Alex
“You know something?”said Zeke. He looked up from the book he was reading.
“What?” I said.
“Shame you aren’t married,” said Zeke before he looked down again.
“Zeke, what are you talking about?”
It had been a week since the interview at the police station. And two days since Lola and I had gone to bed together. Since that day, I’d been feeling increasingly grim. But I showed up to the office each day, and Zeke and I went through everything. City licensing laws, all our documentation. Looking for something that could saveThe Blue Orchid. Something that could prove my innocence.
“Well, you know Frances DeVerge?”
“Sure,” I frowned. “Fancy lady. Lives on Park Avenue. Runs that awful bar downtown, what’s it called?Da Terro’s?
“D’Amigo’s,” Zeke said, correcting me. “Anyhow. You know Frances was married?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t her husband in jail now?”
“Louis DeVerge. He was a real scumbag. Couple of guys I know used to work with him. Now there was a crooked guy.”
“What did he do?” I said. My recent brush with the law had led me to become obsessed with crime. I was alert to it, and read the back pages of the papers, looking for notes about people who’d gone to prison or those going to jail. I was trying not to think about it. But it was a real possibility and one I’d have to face up to at some point or another.
“Fraud. He ran a telemarketing scam. Stole thousands, I hear.”
“Is he in for a long time?”
“Fourteen years. Maximum penalty. And he had to pay back all that money. Bankrupted him in the end.”
“That’s not what I was hoping to hear,” I said. Fraud was one of the crimes I’d been accused of.
“Well, here’s the thing. Louis owned a bar which he gave to Frances as a wedding gift, I guess. Both their names were on the deed. And when Louis got charged, they were going to take the properties away.”
“But?”
“But,” said Zeke, “because Frances was co-owner, and they were married, she got to keep the bar. Because they couldn’t prove criminal liability. It’s this loophole. If you’re married, then you can legally pass your properties to your spouse if they’re listed as a co-owner. And even if something happens to you, they can’t touch it, see?”
“I see,” I said.
“Now, you’ve been handed your Section 12-B because you’re accused of fraud. But whether you get off or not…”
“Then the Section 12-B only applies pending my fraud case,” I said.
“So if you were married, and you passed on the properties to a spouse, who you were married to…”
“Then they’d get to keep them,” I said. “If I got sent down.”
“But more than that,” said Zeke. “They’d get to reapply for the liquor license’s renewal. And it would legally be prejudiced if they discriminated against your spouse on the basis of your trial.”
“I see,” I nodded. “Well, thanks for that, Zeke. I guess I should have gotten married to Katherine Ziegler after all.”
“Well, every cloud,” said Zeke. We chuckled. But it was Dutch courage, and we knew it. The pair of us were staring down the barrel.
“What have we got to do after lunch?” I said.
“Hm,” said Zeke. “We could go through this.” He reached down onto the floor, which was scattered with legal books and photocopies of documents, and pulled an enormous black tome onto the deskProperty Law and Legal Dispute, Volume 6.
“If it’s gotta be done, it’s gotta be done,” I said, staring at the huge book in front of us.
“You know, if you want, I can look through it,” said Zeke.
“It’s fine,” I said.
“You haven’t been getting a lot of sleep these last few days, Alex.”
He was right. From dawn to midnight, I was looking into the charges laid against me, hoping there was a way.
“I’m fine,” I said, even though my eyes were red around their rims. “But I could stretch my legs,” I said. “Mind if I take a walk?”
“Be my guest,” said Zeke. “Want me to have something sent up from the kitchen for lunch?”
“Not hungry.” I grimaced, and got up and went down the stairs. I went through my empty restaurant.
Oddly enough, I used to likeThe Blue Orchidwhen it was empty. Sometimes I came in after the cooks had left on Sunday night, just to be there for the end of the week. Something about the quiet building felt good. I knew it would be crammed full of customers by Tuesday night.
But now it felt awful. An empty, cavernous space where the battle for my life’s work was being fought.
By now, we’d realized that Luca must be behind the fake birth certificate. Who knows how he’d forged my dead mother’s signature so well, or how he’d managed to plant the birth certificate for the police to find. But there was no doubt in my mind that Luca had done it. He certainly stood to gain from being the second-biggest shareholder in my businesses. I’d been trying to find out if there was any record of my parents having lived in the tiny apartment in Fairhill where I’d grown up. But the building had been demolished years ago, and it was taking an age to even find out where the documents would be stored, anyhow.
I pushed through the door and walked onto the street. Was it possible that somehow I’d made a mistake? That my mom had lied to me about something, about my dad, about their marriage? I couldn’t believe it.
Even at the end of her life, my mom had been honest and kind. She did her best to look after me. Not that I felt like I deserved it, looking back.