Chapter 7 - The Master Key
When I returned to 440 North Lake Shore Drive at 4:30 PM, the storm had pushed the remaining light out of the Chicago sky, leaving the lakefront wrapped in a dense, dripping indigo fog.
The private elevator opened into the vestibule of 14B.
The double doors of the apartment were wide open.
In the hallway sat four large, black ballistic-nylon duffel bags, two garment bags bearing the embroidered logo of the University Club, and three cardboard moving boxes filled with golf trophies, leather-bound law reviews, and framed diplomas from Northwestern University.
Mark was on his knees in the master closet, pulling his three bespoke blue blazers off their wooden hangers with frantic, jerky motions that tore the silk linings.
He had changed into a gray wool suit—the suit he wore when he had to meet with bankers—but he hadn't put on a tie. His white shirt was open at the collar, soaked with sweat across the shoulder blades, his hair matted against his forehead.
He didn't hear me walk into the bedroom.
I stood in the doorway, my hands resting in the pockets of my wool coat, watching him pack his shoes into felt travel bags with the desperate, mechanical haste of an embezzler who had heard the sirens two blocks away.
"The lease on Elm Street terminates on the twelfth, Mark," I said.
He jumped.
The three wooden hangers clattered against the brass closet rod, falling to the carpet with a dull, hollow thud.
He spun around, his back hitting the built-in walnut shelving, his eyes wide and bloodshot, his hands raised in front of his chest as if he expected another police officer to step through the door.
"Rachel," he gasped, his chest heaving under the wet white shirt. "I’m... I’m packing. Julian called me from the road. He said... he said you're going to the federal prosecutor on Monday."
"I am," I said.
He dropped his arms. His shoulders slumped, the fabric of his suit collapsing around his frame until he looked like an adolescent boy who had borrowed his father’s funeral clothes.
"Where am I supposed to go?" he asked. His voice was no longer that of a corporate vice president; it was the thin, whiny croak of a child who had been left behind on a gravel shoulder. "My credit cards are declined. The checking account has eighty dollars in it. My car... the lease on the BMW is through the company, Rachel. If the sheriff seizes the corporate assets, they take the keys tonight."
"You have friends at the University Club, Mark," I said. "You play squash with them on Saturdays. Surely one of them has an extra bedroom in Lincoln Park."
He let out a short, wet sob that ended in a bitter, choking laugh. "They’re not my friends, Rachel. They’re Arthur’s friends' sons. The moment they hear the word indictment, they won't even look at me on the street. You know how this city works. If you don't have the firm behind you, you don't exist."
"I know how the city works, Mark," I said. "That’s why I bought this unit with my own money."
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the brass keycard for the private elevator, and held it out between two fingers.
He looked at the small piece of plastic. He didn't reach for it.
"Put your keys on the kitchen counter," I said. "Both sets. The elevator card, the mailbox key, and the storage locker fob in the basement."
"Rachel... please," he begged, taking two stumbling steps toward me, his hands clasped together in that same, pathetic praying gesture he had used in the kitchen that morning. "We’ve been married for three years. We had plans. We were going to look at that house in Lake Forest next spring—"
"You were going to look at a house in Lake Forest with four hundred and fifty thousand dollars of your mother’s stolen money, Mark," I said, my voice dropping into that quiet, terrifying register that made him freeze five feet from my coat. "You were going to move me to the suburbs, put my name on a secondary mortgage, and spend the rest of your life hoping that I died in a car accident before the federal tax liens caught up with your father’s estate."
He stopped.
The truth hung in the air between us, heavy and foul as sewer gas.
He didn't deny it. He couldn't.
The calculation was written into every line of the fraudulent memorandum Julian had drafted: subject only to a temporary domestic tenancy terminating upon the death or legal separation of the Grantor’s spouse.
He hadn't just lied to his mother about the ownership of the apartment.
He had planned for my absence.
"Get your bags," I whispered.
He stood there for five long seconds, his chest rising and falling in shallow, trembling hitches, looking at the bed where he had slept for thirty-six months, looking at the custom lighting, looking at the wide expanse of Lake Michigan through the glass.
Then, slowly, with the dragging, broken gait of an old man whose knees had finally given out, he reached down, picked up the four duffel bags by their handles, and walked past me into the gallery hall.
He set his keys on the quartz island.
Click.
Click.
Click.
The three pieces of brass sounded like small coins dropped into an empty tin cup.
He stepped into the private elevator vestibule.
May you like
He didn't turn around to look at the living room. He didn't look at the white walls, the high ceilings, or the red mark that was still burning on my left cheekbone.
He pressed the call button with his elbow, the stainless-steel doors slid open with a soft, pneumatic hiss, and the elevator dropped into the dark of the building shaft, carrying the last of the Vance name down to the wet pavement of Columbus Drive.
