by Robert Pobi
The centerpiece of the living room was an elegant Japanese shelf—Meiji period—that displayed five of what Lucas knew were perfect and very old examples of the art form; one five-needle pine, two junipers, and two cypresses.
That Lucas was not good with people was no secret, especially to himself. So he thought of the one person he knew who was—Kehoe—and asked himself what Kehoe would do if he wanted something from William. So he leaned forward and examined one of the tiny trees. “Beautiful cypress.” A tree like that took at least a century to cultivate. “Hinoki?”
William managed a smile, however small. “You are nothing if not surprising, Dr. Page.”
“I read a lot.”
William shook his head. “One does not learn to identify Chabo-hiba by reading a book. But I appreciate your humor.”
“I’m glad someone does.” The truth was during his days at MIT, one of the girls he had lived with was a botanist at the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard; he had learned a lot about plants through simple intellectual osmosis.
He reached down and picked up a pair of hand-forged scissors that lay on a piece of silk beside one of the tiny trees. A few clippings were in a small cloisonné bowl; evidently Mr. Hockney had been at work tonight. Lucas slipped his fingers into the handles and felt the craftsmanship in the way they molded to his thumb and palm, as if they had been made for him. They warmed to his touch, and he wondered if Mr. Hockney knew how special they were; these weren’t eleven-hundred-dollar hobby scissors sold in a midtown boutique for people with more money than taste—these had been made by a master blacksmith, probably Sasuke, and had to run in the mid five figures.
He put the scissors back down on the embroidered silk and turned to take in the rest of the apartment as William eyed him with interest. “Those two cypress come from the Larz Anderson collection that Anderson’s widow left to Harvard in 1949—these two were gifted to my father, and he left them to me. The rest are housed in the Arnold Arboretum.”
Lucas wondered if the old man was fucking with him, or if the coincidence was real.
Hockney dropped into an antique club chair covered in zebra hide. There was a copy of Lucas’s latest book on the table beside him, an ivory paper knife sticking out at the two-thirds mark, a highball of whiskey beside it.
“You bought my book.”
The old man shook his head. “Dr. Saarinen gave it to me.”
“How am I supposed to pay for macaroni and cheese if cheapskates like you don’t splurge on luxury items once in a while?”
The old man raised his whiskey. “Would you like a drink, Dr. Page? I’m afraid that in light of recent events, I am desirous of my privacy and have sent the help home—you’ll have to serve yourself.” The old man pushed a button—evidently William was big on secret buttons—and a panel slid back, exposing yet another Disneyland for alcoholics hidden away in a wall.
Lucas walked over and poured a Perrier into a tumbler—he didn’t feel like fumbling with lemon or ice, so he sat down facing William in one of the safari chairs.
Hockney pointed his highball at Lucas. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but I knew Odelia.”
That bit of information was both a surprise and no surprise at all. Odelia Page—the eccentric old lady who had adopted Lucas in the winter of her life—had been a social fixture in New York City for the better part of the twentieth century. The surprise was that he had never heard anyone call her Odelia—not in the fifteen years they had spent together and not in all the time since she had died. She had simply been Mrs. Page, even though her husband had died when she was in her early twenties. “How so?”
Hockney waved his fingers as if casting a spell, and for an instant he was back in time somewhere. “I was trying to climb the social ladder and she was trying not to slip off; she had moved in the circles I aspired to, and I moved in the circles she could no longer afford. I remember when she adopted you—it was the only thing people talked about for several weeks. People thought she was—”
Lucas hoped he wasn’t going to say anything bad about her, because he had never hit another human being. But Mrs. Page had been the single greatest influence in his life, and he wouldn’t let anyone—not even an ancient billionaire—speak ill of her.
“—making a mistake adopting a child at her age. But I admired her for it. I remember seeing you once when you were new to her world. It was a garden party at the Wassermans.’”
Lucas remembered the party—it was on Long Island, and they had inflatable flamingos in the pool for the children to float around on. There had been a band. And white dinner jackets for miles. Lucas had been with Mrs. Page for only a few months at that point, and he was still worried that if he made any mistakes, she would send him back to the foster home where she had found him. It had been the first time he had danced—she had shown him how to waltz. “I remember the inflatable flamingos in the pool.”
Hockney’s face went blank for a moment; then his eyes lit up as the memories behind them sparked up. “Yes! That’s right. What a phenomenal thing to remember.”
Lucas shrugged. “I was six. And it was the first party I had ever been to.”
The old man waved his hand again. “I find myself getting more nostalgic as I get older.”
Lucas took a sip of his water, put his head back, and closed his eyes. Evidently the cab ride across the island followed by the trek through orc alley had taken a toll and he didn’t feel nearly as strong as he had when he left Nadeel’s. The handcuffs in his pocket poked his hip, but he was too tired to shift his weight.
William ended Lucas’s sleep fantasy. “Now that we have exchanged pleasantries and shared histories, may I ask you why you have come, Dr. Page?”
“There’s a Latin saying, Cui bono?”
“To whom is it a benefit?”
It was Lucas’s turn to smile. A display of a classical education was becoming a rare thing out in the world—all you had to do was look at the conspiracy idiots gumming up the streets around the crime scenes. “So who profits from fucking with you?”
77
The Upper East Side
Kehoe was at home for what felt like the first time in days. In all his years with the bureau, he had never really adjusted to the stop/go mindset the job required. Some of his people were able to turn it off at the end of the day—to simply go home, unplug from the chaos of the office, and settle into family mode. But Kehoe always found that impossible. Not that he didn’t relax. He had a well-rounded life outside of work: a good marriage to a woman he still loved after thirty-two years; a sailboat that took him away from the corridors of the city; a cabin on a lake upstate where he managed to spend a dozen or so weekends a year; and his family home in Sonoma that took up ten days every summer, ten days every winter, and the occasional family gathering where the kids showed up with his grandkids.
But he always thought of himself as a bureau man who had a family instead of a family man who had a career. He had given up trying to fight this understanding of himself years ago, but every now and then it came back, and he wondered if he was missing out on things that everyone else seemed to find solace in.
Lately he found himself on the boat less and less. The same with the cabin. And the home out west. With the internet flattening out the world and bad ideas able to circumnavigate the planet at the speed of light, time away from the job was succumbing to diminishing returns. That’s one thing that Page was right about: people were becoming dumber and dumber, and they were doing it with open arms and smiles on their faces. All you had to do was look at the conspiracy message boards or any HGTV program—they were peopled by imbeciles.
He was at the bench in front of the piano. The fallboard was down and he was looking out at the East River and enjoying a tea that had just hit the perfect Goldilocks temperature. His wife was out somewhere with her friends—an evening of hoisting cocktails after a day spent in a competitive game of American Expressery at Bergdorf’s. He had the patio doors open and the wind was just ri
ght, turning the sounds of traffic on the 59th Street Bridge a few blocks down into the perfect score to his thoughts. For the first time in days he felt like he was alone.
Well, alone except for the man with the C-4 and lack of conscience.
They had a lot on this guy—or these guys—storage rooms full at this point. But they didn’t know how to put it together. It was like one of those puzzles where there wasn’t a picture, just a box full of pieces that were all the same color. You needed some place to start or you could just stare at it all day long and get nowhere. Which was not a way to run an investigation.
This was not the first time the bureau faced a bomber. People had been trying to blow holes in the social fabric of Manhattan since the first keg of gunpowder had been ferried ashore on a rowboat.
The first major bombing on record for the twentieth century had been in 1914, when the Anarchist Black Cross group killed four people and leveled an entire city block. Then, in 1920, a group of Italian anarchists detonated a horse-drawn buggy loaded with explosives on Wall Street, murdering thirty-eight innocent people. The forensic evidence had been destroyed when sanitation crews had mopped up the mess—forensics hadn’t even been a word back then—and the culprits had never been caught.
Fast-forward two decades to 1940, when George Metesky began a bombing spree that would span sixteen years and include twenty-two separate explosions. Metesky had the distinction of being collared due to some of the earliest criminal profile work undertaken by the bureau.
The late sixties, a decade rife with anti-government sentiment, gave the city Sam Melville, who set off eight devices between July and November of 1969. His spree was cut short after a friend turned him in. He went on to further infamy as one of the instigators of the Attica prison riots of 1971, where he was killed by state police when they retook the complex.
Melville was closely followed by the Weather Underground in 1970, but they managed only to blow up three of their own—so Kehoe wasn’t certain that they deserved a criminal distinction; morons seemed a more fitting designation.
In 1975, the Armed Forces of the Puerto Rican National Liberation Front subtracted four citizens from the financial district, followed by Croatian nationalists blowing up eleven people at LaGuardia. The Croats hit again in ’76, this time killing one bomb disposal technician.
Things were relatively quiet until 1993, when Islamic fundamentalists took their first kick at the can, killing six people and injuring a thousand more when they detonated a truck bomb in the parking garage of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. From that point on, most of the bombings in the city were committed by like-minded religious nuts with the occasional sociopath thrown in just to mix up the statistics.
And now the city could add another spree to the list: the Machine Bomber.
But Lucas’s visit yesterday had shaken Kehoe’s belief that this thing was put to bed. Not that he doubted the ability of his people—no, he believed in them. But Page was a master at cracks in arguments, and he was smart, which was a lethal combination in the right circumstances. And if there was one thing that Page could be counted on, it was to find the right circumstances.
Kehoe stood up and closed the window.
Then he picked up the phone to call Hoffner—it was time to get back to the office.
78
The Upper West Side
William Hockney let the silence hang in the air as if it grew more valuable with each tick of the clock. The tactic might have worked on others—Lucas had come to learn that most people believed that the opposite of speaking was waiting—but he let it stretch out; he had never been a big believer in meeting the expectations of others. Besides, he often found conversation more awkward than silence.
He poured himself another water, sat back down, and took a sip, grateful that it didn’t dribble down his chin. He turned toward the big open patio door; from the change in cadence, he could tell the rain had backed off a little. A cool breeze kissed through the doors—the cold front was taking hold and there was a chance they’d get light snow.
Lucas watched the rain for a few moments, focusing on the way the leaves on the small shrubs outside bounced, and it looked as if they were dancing to the music that Hockney had on in the background—Nina Simone, which surprised him.
“You’re the last man standing.”
“Like you, Dr. Page, I am a man who defies the odds.” Hockney gave Lucas his little cryptic smile again. Back in the day, it had probably charmed the pants off of more than one date—which made it a redundant feature considering all the money he had.
“Are you worried?”
“About?”
“Whoever killed your brother might come after you.”
The old man waved it away. “While you were in the hospital, my lawyers had a very fruitful meeting with Special Agent in Charge Kehoe. He is of the opinion that Mr. Frosst is responsible for everything that happened. They assured me that they will find the people who paid him to disrupt my life.”
Jesus, Lucas thought, where did these people come from? Seth was dead, his insurance company was down $4.5 billion in claims, he was out another billion in lost revenue from the Horizon Dynamics IPO, and seven hundred plus human beings and a pet dog were dead. If that constituted disruption, Lucas wondered what Hockney considered a tragedy. “And you let them sell you that idea?”
Again, the old man didn’t move, and Lucas realized that he had already worked all of this out in his own way. “It is not an unreasonable assumption.”
“No one has accused you of ordering Frosst to kill Seth?”
That smile came back. “Only you, Dr. Page.”
“Did you?”
William examined him with renewed interest. “Do you think you will solve who was responsible for all these bombings?”
“Yes.”
“Then it doesn’t matter what I say—truth is truth.”
“If Frosst did kill your brother and you ordered it, I solved your problem by putting an SUV into him—they can’t tie his actions to you. Yet.”
“But?” William Hockney was starting to impress Lucas.
“There’s another option.”
“That I didn’t kill my brother.”
He had to admit, the old guy was smart. “If you didn’t, who did? And if Frosst killed your brother for some reason unknown to you, it’s possible that you were also a target that he didn’t get to. Which either makes you safe now that he’s dead or buys you time until someone else comes to complete the task.”
“You must find this job very tedious, Dr. Page.”
“No. Just the people I deal with.”
William examined him again. “Of course.”
Lucas finished his drink and pushed himself out of the chair that had once been a happy mammal munching grass on the veldt. He hobbled over to the bar, but the panel was closed and Hockney once again had to press his secret button. As before, the wall opened like a prop in a Bond film and Lucas grabbed another Perrier. He went back to his chair, passing the shelf of bonsai and the hand-forged scissors. “But if you had Frosst kill Makepeace and Seth, then the only one who could have sent Frosst after Whitaker and me is you.”
The old man looked taxidermied—he wasn’t moving at all. But the lights were on behind his eyes. “What benefit would it be for me to send Frosst after you and your partner?”
Lucas had been wondering about that. “I don’t know, other than that it was an addendum—Whitaker and I were not targets when this started.”
“More tying up of loose ends?”
“Possibly.”
“What about you? If Frosst’s attack on you and your partner was part of the same grand scheme, you hardly seem to be in any shape to protect yourself.”
Lucas took a sip and waved the question away. “I don’t die; people around me do.”
The old man stared at him for a few moments, and the silence was now a part of their conversation.
“Where is William Junior?”
&nbs
p; “He has business abroad.” Hockney waved the question away. “Besides, I think it wise that my family spend the next little while dispersed to the corners of the globe.”
“Just in case?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“And what’s next for you, William? I’m sure there are worlds that need conquering.”
“I am a little tired right now.” He was examining Lucas with some unidentifiable meaning in his eyes. “But what is your next move, Dr. Page?”
Outside, beyond the open patio doors, the rain coming down had finally turned to a light snow. It was too warm for it to stick, and it melted as soon as it touched down, but it signaled a change in their luck with the weather: Indian summer was officially over.
Lucas fingered the rim on the glass, and the action made a soft sound that he wondered if the old man could hear. “To find whoever is responsible.”
“And then?”
Lucas fingered the rim of his tumbler again, but this time it didn’t make any noise. “Use your imagination.”
79
The Upper West Side
Some of the small shrubs outside were dusted with white. The help was gone—even his full-time butler and housekeeper had been sent to their quarters on the floors below so he could have his privacy. He thought about calling someone to come up and cover the shrubs, but he wasn’t in the mood for any more people tonight—Dr. Page had finished off whatever tolerance for interlopers he had—so he decided to do it himself.
William Hockney buttoned his smoking jacket and went outside. The park across the street was dark, and the East Side was invisible through the fog massaging the city. He knew they kept the Styrofoam covers for the shrubs in a small shed at the far corner of the patio—William oversaw the care of all of his plants; he had inherited the interest from his father. Unfortunately, his son shared none of his love for horticulture. Actually, his son displayed passion for very little, and William wondered what would happen to the many collections he had put together over the years—the paintings, the sculpture, the cars, the objects of virtue. Would they end up at auction, broken up for the philistines to bid on, or would they go to museums, to be enjoyed by schoolchildren? Neither option seemed particularly comforting to William, but he had long ago accepted that each man has only one life.