“She’s missing? Since when?”
His surprise seemed genuine, although I knew I probably couldn’t tell if it wasn’t. Not with this man. “Not long,” I said. “She was driving down to meet me—she wanted to tell me something about her brother. They found her car in the parking lot of a state beach. Police are asking around. Did Mr. Z say anything?”
“About her? Not a thing.” Coombs frowned. “That family is a snake pit of jealousy and rivalries. Little scores always being tallied and settled, new feuds and alliances blowing up like summer squalls. Marie holds it all in check, as best she can, and Susan—well, from what I understand, Susan grew increasingly disgusted with the whole mess. You want my opinion? Even odds that she bought a plane ticket to somewhere far away. She’ll turn up.”
“Let’s talk about her brother.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Ron was being blackmailed. That started all this. He had been in the habit of frequenting a particular San Francisco establishment that Mr. Z’s Organization ran.”
“What was particular about it?”
“It caters to men who prefer women slightly underage. Like those poor girls in the motel. Not pedophiles, per se, but deep-pocketed men who are willing to pay enormous premiums for what I suppose is the illicitness of the act.” He had picked up another piece of driftwood and ran it through the sand, sketching invisible lines. “For men like that it’s not only sexual. They already have so much money, so much power. It’s transgression. A way of sneering in the face of society, stating they can take what they want, rules be damned.”
I thought of the girls in the blue motel and my stomach turned.
Coombs said, “If the news had broken it would have been devastating for the family. The threat put them in an intolerable position; something had to be done. The blackmailers were asking for a lot, but that wasn’t the sticking point. Marie worried—not without cause—that if she paid, it could become a leaching without end, on and on, forever. She asked me to travel down to meet them and finalize the negotiations.”
“You agreed to put yourself in harm’s way for a man like Ron?”
Coombs chuckled. “Don’t get me wrong, Nikki, I’ve never been much for community service. My fee was to have been ten percent. Almost a million dollars—for what I thought would be a few days’ work.” His smile faded. “Although had I known who that bloody fool of a playboy had gotten wrapped up with, I would sooner have jumped in a shark tank.”
“Did Mr. Z’s people blackmail everyone? What kind of business model is that?”
Coombs shook his head. “Not everyone. They taped all their customers, but I believe they only selected a small percentage of men who were deemed VIP for blackmail. The men who could afford the most, and had the most to lose.”
“Do you know where this place is? In San Francisco?”
“Why?”
“To shut it down, of course. And that is your community service.”
Coombs tore a scrap off the pizza box and wrote on it. “Here you are.”
I put the piece of cardboard in my pocket. I’d give it to the police, along with the route maps and files from Hillman’s office.
The fire had crouched into orange embers. The guitar had fallen silent. I looked at the man next to me, feeling that same flick of danger and excitement, like being near a wild animal. He turned his head, his eyes unreadable. Looked at me with that same obsidian sphinx smile. I tried to guess what he might do. What he was thinking. We watched each other for a long moment, our faces barely a foot apart. Maybe he read my hesitation, or maybe just spoke in accordance with his own private thoughts, but he simply said, “I suppose we should be getting on with things. Can I offer you a lift?”
The moment, whatever it had been, passed like a cloud across the moon.
“You don’t have a car,” I reminded him.
Coombs looked at me, a real smile now, teasing the corners of his mouth. A smile suggesting fun and play and possibility and all kinds of excitement.
“Have you forgotten you’re talking to a man who likes to take flight?”
* * *
“Where’d you learn to fly?”
The engine was very loud, even taxiing, but his answer came clearly through my headphones as we turned onto the short runway. “I grew up in rural Canada. Very few people, very large distances. Everyone uses puddle-jumpers and seaplanes. I could fly almost before I could drive.” He did a last check of the controls, the plane pausing as though an animal about to leap, the propeller a vague blur through the cockpit glass.
“If you ever care to learn, I’d be delighted to teach you.” He throttled up and the little plane raced down the runway, eager for the sky, the engine noise now deafening. The pavement and lights streaked beneath us.
“I think I’ll stick to two wheels.”
“The offer stands. In case you change your mind.” He worked the controls and we were suddenly buoyant, the lights of Monterey falling away beneath us. “So, where’s next for you?”
“Back to work. My bookstore. Nothing exciting. You?”
“I believe I rather deserve a vacation.” Still ascending, he banked steeply north, the ocean to our left as we followed the coast. “Are you sure I can’t convince you to spend a week dallying at Le Meurice?”
“Le Meurice?”
He sounded disappointed. “Clearly you don’t care about fine Parisian hotels.”
A bump of turbulence jolted the plane. “Thanks, but take-out Chinese food and the TCM channel is how I plan to celebrate. I’ll let you handle five-star Paris.”
“Old movies and take-out noodles. How devastatingly mundane,” Coombs said. “I’m starting to think you really do need me.”
“How about you?” I shot back. “Off to find the next wealthy widow to pay the bills?”
He tweaked the yoke. “Believe it or not, I might take a hiatus from the widows.”
We had stopped ascending and leveled out, flying under the clouds. I could see the glitter of lights below us, the homes set into the hills and valleys of the coastline. During the day it would have been a breathtaking flight.
“Do you ever get bothered by what you do to people?” I asked.
“Do you ever get bothered by what you do to people?” he returned.
“The people I hurt deserve it.”
He glanced at me. “Is that your only answer?”
I watched the lights underneath us. “It bothers me. Sometimes. Even when they deserve it.” We hit a bank of low clouds and for a few seconds everything disappeared in a blizzard of whiteness.
The clouds whipped away. The night was clear again.
“When I was younger, hungrier, I was less discriminating,” Coombs acknowledged. “To put it in the forestry jargon of my boyhood, I sometimes engaged in clear-cutting. Now, it’s more selective trimming. I take what people can afford to lose. Would many call that dishonest or evil? Of course.” He twitched the nose of the plane as another spot of turbulence rocked us. “They won’t build monuments when I die. No flags will fly at half-mast. If you’re after actual honesty, Nikki, that’s the best I can give you.”
I thought about his answer. “I understand.”
And I did. Plenty of people would say I deserved prison or worse for the things I’d done. The man sitting next to me wasn’t like most in the world. But neither was I. And we all had to live with the things we did.
“You think we’ll see each other again?” I asked.
“Kindred spirits can’t keep apart.”
“Are we kindred spirits?”
Coombs smiled. “The two of us are different from every other person here.”
I smiled, too. He knew me.
And that would always be exciting.
And after all, up here, alone in the cold and lonely night, thousands of feet above the ground, sitting next to each other in this little airplane with nothing but the wind-whipped clouds and star-pricked sky for company, it was hard to disagree.
SATURDAY
> 36
The doorman must have been expecting me.
He waved me through with barely a word.
The elevator rose, smooth and silent as a switchblade.
The butler was waiting for me at the landing when I stepped out. This time he ushered me into a dining room with inlaid parquet floors like a ballroom. Crystal chandeliers, wood-paneled walls, heavy framed paintings. Lavish, anachronistic. As if the room had chained itself to a fallen century, resistive or uninterested in the passage of time.
I seemed to have interrupted a family dinner. Mrs. Johannessen sat at the head of the long table, her three sons scattered down its length. Martin sat closest to his mother, hands folded primly around his napkin, lines of stress showing on his narrow face, the only one wearing a coat and tie. Ron slouched in shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, drink in hand. William drooped in his wheelchair like a wilted flower.
The table looked ready for a state dinner. Candles flickered in pewter candlesticks. Crystal goblets and polished steak knives and a magnificent flower display, all blood-red roses and scarlet tulips. A silver platter held an enormous cut of prime rib. The meat, in its drippings, was cooked so rare as to appear almost raw. Blood from the beef had seeped into a dark surrounding pool.
Mrs. Johannessen looked to be the only one still eating. Ron looked like he was seething with boredom, desperate to be anywhere but here. Martin seemed frustrated, his thin lips set in a petulant line. William’s head tilted as though his neck was rubberized.
Mrs. Johannessen looked up as I was shown in. “Nikki,” she said. “As you can see, we’re in the middle of supper. Have you eaten? I’d be happy to have them fix you a plate.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “I don’t think I’ll stay long. Don’t want to interrupt the whole family meal. Almost the whole family,” I amended. “Where’s Susan?”
If I was fishing, I got nothing. She merely said, “My daughter could not be here tonight, as is frequently the case.”
Martin was on his feet, clenching his napkin. “What are you doing here?”
“Martin, sit,” his mother instructed. “I asked her to come.”
Martin sat obediently but his eyes were furious. “How did you… ?”
I didn’t feel like doing a whole song and dance, so I simply said, “You fired me. She hired me.”
His eyes shot to his mother. “But you made me get rid of—”
“Merely a change of heart.” His mother used an ivory-handled steak knife to slice a piece of red meat. “There was something that needed to be done. Once we met, Nikki struck me as someone uniquely capable of carrying that out.” She forked the bite of meat into her mouth and chewed without hurry. “Did you do as I asked, Nikki? Don’t leave us standing on the razor’s edge, now.”
I nodded. “It’s taken care of. And he’s free.”
Martin flushed. “You don’t mean Coo—”
“Coo, coo.” All of us turned to William as he opened his mouth with a smacking sound. “Coo, coo, coo,” he said again. His voice was high, as though imitating a bird. There was drool on his chin as he drooped into silence once again.
Ron took a slug of his drink and turned to his mother. “Okay, Christ, the woman did whatever garbage-hauling you wanted her to do. Can you please get her out of here, now, so we can actually talk?”
“Patience, Ronald,” Mrs. Johannessen said. “You lacked it even as a child.” She turned from her middle son to me, not sounding the slightest bit perturbed by the interruptions. “Where is he?”
“I’d check Paris,” I said. “I think he said something about a vacation.”
“And the people who were holding him?”
“I wouldn’t worry about them. They won’t bother you.”
She took that in as she poured herself more red wine from a cut-glass decanter. “Thank you, Nikki. You did excellent work, finding Geoffrey. Send me any invoices for fees and expenses you incurred, and know that you have my heartfelt gratitude.”
She turned away.
I was dismissed.
I said, “I’d have thought you’d be more curious about the rest of it.”
“Rest of it?” She looked up again. “Rest of what?”
“You know—why Coombs was down there in the first place.”
Her blue eyes showed nothing, but I had her attention.
“I don’t follow.”
“Your family was being blackmailed,” I said. “I’m sure you’re fond of Coombs, but we both know why you really needed me to go down there. And it wasn’t for his well-being.”
She cut into a roasted potato, her voice now very cold. “I’m not sure that I care for these insinuations. My thoughts, I believe, are mine alone, as are my motivations. I don’t see the point of you haphazardly guessing at matters that are not at all your concern.”
“See?” Ron said to me. “That’s her polite way of telling you good night.”
I looked at him. “I’m curious—what happened, back in the Princeton days? What did you do to that poor girl your family had to buy off?”
He flushed. “What did you say to me?”
“I asked what happened at Princeton,” I repeated. “I’ve been wondering.”
“This is too much.” He knocked back the new whiskey he had just poured and stood. “I don’t have the patience to sit here listening to some chick who looks like an extra in Sons of Anarchy cracking this cheap innuendo about me.” He stepped around the table, hands balled into fists. “That’s my polite way of saying good night. You’re not needed or wanted. And I’m about two seconds away from carrying you out of here myself.” He took another step toward me, as if planning to sling me over his shoulder like a load of laundry.
Punching Ron in the nose felt good. Even better than I would have imagined. Which was saying something.
He grunted and fell back against the table, blood pouring from his nose.
“You had that coming,” I told him.
Mrs. Johannessen and Martin made shocked noises. William’s head flew up to the source of the noise and he started bellowing like a cow, a loud, pained, unpleasant bovine sound. Mrs. Johannessen stood, towering over me, eyes dangerous. “How dare you!”
Martin snickered as though he was kind of liking the newest turn of events. Suddenly I could see the twelve-year-old boy he’d once been, petty and malicious in a mosquito sort of way. Ron’s voice was muffled and nasal as he pinched a napkin to the bridge of his nose. “After they lock you up for assault, I’m going to destroy you in civil court.”
“I shall call security?” The butler had arrived, summoned by the commotion. He hurriedly righted a tipped candle before it burned into the linen, then stared at Ron, who was wheezing painfully, now back in a chair. Splotches of bright red showed on the white cloth napkin.
I ignored them and addressed only Mrs. Johannessen. “Should he call security? Or would you like to talk to me first?”
She was still staring at me, her eyes fierce and wild as a falcon’s. Then she gave the smallest movement of her head. “Why don’t you and I talk in the parlor, Nikki.” She called over my shoulder, “Ronald, darling, put some ice on your nose, ice always helps.”
* * *
She sat on the same couch as last time.
I sat across from her in the same armchair.
No drinks, this time. No back-and-forth, no feeling each other out. I knew who she was, more or less. She probably felt the same about me.
I got to the point before she could even ask. “If what your son did was publicly exposed, you knew that would destroy your family name. You didn’t trust that the blackmailers would go away on their own, either—not that I blame you. Why would they? They knew they had snagged a golden goose. But your son couldn’t manage the negotiations on his own, and I doubt your lawyers would have dared—not once they realized who was on the other end, and how far outside of the law this would take them. You needed someone with a foot on each side of the line. So you enlisted Coombs, thinking he’d be
a perfect intermediary between your world and theirs. You knew he’d been in prison, that he’d spent time around violent criminals, knew the streets. And you trusted him—especially because he had a stake in things. His ten percent commission. Self-interest. You figured he could negotiate.”
She folded her hands on her lap. “And what if that’s true?”
I kept going. “Only you didn’t realize how dangerous these people were, and you failed to appreciate that Coombs was the wrong sort to deal with them. He’s not a violent guy. He lives by his wits. And just in this particular situation, with these particular people, he was out of his league.”
Mrs. Johannessen considered what I had said. Then she spoke. “My son, bless his heart, made a mistake. It was very foolish of him. He knows that.”
I was tired of tiptoes and whispers. Tired of good manners and perfect breeding. Tired of using polite words and gentle sentences to smooth and pave the things people did.
“He paid to sleep with underage teens. I don’t know if foolish is the right word.”
She looked at me and once again I could feel the force of her will, pressing against me like a hard, onrushing wind. Our eyes met and I felt myself in a physical contest, taut, clashing, straining, like two blades locked against each other.
Then she relaxed and the tautness slipped away.
“I’m hardly going to excuse my son’s actions,” she answered. “Equally, I won’t apologize for protecting my family—my children. My family will always come first, Nikki. I’m surprised I have to even remind you of that truth.”
“You don’t. I understand.”
For a moment we were both quiet.
“What do you actually want?” she asked. “Maybe I should have asked you that at the beginning.”
“Don’t feel too bad. I would have given a different answer then.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know more now. What I want has changed.”
“What, then?” Her long fingers unfolded, refolded. “Tell me, and maybe I’ll give it to you.”
“You think you can just buy your way out of this?”
One Got Away Page 28