My Darling Husband(30)
I close the door and jog down the alleyway to the truck. “Life or death, Ed. I need the money by closing time.”
Ed puffs another defeated sigh. “Then you’d better let me go so I can get busy.”
T H E I N T E R V I E W
Juanita: After that phone call from Jade, why wasn’t your first call to the police?
Cam: Because those were the marching orders. Bring home $734,296 by seven and don’t call the cops. Jade made it perfectly clear what would happen if I didn’t obey.
Juanita: Seven hundred, thirty-four thousand...
Cam: And two hundred ninety-six dollars.
Juanita: That’s an awfully big number.
Cam: Yeah, no kidding. And an hour before the banks were set to close.
Juanita: Almost like he wanted you to fail.
Cam: Or like he wanted to torture me, because I sure as hell didn’t have that kind of money lying around.
Juanita: How can that be? You owned five restaurants consistently named as the best restaurants in not just the city but the country. Before the fire, your Buckhead steak house had a six-week wait for a Saturday night table. You were featured in magazines and newspapers, and were a regular guest on the morning news shows. You even beat out Bobby Flay on Iron Chef. You’re very successful.
Cam: Was very successful. Was. But after Iron Chef, investors were tossing me money like they’d just hit the jackpot in Vegas, more cash than I ever thought imaginable. Like a fool, I grabbed on with both hands, never stopping to think through the consequences of opening another shop before the one before it was paid off. Because here’s the thing about investors, Juanita—they really like you a whole lot better when you pay them back.
Juanita: What happens if you miss a payment?
Cam: Depends on the investor. Most were pretty reasonable. A thirty-day cure provision, meaning I had a month to get my act together and cough up the money. After that, it depends on the terms of the contract, how much I was willing to put up as collateral.
Juanita: What were your terms?
Cam: They were 50 percent interest in the shop, 50 percent of the profits and a personal guarantee.
Juanita: So, a lot.
Cam: Everything but the wife and kids.
Juanita: And the others? The ones who were less reasonable?
Cam: [smiles] They were the first to get paid back.
Juanita: Did you ever consider shuttering one or more of your restaurants?
Cam: Of course I thought about it. For about three seconds.
Juanita: Why so short?
Cam: Because in the restaurant world, closing your doors for any reason is equivalent to failing. Especially if people were ever to find out the truth, that I closed because of money problems. The Lasky brand would have suffered. The rest of my shops would have fallen like dominoes.
Juanita: And then there’s also the fact that Jade had no idea you were experiencing money problems.
Cam: [sighs] And then there’s that. The point is, I had no choice but to keep trying to dig myself out of the hole.
Juanita: What made you decide to keep your money issues from her?
Cam: God, I don’t know. A million and one reasons. Because her father never liked me. Because her sister would have never let us hear the end of it. But I guess it all goes back to the fact that I was too proud, am too proud. I mean, all that time I told myself I kept going because of her, but that’s a lie. It was because of me. Because I couldn’t admit I was a failure, because I couldn’t stand the thought of ending up just like...
Juanita: Like your father?
Cam: Yeah, like him. I remember what it was like after he lost all his money, the way Mom and I went from this giant mansion to a seedy hotel, all the whispers that would start up the second she left a room. Do you know that’s the reason I chose steaks as part of the Lasky brand? Because to me it was the ultimate status symbol, being able to afford a hundred-dollar meal on a regular old Tuesday.
Juanita: So your ambition stemmed from not wanting to make his mistakes.
Cam: If you’d asked me a year ago, I’d say it was because I didn’t want to put Jade and the kids through what I went through as a kid, but that’s not the truth. It was about me. I didn’t want to go through that again. So okay, maybe I was an asshole to my employees, but it was because I was drowning, trying to keep my business afloat while taking on water.
Juanita: Even more reason for calling 9-1-1. The Atlanta Police Department has a Special Weapons and Tactics unit. They have officers specialized in hostage negotiation, ones with specific skills and decades of experience. They know what to do in hostage situations, because they respond to more reports of home invasions in a month than many other cities do in a year.
Cam: [sarcastic laugh] Doesn’t say much for our fair city, does it?
Juanita: My point is, the police would have known what to do.
Cam: Or they would have come in, sirens wailing, busted down my front door and started shooting until somebody was dead. Which as you know, they did.
Juanita: You could have told them not to use the sirens.
Cam: I did what I had to do, what I thought was the best thing at the time.
Juanita: But police officers are trained for this exact situation. They know how to respond in order to save lives.
Cam: Look, lady. You and whoever’s on their cushy couches at home can sit there and judge me all you want, but let’s talk again when it’s your wife chained to a chair, begging you to hurry home with money you don’t have while your children scream bloody murder in the background. Until then, until you’ve stood in my shoes with the weight of a thousand elephants on your chest because you can’t cobble together the ransom to save the people you love most, I suggest you save your judgment for someone else because you don’t know what that’s like. You can’t know until you’ve been there.