Three Fates

carried the glasses back to where she was curled in a ball in the corner of the booth. He slid in beside her, took her chin firmly in his hand and poured half the shot down her throat.
    She choked, sputtered, then simply laid her head down on the table and sobbed like a baby.
    “It’s my fault. It’s my fault.”
    “I need you to tell me what happened.” He lifted her head again, held the glass to her lips. “Take another drink and tell me what you did.”
    “I killed him. Oh God, oh God, Mikey’s dead.”
    “I know it.” He picked up his own untouched glass of whiskey and urged it on her. Better drunk, he thought, and half passed out than hysterical. “What did you and Mikey do, Cleo?”
    “I asked him. He’d have done anything for me. I loved him. Gideon, I loved him.”
    Now, he thought, in grief, she finally used his name. “I know you did. I know he loved you.”
    “I thought I was so smart.” Her tears plopped on his hand as he made her take another swallow. “I had it all figured out. I’d sell that bitch the Fate, skin her for a million dollars, give you a nice cut to keep you happy and dance in the goddamn street.”
    “Christ. You contacted her?”
    “I called her, set up a meet. My turf. Top of the fucking Empire State,” she continued with her voice slurring now with liquor. “Like King goddamn Kong. Mikey went with me, just in case she got testy. But she didn’t. Butter wouldn’t melt. Didn’t have a good word to say about you or your brother, but that’s beside the point. Gonna give me a million dollars tomorrow, cash money. I give her the little lady. Sensible deal, no harm, no foul. Mikey and I got a good laugh out of it. I told him the whole story, you know.”
    “Yeah, I got that.”
    “Gonna split it with you, Slick, sixty-forty.” She swiped at tears and smeared mascara over her cheek, over the back of her hand. “You got a four-hundred-thousand-dollar bird in the hand, why beat around the fucking bush, right?”
    He couldn’t work up any anger. Not when she was shattered. He pushed her hair back from her damp cheeks. “No, I guess you don’t.”
    “But she was never gonna give me the money. She played me. Mikey’s dead because I was too stupid to know it. I’ll never forgive myself, never, not for as long as I live. He was harmless. Gideon, he was harmless and sweet, and they hurt him. They hurt him.”
    “I know it, darling.” He drew her head down on his shoulder, stroking her hair as she cried. He thought of the man who’d fixed French toast that morning, had given up his bed to a stranger because a friend had asked.
    Anita Gaye would pay for it, he promised himself. It was no longer just about money, about principle, it was about justice.
    So he stroked Cleo’s hair, drank the last swallow of the whiskey.
    He could think of only one place to go.

Eleven
     
     
     
     
    D R. Lowenstein had his own problems. They included an ex-wife who had successfully skinned him in the divorce, two children in college who were under the delusion he owned a grove of money trees and an administrative assistant who’d just demanded a raise.
    Sheila had divorced him because he’d spent more time working on his practice than his marriage. Then she had sucked the financial benefits of that practice up like a Hoover.
    The irony of it had been lost on her. Which, Lowenstein decided, only proved he was well rid of the humorless bitch.
    But that was neither here nor there. As his son, who changed majors as often as he changed his socks, was given to say, it was only money.
    Tia Marsh had money. A steady stream of interest and dividends and mutual funds. As well as, he supposed, a reasonably substantial trickle of royalties from her books.
    And God knew the woman had problems.
    He listened to her now as she sat tidily in the chair facing him and told a convoluted tale of sneaky Irishmen, Greek myths, historic disasters and thievery. When she ended with a police impersonator and tapped phones, he rubbed his steepled fingers on his thin blade of a mouth and cleared his throat.
    “Well, Tia, you’ve certainly been busy. Tell me, what do you think fate represents in this context?”
    “Represents?” Finding the courage to tell the tale, and telling it, had used up most of her steam. For a moment, Tia could only stare. “Dr. Lowenstein, it’s not a metaphor, it’s statues.”
    “Determining your own fate has always been one of your core dilemmas,” he began.
    “You think