Long Way Down by Michael Sears

I’m on the boat, I’m not thinking about balance sheets, or failed algae batches, or Chinese saboteurs, or . . .”
    “I hear you.” Or a wife who prefers to live twenty miles away, or an SEC investigation, or who might be stabbing you in the back. “I don’t know how you do it, out here in just a jacket, but I’m dying.”
    “Of course. Of course. We’ll head back and I’ll let you go.”
    Haley pushed the pace back to the parking lot, and by the time we got there I was beginning to think that I would live.
    “I’ll be in touch,” I said. “Anything else that comes to mind, please let me know right away. I’ll report back to Virgil, but with your permission, I can also keep your lawyer in the loop.”
    “Right. Give him a call,” he said airily. He was back in his denial phase.
    “By the way,” I said, “where do you keep the boat? I didn’t see it down there.”
    “Oh, no. There’s no real dockage here. I keep it in the cove just down the coast. Come back in warmer weather and I’ll take you out. We’ll head out east for bonito. Good fighting fish on light tackle.”
    The wind was making the birches next to the lab groan and complain as they swayed. I hustled into the car and put the heater on high. It blasted cold air for a minute, then neutral, and, finally, blessed heat. I turned the fan down and started the long drive home.

10
    T here was an accident in the left lane just before the Cross Island Parkway, and the Long Island Expressway had become a parking lot. I was close enough to see the flashing lights up ahead, which was also close enough to see that the only lane where traffic was moving was the exit lane to the Parkway. I pulled out my phone, fitted in my earbuds, and made a call—almost hands-free.
    Straight to voicemail. “Hi. This is Fred Krebs. I’m not available right now, but if you leave your name, number, and a brief message, I will be sure to get back to you.”
    “Hello, Spud. Sorry. Fred.” Spud had been a junior trader who had helped me out in the past, but now that he was in law school—at Yale—he was trying to lose the old nickname. “So by now you’ve guessed who this is. I thought you might need to make a few bucks to buy Christmas presents. Give me a call.”
    I tried Skeli.
    “Hi. What’s up?” She sounded busy.
    “Are you busy?” I asked.
    She let out a breath. “I’m always busy these days, aren’t I? I didn’tuse to be, you know. Or at least it felt less busy. I miss it, sometimes. What are you doing?”
    “I’m stuck in traffic on the LIE.”
    She laughed a great whoop. “Your worst nightmare. And you called
me
. What a romantic you are.” She gave a soft chuckle. “Poor baby.”
    “Thanks. I didn’t know I needed that until you said it.”
    “Call when you get back into the city. I need a break from all this. A long relaxing session with you.”
    “I’ll try and fit you in,” I said.
    “I love it when you talk dirty to me.” She disconnected.
    A Chrysler 300 in the middle lane suddenly put on its blinker and attempted to force its way into the left-hand lane. As no cars were moving, he didn’t get very far, though he now managed to block two lanes rather than one.
    My phone rang. Spud.
    “Hey! Thanks for getting back to me so quick.”
    “I only called to say I can’t help. I’m buried.”
    “I don’t need much. I think.”
    “It’s finals. Law school finals. People regularly take their own lives in all kinds of dramatic and mundane ways to avoid what I am going through.”
    “Come on. By this time you either know it or you don’t.”
    “I want to make law review.”
    “Five minutes? Less, if you stop trying to put me off.”
    “You always try to cheese me with that ‘five minutes.’ It is never five minutes.”
    “I will wire you the money the minute I hang up,” I said.
    “Banking by phone?” He laughed. “Are you finally embracing technology? Leaping blindly into the second decade of the twenty-first