They approached the carousel, which was not open. Its brightly painted horses and carriages had a sinister air under the darkened roof, as if they’d been abandoned and forgotten. He and Caroline had often brought Matthew there when he was a boy. How many times had he hoisted Matt up onto the biggest horse, it always had to be the biggest horse, then stood at a discreet distance, holding onto a pole, ready to catch him if he fell off as the carousel began its gentle turning? He’d been a good father, despite having never had an example of such a person in his own life. He wondered sometimes: what if he’d been taken to a carousel, or a movie, or a parade? Would he be a better man? A less driven, less successful man, almost certainly, but also perhaps a man who could look at an empty carousel on a cold January afternoon without the paralyzing desire to order its destruction, or tear it to splinters with his own hands.
“Make it look like an accident, or a robbery, I don’t care,” he said softly as he gazed at the darkened carousel. For one awful moment he thought he saw it start to turn.
“What about the girl, she might—”
“Her too,” he said, then turned and walked quickly away.
• • •
To the west of the carousel, the terrain gradually rose to a stand of oak trees, now bereft of leaves. Behind one of these oaks, Zach shielded himself from the two men standing by the carousel. With the New Hampshire primary three days away, he’d grown desperate to prove the connection between Julian and Harry Lightstone. And the red drapes heaped on the floor of the apartment—he couldn’t shake the suspicion that someone had broken in. And then there was Sarah. They hadn’t spoken since her ultimatum. If he could prove that his pointless obsession, as she saw it, was grounded in reality, perhaps she’d reconsider her eviction order.
So he’d found himself standing across Fifth Avenue earlier, staring up at the eighth floor of Julian’s building, as if he could telepathically intuit what was going on inside, when Julian’s Mercedes had pulled up. Julian got out and disappeared inside the building. Zach stood there for a few minutes, frustrated that his nemesis was so physically close and yet completely off limits. He was about to walk away when Julian reemerged, looking concerned, and headed across Fifth Avenue and into the park. At the bandshell he met Billy Sandifer, whom Zach immediately recognized from photos he’d seen online. They stood and talked for a bit and then walked, Billy looking relaxed and comfortable, Julian stiff and aloof. They stopped at the carousel. Zach used his cell phone to snap a picture of the two men. It wasn’t the clearest shot, but it did reveal an unexpected sight: one of the world’s richest and most powerful men standing shoulder to shoulder with a violently antibusiness ex-con. Who knew when such a photograph might prove useful?
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3
Chapter 36
The mile-long ascent from the road that paralleled the Hudson River up to Route 9 in Closter, New Jersey, was something of a legend to the serious cyclist. Neophytes liked to boast about which gear—never the lowest—they used to get to the top, or how they never resorted to standing up on their pedals. For veterans like Zach, the climb was the closest thing the route offered to a challenge, and it was all about maintaining a nice, even speed, finding the groove and staying in it.
He was almost halfway to the top, feeling good. He’d stopped noticing the biting wind miles back. Sometimes he liked to clear his head before a major climb, the better to focus on each turn of the pedals. Other times he let thoughts fuel his efforts, and that was the case just then. He sensed that he had most of the key pieces to a puzzle that, when complete, would take down Julian Mellow. The photo of Julian and Billy Sandifer together in Central Park was hardly sufficient proof to derail the Lightstone campaign or destroy Julian—his real objective. But he felt fortified with a print of it tucked in his wallet—the only concrete evidence he had that he wasn’t entirely insane. He’d tried showing it to Sarah, but she wasn’t interested. In fact, their only conversation over the past few days had been about the Craigslist ads she’d forwarded to him for tiny apartments all over the city, including one in Queens, a forty-five-minute subway ride from their current place. Still, he felt sure he was getting closer to figuring things out, that soon Sarah would understand too, and that thought pumped strength into his legs, even if he didn’t know how everything fit together. Three hundred miles to the north, the polls were due to open in one hour for the New Hampshire primary. Harry Lightstone was the unlikely frontrunner, and if he pulled it off he would more or less coast to the Republican nomination. Julian was somehow connected to Lightstone, and Zach had a strong feeling that the more prominent Lightstone became, the harder Julian would fall.
He hadn’t left the apartment on Monday, watching televised news reports of the impending Republican primary and reviewing his files, hoping to stumble on a missing link that would lead, somehow, to Julian’s downfall. But that morning he’d gotten up early and needed exercise, needed to get out, needed to focus on something other than Harry Lightstone and Billy Sandifer and Julian Mellow.
He heard a car downshifting behind him as it, too, struggled with the climb. To his right the hillside plunged down to the Hudson River along a steep embankment dense with trees and rocks. He edged very slightly to the side to let the car pass—you didn’t want to get too close to the edge, even on the ascent. Drivers were used to sharing the road with cyclists in this part of Bergen County.
He was in a nice rhythm, legs pumping smoothly, fingers loose on the handlebar. Julian was going down, he was sure of it, and then he would move on, he and Sarah together. He’d been successful once, he would succeed again.
The car, a dark four-door sedan, pulled next to him and slowed. Move on, asshole, he wanted to shout, feeling pinched between the car to his left and the steep embankment to his right. He stole a glance to his left but before he could make out the driver the car jerked to the right, toward him, and the next—and last—thing he noticed was a swirling mass of green coming at him as he hurtled down the hillside, detached from his bike, detached from the earth, wondering if this was how it would end, thinking of Sarah, wanting to tell her something—wanting to tell her that he was thinking of her, just her—not Julian Mellow, not New Hampshire, just her—as he tumbled.
Chapter 37
Entering Zach Springer’s apartment the second time was a cinch. After buzzing apartment 6D from the ground-floor vestibule to make sure no one was home, Billy Sandifer used one of the keys he’d taken during his first visit. He also remembered to bring snacks for the big sheepdog, who offered a timid whine from the bedroom before succumbing to the cookies. He’d hoped to take care of Zach and the girl, Sarah Pearlman, on Monday. Sarah had left for work at eight, but Zach had stayed inside all day. She’d come home for lunch and to walk the dog, left again, then come home for good around five. Billy had kept an eye on the building from either end of the street, pacing back and forth to keep from going insane, but Zach had never emerged. This morning, Tuesday, he’d gotten lucky. Both of them had left the building, Sarah at seven thirty, Zach, on his bicycle, at eleven.
He decided to make himself useful while he waited for Sarah to come home for lunch and to walk the dog. He went right to the desk in the living room and took all the files he could find bearing the name Mellow—including the one that made his stomach muscles clench, the one with his own name on it—and stashed them in a leather satchel. He turned on the computer and nosed around for a few minutes. He found only one item of interest: an icon for a picture file on the desktop labeled Central Park, 1/31. He double-clicked on it: he and Julian were standing close together, as if whispering secrets. Nothing illegal in that, but it might raise questions: for one, what was a convicted felon doing chatting with a multibillionaire in the middle of winter in Central Park? He closed the photo and deleted it. Zach’s internet history indicated that he spent most of his days visiting sites about Mellow and his companies, but that would only lead cops, if they looked into his computer, to conclude that Zach Springer had been pathe
tically obsessed with the man who had fired his sorry ass a few years ago.
Now there was nothing to do but wait for her to come home for lunch, as she had when he’d broken into the apartment that one time, as well as the day before, when he’d stood across the street, watching. It was convenient, working with people who kept regular schedules. Zach, for example, left on his bike rides at about eleven in the morning, heading up the West Side and over the George Washington Bridge. He took the same route every time, so it had been a no-brainer to wait until Zach left his building that morning, then drive ahead to Jersey and wait for him at the bottom of the steep hill that led up from the Hudson in Jersey. A sharp jerk to the right—he’d felt only a slight jolt from inside the car, like fender-tapping when parallel parking—and suddenly the road was empty. No way Zach would survive a fall down that hillside. No way he’d ever again visit the Newman Center, sticking his nose where it didn’t fucking belong. Of everything he’d done for Julian Mellow, jerking his steering wheel a few inches to the right that morning had been the easiest. A pleasure, almost.
But where was the girl? He estimated that Zach’s body wouldn’t be found for hours, perhaps days. Even so, if Zach was going to be a suspect she would have to die sometime before…he started to check his watch but stopped when he heard a key in the front-door lock. He hurried to the bathroom off the master bedroom, almost tripping over the stupid dog, which had jumped to its feet at the sound of door opening.
“Guinevere!” she said. “Ready for your walk?”
The dog panted its enthusiasm.
Holding a switchblade in his right hand, he started to leave the bathroom to intercept her when he heard footsteps heading to the bedroom. A moment later he saw her, back to him, just a few feet away, idly looking at the pictures on the dresser, all of them of her and Zach. Sentimental, and just as well for her—her last images would be happy ones. In one swift movement he stepped into the room and reached around her shoulders with his left arm, pulling her back to him. She had just enough time to gasp, but no time to protest or even, he guessed later, to take in what was happening. He drew the blade across her neck and felt a rubbery bit of resistance as it severed her trachea. She stood there, leaning against him, for a long moment, as if her body were trying to gauge the severity of the injury and the appropriate response. Then he felt her go limp and he let go. She fell to the floor in what was already a small pool of blood.
Guinevere the sheepdog stood in the doorway, watching. Billy lifted Sarah’s arm and took her pulse, or rather confirmed the lack of one. With luck the police would suspect her boyfriend—unemployed, depressed, a self-admitted perpetrator of securities fraud…he’d killed her and fled on his bike to establish an alibi, then either thrown himself over a cliff or gotten careless and died.
Without luck there might be an investigation into the improbability that two people living together had died on the same day, though twenty miles and a river apart. It seemed highly unlikely that either death would be connected to Julian Mellow, and virtually impossible that he, Billy Sandifer, would be involved.
He took the file folders and gave Guinevere a pat on the head.
“It’s going to be a long, lonely night,” he said. Then, just before leaving, he dug into his pockets and gave her the rest of the cookies he’d brought with him.
• • •
Julian Mellow’s phone rang at nine o’clock, just as the polls in New Hampshire closed. It rang twice, then stopped. A minute later it rang twice again, then stopped. Two rings, twice. Two people dead. The prearranged signal at the prearranged time.
“Aren’t you going to answer?” Caroline said from her side of the bed.
He ignored her. Instead, he searched inside himself for some nugget of remorse and was deeply relieved not to find one. In the park, with Sandifer, his reluctance to authorize what he knew needed doing had alarmed him. There could be doubts, no second-guessing. The stakes were already high, and getting higher.
He aimed the remote at the TV and upped the volume.
“In New Hampshire, in what will surely be regarded as one of the most bizarre and unexpected primaries in history, Pennsylvania senator Harry Lightstone has been declared the winner of the Republican primary by a comfortable twelve-point margin.”
“Are you happy, Julian?” Caroline asked, putting down her book. “I don’t know what you’ve done, I don’t want to know. But I do know you had a hand in this.” She aimed a long, elegant index finger at the screen. “So my question is, are you happy?”
He looked at her and saw that she was genuinely curious, perhaps even concerned—but for whom? For him, or for the life she’d built for herself? A shroud of chilly isolation fell over him and all he could think to do was move over to her side of the bed and pull her toward him.
“Are you happy, Julian?”
He pushed her nightgown up over her hips and forced his right hand between her thighs. She sighed irritably as he worked his hand up, but in a few short moments he felt her legs relax, and then the rest of her seemed to give way as well.
A statement from Senator Lightstone is expected in just a few minutes. “Answer me, Julian. Are you happy?” she whispered in his ear as he entered her.
The magnitude of senator’s victory here in New Hampshire makes him all but a shoo-in for the nomination. It also promises to bring the issue of global human rights to the forefront.
“Whatever it…it is you’re…doing…has it…it made you happy?”
He thrust harder, then harder still.
“Are you happy, Julian?”
“Not yet,” he whispered, bracing himself on his hands and thrusting so hard Caroline’s head rammed the headboard. Crack. Crack. Crack. He thought he heard her protest, or was she moaning with pleasure? It made no difference to him.
Here comes the senator now, accompanied by his wife and campaign aides.
He thrust harder, faster. Was he happy?
Crack. Crack. Crack.
“Julian, stop, you’re…”
He covered her mouth and continued the assault, then answered her question, but silently.
Was he happy?
Not yet.
PART III
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14
Chapter 38
They met in the dining room of the senator’s Georgetown townhouse, the group charged with putting Harry Lightstone into the White House. Harry had called the meeting the evening before, and the eight assembled people, himself included, had scrambled from wherever they happened to be to show up. An aura of stifled dread filled the room. It was as if they were all moving in slow motion, unable or unwilling to summon the energy for decisive action. Handshakes were just shy of firm. Porcelain coffee cups, filled by the Lightstones’ butler, were raised to mostly silent lips, then lowered without a sip. Voices were muted, but out of weariness, not respect. It was the second week in October, the convention over, the vice president selected, the debates come and gone without any serious embarrassment to either side. The polls, even those conducted by Harry’s own people, indicated that the chances of a Lightstone victory in two and a half weeks were close to nil.
“I want to thank you all for coming on such short notice,” he said, then decided to cut the campaign speech bullshit, which lately sprang from his lips as easily as please and thank you. “We have to turn this dog around. If Nessin beats us on the issues, so be it. The country has spoken. But I’m reading in the Times and the Post that we’re running the most inept and uncoordinated campaign in recent history. There was an hour on Fox devoted to our incompetence. On Fox! I don’t want to lose because we can’t get our goddamn act together.”
He was gratified by the uncomfortable shifting in seats, the discreet throat clearings.
“Fred, speak to me.”
Fred Moran tilted back in his chair but he appeared anything but relaxed. The campaign had taken a toll on his face, which only a few months ago looked younger than his fifty-five years, handsome in an approachable, CNN-
ready way, and now looked tired and older and a touch bitter. He’d gotten three governors elected against all odds over the past decade, but he seemed to have lost his touch. Or perhaps he wasn’t up to the rigors of a national campaign.
“We have three challenges,” he began in the slightly nasal voice that had once seemed to reflect a cynical insider’s perspective on politics but now suggested nothing more than a chronic sinus infection. “First, we haven’t identified a compelling issue to claim as our own. The economy is stalled in low gear, but people seem okay with it, or at least they haven’t responded to any of our proposals for improving it. Health insurance is still a problem, but no one believes our plan will work any better than the last one, or the one before it. No one believes we’re serious about lowering taxes, even after sixty-five million dollars in ads focused specifically on that issue. There’s nothing in the foreign policy arena to get people excited. Every month that goes by without a terrorist incident the president’s poll numbers go up a percentage.”
“Jesus Christ!” The outburst came from Martin Selkirk, the vice presidential candidate. “Why don’t we all just go home now. If we can’t find a single goddamn issue that gets people excited let’s just pack it in.”
At sixty-three, Selkirk was the oldest person in the room by several years. He’d been selected for his Southern bona fides—as a four-term governor of Georgia he added “balance” to the ticket, not that anyone seriously expected the Peach State, or any other Southern state, to go to the Democratic incumbent anyway. But it had seemed important to counteract Lightstone’s reputation for Northeastern frigidity with some plain-talking Southern warmth. Selkirk was reassuringly plump, with a full head of gray hair always in need of a trim, and a kindly face that made a lot of voters think of their beloved grandfather. He was happily married, the father of three, and grandfather of many more than that. After the Stephen Delsiner disaster the Republican faithful craved normality, and Selkirk was nothing if not normal. He seemed too un-self-conscious to be devious or dishonest, and that’s just what the country wanted. If he struck some as not the sharpest tool in the shed, well, men without intellectual credentials had made successful presidents in the past, and Selkirk was only running for veep, after all. He was the do-no-harm choice, just the ticket, as the saying went.
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