The House of Broken Backs: A Joanna Mason Novel Read online

  John

  "Hey, honey!" I call out as I swing the front door shut. "I'm home!"

  "Hey!" Sharon calls out from the kitchen. "The family man returns from his travels! Right on time, too! You hungry?"

  "You have no idea," I reply with a smile as I place my briefcase on the chair and then proceed to hang my coat up. "Something smells delicious. What's cooking?"

  "It's probably the pecan pie you can smell," she replies. "That's for dessert, though. First we've got lasagna to get through. It should be ready in about twenty minutes, and everything's under control, so you just need to put your fet up and relax. Do you want a glass of wine while we wait?"

  "Sure," I say calmly as I head through to the kitchen. As usual, Sharon is slaving away in there, working like a trooper as she keeps her eye on five or six different things at once. It's always something of a miracle to see the way that she can keep so many plates spinning in the air at one time without dropping any; she might not be a real beauty, and she's certainly not been blessed with great intelligence, but Sharon certainly has her areas of expertise. She's one of the few women who really do belong in a kitchen.

  "Hard time at work?" she asks as she pours us each a glass of wine.

  "Tell me about it," I say with a weary sigh.

  She wraps her arms around me and gives me a big hug. "We missed you," she says after a moment. "Two weeks is a long time for you to be gone, but I guess those insurance packages won't sell themselves."

  "I have to give it the personal touch," I remind her. "Until the robots take all our jobs, anyway."

  "I hope you're going to give me the personal touch later," she says, stepping back with a glint in her eye. "I still have a few wifely needs, you know."

  "Of course," I reply with a smile.

  "The kids are upstairs," she replies, handing me a glass and then raising her own toward me. "Cheers."

  We clink glasses, before each taking a sip.

  "Actually," I add, checking my watch, "I think I need to make a quick phone call to Barry in the accounts department. I'm sorry, honey, I know it's late, but those guys really need someone to crack the whip."

  "It's fine," she replies, stepping closer and kissing my cheek. "I know you're a busy guy, John. Do what you need to do, but try to be done in twenty minutes, okay? You can always keep working after dinner. I know they can't manage without you sometimes." She kisses the side of my neck. "My big, important husband."

  "And I can't manage without you," I reply, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her closer. "I hope the kids get to bed nice and early tonight," I add quietly. "I could really use some time to unwind. Just the two of us, you know?"

  She smiles, and it's clear that she knows exactly what I've got in mind.

  "I'd better go make that phone call," I add, carrying my glass of wine to the door before glancing back over at Sharon. For a moment, she almost looks appealing, although the thought of making love to her tonight is, at best, tolerable. "Back soon," I say, before heading out of the kitchen and along the corridor to my office. Once I've stepped inside and pushed the door shut, I walk over to the desk, take another sip of wine, and remove the latest burner phone from my pocket.

  "Fucking assholes," I mutter as I manually type in Albert's number and then wait as the ringtone starts.

  "It's me," he says as soon as he answers. "Who's this?"

  "Who the fuck do you think it is?" I whisper, keeping my voice low just in case Sharon or the kids might overhear. "You'd better have good news for me, cocksucker, or I swear to God I'll rip your body into so many shreds, a light breeze'll be enough to blow you away."

  "It's the Staten building," he replies, sounding stressed. "It's like I told you, there was a huge fuck-up. You remember that guy Manuel we hired to watch the girls? He completely flipped his shit and shot out from under us."

  "Tell me what happened," I say, forcing myself to stay calm even though I want to vent my fury. My hand is almost shaking as I take a sip of wine.

  "He gave a key to one of the girls -"

  "Jesus Christ," I splutter, "I thought you'd checked him out!"

  "I did!" Albert replies defensively. "I did! I swear, I did! It's like this fucking pang of conscience just came out of nowhere. Right? So he gave a key to one of the girls and then he shot through. Fortunately, I had a tracer on his truck, so I was able to get after him pretty damn fast." He pauses. "I caught up with him a few miles away and made sure he won't be a problem again."

  "Where'd you put the body?" I ask.

  "Usual place."

  "And the girls?"

  I wait for an answer.

  "Albert," I say firmly, feeling a rising sense of panic in my chest. "Are the girls secure?"

  "That's where it gets tricky."

  I take a deep breath, followed by another sip of wine. "Go on," I say eventually.

  "The job with Manuel took a little time," he continues, "and by the time I got back to the Staten building, the girls, well, most of them, were gone."

  "Gone?" I spit. "What do you mean gone? Thirty-five girls can't just fucking disappear in the blink of an eye!"

  "Seven were still there," he explains. "Just the ones who were too sick or scared to move. I dealt with them. Back of the head, like we agreed. They're totally out of the picture, but the other twenty-eight had already managed to get away. It wasn't easy to work out which way they'd gone -"

  "Jesus Christ," I whisper, realizing that this fuck-up is several magnitudes greater than I'd feared.

  "So it turns out," he continues, "they'd already reached this fucking farmhouse. Remember the one I told you about? The one that was abandoned a few miles away, and then some fucking hick asshole moved in with his wife? Well the girls went there. I guess they saw a light on or something. Pretty much all of them, together, and by the time I was in a position to do anything about it, the hicks had called the cops and the place was crawling."

  "Oh," I say quietly, "you incompetent fuck."

  "I torched the Staten building," he says. "That's the important thing, right? There's absolutely nothing to link any of this with us, or to any of the other sites. It's a clean cut." He waits for me to say something. "I mean, I know it's a big loss, but it's not the end of the world, right? We just have to accept that mistakes were made and see what we can do differently with the other buildings. We always knew that something like this might happen one day if we continued to expand."

  "A mistake?" I reply, barely able to spit the words out. "Is that what you call this? Thirty million dollars worth of human capital escapes from one of our buildings and you think the word 'mistake' is enough to cover it?" I take a deep breath, trying to stay calm. "Not to mention the investment we put in. No, scratch that... The investment I put in. Some of those girls were in their late teens and early twenties, for God's sake. They were beyond ripe!"

  "They won't talk," he continues. "They've got nothing to say. Hell, they can't even string together more than a few words, most of 'em, and it's not like they can describe us. They're just empty slabs of meat, dribbling along."

  "I should never have given you so much responsibility," I reply. "There. That's the fucking mistake at the heart of all this. I thought you could fucking handle a few extra parts of the job."

  "Hey," he replies, "it's Manuel who had the little moral moment and gave them a key -"

  "And who hired Manuel?" I hiss. "Jesus Christ, Albert, you fucking moron!"

  "Dinner!" Sharon shouts from the kitchen.

  "Christ," I whisper, taking another swig of wine.

  "What do you think we should do next?" Albert asks.

  "Do?" I pause as a thousand ideas race through my mind. "First," I continue, trying to sound a little calmer, "we focus on cleaning up after ourselves. We have to double check that there are no loose ends that could tie us to this fuck-up, and then we have to look at our forward strategy and see what we need to change. We just lost a third of our production base, and call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to kee
p that base as high as possible. And then..." I pause as I hear the clinking of cutlery elsewhere in the house; I guess the table is being set for dinner. "Meet me at the drop house," I add eventually, before checking my watch. "I'll be there at midnight, sharp. Don't be late."

  "Are you sure it's a good idea to meet right now?" he asks.

  "Oh yes," I say firmly. "It's a very fucking good idea."

  "I'm really sorry about this situation," he replies, "but you talked to Manuel, right? He seemed like a good guy."

  "Maybe that's the problem," I mutter. "Good guys are the last thing we need. They tend to have consciences. Just... Midnight. Be there."

  As soon as I've finished the call, I open the back of the phone and remove the battery, before swigging the last of the wine and trying to regather my composure. I always knew that delegating responsibility would lead to fuck-ups, but I never thought things would get quite this bad. I guess I made the mistake of trusting Albert, and now I can see that my original instincts were right all along: the only person I can trust is myself, and I need to view everyone else as expendable. This is, at heart, a one-man operation.

  "Honey!" Sharon calls from the kitchen, as I hear the sound of the children running down from their rooms. "Dinner's up! Come and get it!"

  Joanna Mason

  "Hello," says a familiar, bitchy voice on the other end of the line. "Elaine Dawson speaking."

  I open my mouth to say something, but the words catch in my throat. To be honest, it had never occurred to me that when I called Dawson's phone, Elaine might answer instead. Still, I can't exactly hang up; she'd inevitably realize it was me, and then there'd be a whole mess and she'd totally get the wrong idea. Taking another sip of beer, I pause for a moment and try to think of something polite to say to her. It's not easy.

  "Hello?" she says again. "Joanna? Is that you?"

  "Hi," I reply, signaling to the barman for another drink. "Yeah, it's Joanna Mason. I'm sorry, I thought this was Mike's phone."

  "He's in the shower," she says with a confident, slightly mocking tone to her voice. "He left his phone by the bed. I don't normally answer his calls, but... Is there something in particular that you wanted, Joanna?"

  "No," I reply, my mind racing as I try to work out how to cover my ass here. "I guess I was just calling to... check up on some... cases we were discussing a while back."

  "Cases?" she says. "I was under the impression that you were still off work sick?"

  "That's right," I say, counting out some notes for the barman as he places a beer in front of me. "The thing is, I've been off work for so long, I've actually started to think about some of the old cases that we never quite tied up, and I was just calling to see if Mike might be able to send me some documents by email." I pause, relieved that I've finally stumbled upon a reasonable explanation. Even the psychotically jealous Elaine should believe this one. "It's nothing urgent, really. I just thought it'd be a good way for me to pass the time and maybe contribute something. You know, my sick pay is building up, and I feel kinda guilty not doing anything to earn it."

  "I'll be sure to let him know," she replies, with the very faintest edge of grit to her voice. "And how are you doing, Joanna? I heard you'd taken time off for health reasons."

  "It's nothing important," I say quickly. "Trivial shit, you know?"

  "It can't be that trivial," she replies, "not if you've been off for three whole months."

  "I'm just gaming the system," I add, trying to sound like I'm making a joke. "You know, dragging my heels a little, coughing a few extra times, generally making myself seem sicker than I actually am. I mean, why go back to work when I can just sit around pulling sick pay, right?" I pause for a moment, keenly aware that I just contradicted myself; the truth is, I'm desperate to get back to work, but I need Dr. Gibson to sign off on the decision, and then I need Schumacher to make the first move. There's no way I can just go marching back into the office and ask if they need some extra help. I don't want to seem so goddamn desperate.

  "Well as long as you're okay," Elaine says after a moment, sounding a little concerned. "Obviously, when Mike told me that you were off sick, I was concerned that..."

  I wait for her to finish the sentence, but she seems to be leaving it hanging on purpose.

  "You thought my cancer had come back?" I ask, keen to push her into uncomfortable territory.

  "Well..."

  "It hasn't," I lie. "I'm fine. It was a totally unrelated and completely non-life-threatening thing that just knocked me off my perch for a few months." I pause for a moment, feeling a little disturbed by the fact that for the first time in years, maybe even the first time ever, I'm talking to Elaine is if she's a normal human being rather than the spawn of Satan. "Don't worry," I add, "there's no need to start planning what to wear to my funeral. Not just yet, anyway. The worst thing is that I really miss working with Mike. We have a lot of fun together. I miss his smile."

  "I'm sure he misses you too," she replies icily.

  "I guess I just wanted to hear his voice," I add, layering on some extra charm. Elaine has always been worried about the closeness between Mike and me, and sometimes it's fun to play with her jealousy. "Mike's a good guy," I continue, "but I guess you know that already. Don't worry, though. I'll call back some time and arrange to meet him for a drink. I know this little bar, real out of the way, where they've got great booths and -"

  "I don't think Mike really likes going to bars much these days," she says. "That's more of a single person's lifestyle."

  "Really?" I reply with a smile. "That's news to me."

  "Joanna," she says suddenly, interrupting me, "I'm so sorry, but I'm gonna have to get off the phone. I think I hear the oven timer beeping, and Mike's still in the bathroom, so I'd better get going."

  "Cooking up a storm, huh?" I reply, glad that I've managed to piss her off.

  "Actually, it's my..." She pauses.

  "Birthday?" I ask. "How old?"

  "It's not my birthday," she replies. "We're just having some friends over for a little celebration. I thought Mike would have told you, but I guess you can't have talked to him for a while. I'm actually pregnant, Joanna. I've just entered my second trimester, so we're going to have a spring baby."

  I look down at my beer, and for a fraction of a second I feel as if my entire mind has been derailed. I should say something smart and witty, perhaps even a little cutting, but all I can do is replay those last few sentences over and over, as if they're cutting through me. Even though I know that this is an irrational response, I can't shake it. I was winning this conversation right up until that last little bit about a baby, and now I'm floundering.

  "I really have to go," she continues, "but I'll tell Mike you called, and maybe we should all get together some time. At a restaurant, perhaps? I hope you're feeling a lot better soon."

  "Yeah," I say, keenly aware that I've kind of hit the buffers. "Yeah, you too. Good luck."

  Once the call is over, I'm left sitting alone at the bar, staring at my beer and trying to get my shit together. Since I stopped taking the cancer drugs, my mind has been pretty clear, but suddenly it's as if all my thoughts are rushing in different directions, colliding and spinning off into the ether. For a moment, I'm convinced that somehow the drugs have found a way to strike back at me, but finally I realize that this is something else entirely.

  A baby.

  Mike and Elaine are having a baby.

  After taking a swig of beer, I hold the glass up to the light and watch the bubbles. There's absolutely no reason why this news should have affected me at all, and yet I've got this empty, aching feeling in my gut. All I want right now is to just rewind time and go back to a moment before I called Mike's number. Damn it, that was a real moment of weakness. I'm sure Elaine'll tell him I tried to get in touch, and he'll realize that I cracked first. Taking another swig, I check my watch and see that it's just after 5pm. I'd only planned to come in for a quick drink, but suddenly I feel as if I might stay until closin
g time.

  I take another swig of beer.

  Damn it, why the hell would Mike want to have a baby with that shrill, manipulative bitch? It was bad enough when he married her, but now he's letting her get her hooks even deeper into his flesh. I really thought he was smarter. I guess that's the real reason the news has affected me so badly: I just hate to see a friend getting sucked deeper into a bad relationship, but I guess you just can't save some people from their own bad decisions.

  "Send me a whiskey," I say to the barman. "Make it a double."

  John

  "So we were talking," Sharon says, smiling at me in that way she does whenever she and the kids have come up with a plan, "and we thought that maybe you'd like to head off on vacation after Christmas. Maybe somewhere abroad?"

  "Abroad, huh?" I reply, struggling to focus on the dinner conversation when all I really want to do is race to the Staten building and find out what the hell kind of mess Albert has caused. "Whatever, um... Whatever made you think of something like that?"

  "I want to go to London," Kieran says excitedly.

  "You do, do you?" I say, keeping things purposefully vague. "And why's that?"

  "I want to see where Harry Potter lives!"

  I glance over at Sharon and see the look of happiness in her eyes. She clearly agrees with Kieran and thinks our family should go away together; she knows we have enough money to afford an ambitious trip, and I guess she feels that after the past few tumultuous years, we deserve some time to relax. It must be hard for her, being stuck here with the kids for weeks on end when I'm away on 'business'; by rights, she's owed a good time.

  "Daddy," Kieran continues, "can we go? Please?"

  "I tried to keep him from getting too excited," Sharon says with a smile, "but one of his friends went to England recently and told him all about it. His head's been filled with all sorts of ideas, and he's been looking at photos online."