Jack understood that. He rubbed his chest, trying to will his heart to stop pounding so hard. From where he sat, he could hear the rush of the waves outside and the caw of the seagulls. Slowly, he shifted his hand between the buttons of his shirt and removed another hundred-dollar bill. “I came to Hawaii to build a different life for myself,” he breathed, hardly able to speak. “I came here because I couldn’t be myself elsewhere. As a teenager, my uncle set me up to be a criminal. Maybe you could say I was old enough to know better. Or perhaps you could see it the way I do, which is that I was young and naive and looking up to my uncle for guidance. In any case, what happened after that tore my family apart. In Hawaii, I’ve been able to build a new family. One of my own. And I have no interest in letting my Tio Angelo tear this one apart as well.”
Jack wasn’t sure why he thought pleading to Ricki’s emotional side would help his case. He searched for compassion in Ricki’s eyes but couldn’t find it.
But then, he watched Ricki reach for that fourth hundred-dollar bill. He looked contemplative, like he was on the brink. Pushing his luck, Jack reached for another bill, followed by another. He watched Ricki count out his six hundred dollars, his lips fluttering.
Ricki said, “All right, man. I think we might be able to work something out.”
Chapter Nine
In the wake of his conversation with Ricki, Jack knew he had to move quickly. He leaped into his car and immediately tried to call Addison. He needed to come up with some excuse, something that would assure her that he’d left but that he’d be back soon. She couldn’t think that he’d never return to her and the kids. But Addison didn’t pick up, not then, nor thirty seconds later. He racked his brain to try to remember her schedule and guessed that she was meeting with both her father and one of the more prominent guests of their Golden Sunset Hotel. He knew how she could be around her father—everything she did had to be calculated to avoid angering him. Flooring the gas pedal, Jack smashed his hand against the steering wheel and drove toward the airport, telling himself that he had to get Addison on the line before he boarded. But what could he tell her? How could he explain?
He felt as though he’d spent all his available lies on his identity as Seth Green. He felt as though he couldn’t keep lying and lying and lying. He was digging himself an even deeper hole.
But Jack knew better than to park his car at the airport. Although he prayed he’d only be gone a few days, he knew their wallet couldn’t take the hit of multiple weeks in long-termparking, especially not in Hawaii, where prices were going up and up and up. Instead, he diverted his route and found a spot under a shady tree not far from a bus he knew would take him the rest of the way. He’d come find the car after this was all over. Hauling himself onto the bus, he let his fingers flicker over the remaining cash in his shirt and pants, plus his passport and the few things he’d packed in his bag. It was the same backpack he’d brought with him to Hawaii fifteen years ago. It felt like his oldest friend.
When Jack reached the terminal, something terrifying occurred to him. Ricki said that Tio Angelo and his people had known where Jack was, exactly when he’d been there. It was why the notecard had been placed on his table at the right time. How could Tio Angelo track him? He was petrified. He tried to call Addison several more times. But the anxiety mounted so incredibly that he soon watched himself remove his SIM card, destroy it, and pour a bottle of water over his phone, which he then placed in the trash. As soon as he’d done it, he felt overwhelmed with shock and fear. Had he just eliminated his final link to his family, to his wife? What if he never saw her again?
But if he was going to Mexico to face off with his uncle, he had to go now. He shook all the way through the security line, and then he remained standing, shifting his weight from side to side as he waited for the plane to board. It was a full flight from Oahu to Mexico City, and he couldn’t help but imagine that nearly every person boarding was his uncle or related to his uncle in some way. He felt permanently on the brink of insanity.
He wondered where his father was in all of this, if his father was still in Hawaii, waiting and watching for Tio Angelo. He wished Benjamin would slow down to create a plan with Jack, rather than one that would separate them once more.
On the flight to Mexico City, Jack felt a cold coming on. He remembered that Gavin had been sniffling last night, and Addison had been worried. Jack asked for a can of ginger ale and a mug of tea, praying that he would feel better before they landed. But the opposite was so. By the time he got in a cab in Mexico City, he felt on the verge of a full-on flu. In Spanish, the driver told him he looked pale, and he even put on a face mask, glancing back at Jack angrily, as though Jack himself was going to be responsible for a new pandemic. With his mastery of Italian, Jack could understand almost everything he said, but he was too exhausted to respond.
Jack had asked the cab driver to take him to the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, where he figured he could get a decent hotel and a bite to eat. Stumbling into the nearest okay-looking hotel he could find, he paid for a week in the room in cash, feeling so delirious that he barely made it through the conversation. On the fourth floor, he collapsed in bed with the shakes, both hot and cold at the same time. He itched to call his wife; he itched to look at his phone. But his phone was in a trash can back in Hawaii, and he was here, lost in his ailing mind.
For three days, Jack was in and out of delirium. It was the worst illness he’d ever had. Frequently, he dropped into nightmares that involved the night of July 4th, 1998. In them, he was seventeen years old and terrified, running after his Tio Angelo and asking him what would happen to him. “Are the cops going to arrest me?” Jack cried, speaking in the dream a mix of Italian and English. “Is my mother going to find out?”
When Jack pulled himself out of his nightmares to drink water and order takeout to keep himself alive, he sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing sweat from his forehead and thinking back to 1998. He remembered how panicked he’d been to learn that his father, Benjamin, had been involved in Tio Angelo’s operations from the start. The story was that the White Oak Lodge neededmoney, and Benjamin had made an incorrect calculation that put the family in the red. He’d told Tio Angelo that he didn’t want to know anything about the mechanics of the dealing—but he wanted to help with the higher-up operational stuff for a cut of the profit. Tio Angelo had welcomed Benjamin’s help for numerous reasons.
It had terrified Jack to realize that his father was involved in such a criminal activity. Jack had seen himself as a sort of everyday soldier, the guy who went out there and hawked the drugs himself. He’d brought that guy Amos into the equation as well, needing more resources on the ground.
Benjamin had learned that Jack was involved in drug dealing around the same time that Jack had learned about his father’s involvement. It had been too much for both of them. The truth had smacked them both in the face.
On the night that Tio Angelo had set the fire to save himself, Jack had run through the night with his father. Benjamin had spoken clearly, certainly, and told him that he’d set everything up. “We’re going to have to leave everything behind,” Benjamin had said. “New names. New identities. New ways of being in the world.”
“I don’t want that, Dad,” Jack had retorted. He’d wanted to face the music, so to speak. He’d wanted to cooperate.
But his father seemed unable to handle the idea of his son going to prison. Jack suspected that sounded far worse to him than going to prison himself.
It was the first time Jack had reckoned with what it meant to love like a father. It meant loving your children far more than you loved yourself. Jack saw that in himself now.
When Jack’s cold broke, he stepped in front of the hotel mirror and reckoned with what he looked like now: pale and gaunt, with big black circles under his eyes. But he was losing time. Again, he checked the information that Ricki had given him back in Mexico—his cousin’s name, where he usually hung out, and where he worked. Ricki had refused to give his home address, which Jack understood. Something had to be protected.
Ricki’s cousin’s name was José. He worked at a furniture-making shop not far from Roma, specializing in beds, cribs, and rocking chairs. Terrified that José would recognize Jack from his dealings with Angelo, Jack wore a hat and sunglasses and stalked along the edge, impressed by the beautiful handiwork. He spotted José right away. He was in his late thirties, with shaggy black hair and large, capable hands. He spoke to incoming clients with kindness and excitement for his craft. It was hard to imagine how he’d gotten wrapped up with Tio Angelo.
Jack had begun to think of Tio Angelo like a poison that spread too quickly to catch.
But right before the furniture shop was set to close for the day, José stepped outside to have a cigarette in the sunshine. Jack had been daydreaming, thinking about Addison and his kids, and he couldn’t get out of José’s way in time. José said hello evenly and lit his cigarette. Jack froze, searching José’s face for signs that he recognized Jack. But there was nothing there.
Was it possible that he didn’t know who he was? Jack’s mouth went dry.
José asked Jack if he was interested in his furniture.
“It’s beautiful,” Jack said, grateful that his Spanish sounded clear. “You do everything yourself?”
José said he did, beaming. “My father taught me everything he knew. This used to be his place. I’ve changed the stylings a little bit to suit the modern times, but his skills are in everything I put out.”
“It’s something to be proud of,” Jack said, surprised at how emotional he felt. Once upon a time, his own father had wanted to pass on the White Oak Lodge not only to Alexander, who was the oldest, but to Jack and his daughters, too.