“So we gonna start with your day,” Kate quipped, trying to cut the tension, “or would you like to hear about mine?”
That made her dad smile. “First, I don’t want any of you to be afraid,” he said. “You’re going to hear some terrible things about me. The most important thing is that you understand I’m innocent. Mel says we’ve got a solid case.”
“Of course we know you’re innocent, Ben,” said Sharon. “But innocent of what?”
Kate’s dad let out a nervous breath and gently moved Emily to an adjacent chair.
“Money laundering. Conspiracy to commit fraud. Aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise—that enough?”
“Conspiracy …” Sharon’s jaw dropped open. “Conspiracy with whom, Ben?”
“Basically, what they’re saying”—he locked his fingers together—“is that I provided some merchandise to people who ultimately did some bad things with it.”
“Merchandise?” Emily echoed, not understanding.
“Gold, honey.” Ben exhaled.
“So what’s wrong with that?” Kate shrugged. “You’re in the trading business, aren’t you? That’s what you do.”
“Believe me, I tried to make that point—but in this case I may have made some mistakes.”
Sharon stared at him. “You provided this gold to whom, Ben? What kind of people are we talking about?”
Raab swallowed. He moved his chair a little closer to her and wrapped his fingers around her hand.
“Drug traffickers, Sharon. Colombians.”
Sharon let out a gasp—half laughing, half incredulous. “You must be kidding, Ben.”
“Now, I didn’t know who they were, and all I did was provide the gold, Sharon, you have to believe that. But there’s more. I introduced them to someone. Someone who altered what I sold them. In an illegal way. Into things like tools, bookends, desk ornaments—and painted them over. So they could ship them back home.”
“Home?” Sharon squinted. She looked over to Kate. “I don’t understand.”
“Out of the country, Sharon. Back to Colombia.”
Kate’s mother’s hand flew to her cheek. “Oh, my God, Ben, what have you done?”
“Look, these people came to me.” Raab squeezed his hand around hers. “I didn’t know what they were doing or who they were. They were some export company. I did what I always do. I sold them gold.”
“Then I don’t understand,” Kate cut in. “How can they arrest you for that?”
“Unfortunately, it’s slightly more complicated, pumpkin,” her father said, shifting back. “I set them up with someone, in order to accomplish what they wanted. And I also took some payments, which makes it seem like I was a party to what was going on.”
“Were you?”
“Was I what, Sharon?”
“Were you a party to what was going on?”
“Of course not, Sharon. I just—”
“So who the hell did you introduce them to, Ben?” Sharon’s voice rose, tense and alarmed.
Raab cleared his throat and looked down. “Harold Kornreich. He’s been arrested, too.”
“Jesus Christ, Ben, what have the two of you done?”
Kate felt her own stomach tie into a knot. Harold Kornreich was one of her dad’s business buddies. They went to trade shows together. He and Audrey had come to her bat mitzvah. It was like they were two stupid white guys who had walked into a scam. Except her dad wasn’t exactly stupid. And he had taken money—from criminals. Drug dealers. You didn’t exactly have to be a constitutional scholar to see that this wasn’t about to just go away.
“Now, there’s no grounds to prove I knew exactly what was going on,” her father said. “I’m not even sure they really want to focus on me.”
“Then what do they want?” Sharon asked, her gaze troubled and wide.
“What they want is for me to roll.”
“Roll …?”
“Testify, Sharon. Against Harold. The Colombians, too.”
“At a trial?”
“Yes.” He swallowed resignedly. “At a trial.”
“No!” Sharon stood up. Tears of anger and bewilderment flashed in her eyes. “That’s how we get to keep our life? By turning state’s evidence against one of your closest friends? You’re not going to do that, are you, Ben? It would be like admitting you were guilty. Harold and Audrey are our friends. You sold these people gold. What they did with it is their business. We’re going to fight this, aren’t we, Ben? Isn’t that right?”
“Of course we’re going to fight this, Sharon. It’s just that—”
“It’s just that what, Ben?” Sharon kept her gaze on him, razor sharp.
“It’s just that the payments I took from these guys all these years don’t exactly make me look innocent, Sharon.”
His voice had elevated, and there was something in it Kate had never heard in her dad before. That he was afraid, and not entirely blameless. That maybe he wasn’t going to be able to make this come out okay. They all sat there looking at him, trying to figure out just what that meant.
“You’re not going to go to jail, are you, Dad?”
It was Justin, in a voice that was halting and tight. The question that was suddenly front and center in everyone’s mind.
“Of course not, champ.” His father pulled him close and stroked his bushy brown hair and looked past him. At Kate.
“No one in this family’s going to jail.”
Luis Prado didn’t ask too many questions.
He’d been in the United States for four years now. His papers said he was here to visit a sister, but that was a lie. He had no family here.
He’d come here to do work. He was handpicked because of the way he handled himself back home. And what he did, Luis did very well.
He did jobs for the Mercados. Dirty jobs. The kind you did because of the oath you had sworn. You didn’t look into someone’s face. You looked through them. You didn’t ask why.
That’s what had gotten him out of the slums of Carmenes. What enabled him to send money back home to his wife and child—more money than he could ever dream of there. What paid for the fancy suits he wore and the private tables at the salsa clubs—and the occasional woman he met there who looked at him with pride.
It’s what separated him from the desesperados back home. A man with no worth. No significance. Nothing.
The driver, a cocky kid named Tomás, played with the radio in the customized Cadillac Escalade while he drove. “Ha!” He tapped his hands against the wheel to the steady salsa beat. “José Alberto. El Canario.”
The kid was probably no more than twenty-one, but he had already cut his cherry and would drive through a fucking building if he had to get out the other side. He was fearless and good, if maybe a little reckless, but that was just what was needed now. Luis had worked with him before.
They