Chapter 92: Eight Thousand Dollars
Dean came to the office on the sixteenth of September at 10:40 in the morning.
He had not been to see me in six years except twice, and both of those were behind glass, and both of those lasted under fifteen minutes.
He came in the door and he did the thing he always did, which is look up at the ceiling first, as if checking the height of a room before entering it.
Six feet two. One hundred and eighty-eight centimeters. In eleven years I had never once thought of him as a measurement. Now it was the only fact about him I could hold.
“Cass,” he said.
I said, “Marisol, this is Dean Mercer.”
Marisol came out of her office and stood in the doorway of it with her arms folded and did not say hello, and did not leave.
He noticed. He is not stupid.
“Can we do this outside?”
“No.”
He put a folder on the counter. Not a blue one. A grey plastic wallet with a snap.
“I brought something,” he said.
“I can see that.”
“It's good for you. Just read it.”
Eleven pages. I read all eleven while he stood there, which took eight minutes, and he shifted his weight four times.
Page ten was a schedule of payment. Four thousand on signature, four thousand at ninety days.
Page one was a cover letter from a firm called Coyne and Deshpande, addressed to me at the halfway house, which meant somebody had my address.
That address is not public. It is on my parole file and on my employment record and nowhere else.
Pages two through nine were a settlement agreement.
The money was eight thousand dollars.
The consideration was that I release any and all claims against Dean A. Mercer, Bree M. Mercer, and Renata Halloway, arising out of any matter whatsoever occurring before the date of signature.
There was a non-disparagement clause.
There was a confidentiality clause with liquidated damages of five thousand dollars per breach.
And on page seven, in a paragraph headed Cooperation, there was a sentence saying I would not initiate, encourage, or assist any inquiry, application, petition, or proceeding concerning the events of the ninth of March.
I read that sentence twice and then I put my finger on it and turned the page around so he could see where my finger was.
“Who wrote this,” I said.
“A lawyer.”
“Whose lawyer.”
“Does it matter?”
“It's the only thing that matters,” I said. “This letterhead has three names on it and none of them is yours.”
He said, “It's family money, Cass. It's Renata's lawyer. She's trying to help you.”
I want to record what happened in my body when he said that, because it was nothing. Nothing at all.
I have been told since that a person is supposed to feel something. I felt the way you feel when a machine you are operating makes the noise it is supposed to make.
Because eight thousand dollars is not a bribe. Eight thousand dollars is a number somebody arrived at after asking what a woman with $34 a week is worth.
And people do not buy releases from a person who is not a threat.
You buy a release from somebody who might one day be able to do something. Eight thousand dollars was somebody's estimate of what that day was worth.
Which meant somebody knew something had changed.
“Why now,” I said.
“What?”
“I've been out sixteen months. Nobody offered me eight dollars for fifteen of them. Why September.”
He looked at the ceiling again.
“Bree's been upset,” he said.
“About what.”
“There was a car parked on our street.”
I did not move my face. I have had six years of practice at not moving my face.
“She thinks somebody's watching the house,” Dean said. “She's not sleeping. Renata thinks it would be better for everybody if all this was just — done.”
“All what.”
“Cass, don't.”
“All what, Dean. Say the noun.”
He picked the wallet up off the counter and put it down again about four inches to the left, which is a thing he does when he is choosing between two sentences.
“Everything,” he said.
I turned to page eleven, which was the signature page, and I looked at the top right corner where the drafting date is printed in six-point type.
The date on that agreement was the twenty-ninth of August.
Theo parked on Kelvin Street for the first time on the second of September.
I have thought about that for a long time and I still only have one reading of it, which is that the agreement was drafted before there was a car on the street.
“You can take it back,” I said.
“Cass—”
“Take it back and tell whoever wrote it that I read the date.”