The Blue Cantina: Anna's Surrender

Chapter One-1

Chapter One

Anna sat frozen in the driver’s seat of her leased, red, late model Toyota Camry, the radio off, the motor purring, unable to bring herself to commence the process of shutting the engine. Beneath her fur lined, kid leather gloves her hands were sweating and she gripped the steering wheel tightly as if steeling herself to resist some force that might hurl her from the vehicle unwillingly. She was wearing a short, pleated, tan, cashmere skirt and a tight, burgundy, pullover knit sweater under her heavy, black, cloth overcoat. She had adorned herself with a pair of two inch, red high heels, as she had been instructed, and she had on more makeup than she usually wore, having outlined her eyes carefully with dark mascara and painted her lids a subtle, soft blue.

Exactly one week ago, the attractive 29 year old social worker had come to the elegant mansion belonging to Miles Devlin with a trepidation that was only imperceptibly less intense than now. She had been in desperate straights, but had no where else to turn. Just that morning she had discovered that Carol, her best friend and the second in command of the charity that Anna headed, had absconded with approximately $225,000 belonging to the social service agency. As executive director, Anna was ultimately responsible for everything that went on at the Center, a residence home for young girls who had run or been cast away by their families and society. The Center provided them with a loving, warm environment to recover from abuse and neglect and gave them schooling, job training and a hope for a better and more fulfilling future. The money had been the quarterly grant from the county welfare agency and without it operations would come to a grinding halt. The girls who lived and trained there would be cast out into the street or sent back to their abusive homes. It was a disaster of the first magnitude.

Anna had founded the Center five years ago when she was 24 and it was the centerpiece of her life. She knew what the girls had suffered, having run away from her own dysfunctional home when she was sixteen. Life had been hard, and she had skated precariously amongst the temptations of drugs, alcohol, exploitative men and the easy way out of prostitution, go-go bars and promiscuous s*x. Anna had been lucky. After a few false starts, she had been taken in by a kindly, older woman who had found her a job waitressing at a local diner, guided her through the process of getting her G.E.D. and then an associate’s degree at the local county college. Anna had gone on to get a B.A. as a social worker at State.

When the old woman died, she had left Anna her large house and about $150,000. Anna started the Center in the house soon afterwards and, through determination, luck and lots of hard work, had gotten the agency recognized as a bona fide charity by the county welfare board. The Center now housed, at any single time, between fifteen and twenty girls ranging in age from sixteen to twenty-one. There was counseling, schooling and job placement. Not all the girls went on to lead productive lives, but a high percentage of them did, moving on to good jobs or colleges armed with a better vision of themselves as worthy of respect and love.

But all of that was set to come tumbling down with a huge crash. Carol had vanished without a trace. She was a few years older than Anna and had had a similar life experience—s****l abuse at home, beatings, an alcohol ridden family, and had run away at fifteen. She had not been as lucky as Anna and had descended into a life of drug abuse and prostitution. They had met while Anna was interning at a local drug rehab facility and had hit it off right away. When Anna told Carol of her dreams about founding what in the old days was euphemistically referred to as a ‘home for wayward girls’, Carol had excitedly agreed to join her once she finished rehab.

But Carol’s addictions had reared their ugly heads again. Anna first noticed it about two months before when Carol started coming in later and later, tired and disheveled. Anna had found a pint of vodka in her desk drawer. She demanded that Carol take a drug test, but the tall, thin, blond haired woman refused. Then, one morning, she didn’t come in at all. She failed to answer her cell phone or respond to text messages or emails. After three days, Anna went to Carol’s apartment to find she had gone. It was with a gnawing, terrible foreboding that Anna had conducted an informal audit of the Center’s books and found that Carol had absconded with all of their quarterly grant money, over $225,000.

Anna had cried, heartbroken that her friend had betrayed her and disconsolate at the thought that her life’s work at the Center would probably have to fold. The worst thing about it was that Anna had endorsed the check that Carol used to embezzle the funds and she knew that she would be implicated, if not in the actual theft, at least in accusations of incompetence and reckless negligence with the Center’s money. There was no way that she could come up with that kind of cash. There was only one hope: Miles Devlin.

Devlin had been one of the Center’s most enthusiastic supporters for years. In addition to his sizable annual contributions, he had helped obtain the financing for the addition of a new wing on the old house that Anna inherited and created a scholarship fund for the girls, which was contributed to by many of his bigwig friends. Anna had some reservations about receiving Devlin’s largesse. His reputation was a little darker than shady. Although he represented himself as a wealthy investor, there were rumors about his underworld connections and alleged mob ties. He was young, a little over forty years old, handsome and suave. He had short, jet black hair and a fit, masculine build. He oozed charm. He had appeared at one of the Center’s fundraisers about a year after it opened and Anna had eagerly accepted him on the Board of Trustees about six months later. Shortly thereafter, the Center received its first County grant and the hand-to-mouth existence of the agency came to an end. He was now president of the Board and was involved in every major decision.

Last Friday, Anna had telephoned Devlin and told him that she needed to talk to him urgently. She arrived a little after seven o’clock that night and was ushered into his private office, a sumptuous, lavishly decorated retreat inside his luxurious mansion. She sat in one of the comfortable, elegant chairs in front of his large, finely polished, oaken desk and blurted out her troubles. Devlin took in her message of tribulation calmly, but with a severe, disappointed wrinkle in the brow of his handsome, vital face.

“And what do you expect me to do about it, Anna?” he asked. His voice was stern and Anna shivered at his disapproving tone.

With tears in her eyes, Anna pleaded that the wealthy benefactor replace the lost funds. She promised to repay him, forgo her salary, work a side job, anything to keep the Center from failing and to forestall her personal disgrace.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Devlin,” she eked out. “I know it’s my fault. I should have known better than to give Carol all that responsibility. But there’s nothing I can do now. The Center will have to close. I don’t want to imagine what will happen to the girls. There’s no place else for them to go. Can’t you do something to help?”

“Listen, Anna,” Devlin replied, leaning back in his large, black, leather chair, a frown of disapproval on his face, “I’m not in the habit of rewarding negligence or embezzlement. You tell me that Carol took the money. That’s what you say. Your signature is on the check and it was cashed at your bank. I don’t know whether you’re telling me the whole truth or not. Maybe you’re using Carol’s disappearance to cover up your own crime. Did you owe somebody a lot of money? Do you have a gambling problem or something?”

“I swear to you that it wasn’t me, Mr. Devlin,” Anna answered, panicked. It was worse than she thought. Maybe she would be arrested. She might go to jail. Her stomach quailed at the thought. Her throat grew tight and her hands began to sweat.

There was a lull of deadly silence in the room. Then Devlin spoke again.

“I want to tell you something, Anna. I don’t know who you think I am. I’m sure you’ve heard all the rumors. Helping out on your charity was a good way for me to get a little favorable PR. I don’t give a f**k about your wayward girls or any of your problems. I can tell you that it will be a great embarrassment to me when this all comes out. I will make sure that you are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Your Center cost me a pretty penny over the years and now to have my name dragged through the mud will undo all the good I got from it. It makes me want to toss you out on your ear. I could call the sheriff right now and you’d be in the county lockup in a half an hour. It’s probably the only way for me to escape this mess without the newspapers using me as a fall guy. I can see it now: ‘Alleged Mobster Implicated in Charity Scandal.’ That’s what the headlines will say.”

The distraught woman sat through Devlin’s tirade with a building sense of dread. She broke into tears. “Oh, please don’t call the sheriff, Mr. Devlin! I didn’t take the money, I promise you! I wouldn’t do that, the Center is too important to me!”

Devlin let the unhappy woman cry for a few minutes. When Anna looked up, she could see the wheels turning in his head.

“Okay, Anna,” he said finally. “What’s in it for me?”

Anna tried to stifle her sobs. Her glimmer of hope was tinged with confusion. “What do you mean, Mr. Devlin?” she asked hesitatingly.

“I mean, ‘What’s in it for me?’ You expect me to shell out over 200 grand. What do I get in exchange?”

Anna looked at the man, perplexed. “I told you that I’d pay you back somehow, Mr. Devlin. It’ll take a long time, but I promise you’ll get all your money back, with interest, if that’s what you want.”

“Bullshit,” Devlin spat out at her. “It would take you a hundred years.”

“No it won’t, Mr. Devlin! I’ll mortgage the house!”

“You can’t get a mortgage on the house. It belongs to the Board of Trustees now. I doubt that that group of stuffed shirts will look on your defalcation with amusement. Anyway, it’s already mortgaged to help pay for the addition, or did you forget that?”

Anna felt her heart sink. He was right. She fought back a renewed cascade of tears.

“There is one thing you’ve got that I want, Anna,” Devlin told her in a cold, insidious voice.

Anna looked at the callous man with surprise. “What would that be?” she asked, tremulously.

“I think you know what it is,” Devlin returned.

The pretty, shapely social worker felt a chill run through her. Devlin, although his actions towards her had always been above board, had asked her out on a number of occasions. She had politely demurred. Many times, at cocktail parties or other benefits for the Center, she had felt his eyes wandering her flesh and she had gotten goose bumps and a sickly feeling. Devlin always appeared with a languorous, beautiful, young woman on his arm, rarely the same one. Anna, like many women, had a sixth sense about men, and she had him pegged as a lecher from the word ‘go’. She had often joked to Carol about it, who had responded, “But a good looking one.” That didn’t matter to Anna. She hadn’t dated much since college. She learned to like s*x, but the men she met had not inspired her. Burdening herself with a lover was something that wouldn’t add much to her life. Looking at the leering face of her charity’s principal benefactor, she hoped that she was wrong about what he implied.