A Rough Way To Go

by Sam Garonzik

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

An all-consuming, suspenseful story of a stay-at-home father with something to prove. You'll never look at a man pushing a stroller the same way again.
 
Peter Greene spends his days taking care of his toddler, Luke; staying on the right side of The Moms in his local beach town; and hanging out with his surf buddy, Frank. Isolated from his former life in finance, and frustrated by his current “out of work” existence, he worries that if he sits around the house for much longer, his workaholic wife might start to lose patience with him. He has few escapes aside from surfing and the love he has for his son.

But when the body of wealthy Wall Street investor Robert Townsend washes up on shore one morning, nothing about the incident makes sense to Pete, and he’s completely bewildered when the death is ruled an accidental drowning.  But when he takes his concerns to the police, they ignore him—so he decides to investigate on his own. Sustained only by the unquestioning devotion of his three-year-old sidekick, Pete starts looking into Townsend’s eccentric relatives and employer, the ruthless and secretive private equity firm GDR. But has Pete deluded himself with this misguided quest for redemption? Or has he uncovered something sinister enough to risk his life, and even his family?

A Rough Way to Go is a raw, irreverent story that plumbs the depths of masculinity, unemployment, fatherhood, marriage, and modern capitalism—and the struggle to live a purpose driven life.

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

I DON’T TALK about this much and I wouldn’t want it to get around, but a few years ago I pretended to have jury duty so I could avoid my wife and child. We were still living in the city back then and Luke was only a few months old. Lauren was on the last of her maternity leave and I didn’t have a job. I was sitting around the house a lot, and I didn’t feel very useful. There were small, menial tasks I could perform, and I did them while my wife gave me instructions. She gave me a lot of instructions.

But then I opened the mail one afternoon and found a jury summons. I could hardly believe what I held in my hands, but there it was—a chance to get out of the house! I had to give Lauren the news. I wasn’t trying to run out on her or anything—admittedly, the timing wasn’t great—but in a few short weeks, I would need to get down to that courthouse. The letter had plainly said “Final notice.” If I skipped it again, that would be breaking the law of this county.

“I’m sorry,” I added.

She didn’t say anything. But there was nothing she could do about it.

The next weeks seemed to move a lot faster—I couldn’t focus on much else—so when the morning arrived, I was ready.

I lit out from the apartment, not long after sunrise. Even just getting on the subway, I felt an energy that was missing in my living room, that spark you can feel when you have an actual destination and a legitimate reason to go there. The train picked up speed, and we screamed down the tracks.

I hopped off at city hall and waited in line outside the courthouse with everyone else, and when they let us in, we all walked inside and sat down in a big room. They explained the basics in a no-nonsense delivery: we might get called we might not, but this was our civic duty to perform, no cell phones, and take all the bathroom breaks you want. Sounded good, so far. The guy giving the instructions was this older Black man with gray hair and a mustache. He was a funny guy. He said he needed a strong cup of coffee—he’d been up most of the night, driving back from Dewey Beach, where he’d spent his weekend working on a little house that he owned. That sounded pretty good, too. Having your own place that you could work on yourself—I wondered if he was building or fixing it up?—and it was down by the beach. He probably couldn’t surf at his age, but he could fish. He could walk on the sand or swim in the sea. And the man was a civil servant. No business cycles in jury service, I guess, no boom and bust. Who knew how long it had taken him to do this, and sure, he still had to schlep into work Monday morning, but driving back from his own place at the beach where he could put in the hours whenever it suited him? That didn’t sound bad at all.

At some point, my name got called and I went down to one of the courtrooms. The guard brought us in and then the judge explained the drill. We might get selected for jury duty, but before we could start into that business, he warned us that the trial would take about a month, and he needed to know if any of us had a good excuse to get out of this? A lot of hands started to go up. People looked at their calendars. I didn’t, of course. But all around me people were checking their phones and raising their hands.

“My daughter’s wedding.”

“A big client meeting in London.”

“They’re coming in from the West Coast and it’s such a big deal.”

“My mother’s very sick. And we’ve always been close. She’s everything to me.”

“The play opens in New Orleans. I’ve dreamed about it all my life.”

But not me. I didn’t say anything. My pad was clean.

Some folks just explained that they couldn’t bear judging another human soul, these prisoners of conscience. The judge looked them over for a little bit, but in the end, he still crossed their names off his sheet. He was not an unreasonable man. After a while he read out a list of candidates, and when he called my name, I was very pleased.

Then just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, they gave us a lunch break. I went to one of the places in Chinatown with the pigs and the ducks hanging in the windows. I ordered fried pork dumplings and dipped them in soy sauce with my chopsticks, downing a Diet Coke while I ate them, and they were huge, juicy, and crisp. It was after 2:00 p.m. by the time we settled back in our seats. The judge started to explain stuff about the case, just some basics. We’d be trying a murder—a man had been killed. My day kept getting better and better! I couldn’t wait to hear more of the facts, then figure out if he’d done it or not, and convince the rest of the jury what I had discovered.

Later, when we all stood around in the hall outside the courtroom, I tried to chat with my fellow citizens, gripping and grinning. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done this, and it felt great to be around other people. In an instant, the afternoon was over. I took my sweet time getting home, practically skipping back to the apartment, but not forgetting, of course, to slump in through the door and collapse on the couch, exhausted and sore.

The next day got off to a casual start—we didn’t even show up to the courtroom until 2:00 p.m. The judge asked us all what we did for a living. We had a teacher, a waiter, a security guard, and a few finance guys, but they didn’t work at my old firm, and I didn’t recognize any of them, so that wouldn’t be a problem. There was a nurse with a great smile and green eyes who seemed funny and interesting. Then they came around to me.

“I’m unemployed,” I said, and studied my belt buckle. When I picked my head up, the nurse’s smile had vanished, along with everyone else’s, and those greens eyes were now sad and concerned.

“But we just had a baby,” I said, rebounding. “So, I’m pretty busy right now!”

The smile came back. It was good cheer all around, mostly.

And I’m a reasonable guy. No prior convictions. Very open-minded. This thing could go either way—just show me the evidence and I’ll make a decision—and forty bucks a day works for me, too. I kept my answers short but polite and tried my winning, closemouthed smile. The lawyers nodded and scribbled their notes.

On the third day we started at 9:00 a.m. sharp, and it felt like things were getting more serious, but I didn’t care. I would soon serve on a murder trial. The other people in the jury box seemed like a decent group, and I looked forward to working with them as part of a team. Then the judge explained that the following jurors had been selected. My chest swelled with pride.

“Oscar Martinez. Sharon Alboretti. And Thomas Not-you-either. Please stay. The rest of you are free to leave. Thank you for your jury service.”

Wait a minute, I thought. What the hell is going on? That’s it? You’re dismissing me? And you’re only taking those three jerkoffs? The rest of us can just leave? But when would I ever see these characters again? Miss Green Eyes and her nice smile. Mr. Creepy Defense Attorney and his stupid suits. Mr. Murderer sitting right there in front of us! What about me? Now, I just go and get lost? I have the rest of the day open! I’m supposed to just go back to my apartment and sit around with my wife and newborn son?

I went home to Lauren that night and confessed everything.

I was really very sorry. Much to my shame, I had been selected for jury duty—a murder case—and it could last a few months. To not show up would be unthinkable, a gross violation.

Lauren burst into tears. She was good and well pissed. Back in those days, she did this a lot, and whenever I tried to help her out or comfort her, I just made everything worse, so I needed to get out of the house. Maternity leave was a dark time in that apartment. My wife had developed a certain coldness toward me.

“You’re such an asshole!” screamed Lauren. She had lost her patience with me. “How dumb do you have to be to get picked, actually picked, for jury duty? What’s wrong with you?”

I didn’t know what to say. I had tried my best to appear irresponsible and prejudiced—I had even worn what I usually wear around the house every day—and still, a high court of this land had picked me to decide another man’s fate. I wasn’t happy about it either.

That night I did what I could to smooth things over. I changed Luke when he needed it and fed him every couple hours, and when he had emptied the bottle, I held him tall against my chest and rubbed a palm up and down his ribs, sticking with it, until he roared out a good one. We paced half circles around his room and I bounced him gently, our little dance, until I heard his snoring on my shoulder. I wrote down eight ounces and number one or two in the sacred book, as necessary. Then I washed the bottles and nipples in the sink and left a clean set out for my partner on the early shift. That stuff didn’t bother me. I just couldn’t stay in that apartment anymore.

The next morning, I rose at a reasonable hour and headed down to the courthouse. I decided that I should hang around the court to get the rhythms of the place and get some basics down so I wouldn’t fold under questioning. I just went back to the room where they dismissed me and sat outside for a while. When people started filtering in for the trial, I followed them inside.

I hadn’t always behaved this way. Not long ago I was a much different type of guy, a What are the next steps we’re doing here? kind of person. Serious. Responsible. Completion-oriented. A decent citizen. I was a good soldier, obsessed with my work. But losing my job blew that all to pieces, and I hadn’t been able to put them back. I was a little lost. I had spent many years as a good producer in a real seat at a great firm in a tough industry, but when I got laid off, I was out looking for a while, and I just could not find a job. It was rough. And it might have affected me—I know that it did—maybe more than I realized. It felt terrible. I don’t like talking about this much and I don’t think most people want to hear about it, either, and I can’t blame them.

The judge reminded everyone that under no circumstances could we discuss any details of the case with anyone, not our friends, family, even our wives. I had been looking for this my whole life. Legal protection! I could return home after a long day doing God knows what and explain to my wife that I couldn’t really talk about it, much as I would like to, but the law was very clear on this point. Although the way it played out, she never really interrogated me about the trial. She barely even brought it up. She did have a lot on her mind. So when I walked in the door at night, she had plenty of other stuff for me to focus on—but it wasn’t that bad. Somehow, my free time turned out to be the hard part. The whole thing never started off that great from the outset, but then it got a little depressing and everything wound up sort of creepy by the end.

In the beginning, I like to think I was somewhat productive. I made it to the gym every morning. Then I would go sit in the assembly room with my laptop—they had good Wi-Fi in there—and I would spend time on LinkedIn or on cover letters, emailing people or keeping up with the world and politics and the markets and social issues and reading a lot without interruption. When the spirit moved me, I sent articles to old friends that I thought might interest them. Sometimes, my wife would ask me to bring home takeout, a little Chinese.

Since I was down there, I started following the murder trial they had denied me. I would go back to the courtroom and listen to them argue the case once or twice a week. Some parts were slow, but I found a lot of it interesting. During breaks in the hallways, teams of lawyers would walk together or huddle in discussion, and I’d watch them and wonder about their lives and careers.

But then I began to notice a lot of the same people sitting around me in the gallery every day. I figured that most of the regulars had good reasons to be there, but some of them were concerning. I wondered if they didn’t have real obligations for coming, if maybe they were just the sort of people who hung around courtrooms because they found it more interesting than whatever else they could have been doing instead. The idea disturbed me.

Sometimes the walls began to creep closer as a terror would build in my chest, and I couldn’t shake the thought that I had run out of answers or options. A courtroom is not a good place to panic, so I’d sneak away from the gallery and slip outside for some air. I’d go out and wander the streets. The people walking past seemed to move very quickly.

It was a dangerous game I had chosen to play, and I knew it. I worried about bumping into someone who might recognize me—even just a chance encounter with a casual friend of Lauren’s could lead to hard questions, and if my story unraveled, the fallout would cause a great deal of damage. I was becoming unglued.

One night I came home from the courthouse and my wife started talking about going back to work. I was tired and a little distracted, but when she said some stuff about working remotely one or two days a week at corporate housing, I started to listen more closely. Then I heard something surprising. She said she wanted to move out of the city. A few hours away, close to the beach. She started explaining why—the schools, the space, some other stuff—but I had stopped listening. She tried to convince me for a bit, but I’d heard enough.

“It’s okay,” I said interrupting. “I feel like this could be really good for you, good for all of us. And it seems like this matters a lot to you, and that’s what’s important. Because I want to support you. C’mere. It’s all an adventure.”

I hugged her close.

I held her in my arms, and I was already thinking about the water, the sunsets, the open roads—anywhere else than a godforsaken tiny apartment in this cruel city where at any moment I might run into people from my former but now all sorts of fucked-up, shot-to-hell existence. My darkness was over. The days when I couldn’t even get selected for jury duty, or convince a therapist to call me back, when I was lurking around courtrooms just to get out of the goddamn house, were done.

I hugged her again. She kissed me.

“Oh, thank you, Pete! Thank you! I love you,” she told me. “Now we need to start looking at places. We have a lot to do. It all seems like a ton, but don’t worry, I’ve already started. But I could use a little help here. When do you think the trial will be over?”

I kissed her and hugged her some more.

“I don’t know,” I told her. “But I hope not much longer. And I want to help. Because you deserve this. I love you.”

THINGS HAVE BEEN better out here.

I’m not saying the transition was easy. There were a few incidents—I can get into them later, now’s not the time. But I still think I’ve made some sort of progress in this place, and I’m glad we live around here.

This is a nice town. Not quite as fancy as some of the more famous beach spots in this part of the world, although, like everywhere else, you see bigger and bigger houses getting built and some real estate transacts at disturbing prices. And yes, we swell to bursting with summer crowds from the Fourth of July through August, and you can see in certain kinds of behavior hints of great wealth mixed with an unapologetic desire to spend it, but this place still doesn’t have the same vibe or the social intensity of those sandy villages that became playgrounds for the Wall Street set a long time ago, although many inhabitants fear a similar fate will befall us, probably soon, if it hasn’t already. Enjoy it while it lasts, warn many locals. This place still has its beaches and salt shacks, decent schools, the public park, a good diner, a few bars and restaurants, every type of gym or fitness studio known to man, a Little League field and a hospital within driving distance, as well as one regional bank, various law, real estate, architecture, design, and insurance firms, plus constant construction to stoke the local economy. A small contingent of finance types commute or work from home. When they aren’t working, people here tend to occupy themselves with their passions, like exercise and sports or booze or their children, and often a keen interest in their friends’ and neighbors’ personal lives and careers. This is a comfortable town. But sometimes, it can feel like not an enormous amount happens around here.

So, in this town, when a body washes up on the beach, it’s the sort of thing people talk about—it’s a big deal. We don’t have a lot going on, so last week, when somebody rolled onto the shore with an incoming tide, it was the type of thing people wanted to discuss. People notice that kind of stuff around here.

They say a fisherman found him. Saturday morning, just after dawn, a surf caster was reeling in his lines when he spotted something in the water a couple hundred yards down the beach. Whatever was bobbing out there was big and dark enough to be driftwood or maybe some giant creature breaching, but when the guy walked closer, he saw a body getting rag-dolled in the waves. The fisherman ran out into the ocean, hoping he could still save him, but the victim had been in the water for days. But give that guy some credit—he dragged him in through the white water, got him ashore, caught his breath, and phoned it in. It’s late September, off-season, so if he hadn’t seen him, who knows when they would have found him, this time of year?

The newspapers Monday said the body of an unidentified man had washed up on the beach. Nobody around the gym, at the library, or even the moms at school pickup knew who he was. The moms know an awful lot about many subjects that I find helpful in my current role as a stay-at-home dad, but on this one, they didn’t have much. Everyone’s been asking questions, like Who the hell was he? and What the hell happened to him? I can’t think of anything that’s caused this kind of stir since we’ve lived out here.

People have theories. They’re saying he was surfing. They found him in a wet suit, with a snapped leash tied to his ankle but no board attached. So they’re saying he was surfing alone and that something went wrong—maybe he knocked himself out somehow. Maybe his board popped up and hit him in the head or he wiped out and plowed into the sand. Or broke his neck on the bottom. He could have breathed in some seawater. Imagine you go over the falls, the top of the wave snatches you as it rears up and rolls over, throwing you forward and slamming you down, driving you under, spinning and tumbling, getting tossed in the wash. When you reach the surface, you’re disoriented—you don’t see the other one coming or maybe your lungs just need air—but you take a deep gasp of something salty down the wrong pipe. That awful burning and coughing—that’s a rough way to go.

But then today, I’m down here at this empty stretch of beach on a gray Thursday morning, watching Luke and his little friend Jake play with their trucks in the sand. I was just looking at my phone, going through the papers, when I see a headline in the local rag. They have the guy’s name. They figured it out. I can hardly believe what they’re saying, but there it is. I read the whole article twice and then glance up at the boys to make sure they haven’t started to hitchhike.

“You want to hear something messed-up?” I yell over to Frank. He’s bouncing on one foot and shaking his head to his shoulder, trying to get salt water out of his ears. He doesn’t respond.

“Remember that guy who washed up last Saturday?” I ask him.

Frank’s the kind of person who can sometimes leave you wondering whether or not he heard what you said.

“That was pretty messed-up,” he says, finally.

“Yeah. The paper just released his name. I know the guy,” I tell him.

I knew who he was. I’d recognized Robert Townsend the first day I saw him on the water, sitting on his board, and watching the horizon for the next approaching set. The ocean had been nearly deserted on a clear November morning with semidecent waves. That was almost a year ago now. If you work in this business—pardon me, worked in this business—you know who certain people are, even if you haven’t met them. He was a fair-haired boy. A rising star. He didn’t run one of the behemoths, but he was well recognized as the heir apparent at a midsize firm in the city. I figured there were worse people I could try to get to know.

So, that first day on the water, it was just the two of us out there, and I let myself drift over. We had a nice conversation.

What’s up? I had asked him.

Hey, he had said. And he’d nodded.

That was the end of the chat. That was our first conversation. But that’s how it started.

“Jesus,” Frank says walking over. “He was a friend of yours? That’s brutal. Who was he?”

“A guy named Robert Townsend,” I tell him. “But that’s not the messed-up part.”

I’m not sure I’d have called him a friend. I’m not sure what I’d call him.

“What do you mean?” he says.

“I saw him. Right here. A week ago, that Thursday.”

“Out on the water?”

“No man. Right here. He was sitting in his car. Watching the water. Just like me. I was down here, too, with the little guy.”

“And when did he go missing?”

“Thursday.”

“You saw him before he went in the water?”

“No, that’s the thing,” I tell him. “It was lousy. I saw him just sort of sitting there in his car and I walked over to say what’s up. And we talked. We both said it wasn’t worth it. It’s not doable, that’s a bummer kind of thing. Then we sat around for a minute or two. And then I took off.”

“So, he went in after you left?”

“No. No. They found his car over by Hammy’s.”

“Huh,” he says.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“What time did you see him?”

“Around four or four thirty.”

“Huh,” he says again.

I could see him doing the same arithmetic as me. If Hamilton Beach sits about ten miles down the coast from this stretch of sand, at this time of year, with no traffic, back roads or the highway, that would take what, maybe twenty to thirty minutes?

“Why would he drive all the way out there just before dark to go in on some dog shit day?” I ask him. “Onshore wind. Starting to rain. Doesn’t make any sense.”

Frank rubs his neck and considers this for a sec.

“Was he any good?” he asks.

“Good athlete,” I tell him. “But not really. Just getting into it.”

Since we’re being honest, I could add that he was probably a little better than I am, but I don’t.

“Was he from the city?” Frank asks.

“Yeah. He’s got a place out here. Big finance guy.”

“He’s out from the city, and he’s just starting—he just caught the bug,” says Frank. “Those guys go out in all kinds of stuff.”

As a card-carrying member of the “guys out from the city who have a lot of time to make up” crowd, I should know that he makes a fair point.

“I was talking to him right here,” I mutter instead, looking at the spot where his car sat parked that day. “It just doesn’t make sense. Doesn’t add up.”

He looks out at the ocean for a little bit. We both do.

“How’d you know the guy, again?” he asks.

“He was a friend of mine,” I tell him.

Frank thinks it over for a minute as I watch the boys dig a hole in the sand with a stick they found someplace. I wonder how long it will take to get them in the car.

“Yeah, that’s messed-up,” he says.

AFTER THAT FIRST day I didn’t see Townsend again on the water until a couple weeks later. It was a decent morning with three-to-four-foot swells and light, side shore wind. Just the two of us, again. I had gotten out there before him and caught a few nice ones by the time he showed up, and I felt pretty good. He sat out behind the sandbar for a little bit, then jumped on the first wave of an all right–looking set and I took off on the second. When I paddled back out past the break, I pulled up a half dozen yards over from him, and even though this was booties and gloves season, and he wore a hooded wet suit tucked over most of his face, I recognized him. He turned to me, sporting a grin. I didn’t force anything.

“What’s up?” he asked and nodded.

“What’s up?” I said and nodded back.

Everything was going fine.

“You live around here?” I asked. I already knew the answer, of course, but it seemed as good a moment as any to make my move, and that was the first club I could find in the bag. I figured he’d be a good guy to know. Maybe a game changer, even.

“I’m in the city,” he said. “Just out on the weekends.”

And he was still smiling. In my time out on the water, I would say hello to a few of the more approachable-looking regulars, but I’d never met anyone before that I’d consider a friend, although I’d heard about that sort of thing and believed it could happen.

“How about you?” he asked.

“I’m out here year-round now. I used to live in the city.”

“Sounds like you got the right idea.”

“Yeah, we’ve been here a little over a year.”

“What do you do?” he asked.

I kept my chin up, but I already felt myself sinking.

“I worked in finance for a while and now I’m between jobs,” I said. “But I look after my son.”

He stopped smiling. Then he glanced out at the water. When he turned to look back at me, he was forcing a smile that didn’t look right. I’d seen this before. Not often this bad, though—this one was brutal.

Cocktail parties are the worst. But really any kind of social gathering gets dangerous, even just running into someone on the street. When you’re unemployed, anywhere people come together and feel the urge to speak, things can go wrong in the worst sort of way and often do. At any moment someone could ask what you do for a living, and then you’ll have to tell them. But it gets worse. They make you watch. You have to watch the light drain out of their eyes as they fumble for their next words. Sometimes they look away.

But what was I supposed to do—lie to him? I wanted to get to know the guy, and I’d have to come clean eventually.

“I used to work on the sell-side,” I added.

This only seemed to make him more uncomfortable. He nodded and kept smiling at me, but he was already somewhere else, and I’d sent him there by just answering one, simple question.

When I got let go, I wasn’t fired. I was actually a good producer—one of the better ones on the desk. I was well liked and tried to mentor younger people. I didn’t steal anything or yell racist comments or assault any women. And one day I got laid off. That was it. I’m sure everyone says this, but even though they were downsizing all these groups, I was shocked when the call came.

It sort of reminds me of paddling out on some huge, scary day. You think you have it timed right, but then this set comes bearing down on you, like 2008, and you dig and make it over that first bastard even if you can’t help but notice, looking around you, that a few of your buddies are gone. You hear the roar of collision over your shoulder and hope they’re okay, but you just paddle harder, and now there’s another one right in front of you—some European disaster—but you dodge that one, too, you’re still in the game. Then there’s another clusterfuck. Another round of layoffs comes along, but you’re still paddling, and then your old boss is gone, and you make it over another, but Jesus, how big a set is this? Until one wave comes. Somehow it always seems to come out of nowhere, but really it just follows all the rest. And that’s it. You get drilled. And that’s not fun, but that’s business, it’s part of the sport, no one asked you to play, they don’t put a gun to your head, and if you can’t take getting roughed up a little or making an ass of yourself, there’s an easy solution—just stay on the beach. Of course, if you sit there long enough watching everyone else out on the water, you might miss getting drilled.

I didn’t mention any of this to Townsend. He didn’t bring it up, either.

“Gotcha,” he said.

Then he looked out toward the ocean, hoping to find an incoming set. But there wasn’t one. And I could have used it.

“I’m Pete, by the way,” I told him after a good-size silence.

“Robert.”

He tried forcing a smile. But then again, he turned back to study the water, scanning for the next wave.

“How about you?” I asked him. “What do you do?”

What else was I going to say?

“I’m in finance,” he told me.

But he didn’t look away from the horizon. He didn’t look my way again. And I knew, of course, at that moment, he would have begged me, paid any kind of ransom, if I could just shut the fuck up and not ask him another question or confide any horrifying secrets about the life I had squandered. So, I didn’t. We didn’t speak for the rest of the session.

I did see him again out on the water another time—this would have been early summer. It didn’t go well at all.

MOST NIGHTS MY son doesn’t fall asleep unless I stay there with him in his room. Maybe I’ve indulged him too much and created a bad habit, I don’t know. But the truth is I like it. It’s something I can take c. . .