Conflict of Interest Read online

  Ian Decker was seated in a mauve-colored upholstered chair, coughing and waving his hands in front of his face. “Can’t you get Gary to go outside when he smokes that stuff?” he asked. “I can’t breathe, Tom.”

  Gary had muscular arms and broad shoulders but he carried most of his weight in his midsection, causing his stomach to spill over the top of his towel. “You’re breathing fine, asshole,” he told Ian, trying to hold the drug inside his lungs. “If you weren’t breathing, you’d be dead.”

  Tom was sprawled on the king-size bed, several pillows propped behind his head. They’d requested a room with two queens, but none was available. Gary slept on one side of the bed, while his brother slept on the other. Ian either tossed a pillow and blanket on the floor or dozed off in one of the chairs.

  “Give him a break,” Tom said. “He used to have asthma when he was a kid, remember? What are you going to do when our stash runs out, huh? No one’s seen Willie lately When we were in the tank, a guy told me he’s got a warrant out on him for dealing. I don’t think this is the time to start trying to find another drug connection, know what I mean?”

  “We’ve been cooped up all day,” his brother said. “I feel like putting my fist through the wall. I don’t give a shit how important Ian’s attorney is supposed to be. He runs his mouth too much, if you ask me. I thought he was going to ask that one lady what kind of underwear she was wearing.”

  “You’re just jealous because Ian has a better attorney than we do,” Tom said, leaning down and pulling a beer out of a foam cooler by the bed.

  “Ian’s mommy wants to protect her baby boy,” Gary responded sarcastically He spun around and faced Ian. “You stay away from your mother, you hear me? Your mother’s nothing but trouble. She’ll have you locked up in a nuthouse if you don’t let us handle her. No phone calls. Nothing. When she shows up in court, don’t even look at her.”

  Ian shook his head in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Your mother will do anything to keep you out of the joint,” Gary continued. “I’ve heard her talking to Dreiser, telling him that you’re a retard. You think prison is bad. At least in prison, a man has rights. At a state mental house, they’ll pump you full of drugs and lock you in a padded cell. Guys that go in those places sometimes never come out.”

  “My mother would never do something like that,” Ian said, remembering his mother’s anguished face.

  Gary took another puff of marijuana. “Don’t kid yourself,” he said. “That’s why I don’t mind having a public defender. The last thing I want is my mom and dad involved. Parents want to protect their own reputation. They don’t want their friends to find out they’ve got a kid in jail. Tom and me, well, our folks have already washed their hands of us. Elizabeth thinks she’s some kind of saint or something.”

  “My mother’s a good person,” Ian said. “She loves me, that’s all.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Gary said. “She’s kept you under her thumb since you were a baby. You’re like her little pet. She makes such a big deal about looking after you, always talking about all the sacrifices she’s made. Don’t you understand? She likes the attention. Everyone feels sorry for her ‘cause she’s got this son who isn’t right in the head.”

  “Knock it off, Gary,” Tom said, wishing he could flush his brother’s dope down the toilet. Gary had been smoking marijuana since he was twelve. He thought it was the same as smoking a cigarette.

  Gary ignored his brother and continued. “Your mother didn’t want you hanging out with us because she didn’t want you to have any fun.”

  “That’s enough!” Tom shouted. “You’re getting on my nerves.”

  Ian tuned out the brothers’ bickering. They were at each other’s throats all the time, particularly since they’d been arrested. Gary’s tan sweater was tossed over the back of his chair. Ian hated the way marijuana smelled, but body odor was even more offensive. It smelled disgusting, like sour milk. Gary had worn the same pair of Levi’s and the same sweater every day for the past week. Ian was glad that Gary’d finally taken a shower, even though he knew the man would probably put the same stinking clothes back on.

  Ian’s mother had always drilled him about personal hygiene. Her voice echoed inside his head, Did you take a shower today, honey? Did you brush your teeth? Don’t forget that you have to use deodorant. You’re a man now.

  Mr. Dreiser had told the Rubinskys that they should shower and try to dress appropriately when they came to court. Tom was fairly neat in comparison to his brother, but neither one of them had washed their clothes since they’d taken up residence at the Economy Inn. It wasn’t as if they had an excuse. The motel had a laundry room.

  Tom seldom lost his temper the way Gary did, and sometimes when his brother was passed out from booze or dope, Tom would sit and talk to Ian, reminiscing about people they knew from the neighborhood, telling jokes, or fantasizing about places he wanted to visit someday. Still, when his older brother told him to do something, Tom might bitch about it, but he always ending up doing whatever Gary said.

  Overall, nothing much had changed since the days when they lived three houses away from each other on Mercer Street. Ian and Tom had been best friends until the fifth grade. Once Ian had been placed in the special-education program at Elmhurst Elementary, none of his former friends would have anything to do with him. He’d not only been branded a loser, he’d discovered that there were only a few kids in the program with legitimate learning disabilities. The majority of his classmates were bullies, thieves, and thugs—what the teachers classified as behavior problems. An assignment that might take Ian hours, many of his classmates could finish in thirty minutes. They then scribbled nasty words all over their papers or made paper airplanes out of them, almost as if they wanted the school to expel them.

  Tom reached for another beer and noticed there were only three remaining out of the two six-packs they had purchased the night before. “Hey, Ian,” he said, “go buy some more beer. And while you’re out, pick us up some grub. What do you want, Gary?” Tom sat up on the edge of the bed and belched, kicking a pizza box across the floor. “Can you believe the maid left the trash in the room? Place is gonna be crawling with roaches.”

  Unfurling the towel and whipping it out at his brother, Gary told him, “You left the Do Not Disturb sign on the door Sometimes I think you’re more retarded than your buddy Ian.”

  Ian dropped his head in shame. He wanted to strike back, tell them how much it hurt when they ridiculed him. The one time he had found the courage to speak out, though, Tom had said they were only joking, that words didn’t mean anything between friends.

  “I’m not hungry,” Ian told them, wondering if the things Gary had said about his mother could possibly be true. A few months after he had renewed his friendship with the Rubinskys, Ian had stopped paying his rent. The manager of his apartment complex had called his mother, asking her to come and pick up his belongings. When Elizabeth had came to post his bail, she’d been furious, telling him he would never be able to live independently again. And it was more than simply an apartment. To qualify for it, a person had to go through a series of tests to make certain they were either mentally or physically disabled. They taught people how to cook and manage money, along with other necessary skills. Once Gary and Tom had taken over his life, Ian had stopped attending any of the programs held in the recreation room. Several times he’d thought of sneaking out of the motel room and calling his mother from the pay phone down by the office. He wanted to tell her that he loved her and appreciated everything she’d done for him, that he was sorry for causing her such heartache.

  One of the primary reasons the Rubinskys didn’t want Elizabeth snooping around was the credit card. When she’d arranged for Ian to get his own MasterCard, Ian’s mother had made him promise that he would only use it in case of an emergency. Opening his wallet, he pulled out a small piece of paper where he’d been attempting to keep track of how much they were spending.
He wasn’t that good with math, though, and Gary and Tom took his credit card and charged things without even asking.

  The most serious problem was the car theft. Ian had nightmares about what he’d done, certain that if the court didn’t send him to prison for the robbery, they would put him away for stealing the car. As soon as the attorney had posted their bail, Gary had coerced Ian into stealing the keys to his family’s business. Elizabeth and Ian’s uncle Carl were partners in a company called ABC Towing and Storage. ABC had a contract with the city to handle their abandoned vehicles in addition to their regular service calls. Everyone had always laughed about the name. When people asked Uncle Carl what he did for a living, he told them he owned ABC, knowing they would think he was referring to the television network. His uncle Carl was a pretty smart man. Using that name had made them a lot of money. When their car broke down on the road, people generally called information for the name of a towing company. Since telephone operators weren’t allowed to give recommendations, the caller would ask for the number to any towing company. The letters ABC were the first three letters of the alphabet, the first in the listings, and therefore, his family’s company received the majority of the calls.

  When the three were arrested, the police impounded the green 1996 Firebird that Ian’s mother had given him for his twenty-first birthday. Once they were released on bail, Gary said they couldn’t get by without transportation. Gary and Tom claimed to have sold their Jeep Pioneer a few weeks before reconnecting with Ian at the shopping center. Ian’s mother had warned him that the brothers would get him into trouble. In the beginning, Ian had been having too much fun to believe her. Gary and Tom had tons of friends, even as far away as San Diego. They took him to bars, parties, sporting events, introduced him to girls. The days sped by in such a flurry of activity Ian couldn’t remember half of the places they’d been to, or the dozens of people he’d met along the way.

  Once the police arrested them and impounded Ian’s Firebird, Gary came up with the idea of taking a car from the ABC lot. Ian had to admit there were tons of cars on that lot. Some owners never claimed their vehicles because the storage bills ended up being more than the cars were worth. After a certain period of time, the city allowed ABC to sell the cars to satisfy the storage fees. Ian had seen the same cars for as long as a year, most of them rusted out heaps that his family eventually sold to a wrecking yard.

  The only good thing about the car situation, Ian told himself, was that Gary and Tom hadn’t asked him to steal an expensive car, just anything that ran and had current plates on it. He’d found a 1996 Chrysler Cirrus with the side bashed in, but the car’s engine was in perfect condition and the registration was up to date.

  Beads of perspiration formed on Ian’s forehead. He’d never intentionally stolen anything. What if the police found out and thought his mother was involved? His sister, Pauline, had moved back home to help out when his mother had become ill. With the problems Ian had caused, he was fearful his mother would get sick again. Her face flashed in front of him. Her skin had been yellowish today, the way it had looked before she’d had the liver transplant.

  Ian buried his face in his hands. Gary and Tom swore they would return the car as soon as they were cleared on the robbery charges. They were certain Mr Dreiser would get them off. Then they would take the car back to the ABC lot, and no one would be the wiser. They weren’t really stealing anything, they kept telling him. Stealing meant keeping something forever. All they were doing was borrowing.

  The Rubinskys had insisted on taking one of the cars from Ian’s family’s business because they knew it wouldn’t show up on the police computer as a stolen vehicle, Ian’s mother had never said anything about the missing key, let alone the car. He assumed she had several keys to the storage lot and just thought she had lost it.

  The Chrysler was now in the parking lot at Costco, located next to Albertson’s supermarket, about three blocks from the Economy Inn. To make certain his mother didn’t see them driving the car to court, they left early every day and parked behind the jail where the prisoners were released. Ian had come up with that idea as he knew his mother would never park in a place where she didn’t feel safe. Ian doubted if she would recognize the car, anyway, not with everything else that was going on.

  “You didn’t eat any lunch today,” Tom commented. “Are you certain you’re not hungry?”

  “What are you now?” Gary asked. “Ian’s big brother or something? Maybe he needs to toughen up. Who cares if he eats or not? He can starve for all I care. All I want him to do is drive down to the comer and get us some food.”

  “And pay for it,” Ian mumbled under his breath.

  Gary spun around, pointing a finger at him. “Did you say what I think you said?”

  Tom placed his body between the two men. “Chill out, will you? He doesn’t have a lot of money left. Here, Ian,” he said, pulling out a twenty. “Go get us a bucket of chicken or something. We can’t use his credit card.”

  “Why not?” Gary asked. “We used it this afternoon and there wasn’t a problem.”

  “All Elizabeth has to do is call MasterCard and check on any recent charges,” Tom explained. “You don’t want her to know where we are, right?”

  “Ian, you stay here,” Gary said, a grim look on his face. He scooped up the keys to the Chrysler off the end table. “We’ve got to run an errand. Just make certain you’re here when we get back.”

  FIVE

  Thursday, February 8, 2001, 6:15 P.M.

  JOANNE WASN’T able to pull her car into the garage that evening as it was filled with Judge Spencer’s furniture. Since the Spencers had another home, they had graciously offered to remove their own furniture, saving Joanne the expense of storing her own during the six months they had agreed to lease her the house. She pried the key to the Lexus from her ring, then hid it under the floor mat. She doubted if Leah would pull the same stunt two nights in a row, but she didn’t want to take a chance.

  Judge Spencer’s house was a charming two-story, with shuttered windows and a spacious front porch. Most of the lots at Seacliff Point were long and narrow, the houses set a good distance back from the road. Covered with vines, a four-foot white picket fence surrounded the property, more for decoration than privacy Two enormous sycamore trees stood on either side of the stone path leading to the front door. Through the years their branches had intertwined so that they now formed a canopy, shading the house from the harsh glare of the afternoon sun.

  Joanne wished she didn’t have to go through the ordeal of uprooting the children. Even if another home were to become available at Sea-cliff Point, though, the prices were outrageous. Most people would classify the Spencers’ house as a beach house. In another location, it would probably sell somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred thousand dollars. Emily had told her that the last house that had changed hands inside Seacliff Point had sold for over two million, and it was even smaller than the Spencers’ home.

  Few communities had a private stretch of beach, which was part of the exclusivity of Seacliff Point. Restricting the public was illegal, yet no one could dispute what nature had created. It wasn’t just the cliffs, but the ocean currents that swirled around them. People who passed through the front gates felt as if they’d been handed the keys to paradise.

  Living in a picturesque area was certainly pleasant, Joanne thought, but individuals who tricked themselves into believing that wealth, privilege, public recognition, or any material possession would lead to genuine happiness were in for a rude awakening. This was a lesson Joanne knew well, for she had learned it the hard way.

  Although the ocean wasn’t visible from the main floor of the Spencers’ house, the master bedroom had a magnificent view, the trees formed a living picture frame around the sparkling water. During the days when she was convinced she would never see Leah or Mike’s face again, never hear their voices, never hold them, laugh with them, love them, the ocean had seemed like a cold and desolate place.
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br />   Mike was waving at her from the living room through the plate-glass window. She looked toward the north side of the house and saw Leah rummaging around in the kitchen. Her spirits soared as she flung open the front door. She could be happy in a tent as long she knew her children would be waiting for her at the end of the day. In the past, she’d been no different than any other person, dreaming of the day when Doug would hit it big with one of his computer programs and they could live in luxury. Amazing, she thought, how rapidly a person’s values could be realigned.

  Mike opened his arms as his mother walked toward him. Her son was not only mature for his age, at five-ten, he towered over both his mother and older sister. And he was a hardy boy He didn’t lift weights or express much of an interest in sports, but he was strong and muscular. She assumed he had inherited his father’s genetic makeup. Doug was six-five, so her son was probably a fraction of the size he would be once he reached full maturity. Mike’s hair was thick and black like his father’s, his olive skin unblemished, and his brown eyes were fringed with long lashes.

  “How was school, big guy?” Joanne said, relishing the warmth of her son’s embrace.

  “Fine,” he said, hyped up about something. “They’re having a party at the beach Friday night. Can I go?”

  “Who’s ‘they’?” she asked, placing her hands on her hips.

  “You know,” Mike answered, “some of the kids that live here.”

  Joanne had heard rumors about the young people’s activities, if a kid wanted to party, Seacliff Point was the place to live. Teenagers were known to gather at the beach and get drunk, most of the time on alcohol they swiped from their parents. Since Seacliff Point had incorporated as a private city, no one had to worry about getting arrested. The security guards employed by the homeowners’ association manned the front gate but they didn’t patrol.