I say nothing.
“Does it have something to do with you?”
“Max wouldn’t tell you?”
“Max hasn’t been particularly helpful.”
At last I look up and smile with a confidence I don’t feel. “You think I’m going to tell you things I didn’t tell Holland and his waterboarding team?”
Arthur Pine looks like he’s on the verge of telling me something, but he doesn’t. Instead, he studies me the way he might some animal of passing interest during a forced trip to the zoo.
“How long have you guys known about Sally’s cache, Arthur?”
He hesitates, then answers, probably figuring I have no way to record him. “Sally called one of us about fifteen minutes before she died. She revealed the existence of the cache at that time.”
Now I’m learning something of value. “Why would she do that?”
“I think she was going to kill herself, but she wanted to make sure the cache accomplished what she wanted it to.”
“Which was what? Destroy Max?”
Pine shakes his head. “No. Max knows something that would traumatize his family. Something personal—nothing business related. Sally told us we had to make sure he never reveals it. If he does, not only Max but also the members of the Poker Club will be destroyed.”
At last, I think. Arthur doesn’t have enough information to understand Sally’s plan, but I do. At some point she must have figured out that Max had fathered his “grandson” by their daughter-in-law. Sally probably knew it was rape, but rather than confront Jet about something so uncomfortable, she decided to take things into her own hands—to make sure that neither Paul nor Kevin ever learned the truth about Kevin’s paternity. By framing Max for her own murder, Sally could prevent him from playing any role in the boy’s life—or, God forbid, ever getting custody of him. But Sally also knew her husband well enough to know that making Max rot in prison wouldn’t necessarily silence him. To do that, she’d have to put him under perpetual fear of death. She solved that problem with ruthless elegance. By placing every member of the Poker Club at risk of imprisonment, Sally ensured that they would keep Max quiet.
It’s a miracle they didn’t kill him outright, I think, to remove all risk of him destroying the Poker Club.
“How,” I ask Pine, “do you stop Max from revealing a secret when you don’t know what the secret is?”
He smiles in appreciation of the problem. “You let him know he’s one cunt hair from being dead already.”
“That sounds like Tommy Russo’s department.”
Pine shrugs. “Tommy knows how to deliver a message.”
For a time we simply look at each other, until it strikes me that Pine being here makes no sense. Surely he didn’t come for a casual chat. And I was so happy to escape the shower room that I haven’t bothered to ask why they stopped torturing me.
“How does this end, Arthur? What are you doing here? Why did Buckman make Beau stop torturing me?”
Pine reaches into his pocket and takes out a cigarette, then lights it and takes a drag like it’s the elixir of life.
“Take it easy there, Arthur. You’ll blow a lung.”
“I allow myself one a day. This seems like a good time.”
“So, what are you doing here?”
He takes another greedy hit, then blows the smoke away from the bars. “We’ve been contacted by your accomplice.”
I go still. My accomplice?
“He spoke to Claude and provided some bona fides that have altered the situation profoundly.”
Who the hell is he talking about? “It’s about damn time. Past time, in fact.”
“You’re probably going to be getting out of here before long.”
“At what price?”
Pine shifts uncomfortably. “What happened in the shower room earlier was a mistake. Chalk that up to Beau Holland’s account. Rest assured that you’ll be compensated for pain and suffering. As you know from our meeting this morning, the club is prepared to be quite generous to acquire Sally’s materials.”
I make the mistake of shifting on the bed, and my ribs shriek again. “Do you think this is a negotiation, Arthur?”
He gives me the smile of the eternal fixer. He could have been a clerk under Pontius Pilate. “If it weren’t, whoever has the cache would already have gone public with it. And you’d be dead. As it is, your accomplice won’t deal until he sees you alive.”
That’s the best news I’ve heard all year. “What makes Claude and Donnelly think we’ll deal once you let me out of here?”
“You were ready to make a deal at midday.”
“You yanked that deal off the table.”
“That wasn’t my call.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Arthur. You had a vote. This afternoon you thought Max’s little porn video would keep me in line. You were cocky enough to shut down the paper and ruin my father based on that belief. Now you want to kiss and make up? What’s changed?”
He finishes off his cigarette with one ferocious pull. “Your accomplice has more sensitive information than we first imagined.”
“Translation, Buckman’s shitting his geriatric diaper.”
Pine wrinkles his lips in disgust.
“So, when do I get out?”
“That’s not my call, either. But it shouldn’t take long.”
“Then how about letting me get some sleep?”
“Tell me one thing first. What is this secret Max knows?”
The prurient light in Pine’s eyes tells me his interest is purely personal. He wants to know the intimate sins of Max’s life. Or is even that a business interest? Secrets are weapons to be hoarded for future use.
When the lawyer realizes that I don’t intend to answer, he says, “The club can make you whole again, Marshall. Think about what you’re going to need to put all this behind you.”
At last I let him see my hatred and disgust unmasked. I should keep my mouth shut until I’m free from this building, but all my instinct tells me they have no choice but to let me out. “What if I need your hide, Arthur? I told you today that I’m going to get you.”
“Don’t make this personal. It’s only business.”
“Yeah? Here’s how I see it. If my father dies this week, you killed him. You, Holland, Russo, Cowart, Buckman, Donnelly . . . the whole club. And I will balance that out. Think about that while you’re driving home.”
Pine taps the bars with a manicured nail. “Losing a father isn’t easy. I can still feel the pain like yesterday.”
“If you were the best he could do, your father was a failure.”
He gives me a cynic’s smile. “And yours is a drunk with one foot in the grave. That’s life.”
“Mine did some good in his time.”
Pine pushes off the bars and walks to the big metal door. “All this will look different in the morning. You’ll want your old life back.”
“Maybe. But no matter how this turns out, you’re part of the price.”
The lawyer turns and looks back at me. “Why me, more than the others? They’re the real power in the club.”