Page 32 of Only the Devil
Collection notices.
It didn’t take me long to realize they were all unpaid bills. Utility. Rent. Credit card. Water. The collection notices whispered against each other as I sorted through Reed’s shame.
My chest ached with regret. I could still see him sitting in that folding chair by the pool, waving when I came home, making sure I was safe. He’d watched over me every single day of my childhood, and somewhere along the way, while I was busy living my life, I’d missed that he was slipping.
He should’ve asked for money.
But that was my fault.
I shouldn’t have complained to him about Mom asking for money. But I did, and that certainly made him feel like he couldn’t come to me. The twisted part of it is, I may have complained, but I always helped Mom and my sister, Lily. Always. Without fail.
Reed clearly slipped, I mean, those bills were a shit show. But the man I knew wasn’t too proud to admit when he fucked up.
“Messed up big time, little one.” That’s what he’d told me when I asked what happened with him and his wife. I never met her. He moved into the Hollywood Dreams Apartments after the divorce, a split that happened before I was born.
“There’s a lot of devils out there with a powerful pull.” One of his all-time favorite statements rings through my head, something he’d say in his defense of my mom.
Uncle Alvin always said I had every right to be mad at her, and that it was important I understand her actions were no fault of mine. Even as a kid, I sensed his words carried weight, because they applied to his past. When he spoke those words, he wasn’t just saying them to me, the latchkey kid from across the courtyard. He spoke to his ghosts.
My curiosity, my need to understand what caused him to slip this last time is what led me to dig further.
He’d been the most frugal man I’ve ever known. He didn’t replace anything unless it broke and couldn’t be repaired. He stopped his daily trips to the beach when they raised the bus fare. How he could fall so far into debt didn’t make sense.
If I’d found his laptop, I could’ve gotten in because on his desk beneath yellowed scotch tape he’d pasted his login to an important site: Username: AReed Password: WildFlower1!
But I never found the laptop.
I did find a spiral notebook with scrawled names and dollar amounts beside them. At first, I thought it was a betting log. Tucked in the pages was a business card for a lawyer with a Los Angeles address.
Another file included articles that he must’ve printed in the library, as he didn’t own a printer.
The headlines offered clues: BitConnect, One Coin, Plus Token, Squid Game Token, Africrypt Heist.
His printed search queries with answers interwoven with ads with broken images offered more clues.
What is pig butchering?
The Wikipedia-like explanation described how scammers build trust through fake relationships before convincing victims to invest in fraudulent platforms.
Then I opened a folder with a handwritten tab labeled Sterling Financial. Marketing materials filled the folder. Buy “memberships” with minimum returns of 0.5 percent a day, with a 300 percent return over 600 days.
My coffee has gone cold beside me. Outside, the Sunday morning is perfectly quiet—no sirens, no emergency vehicles across the street. Just like the afternoon I realized Uncle Alvin had been scammed.
A thousand bucks incentive for recruiting new members with a $50,000 investment.
Stock photo images of smiling models and palm trees adorned a glossy folder that could double as an advertisement for a sleep aid.
That day, my fingers tingled with realization. Uncle Alvin met a modern devil—a scammer.
If he died of a heart attack, did stress bring it on?
My initial assumption had been that he was doing all the research to get his money back. But from what I’ve read, it doesn’t work like that. I’m sure he signed something stating he completely understood the risks he was incurring.
That day, I’d sensed he’d been wronged. I wondered how they found him, a Vietnam vet living in a shit hole. And I’d wondered if he’d given them everything—and he had.
I took photos of everything, even the spot on the linoleum where Mom said she found his body. The police officer called to the scene didn’t register surprise at an eighty-three-year-old’s unexpected death.
I agreed; never suspected murder. Given Reed thought doctors were too expensive and would rather die than complain about a health issue, I figured there was no telling what got him, what ailment he suffered from and never sought treatment. With those bills, Reed would’ve had to have been in massive physical pain before he added to his debt.
