The Tempest

by James Lilliefors

  “I’ll put that on my bucket list,” Champlain said, holding his smile. He was a brutish man, Kepler saw again, although there was something—­an amused cruelty—­about his manner that appealed to him.

  “The life of a painting like that,” Kepler said, “if cared for, it’s indefinite. Whereas the life of one of us, a human being, it’s what, seventy-­five years? If we’re lucky?”

  “If we’re lucky.”

  Kepler set his elbows on the table then and leaned forward. “There are two other things I need to mention, Nick. First: the photos this homicide cop showed you.”

  Champlain shrugged with exaggerated emphasis, as if he didn’t know what Kepler was talking about.

  “You don’t have copies.”

  “No.”

  “But they came from your wife’s camera.” Champlain’s eyes suddenly appeared nervous, which was the response Kepler had wanted. “Tell me about them.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. That was the first I heard of them.”

  Kepler nodded, figuring: Hunter had copies, the police had copies. How far would this go? “We’re just concerned that this woman, the homicide detective, may be talking with the FBI. Or vice versa, they may be talking to her.”

  Champlain’s expression never changed. “Why would that be?” he asked. “Why would they think I have anything to do with it?”

  “Well, they don’t. It’s no cause for concern.” Kepler smiled, reassuring him. “They think you’re in Iowa for the funeral, right?”

  “But how do they know anything?”

  “Because they’re tracking someone connected with your friend, Vincent Rosa, I imagine,” Kepler said pointedly. “They don’t know anything about you. Or me. And we want to keep it that way. I’m just saying, if she should try to reach you again, I trust you’ll refer all inquiries to your business manager.”

  “Already doing it,” he said.

  “Good. Good.” Kepler felt satisfied. “Then we’ll do our business tomorrow and we’ll all go home happy.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Hunter headed back toward the city, taking the Schuylkill Expressway over the river. Driving past Fairmount Park, then through a series of turns into a sketchy neighborhood of row houses where Cyril Charles lived. Eddie Charles’s son would be a long shot, she knew, but she decided she’d make this one last stop before returning to Tidewater. She was off track, clearly, taking a detour on the chance that Eddie Charles’s children might be able to tell her something about Belasco. Or Kepler. Something that might tie back to the killing of Susan Champlain.

  Fischer had sent her updates, she saw as she drove. The state police computer forensics lab had gone into the computer of Sally Markos, the Champlains’ summer housekeeper, and found e-­mails and phone numbers belonging to Joseph Sanders and Elena Rodgers. Still processing all, Fisch wrote.

  Hunter parked on the street below the row house listed in property records as belonging to Cyril Charles, behind a new-­looking maroon Lexus.

  She rang the doorbell three times before Cyril answered. He was a rail-­thin man with a lean face and stubbly whiskers, wearing shiny warm-­ups that were several inches too long.

  Hunter introduced herself and showed her badge. She told him she wanted to talk with him about his father. Cyril looked at her, keeping his left hand on the door.

  “You don’t want to be here,” he finally said, which was more or less how Hunter felt by then. “Okay?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we don’t talk with no po-­lice,” he said. “Okay? You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Not really,” Hunter said.

  “What do you want to ask me?”

  “I’m just doing some follow-­up on another case,” she said. “Your father’s name came up. I’d like to help find out what happened to him.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. You don’t want to do that,” he said. Hunter smelled alcohol on his breath now. “Okay? We have nothing to tell you about that.” The door opened wider. Hunter was surprised to see a heavyset, pouty-­looking woman leaning against him, her arms crossed. “Because we already said more than we need to say, you understand what I’m saying? There’s been enough trouble over all that, we’ve put all that behind us now.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  “Trouble you don’t want to know about. Okay?”

  Hunter’s phone began to vibrate in her pants pocket. She ignored it.

  “Also, I’d like to share some information with you,” Hunter said, trying a new tack, but Cyril was no longer looking at her. The woman was speaking tersely to him, saying, “Just close the door!”

  “We’re not interested in talking to no po-­lice,” Cyril said again. “Okay, you understand what I’m saying? Thank you.”

  He closed the door.

  Hunter walked down the steps to her car. Three children—­two boys and a girl—­who’d been kicking a soccer ball froze in position down the street, staring at her. Hunter waved. She turned back to the row house and saw Cyril Charles and his wife looking out the window at her.

  Driving away, she slid down the windows and pulled out her phone. At the end of the street, she stopped, hearing it again: the breathing sound, high in the trees, wind inhaling and exhaling through the leaves, sweeping subtly back and forth.

  It was Calvin Walters who’d called while she was standing on the stoop with Cyril Charles. She called him back as she drove toward the river.

  “Hey you,” he said, “you still in town?”

  “I’m just leaving.”

  “Think you could scoot over to the art museum?”

  “Which art museum?”

  “The big one. If you can be there at four, she’ll meet with you. Eddie’s daughter. She can talk for ten minutes in the Cafeteria. It’s on the ground floor.”

  “Okay.”

  The Philadelphia Museum of Art.

  “Keep it to ten minutes, all right? Her name’s Thelma. Be gentle.”

  Hunter punched in the Philadelphia Museum of Art on her GPS, and let it guide her back into the city.

  SHE PICKED OUT Thelma quickly. Conservatively dressed, a professional woman in a dark suit that fit a little snugly. Mid-­thirties, probably, with long, thin hair over her shoulders and strong, symmetrical features. She was seated at a table against the wall, looking slightly self-­conscious as she spread butter on a bagel.

  Hunter bought a bottled water and sat diagonally across from her. She spoke her name as a question. Thelma acknowledged her by lifting her eyes.

  Speaking softly and conversationally, Hunter told Thelma who she was. “I’m interested in what happened to your father,” she said.

  Thelma finished buttering her bagel. She took a small bite and kept it in her hand.

  “I’m investigating a case that I think may be connected to what happened to your father. I’d like to know about him. I’d like to help establish a more truthful explanation for what happened.”

  She looked at Hunter with eyes that were startlingly direct but vulnerable. Hunter felt that she was treading a line, not wanting to push too hard or promise anything; but wanting to help. Thelma had agreed to meet, after all, so she must have something to say. Let it come naturally.

  “My father,” she said, “was a good man. The police never tried to catch the ­people who killed him. They made up their minds what happened and never considered it might be anything else.”

  “The police treated your father’s death as drug related.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to hear what really happened,” Hunter said. Thelma kept her eyes down, both hands holding the bagel. “I was told he saw it coming?”

  Without looking at her, she said, barely audibly, “Yeah. He knew.”

  “Okay.”

  She took another small bite and pu
shed the plate to the side, no longer interested in eating. “He knew a week before it happened,” she said, looking up again. “He sat me down and he told me what all was going on. He said he was in a jam that he probably couldn’t get out of. He wanted me to know that.”

  Hunter nodded for her to continue. Thelma glanced around the cafeteria first. “I don’t know that I’m really comfortable telling it like this. I’m only doing this because of Mr. Walters.”

  “I understand. Any way you want to do it,” Hunter said.

  “If I tell you, do you guarantee you’re not going to get me in trouble?”

  “I’ll do everything I can . . . If you want to do this later, in a different location—­”

  “No.” She lowered her eyes and began: “A week before my father died, he told me that he was afraid he was going to be killed. He said it could happen anytime. A week, a few days. It could happen the next day.”

  Hunter nodded. “Okay.”

  “He told me he’d learned some stuff and was afraid it was going to get him killed. Which put him in a tough position, because once you learn something you can’t just unlearn it. You know what I mean?”

  “Okay. What was it he had learned?”

  Thelma glanced at her watch. Hunter saw the second hand sweep around.

  Six minutes twenty seconds.

  “This can’t come back to me in any way.”

  “No.” Her eyes held Hunter’s—­deep almond ovals, a secret world opening up to her momentarily.

  “My father, he was an electrician,” she said. “It was a one-­man business. He worked for some important ­people, in the city and on the Shore. ­People like Mr. John Luigi and Mr. Dante Patello and Mr. Frank Rosa. Those men were very generous to my father over the years and he always respected their privacy.

  “But the thing that happened was because of that, because of his association with those men. It wasn’t anything he did. It was more like guilt by association. And maybe my father made a mistake along the way. But it wasn’t something that he should have lost his life over.” Her eyes had moistened.

  “What was the mistake?” Hunter asked.

  “My father had one conversation where he might’ve said something he shouldn’t have. And after that, this other man came along and hired him. A man he didn’t know.”

  “To do what?”

  “Well. To wire an apartment. That’s what he said. But the man was acting funny right from the beginning, asking him questions about the Patello family, and my father began to think he might be a cop or something. He tried to cut it off.”

  “And—­? What happened?”

  “That’s when this other man started to play rough with my father.”

  “How so?”

  “He tried to force him to talk about the Patellos—­or, the word my father used, coerce. He’d have a conversation with my father and then, later, my father found out that he had recorded the whole thing. And then he tried to use the tape to threaten him.”

  “Threaten your father.”

  “Yes.”

  “How so?” She was going fast now, leaving things out. “How was he going to use the tape to threaten your father? What did they talk about on the tape?”

  “There was nothing incriminating. But they were—­my father said if it was taken out of context, it might sound incriminating; it might sound like he was saying something he really wasn’t. And this man just began to threaten him with it. Said he could make that conversation available to Mr. Dante Patello if he didn’t cooperate. He made my father feel like he was in a trap that he couldn’t get out of.”

  “What exactly was this man asking your father to do?”

  “Find out some things about the Patellos.”

  “Why? Who are the Patellos, exactly?”

  “They have several businesses in the city and Dante has some apartment buildings on the Jersey Shore. My father’d done work for them for years. Anthony Patello, Dante’s father, lent my father some money at one time, that helped him get started in his business. So my father wanted no part of this. He was planning to go to Mr. Patello and come clean about it, tell him what was going on. But I don’t think he ever had a chance to do that.”

  Her eyes were glistening with emotion. She was nervously twisting a corner of the napkin.

  “But he never did what this man asked him to do.”

  “No.”

  “Did he say who this man was? Did he give you a name?” Her thoughts seemed to lose focus then, her eyes staring at a spot on the table. “Thelma? Did he give you a name? Did your father say who this man was, who he worked for?”

  “He said he worked for the government.”

  “The government.”

  “Yeah.”

  Thelma glanced at her quickly.

  “This was the government putting pressure on him, you’re saying?”

  “That’s what he told me. That’s why he didn’t think he could ever just walk away from it.”

  “What government? State? Federal?”

  “Federal government. FBI.”

  Hunter felt her heart ratchet into a higher gear. “Okay,” she said, concentrating on keeping her voice even. “This man was with the FBI.”

  “Yes. My brother’s warned me not to talk with anyone. I’m only here because Mr. Walters called me.”

  “I know that.”

  “I’ve got four children at home. I can’t afford to get involved in any kind of trouble, you understand?”

  “I understand,” Hunter said. “You won’t. Believe me, this is strictly between us. But it’s important that you tell me all you can about what happened.” Hunter glanced across the room. An older woman seated alone averted her eyes. “Why did your father think the government was interested in Mr. Patello and his family?”

  She breathed more heavily but didn’t answer.

  “Did this have to do with stolen art?”

  Thelma raised and lowered her chin, their eyes connecting for a long moment. “Yeah, that’s what it was. This man wanted my father to find out about stolen art. He wanted to pay him, thousands of dollars, he said, if he’d just ask three or four questions. That’s how he put it.”

  “But your father wouldn’t do it?”

  “Never. Not for a second. They wanted him to go in and be a snitch, and my father would never do that. Never. My father was an honorable man.”

  “So he said no.”

  “He said no. But that only made this man come on stronger. I don’t think he knew what kind of person my father was. And then, of course, the government raided Mr. Patello’s house and it was in all the papers, and I guess maybe my father got tied in with that.”

  Hunter sighed, understanding now. “Was this all just one man? Or was there more than one?”

  “One man.”

  “Okay. Thelma, can you tell me who this man was,” Hunter said. “Did he give you a name?”

  She kept her eyes down now. Hunter took a breath, knowing she had to be careful or Thelma might close up.

  “Was his name Scott Randall?”

  She lifted out her chin affirmatively. It wasn’t a direct answer, but close.

  “Was it Scott Randall?” she asked again, and this time she nodded and looked at her, her eyes glistening, letting Hunter all the way in for a moment.

  “Did your father tell you anything about this deal specifically? With the stolen art?”

  “No,” she said. “Other than what this FBI man said to him.”

  “Which was what?”

  “He told me someone was going to make a deal for a stolen painting that was worth several million dollars. That’s all he knew.”

  This must have been the earlier deal that fell apart, Hunter figured. The Manet. The FBI sting that Kepler had walked away from, taking some of the government’s money. Maybe in the
end, Randall blamed Eddie Charles for sabotaging it.

  “And so, what happened?”

  “Just like I say. He didn’t want any part of it. But he was scared because this man wouldn’t let go. Told him he was replaceable, all kinds of shit,” she said, her voice suddenly angry and trembling. “And he said, if my father, or any of his family members, even think about going to the police, they’d regret it.”

  “That’s why you haven’t talked with anyone other than Mr. Walters?”

  “Yeah. I mean—­I didn’t exactly think they’d believe me, either. But also.” She hesitated, and went on: “Also, someone paid my brother some money after my father got killed. An attorney contacted him, said it was from a fund my father had set up. But I think it may’ve just been payment to keep him quiet.”

  “How much was this?”

  “I don’t know. He gave me five thousand. Said that was my half of it. I don’t necessarily believe what Cyril tells me.”

  Hunter glanced at her watch, seeing the ten minutes were up.

  “When your father talked with you, what did he say about this man? This Scott Randall?”

  “He said he was corrupt. He said all kinds of things, tell you the truth,” she said, showing a quick smile for the first time. “But my father was very afraid of what he was going to do. My father was an honest man. Anyone will tell you.”

  “I know,” Hunter said. “I know that.”

  “There was a lot of loyalty in my father. Maybe Mr. Patello, the son, thought my father had betrayed him with the FBI, I don’t know. I hope not. But it was wrong, that the story got out there.”

  “I know it was.”

  Thelma glanced at her watch. “Anyway,” she said. “I need to go.”

  Hunter understood some of what she was feeling, the sense of injustice and powerlessness. You can do things that are legal but not moral, Bradbury had told her. Was there any direct connection between what had happened to Eddie Charles and what had happened to Susan Champlain? Hunter didn’t know yet. But Eddie had been in the photo that Susan had taken, in the same frame with the stolen Rembrandt. Maybe he’d just been there as an electrician, to wire an old house. Maybe the fact that she’d taken the photo had just been a coincidence.