“He was a big target,” I said. “Big fat target. Didn’t require Superman.”
She smiled.
I said, “So let me ask you something. Why aren’t you Scott Rudin? Why aren’t you Jordan Roth? Why aren’t you Fred Zollo?” I named some big, successful Broadway producers whose names I knew from boning up in the last couple of days. People who did what she did but had a lot more success and visibility.
I couldn’t interrogate her, because as far as she was concerned, I was just Sukie’s boyfriend. Instead, I was a little aggressive. Right away, I saw that she wasn’t expecting that. She was expecting deference. But she didn’t wince or snap something back at me. She took a drink of her Scotch.
I thought of that scrawled note on Maggie’s yellow pad: HK—> $$$? Meaning something about Hayden and money, but what?
“I can’t finance all this myself,” she said. “You hit a bit of a tender spot there, Nick.”
“How so?”
“I mean, it’s kind of an unfair comparison. Look at Jordan—and I love the guy, he’s so talented—but we’re talking deep pockets. His father is just a lot more generous than mine is. I kind of feel—well, first-world problems, right?—I mean, the things I’ve identified and had to miss out on! I think of the projects I developed off-Broadway that got taken away from me.” She put her hand on my forearm. “You know, Nick, I would love to be in a position where I don’t have to say no when I want to say yes. To not be constrained. I’m not my brother Paul. I’m not writing imaginary books about imaginary subjects, you know?”
That was not a dig I’d expected. But maybe she was just the blunt sort. I nodded, smiled. Made a mental note that I should also find a way to talk to Paul, up in Cambridge, Mass., and soon.
“I mean, this is real,” she said. “It’s theater, but it’s real. It’s as real as it gets.” She took her hand off my forearm, took another big sip of her Scotch. “Sorry, just a tender spot. I’m not a complainer.”
“Why do you think your dad won’t open the floodgates a little?”
“Because of Big Sis. Megan.” She said it liltingly, sarcastically.
“How so?” I remembered Hayden and Megan had pointedly avoided each other at their father’s birthday dinner.
“Because she and Paul consider what I do a hobby, you got it? Let me give you an example—and I’m trusting you here, Nick, because you’re with Sukie, so you gotta be okay. Megan once came to see a staged version of Shoah that I produced at the Long Wharf in New Haven, okay? And you want to know what she said afterward? She said, ‘Kind of a bummer, no?’ This is the type of sensitive soul we’re talking about.”
I sort of got what she meant. Megan didn’t like the downbeat ending of a play about . . . the Holocaust. “So you would have received more support from Conrad if she hadn’t been pouring poison in his ear?”
“Exactly.”
“That makes sense,” I said, and then I pushed further. “But Cameron doesn’t do that, does he?”
She shook her head. “I mean, Cam’s a bit of a lost soul. Never found his way, like the rest of us have. It’s like there’s something broken inside him that never got fixed. I’ve always thought of him as, like, the extra, the understudy. Waiting for a turn that may never come.”
“I see. And as long as we’re speaking frankly, I wonder how closely you guys have looked into Natalya’s background.”
She looked me straight in the eyes. “You’re asking a very pointed question. We’re concerned about it. I’m concerned about it.”
I nodded. “I work with a lot of venture capitalists,” I said, “and one of the most important things they do is due diligence. You’re going to invest your fund’s money, you want to get to know the people you’re investing in. You fly over, you kick the tires, you talk to people, you check things out. I’m sure you do the same thing in the talent business.”
“Sure.”
“If your eighty-year-old father’s not going to do it, one of you should. Hire someone to check her out. Get it done.”
“You want to know what I wonder about,” she said, so quietly I could barely hear her over the din in the bar. “Not ‘Is she a gold digger?’—that’s obvious. And common. No, I’m wondering if she’s connected to some Russian oligarch, you know?”
“It’s possible.”
“I’m not saying she is. She could just be a gold digger with a heart of gold, right?”
“Where is she these days?”
“Oh, my God, it’s the Westminster Dog Show, you didn’t know that? She does not miss it. Why do you ask?”
Someone approached—a slender woman in her sixties with dark circles under her eyes—and said, “Are you Hayden Kimball?”
Hayden turned. “Who wants to know?”
The woman said, “Someone told me you’re Hayden.”
“That’s right. And you are?”
The woman hissed, “Murderer!” She grabbed a glass of ice water from the table and dumped it on Hayden’s head. “You killed my son!”
Hayden yelped, her hair wet and scraggly, water streaming down her face and blotching her shirt, and the woman fast-walked away. Her expression evolved from terrified to furious, but when I spotted Sukie across the room, she appeared to be suppressing a laugh.
59
We returned to my friend’s apartment on Central Park South late that night. Sukie was exhausted and fell asleep before I did, but in the morning she woke me with her hand between my legs. Which I didn’t mind.
Later, when we were debriefing about Megan, I said, “She sounds like a piece of work.”
“She and Hayden hate each other like a couple of alley cats,” Sukie said. “Have for years.”
“But is either one of them a killer?”
She shrugged. “How could I possibly know?”
“You don’t.”
“If you told me that Natalya, who loves the outdoors and nature, shoved Maggie off the cliff in the middle of the night, that wouldn’t surprise me.”
“How can I get to her?”
“Natalya? She’s always reaching out to me to get together in the city. Always emailing me invitations. She knows what I think of her, and she’s campaigning. She’s trying to bond with each of us, one by one.”
“How about you accept her invitation?”
She smiled. “You like dogs?”
“I do,” I said. One of the drawbacks to my constantly traveling life is that I’m gone too much to take care of a dog.
“Then I’ll arrange it.” She hesitated. “Uh, Nick—yesterday I said something I shouldn’t have.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I said I no longer feel alone in this, this—what’s going on. That I knew you were in it with me. That was totally presumptuous of me. I shouldn’t have said it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m a client. A former client, anyway. I was in a business relationship with you. And when this gig is over, you’re back to Boston.”
“Come on,” I said.
“It’s presumptuous to think you could ever be committed the way I have to be. I am a Kimball. You’re an outsider.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I said, “We’ll see this through together. I promise.” Just then my phone rang. It was Dorothy. “Excuse me,” I said, and I answered the call.
“I’m getting some interesting stuff on your favorite security director, Fritz,” Dorothy said.
“Interesting how?”
“A sealed domestic abuse charge. From around twenty years ago. Around the time of his divorce. Allegations of physical cruelty. Sounds like a lovely man.”
“Yep,” I said. “Oh, I had a thought.”
“About?”
“The encrypted folder. Try Neil D. Tyson. All one word.” I remembered the photo of Tyson with Scavolini, the little stone quotes from Tyson
on his desk. Scavolini clearly had a man crush on Neil deGrasse Tyson.
“Nope,” she said, clackety-clacking away. “Not all one word, caps and smalls.”
“Try all the variations. You know.”
“Okay,” she said. “But so far, nothing.”
“Keep trying,” I said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
60
The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show was going on at Piers 92 and 94 off the West Side Highway. We found Natalya just where she said, in the “benching” area. She kissed Sukie and gave me a firm handshake. She was dressed all in pink, her suit and her shoes. She was a very attractive woman. A forty-year-old Grace Kelly, but with one difference: up close you could see she’d had a lot of roadwork done.
Meanwhile, dogs by the dozens were walking by on leashes. I paid no attention to their owners. There were all sorts of breeds and sizes of dog, and they were yipping and barking. It was a cacophony. We walked past an area where people were showing off their dogs, and some were grooming them. I saw a big old English sheepdog with hair rakishly over his eyes. And then a huge Neapolitan mastiff, a homely dog but a fierce protector.
Natalya was grooming her Havanese, a small dog with long, silky black-and-white hair and button eyes, who was standing on a bench. She said she was entered in the show. The dog reminded me of Chewbacca, from the Star Wars movies. A Wookiee. But a very cute dog.
Sukie told Natalya about the brick and the Molotov cocktail guy. She looked at me and put a hand on my biceps, lightly squeezing. She hugged Sukie and told her how scary that must have been. The two seemed to get along just fine.
Then Sukie excused herself to go find the nearest restroom.
Every bench in the hall had a dog sitting on it. The dogs were all getting petted and groomed and primped. They were the celebrities, not their owners. The woman next to us was trimming the eyelashes of her cocker spaniel with a pair of scissors. A few benches away was a long-haired dachshund, which was getting lots of attention from visitors.
“How’s your dog doing in the show?” I asked Natalya.
“Clara is select bitch,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
She pulled out a ribbon affixed to a silver medallion from under the bench, a blue-and-white rosette, and showed it to me. It did say Select Bitch on it. I realized she was talking dog-show language. She kept brushing her dog, who responded by panting happily.
“Congratulations,” I said.
“Winner of show always wire fox terrier.”
“That right?”
She tilted her head and smiled. “You went after this bomber?”
I nodded.
“Yes, of course you did,” she said. “You are sheepdog.”
“I’m a sheepdog,” I said dubiously.
“I read somewhere there are three kinds people—is sheep, is wolves, and is sheepdog. Most people sheep—just kind and gentle people. They never hurt others, except by accident. Then there is predators—the wolves. They prey on weak people. They feed on sheep. These are the bad people.”
“Okay.”
“And then is sheepdogs. They protect flock. They have drive to do this. They have gift of aggression.”
I nodded.
She said, “You are not sheep. You are not wolf. You are sheepdog. You are guard dog, not attack dog.”
“I see,” I said. “And what are you, Natalya?”
She smiled. “I own guard dog. Dogs have owners, yes? Who owns you?”
“Maybe I’m a stray,” I said.
She went back to brushing her dog, whose hair was so long I couldn’t see her feet. “Clara,” she said soothingly to her dog. Then, to me: “I think you are good man. Very observant. I have strong intuition, and I trust this intuition. And you are good for Sukie.”
“Thank you.”
“These children of Conrad—they are not sheep or wolves; they are scorpions.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s what he always says to me. His children see me as thief in night who comes to take their birthright away. Their greed makes them . . . it blinds them. I think it does not blind you. I think you see this.”
I didn’t want to agree with her, so I just nodded vaguely.
“Megan thinks she is very clever, what she is doing. But she is playing short game. Conrad, you see—he plays long game.”
“He’s eighty years old. That’s a long game right there.”
“I’m very sorry about what happened to Hildy.” She said “Hildy” with a hard Russian ch sound, and she also said it with invisible quotation marks around it. As if she knew it was an alias. “I think she was someone special to you.”
I concealed my surprise. “She was.”
“No one else in family really sees you. Too blinded by greed. But I see you.” She stroked the hairbrush over the long hair on the dog’s face. “Clara, dushenka,” she said to the dog. Probably a Russian word. To me, she said, “These are my private thoughts. I share them with no one. Not even Conrad. I like you, Nick.”
“What’s not to like?” I said.
“You know, Nick, when you grow up extremely poor like me, and then suddenly you have great wealth, you have maybe different perspective. You realize what is real wealth? Is other people. Is not dollars or rubles. Is what kind of person you are.”
I paused for a moment. I hadn’t expected this kind of directness from Conrad’s fiancée. So I pushed a bit. “Tell me about Paul. He seems very gentle. Maybe a little out of it, but well meaning. Am I wrong?”
“Paul is more complicated than he seems.”
Who isn’t? I thought. “How so?” I said.
“Paul is Chow Chow. He has big fluffy coat and everyone thinks it is friendly dog. But Chow Chow can be very aggressive. They have jaws like lion. I had Chow Chow in Russia, big, fluffy, beautiful dog, but he can never stop biting. He jumps and bites people and digs holes.” She paused and, after a meaningful glance, said, “We had to put him down.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Some breeds of dogs, like the Rottweiler and the pit bull, they are friendly and sweet and loving but very aggressive to other dogs.”
“And what is Conrad?”
“He is my Chihuahua.”
“But Chihuahuas are little.”
“I once had a Chihuahua who is extremely loyal but if anyone else gets near me, he snarls and bites.”
“Loyalty’s a good thing,” I said.
She looked lost in thought. “We had to put him down too.”
We talked for a while, Natalya and I, until Sukie came back. She said to Natalya, “Looks like you two are hitting it off. I might wander around for a while.”
“Sukie, my dear, I must go,” said Natalya. “Clara and I. I have hairdresser appointment. Can I give you a ride anywhere?”
“Just back to my house.”
“My car is outside. I will drop you two off.”
We wandered through the halls of Pier 94 and took an elevator down to the ground level. Outside it was crowded with cars and cabs and a lot of people. When Natalya emerged, in her pink suit and holding Clara in the crook of her arm like a baby, a couple of shouts went up from the crowd. I heard “Kimball.”
“Damn these people,” Natalya said.
Some in the crowd started chanting, “Kimballs lie, people die!”
There were black signs that read GREED KILLS and KIMBALLS ARE KILLERS and a big red banner that read 200 DEAD EACH DAY. I immediately took the lead and ushered the two women across the bustling sidewalk to Natalya’s car, a white Bentley limo. Someone threw an egg, which splatted on the sidewalk near her. The car pulled up to us just in time, and Natalya and her dog hustled over to the passenger’s-side door. I opened the door for her. She climbed in, with Clara the dog, and then Sukie did.
When I was about to get in, I s
uddenly noticed something on the undercarriage of the car. Something had glinted at me. I said, “Hold on,” then I closed the car door and knelt down on the pavement. I reached underneath, felt the hot metal next to the object I’d seen a few seconds earlier. I grabbed it. It easily came off.
It was a small, gray plastic box, around five inches long and two wide, with two big magnets on top. Inside, as I expected, was a GPS tracking device. Someone was tracking Natalya.
I shoved it into the pocket of my coat and jumped into the car. Once I closed the door it was quiet in there. The outside chants were muffled.
“What did you find?” Natalya said.
I pulled out the little gray box and showed it to her.
“What is it?”
“It’s a tracker. A GPS tracker.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s for someone to follow you, track you down everywhere this car goes.”
Her brows arched. She looked angry. “Who puts it there?”
“I don’t know. I’ll find out.” I disconnected the battery from the GPS unit, disabling it.
She told the driver, “Please, Edward, get us out of here. Go very fast.” The car slowly began to move. There were too many people around. Natalya began stroking Clara, in her lap.
Someone hit the car hard, or maybe kicked it. It made a hollow sound.
Suddenly the exterior of the Bentley was hit with dozens of what sounded at first like rocks. Splotches of paint covered the windshield and the side windows, yellow and pink. We’d been attacked by a couple of paintball guns. The protesters had come prepared with weapons. Yellow and pink paint streamed down the windows. They had known that Conrad Kimball’s fiancée would be at the dog show.
Natalya was quietly crying as we drove away. But I kept staring out the window, because I had to double-check on something.
It took me a moment, but quickly I confirmed it. My stomach knotted as I recognized someone in the crowd. It was a swarthy man with a scar cut through his right eyebrow, and I knew for sure I had seen him before.
61
But where?
It wasn’t in Boston that I’d seen the guy with the eyebrow. It had been recent, in the last couple of days. Then I called to mind the image of that same guy—close-shaved black hair, swarthy complexion, scarred right eyebrow—looking at Detective Goldman and me and ordering something at the Dunkin’ Donuts, a mile or so from the Bedford police station yesterday. A fit man in his thirties who moved with athletic confidence.
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