Chapter 5: The Man Named R
I stood in the hotel corridor for a long moment, reading the message twice.
*There's something about Walter you don't know.
— R*
I typed back: *Who is this?*
The reply came in under a minute.
*My name is Raymond Cho.
I was Walter's business partner from 2003 to 2011.
I was at the restaurant tonight.
I was one of the men from Denver.*
I sat down on the small bench at the end of the hallway.
*What do you want to tell me?*
*Not by text.
Lobby bar.
Twenty minutes.
I'll be the one in the gray jacket.*
I checked on the kids.
Both asleep.
I left the door on the latch, told the front desk I'd be in the lobby, and went downstairs.
Raymond Cho was exactly where he said he'd be — gray jacket, early sixties, the kind of man who looked like he had spent a long time being careful about what he said and to whom.
He had a glass of water in front of him, not a drink.
He stood when he saw me.
"Mr.
Miller.
Thank you for coming down."
"You said there's something about Walter I don't know."
"There are several things." He sat.
I sat across from him.
"I'll start with the one that matters most."
He folded his hands on the table.
"The $85,000 you gave Walter in 2012 — it didn't go to Lance's debts."
I kept my face still.
"Where did it go?"
"Walter had a second family.
A woman named Carol in Tucson.
They were together for nine years.
He used your money, and money from several other sources, to support her and her daughter through a difficult period."
The lobby bar hummed around us.
Someone laughed at a table nearby.
"Her daughter," I said.
"Walter's daughter.
She's twenty-two now.
Her name is Renee."
I set both hands flat on the table.
"Does Courtney know?"
"No.
Shirley found out in 2018.
She made Walter end the relationship.
He did.
But the daughter — Renee — she's been trying to make contact with the family for the past year.
Letters, mostly.
Walter has been intercepting them."
"And Lance?"
Raymond paused.
"Lance has known since 2019.
Walter told him.
He's been using it as leverage ever since — that's where the money requests stopped being loans and started being something else."
The word Lance had used at Christmas came back to me.
Brandon the Bank.
Everyone laughing.
Lance had known for three years that his father had a secret daughter.
He had been extracting money from Walter to stay quiet.
And he had been doing it while borrowing from me, treating me like a fool, laughing at the seating chart.
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
Raymond looked at his water glass.
"Because Walter asked me to be at that dinner tonight.
He knew what you were going to do — or he suspected.
He asked me to come and watch.
He said if things went the way he thought they might, he wanted someone there who knew the full picture." He looked up.
"I think he wanted a witness.
I think he's tired."
"Tired of what?"
"Of all of it." Raymond reached into his jacket and set a small envelope on the table.
"He asked me to give you this if the night went the way it did."
I didn't pick it up immediately.
"What is it?"
"I don't know.
He sealed it himself."
I looked at the envelope.
My name was on the front in Walter's handwriting.
The same handwriting that had signed the email twelve years ago.
*Brandon, you are more a son to me than you know.*
"One more thing," Raymond said.
"Renee — Walter's daughter in Tucson.
She knows about you.
She knows you've been supporting the family financially.
She reached out to me last month.
She's not angry.
She's scared.
She's twenty-two and she's been trying to understand who her father is for a long time."
"What does she want?"
"She doesn't know yet.
But I think she deserves to."
He stood, buttoned his jacket, and offered me his hand.
"I'm sorry for what happened to your children tonight, Mr.
Miller.
That was wrong.
Whatever else is true about this family, that part was simply wrong."
He left.
I sat alone at the table with the sealed envelope in front of me.
I picked it up.
Turned it over.
The seal was firm.
I put it in my jacket pocket and went back upstairs.
At the door to my room I stopped.
Down the corridor, the elevator opened.
Courtney stepped out.
She saw me.
She stopped walking.
We stood at opposite ends of the hallway.
"I need to tell you something," she said.
"About my father.
May you like
About something I found out tonight."
Her face told me she already knew.
