Chapter 6 - The Long Road to West Broad
The clock on the dashboard of Richard’s black Cadillac Escalade read 5:42 PM when the tires cleared the brick entrance gates of Elmwood Terrace.
The temperature had dropped to twenty-eight degrees, and the late-November drizzle had hardened into tiny pellets of sleet that ticked aggressively against the windshield like thrown rice. Outside, the sprawling colonial homes of the country club district were ablaze with amber holiday lights; inside their high, arched windows, families sat around formal tables, laughing, carving turkeys, and raising glasses in safe, predictable comfort.
In the front passenger seat of the Escalade sat Evelyn Vance.
She had removed the flour-stained apron. She was wearing her old Sunday coat—a heavy, charcoal-gray wool trench that Arthur had bought her for their fortieth anniversary from the Sears catalog, its horn buttons slightly mismatched where one had been replaced with brown plastic thread in nineteen-ninety-eight. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap, resting atop her black vinyl handbag.
In the second-row captain's chair sat Noah. He was still wearing his miniature navy blazer, but he had taken off the bow tie, stuffing it into the cup holder. In his lap he held the small plastic grocery bag containing the three pink receipts and the photograph of Arthur Vance.
Richard drove in complete silence. He didn't turn on the satellite radio. He didn't look at his phone, which sat in the center console vibrating continuously with incoming text messages and voice memos from his chief operating officer in New York.
Every ten seconds, the screen illuminated with frantic notifications:
COO: Richard, Julian’s office just called our lead underwriter. They’re pulling the syndication memo. What happened out there?
CFO: Vance Logistics margin account flagged for immediate margin call at 9:00 AM Friday. Need $4.2M liquidity or debt-service default triggers.
Vanessa (6 calls missed): You left me here with the caterers. You have five minutes to bring that car back.
Richard didn't look at the screen. He kept both hands locked onto the leather-wrapped steering wheel at the ten-and-two position, his knuckles white beneath the skin, his eyes fixed on the black ribbon of highway stretching southwest toward the industrial core of the city.
The landscape changed with brutal, geographic honesty as they crossed the Scioto River bridge.
The manicured lawns and Georgian brick colonials of the eastern suburbs gave way to concrete retaining walls tagged with faded spray-paint memorials, abandoned warehouse terminals with broken clerestory windows, and used-car lots enclosed behind eight-foot chain-link fences topped with coiled razor wire.
This was West Broad Street.
It was an avenue of tire retread shops, twenty-four-hour laundromats, drive-thru liquor stores, and windowless concrete buildings whose neon signs flickered against the sleet: CASH FOR GOLD. PAYDAY LOANS. E-Z CHECK CASHING.
Richard had not driven down West Broad Street in twenty-five years, not since he was an undergraduate commuting from the southern trailer parks to the state university campus in an eighty-eight Ford Escort that had a coat hanger holding up the tailpipe. He had spent twenty-five years pretending this street didn't exist, scrubbing its dust from his shoes, convincing himself that a man who wore three-thousand-dollar Italian suits had never smelled the sulfur from the chemical plants on the river.
"Which block, Mom?" Richard asked, his voice low, gravelly, and stripped of all executive cadence.
Evelyn turned her head toward the passenger window. She didn't need to look at a street sign; she had memorized the route during three separate bus transfers on a freezing Tuesday morning.
"Past the railroad trestle, Richie," she said softly. "Beside the auto salvage yard with the blue fence. It’s got bars on the windows and a yellow sign."
Richard pulled the three-ton luxury SUV to the curb, its tires splashing through a puddle of black, oily slush that coated the chrome running boards.
The establishment was called BUCKEYE PAWN & LOAN.
It was a squat, concrete-block structure painted an institutional shade of mustard yellow, its single plate-glass window protected by heavy decorative iron bars painted black. Above the steel security door hung a flickering blue neon sign that read: OPEN — WE BUY GOLD, GUNS, TOOLS.
A light burned inside, throwing a square of cold, yellow light onto the wet sidewalk.
Richard killed the engine. The silence inside the vehicle was absolute, save for the clicking of the cooling manifold beneath the hood.
He turned in his seat to look at his mother.
"Wait here, Mom," Richard said. "Noah, stay with your grandmother."
"Richie," Evelyn called, her frail hand reaching across the center console to catch his wrist. Her grip was surprisingly firm, the old country strength lingering in her swollen knuckles. "The man behind the counter... his name is Mr. Henderson. He wasn't mean to me, son. He gave me thirty dollars more than the scale said because he saw Arthur’s name inside the gold. Don't go in there with your corporate voice. He’s just a man making a living on a hard road."
Richard looked down at his mother’s hand resting on his wrist, then looked at the bare, bruised finger where the ring had lived for half a century.
"I won't use my corporate voice, Mom," Richard whispered. "I don't think I have one anymore."
May you like
He opened the driver's door, stepped out into the freezing sleet, and pulled the collar of his suit jacket up against his neck.
He reached into his trousers pocket, fingers closing around the cold, heavy links of Vanessa’s eighty-four-thousand-dollar diamond choker, and pushed open the steel door of Buckeye Pawn & Loan.
