The Blue Zone. Andrew Gross

Чтение книги онлайн.

       CHAPTER FIVE

      Kate barely caught the 12:10 train at Fordham Road to get back to her parents’ home in Larchmont, squeezing into the last car just as the doors were about to close.

      All she’d had time to do was grab a few personal things and leave a cryptic message for Greg on the way: “Something’s happened with Ben. I’m heading up to the house. I’ll let you know when I know more.”

      It took until the train pulled away from the station and Kate found herself in the midday emptiness of the car for it to hit her—body-slam her, was more like it—just what her mother had said.

      Her father had been arrested by the FBI.

      If she hadn’t heard the panic in her voice she would have thought it was some kind of joke. Money laundering. Conspiracy. That was crazy.… Her dad was one of the straightest shooters she knew.

      Sure, maybe he might finagle a commission here or there. Or put a family meal on the company tab once in a while. Or fudge his taxes.… Everyone did that.

      But RICO statutes … abetting a criminal enterprise … the FBI … This was nuts. She knew her father. She knew what kind of man he was. There was absolutely no possible way.…

      Kate bought a ticket from the conductor, then leaned her head against the window, trying to catch her breath.

      Reputation was everything to her dad, he always said. His business was based on it. He didn’t have salesmen or some fancy arbitrage program or a back room filled with hustling traders. He had himself. He had his contacts, his years in business. He had his reputation. What else was there beyond his word?

      Once, Kate recalled, he had refused to handle a large estate sale—it was well into seven figures—just because the executor had shopped it to a friendly competitor on the Street and Dad didn’t like the appearance that he’d been bidding for the job against his friend.

      And another time he’d taken back an eight-carat diamond he’d brokered in a private sale after two years. Just because some shyster appraiser the buyer had found later insisted that the stone was a little hazy. A six-figure sale. Hazy? Even Em and Justin told him he was nuts to do it. The stone hadn’t changed! The woman just didn’t want it anymore.

      The Metro-North train rattled past the housing projects in the Bronx. Kate sank back in her seat. She was worried for him, what he must be feeling. She closed her eyes.

      She was the oldest—by six years. How many times had her father told her what a special bond that created between them? It’s our little secret, pumpkin. They even had their own little private greeting. They had seen it in some movie and it just stuck: a one-fingered wave.

      She looked a bit different from the rest of them. She was wide-eyed and pretty, kind of like Natalie Portman, everybody always said. Her hair was shoulder-length and light brown. Everyone else’s was thicker and darker. And those sharp green eyes—where did those come from? Flipped chromosomes, Kate always explained. You know, the dominant-recessive Y … how it skips a generation.

      “Pretty,” her dad would tease her. “I just can’t figure out how she got to be so smart.”

      Leaning against the glass, Kate thought of how many times he had come through for her.

      For all of them.

      How he’d leave work early to come home and catch her soccer games in high school, once even hopping a plane a day early from the Orient when her team had made the district finals. Or drive all over the Northeast to Emily’s squash tournaments—she was one of the top-ranked juniors in Westchester County—and coax her back to earth when that famous temper got the best of her after she lost a tough match.

      Or how at Brown, after Kate had gotten sick, when she took up crew, he’d drive up on weekends and sit there on the shore and watch her row.

      Kate always figured that her dad was such a committed family guy because, truth was, growing up, he’d never had much of one of his own. His mother, Rosa, had come over from Spain when he was a boy. His father had died there, a streetcar accident or something. Kate actually never knew that much about him. And his mother had died young as well, while he was putting himself through NYU. Everyone admired her father. At the club, in his business, their friends—that’s why this didn’t make any sense.

       What the hell did you do, Daddy?

      Suddenly Kate’s head started to throb. She felt the familiar pressure digging into her eyes, the dryness in her throat, followed by the wave of fatigue.

      Shit …

      She knew that this might happen. It always came on with stress. It didn’t take but a second to recognize the signs.

      She dug through her bag and found her Accu-Chek—her blood monitor. She’d been diagnosed when she was seventeen, her senior year.

      Diabetes. Type 1. The real deal.

      Kate had gotten a little depressed at first. Her life underwent a radical change. She’d had to drop soccer. She didn’t take her SATs. She had to watch her diet strictly when everyone else was going out for pizza or partying on Saturday nights.

      And once she had even fallen into a hypoglycemic coma. She was cramming for a test in the school cafeteria when her fingers began to grow numb and the pen slipped out of her hand. Kate didn’t know what was happening. СКАЧАТЬ