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“And you can make a living at that?”
He shrugged. “No, not really. It’s something to do.”
“Like tennis?”
“Oh, I don’t play.”
She just looked at him.
“My wife does. Second wife actually. Some would call her a trophy wife. She kept whining about how she gave up this wonderful career to watch the kids, but really, she plays tennis all day. When I lost my job, I suggested that she go back to work. She told me that it was too late now. So she still plays tennis every day. And she hates me now. She can barely look at me. So I wear the tennis whites too.”
“Because . . . ?”
“I don’t know. A protest, I guess. I dumped a good woman—hurt her horribly—for a hottie. Now the good woman has moved on and doesn’t even have the good sense to be mad at me anymore. I guess I got what I deserved, right?”
Wendy had no interest in going there. She looked at the screen. “What are you selling now?”
“Ten-A-Fly souvenirs. I mean, we’re selling his CD, of course.”
There were copies on the table. Ten-A-Fly dressed like Snoop Dogg on a bender making gangsta hand signs that made one think not so much of intimidation as an unusual state of palsy. The CD was titled Unsprung in Suburbia.
“Unsprung?” Wendy asked.
“Ghetto slang,” Doug of the Tennis Whites explained.
“For?”
“You don’t want to know. Anyway, we’re selling those CDs, T-shirts, caps, key chains, posters. But now I’m putting up one-of-a-kind items. Like, see here, that’s the actual bandana Ten-A-Fly wore onstage last night.”
Wendy looked and couldn’t believe the bidding. “It’s up to six hundred dollars?”
“Six-twenty now. Like I said, a lot of action. The panties a fan threw up onstage are also a hot item.”
Wendy looked back at Fly. “Wasn’t the fan your wife?”
“Your point?”
Good question. “Absolutely none. Is Phil here?”
As she asked the question, Wendy spotted him behind the counter talking to the barista. He was smiling when he turned and saw her. The smile anvil-dropped off his face. Phil hurried toward her. Wendy met him halfway.
“What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk.”
“We already talked.”
“We need to talk more.”
“I don’t know anything.”
She took a step closer to him. “Do you not get that there is still a girl missing?”
Phil closed his eyes. “Yeah, I get it,” he said. “It’s just . . . I don’t know anything.”
“Five minutes. For Haley’s sake.”
Phil nodded. They moved over to a table in the corner. It was rectangular and had a handicap logo with the words “Please offer this table to our disabled customers.”
“During your freshman year at Princeton,” Wendy said, “who else did you and Dan room with in college?”
Phil frowned. “What could that possibly matter?”
“Just answer, okay?”
“There were five of us. Besides Dan and me, there was Farley Parks, Kelvin Tilfer, and Steve Miciano.”
“Did you guys room together other years?”
“Are you serious?”
“Please.”
“Yeah. Well, sophomore year—or maybe junior—Steve did a semester in Spain. Barcelona or Madrid. And junior year, I think, Farley lived in a frat house.”
“You didn’t join a fraternity?”
“No. Oh, and I was gone first semester senior year. Did a program in London. Happy?”
“Do you guys stay in touch?”
“Not really.”
“How about Kelvin Tilfer?”
“I haven’t heard from him since graduation.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
Phil shook his head. A barista brought over a cup of coffee and placed it in front of Phil. Phil looked toward Wendy, seeing if she wanted one, but she shook him off. “Kelvin was from the Bronx. Maybe he’s back there, I don’t know.”
“How about the others? You ever talk to them?”
“I hear from Farley, though it’s been a while. Sherry and I held a fund-raiser for him last year. He was running for Congress, but it didn’t work out.”
“Well, Phil, that’s the thing.”
“What is?”
“It didn’t work out for any of you.”
He put his hand on the cup but didn’t lift it. “I’m not following.”
She took the printouts from a manila envelope and laid them on the desk.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Let’s start with you.”
“What about me?
“A year ago, you go down for embezzling over two million dollars.”
His eyes widened. “How do you know that number?”
“I have my sources.”
“The charges are total crap. I didn’t do it.”
“I’m not saying you did. Just bear with me, okay? First, you go down for embezzling.” She opened another folder. “Two months later, Farley gets ruined by a political scandal involving a prostitute.” The next file. “A month or so after that, Dan Mercer gets nailed on my TV show. And then, skip ahead another two months, Dr. Steve Miciano gets arrested for illegally possessing prescription drugs.”
The files with various online printouts sat on the table. Phil stared at them, his hands down as though afraid to touch them.
“Don’t you think it’s a hell of a coincidence?” she asked.
“What about Kelvin?”
“I don’t have anything on him yet.”
“You found this all out in one day?”
“It didn’t take much. I just did a simple Web search.”
From behind her, Ten-A-Fly said, “May I see those?”
She turned. They were all there—the rest of the Fathers Club. “You were eavesdropping?”
“Don’t take offense,” Doug said. “People come in here and talk about the most personal things in the loudest of voices. It’s like they think someone lowered a cone of silence around them. You just get used to listening in. Phil, this trumped-up embezzling charge—is that the reason they fired you?”
“No. That was the excuse. I was laid off like the rest of you.”
Ten-A-Fly reached out and picked up the sheets. He slipped on a pair of reading glasses and started studying them.
