My phone went off. It was Megan. I stepped behind a rack of paperbacks, where I could still keep an eye on Ross.
“I thought maybe you’d decided to take the rest of the day off,” I said.
“I got caught up in some stuff. The Spicer investigation was a bust. The top brass has been reading us the riot act. I’m sorry. Where are you now?”
“I’m at Kennedy. Alan Ross is waiting for Tracy Jacobs.”
“I got your message. What’s the story with Alan Ross?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. You know who Tracy Jacobs is, don’t you?”
“Tracy Jacobs the actress? What does she have to do with anything?”
“She’s the person who called Fox and Riddick and put the squeeze on for Fox to fess up to his affair with Cynthia. She was sleeping with Fox’s driver. Except the thing is, he swears the information about Cynthia didn’t come from him. I believe him.”
“Why is Alan Ross meeting Tracy Jacobs at the airport?”
“I don’t know. Would you like me to go over and ask him?”
“No. Where’s she coming from?”
“Paris. She’s been catching up on her culture.”
“What do you think’s going on?”
“I don’t know. Except that Alan Ross called me into his office two days ago and gave me an envelope full of money. He wanted me to look into the Burrell and Riddick murders. In fact, he wanted me to tell him how you were faring on them.”
“Me?”
“The police. He wanted progress reports.”
The line was silent for a few seconds. “Listen. When she shows up, I want you to keep a tail on them. Call me as they’re heading back to the city.”
“What if they don’t go back to the city? There are plenty of no-tell motels between here and there.”
“You think they’re lovers?”
“It was suggested to me that this might be the case. I don’t know what they are. Except that Mr. Ross seems to have set Ms. Jacobs up pretty nicely. He’s the one who got her the Century City gig. I think we’d like to find out why he did that.”
“Shit. Okay. Wherever they go, stay with them. Let me know what’s going on.”
I broke the connection. Ross was still seated in the plastic chair. I checked my watch. Plenty of time. Going back outside, I waited a few minutes in the taxi line and caught a cab. When I told him I only wanted to go over to the car-rental lot, he tried to dump me. I pulled enough bills from my wallet to convince him not to. There was a longer line than I’d anticipated at the rental desk, and by the time I got my car and was driving into the short-term lot, Tracy Jacobs’s flight was-unless things had changed-on the ground. I located Alan Ross’s car and pulled into a nearby slot. The wait was shorter than I’d expected, maybe fifteen minutes. Ross appeared, rolling a small suitcase behind him. Next to him was a woman who was not dressed for a snowstorm. She was holding a magazine over her head. They reached Ross’s car, and he opened the passenger door. The woman got in. Ross moved around to the trunk and put the suitcase in. Before closing the trunk, he removed his overcoat. Reaching into the trunk, he pulled out something that I couldn’t see. It went into the folds of his coat. Before he yanked open the driver’s door, he paused and looked around. His eyes moved right past where I was parked. I was too far away to get a true read of his expression. He got into the car, started it and backed up. This brought the car closer to mine. Just as the car shuddered into forward, the trunk rose slowly and the brake lights came on. Ross got back out and came around to shut the trunk, this time making certain it was secure. He looked around again. This time I could see the look on his face. Let’s just say this: I was glad I would be on the man’s tail.
43
THE CONDITIONS ON the Long Island Expressway degenerated the farther east Alan Ross traveled. By the time he was approaching Melville, they were near whiteout. Tractor trailers were pulled over and parked along the sides of the highway, as were dozens of passenger cars and SUVs. Every few miles, a vehicle had run off into the median strip and remained there, the taillights blinking an anemic pink. From the swirling white haze in Ross’s rearview mirror, the occasional snowplow materialized. Pellets of salt rattled against the side of his car as the plows overtook and passed him.
Ross was perspiring like a man in the desert. His head was aching from the strain of squinting into the white wall in front of him. What he wanted was silence, some time to think. But this wasn’t likely, not with the hyperactive actress seated next to him. You’d have thought the woman had invented Paris. She wouldn’t shut up about it. Ross couldn’t count how many times he had been to Paris. Dozens? By the time this ride was finished, Tracy Jacobs might well have managed to ruin the city for him forever.
Ross was maintaining an achingly slow speed. He was not going to run the risk of either being pulled over by the police or sliding off the road like the half-dozen or so cars he had already passed. If there was one thing to be said for doing all this in a snowstorm, it was that the snow rendered Ross’s car virtually invisible. That part’s good, he thought. In a way, you really couldn’t ask for better. Not only here on the damnable LIE, but later, once they’d arrived at their destination, invisibility would be a wonderful advantage. Ross smiled to himself. It spoke to his sense of perfection. All he wanted at this point, his single goal, was to make all his problems and headaches disappear. Like a polar bear in a snowstorm. It’s there and it’s not there all at the same time. Now you see it, now you don’t.
He glanced over at Tracy Jacobs. She was in the middle of telling him everything he didn’t need to hear about the Musée d’Orsay, but noticing him looking at her, she came up for air. Would wonders never cease?
“You look happy all of a sudden. What are you smiling about?”
“I love hearing your stories,” Ross said suavely. “It’s nice to see a girl who can get all excited like that. It’s so nice you’re not jaded.”
Tracy flashed her huge smile. “Do you know what I thought when I was looking at the Mona Lisa? I mean the Mona Lisa.”
“Tell me.”
“I was thinking, and I’m serious about this, I said to myself, ‘Alan Ross is the man responsible for this.’”
Ross demurred. “Don’t you mean Leonardo da Vinci?”
Tracy laughed. God, that laugh. Try as they might, the vocal coaches for Century City hadn’t made a whole lot of progress on that horrific laugh.
“Alan, you know what I mean. Not just Paris. The whole thing. Everything. It’s true. I owe you my entire life.”
Alan Ross turned his attention back to the slick roadway. Yes, you do, dear, he thought. That’s exactly right.
44
MEGAN GOT THE CALL from Fritz as she was clearing the snow off her windshield.
“They’re heading out onto the Island. I remember Robin telling me that Ross and his wife have a place out in the Hamptons somewhere. That’s my guess.”
“The Hamptons? In this weather?”
Megan looked up and saw Brian McKinney coming out of the precinct house. She turned her back on him. The interrogation of Bruce Spicer had been a fiasco. If Spicer bellowed “Whore!” at Megan once, he’d bellowed it a dozen times. McKinney and a few of the others had found the whole Bruce Spicer show vastly amusing, crowding around the one-way window outside the box to watch Spicer heap his verbal abuses on Megan. The interrogation had gone nowhere, except round and round. Megan knew she might have handled Spicer better, but her mind had been elsewhere.
Malone was asking her a question, but the connection was breaking up.
“Say it again, Fritz. I couldn’t hear you.”
“…get the address…Hamptons. That way…follow him.”
“What?”
“Ross’s address.”
“You want me to get Ross’s address? The Hamptons?” Malone’s answer was unintelligible. “What do you think he’s doing out there?”
The connection crackled again. Megan repeated her question.
Malone’s voice came on abruptly. Loudly.
“…DEFINITELY NO GOOD.”
Megan jerked open the driver’s-side door and tossed the snow scraper onto the seat, then slid in behind the wheel. In the side-view mirror, she saw McKinney getting into his car. “I’m coming out,” she barked into the phone. “I’ll get back to you with the address. Just stay with him. Corner the bastard. Shove him all the way out to Montauk if you have to. I’m coming out there.”
“The roads are a mess. You don’t need to-”
She threw the phone onto the seat and fired up the engine. McKinney had pulled up next to her. He signaled for Megan to roll down her window. She hit the gas and jerked the wheel, fishtailing sluggishly from the curb.
TOO MANY QUESTIONS. Ross was getting sick of stringing stupid lies together. He’d told Tracy when he met her at the airport that he was taking her to a surprise birthday party for Gloria out at the Hamptons place. Anyone else would have asked the obvious question right up front (“In a blizzard?”), but in tossing out a bogus list of who was allegedly coming to the nonexistent party, Ross had ignited Tracy’s expectations and she’d spent nearly the first forty minutes of the drive gushing over the fanciful gathering. Only as they crawled past the Central Islip exit did Tracy begin asking why the party wasn’t being held at Ross’s place in Westchester. And wasn’t Gloria’s birthday in March?
Where was jet lag when you needed it? Ross wished she would just clam up. His temples were pounding, and he fantasized about snatching hold of the gabby woman’s neck with his right hand while still piloting carefully with his left, pressing his thumb into her windpipe as hard as he could. His heart quickened with the thought. He just wanted everything over. Enough was enough was enough.
He glanced over at Tracy. She was sitting upright in a sexy something she’d told him she got on the Champs-Élysées. Okay, Ross conceded, a little fame and a lot of money hadn’t hurt the girl in the least, he’d give her that. Compared to the shrill, awkward young woman who had sat in his office the previous spring, going on and on about how violent and dangerous she thought Marshall Fox was, this Tracy was a vast improvement. The new hairstyle, the fix-up on the nose. Some eyebrow work. It wasn’t a face with much of a repertoire of expressions-especially for a so-called actress-but it was sunny and fresh and eager, and sure, he’d have considered getting into this one’s pants if he’d had anything remotely close to the urge, which he didn’t. How easy. Slide the car over to the side of the road. Work a quick number on her. Remind her who the hell got her where she was today and who had the power to take it all away. Easy. Ross was 90 percent loyal to his wife. Hell, in their industry, that practically made him a prince. And since the whole debacle with Cynthia, Ross hadn’t strayed at all. Not once.
But that wasn’t the plan. Maybe by the time they got out to the house, he’d consider it. Who knows? Maybe in a perverse way, it would make what he had in mind easier. She’s already gotten further in life than she had any right to. I’ve already given her that, Ross thought. Maybe one final dizzy moment before it all ends.
He’d think about it.
Tracy ran her palms across the flat plane her skirt made of her lap. “Would it be all right if I talk to you about the show?”
“The show?”
“Well, my character, actually.”
“You know what, Trace? It’s tricky concentrating on the road. If it’s all the same to you, can it just wait until we get to the house?”
“Sure. It can wait. It’s just about expanding Jennifer a little. I really don’t think her potential is being realized.”
Ross gave her a paternal smile. “But it can wait.”
“Sure. It can wait.”
Ross stared into the swirling snow. He thought of Gloria. She was in L.A. Hopefully, she wouldn’t try to reach him. Ross’s cell phone was turned off. Doubtless it would be collecting messages, lots of them. Ross spent half his day talking on the phone. If things got screwed up somehow, that could be a problem. His dropping out of sight for all that time. If it came to that, he’d have to sort through it. There’d be a way; he’d figure it out. He’d gotten quite good at that sort of thing. Alan Ross was nothing if not methodical. It was how he had made his way. Organization. Knowing exactly how to play people. Moving them around like chess pieces. It was an art. Ross truly felt that. It was something he had shared only with Gloria, the fact that he considered what he did art, that he considered himself something of an artist. Like Picasso. Beethoven. Grinning to himself, he ran his fingers along his row of CDs in the well between the two front seats and picked out Beethoven’s Seventh and slid it into the CD player. The music swarmed richly from the speakers like intoxicating smoke.
“That’s nice,” Tracy said. “What is it?”
“It’s Richard Strauss.” Ree-shard Strauz.
“Yeah. It’s nice.”
Ross stole a glance at Tracy Jacobs’s legs. If he wanted, when they got where they were going, he could tie them up like a pretzel. Who would stop him? Her?
“Oh God, Alan. I am so glad you picked me up at the airport. I can’t wait till we get there. This is too much fun. Really. I love you. I really mean it.”
Ross leaned over and patted her on the leg. “I love you, too, honey. You’re something special.”
He let his hand linger on her leg a few seconds. The thought of Cynthia’s firm legs came to him, the brief moment he had taken to stroke them as he’d choked back his tears. It was her fault. This whole stupid endless maze of hell was that infuriating, sweet dead woman’s fault.
Tracy smiled over at him, and he gave her leg a squeeze. Good Christ, it felt nice. The kid was a real specimen. No taking that away from her. He’d have to consider exactly how he wanted this whole thing to play out.
A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS had gone into the master bathroom alone. The fixtures were all Bagni. Eight thousand alone just for the showerhead. Nine-inch diameter. Solid chrome. Gloria had pointed out to Rosemary the different rings, each one responsible for a unique spray. But it was the chrome pipes on opposite walls of the shower, she’d said, that made the real difference. Prickling jets of water from the shoulders to the knees. Or, if one preferred, a strong hissing mist. Just adjust the control. The marble was Italian, cream with pinkish veins. Overhead, a chimney-like flue ran up about twenty feet to a skylight, operable by remote control right from the shower.
The ride out to the Island had been a blur. Three cheers for the Demerol that she’d been given at the hospital. Rosemary had made the driver stop at Paragon, instructing him to go inside and buy several pairs of sweatpants, both lightweight and heavy, a few sweatshirts, some T-shirts and several pairs of warm wool socks. Gloria had plenty of other clothes in the closets and dressers if necessary. Rosemary had found a flannel robe that she liked; she’d be fine.
Rosemary adjusted the temperature and stepped into the shower. Her body ached from Lyles’s brutish attack. What was his problem, anyway? Rosemary wondered. Was he offended that I told him to pack it up and get out? What is it with men? Maybe that lesbian detective knows what she’s doing after all. Maybe there’s something to be said for sticking with the more intelligent sex. Rosemary increased the pressure of the water. God…it felt so good. She hadn’t yet activated the two chrome pipes.
Okay. Men are useful, let’s not get silly about it. They’re fun. Get the right one and they’re more than just fun. Lord, Rosemary thought, tilting her head cautiously to look past the eight-thousand-dollar streams of water at the few flakes of snow drifting through the distant skylight, I am so ready to burst out of the stable. Where in the world has my life been, anyway? The entire past year was feeling as hazy as the past three hours. Even though she was in a fog, she felt as if she were finally making her way out of one.
Rosemary had to be careful with her wrenched neck. No sudden movements. And it would be several days at least before the bruising on her face went away. Not that she planned on seeing anyone. This was major downtime. Rosemary. A
big empty house. An ocean. It was fine with her if it snowed ten feet. Twenty feet. Bring on the next Ice Age, she didn’t care.
Looking down, she noticed a bruise on her right thigh. Bastard, she thought dreamily. She took the oval bar of translucent soap and began rubbing it along the bruise, as if somehow she’d be able to lather it away. She rubbed counterclockwise, then clockwise, then again, both directions. At last she released the soap, letting it drop next to her feet. It looked like a very fat toe. I need to get to sleep, she thought. Or maybe she’d spoken aloud. She wasn’t sure. The jets of water were beginning to sting. It felt like her skin was burning where the water hit.
Okay…let’s try the big blast, and then it’s mattress time.
Rosemary reached for the nozzle that activated the chrome pipes and gave it a turn. The water blasted from the pipes with unexpected force. Too hard. And way too hot. Scalding. Rosemary spun. Her neck torqued. The pain shot through her entire body, and a shriek erupted from her lungs. It echoed through the upstairs rooms of the empty house and down the empty staircase. It also traveled out the skylight far above her head, traveled outside into the soft white silent world, where its sound barely registered.
A faint noise.
Brief. Unintelligible.
Then nothing.
46
AFTER SHE CAME OUT of the Midtown Tunnel, Megan phoned Ryan Pope. She explained what it was she needed from him, and when he questioned why she needed it, she requested that he simply do her the damn favor and not ask questions.
“This has to do with Fox, doesn’t it?”
Megan sighed. “Ryan, everything I do these days has to do with Fox. My pancakes in the morning have to do with Fox. Please just get that address and call me back.”
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