Continued from last week’s Part 1…
Donnie and I were left sitting there, dumbfounded. Donnie looked at me and expressed that clearly I had no other choice but to pay Daniel Halpert what was due to him.
That’s when I screamed at Donnie that there was no Daniel Halpert. Didn’t he understand that? Him and I had made him up. And nothing was due to him. This had started as a prank and now I was being extorted by a psychopath.
Donnie pointed out that clearly there was a Daniel Halpert. Maybe I wasn’t such a genius writer after all. Maybe I’d met my Dad’s friend, Daniel Halpert, when I was young, or seen a photograph of him, and the character I’d created for pranking my brother was just recycled shit from my subconscious.
My prank was slowly becoming a nightmare. And while I’ve never believed in karma…I was beginning to. In fact I felt like my brother was looking up at us…yes looking up…and laughing right now.
I figured we should go visit my dad’s actual lawyer, Steve Benedict and see what was what. I’d been so busy concocting a plan to screw with my brother, I hadn’t done much in the way of settling the estate. This was the kind of thing my dad put me in charge of: He knew my brother would do nothing short of suffocating him with a pillow for money, so he was hesitant to have him involved in his legal affairs.
Donnie insisted on coming. He said he didn’t want to be alone while Daniel Halpert was at large, but I’m pretty sure he just wanted to see a real-life estate lawyer in action for his future one-man show.
When we sat down with Mr. Benedict, he seemed as if he had news for me. He told me I was probably wondering why he hadn’t reached out. I told him it was no problem: August was a big month for death or so I’d heard. But he didn’t find that joke funny.
And then he went on to drop a bomb on us…
My dad was bankrupt.
Everything, including that log on the fireplace…belonged to the US government — not me, not Daniel Halpert, and not my dead brother. My Dad had lost it all in some scheme he’d put every cent into. I couldn’t pay that psycho Daniel Halpert a dollar…even if I wanted to.
I stared at Steve, horrified, and - call me paranoid - but I could’ve sworn he was sort of enjoying the whole thing. I really got pissed when a blatant half-smile came across the jackass’s face.
I politely asked him what was so fucking amusing.
He frowned and said he was just happy my dad had reserved something for me. He explained I had a special place in the old man’s heart, and when he found out the government was seizing everything he’d given something to Steve to keep for me. Not for my brother…just for me.
“And you know that’s illegal. For me to do.” Steve said, a little indignantly. Like I wasn’t recognizing the noble work that he had done.
“What is it?” I asked.
“His set of golf clubs belonging to the Ford family.” Steve answered, meaningfully — as if this made up for a multi-million dollar estate.
Why did everyone think I wanted these golf clubs? Were they magic golf clubs? Were they made of gold? Of all the things the man could have saved from a house filled with sentimental treasures…my mom’s signet ring…his record collection…a first edition of Great Expectations we’d read aloud together when I was a kid…that moronic heap of metal had somehow come out the winner.
All I could think to say was: “I don’t play golf.”
“No, no.” Steve said, horrified. “You don’t play with these clubs.”
“So what the hell are they for?” I asked.
“They’re a collector’s item.” Donnie observed from the corner of the room, like he was suddenly an auctioneer at Christie’s. He’d been sitting there watching Steve and picking his teeth the whole meeting. Steve nodded in Donnie’s direction.
No offense to Henry Ford but let me take this opportunity to say I will never understand the value of something increasing based on who used to own it. No matter who it is. Should we save the president’s Kleenex? Sell the sweaty towels of famous athletes on eBay? Where does it begin and end? These objects that we gather, collect, auction off that belong to the supposed great figures and families of America; really they’re just someone else’s crap. And now they’re our crap.
I explained to Steve that I did not want the golf clubs. In fact if my brother was still around I’d give them to him, that’s how much I didn’t want them.
Really I was just reeling in anger now as the reality of the situation washed over me. It wasn’t the money. It wasn’t the fact that Daniel Halpert was maybe going to brutally dismember me. It was the fact that my Dad had blown everything on one stupid scheme. It was so typical — the guy never thought he could be wrong. And he always had to put all of his eggs in one basket. God forbid he wasn’t the man in the room that knew the next best thing. What’s more he always thought he did no matter what. If he wasn’t “on to something” he wasn’t existing...that’s why everyone loved him so much. But there is no quality worse than the inability to question your own judgment. And the man never questioned a decision he made in his entire life. He just made them, then moved on.
But Steve was determined. He quickly went behind his desk and got the bag of golf clubs and handed them to me. It was my father’s dying wish - I had to have them. My only comfort was the fact that my brother was probably rolling over in his grave; or for now the gurney at the morgue.
I dropped the clubs and walked out. Donnie took them and quickly followed me. We walked down the street looking like player and caddie.
I checked my watch: 19 hours until Daniel Halpert would come back for his money. None of which I had. And then I realized the cherry on the sundae of this shit-pile of a situation was the fact that I still had to get my brother buried. And now I didn’t have a cent to do it with. I wondered if the funeral home would take a five iron previously sneezed on by someone in the Ford family.
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to call the medical examiner back who’d gotten in touch, to ask about the body.
“Cremation’s cheap.” Donnie piped in, as he started to do practice swings with the putter. I could’ve been doing just about anything that day…Donnie would have come. He never had anywhere better to be.
After a few rings, the medical examiner picked up and let me know they needed more time on the autopsy, and I should come by the next afternoon to identify the body. After I hung up, I relayed this to Donnie who stared at me oddly.
“What?” I asked him, impatient and irritated.
He went into a speech about shows like ER, Law & Order, NCIS: People always went in first to identify the body. Why’d this medical examiner only tell me to come tomorrow? My instinct was to shrug Donnie’s question off. He had - after all - always been an idiot. But then the more I thought about it, the more strange it seemed. I stared at the medical examiner’s number in my phone, and a cold shiver began to run up my spine. I told Donnie to call the number from his phone, not mine.
It rang five times, and then went to voicemail:
“It’s Joe. If you’re anyone besides Jill, leave a message. If this is Jill…blow me.”
It was a strange voicemail for a medical examiner.
Next we tried the detectives back that had called to inform me of my brother’s death. We got a busy signal. Then on the next try, a voicemail that said we’d reached brothers Bill and Barry. If they weren’t here, try Autobond mechanic shop.
Autobond mechanic shop…for some reason the name was familiar. And then it came to me: My brother had taken my dad’s vintage corvette there once when it stopped running. I remembered because the drama that followed was one that would put a Shakespearean tragedy to shame. My brother’s intent had been to fix it all up, no doubt ensuring he’d get the car one day. My dad was wary of a new mechanic, but my brother insisted. In the end this Billy and Barry duo of idiots truly mucked it up and almost ruined the car beyond repair. They were both dangerous ex-convicts with two Labrador Retrievers they were supposed to be taking care of as part of their parole. You know — to show they could take care of living things, give them a hobby and all that. These two brothers had somehow managed to make these labradors their beasts at the threshold: They may as well have been Rottweilers. It had occurred to me then that only a truly sick mind could make a Labrador retriever - the mascot of soccer moms and seeing eye programs alike - this mean and fierce.
What were these guys doing on the other end of the line when I called back the detectives? And then there was the medical examiner’s bizarre voicemail…something wasn’t right about my brother’s death. And then a realization came to me that seemed too unbelievable to be possible:
Maybe my brother wasn’t dead. Maybe my brother had hired people to tell me he was dead. Then he hired someone to play Daniel Halpert and extort my Dad’s estate from me. He didn’t want to split it 50/50, he wanted it all. And somehow he’d found out about the prank I was going to pull on him, and seized on the opportunity.
When I shared this with Donnie, he told me I was crazy. But we were interrupted when my phone rang. I picked it up and heard a sweet old man clearing his voice on the other line. He asked if this was Jim Murray’s daughter.
I said yes and he explained he was an old army buddy of my dad’s. He wanted to send his condolences as he’d heard my dad had passed away. I thanked him and asked his name.
“Daniel Halpert.” He said. Then a dog barked, and he excused himself from the phone for a minute. That’s when I heard him tell Fitzgerald to shut the hell up.
To be continued…