Spoonbenders

“So what’s her angle, then? You said she wasn’t interested in you romantically, so she must want something. Why are you smiling?”

It warmed his heart to hear his eldest child musing about angles. Irene was always the sharpest of his children. She had all of Maureen’s intelligence and a good dose of his craftiness. Maureen used to think that Buddy was the genius of the family, but it was little Irene who had a mind like a Ginsu knife. The Human Lie Detector. And that was why, if he was going to help Graciella, he needed Irene at his side.

“I thought you liked her,” Teddy said, trying to sound hurt, and failing even to his own ears.

“Liking has nothing to do with it,” she said. “This is business.”

He laughed until the next stoplight.

“How much is ATI paying you?” Irene asked. Hanging on like a God damn terrier. “In round numbers.”

“They are not paying me any numbers,” Teddy said. “Round, square, or rhomboid. I am paying myself.”

She made a skeptical noise, even though she had to know he wasn’t lying.

“I’m half owner,” he said. “Stop making that face. It was my idea to start the company. Once I got a glimpse of how government worked, how could I not? It’s the craziest damn business. Skinny bakers, top to bottom.”

“You’re saying that like it’s a saying.”

“Skinny bakers! ‘Never trust a skinny baker.’ That’s absolutely a saying.”

“And what does that have to do with the government?”

“Allow me to expound,” he said. “The people inside don’t get to eat any of the cake, but they compensate by throwing cakes out the window. Barrels of cake. The military industrial complex is made entirely of barrel throwers and cake eaters. In this metaphor, cake equals money.”

“Let’s just call a moratorium on metaphors.”

“A metatorium.”

“And coinage.”

“The point is, Destin Smalls is the most gullible man on the planet, and yet he could funnel millions into dubious projects. He’d pay G. Randall Archibald outrageous sums for the most transparent flimflammery. Torsion field detectors. Micro-lepton guns that never quite worked, oh, just need another half mil in development—”

“Oh my God,” Irene said. “This is about competing with Archibald. Still. Again.”

“This is about making money, plain and simple,” Teddy said.

“Did Mom know about this?”

He started to answer, then thought better of it.

“Then no,” Irene said.

“She knew,” he said. “Eventually.” Before Irene could ask he said, “Your mother, she was very conservative about money, very conservative. Didn’t like anything speculative. The start-up costs were significant, and took a long time to recoup. I was very sad that the company didn’t start earning back on our investment until well after her death.”

“You can’t say ‘our’ if she didn’t agree to it.”

Yet she paid all the same, Teddy thought.

“Help me find the address,” he said. “One-thirty-one. Look for a real estate sign.”

They found it soon enough. NG Group Realty. The parking lot was empty except for Graciella’s Mercedes wagon. He eased his car next to hers and Irene put a hand on his arm.

“Answer this: Has Graciella asked you for money?”

“No,” he said. The honest truth.

Irene shook her head. “I don’t get it, then.”

“You’re asking the wrong question,” he said. “It’s not what she’s getting from me, it’s what I’m getting from her.”

“Which is?”

He couldn’t lie, not to Irene, but he could choose what true thing to say. He thought of saying, “Revenge,” but that sounded melodramatic. He considered “Justice,” but that was both melodramatic and out of character.

“I get to be back in the game,” he said.

One of the great regrets of his life was that he never told Maureen about ATI. Another one of his great regrets was that she found out on her own.

He remembered the night. He’d driven home through a snowstorm and entered the house like the Great Hunter, bearing the finest pizza in the Chicagoland area. Maureen cleared the papers and crayons from the kitchen table, and the whole family sat together under the warm lights, Frankie excitedly describing fantastic sled crashes, getting them all to laugh, even Buddy. It was when they all huddled together like this that he was most happy. They were coconspirators, happy thieves dividing up the take, laughing it up while the mundane world went on with their dreary lives. It was the next best thing to being onstage together.

After dinner, Teddy lit a cigarette and watched Maureen wash the dishes. He was not by nature a content man, but this came pretty damn close. Then he noticed, on the counter next to his elbow, the stack of pages that Maureen had moved from the table to the counter. They weren’t Buddy’s coloring pages, as he’d assumed after seeing all the crayons. They were bills and bank documents. He lifted a few pages, and saw the red logo of their mortgage company. It was Teddy’s job to handle the money and the house payments. He’d insisted on it.

He replayed the past hour in his mind, knowing that Mo had been looking at those pages before he arrived. Now her laughter seemed a bit forced. Her attention had been elsewhere.