Page 63 of Old Money
And then the phone rings again. This time, I answer.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Two days later, on another early morning, I drive up the Taconic to Westchester County Airport. It’s not yet 5:00 a.m. and the two check-in gates are closed. There are only four flights listed on the departures screen, the next one scheduled for seven twenty-five. It’s a small, regional airport that runs a handful of short-haul commercial flights between cities along the East Coast. The rest of its clientele are private fliers and corporate employees who depart directly from their respective hangars, bypassing the terminal entirely. The sheer lack of lines makes flying through Westchester an eerily easy experience.
My footsteps echo on the freshly mopped floor as I follow the signs for security. This area is also empty, except for two guards chatting beside the conveyer belt. Just past the security area, there’s a shuttered souvenir store, a magazine stand and in the corner, a tiny coffee shop with three café tables. Alex Chapman is sitting at the last one, waiting for me.
He lifts his chin by way of greeting, hands wrapped around a paper cup of black coffee. He wears a fleece vest over his T-shirt. His face is cheesy pale and studded with black stubble. He doesn’t look like someone who spent last month cruising the Italian coast, but I do recognize his face as the same one photographed in Naples: solemn and set, his mouth a flat line.
“Don’t bother getting coffee,” he says when I reach the table, his eyes on the cup. “It’s burnt to shit.”
His blue eyes, I notice, are bloodshot.
“Are you gonna sit?” he asks mildly. “I don’t have that much time.”
He doesn’t seem like the person who called me the other night either. He’d been panting and frenzied when I answered the phone, like someone fresh from a screaming fight. He’d exploded at me: What did I want? What was so goddamn important that I’d tracked down his fucking home address?
I’d gathered myself as quickly as possible, unsure where or how to begin. It hadn’t mattered though. As soon as I found my voice, Alex cut me off.
“Not on the phone!” he’d barked, pausing. “Tuesday. I’m on an early flight out of Westchester. Because of you.”
***
Now Alex sits before me, somewhere between abashed and indignant.
“So, are you going to ask me questions, or... ?”
I watch him for another few seconds, still adjusting to his wilted, bloodless affect.
“Where are you going?”
“Upstate,” he answers. “Rehab. Third time.”
He sits back, taking a shallow sip from the steaming cup.
“I thought—you said you were leaving because of me?”
“Yep.” He nods. “They’re shipping me out again, because of you this time.”
I shake my head, confused. He raises his cup toward me in a grim toast.
“I’m not an alcoholic. Patrick is—a sober one now.Fornow. I’ve seen him clean up twice before, and it never lasts.”
Alex sneers into his cup.
“I’m a better fake. I do it full-time.”
“What does that mean?” I ask delicately.What are we doing here?
He takes a breath and then, with great deliberation, Alex unravels, bit by bit, before my eyes. The story spills out of him withhardly any prodding. It’s like he’s had the whole thing queued up and ready, just waiting for me—for anyone—to come along and push the button.
***
Alex and Patrick had indeed been close in high school, but by their graduation, Alex was growing weary of being the constant sidekick. Thanks to their reckless antics, he’d already fucked up his kneeandany shot of getting into an Ivy League school. Patrick, he’d noticed, had paid no such price. Either way, he figured, they’d have one last drunken summer, then they’d go off to college and real life would begin. But Alex’s life changed forever, the night he served as Patrick’s alibi.
“It never occurred to me back then,” he says. “You don’t think about consequences like that when you’re seventeen.”
“Did Patrick ask you to confirm his story?” I cautiously interject. “Or was it his parents?”
