The Legend of Kareem (3 page)

“I don’t know, baby,” I said. “It doesn’t seem right for me to leave you like this.”

“Leave me like what? I’ll be fine here. It’s better now than going in a month to deal with it because my parents are here, my sister is here. I’ll have all the support I need.”

The idea that Grace didn’t need me stung. But she probably hadn’t meant it in that way. She was trying to be generous and selfless.

“And,” she said, “I’m twenty-seven weeks pregnant, not thirty-eight or nine. That would be a different story. If this is what it takes to move your dad into our past so we can get on with the present, then I’m all for it.”

I shook my head.

“Ask yourself… if you don’t go, and something happens to this Omar guy, will you be okay with it?”

“I don’t even know him.”

“That’s beside the point. You know
about
him, and you know you can do something to help him.”

I sighed. “You’re right.”

“Then you should go. I want you to do whatever you need to be okay with yourself. I’ll be fine, baby.”

Well, shit. If I didn’t have that promise to hold on to, nothing else could stop me from going. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m positive. I know you have some… unresolved feelings about what happened to Kareem. If you can make it right while you’re there and clear your head so you can come back to me a hundred percent, then that’s what I want for you.”

And just like that, I’d committed.

CHAPTER FOUR

As the flight attendant droned on about connecting flight information from the overhead speakers of the plane, I realized with a dull thump that I’d spent almost no time grieving for my dad. When I’d found out, I was right in the middle of a bloody mess of dead bodies and a presumed-dead spouse, and his passing had seemed less important than that.

Would I grieve a man I barely knew?

The fact that I was on my way to Texas to deal with the estate must have been evidence in his favor. Grief in action or something like that. But I couldn’t say that I felt sad about his passing since he was little more to me than the occasional letter or phone call when I was a kid. Not at all as an adult.

A guy I barely knew from high school had died in a boating accident five years ago, and I’d found out about it on Facebook. We’d taken a few classes together, but we weren’t exactly friends. I felt sick when he died, experienced a brief moment of considering my own mortality. I also felt sorry for his wife and two kids and what they’d have to deal with. But I experienced more grief about that guy dying than I had my own father’s death. And guilt about feeling that way hung over me.

But what had my dad ever done for me?

According to Kareem, he’d left me some money. Or maybe not. Who knew if Kareem could be trusted. Hopefully, the will and the attorney would clear up all that mess.

As we descended into Dallas, I watched a young mother with an infant across the aisle from me. The baby screamed bloody murder. The air pressure was probably squeezing his little brain, and I realized babies are all
need
and no
agency
. They don’t understand the world. They can’t affect the world. Keeping one alive and happy seemed like a daunting task.

But I was also excited about doing it. I wanted to be a father, and I promised myself I’d be a good one.

The woman eventually popped out a pink nipple to shove in his mouth, and I looked away as quickly as I could. Nipples as restaurants instead of amusement parks was a concept I was going to have to spend some time adjusting to.

As I exited the plane and entered the maelstrom of the D-F-Dubya airport once again, I felt the strangest tug behind my eyes. The same feeling I had when Kareem left me standing alone at Ernie’s Bar the night I’d met him… that strange sense that something big was about to happen.

***

The attorney’s office was in a brilliant glass building in the middle of a great big nothing. By that, I mean an enormous parking lot surrounded by twelve-lane highways crisscrossing like strands of hair clustered around the shower drain.

That old familiar pulse of anxiety swirled as the elevator rose from the ground level, hurtling through space to reach floor twelve. Couldn’t say why. The numbers over the door blinked higher and higher, and I felt the inertia swell as it soared up. When the elevator finally slowed a half second before reaching the floor, I thought my heart might explode.

Ding. Door opened. Smiling receptionist with a perm raised her eyebrows at me.

“Can I help you, sir?”

Her smile calmed me, and the panic I’d felt in the elevator seemed so silly now. Hangover from the drama with IntelliCraft? Did I have PTSD now?

“I’m here to see Luther. Luther Somebody-or-other.”

“Mr. Fredrick, I assume?”

I ran the name through my data banks. Seemed to check out. “Sure, Mr. Fredrick. He called me.”

She tapped on a keyboard for a few seconds, then ushered me through a glass door and into a hallway. Compared to the IntelliCraft offices in Denver or Dallas, this place was the Taj Mahal. Everything was glass and silver and not a stray piece of paper or cardboard box lingered anywhere. From this height, I marveled at the view of all the other towering glass buildings in Dallas.

When we reached the open door bearing Luther’s nameplate, she retreated behind me, and I entered the room.

Luther Fredrick stood, a giant of a man at least 6’6”. Since he was so tall, I fought the urge to ask him if he played basketball.

“Mr. Candle?”

“That’s me.”

“Please come in,” he said as he waved at a chair, something curvy and ergonomic and expensive-looking. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” I said, and realized I wasn’t used to hearing it. Over the last few months, it had mostly been
congratulations
on the impending birth of our child. This was the other one, the other thing strangers would reach out and offer when they didn’t know what else to say. Birth and death.

He started shuffling through papers, arranging them on the desk in front of me in rows. He launched into a fast-paced speech about writs for this, affidavits for that, and none of it made any sense.

“Luther, I’m not sure what’s going on here,” I said as I perused documents. “My dad and I weren’t close, so I have no idea what the state of his affairs was like. You said something about financial problems?”

Luther leaned back, picked up a ballpoint pen from the desk, and clicked it a few times. “Well, here’s the thing, Tucker.”

“Everybody calls me Candle.”

“Here’s the thing, Candle. Your father left nothing but a mountain of debt. It appears that he hadn’t paid taxes in over twenty years.”

My face scrunched. “What? How is that even possible?”

“Your father had been off the grid, so to speak. Most everything in his estate will likely be seized for back taxes. Those details will be worked out in the coming months.”

My brain buzzed. I thought about what Kareem had said before he died, about them working together. “Does that include my father’s stock portfolio?”

Luther frowned. “We haven’t been able to uncover any records of him owning stocks or bonds. That’s the strange thing, Candle… we don’t have any record of your father ever having been gainfully employed as an adult. I looked him up in some databases, and he apparently hasn’t registered a W-9 since a job he had in high school.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There is no stock portfolio. Here’s what we have, and where you’re responsible as the executor of his will. His house in Corpus Christi will likely be seized.” He passed a house key and a note with the address across the table. “If you’d like to go collect any personal belongings, you should be able to get in. But I’d hurry if I were you.”

I opened the paper, read the address. I already knew it by heart, even though I’d never been to that house.

“We do have one item that was left in our care, to be given to his daughter.”

My throat tightened. “His
daughter
?”

“Susan Palenti, of Brownsville. That’s near the Mexican border.”

I knew where it was. Close to Padre Island, spring break destination. I knew it well from college.

Luther removed a lockbox from his desk and set it on the table. It was a small wooden thing, about the size of a shoe box.

“What’s in it?”

He handed me the key. “Nothing of value, or the government would have taken it already.”

“What do I do now?”

“That’s up to you. Once you sign the paperwork, it’s in your hands.”

***

At my hotel, I set the box on the bed. Bounced the key in my palm. I’d never heard of Susan Palenti. Dad must have had some other family, which didn’t surprise me at all.

But the absence of records of him ever working, that was strange. I had distinct memories as a little kid of my dad, in a suit, holding a briefcase. He’d worked in sales for some manufacturing company, or at least, that was what I recalled.

Maybe he’d found a way to erase his employment records, and that’s how he evaded taxes. I didn’t know how that would function, but it seemed to make sense.

But what did Kareem mean about some money coming to me in the event of my father’s death? Had he been simply babbling, knowing he was dying and not caring? Or had my dad made some arrangement so his inheritance would go to his daughter instead of me?

I called my Aunt Judy, the one who’d been trying to inform me of Dad’s stroke while I had been a little too busy attempting to find where the hell Wyatt Green had imprisoned my wife. She didn’t have anything useful to tell me about Dad or Susan Palenti. She’d never heard of this Susan person. She did, however, scold me for a few minutes for missing Dad’s funeral. I was expected to give a eulogy, it seemed.

Next, I called Grace, still staring at the key in my hand. Grace didn’t usually like to talk on the phone, but this was a special occasion.

“What are you going to do?” she said after I’d explained the visit to the attorney’s office.

“I have no idea. I have so many more questions now than before I came, which wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Oh, I just remembered: a detective came by this morning, looking for you. I told him you were busy.”

This irked me. “I’ve already given them a million versions of the statement. How many times do I have to rehash the same story over and over again? He can call me if he needs me so bad.”

“This one seems pretty determined to talk to you, but I’ll pass along the message if he shows up again.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Did you open the box the guy gave you?”

“I don’t think I’m supposed to,” I said, twisting the key between two fingers and staring at the box.

“If it were me, I’d open it.”

I thought about it, sitting there. Something that could possibly answer some of my questions. “Maybe so.”

Grace sighed. “Are you going to go find this woman?”

“I told you I’d be here two days. I don’t have time to go down to some little border town to hunt for a woman who may or may not be my half-sister.”

“But if you’re the executor of the will, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? I thought it was some kind of sacred duty.”

“I told you two days.”

“I’ll be fine, baby. My parents are keeping me busy. I just want this to be over with, and if this is what it takes, then this is what it takes. You go do what you need to do, and I’ll see you when you get home.”

“But…”

“Text me when you know anything,” she said. “I’ll check in with you later. I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said, then she ended the call. Grace did seem okay without me, which was a strange feeling. Maybe that was my need to be needed. Maybe that was me forgetting how independent she was.

I fiddled with the key. “Screw it.”

Slid the key into the lock on the box. Opened the lid. I discovered, in the whole of the box, there was only one object inside: a little red Matchbox car. A truck.

CHAPTER FIVE

I slid the toy truck into my pocket and took my laptop down to the hotel bar to hunt for dinner. A man in the elevator gave me a strange look, peeking at me out of the corners of his eyes a couple times. I didn’t think much of it.

For some reason, pork ribs dominated my thoughts. There’s something so deeply carnivorous about eating ribs… tearing animal flesh from the bone with your teeth, getting blood (barbecue sauce) all over your hands and face in the process. Maybe I unconsciously sought violence now, in this new landscape of my life.

When the ribs were all in my gut, I flipped open my laptop, put my feet up on the opposite bench in the restaurant booth, and connected to the hotel WiFi to prowl the internet for Omar and Susan.