Hadley & Grace Page 6
13
HADLEY
Hadley stares at the baby, watching him as he breathes. She is alone in the passenger seat of her own car at the scene of a robbery with a stranger’s baby.
She shakes her head. Of all the ways she’s imagined this night could have gone, she can honestly say she never imagined this.
She flexes her ankle, and fresh tears fill her eyes. She can’t walk. She can’t drive. She has no money. She’s not even out of Orange County, and any hope she had of escape has been quashed. Her best option now is to follow Frank’s plan and hope he never finds out she was a part of this.
She bites her lip to keep her emotions inside, knowing babies are very sensitive to the emotions of others, even when they’re asleep.
The door opens, and Grace climbs in, her cheeks flushed from walking from wherever it is she’s stowed her car and from carrying the bag with the money.
“Where to?” she asks.
“The Ayres Hotel on El Toro,” Hadley mumbles.
Grace glances back at the loaded trunk.
“We’re leaving,” Hadley says. “Or at least we were.”
Grace says nothing. Without a word, she starts the car and pulls onto the road.
After a few minutes, Hadley says, “That’s why I was taking the money. To get away.”
“I’m not giving you my money,” Grace says flatly.
“I wasn’t asking you to.” Hadley huffs and folds her arms across her chest. “I was just trying to explain what I was doing tonight, why I was trying to get my money.”
The car turns suddenly, cutting right so sharply Hadley slides sideways and needs to catch herself with her hand.
“You want anything?” Grace says as she pulls into the drive-through for In-N-Out.
“I have no money,” Hadley snipes.
“My treat,” Grace offers without an ounce of pity.
“No, thank you.”
Grace orders two cheeseburgers, an order of fries, and a chocolate milkshake, and Hadley hates her a little more. If Hadley ate like that, she’d be the size of a walrus in a week. Meanwhile Grace can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds.
Grace sets the food on the console between them, and the smell of grease and salt wafts seductively past Hadley’s nose.
“You sure you don’t want something?”
Hadley shakes her head as her stomach groans in protest.
Grace pulls back onto the road but a block later veers to the curb and stops. Her hands grip the steering wheel, and her eyes are fixed on the black sky through the windshield, looking at it so intently Hadley wonders what she’s looking for.
Finally, with a great exhale through her nose, she turns. “We need to split it,” she says.
Hadley blinks.
“The money,” Grace says. “The deal was fifty-fifty. So, you need to take half.”
Hadley squints in distrust. “Why?” she says.
“Karma,” Grace says plainly. “I believe in it. It might make me a fool, but I feel like if I don’t give you your half, I’m going to regret it, that it will come back to haunt me, so you need to take your share.”
14
GRACE
Grace is huffing and puffing by the time she gets back to Mrs. Torelli’s room, carrying Miles in his car seat, the diaper bag full of money, her bag of food from In-N-Out, and the grocery bag with Miles’s diapers, bottles, and formula.
Mrs. Torelli sits in the chair beside the bed, her foot propped on the mattress, the ankle already swollen and blue.
Grace sets Miles on the bed, climbs up beside him, and dumps the diaper bag onto the quilt, creating a mound of cash—bundles of twenties, fifties, and hundreds. And the gun.
Her eyes slide from the gun to Mrs. Torelli.
“Sorry,” Mrs. Torelli mumbles. “I wouldn’t have actually shot you.”
She appears really upset, and Grace feels a little bad for her. Mrs. Torelli looks like the kind of woman who would have a hard time squashing a bug, and before tonight, she’s probably never even touched a gun.
Grace slides the gun back in the bag, where it’s out of sight, and turns back to the money. She stares at it, a queasy feeling in her gut. In her whole life, Grace has never had more than a month’s rent in her account, and now, inches away, is enough money to buy a whole new life. Money that isn’t hers.
She looks at Miles, asleep in his car seat, his mouth hanging open and his little fists balled on top of the straps; then she reaches into the In-N-Out bag, grabs a burger, unwraps it, and sinks her teeth into it. Her eyes close as the salty deliciousness touches her tongue, and she feels a little like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind when she declares, “I’ll never be hungry again.”
Sensing Mrs. Torelli watching her, she opens her eyes and says, “Want some?” She holds out the bag with the fries.
Mrs. Torelli shakes her head, but her eyes track the bag like a dog following a bone, and Grace nearly laughs. Mrs. Torelli is probably one of those women who starves herself to stay thin, constantly counting calories and how many steps it takes to burn them off. Though Mrs. Torelli will never be skinny. She’s far too curvy for that. A woman with boobs and hips, something Grace has neither of.
When half the burger is gone, Grace looks back at the money, takes a deep breath, and starts to sort the bundles into piles—hundreds, fifties, and twenties. There are only a few bundles of fifties and twice as many bundles of twenties, and the remaining bundles are hundreds.
She counts the bills in one of the bundles of twenties, then does the same with a bundle of hundreds. There are one hundred bills per bundle.
She points to each pile in order. “Two grand. Five grand. Ten grand.”
“Each?” Mrs. Torelli says, clearly stunned.
Grace nods; then she looks at the bundle of hundreds still in her hand. She tests its weight, which can’t be more than a few ounces. Ten grand, she thinks. Childcare for a year, a new car, half a year’s rent. It seems impossible that so little could be worth so much.
Sitting back on her heels, she starts on the french fries and sips her shake.
“You sure you don’t want some?” she says to Mrs. Torelli, part of her enjoying the torture she’s causing. Grace has never understood the diet mentality. Her grandmother used to say the first three letters in diet are a warning, and Grace agrees. Her grandmother wasn’t five feet tall, and she died a content 180 pounds, and if she were still alive, she’d tell you she’d enjoyed packing on every ounce with the kind of southern cooking that made Paula Deen famous.
When the fries are done, Grace counts the number of bundles in each pile, then counts them again before letting out a long, slow whistle.
“Well?” Mrs. Torelli says.
15
HADLEY
Hadley hears the number, but it doesn’t register. She repeats it to herself: One million, eight hundred seventy-two thousand. She attempts to see it in her mind: a one, a comma, three digits, another comma, three more digits. She rounds it. One point nine million.
She shakes her head. “That can’t be right.”
It can’t be. She and Frank do well, but they don’t have that kind of money. She thinks about Frank—the stress he’s been under, the late-night phone calls, his extravagant splurges over the past couple of years—then she pushes the thoughts away, a bad feeling in her gut.
She glances at the door that connects her room with the kids’ room. She checked on them when she got here. At some point Skipper had climbed in beside Mattie, and they were curled together like a pair of kittens. Mattie probably wasn’t even aware of it, believing the warmth beside her to be Prince Charles.
A million dollars. Tears spring to her eyes as she thinks of what it means. She looks at Grace slurping her shake, and she wants to kiss her, plant a great big smacker on her forehead or cheek. She wants to whoop and holler and throw the money in the air and dance a jig around the room.
Instead, her voice cracking with emotion, she says, “Thank you.”
Grace looks up, then quickly looks away, her face pink.
She sets the shake down and starts to divide the pile of twenties—one for Hadley, one for herself, one for Hadley, one for herself . . .
Hadley drops her leg from the bed and pulls the bundles of hundreds toward her to do the same.
As she counts, she thinks how unimpressive it looks. Nearly two million dollars, and it barely takes up a quarter of the bed. Some people work a lifetime to earn this much money; how disappointed they would be to see how measly the result of all that effort is.
When they’re done, Grace begins to put her share back in the bag. She’s almost finished when the baby starts to stir. First, he yawns; then he turns his head and makes hopeful sucking motions with his mouth.
Beside Hadley, Grace freezes, her body rigid as if stunned with a Taser. Her hands are suspended in front of her, a bundle of money clenched in each.
The baby lets out a small whinny, and Hadley watches as Grace squeezes her eyes shut, takes a deep breath as if steeling herself for battle, then snaps them open. She drops the money to the bed, then scrabbles off it to undo the straps of the car seat. She lifts him into her arms as he starts to cry, and she hugs him tight against her and jiggles him up and down.
He cries harder.
“Maybe he’s hungry,” Hadley suggests.
Grace shoots daggers at her, and Hadley clamps back her next suggestion that he might also need his diaper changed.
A piercing howl shatters the air, followed by another, then another, until the baby is screaming at the top of his wee little lungs and Hadley’s skin is on fire, his wailing at a specific bloodcurdling decibel level that implores you to take action and do whatever is necessary to stop it.
“Here,” Hadley says, “give him to me while you make a bottle.” She holds out her arms.
Grace shakes her head, more reaction than response, her brain clearly overwhelmed with distress nearly as severe as her son’s. Her jiggling is almost frantic now, the bouncing causing the baby to flop up and down.
“Grace,” Hadley says firmly as she pushes to her feet. Pain shoots through her ankle as blood rushes into it. “Let me take him.”
Grace blinks as if just remembering Hadley is there, and her head almost shakes again, but Hadley’s stern look stops her. “Grace, give him to me and go make a bottle.”
The baby howls louder, and Grace’s nostrils flare; then she practically throws him into Hadley’s arms, frantically rummages through the grocery bag to retrieve a bottle and formula, and races to the bathroom.
Hadley places the baby over her shoulder so his belly is pressed against the round bulge of her muscle—a position Skipper was particularly fond of—then she lowers herself back to the chair and gently rocks him back and forth. “Shhh,” she soothes as she pats his back.
He chews on his little fist, and his crying softens to whimpers. “That’s it. You’re okay. Your bottle’s coming.”
She hums softly, no particular song, just a gentle sound to let him know she’s there, and he quiets. He’s a solid baby, thick and strong. His chubby legs climb against her chest, and the fist that is not in his mouth tugs at her hair. She buries her nose in the sweet folds of his neck, the smell spiraling her back to when Mattie and Skipper were babies, that miraculous time when they needed her so much it was as if they were a part of her.
Grace races from the bathroom, a woman on fire. She thrusts the bottle at Hadley, then pulls it back. “How’d you do that?” she says, staring at the baby, who now snoozes peacefully on Hadley’s shoulder.
“What?”
“Get him to stop crying?”
Hadley gives her a thin smile. She’s always had a way with babies. “Why don’t you get some rest? I’ve got him. Leave the bottle.”
Grace’s head starts to shake.
Hadley rolls her eyes. “Rest. You’re exhausted. You helped me; now I’m helping you. If you don’t trust me, sleep with the money. But you’re tired and he’s tired, and there’s nothing you can do tonight that can’t be done in the morning.” It’s something her mom would have said, and she likes the way it sounds coming from her mouth.
“You’re very bossy,” Grace says.
“And you’re a pain in my ass.”
For a long moment, Grace looks at her, searching for the lie. Finally, not finding one, she says, “Fine, but wake me if he wakes up again.”
“Go. To. Sleep.”
Grace lies down on the bed, distrust still in her eyes as she fights to keep them open, but eventually exhaustion overtakes her and she falls into a deep, still sleep.
Hadley stares at the striped bag beside her filled with Grace’s half of the money, and again she thinks of Mattie and Skipper in the room next door, and about the past and the future and about what she needs to do.
16
MARK
Senior Special Agent Mark Wilkes wakes to buzzing he thinks is in his head. He squints into the brightness streaming through the blinds, then at the clock beside him: 7:32.
Saturday? Yes. Last night was Friday. The song “Yankee Doodle” from Shelly’s spring recital still plays in his head. His six-year-old was a sunflower, then a chipmunk; then, in the finale, she was herself.
He almost smiles, but the buzzing still vibrates somewhere to his right, so he gropes around on the folding chair that serves as his nightstand to find his phone. The ticket stub from the recital falls to the floor, along with an empty taco wrapping from his dinner. After finally unearthing his phone, he brings it to his ear and grunts into it.
“Boss,” Kevin Fitzpatrick says in way of greeting.
“Fitz.”
“We’ve got a problem.”
Mark’s mouth tastes like a sock coated with athlete’s foot, so he pushes to his elbow and takes a swig of the half-empty beer also on the folding chair as he waits for Fitz to continue.
Fitz is Mark’s deskman on the Torelli case, a two-bit racketeering case Mark’s been coordinating for a year. Frank Torelli is a small-time hustler running a gambling and drug operation out of his parking business in Orange County, California. It should be a regional case handled by the LA field office, but because Torelli has a cousin running a similar racket in Chicago, it’s multijurisdictional, and since it also involves multiple agencies—FBI, DEA, local law enforcement—Mark was assigned the job of coordinating a task force.
The case isn’t complicated and should have been wrapped up months ago, but they hit a snafu when the marked money they’d put in circulation never showed up in Torelli’s accounts. Not a big deal: it simply meant Torelli was stashing the money somewhere other than the bank.
Mark set up surveillance cameras outside Torelli’s office and his garages, and now they’re just waiting on a search warrant. As soon as they have it, a team will go in and find the money, and Torelli, his brother, and his cousin will be sent away for a nice long stay at their local federal penitentiary, compliments of the US government.
Mark rubs the bridge of his nose as Fitz says, “It’s the tapes from last night.” He hesitates, mutters an “uh,” then an “um,” then stops again.
Fitz is a good kid, smart and hardworking, and Mark genuinely likes him. But his dream is to someday be a field agent, and Mark has his doubts. While the kid has a great criminal mind and good instincts, being on the ground means making life-and-death decisions and, more importantly, being able to live with the consequences of those choices after they’re made. There can’t be any second-guessing, and with Fitz, everything the kid says seems to come out a question.
“Fitz?” Mark says, trying to conceal his irritation. A hazy hangover has formed behind the front of his skull, the thrum of his pulse in his brain, and he presses his fingers against it, regretting the beer binge he indulged in last night after the recital.
“Maybe you should take a look for yourself?” Fitz says.
Mark grunts and hangs up, then for a long minute sits where he is, staring at the fan as it pulses back and fort
h beside the window. Even at seven in the morning, the heat that’s descended on the capital this week is suffocating, and again, he is reminded of how much he misses Boston.
Finally, he pushes from the bed and shuffles to the bathroom, his left shoulder and right knee creaking—the first from his football days, the second from the shrapnel of a grenade that blew up too close to his team’s Humvee during his second tour in Iraq.
As he walks, he turns on every light in the small apartment as well as the television. He pays no attention to what’s on. He does it for the noise so the apartment is not so quiet and so he’ll miss his kids a little less. He scans the empty space as he goes and tells himself, as he has every morning for the past two months, that he needs to get some furniture. Someday, the kids will want to visit, and this is no example of how to live.
As he shaves, he thinks about Shelly and her performance. She was smack in the middle of the front row, her curly blonde hair held up in a large white bow. She got the center stage position, she told him, because she sung with the “most emfusiasm.” And she did. Head held high and shoulders pulled back, she belted out the song with gusto. Yankee Doodle went to town, riding on a pony . . .
He rinses his face and pulls a towel from the box Marcia neatly labeled Bath Stuff in her very precise handwriting.
He stuck a feather in his hat, and called it macaroni . . .
Stan the Insurance Man was there, at the recital. He, Marcia, and Ben, Mark’s nine-year-old, sat two rows in front of Mark. A delightful little family enjoying the show.
Mark had arrived a few minutes late. Probably a good thing. Had he arrived on time, he might have made a scene, told Stan the Insurance Man to go to hell, that he could sit two rows back . . . by himself. That this was his family and that Ben was his son and therefore should be sitting beside him.
But getting out of downtown was a bitch, so Mark showed up late and, broiling mad, took his seat two rows behind them, his eyes shooting daggers at the back of Stan the Insurance Man’s gray-haired, slightly balding head.