Found Money - James Grippando [6]
They shared a weak laugh. Then his father gave him a searching look. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile in I don’t know how long.”
“Guess I haven’t felt much like smiling. Didn’t feel much like drinking tonight, either.”
“What do you propose we do? Make a few phone calls, cancel the disease? Look,” he said warmly, “the way I see it, we can either laugh in the face of death, or we can die trying not to. So be a sport and pour your old man another drink.”
“I don’t think you’d better, Dad. Painkillers and alcohol aren’t a good mix.”
“God, you’re always so damned responsible, Ryan.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. I admire you for that, actually. Wish I were more like you. People always said we’re exactly alike, but that’s just on the surface. Not that it wasn’t cute when you used to sit at the breakfast table and make like you were reading the sports section with me, trying to be just like Dad, even though you were two years old and didn’t know how to read yet. But all that was just pretend. On the inside, where it counts—well, let’s just say that you and I are far more different than you’d think.”
He paused and placed his glass on the tray. All humor had left his face. He was suddenly philosophical. “Do you believe that good people can turn bad?”
“Sure,” Ryan said with a shrug.
“I mean really bad, like criminals. Or do you think some things are so unspeakable, so heinous, that only someone who was bad from the very beginning could have done them?”
“I guess I don’t think anyone’s born bad. People have their own free will. They make choices.”
“So why would someone choose to be bad if they’re not bad?”
“Because they’re weak, I guess. Too weak to choose what’s good, too weak to resist what’s evil.”
“Do you think the weak can become strong?” He propped himself up on his elbow at the edge of the mattress, looking Ryan in the eye. “Or once you turn toward evil are you like rotten fruit, gone forever?”
Ryan smiled awkwardly, not sure where this was headed. “Why are you asking me this?”
He lay back and sighed. “Because dying men take stock. And I am surely dying.”
“Come on, Dad. You’re devoted to Mom. Both your children love you. You’re a good man.”
“The best you can say is that I’ve become a good man.”
The ominous words hung in the air. “Everybody does bad things,” Ryan said tentatively. “That doesn’t make them bad.”
“That’s the fundamental difference between you and me, son. You would never have done what I did.”
Ryan sipped nervously from his empty glass, unsure of what to say, fearing some kind of confession. The drapes moved in the warm breeze.
His father continued, “There’s an old chest of drawers in the attic. Move it. Beneath the floorboards, I’ve left something for you. Some money. A lot of it.”
“How much?”
“Two million dollars.”
Ryan froze, then burst out laughing. “That’s a good one, Dad. Two million in the attic. And hell, all this time I thought you had it hidden in the mattress.” He was smiling, shaking his head. Then he stopped.
His father wasn’t smiling.
Ryan swallowed hard, a little nervous. “Come on. You’re joking, right?”
“There’s two million dollars in the attic, Ryan. I put it there myself.”
“Where the hell would you get two million dollars?”
“That’s what I’m trying to explain. You’re not making this easy.”
Ryan took the bottle from the tray. “Yup, I’d say that’s about enough horsing around. Whiskey on top of painkillers has you hallucinating.”
“I blackmailed a man. Someone who deserved it.”
“Dad, cut it out. You were in no position to blackmail anybody.”
“Yes, I was, damn it!” He spoke with such force, he started a coughing fit.
Ryan came to him and adjusted the pillows behind his back. His father was wheezing, gasping between coughs. The phlegm in his mouth was coming up bloody. Ryan pushed the emergency call button for the home care nurse in the next room. She arrived in seconds.