Spoonbenders

“You want to talk about anything?” he asked.

Maureen didn’t turn around. “Is there anything to talk about?”

He knew that arid tone.

In retrospect, he was a fool to think she wouldn’t find out sooner or later. How could any mortal hide anything from Maureen Telemachus? He’d dipped into the family savings, if you could use the word “dip” for such a thorough excavation, and he’d also taken out a second mortgage.

“Tell me what you did with it,” she said. “Are you gambling again?”

She thought he’d gone back to his wicked ways. Ironically, he had returned to his wicked ways, but only to make up the money sunk into ATI.

“What I used to do wasn’t gambling,” Teddy said, unable to keep the indignation from his voice. In those days, he was even more of a peacock than now.

Maureen, without even looking at him, made it clear she was taking none of his bull. Why should she? She’d taken so much of it for years. “Oh, Teddy,” Maureen said. “Everything we worked for, you’re throwing it away.”

“I certainly am not,” he said. “I’m investing it. There’s a big difference.”

“Investing in what?”

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “Just sit down. Please.”

She dried her hands and took a seat opposite him at the table, quiet as a hanging judge.

“A business opportunity presented itself,” he said. “I had an idea for a company, and a coinvestor to create it with me. This company would create an ongoing revenue stream, but it required some initial capital, just to get things rolling. Short-term start-up costs, long-term returns.”

“Ongoing revenue stream,” she said.

“That’s right!”

“Are you listening to yourself?” she said softly.

“I want you to listen to me,” he said in a reasonable tone. “I’m trying to put food on the table. What choice do I have? Everything else I’ve tried—”

“The act,” she said. She shook her head in a way that years later would be echoed by their daughter. “You’re still angry. You can’t let it go.”

“We had a plan, Mo. Everything depended on you coming out, and you didn’t do it.” Teddy knew Archibald was scheduled to interrupt their act. He deliberately gave the skeptic something easy to expose, the old séance trick with his foot, something the cameras could pick up. The family wasn’t debunked; their defeat was bunk itself, the setup for the big reversal. Mo would do the telephone gag, flummoxing Archibald. The famous skeptic would admit on national television that they were the real thing, and their fortunes would be made.

“What did you want me to do?” Teddy said, exasperated.

“Get a job,” she said. “A real job.”

“This is better than a job,” he said. “This is a legitimate business venture.”

“You come in here with Nick Pusateri’s pizza, and you’re going to talk to me about legitimate?”

“This has nothing to do with him.” Which was the truth. “All I did was buy a pizza.” Which was a lie. He’d stopped by Pusateri’s to talk about their next job. But he couldn’t tell her that, because he’d promised that he’d never work for that man, or the Outfit, again.

“Then tell me what this investment is,” she said. “No hemming and hawing. None of your flimflam. Tell me exactly who you’re in business with, and what you’re doing.”

“I can’t, Mo. I just can’t. You just have to trust that what I’m doing, I’m doing for the family.”

“Trust,” she said bitterly.

He nodded. “That’s all I need. A little trust.”

“Yet you can’t trust me,” she said. Her lips were trembling. “Your wife.”

“Not until it pays off. Then, I swear, you’ll understand why I—”

Frankie burst into the kitchen, followed by Buddy. “Can you make cookies?”

“I’m not one of your marks,” Maureen said. She gathered up the bank statements, ignoring the boys, who were clamoring for her attention. He watched her in silence, thinking they were done with the argument, and then she handed him the pile. “That’s not true,” she said. “I was your first mark.”

The next morning, Maureen informed him that she’d accepted Destin Smalls’s offer to work for the government in a new program called Project Star Gate. And not long after that, Nick Pusateri ended Teddy’s career as a cardshark.

Graciella unlocked the door to the offices from the inside and let them in. There were no hugs—she was not that kinda gal—but she shook hands with Irene. “Welcome to NG Group.”

“You’re the G?” Irene asked.

“The N liked to keep me in the dark, even though I was the owner on paper.”

“And now you want to be the owner in fact,” Teddy said.

“Now I have to be. I don’t know how much of this business is real, and how much of it is a front for the other Pusateri business. I don’t even know if I’m the only owner. I wouldn’t be surprised to uncover a few silent partners.” She led them through an empty cubicle farm—none of the agents had yet come in—to a big glassed-in office. She gestured toward the computer and the large beige monitor. “Nick Junior gave me the password for the accounting software, but I don’t know what I’m doing. Your dad said you were good at this.”