Penzler, Otto Ed v2

by Murder For Revenge

  Think of how they danced while I played ‘Rhapsody in Blue.’” I smiled, trying, in my way, to make him mimic me.

  “That was Caroline’s request,” he said tightly. “Gershwin always moved her to tears. But what did he want?”

  “The same, I’m sure. The look in their eyes while they danced—“

  “He was looking at me, Perse. Because he knew.”

  I cocked my small, elegant head. I had been told many times that I looked like a ballet dancer, not a concert pianist. But ballet, what could I know of ballet in the filth of my former life? But music, oh, music was my sole escape. “Knew what?” The silence my husband generated was like a sound-damped engine. What remained unheard I felt. I gripped his powerful arms. “Willie, what could he know?”

  “It started when Yates found Eddie had a license to carry a gun.” Ross Yates was Willie’s private investigator, one of Willie’s major secrets from the outside world. Even Caroline didn’t know of his existence, but I did. Of course, Willie had had Eddie investigated. “I asked him if he carried and he lied, said he didn’t. And when I confronted him with Yates’s report that showed the receipt for the nine-millimetre pistol he’d bought, he gave me another bullshit story that it had been stolen and he’d never replaced it.”

  “Was it bullshit?” I asked. “He seemed sincere.”

  “Sincere my ass. I’m the actor, here, Perse. How d’you think I make so much money? I know how to play a part. Just like our dear little Eddie-boy.” Willie’s mocking tone set my teeth on edge. “Yates showed up at the reception an hour ago to give me this.” He broke away from me, slipped a set of folded papers out of the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket.

  “Let me see that.” I reached for the papers, but Willie kept them out of my reach.

  “No, Perse. I’ll tell you as much as you need to know.”

  It was always this way with us. How can I be expected to learn about the real world if Willie keeps it out of sight?

  For a moment I stared at the report, blue-white and ugly in the lamplight of the gilt-and-cream-coloured hotel suite. Then I turned and walked away from him.

  I put on one of my favourite CDs: Eugene Ormandy’s orchestral transcription of Bach’s majestic Toccata and Fugue in D minor. I turned up the volume so he couldn’t be heard over it. The chords burst in quiet thunder, filling the suite as if with purified air. Bach’s great gift, it seemed to me, was bringing order out of chaos. Whenever I heard his music the emotions that had been tied in knots began to untangle.

  Outside, it had begun to rain. Staring out the window at the spiked Manhattan skyline, I thought of the last few moments alone I’d had with Caro before we’d entered the chapel this evening.

  “Are you sure this is what you want, darling?”

  “Absolutely. God, I love him! Give me some credit, Mother. I’m as sure of Eddie as I am of anything.” Caro, radiant in white, veiled like a vestal virgin, so like my younger self, so beautiful her heart-shaped face made me want to cry. “I just want you and Daddy to be okay with this. I know you disapprove of Eddie.”

  “Things will work themselves out, in time.”

  “Mom?”

  “Um-hum.” I was fiddling with her hair.

  “I do love him so!”

  Caro had tossed her head like a horse who’s impatient for the race, and I thought, Slow down, my darling, you have your whole life to live. But of course things are so much clearer when you’ve a few years under your belt, and I was so determined that she shouldn’t make the same mistakes I once did. That’s a natural instinct in all mothers, isn’t it?

  The Bach toccata and fugue died in mid-melody, and the silence of the present crashed in upon me. “Must we have this squalling late at night as well?” Willie said. He’d turned off the stereo. The artist’s passion was something for which he had no understanding. Consequently, it was a threat to him, and his innate fear took the form of impatience. I recognised that and, for years, had forgiven him.

  It seemed we must talk again. “How clearly I can recall the boys Caro brought home, one after the other,” I said. I put my forehead against the thin pane of glass as if trying to melt through. “Abusive alcoholics, slack-jawed drug users with their greasy hair and their groping hands, grimy thrill-seekers with their tattooed scalps and their motorcycles.” I felt so close to the rain, to being washed clean as a newborn kitten. “You know, it got to the point where I was sure she was doing it to torture us.”

  “Rubbing my face in the vileness of the world,” Willie said.

  “It was just as bad for me.”

  “Really?” He lifted an eyebrow. “But, Persis, my dear, you already had intimate knowledge of these vermin.”

  I smiled thinly at him. What else was there to do? Serenity was my watchword tonight.

  “They made my skin crawl just looking at them,” he went on, just as if he hadn’t hurt me. “That junkie—“

  “Yes. You were quite out of control that night.”

  “Whatever beating I gave him he deserved,” he said. “Bringing drugs into my house.”

  “If the police hadn’t come... You nearly killed him, Willie.”

  “And if I had, the world would have been a better place.”

  He believes it, I thought as I watched him make himself a drink. He always made himself a drink when he was working himself up to a difficult moment, either at home with me, or at the office with clients.

  I continued to speak of Caro. “I doubt you know it, but I kept track of all her men friends. Because in some way each one was a reflection of her—or, at least, of what she was trying to do.”

  “And what was that?” Willie’s tone was that of a professor who must put himself through the tedious task of listening to his students’ fatuous theories before getting on with the real meat of the course.

  How well I knew that tone of voice! He’d used it time and again since I’d been seventeen, when he’d begun to train me. And how I had needed training! Apart from breaking into the local high school at night to play the piano in the auditorium, I had no happy memories of my early years. Not surprising. Falling in with evil, I had no identity, no self. I had felt lost, a traveller in the midst of Grand Central Terminal with neither direction nor destination. That seemed long enough ago to be another lifetime.

  “Caro had got the scissors out and was busy cutting the umbilical between child and parents,” I said.

  “You’re wrong,” Willie said angrily, as if all along he knew I would be. “She’s saved that particular horror for tonight.”

  I stood without moving until Willie had to acknowledge my presence. It was a trick. “The way to most effectively put the spotlight on yourself,” he had drummed into me, “is through understatement. In this case, stand perfectly still.” The first time I’d attempted it, at a party he’d taken me to, I’d seen how right he was.

  When I had his attention, I took his old-fashioned glass away from him. “Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, Willie.” I kissed him several times, lightly as an arpeggio. “Face it. Eddie is different. He’s the first real man her age she’s cared about.”

  “Don’t misunderstand me. I have no doubts about the depth of her feelings.”

  “Then take it from a woman,” I said. “Eddie loves her.”

  “You’ve deduced this from what? Talking to Caroline, I suppose.”

  “And simple observation.”

  “Oh, yes. To be sure. He drives a Mercedes 500SL and wears made-for-measure clothes. The perfect man for our only child, isn’t that what you think?” Willie had the impression that I coveted success as others prized diamonds or love. He was absolutely certain of this judgment because he had made me this way. It was his own image, but like most powerful men he didn’t recognise it. Why had he done it? An enigma wrapped in a conundrum. Until you understood the man. What seemed on the surface perverse, was simply the basic instinct for self-preservation. He knew if he allowed me to fully surrender to my music he would come in a poor second. W
illie had never come in second in his life, and he wasn’t about to start with me.

  “But you and Caroline are seeing what Eddie wants you to see.” He slapped the papers of Yates’s report so hard against his thigh that I jumped. “He’s a monster. A fucking evil wind.”

  What did he want me to say? I knew, so I said just the opposite. “Willie, let her go. I promise she will not love you the less for loving Eddie. You’re her daddy. My God, you make damn sure she still calls you that. You’ll always be her daddy.”

  “You stupid cow, you still don’t get it!” he shouted. Seeing the reaction in my white face, he forced his voice down. “This isn’t about me. And, except in a minor way, it isn’t even about her.” He shook his fist. “If she stays married to him it’ll end in tragedy, and Caroline will be irrevocably damaged. Maybe worse. She could wind up dead.” Into the shocking silence, he said, “I should’ve seen it, but I didn’t.”

  I looked down at the sheets of folded paper he still held out, and my eyes fluttered closed. “All right, go ahead,” I whispered. “Tell me.”

  “This is the report of Yates’s second investigation,” Willie said.

  Yates came only to the house, never to Willie’s office. He arrived mostly late at night, at a ghostly hour, and always when Caroline had been out. But every once in a while he’d show up early in the morning, when the sky was still a pearlescent gray, yearning for the sun. At those times, I could hear his deep, raspy baritone as he reported to Willie in the study. Afterward, I would serve him coffee while Willie was upstairs getting ready to helicopter into Manhattan.

  “First of all,” Willie went on now, “Eddie’s a goddamned fake. His last name’s not Bennett. It’s Bendarenski.”

  “So what? Many people shorten their names. I suppose he isn’t an art dealer either.”

  “Oh, he imports artwork from all over and sells it here, just the way it seems,” Willie said, as if he couldn’t care less. “Only, some of the crates he gets contain more than paintings and sculpture.”

  I stared at him. “Like what?”

  “Like drugs.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Kilos of it,” he said. “Cocaine, heroin, you name it, he sells—“

  “Stop it!”

  Willie seemed momentarily astonished by the force of my voice.

  “This just isn’t true. A mistake has been made. I know it!”

  “Believe me, Ross Yates doesn’t make mistakes.”

  I shook my head violently. “But we’ve met some of his clients. You know who they are—fabulously rich, famous—everyone knows them.”

  “Apparently, they don’t know enough about them.”

  “Dear God!”

  With a sob, I collapsed to my knees. My tears fell onto the strewn papers.

  “I’m afraid there’s more.”

  “No!” I cried. “I know more than I want to now!”

  Willie knelt beside me, put his arm across my shoulders. “All right,” he whispered. “How small you are, Perse. And how very female.” It was this quality that had attracted him so powerfully when we had first met. “You need to be protected,” he had once told me long ago, “from everyone who’ll want a piece of you because of your talent.” He’d sucker-punched me, in an emotional manner of speaking. Because what he had meant was “I can make you into anything I want.” And in the beginning he had been right. He could see that I was all too delighted to let him make the hard choices. Being an orphan had drained me, and falling into evil on the street had taken whatever had been left. It was as if he had lifted an insupportable weight off me. What had resulted was a folie á deux.

  “Why?” I whispered. “Why didn’t we know all this before the wedding?”

  “It took all this time for Yates to get the goods.” Willie kissed my temple. “It wasn’t easy. Initially, he hit a stone wall; Eddie’s clever, I’ll give him that. But Ross is smart. That’s why I hired him. It’s Eddie’s clients who made it so difficult for Yates to find out what he is. It’s his clients who are protecting him. If he goes down, they’ll follow. They can’t afford to let that happen.”

  I turned to him. “What—what d’you mean?”

  “I can’t go to the police with this. Ross hasn’t given me any proof that’ll stand up with the DA.”

  “Meaning?” I knew a weak spot when I saw one. Willie had made certain of that.

  He shrugged. “You don’t know Ross. He sometimes uses methods that are... well, let’s just say not open to the cops.” There was that tone again, putting me in my proper place, protecting me from the world. “But it doesn’t matter. Even if he had, he’s assured me no one would listen. It’s been hushed up.”

  “Oh, Willie—“

  He picked me up tenderly and carried me across the threshold into the bedroom. He kissed my cheeks and damp forehead as he placed me into bed. How he adored me when I was utterly helpless. I could see him melt like ice cream in the sun.

  “What about Caro?” I whispered up into his face. “What’ll happen now?”

  “Don’t worry.” He held my hand while he peered into my eyes. “I’ll go talk to Eddie. He’s venal. I’ll make him an offer.” A grim smile shone down on me. “The boy will recognise what’s best for his own interests.” He patted me. “Now go to sleep, Perse. I’ll take care of everything. I promise. I’ve always been right, haven’t I?”

  I nodded. I watched him as he went into the bathroom, unfastening his silk braces. I heard him turn on the taps, then unzip his cosmetics kit bag. When he came out, my eyes were closed and I made sure my breathing was slow and steady.

  As soon as Willie left the suite, I jumped out of bed.

  In the bathroom, I turned on the light and rummaged through his kit bag. It was oversized, custom made for him from stiff belting leather. I pushed aside shave cream, styptic pencil, dental floss. My fingertips found the hidden tab and I pulled. The zipper went right around the circumference of the bottom, revealing the pouch in which he kept his gun. Ever since he’d gotten the E-mail death threats a year ago, he’d obtained a permit and carried the .25-caliber Glock with him at all times.

  I checked twice to make sure. The gun was gone. I hurried back into the bedroom.

  Ask not for whom the bell tolls... I thought.

  In the living room, one lamp was on. Within the halo of light it threw on the carpet, I could see the blue-white papers of Ross Yates’s fateful report. I carefully gathered them up, placing the last page on top.

  Ross Yates was nothing if not thorough. He’d discovered more than Willie had seen fit to tell me. Eddie had been previously married—to a woman both rich and young. She had died in a sailing incident. In heavy weather, the boom had caught her on the side of the head and she’d been pitched overboard. The Coast Guard had found no evidence of foul play, but the girl’s sister had tried to keep Eddie from inheriting. It was her contention that he’d murdered his wife. Her efforts, it seemed, had come to nothing.

  Now Eddie was married to Caroline.

  I stared at the typewritten words. I could imagine what had gone through Willie’s mind when he’d read this. All of his innate distrust of Eddie must have centered around this report. And God had hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

  I hurried back into the bedroom, pulled on leggings and a clingy jersey top, slipped my feet into suede flats. I found that these simple acts left me breathless. I tried to calm myself with a mantra given to me by my yoga teacher, without success. I opened up a box in the closet, grabbed the black suede clutch bag that lay within, then, without a sound, I ran very quickly out of the hotel room.

  Willie and I had secured for the newlyweds the presidential suite, a truly vast set of rooms that took up an entire corner of the hotel’s penthouse floor. It was just for the wedding night. Late this afternoon, Caroline and Eddie would fly to Tortola, where he had a sailboat ready to take them through the Caribbean for two weeks.

  I took the stairs. That made good sense, since I had insisted that Willie book the suite d
irectly below.

  The hallway carpeting was even thicker here on the top floor of the hotel. I went quickly and silently to the impressive double doors of the presidential suite. Glancing behind me down the empty corridor, I put my ear against the wooden door. I found that I was trembling.

  Almost of its own accord, my slender shoulder pushed against the door. Unlocked and unlatched, it opened inward.

  On the threshold, I paused. The slice of semidarkness beyond the door spilled over my feet, as if a grasping hand was pulling me inward. I felt as if I stood on the brink of another world, one that, even now when I confronted it, seemed inconceivable. I was reminded of Ross Yates’s description of scuba diving. “The ocean is the great unknown,” he had told me one morning over coffee. “It’s dark and it’s cold and there are things down there—creatures we can’t even imagine. But I can because I’ve seen them. That’s why I get off on it.”

  Holding my breath, I slipped my body sideways through the opening and plunged into the unknown. I stood absolutely still. I listened while the suite breathed. It was like the sound of a sick person on life support.

  What came to me at length was a sob. It was a sound so stifled I swear I felt my heart constrict.

  “Caro?”

  With my musician’s ear, tone was something I could identify in a heartbeat. I had recognised my daughter’s voice.

  “Caro!”

  My daughter’s voice was muffled by the bathroom door. “Caro, darling.” A swhimpering wrenched at my heart. “What are you doing in there, sweetheart? Please come out.” That’s when I saw the pale outline of the desk chair wedged under the doorknob.

  “Get the hell away from there!”

  I whirled, saw Willie standing in the open doorway to the master bedroom of the suite.

  “I locked her in.”

  I moved to pull the chair away, but he grabbed my wrist.

  “For her own protection, Perse. She would have tried to save him.”

  That was when I saw the gun in his hand. “What the hell have you done?”