Mind Prey

dipping into the principal. Then he got into politics—bought his way in, really—and he dipped a little deeper. It must’ve seemed like taking water out of the ocean with a teacup. But it added up. Then, in the late seventies and eighties, he did everything wrong—he was stuck in bonds during the big inflation, finally unloaded them at a terrific loss. Then sometime in there, he met Helen…”
    “Helen’s his second wife, right?” Lucas said. “She’s quite a bit younger than he is?”
    Dunn said, “I guess she’s…what? Fifty-three, fifty-four? She’s not that young. His first wife, Bernie—that’s Andi’s mother—died about ten years ago. He was already seeing Helen by that time. She was a good-looking woman. She had the face and real star-quality tits. Tower always liked tits. Anyway, Helen was in real estate and she got him deep into REITs as a way to recoup his bond losses…”
    “What’s a reet ?” Lucas asked.
    “Sorry; real-estate investment trust. Anyway, that was just before real estate fell out of bed, and he got hammered again. And the crash of eighty-seven…Hell, the guy was the kiss of death. You didn’t want to stand next to him.”
    “So he’s broke?”
    Dunn looked up at the ceiling as if he were running a calculator in his head. After a moment, he said, “Right now, if Tower hunted around, he might come up with…a million? Of course, the house is paid for, that’s better’n a mil, but he can’t really get at it. He has to live somewhere and it has to be up to his standards…So figure that he gets sixty thousand from the million that’s his, and another hundred thousand from the trust. And he’s still got that seat on the Foundation board, but that probably doesn’t pay more than twenty or thirty. So what’s that? Less than two hundred?”
    “Jesus, he’s eating dog food,” Lucas said, with just a rime of sarcasm in his voice.
    Dunn pointed a finger at Lucas: “But that’s exactly what he feels like. Exactly. He was spending a half-million a year when a Cadillac cost six thousand bucks and a million was really something. Now he’s scraping along on maybe a quarter mil and a Caddy costs forty thousand.”
    “Poor sonofabitch.”
    “Listen, a million ain’t that much any more,” Dunn said wryly. “A guy who owns two good Exxon stations—he’s worth at least a mil, probably more. Two gas stations. We’re not talking about yachts and polo.”
    “So if you took your wife off, you wouldn’t have done it for the money,” Lucas said.
    “Hell, if anybody got taken off, it should’ve been me. I’m worth fifteen or twenty times what Tower is. Of course, it ain’t as good as Tower’s money,” he said ruefully.
    “Why’s that?”
    “’Cause I earned it,” Dunn said. “Just like you did, with your computer company. I read about you in Cities’ Biz. They said you’re worth probably five million, and growing. You must feel it—that your money’s got a taint.”
    “I’ve never seen any of it, the money,” Lucas said. “It’s all paper, at this point.” Then: “What about insurance? Is there insurance on Andi?”
    “Well, yeah.” Dunn’s forehead wrinkled and he scratched his chin. “Actually, quite a bit.”
    “Who’d get it?”
    Dunn shrugged. “The kids…unless…Ah, Christ. If the kids died, I’d get it.”
    “Sole beneficiary?”
    “Yeah…except, you know, Nancy Wolfe would get a half-million. They do pretty well in that partnership, and they both have key-man—key-woman—insurance to help cover their mortgage and so on, if somebody died.”
    “Is a half-million a lot for Nancy Wolfe?”
    Dunn thought again, and then said, “It’d be quite a bit. She pulls down something between $150,000 and $175,000 a year, and she can’t protect any of it—taxes eat her alive—so another half-mil would be nice.”
    “Will you sign a release saying that we can look at your wife’s records?” Lucas asked.
    “Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”
    “Because a lot of medical people think psychiatric records should be privileged,” Lucas said. “That people need treatment, not cops.”
    “Fuck that. I’ll sign,” Dunn said. “You got a paper with you?”
    “I’ll have one sent over tonight,” Lucas said.
    Dunn was watching Lucas’s hand and asked, “What’re you playing with?”
    Lucas looked down at his hand and saw the ring. “Ring.”
    “Uh-oh. Coming or going?” Dunn asked.
    “Thinking about it,” Lucas said.
    “Marriage