Page 72 of Gray Area

“Dad?” I say, lowering my voice to try and give him the comfort he seems to need. “What are you talking about?”

“I promised your mother,” he says, slamming a fist on the desk, then looks up and meets my concerned gaze with his own angry stare. “I said by the time I left all of this to you guys it would be legitimate, it would be something that you guys could grow and not have to be beating the shit out of people for money. You guys were supposed to have a good, successful business to take over.”

“Dad, we do.”

“No,” he says, drilling me with his stare. “I fucked it up. I fucked it all up.”

I move closer to my father, approaching like I would a wounded animal. “Dad, you’re freaking me out. What the fuck is wrong?”

My father leans back in his desk chair, and he suddenly looks twenty years older. “I had some money put aside, from the days when I was moving drugs and taking bribes. I had it stowed away because your mom didn’t want to use it for anything. It was like an emergency fund of sorts. She asked me to save it to do something that would help get me to the next level.

“So I held onto it—truth is I forgot about it—but then someone came to me for money about twelve or so years ago. You know I had put that part of the business to bed for me just after you were born; it was too dangerous for a family man,” he tells me.

“Yeah, I remember.”

“So this guy came to me, late one night. Well, morning, actually. I was shutting down Sixth Street—someone had been out sick. He met me in the alley, and he looked like fucking shit. I almost shot him, to be honest. I thought he was some homeless guy trying to mug me at first. Now I kind of wish I had.

“He said he was desperate, that he needed to borrow some money, and he promised to pay me back with fifty percent interest by the end of the week. He told me he’d fucked up, tried some shitty investments, and he’d lost it all. But he knew how to get it back by the end of the week. He sang me a song about his wife and kids, and I won’t lie, it got to me. So I lent him the money.”

“How much?”

“$300K.”

I whistle at the amount. “And then?”

“He paid me back, as promised, $450K.”

My mind is spinning. “What’s the problem?”

“That was the first of many. He came back to me numerous times over the years. And each time I lent it, we’d come to terms on payback and he would get it back to me in the approved time. It became like a sure deal to make money. I would say once every two years, he’d come asking for hundreds of thousands, and I would take it from that account and lend it and he would get it back to me. No big deal, a big nest egg for the future.

“And then, about two years ago he came to me, and it was the biggest loan he had asked for. By this time he’d gotten his name in the news a bit. He’d become a big name along the way in the business world. I’d also heard rumors here and there about him from some of my former associates. Apparently he wasn’t the stand-up guy he’d made himself seem to be in the mainstream. He never had been. I mean, I should have known better. I should’ve realized something was up if he kept coming to me for money. I mean, I trusted these guys who were telling me about him, and I stopped trusting the guy I was loaning to. I wasn’t as comfortable about just lending and taking his word. So he offered to do up a contract.

“He gave me this contract, and the terms were that I would lend him the money and he would pay me back over the next two years. I took the contract, met with my own set of lawyers, and I had shit added to it. If he didn’t pay me back within two years, I got fifty-two percent of shares in each of the companies he owned. I gave it to his lawyers, who added a clause. If I was convicted of a felony within six months of the end date, I forfeited all of my rights.”

“Did you sign it?”

He nods. “I did.”

“When are the two years up?” I ask.

“In five weeks,” he says softly.

My head spins with the information. “So why do you think this has to do with you and any of these weird crimes, Dad?”

“Because that fucker has refused to pay me back, and I think he is trying to pin something or multiple somethings on me if I force my hand with this contract.”

“But how can he do that?” I demand. “You have the contract—”

“I have the contract, the original ones, but any and all copies that have been made…he’s destroyed all of them.”

“Dad, that doesn’t make any sense. The lawyers were there.”

“They’re all gone.”

“Who?” I ask, baffled.

“The lawyers, all of them—they are gone.”

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