And why the hell not? Frank had felt nervous and broke his rule about drinking on the job. （He wasn’t technically on the job.） Then the two of them had shared a lobster lunch—the best goddamned lobster he’d ever eaten in his life and nursed a bottle of whiskey.
“So?” Wolfsheim finally said, wiping around his graying beard with his napkin. “Tell me the truth, Charles. Who did it?”
He’d left Santa Barbara with every intention of telling Wolfsheim what he’d learned about Jordan, what he knew for sure in that detective gut of his, even if he couldn’t prove it. Until last week, when something else had gone down: a handless dead man, pulled from the East River, and word was he’d worked for Wolfsheim and had betrayed him. We’ll never get enough evidence to make an arrest, Detective Lawrence, who was new to the precinct but had seen this kind of thing from Wolfsheim before in Brooklyn, had said. But that’s justice in Wolfsheim’s world.
What’s that? Frank had asked, suddenly feeling nausea swelling in his chest.
Murder. Lawrence had shrugged.
And in that moment, when Lawrence had said murder, all Frank could think about was Lizzie.
“Well?” Wolfsheim urged Frank now. “Give me the full report.”
Jordan Baker’s name sat loosely on the tip of Frank’s tongue, and part of him really wanted to say it. But then the other part of him knew what he would be unleashing if he did. No woman deserved that. And he knew he’d never be able to forgive himself if Jordan Baker turned up dead later.
“I’m sorry to tell you, Mr. Wolfsheim,” Frank finally said, clearing his throat, trying not to let his voice betray his nervousness. “But I investigated this thoroughly and it was George Wilson all along.”
Wolfsheim took a sip of his whiskey. “You’re absolutely sure, old sport? No doubt?”
“Absolutely sure,” he lied through his teeth. Wolfsheim had promised to pay him no matter what the result and he held his breath, waiting for him to take that promise back.
Wolfsheim nodded. “You know, Jay Gatsby was like a son to me. I don’t trust the police, no offense, Detective.”
“None taken,” he said. Though, really, how was he supposed to take that?
“And I just wanted to make sure Gatsby got what he deserved. Justice. Whatever that means these days.”
Frank thought about the handless man in the East River and felt the lobster rising up in his chest. He shouldn’t have eaten so much. “I don’t know,” Frank spoke softly. “I tend to think justice finds a way of working itself out. We all get what’s coming to us eventually.”
Wolfsheim chuckled a little and shook his head. Then he motioned at a waiter, who walked to the table a minute later with a briefcase. “Here’s your money, Detective, as promised.”
It all felt so illicit, Frank wasn’t sure whether to thank him or arrest him. But he knew he should take the money and get the hell out of there, before Wolfsheim changed his mind. He stood and grabbed the briefcase.
“Hey, Detective,” Wolfsheim called after him. “Stay out of trouble.”
Frank laughed a little in spite of himself. “You, too, Wolfsheim,” he called as he walked out of the speakeasy. “You too.”
* * *
“FRANK! THIS HOUSE! It’s too much,” Dolores exclaimed now as he led her inside their summer rental. Out in East Egg, just like she’d always dreamed. It wasn’t as fancy or as large as the Buchanans’—and besides, that one was already rented for the summer by another couple—but he’d snagged a smaller one, on the same street. The house itself may have been less extravagant, but they had better access to the water.
“You deserve this house,” he said. “We deserve this summer.” And wasn’t that true, after all they’d been through the past few years. Dolores’s eyes already shone a little brighter, her cheeks a little pinker out here than they had been in Brooklyn.
“Still, I hate to think of how we only got here because of that awful man.” She shuddered a little, and it wasn’t clear whether she meant Wolfsheim or Gatsby. Dolores knew every last detail of his interviews and investigation and gut feelings, right down to Jordan’s insistence he’d never prove anything over cherry pie in Santa Barbara and the lie he’d told Meyer Wolfsheim over lobster.
He didn’t quite regret the choice he’d made with Wolfsheim, but something still sat unsettled in his gut about the whole thing. It was the thought of Miss Baker out on the golf course, and Mrs. Buchanan in that vast mansion in Minnesota, and Miss McCoy he’d heard had settled in Chicago. They’d all moved past what had happened last summer, onward with their lives. While Myrtle Wilson and Jay Gatsby would never get that chance. But maybe he did believe what he’d told Wolfsheim, too: we all get what’s coming to us. Eventually.