Chapter 31

It was a matter of symbolism. The Grimes clan always had their big celebrations at the Elegance, arguably one of the best and most expensive restaurants in the city; so, here we were.

“Thank you for coming,” said Nathan Grimes. I nodded.

“Yes, thank you, John Michael,” said Victoria Grimes.

“Okay, I’m here. Whaddya want?” I said. I was not being nice. There were just too many things.

“John, please,” she said. “Today is a very important day.” I shrugged.

“For you maybe, not for me,” I said. “I gotta go to work at 3:00 p.m. I got swing. Gotta make a living; you know how it is.”

“John, this meeting is about Selena,” said Nathan, finally reentering the lists. Now he’d stopped me. Well, nobody could fault the man’s ability to control situations, sure as hell not me.

“Selena? Is she all right?” I said. I got a look from Victoria for my clear concern.

“She’s fine, very healthy,” said Victoria. “It’s about other stuff.”

“Other stuff?” I said, not having a clue what they were about.

“Yes, a lot of other stuff. And, John Michael, you are not blowing me, us, off this time. I have two three-hundred pounders outside ready to kidnap you if you try to leave this sit down early!” he said.

He was kidding. Well, I was pretty sure he was. At all events, this was sure to be important at least to them. As for me, well, we’d be seeing.

“So?” I said.

“John, twenty-some years ago, I saw the most beautiful woman in the world, her,” he said, nodding toward my used-to-be wife. I had to have her. She was young so I hoped she was single.

I decided to put on the dog in a big way to impress the hell outta her, so that she could not deny me. And put on the dog I did, right out of the box. I made a call. I bought the hotel we were eating at lock stock and barrel and gave it to our waitress. That was phase one.

Phase two was me asking Victoria, I didn’t even know her name yet, if I could sit with her. She essentially told me to buzz off that she was married to the world’s greatest guy. But just as she did that, the waitress came up to us and asked if she still had a job because the owner, the old owner, had called her and told her that the place had a new owner—me. That led Victoria to agree to have dinner with me. I’m sure she was thinking that she might get me to help her out financially, and by inference you too.

“She did not, at that time tell me that you were in the slam. What she did say was that she was in Winslow to visit you. Winslow is a small town, why would she be coming up there to visit anybody. There could only be one likely reason: you were in prison. I didn’t know that for a fact, but I was betting on it. Dinner would be for the next night; it would be in Cancun. We flew down, in my plane.

“When I told her that I was going to marry her, she reminded me that she was already married to a great guy. I said I didn’t care because she was going to be mine regardless; she responded by throwing a glass of wine in my face.

“But, I had had you investigated; and yes, I can do stuff like that on a moment’s notice, so I had. I knew you were in prison, and I knew what for. I went for broke.

“I let her know that she would be better off and so would you if you she married me, and so would the baby. You were going to be in that awful place for fucking ever or damn close to it.

“I told her I would set you up for when you got out and that I would do my best to shorten your time inside; I did both things. I set up an account for you with ten million in it—which account is still yours if you have a brain in your head—which by the way I see as doubtful. And, I got you paroled in year eight of the fifteen you’d been sentenced to.

“John any normal guy would have seen the wisdom of the offer I was making you and Victoria. But, you are not a normal guy, not on any level.

“At any rate, then you caught us that fateful TG-day and damn near killed me. That got you sent back, and ironically, not because of me so much but because you also put two other guys in the hospital.

“And now for the biggee,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m dying to hear the big biggee!”

“John, I did not know that you had taken the fall for Victoria, not till you got out that first time. You cannot know how sick I felt once she confessed that to me. She told me right after I got out of the hospital, well, a few weeks after.

“It was then that I hired Darrell Cabot to cover your ass while you were inside.

“So anyway, at that point, three of us knew the truth; but, maybe the most important one, Selena, did not.

“A short time ago, Selena came to me and asked me for a big favor. She had gotten to the point where she wanted to know more about you, all about you. She wanted to tour Winslow State Prison and meet with inmates that knew you back then. To make a long story short, I fixed it so that she could and Victoria too. They both came back chastened and sick to death per what they’d learned,” he said.

“John,” said Victoria, “Selena and I talked to Carlos Mantea. He’d been identified for us by Darrell; we knew who to ask to see. He is a man who is totally evil. I got sick just listening to him tell us what he did to you, so did Selena.”

I looked over at the man. “You let them go to that place! Of all the... !” I said.