffett and live on a sailboat moored down in the Keys. But nobody would call to see how he was doing. The pace was too fast, the competition too intense. His desk would be claimed by the next morning and his television spot would be given to someone else before the closing bell rang that afternoon. He would be forgotten before the end of the quarter.

  Within the hour his friends in the expensive black suits showed up at his door to relieve him of his key to the safety deposit box and to warn him that things were going to get a lot worse before they got better.

  If they got better at all.

  They advised him to make himself scarce for a while. Pick a spot, they'd vet it, then disappear. They gave him a cell phone equipped with all sorts of fancy blocking devices and a number to call every day to check in. He was to stay in the country, keep the phone with him at all times, and be ready to be brought back on a moment's notice to testify against his former employer. They made no promises. With luck, the information he'd gathered would clear his name. Without it, he was looking at serious jail time.

  He thought about renting a room in the Hamptons but that was still too close to ground zero. The Jersey shore was a possibility but it would be too easy to bump into someone he knew. He hated Florida and California and couldn't afford Hawaii. He had, however, always liked Maine with its three thousand miles of coastline. Warren owned at least a half dozen houses in Shelter Rock Cove. Maybe he would rent one of them to Sam on a monthly basis until he found out if his next address came with number embroidered on the back of his shirt.

  Warren said yes before Sam had time to finish his question.

  Shelter Rock Cove was vetted and okayed. He told his brothers and sisters that he was taking off into the wilds of Maine on a sabbatical. He told them that he wanted to get in touch with nature, clear his head, whatever excuse he thought they would believe. What he didn't tell them was the truth.

  "I give you six months up there, Nature Boy," Courtney had said as they loaded his sound system and television into her U-Haul van. "You'll be knocking on my door, asking for your stuff back."

  He grinned and ruffled her short red hair, the same way he used to do when she was six years old and afraid of the monsters under the bed. She was two weeks shy of her twentieth birthday now, just one year away from graduating Columbia University and diving head-first into life. Her tuition fees and living expenses for senior year were paid in full. He'd sold off everything he could to see to it. Too bad he hadn't been able to make sure his clients had been able to do the same.

  "Don't worry, kid," he said in his best film noir impression. "Nobody's going to ask for your stereo."

  Courtney thought he was coming off a bad love affair and heading north to lick his wounds. Their brother Tony said it was a mid-life crisis ten years too early. Instead of hair plugs and a phallic sports car, he was chucking it
all for life as a loner up in Nowhere, Maine. Kerry, Dave, and Marie just thought he'd gone nuts. He didn't argue with any of them. How did you tell the people you loved, the brothers and sisters who looked up to you, that you'd done some things along the way that you weren't proud of, that some of the decisions you'd made to keep the family together had hurt innocent people? And how the hell did you tell them that the only way out of the mess was by being part of a sting that might backfire and put you behind bars?

  He hadn't planned it that way. Hell, he hadn't planned any of it. He went to bed one night as your average party-hearty college kid, only to wake up the next morning to discover he was the unemployed, uneducated, scared-shitless head of a family of six who ranged in age from nineteen down to three. Somehow he managed to survive and pull the rest of the Butler family along behind him. After a few rough patches they'd managed to stay on the right road and their bright futures made his own shortcomings easier to bear. When the waiting was over and the stories were told, he hoped they would understand.

  And so there he was in his second-hand car, with his second-hand dog, and his second-hand life, wondering if the dreams he'd put aside when he was nineteen would play half as well now that he was thirty-five. For a man with so much family, he had never felt more alone.

  #

  By seven o'clock, Annie had retreated to the back porch with a cup of coffee to revive her spirits and a bottle of aspirin for the world-class headache pounding away at her temples. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate the help and the company, but after a full day of packing, sweeping, cleaning up, making conversation, and trying to stay one step ahead of her memories, she had just plain had enough. She loved every single one of the people who had come to help her out but right now she found herself wishing they would disappear.

  Or maybe that she could.

  Nothing was quite the way she'd thought it would be. The house that had seemed cozy and affordable last month, now looked more like an overstuffed pup tent. Cardboard boxes filled with books, pots and pans, clothes, bath towels and bed linens littered every available surface yet her only real piece of furniture was the refinished sleigh bed that filled up most of the bedroom. She wasn't a stupid woman. Why hadn't she realized a king-sized bed required a king-sized room to accommodate it? She'd have to somersault across the mattress in order to get to the closet because the foot of the bed was almost welded to the wall.

  To make matters worse, the cats were taking swipes at anyone who dared venture into their territory, which, to the dismay of all, included the only bathroom. Susan's husband Jack dug out her tool kit from one of the many cardboard boxes and set to work installing a new lock on her front door while Eileen and Claudia began unpacking her glasses and dishes and the boys continued lugging in boxes of books from the U-Haul. They all worked with such good cheer and high spirits that Annie felt ashamed of herself for wishing she could be alone with her disappointment, instead of being surrounded by assorted friends and Galloways, who were trying very hard to pretend they loved her new house at least a little.

  The fact that they were also whispering among themselves about her sanity wasn't lost on her. Somebody should have stopped her. . . Why would she leave that beautiful house for this place . . . She still isn't thinking clearly, is she . . . so sad . . . so terribly sad.

  How much easier it would have been if she had sat down with them after he died and simply told the truth. If she had told them that their beloved Kevin, the man she had vowed to spend her life with, had gambled away everything long before he died and left her alone to clean up after him. The Galloways would have rallied around her, the same way they had rallied around her when she was sixteen years old and her world went up in flames. They welcomed her as family years before she became Kevin's wife. They gave her a home and love and security, priceless gifts for a teenage girl with nothing of her own. Kevin was the shining star of the family, the poet and dreamer, the one they believed would have made his mark on the world if only he hadn't been struck down so terribly young.

  She loved them all, both Kevin and his family, too much to destroy those memories.

  "You're out of soda," Susan said from the kitchen doorway.

  She swallowed two more Bayers. "Let them drink beer."

  "You're just about out of that too."

  "Do you think anyone would notice if I sneaked out to replenish supplies?"

  "They will if you don't come back." Susan joined her at the railing "It's written all over your face."

  "I'm tired," Annie said. "That's all you see on my face. What I need is some curtains, a few rugs – it'll feel like home here in no time."

  "There aren't enough curtains in three Wal-Marts to make this place feel like home and you know it." Susan rested her elbows on the porch rail. An unlit cigarette dangled from her right hand, her latest attempt at kicking the habit. "Fran at the office told me that Bancroft decided to rent out the other house on your block."

  There were only two houses on Annie' s block, her own and both belonged to Warren Bancroft, Shelter Rock Cove's greatest success story. He had parlayed one small fishing boat into a major operation worth millions yet he had never turned his back on the town where he was born. He had grown up in the tiny cottage that now belonged to Annie. The place on the water had belonged to his sister Ellie who died the same year as Kevin.

  "Anyone we know?" she asked Susan.

  "A retiree from New York. Fran said she heard the guy is an old fishing friend of Warren's."

  One of the best things about Annie's new house was the fact that it was within a few hundred yards of a private beach that had gone ignored for the last few years. She had spent considerable time daydreaming about long morning walks on a deserted stretch of sand. Now some big mouth from New York was going to move in and claim it all for himself.

  "What kind of loser would move to this godforsaken town?" she asked, feeling uncharacteristically peevish. She should be grateful that she had a roof over her head and that it was all paid for. "Doesn't he know every retiree worth his salt lives up Bar Harbor way?"

  "Bar Harbor's overrated," Susan said. "Too many tourists --" She stopped and tilted her head toward the door at the sound of high-heeled footsteps. "Oh great," she muttered, "Here comes Bigfoot." The Galloway clan was merciless on their tiny mother's love of excessively noisy high heels, even though that early warning system had come in handy many times when they were teens and sneaking dates into the house after hours.

  "I should have known I'd find you two girls hiding out here." Claudia stepped out onto the porch, still looking perfectly groomed and coiffed. You would never guess she had spent the last few hours cleaning the stove and refrigerator and performing other odd jobs. "Where are your manners, Anne? You have company inside."

  "Annie's thirty-eight years old, ma," Susan tossed over her shoulder. "This is her home. She can stay out here all night if she wants to."

  Claudia picked her way carefully across the uneven porch, avoiding bent nails, warped boards, and Susan's sharp tongue. "Did I hear you say someone's moving to Bar Harbor?" Claudia was the only woman on earth who could make the famous resort town sound slightly downscale. "Anne, I hope you aren't --" Her words trailed off and she looked so suddenly vulnerable and worried that Annie's heart twisted. In all the ways that mattered, this woman had been her mother for the last twenty-two years and she deserved better than Annie's bad mood.

  "Don't worry." She landed a quick kiss on her mother-in-law's forehead. "The only place I'm going is to the store for more soda."

  "You look so tired." Claudia's voice softened and she reached up to smooth a lock of Annie's hair from her forehead. The touch brought back a thousand memories, some of them too painful for Annie to bear. She was relieved when Claudia turned toward her oldest daughter who was slouched over the porch rail, smoking the still unlit cigarette. "Susan, why don't you go to the market so Annie can relax?"

  "Susan's done enough," Annie said before Susan had a chance to respond. She wished
she didn't sound quite so edgy and irritable. Claudia was only trying to help. They all were. She took a deep breath and regrouped. "You've all done enough for me today. The least I can do is keep you in beer and soda."

  It wasn't their fault she suddenly hated everything and everybody. The town. Her new house. The way her life was playing out. When she went to bed last night she had been reasonably sure she was doing the right thing. Now, less than twenty-four hours later, she felt like grabbing George and Gracie and running away from home.

  Wherever home was these days.

  #

  Hall Talbot was running late. The Preston baby had decided to surprise everyone, her obstetrician most of all, with her early arrival and it was nearly seven o'clock by the time he finished his office appointments and made his rounds.

  "Don't forget you have an eight a.m. Cesarean," his partner Ellen called out to him as he headed for the exit.

  "The Noonan baby," he said, stopping in the doorway of her office, "unless we lose the room." Saturdays were always dicey.

  Ellen stifled a yawn and leaned back in her chair. She was a tall, lanky redhead with strong features and a soft heart. "Feel like stopping at Cappy's for some chowder and blueberry pie? My treat."

  "Sounds great," he said, "but --"

  "Hey, no problem." She straightened up, all angles and sharp lines. "Another time."

  "Any other night," he said, feeling off-center and slightly defensive. "Annie Galloway's moving into her new place and --"

  Ellen pushed back her chair and stood up. Her serious expression gave way momentarily to a smile. "You don't have to explain anything to me."

  "It's no big deal," he said, thereby making it a much bigger deal than it had any right to be. "Susan mentioned they were getting together at the new place and --"

  "Really," she said. "We're business partners, Hall, not life partners. If you want to spend your life sitting on Annie Galloway's front porch waiting for her to give you the time of day, that's your business. Me? I keep out of other people's lives."