Moon placed the Louisville Slugger on the lounge chair beside the dead man's legs and entered the main house through a set of French doors. He was reasonably certain that the alarms had been turned off because he had found the doors ajar and a light on in the kitchen. The man had left himself access to the liquor supply. Still, he was reluctant to explore further. A home such as this might well have more than one system. Motion detectors. Pressure plates on the carpeted staircase. He would limit his search to the downstairs rooms.
In the living room, he found what he was looking for. Atop a grand piano, there was an assortment of family photographs. The gray-haired man in several of these had to be Hobbs. Moon studied his face, mentally darkening the hair, smoothing out the skin. It was not a face that he had seen before. He was disappointed. Bart Hobbs was not Armin Rasmussen. He was far too small, at least a decade too young.
The photos showed that Bart Hobbs led an active life for a Wall Street big shot. Most men in that field are reluctant to take vacations. Yet here was Hobbs in golfing attire, sitting in his monogrammed golf cart. Hobbs in tennis whites being handed a trophy. Hobbs with a fishing rod posing next to a hoisted marlin. Hobbs with several other men, a snowy background this time, all dressed in ski clothing.
Moon studied that photograph. He knew none of those faces either. In the background stood a house that resembled a Swiss chalet. It had window boxes with fake red flowers in them and elaborate carved molding under the eaves and on the wooden balconies. The chimney had his monogram, a large BH, set into the stone. An estate sign in the foreground bore the name Playing Hobbs. The man likes puns, thought Moon.
He turned the photograph over. A card, taped to the back, gave a date and a list of names. None was familiar. Most were what he called rich man names. Men with first names that sounded like last names, half of them followed by numerals.
Gardner Lowell IV ... Frampton Childress II... Avery Haverford Bellows.
This last had no numeral but had three last names plus a nickname written in parentheses. Nickname was “Dink.” Even their nicknames are rich.
There was a fourth name, not like the rest. That name was Victor Turkel. It was a clunky kind of name, and Moon had no trouble guessing which one it belonged to. He had to be the fat one wearing steamed-up glasses, kind of hanging back as if he was not all that eager to be in the picture. The other three, besides Hobbs, were all thin and looked fit and had haircuts in the style of George Bush.
But no Armin Rasmussen. No one who even resembled him. That would have been too much to hope for.
The photograph made him think of Michael again. But this time he realized why. The house was a ski lodge in Maine. Michael had gone there once with the English girl, Bronwyn. Hobbs had invited them.
Moon set it back down, not bothering to wipe it clean of fingerprints. He eased himself back outside and, sensing no other presence but that of the dead man, walked to the garage. There, in a storage room, he found two plastic buckets and a half-gallon can of paint remover. He poured paint remover into two buckets, carried them to the gas pump, and added several gallons of gasoline to each. He left the pump running.
Moon carried these back to the house, where he tested the flow of air. He opened certain doors and closed others, creating baffles and chambers where the heat would build before it spread. That done, he began pouring the mixture.
He had a match in his hand, ready to strike it, when he thought of the man outside. The police and firemen will find him dead and soon they will realize that he'd been throttled. Better to leave some doubt of how he died. Or, more importantly, how long it took him to die.
He returned to the lounge chair and took the dead man's right hand. He wrapped the man's fingers around the Beretta, keeping the heavier weapon for himself. Next, he took the man's head in his hands. Moon tilted it back, exposing more of the throat.
He picked up the bat. He would begin with the throat. The ankles would be next. He would then work his way back up.
Moon stopped for the night near Cape Kennedy.
He found a motel in an all-black section where he would not be especially noticed. There was a late-night laundromat nearby. He washed the blood and the gas fumes from his clothing. He dozed off watching the dryer.
The next morning, he rose early and took a long quiet walk on the beach, then found a pay phone where he placed a call to the machine at Jake's condo. He tapped out the code to hear messages.
There were several; all but one were from Brendan Doyle.
”I fucking can't believe you,” said the last from Doyle. He took that to mean Doyle had heard about the fire.
The one after that confirmed it. It was from Julie Giordano. It said, “You do nice work. But we really gotta talk, okay?”
He tapped another code that left the messages intact. That made it harder to know when he called. He returned to his motel room with a container of convenience store coffee. He would head north soon; he had already mapped his route. Before that, however, he would spend another hour with Michael's laptop computer.
He still had Michael's watch and jewelry, which he had taken from the apartment. It had to look like a burglary. These he kept wrapped in a sock against the day when he might think of a way to return them. These and Bronwyn's photograph in its boxy little frame. He had wondered, idly, why Michael chose a frame that was so deep-set that her face was hard to see. A face like hers, you'd think he'd want to show it off.
At the hour of her service, he had slipped out of Mount Sinai. Michael's building was directly across Central Park from the hospital, five minutes away by taxi. Moon went in through the garage; he worked quickly and quietly, and was back within twenty minutes more. He had Michael's computer and a pocketful of disks but he had no clear idea of what he hoped to find in them or even how to use the computer. He knew only what Jake had always said.
“Someone dies unexpected, go look for his books. Always look for the ledgers but do it quick. You're liable to be in a foot race.”
When Jake was murdered, and Michael's fiancee soon after, the coincidence was too much to ignore. The connection, if there was one, might be found in Michael's files.
A twelve-year-old boy showed him how to use the laptop. The boy, just down the hall at Mount Sinai, had come in with bad headaches and the doctors found a tumor. Tumor or not, it took him less than an hour to find a way past the code that Michael had used to keep his records private. What he found there was a disappointment in some ways, but a great relief in others.
Michael seemed to know nothing. One file, marked Misc. Personal, was filled with random musings. Michael would use his computer the way some people use diaries. He would talk things over with himself. Private matters. Most of the more recent entries had to do with Bronwyn.
Should he ask her to marry him? What might she say? If it's yes, then what? One of them would probably have to resign. Lehman-Stone has a rule against couples. Screw Lehman-Stone. How about Europe for a while? Or maybe she'd like to try San Francisco? Talk to Uncle Jake. Have Jake and Moon over.
The “Screw Lehman-Stone” was comforting. It meant that, to Michael, it was just another job.
Here and there, Michael would go on about how wonderful Bronwyn is. How perfect she is. No question he was crazy about her. He would write Mrs. Michael Fallon or Bronwyn Kelsey Fallon just to see how it looked.
Fair breast, was another notation. It was repeated several times.
Fair breast?
Moon had no idea what it meant.
A second file marked Misc. Financial showed that Michael was doing well, real well, but he was far from getting rich. His income was about right for his age, his education, and the kind of work he was doing. No suspiciously large bonuses. No big deposits. He wasn't blackmailing anyone. That, taken with Michael's willingness to leave Lehman-Stone for love, made Moon ashamed that he had even wondered.
The rest of the files were all homework. All Lehman-Stone and AdChem business, much of it routine. For the most part, Mo
on could penetrate enough of the Wall Street jargon to get the sense of it.
There were musings in these files as well. Judging by some of them, he liked the job well enough, he liked most of the people, but he did not seem to think much of Bart Hobbs. Michael wasn't so much hostile to him as he was mystified. Hobbs, he observed, made a great deal of money and Michael couldn't for the life of him see what Hobbs ever did to deserve it. He traveled a lot. Played golf a lot. And he jumped when AdChem said jump. And even when Security said jump.
Michael didn't write Parker. He wrote Security. Moon took that to mean that Michael didn't know much about Parker either.
His musings about AdChem were more respectful. He seemed almost in awe. They were not the biggest, he notes, in terms of research facilities but they certainly make the most of what they have. Largest number of new drug patents in the industry. And, lately, the fastest FDA approvals. They keep beating out competitors, often by a matter of days. But those few days, he says, are worth millions.
AdChem's not only good, it's lucky. Time after time, says Michael, a major competitor was poised for a launch but either had to recall its product, or the FDA changed the language of an approval, or their research was called into question.
Moon frowned. Thoughts of product tampering crossed his mind. So did thoughts of moles inside the FDA.
The company, Michael notes, has huge cash reserves. He says that's not unusual by itself. But he can't see where they came from and there's no way to find out. AdChem doesn't open its books for anyone. No, thought Moon. I guess I wouldn't either. Not if Julie Giordano is right.
What struck him about these musings, the ones about AdChem, was that Michael must have wondered. It's like, you wouldn't write down, Gosh, Fat Julie sure has a lot of money for someone who doesn't work. And people who borrow some of that money and then stiff him sure seem to be accident prone. You wouldn't write that without finishing the thought. Unless you just don't want to know. Or unless you're only beginning to catch on.
Moon had been through these files several times, every line of them, before Doyle called to say Michael was safe. He was looking for the name “Rasmussen.” He could feel it there. He just couldn't see it.
But then Giordano called and gave him another name. Philip Parker. Fat Julie had no home address for him. But Moon would find him.
He also had those other names, the ones from the back of that picture. Friends of Bart Hobbs. Guests at his house up in Maine. And now he knew who they were. He found them on memos in Michael's computer. Most were copied on almost every report he wrote. One was with Lehman-Stone, one with AdChem's New York office, one with their Washington law firm. And Moon had their home, business, and vacation home addresses from one of Michael's disks.
Except the fat one. Victor Turkel. Moon did not see that name anywhere. For all he knew, Turkel could have been the caretaker of the house in Maine.
But the rest would do for a start.
Chapter 19
Michael now owned the Taylor House.
The closing was held on the tenth of May. It was all done in Boston through an attorney who had been retained for that purpose by Brendan Doyle. The Daggetts were there but Michael was not. There was no need. The young lawyer, technically, held the deed to the inn but he held it in trust for Michael.
This was done, Doyle explained, to make the ownership harder to trace in the unlikely event that these shadows of Michael's actually existed. These hunters and killers. This man with no face from his dreams.
“Then why go to that trouble,” Michael had asked him, “if you don't believe it?”
“Do you? Do you still?”
”I don't know. I suppose not.”
“Well, when you make up your mind, we'll tell the world that you're now an Edgartown innkeeper.”
“No,” Michael said quietly. “No, let's not tell the world.”
This was going to be his life. All the pain of the life he had before, all the crime and crud of New York City . . . these seemed more distant than ever, far to the west of an Edgartown sunset.
The Taylor House was heavily booked already.
It was booked to capacity, in fact, from Memorial Day weekend through the second week of August and there was even a waiting list for the Fourth of July weekend. Given the number of ghost groupies who had taken rooms, it struck Michael as dishonest to say nothing about the starlings. He told Harold what Megan had said.
“I'd keep that to myself,” was Harold's advice. “They won't believe you nohow.”
“But they're birds. They'll sound like birds.”
“Michael . . . they sounded like birds right along. But what folks chose to hear was children.”
He supposed.
People doubt or believe according to their needs. Megan said that as well and who was he to argue? If someone had told him just three months ago that he was going to be an innkeeper . . . and that next he'd fall in love with a loony psychic ...
But it was all happening.
He had even made love to Megan.
That happened after three solid days of being together.
She had slept through the night on his sitting room floor. The next morning he fixed a breakfast so big that they both felt a need to walk it off. They walked the length of Lighthouse Beach. By the time they turned back she was holding his hand.
Later, she took him out for a sail. They didn't really talk much, at least not about themselves. It was mostly about boats and about movies they'd seen. With a bit of gentle urging, she stayed the next night in one of his guest rooms. It pleased him that she didn't bolt her door.
But he wouldn't have knocked. He wouldn't have pushed it at all. He wanted her, no question. He wanted her, he supposed, from the first time he saw her from the deck of the ferry. But he also wanted it to be good and right. Like Megan, he was afraid of what might happen if it wasn't.
It was Megan who picked the time and place.
The moment, when it came, was on her boat. He had asked her to have dinner with him on shore. She said she wanted to shower first. Megan seemed to shower at least three times a day. She told him to crack a beer and wait for her on deck.
It struck him after a while that she was using too much water. Short showers are the rule on a boat. Wet down, suds up, rinse off. He asked her if she was all right. She came to the hatch, dripping wet, wrapped in a beach towel. She looked up at him, took a big deep breath, and said that she was ready to try if he was.
They never did get to dinner. And it was wonderful. In its way.
He might have guessed, he supposed, that when the moment came, she would want it to be in her own space. A boat can be like a womb. But a boat is also a place where sail bags have to be dragged off the berth and where you crack your head climbing in and where the wake of a passing power boat causes you to fall on your- ass while you're trying to kick off your pants.
And of course she was terribly nervous. At least in the beginning. So he asked if they could just lie close, hold each other, without worrying too much about making things happen. She said that sounded like a good idea. At that, she jumped up, dragging a blanket with her and stuck a cassette of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon into her tape deck. If that was her idea of mood music, thought Fallon, he might have stumbled onto one source, at least, of her problem.
The blanket fell away while she was doing this. She felt his eyes on her and moved to cover herself. But she stopped in mid-reach. She let him look and he whispered, “Thank you.” She really did have a marvelous body. And had worked at keeping it that way. He felt badly out of shape in comparison.
At last she climbed back in and warmed herself against him.
“I'm ready,” she told him.
He grumbled.
She said, ''Uh-oh. What did I do wrong?”
“Nothing. It's just so nice. Being here with you.”
We say, “Dinner is ready.” We ask the cleaner if our shirts are ready. When we're tacking our boat, we say “Ready about.” But
we don't jump under the covers and say, “I'm ready” unless we expect cash to be left on the end table. This was not the time, however, to offer a critique.
They did make love. It was actually more of a practice session. She was considerably tense but it was wonderful all the same because it was with Megan. He could not imagine a place in the world where he would rather be. Or anyone, not even Bronwyn, with whom he would rather be. They made love twice. The only thing was ... she would still stop and listen at the damndest times.
But he'd learned that it's best not to bring up that subject. He'd asked, during one of their walks, how someone becomes a Megan. He wasn't prying. Just curious. Like, was she born with it? A head injury, maybe? Abad trip on drugs? At that she closed up like a vault. Not now, though. This was a whole new Megan.
“Michael?” She brushed her fingers across his chest.
“Um . . . ?”
“This is all for me so far. I mean, you're doing everything.’'
“Me? I thought you were.”
She bit his shoulder.
“Megan . . . trust me. You have nothing to feel self-conscious about.”
“Okay, but what do you like?”
“We're doing it.”
The Shadow Box Page 15