American Outrage Read online

  “Money?”

  “Not money,” Murat said. “If he is stealing, he will pay.”

  “But these girls are whores,” Tajik said, his simple, doughy face showing confusion.

  Murat silenced him with a chopping motion and glanced back at his kids once more.

  “Not until I say they are.”

  25

  SAM GRUMBLED WHEN HE HEARD Jake’s plan and he stomped his feet on his way upstairs to pack. Jake reminded him to bring his cell phone charger. From his office, Jake could hear the slamming of dresser drawers. Jake called Don Wall, his contact at the FBI in Washington. For half a case of Wall’s favorite wine, Jake was able to bribe him into doing a weekend search of the Bureau files for Murat Lukaj.

  They took the thruway north to Albany, then west and up to Old Forge in the heart of the Adirondacks, where the brilliant green leaves of spring were three weeks behind the city and just breaking free from their buds.

  “She’s weird, Dad,” Sam said as they pulled into the center of Old Forge.

  Jake just looked at him.

  “She’s just old. She’s your mother’s mom,” Jake said. “She loves you and I trust her.”

  “You don’t like her.”

  “She’s family, Sam,” Jake said. “She cares more about you than my parents, but join the club.”

  They turned at the old hardware store and went up South Shore Road in silence, until they came to a little brown shack standing next to a wooden gate. A brown sign, no bigger than a car bumper, in yellow letters read ADIRONDACK LEAGUE CLUB. An old man in a rumpled cap put down his paper and shuffled out of the shack, swatting at the tiny flies. Jake cracked his window.

  “Hi, Melvin,” he said, thrusting his hand through the small gap and shaking the man’s hand. “Jake Carlson, Eva Wright’s son-in-law.”

  “Yeah, she told me you’d be coming,” he said, peering in at Sam.

  “Rockefellers here yet?”

  Melvin narrowed one eye and said, “That wouldn’t be your business, would it?”

  Melvin shuffled up the oiled road and unlocked the gate, swinging it open and examining something in the trees overhead while Jake drove past. The road wound through the woods until finally they came to an open space overlooking the lake. Down by the water was the shake-shingled clubhouse, an old hotel really, with brick chimneys and decorative clay smokestacks. The dark water lay beyond it like a mirror, reflecting the wooded hillsides and the colorful late-day sky.

  They kept going, past the tennis courts and the parking lot where only a single Rolls-Royce kept company with a handful of Mercedes sedans. The road that snaked its way around the lake was unmarked. Every so often a driveway would branch off down toward the water, but they too were unmarked and devoid of mailboxes. It was still early enough in the season that the foliage hadn’t filled in completely, so through the trees Jake caught the hint of an occasional roofline or the glint of a window down near the water.

  “How big is this place?” Sam asked.

  “Fifty thousand acres,” Jake said. “The biggest private tract of land in the whole park.”

  When he saw the ten-foot boulder with a birch tree growing directly out of the top of it, he slowed and took the next gravel driveway. The road dipped and turned before they passed through the towering cobblestone gateway and into a gravel lot that butted up to the old mansion. The enormity of the green roof made the thick beams of the dark brown house that much more impressive and would have been suggestive of a fort had it not been for the gingerbread gilding of the roof eaves and the balconies.

  On this side of the lake, the sun’s rays had been gone for the past hour, but the orange glow of lamps and woodwork from inside welcomed them. Parker, the caretaker, was lighting candles in the great room and he stared at them for a moment with his liver-spotted hand trembling over the flame before telling them that she was tending to her garden. They walked out onto the front porch and were greeted by the maniacal call of a loon. They tramped at an angle down toward the boathouse, where the raised beds of the vegetable garden made it easier for Jake’s mother-in-law to pick her tomatoes and pull her carrots.

  Jake felt a black fly crawl up under the hairline at his neck and he pinched it and flicked it away, then swatted at another hovering by his nose. Sam was a dancing windmill.

  Bent over with her back to them, in a blue housecoat, was Eva Nelson-Wright of the Boston Nelsons. Even through the veil of mesh that circled her hat, Jake could see his mother-in-law’s icy blue eyes and her pale lips tightening. She changed the trowel from one oversize glove to the other so she could offer him a flimsy handshake.

  “Goddamn bugs,” Jake said, swatting.

  “Those are the good ones,” she said. “They eat the smaller ones. The pests.”

  Jake took her hand and bussed her cheek, getting a whiff of the deet she had sprayed all over her face net.

  “Good to see you, Eva,” he said.

  She turned and said, “Samuel.”

  Sam gripped her limp glove between swats and let it go.

  “I appreciate this,” Jake said. “Like I said, I’ll feel a lot better with Sam up here.”

  “Still chasing windmills?” she said.

  “These days they’ve been chasing me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Well, the grocery bill’s certainly going to go up.”

  Jake took the wallet out of his pants and split it open.

  “Oh, put your money away,” she said, turning away and plunging the trowel into the bed of dirt. “Don’t be tacky. I meant the boy eats like a horse. You think that matters to me? It’ll all be his one day anyway.”

  Jake let the hundred-dollar bills hang in the air for a moment before stuffing them back into his wallet. Sam stared hard at him, and Jake put a finger to his lips and shook his head.

  “Parker set you a place for dinner,” Eva said, dropping a seed into the hole. “I think it would be appropriate that you do that much before you race off to whatever antics you’re up to.”

  “Dinner would be great,” Jake said. “Definitely before the antics start. Sam and I will go get cleaned up.”

  He turned and put an arm around Sam’s shoulder and they walked up to the house, chased by the sound of the trowel scratching dirt.

  “And you’re leaving me with her?” Sam said, slapping his arm and marking it with a bloody skid.

  “It’s me she doesn’t like, not you,” Jake said. “But deep down she finds me funny.”

  “Mom couldn’t stand her.”

  “Just get along. She’s family.”

  Sam looked out at the water and sighed.

  “What did she mean, ‘All this will be his’?” Sam asked.

  Jake looked back at the four-slip boathouse, two stories high with a complete guest quarters on the second floor, then up at the main house. Parker’s shape stood in the vast mullioned window. His hands were fluttering over some kind of glass as he polished it, peering out across the lawn, presumably waiting for a signal from Eva in the event she wanted something. Jake took a deep breath and pushed out his cheeks before letting it go.

  “Let’s talk inside,” Jake said, swatting his neck.

  Sam’s bedroom had a large sitting area with a bearskin rug and its own broad cobblestone fireplace. Parker had lit the fire and the dry wood crackled and popped in the grate. There was a small wet bar by the doors leading out to the balcony, and Jake took a bottle of beer out of the mini refrigerator before sitting on the couch. Sam put his feet up on the coffee table, a varnished crosscut section from a giant tree.

  “She’s not supposed to talk like that,” Jake said, staring into the fire.

  “Am I, like, rich or something?” Sam asked.

  “She is.”

  “But I’m not her real grandson.”

  “I’m sensing a theme here.”

  26

  SHE SAID IT,” Sam said with a nod.

  “Jesus,” Jake said. “Belie
ve me, that had nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.”

  “How could Mom even come from someone like that?” Sam said. “That’s what I never got.”

  Jake took a big swig and let it fizz in his mouth before swallowing. “It’s the same way with me and my parents. We’re nothing alike.”

  “And they’re your real parents, right?”

  “You gotta stop with that ‘real’ crap. I love you, but it’s getting on my nerves, man. I’m as real a dad as you’re ever gonna get.”

  “I didn’t mean you.”

  “I know what you didn’t mean, but you gotta think about how it sounds. People can’t always read your mind.”

  “Does she have a will or something?”

  Jake set his beer down hard on the table and crossed his arms. “See? This is why we don’t talk like that. Life isn’t taking some trust fund and figuring out how to spend it. You work. You contribute. That’s life. I’ve seen it the other way. It’s never good for anyone. Don’t think you can kick it into neutral.”

  “It’s a lot of money.”

  “Her money. The first thing your mom ever said to me about her was not to trust her.”

  Sam said he needed a few minutes in the bathroom, so Jake slipped downstairs and found Eva in the big room overlooking the water. Orange light twisted its way through the old panes of glass and there was a musty smell of spruce trees and old Oriental rugs in the air. Eva had a gin and tonic in her hand, and the floppy hat was pushed back off her head, net rolled up, still hanging from her neck by its bow, and giving her a slightly disheveled look. Jake cleared his throat and she sat up straight, undid the bow, and set the hat beside her on the floor.

  “Drink?” she asked, raising the pitcher.

  Jake went to the sideboard and removed a crystal glass, letting her fill it halfway before he held up a hand. She dropped in a wedge of lime.

  Jake sat in the big leather chair opposite her, extended his legs, and crossed them. He stared at her, smiling, then said, “Remember what you said when you came to visit after we got him?”

  “Who?”

  “You wouldn’t hold him,” Jake said, forcing his smile to hold its place. “He wasn’t your grandson and we shouldn’t count on having him because his real mother could show up anytime and take him back and there’d be nothing we could do about it.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she pursed her lips before sipping her drink and looking out the window.

  “Things change,” she said after a few moments. “Don’t they?”

  She looked at him and smiled, then her face dropped. “Remember when she lost all her hair and you shaved your head, too? Even when your agent said not to because your contract was coming up and they were saying behind the scenes that you better not? No. I wouldn’t have changed having her be with you for the world.”

  Her bottom lip curled up under her teeth and she looked away, sniffed once, and wiped her eyes on her sleeve before turning back, entirely composed.

  “Thank you,” Jake said, so softly he wasn’t sure he’d said it at all.

  Dinner was calm, and almost pleasant. After her fourth drink, Eva’s cheeks took on their usual pink glow and she grew talkative in a girlish way that, although slightly absurd, was always a comfortable alternative to cold steel. When Eva wasn’t talking, Jake could see the same jawline in her face that Karen had had and it brought back the memory of a night they’d shared in the big old place before Karen was sick, a night in a thunderstorm when the warmth of the old lamps glowed in just the same way and every so often a tiny moth would flutter around them until it burned. Jake felt his throat go tight and when he looked up, Eva was staring at him. She cleared her throat softly before asking if he’d like a glass of port. Jake thanked her, but said he had to get going. He gave Sam a big long hug and headed out into the dark.

  27

  MORNING SUN SHONE ON DOROTHY Cakebread’s cottage and tendrils of steam slipped free from the damp wood siding. Jake rolled down his window and watched from the roadside. The bearded man who had spoken with him the previous day came out and began scraping paint from his window frame, filling the air with a rasping that reminded Jake of the dentist.

  It was nearly two hours before Cakebread’s ex-wife emerged wearing sunglasses, her hair tied up into a lime-green scarf. She carried a bag to the car, set it on the passenger seat, then climbed in. Jake ducked down as she pulled out onto the road. He let her get to the bend before he popped up and lit out after her. She drove for nearly half an hour right back in the direction Jake had come from, downtown Syracuse. When she pulled into the parking garage opposite the hospital, Jake took the first spot he found on the street, in a no-parking zone.

  Two minutes later, she emerged from the garage and crossed the street. Jake got out and fell in behind her, following her inside the hospital. He kept back, waiting until her elevator doors closed before he moved close enough to see which floor she stopped at. Four. He took the next car up and stepped out into the pediatric unit. He straightened his back and stared intently around as he walked up and down the halls, meeting the nurses’ eyes until they looked away.

  Dorothy Cakebread was nowhere to be seen. There was one area, however, that he couldn’t see into. The small red sign on the door read PEDIATRIC INTENSIVE CARE. Jake went to the nurse’s station at the end of the hall and learned that the name of the chief pediatric surgeon was Dr. Carney. He returned to the door with the red sign, looked around, then pushed it open and caught his breath. Six small beds were lined up on the far wall. In each lay a child connected to a series of tubes and wires. Two were attended by small groups of doctors, talking in hushed voices below the mechanical hiss of the life-support systems.

  A nurse confronted Jake immediately, and he flipped open his wallet, showing his press credential.

  “Hi. We’re doing a TV special on Dr. Carney,” he said, “and I was told to get a feel for the ICU.”

  “Oh,” the nurse said, the lines in her face relaxing, “you’re that guy. American something.”

  “Outrage,” Jake said, extending his hand. “Jake Carlson.”

  “Did something happen?” the nurse asked.

  “This is one of those tragedies that turns happy in the end,” Jake said, putting on a smile. “Thanks to Dr. Carney.”

  The nurse beamed back at him, nodding her head and stepping aside.

  “Visiting is almost over,” she said. “If you need more time than that, I’ll have to clear it with my supervisor. Even for Dr. Carney.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Jake said. “Thank you.”

  Dorothy Cakebread stood beside the bed at the far end of the unit. She was crying. In the bed was a baby about eighteen months old in a tiny pink nightgown. Her head was shaved clean and a crimson scar ran from ear to ear over the crown of her skull. A clear plastic ventilator was taped to her mouth. Its lizard sound raised and lowered her chest and blew soft tufts of steamy air out her nose.

  Jake crossed the room and stood over her shoulder, watching the child with a lump building in his chest. When Dorothy Cakebread looked back at him, he cleared his throat and said, “I have a child, too. That’s why I’m here, Mrs. Cakebread.”

  The sad lines around her mouth pulled tight and the wet eyes began to blaze.

  “You’re that man.”

  “Please don’t look away. I’m not with the police,” Jake said. “I’m a father. I have a little boy. I’m trying to help him find his mother. We got him from your husband.”

  Dorothy Cakebread took a deep breath and let it out, turning her gaze back to the little girl.

  “My daughter’s little girl,” she said, shaking her head. “They think they got it all, but she’ll have to have chemo. My girlfriend has a cousin and her daughter had the same thing and she’s seventeen now. So, that’s what we think about.”

  They stood there until a nurse came and softly told them it was time to go. Jake walked alongside Dorothy Cakebread and held open the door. Out in the hallway, he
asked if he could buy her a cup of coffee. She shrugged and followed him to the cafeteria, where he set two large cups down between them.

  “I know you were upset when I went to your house,” Jake said.

  “You think this is better?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Jake said. “I followed you. I wanted to find the right time and when I saw your granddaughter, I knew you’d understand. When your child is hurting, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to make it better. I thought you’d understand that.”

  “What do you want from me?” she asked, looking up at him with pale green eyes, gripping her hands together.

  “Your husband had records from the agency?” Jake asked.

  Her face closed tight and she nodded.

  “Ronny was a dreamer,” she said, staring down at the table. “He thought those people were going to make him something. Like if you drove a Mercedes you were someone. It was mostly why we split up. He always cared, though. And he said if they ever bothered me, I should know where the records were and tell the FBI. He gave me money to keep the unit.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Tell the FBI? He said it was my red lever and not to break the glass and pull it unless I had to. Only if they bothered me. He said once I told the police, they would try to kill me and my daughter. He said they’d kill anyone. That they didn’t care.”

  “And they killed him?”

  “I suppose,” she said, taking a sip of the coffee. “It didn’t matter if it was him or them. I knew from the start it would end bad. I know things about people, and he didn’t listen. He couldn’t be happy with a regular life, a regular job. Kind of a curse some people have. I knew that about him, but I was young and I thought he’d change, but people don’t.”

  She was quiet a minute, then said, “You’re not going to stir these people up, are you?”

  “I just want to help my son find his mother,” Jake said. “I won’t let anyone know about the records, or you.”

  “I probably worry more than I should,” she said. “Knowing Ronny, he made the whole thing up to make himself important. He was depressed, you know.”