The Last Word (33 page)

Maybe that was the part that always stuck. I never wanted my mother to look at me
with such horrified disrespect. Then again, she has on many occasions, most notably
when I was caught trying to steal half the liquor cabinet from Lieutenant McClane’s
widow at her husband’s wake. In my defense, I was only fifteen and I heard she was
a teetotaler.

•  •  •

I was so accustomed to seeing Robbie out of his element that it was shocking to see
him suited up in a corporate environment looking almost in place.
Apparently Robbie is the black sheep of his family, which really is good news for
Robbie’s family, but even better news for our undercover operation. When Robbie’s
only brother got married last summer, the groomsman suit (alas, he did not make the
cut for best man) was dictated from on high (his mom) and micromanaged from the measurements
to the impeccable design. My point is, Robbie’s suit fit, and a really good suit can
make shoulders appear on the most amoeba-shaped individuals. In short Robbie looked
normal, which meant that when he roamed the corporate offices, people saw an IT consultant,
not a computer geek
²
who lived in a blacked-out room surrounded by sci-fi movie memorabilia figurines
and posters of Megan Fox and Yoda.

“The system doesn’t look compromised,” Robbie said. “My guess is that whoever made
the transfers did so from a computer inside Slayter Industries.”

“Can you tell who is making the transfers?”

“No. I’m trying to narrow down maybe which IP address it came from, but that wouldn’t
tell me who did it. Your embezzler could be logging in as someone else. If you want
to give me a list of suspects, I can probably hack into their personal computers,
especially if they’re using Wi-Fi, and maybe check their financial data, see if there
are any suspicious deposits.”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“I got news for you, Spellman. What I just did was illegal.”

“What do I care? You’re talking to an accused embezzler.”

As I walked Gruber to the elevator bank, we passed Evelyn’s desk, where she and Arthur
were having yet another hilarious conversation about something.

“Who is that guy?” Gruber asked.

“Arthur, the accountant.”

“Is he funny?” Robbie asked.

“Not in the slightest.”

“Is he rich?”

“Not really.”

“How long has she worked here?”

“Seven years.”

Robbie studied the duo carefully as he waited for the elevator to arrive.

“That’s your girl,” he mumbled.

The elevator doors parted and Robbie stepped inside. I slipped in after him.

“What are you talking about?” I asked as the elevator doors closed.

“An accountant has all the routing numbers. But that guy is too stiff to break the
rules. He orders his shirts on full starch. Nobody does that anymore. That lady wouldn’t
give that guy the time of day unless she was getting something from him.”

“I can’t believe that Evelyn could be the mastermind behind a giant conspiracy against
my boss. She’d have to do a lot more than sweet-talk a lonely accountant.”

“I’m not saying the chick is the mastermind, but she’s got something going on with
the accountant. You want me to look into it?”

I whispered, “You mean hack into her personal computer and check her finances?”

“What, are you wearing a wire?”
³
Robbie asked sarcastically. “Yea or nay, and it’ll cost you.”

I gave him the thumbs-up signal. The elevator doors parted and Robbie waved good-bye.

“I got to bolt,” Robbie said. “Have a date with my lady friend tonight. She loves
me in this suit.”

I contracted the five-minute flu from Robbie’s last words to me and remained paralyzed
in the elevator until I could get my gag reflex under control. When the silver blades
shut in front of me, I saw my reflection split in two. I’m sure I could draw some
kind of boring metaphor out of that, but I was too tired and sick to think of one.

1
. Unlike the one about how you should wear clean socks every day.

2
. To any maybe computer geeks out there: My representation of Robbie is in no way
meant to disparage your entire demographic. And just you wait. Robbie really pulls
through. But he could still work on his table manners.

3
. Actually, yes, I was. Robbie had me on the ropes once before. It would never happen
again.

I
magine a rotating door on Dad’s hospital room. When one Spellman went in, another
went out. You never knew who you’d find at one time or another. Funny thing about
Mom, though. She was at the hospital plenty, don’t get me wrong. But when she wasn’t
there, she was incredibly hard to track down.

I found the room empty when I arrived the next morning. It was rare to get a moment
alone with Dad.

“You just missed your mom,” Dad said. I had a funny feeling he was lying.

I sat down in the chair next to his bed.

“How are you doing?” I asked, using that soft, sympathetic hospital voice.

“What?! I can’t hear you!” Dad shouted to mock me.

“
How are you doing?
” I bellowed back at him to be sure he understood I got the message.

Tralina dipped her head in and said, “If you need me, use the button.”

“That was the television,” Dad said.

“I don’ tink so. Be back in a half hour for our program, okay?” she said.

“Bring the electric razor,” Dad said.

“Okay,” Tralina said.

“I’m going Telly Savalas. Do you think your mom will dig that look on me?”

“I think if Mom likes your current look, she’s going to be cool with almost any look.”

“Was that an insult? Because, you should know, you’re my only child who actually resembles
me.”

“Please stop reminding me of that. How are you feeling?”

“Today wasn’t as bad as yesterday.”

“If you have the slightest premonition that you might puke, please let me know,” I
said, waving the plastic receptacle in his eye line.

“I promise I won’t puke on you unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“Thanks, Dad. You’re the best.”

We sat silently watching a terrifying talk show involving a woman who had cheated
on her boyfriend with his son and then his son’s best friend. Oddly, the most enraged
party to this scandal was the son’s best friend. When the dire state of humanity or
fake television got to be too much for Dad, he turned off the TV.

“I’m not going to die, you know.”

“
Ever?
” I asked.

“I am not going to die from this.”

“I didn’t think so. I always figured it would be Colonel Mustard with the candlestick
in the library.”

“I’m trying to have a moment.”

“So am I. And my moment seems way better than your moment.”

Dad then pinched my cheek.

“You were always my favorite,” he said.

“Stop saying that. It doesn’t mean anything when you tell your other children the
exact same thing.”

“Right now. You’re my favorite.”

•  •  •

Since Maggie had scolded all of us about not informing Grammy of Dad’s illness, the
family convened to come up with a plan. Rae suggested we draw straws to determine
who would tell her. Mom drew the short straw and demanded a redraw, in which she would
not participate. Rae suggested we send Grammy a text message and offered to do it
herself.

“A text message?” David asked incredulously.

Rae, thinking David was balking because Grammy was a Luddite, said, “I showed her
how to text ages ago. I thought the less we had to hear her voice, the better.”

And that was coming from Grammy’s favorite.

Even Mom admitted that a text message seemed cruelly impersonal. Yet I heard her mumble
something about a telegram under her breath. David, the most dignified, humane, and
responsible of us all, made the phone call. And then he even sacrificed himself to
pick her up and bring her to the hospital. He timed it so she would arrive just a
half hour before the end of visiting hours and made sure that no doctor visit was
planned during that time frame.

“How do I look?” Dad said, rubbing his hand over his newly bald head.

“Like a cancer patient,” Rae replied.

To her credit, when Grammy S. entered the hospital room and saw her son in bed with
needles in his hand and monitors tracking every beat of his heart and his blood pressure,
and with almost no hair except the shadow of his stubborn brows, she had that universal
maternal look of concern. She approached his bed, straightened his sheets, gently
touched his brow, and kissed him on the forehead. Then she stepped back and looked
him over carefully.

“Look on the bright side,” she said. “You’ve lost weight.”

I squeezed my mother’s shoulders. To a stranger it would have looked like a massage,
but I was actually holding her down. Meanwhile, David managed to usher Grammy out
of the hospital at breakneck speed.

“You can come visit tomorrow or maybe the next day,” he said. “We’re not supposed
to have too many people in the room at once.”

Grammy made protests, which David knocked down, and when they were eventually out
of earshot, I released my mom, kind of the way you let go of a dog that’s stopped
barking at a threat. Mom slumped in her chair.

“Bitch,” she said.

Dad laughed. “When I get out of this place, you are buying me the best steak dinner
in town.”

•  •  •

The next day, while David and Mom were keeping Dad company in his room, I was stuck
with Grammy and Rae in the waiting room. Rae purchased every health and diet magazine
at the gift shop to occupy Grammy while we both worked on our laptops. Gruber phoned
me after he completed his investigation on Evelyn Glade.

“We need to meet,” Gruber said.

“Are you sure?” I said. “Because neither of us actually enjoys being in the other
person’s company.”

“I’m sure.”

Gruber had always maintained a distantly friendly relationship with my father, so
he agreed to meet me at the hospital. He even brought my dad a bag of salt-and-vinegar
chips from the gift shop with a
Get Well Soon
card attached.

Robbie and I spoke in the hospital corridor.

“Evelyn has the IQ of a prom dress.”

“Finally, we agree on something,” I said.

“She keeps all of her passwords on her computer in a spreadsheet called ‘Passwords.’
The spreadsheet isn’t even password protected. Anyway, her PayPal account information
was right there, so I took a look-see.”

Robbie then took a long drag on his caffeinated smoothie, either because he was thirsty
or for dramatic effect.

“And?”

Robbie passed me a spreadsheet with highlighted transfers and arrows pointing to the
money trail.

“She has had five transfers in denominations of ten thousand dollars
from PayPal over the last month. The same time frame as your suspicious funds.”

“Did they come from an account in the Cayman Islands?”

“No. They came from another PayPal account, with the screen name loyalservant47.”

“And who is that?”

“Rufus Harding, Evelyn’s boyfriend. Through their communications I got access to Harding’s
computer and then access to his PayPal account. His spreadsheet was password protected,
but there’s a back door, because what are you going to do if someone has forgotten
the password to a document that holds the formula for the polio vaccine?”

“Surely someone has memorized it by now.”

“Shall I go on?”

“Please.”

“Harding’s PayPal account had much more action. There were transfers coming in from
a Cayman Islands account, and some of the funds were transferred to his personal account
and some to his girlfriend’s account.”

Robbie pointed out the flow of transfers. They also occurred during the same time
frame, but the transferring account was different from the original one that incriminated
me. However, I would have bet Robbie’s entire
Star Wars
memorabilia collection on the trail of transfers leading back to that one offshore
account under GLD Inc.

“How is it that the FBI can’t figure this shit out, but one computer nerd can?” I
asked.

“For one thing,” Robbie said, “the FBI still has to work within the confines of the
law. Me, I work around it. I haven’t found a system I couldn’t hack. Although I haven’t
yet tried the FBI.”

“I owe you, Robbie, even with all that crap you pulled with our computers.”

“Speaking of that, here’s your bill.”

Robbie handed me an envelope. I cracked the seal, just to see what I was in for.

Balance due: $0.00

“This one’s on the house,” Robbie said.

•  •  •

Later that night, I drove to Evelyn Glade’s apartment. She lived only a mile or so
from the Spellman compound, in a three-unit building in Russian Hill. I rang her doorbell
and heard footsteps approach. I could sense an aerobic organism on the other side
of the door, probably looking through the peephole. I smiled cheerily.

“Just open up, Evelyn. We can hash this out here or at the office.”

Evelyn opened the door. It was past eight. She was in a nightgown and a silk robe
fit for a gentleman caller.

“Are you expecting company?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Why are you asking?”

So, some women dress like that when no one’s looking?

“No reason.”

“Have a seat,” Evelyn said with less enthusiasm than anyone has ever used in offering
me a place to plant my ass.

“Nice couch,” I said as I took a seat. This wouldn’t take long, but I wanted her to
think it would.

“What can I do for you, Isabel?” Ms. Glade said as she reclined on an antique fainting
couch.

“Thanks for the cash. What’s the occasion? It wasn’t my birthday.”

I gave Evelyn 50 percent credit for her poker face; the other 50 percent went to Botox.

“I can only assume,” I said, “that your boyfriend helped mastermind the plan. But
the jig is up. I have the trail of funds leading from Slayter Industries to GLD Inc.
in the Cayman Islands to another offshore account in the name of HRD Inc., then Rufus
Harding’s PayPal account and then your bank account. You guys got really creative
with your corporate names.”