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What he did know was that the hardest part was yet to come. That would take place when he arrived home. When he walked in the door and had to explain to his family, who had trusted and respected him, how the smoothly climbing arc that had been their lives the past two decades had basically been blown from the sky. How everything they counted on and took for granted was gone.
He’d always been the rock, the provider. He always talked about pride and family. His handshake was his bond. Now everything was about to change.
Raab felt his stomach churn. What would they think of him? How would they understand?
The car pulled off the thruway at Exit 16, traveled north along Palmer into the town of Larchmont. These were the streets, stores, and markets he saw every day.
By tomorrow this would all be public. It would be in the papers. It would be all over the club, the local shops, Em and Justin’s school.
Raab’s stomach started to grind.
One day they’ll understand, he told himself. One day, they will have to see me the same way. As a husband and a provider. As a father. As the person he’d always been. And forgive me.
He had been a coach to Emily. He had given Kate her insulin shots when she was ill. He had been a good husband to Sharon. All these years.
That was no lie.
The limo turned down Larchmont Avenue, heading toward the water. Raab tensed. The houses grew familiar. These were the people he knew. People his kids went to school with.
On Sea Wall the Lincoln turned right, and then it was only a short block with the sound directly in front of them, to the large fieldstone pillars, and then on to the spacious Tudor house at the end of the landscaped drive.
Raab let out a measured breath.
He knew he had let them down—their faith, their trust. But there was no turning back now. And he knew that what happened today would not be the end of it.
When the truth came out, he would let them down a whole lot more.
“You want me to come in with you?” Mel asked, squeezing Raab’s arm as the car pulled into the pebbled driveway.
“No.” Raab shook his head.
It was only a house. What’s important is the people in it. Whatever he’d had to do, his family hadn’t been a lie.
“This I have to do alone.”
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_a096d093-6324-5d54-9dd1-cf1c115e696c)
Kate was in the kitchen with her mother and Em when the black limo turned down the drive.
“It’s Dad!” Emily shouted, still in her squash clothes. She made a beeline for the front door.
Kate saw her mother’s hesitation. It was as if she couldn’t move, or was afraid to. As if she were afraid what opening that door would reveal.
“It’s going to be okay.” Kate took her arm and led her to the door. “Whatever it is, you know, Dad’ll make it okay.”
Sharon nodded.
They watched him climb out of the car, accompanied by Mel Kipstein, whom Kate knew from the club. Emily bolted down the flagstone steps and straight into her father’s arms. “Daddy!”
Raab just stood there for a moment, hugging her, staring up at Kate and her mom over his younger daughter’s shoulder as they stood on the landing. He had an ashen shadow on his face. He could barely look at them.
“Oh, Ben …” Sharon slowly came down the steps, tears in her eyes. They hugged. A hug aching with worry and uncertainty, deeper than Kate could remember seeing in years.
“Pumpkin.” Her father’s face brightened as his eyes met Kate’s. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Of course I’m here, Daddy.” Kate ran down to the driveway and put her arms around him, too. She placed her head on his shoulder. She could never remember seeing shame on her father’s face before.
“And you too, champ.” He reached out for Justin, who had just come up behind them, mussing his son’s shaggy brown hair.
“Hey, Dad.” Justin leaned against him. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” He did his best to smile. “I am now.”
Together they went inside.
For Kate, the huge stone house by the water had never really felt like home. “Home” had been the more modest, fifties ranch where she’d grown up in Harrison, a couple of towns away. With her cramped corner room covered in posters of U-2 and Gwyneth Paltrow, the marshy little pond in back, and the constant whoosh of traffic off the back deck from the Hutchinson Parkway.
But Raab had bought this place in her senior year. His dream house—with its large Palladian windows overlooking the Sound, the gargantuan kitchen with two of everything—Sub-Zeros, dishwashers—the flashy basement theater some Wall Street guy had decked out to the nines, the five-car garage.
They all took a seat in the tall, beamed living room. Kate, with her mother, in front of the fireplace. Emily plopped herself on her father’s lap in the high-backed leather chair. Justin pulled up the tufted ottoman.
There was a weird, uncomfortable silence.
“So we gonna start with your day,” Kate quipped, trying to cut the tension, “or would you like to hear about mine?”
That made her dad smile. “First, I don’t want any of you to be afraid,” he said. “You’re going to hear some terrible things about me. The most important thing is that you understand I’m innocent. Mel says we’ve got a solid case.”
“Of course we know you’re innocent, Ben,” said Sharon. “But innocent of what?”
Kate’s dad let out a nervous breath and gently moved Emily to an adjacent chair.
“Money laundering. Conspiracy to commit fraud. Aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise—that enough?”
“Conspiracy …” Sharon’s jaw dropped open. “Conspiracy with whom, Ben?”
“Basically, what they’re saying”—he locked his fingers together—“is that I provided some merchandise to people who ultimately did some bad things with it.”
“Merchandise?” Emily echoed, not understanding.
“Gold, honey.” Ben exhaled.
“So what’s wrong with that?” Kate shrugged. “You’re in the trading business, aren’t you? That’s what you do.”
“Believe me, I tried to make that point—but in this case I may have made some mistakes.”
Sharon stared at him. “You provided this gold to whom, Ben? What kind of people are we talking about?”
Raab swallowed. He moved his chair a little closer to her and wrapped his fingers around her hand.
“Drug traffickers, Sharon. Colombians.”
Sharon let out a gasp—half laughing, half incredulous. “You must be kidding, Ben.”
“Now, I didn’t know who they were, and all I did was provide the gold, Sharon, you have to believe that. But there’s more. I introduced them to someone. Someone who altered what I sold them. In an illegal way. Into things like tools, bookends, desk ornaments—and painted them over. So they could ship them back home.”
“Home?” Sharon squinted. She looked over to Kate. “I don’t understand.”
“Out of the country, Sharon. Back to Colombia.”
Kate’s mother’s hand flew to her cheek. “Oh, my God, Ben, what have you done?”
“Look, these people came to me.” Raab squeezed his hand around hers. “I didn’t know what they were doing or who they were. They were some export company. I did what I always do. I sold them gold.”
“Then I don’t understand,” Kate cut in. “How can they arrest you for that?”
“Unfortunately, it’s slightly more complicated, pumpkin,” her father said, shifting back. “I set them up with someone, in order to accomplish what they wanted. And I also took some payments, which makes it seem like I was a party to what was going on.”
“Were you?”
“Was I what, Sharon?”
“Were you a party to what was going on?”
“Of course not, Sharon. I just—”
“So who the hell did you introduce them to, Ben?” Sharon’s voice rose, tense and alarmed.
Raab cleared his throat and looked down. “Harold Kornreich. He’s been arrested, too.”
“Jesus Christ, Ben, what have the two of you done?”
Kate felt her own stomach tie into a knot. Harold Kornreich was one of her dad’s business buddies. They went to trade shows together. He and Audrey had come to her bat mitzvah. It was like they were two stupid white guys who had walked into a scam. Except her dad wasn’t exactly stupid. And he had taken money—from criminals. Drug dealers. You didn’t exactly have to be a constitutional scholar to see that this wasn’t about to just go away.
“Now, there’s no grounds to prove I knew exactly what was going on,” her father said. “I’m not even sure they really want to focus on me.”
“Then what do they want?” Sharon asked, her gaze troubled and wide.
“What they want is for me to roll.”
“Roll …?”
“Testify, Sharon. Against Harold. The Colombians, too.”
“At a trial?”
“Yes.” He swallowed resignedly. “At a trial.”
“No!” Sharon stood up. Tears of anger and bewilderment flashed in her eyes. “That’s how we get to keep our life? By turning state’s evidence against one of your closest friends? You’re not going to do that, are you, Ben? It would be like admitting you were guilty. Harold and Audrey are our friends. You sold these people gold. What they did with it is their business. We’re going to fight this, aren’t we, Ben? Isn’t that right?”
“Of course we’re going to fight this, Sharon. It’s just that—”
“It’s just that what, Ben?” Sharon kept her gaze on him, razor sharp.
“It’s just that the payments I took from these guys all these years don’t exactly make me look innocent, Sharon.”
His voice had elevated, and there was something in it Kate had never heard in her dad before. That he was afraid, and not entirely blameless. That maybe he wasn’t going to be able to make this come out okay. They all sat there looking at him, trying to figure out just what that meant.
“You’re not going to go to jail, are you, Dad?”
It was Justin, in a voice that was halting and tight. The question that was suddenly front and center in everyone’s mind.
“Of course not, champ.” His father pulled him close and stroked his bushy brown hair and looked past him. At Kate.
“No one in this family’s going to jail.”
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_99deacc9-c1c7-5e98-a3fd-889abab6f323)
Luis Prado didn’t ask too many questions.
He’d been in the United States for four years now. His papers said he was here to visit a sister, but that was a lie. He had no family here.
He’d come here to do work. He was handpicked because of the way he handled himself back home. And what he did, Luis did very well.
He did jobs for the Mercados. Dirty jobs. The kind you did because of the oath you had sworn. You didn’t look into someone’s face. You looked through them. You didn’t ask why.
That’s what had gotten him out of the slums of Carmenes. What enabled him to send money back home to his wife and child—more money than he could ever dream of there. What paid for the fancy suits he wore and the private tables at the salsa clubs—and the occasional woman he met there who looked at him with pride.
It’s what separated him from the desesperados back home. A man with no worth. No significance. Nothing.
The driver, a cocky kid named Tomás, played with the radio in the customized Cadillac Escalade while he drove. “Ha!” He tapped his hands against the wheel to the steady salsa beat. “José Alberto. El Canario.”
The kid was probably no more than twenty-one, but he had already cut his cherry and would drive through a fucking building if he had to get out the other side. He was fearless and good, if maybe a little reckless, but that was just what was needed now. Luis had worked with him before.
They drove north out of the Bronx. Through the kinds of neighborhoods they had never seen before. Places that when Luis was just a kid back home were only hidden behind high fences, with guards at the gates. Maybe, Luis thought as they passed by, if he did his jobs and played his cards right, one day he might have such a home.
They followed the route from the highway carefully. They retraced it, making sure they knew the lights, the turns. They had to be able to retrace it, fast, on the way out.
It went back a long way, Luis thought. Cousins, brothers. Whole families. They all made the same oath. Fraternidad. If he died for his work, so be it. It was a lifelong tie. However long or short that was.
They drove down a dark, shaded street and pulled up outside a large house. They cut the lights. Someone was walking a dog down by the water. They waited until the person was well out of sight, checking their watches.
“Let’s go, hermano.” Tomás drummed against the wheel. “It’s salsa time!”
Luis opened the satchel under his feet. His boss had been very specific about this job. Precisely what had to be done. Luis didn’t care. He had never met the person. He wasn’t even a name to him. All he was told was that they could do harm to the family—and that was enough.
That was everything.
Luis never thought too much about details when it came to work. In fact, only one word ran through his brain as he stepped out of the car in front of the fancy, well-lit house and drew back the TEC-9 automatic machine pistol with an extra clip.
