The honeymoon was short, but it was also enjoyable. Vincent sent me cigars, with which I impressed Lucas and other clients. His financial affairs were a tangle of handwritten receipts and slapdash spending, but I had seen worse. He liked to drop by, sometimes with motley offerings such as an Italian sub he’d picked up on the way from a building site. One time he brought me a brand new DVD player, still in the box. That seemed a little suspicious, but Vincent merely shrugged and smiled at me. We developed into a little comedy duo, with him exaggerating his roughness and his heedless rush through life, and me pretending to be a bit more scandalized than I really was. I knew Vincent viewed me as a fearful, drab creature constrained by convention and routine, but I didn’t mind. It occurred to me more than once that Barbara would have thought he was quite grand, and that I would have gained in her estimation by his seeking out a sort of friendly relationship with me.
Then the trouble started. I initiated some routine cross-checking between his various accounts, and the numbers I produced were wildly divergent from the ones we had been supplying to the government. In addition, large sums of money were vanishing from Vincent’s business funds into his personal accounts. A good deal of his income was disappearing without being reported.
Now, Vincent wasn’t the first tax cheat in the history of the world, nor was he the originator of stealing from his own business. Yet both were crimes, and by their discovery I was implicated. I had never been a party to this sort of thing, nor did I plan to. I agonized for a couple of days, dodging Vincent’s calls, until I hit upon what seemed the right course of action. I would not report him to the authorities, but I would no longer be his accountant. I called him at home to give him the news but immediately lost my nerve. Instead I asked him to meet me after working hours the next day at a bar downtown.
“What’s the matter?” Vincent asked. “You don’t sound right.”
“I’m fine,” I told him. “Just…a headache.”
“Well, get some rest, kid,” he said. “It’s a good thing we’re getting together tomorrow. I have something I want to talk to you about, and I’d prefer we didn’t do it at your office.”
I had suggested meeting at the Irish pub around the corner from WCCO because it was familiar to me. It was the kind of place where businesspeople had lunch, or stopped by for a drink before resuming their masquerade as loving family men. As soon as I stepped in, I instantly regretted the choice. People knew me there, or at least they used to. I hadn’t gotten out much since I no longer had my wife to avoid, but the thought occurred to me that someone might see me with Vincent and associate me with some future crime he might commit.
But I was getting ahead of myself, wasn’t I? I mean, he was a financial crook, but I had no reason to believe he was anything more nefarious. Money, after all, was just an aggregate of abstract sums to be played with and manipulated on computer screens and ledger sheets. It couldn’t hurt, or kill.
He was different from the moment he sat down. He was wearing a suit, for one thing, a nice one, and he leveled me with a stare that immediately indicated his day had been far more arduous and treacherous than mine. He ordered two vodka tonics—one for each of us, it turned out—and sat a black leather briefcase on the table between us.
“Hard day?” I asked when the drinks came.
Instead of replying, Vincent lit up a cigarette. He blew out a big cloud of smoke and stared at me through it.
“You wanted to talk,” he said.
“Yes.” I paused. “Look, I’m sorry. I really am. It’s just that you have to understand…I’ve come across certain discrepancies, certain things in your finances that make me very…”
“Uncomfortable?” he suggested sympathetically.
“Yes!” I said with relief. “Look, I have no intention of causing you any trouble. I’ve enjoyed working with you—”
He slid his chair closer to mine. “I hate to see you worried like this,” he told me. “You’re too serious.”
“Well, that may be, but—”
“You don’t want to be my accountant anymore.”
And I experienced a tremendous, almost painful sense of regret. Sam, who understood me so well, had intuited the reason for our meeting. It was almost enough to make me take it all back, to go on as though nothing had happened.
“Okay,” he said with a little smile. “That’s fine. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
“I’m really glad. I—”
“Forget it,” he said, raising a hand to silence me. “Look, I want to tell you something. Come over here.”
I obliged, moving my drink closer to his. I didn’t even mind the cigarette smoke in my face.
“Look over there,” he said. “Be discreet. But get a good look.”
