Fortunate Son

“That’s Nelda Frank,” Stark said. “Your girlfriend’s sister. A nice group, isn’t it? Good-looking people. You would never think that that sweet-looking Vietnamese woman is in the country on forged papers or that stolid Harold Portman has been embezzling funds from his boss for years. Your grandmother’s insurance company doesn’t know that she lied about a preexisting condition when she bought her policy. The doctor that kept her records back then has recently agreed to make amends for his wrongdoing.”

They were crossing Sunset, beginning an ascent into the hills.

“What I do to you, man?” Thomas asked, sitting with his back against the door, looking into the backseat.

“Three nights ago I sat with your brother and my little girl.

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F o r t u n a t e S o n

She smiles at me. She kisses me hello, but her joy in me is over. She’s moved out of my house and chosen her man. My life is empty because of Eric Tanner Nolan.”

Stark brought both hands to his face as if he were about to melt into tears, but he did not cry. Instead his fat hands folded into fists.

“She’s gone from me and is never coming back. If your Eric died tomorrow, she wouldn’t even cry on my shoulder.

He has taken her heart from me.”

“You crazy,” Thomas said.

“Yes, I am,” Kronin conceded. “That’s an important fact for you to understand. I am crazy, and I will destroy the lives of everyone you know if you don’t do exactly what I tell you to do. That’s just how crazy I am. Your former nanny will be thrown out of the country or into a federal penitentiary, and Harold will be in prison too. Your grandmother will die from the cancer in her stomach. Your stepfather will be sued by half a dozen angry patients, and Clea’s sister will fare far worse.”

Silence settled in on Thomas. All the words he knew dried up and flaked off in his throat.

“You yourself will be tried for the murder of a Jane Doe buried under cinder blocks in an alley inhabited only by you.

There’s no statute of limitations on murder, is there, Terry?”

“No, sir,” the man once known as Michael Cotter said.

“The district attorney will soon begin to seek charges against your brother for helping a wanted felon escape from the authorities,” Stark said. “He will be sentenced for that felony and spend quite some time behind bars.”

They’d made it up into the hills. The road looked down on the desertlike slope of the mountain.

“And you, Thomas Beerman, will testify at your brother’s 3 0 5

Wa l t e r M o s l e y

trial that it was he who suggested and financed the escape. It was he who masterminded everything.”

“You crazy.” Thomas found the words even in his silence.

“If you don’t do it,” the billionaire warned, “he will still be convicted, and everyone you know will be destroyed along with him.”

“But why? Why would you do this?”

“Because it will break your brother’s heart to see you turn on him. And I want to do to him what he has done to me.”

When Stark leaned forward, and Thomas was nearly blinded by the light off his skin. He averted his eyes — Kronin thought he was crying — and wondered about the moon.

The tide’ll come in, the sun’ll rise . . . He remembered the words he’d spoken to his brother. Now he realized that he was wrong.

They were entering a sharp curve over a steep incline. Thomas pushed both his normal and shorter leg against the door, pro-pelling himself against the steering wheel. Terry grunted and tried to keep the steering wheel straight, but Thomas’s hands were too strong for the self-proclaimed assassin. There was no way to stop the car from careering off into free flight. Thomas was weightless. He floated into the backseat. Stark was yelling and so was the man he called Terry. When the Rolls hit the first boulder, Thomas slammed into Kronin’s belly and smelled the acrid stench of the fat man’s belching breath. He also felt a severe pain in his good leg. It felt wet and he thought of blood, but then they hit the second hard rock and then the third. No one was crying out now, and darkness was all around them.

Then suddenly there was a wrenching sound of metal tearing, and Thomas was dimly aware of flight and then light. There was a flash of heat across his face, and he remembered the fear in Stark’s face when the big man realized that he was about to die.

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20

He was in a hospital bed once more, looking at the light through the window again. He turned his head to the left and there was someone there. Clea — her hands clasped together and her eyes too sad for tears.

“Hey,” Thomas said.

“Hi. How are you?”

“That depends. Am I gonna die?”

“No. They said that you’re really banged up but that there’s nothing life-threatening.”

“Did I lose my leg?”

“You lost a lot of blood, but the doctor says that the leg’ll be fine,” she told him. “He also said that he might be able to fix the other leg with a hip replacement.”

“And are you still moving out here to live with me?”

“Of course,” she said.

“You will?”