“Liam, the Lucky We is like the Hope diamond.”
“What do you remember about it?”
“I read a whole thing on it to you,” Nell said. “The Duke of Windsor gave it to the Duchess for an engagement ring. It’s an emerald with diamonds around it, and inside there’s an inscription. Lucky WE. WE for Wallis and Edward. Lasher paid over a million for it.”
“Lasher paid $3,126,000. It was his wedding gift to Lara.”
“Liam, I don’t understand how anyone can fence a ring like that.” “That’s the fence’s business. I’ve already inquired about it. We can get $800,000.”
“Is that all, for something worth three million . . . and more by now?” “Nell, the fence gets a cut, too.”
“But who will buy it?”
“A collector. These collectors don’t care where it came from, just that it’s the real thing. Remember Fina Merola? She’ll be our fence.”
Nell grimaced. “The one from Haven?”
“You knew her a long time ago. She’s a big operator now,” Liam said. “She didn’t stand still like Jimmy Rainbow or the other pikers from the old days.”
“Why toss his name into the pot?” Nell asked.
“Why not? You used to think Rainbow was hot stuff. Fie couldn’t move this stone across the room. But Josefina Merola can give us $400,000 cash on receipt and another $400,000 one week later, in New York City, after she’s made the delivery.”
“You’d trust Fina Merola?”
“I told you, love: she’s not penny ante anymore. The circles she moves in don’t fuck with you. You don’t with them, either. That’s just understood. Did I tell you what the quotation is in this month’s Affirmations?” “No, but I know you’re going to,” Nell said.
“‘We are now moving forward in great and gallant company.’ Winston Churchill.”
“Does Fina know about me?”
“Fina doesn’t want to know anything. That’s how they work. The less names she knows, the less faces she sees, the better. We produce the product and she turns it into cash, after she makes sure it’s authentic. She can spot a fake faster than a kike cutter from Forty-seventh Street.”
“Suppose Fina says it’s a copy? Don’t rich people usually have copies made of major pieces?”
“Sometimes they do. But we’ll warn Lasher that if he tries any tricks the child will die.” Before Nell could get a word out, Liam said, “Don’t worry! We’re not murderers. But Lasher doesn’t know that. He won’t take any chances on his kid getting hurt.”
“But I want a promise from you on this Christmas Eve. A solemn promise, Liam.”
“About what?”
“Promise me the child will not get hurt.”
“Negative thinking. If you talk trouble, you get trouble.”
“Never mind that Affirm crap! I want you to say, ‘ She will not get hurt, I promise you.’”
“She will not get hurt, I promise you.”
But sweet Jesus, anything could go wrong. Any asshole knew that just from sitting nights watching TV cop shows. Liam knew, too, that if anything went wrong, Nell would never forgive him. She’d turn herself in. She’d want to be punished. She could not stand causing anyone injury. The reason she’d gone to prison was carelessness: going back to see if the old rich bitch whose jewels she’d just finished filching had really had a heart attack. She had not. Nell had lost just enough time returning to check on her to get herself arrested.
She never blamed Jimmy Rainbow. She said he’d told her to follow instructions exactly, and there were no instructions to stop and be certain the victim was all right.
Liam figured out the only flaw in his project was having a partner who did not believe in positive power. Nell had refused to read even one Affirmations. She’d called it propaganda.
“The child will never be out of your sight once I have her,” he told Nell. “Good! Thank you! And once we have the first $400,000 and Deanie is returned safely, I go to New York and stay there.”
Liam said it would be better if Nell Slack came back to East Hampton and carried on as usual for a while.
“That was a mistake I made once before,” she said. “I went back, and you know what happened. Once this is done, I head for Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, too,” and then in falsetto, “it’s lovely going to .. . the zoo.”
“I have to come back, for a while,” Liam said. “Business as usual, for awhile. Then I’ll dissolve Homesafe, pay a few months’ extra rent, saying I’ll be back, and we’re off to England.”
“Hey, this isn’t very merry Christmas conversation.”
“Just a little more, Nell. I have these clients, the Karpinskis. They leave for Naples, Florida, on the first of January. We’ll use their house after we have her. The others are either closed up, water off until summer, or there are nearby neighbors. We don’t want to be too far into the woods, either, in case it snows.”
The Karpinskis’ white brick house on Maritime Way was ideal: isolated but near the road. No year-round residents on that small street. Heat, water, and phone service was left on by the Karpinskis for a son who would stay there during his college intersession, the third week of February.
On the wall opposite the bed, photos of Mario Rome were thumb-tacked to the bulletin board. The map of East Hampton was there with the
Invictus School circled, and the route from the school to the six stops before Le Reve. A little beyond the sixth stop, in Northwest Woods, there was a gold star between there and the Lashers’ house.
There were xeroxed stories from magazines about the Lashers. It was impossible to print out everything Google came up with, but Liam had looked through all of it.
Liam had taped a year-old interview with Len Lasher on LTV, the local public-access station. Lasher was called to the microphone during a fundraiser, telling the reporter he admired the “wok” the “Wesowaion” committee “pwefomed.” He’d sounded like Bugs Bunny.
Last week Liam and Nell had followed Mario Rome’s van on its homeward route. Nell had put on one of her old wigs from days she’d given demonstrations of Star Cosmetics to cancer victims. She’d dressed in a frumpy style she planned for a disguise, actually in pants, which she hardly ever wore.
Nell could make herself into a gorgeous woman in her thirties or transform herself into an octogenarian bag lady.
They were renting the first floor of an old house on Newtown Lane near the East Hampton Middle School. They had a year’s lease, which would be up in June.
Liam said, “Let’s go out, love. Right now!”
“Nothing will be open on Christmas Eve.”
“Hydra is.”
They usually went to roadhouses around Westhampton or Riverhead. They liked darkly lighted pubs that weren’t trendy yet were busy. They chose places where they wouldn’t draw attention to themselves. They weren’t known very well in the Hamptons anywhere by anyone.
A cardinal rule of Liam’s was not to make friends. He had once leased a warehouse when he was fencing large-scale stolen goods. He dealt with professional cargo thieves, one of them a Peruvian citizen who hijacked along the eastern seaboard. Sometimes when he brought a load in, Liam would go for drinks with him. He turned out to be an FBI plant. Liam had beat the rap thanks to the way the United States government bent over backward to keep evidence that had been obtained illegally from the courtroom. But it had taught Liam not to become familiar with anyone.
Liam knew only vaguely the people whose houses he cared for. Nell had never met them. Nell knew only this horny limo driver. Under the circumstances she wasn’t to blame because Mario Rome had gotten the idea she might be interested in him. Liam had told her to work him. Now she’d have to ditch him, give him the cold shoulder, act like he’d never sent that poem to her. Chill.
Nell said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to be seen together in Hydra.”
“Oh, most people won’t be out. We’ll just stop in and get a souvlaki. We need a change of scenery.”
&nb
sp; Nell was putting away her Christmas present, a Smith & Wesson Sigma pistol that was only 5.8 inches long and weighed just fourteen ounces. She didn’t like heavy guns. This one could fit into her coat pocket like a small purse, or even in a small purse.
“Won’t it be depressing to be out when no one’s around?”
“Someone will be around,” Liam said.
Someone was.
FOURTEEN
“Delroy’s not Lasher’s manager!” Mario’s voice boomed with scorn, and it was precisely at that moment when Scotti saw Nell Slack stroll into Hydra, catch a glimpse of them, turn around quickly, and leave.
Nell Slack was with the same dark-haired man with whom she’d left East Hampton Bowl that night. Obviously she didn’t want Mario to see her. What was she up to? Scotti flashed back to Nell at the bowling alley, with the cheap camera at her face, snapping Mario’s picture.
Scotti didn’t mention seeing her to Mario. Whatever was going on, it was between the two of them. It wasn’t Scotti’s business, and besides, she wanted to hear what Mario had to say about Delroy Davenport.
“Did Delroy tell everyone at the library he was Lasher’s manager?” Mario was shaking his head, grinning.
“He told me that.”
“Oh, he hires limos and keeps track of where Deanie is, where Mrs. Lasher is. Part of his job there is to be sort of a traffic manager, except no one in their right mind would call Delroy a manager of any kind.”
“What’s he like?”
“He used to be pathetic before he connected with the Lashers. He was the town joke in Sag Harbor. He worked in his aunt’s knitting shop, knitted himself, and earned the nickname Needles Couch.”
“Couch?”
“Davenport . . . He was the type who made you feel awful because when he was around no one ever directed any conversation his way, or made eye contact with him. I heard a rumor that he was Amish, his family banished him, and that was how he came to live with his aunt.”
“How did he hook up with the Lashers?”
Mario shrugged. “It was a fluke. He used to caddy for people. Len was a great golfer. One day Len took a swing at a ball and fell on his face. It was the start of his MS. Delroy helped him home, and the Lashers began asking him to do this and that for them. He suited them because he had no life. They could count on him to be there day and night.”
“Does he live with them?”
“Now he seems to. They got him a little place down the road, though.” Mario told her the help at Le Reve called Delroy Mrs. Danvers. “Remember that spooky housekeeper in the movie Rebecca,? Judith Anderson played her. She acted as though she owned Manderly.”
Then Mario told her Delroy had knitted a scarf for the Lasher child, with her pony’s name misspelled on it. Pecheresse was the pony’s name. Peculiar name for a litde girl’s pony, Scotti thought. French for “sinner.” “But Mrs. Danvers spelled it Pisheresse,” Mario laughed. “And that’s what the guy is: a pisher. Why are you so curious about Delroy?”
She told Mario about having to open the library for him in the morning. She said, “I’d rather you didn’t tell him I mentioned him to you.” Mistake, she thought. She should never have mentioned Delroy. It could lead to her being “outed” before she was ready, if she’d ever be ready. She couldn’t imagine telling Mario, couldn’t predict what he would think of her if he knew.
“Oh, well, Delroy’s harmless,” Mario said. “Don’t worry.”
Scotti said, “I’m not worried.”
“You sound dismayed.”
“I like that word. My father was a wordsmith. That was a favorite word of his.”
“Was he a writer?”
“A professor of English . . . I’m really not dismayed, Mario. Where this Delroy is concerned, I guess you could say I’m wary. He’s strange. I’ve always been inquisitive, too. My ex says the reason I’m such a good investigator is that I’m pathologically curious.”
Before Scotti moved out, Jessica had even suggested that they pool their savings and start their own detective agency. That way, Scotti wouldn’t have to worry about employment while she was going through the initial hormone treatment and beginning to cross-dress. To Scotti’s amazement, Bolton House had left her a small inheritance. But though it seemed to be a lot at first glance, it was soon spent on the expense involved in becoming a woman.
Scotti had helped Jessica trap Edward Candle, and she had researched other investigations for Jessica, but there was really not enough work for her coming from Southgate Insurance.
Until Scotti was post-op, she had to have a low-profile job, one that did not require references and records of previous employment. That meant a low salary, too. She still did textbook editing, but sometimes she wondered if she would ever have enough saved for the final surgery.
“You said you helped your ex out sometimes,” Mario said. “What kind of thing does he investigate?”
“He’s an insurance investigator. He tracks down the fellow who was awarded millions for an accident that broke his back, only to find him lifting weights in a gym.”
Mario signaled to the bartender for another round.
“Not for me,” Scotti said. “But I’ll have a coffee.”
Scotti wanted to get off the subject of her ex. The hardest part of making new friends was dealing with the past. A sex change was something like being in a government witness program, only worse because besides reinventing your life, you had to change your pronouns.
“Did you ever hear from Nell Slack after that fund-raiser in the bowling alley?” Scotti asked.
“No. She’s probably not taking any trips during the holidays. She’s never called me for any other reason yet. All I really know about her is that she lives on Newtown Lane, up past the middle school.”
“Alone?”
“I think so.”
“Does she travel on business?”
“She’s this floor demonstrator for Star Cosmetics. She goes to malls all over the country. That’s all I really know about her. She’s one of these people who makes conversation by asking you questions. And of course I’m a marathon mouth. It’s a lonely job.”
“Is it your only work, Mario?”
“Right now. I’m trying to get some backers and open a club out here . . . Magic C East or something like it.”
“And you’re writing.”
“Trying to.”
“The Lashers can give you some interesting material, I’ll bet.”
“I wish I knew more about his big deals. This Standard Broadcasting thing he just pulled off was top secret. I don’t know sh—beans—about corporate politics, either.”
“Neither do I. But there’s a story there without the business details. Wasn’t he a poor boy who made it rich? People love to read about the rich, particularly when you have inside information.”
“Like the fact that after Delroy brings the mail to Le Reve he has to go through every magazine and remove all the inserts. Nothing can fall out of a magazine in the Lasher household.”
“I wish I could get someone to do that for me.”
“Oh, and then there’s the school. Lasher bought a school for his daughter.” “You’re kidding,” Scotti said.
“I’m not. Deanie Lasher and six other little girls go to this very private school he owns called Invictus.”
“Named after the poem?”
“How did you know? Lasher did get the name from a poem.”
And that was where Scotti had gotten the title the Ashawagh Hall instructor didn’t like. Out of the Night.
She said, “It was written by William Ernest Henley. He wrote it after his six-year-old daughter died. ‘Out of the night that covers me / Black as the pit from pole to pole /1 thank whatever gods may be / For my inconquerable soul.”’ Mario clapped. “You can quote it. I’m impressed.”
She could quote it all right. It used to be a favorite of Scott’s. Of Max Bernstein’s, too. A lot of Metamorphs had discovered that poem when they were young and latched on to
it for courage.
Mario said, “Deanie went to this Catholic school when they lived in New York City. Mrs. Lasher thought she got brainwashed there. They wanted someplace for Deanie where they could control the curriculum and also take advantage of their advantages. If the kids are studying art, Invictus flies them to Paris, to visit the Louvre.”
“A little field trip,” Scotti said.
“Here’s a funny story. When I first began to take the kids to Invictus, I lent Deanie my copy of The Little Prince. When I was a kid I loved that book. So one day I asked Deanie if she’d finished reading it. She answered that she’d left the book on the plane. I was steamed! I told her that book meant a lot to me. I asked her how she could be so careless with someone else’s property. Deanie said not to worry, that when she went back to the plane she’d get it. . . . They keep their own jet in Westhampton.”
The waiter put the wine and coffee on the table, and Mario took a long swallow of the Roditis.
Scotti said, “I guess when you have everything, you think of everything.” “He does. He thinks of everything,” Mario said.
“Start your own school. Have your own plane. Buy a half acre for your own family plot.”
“What does that mean?” Mario asked. “Buy a half acre for your own family plot?”
“Mr. Lasher bought a half acre up at Green River Cemetery. I was going to ask you about it. My mother walks her bulldog there, since we live right next door. She says they’ve dug a grave for Len Lasher. I told her there had to be some mistake.”
“Could you run that by me again?” Mario asked.
Then Scotti told him what was going on behind Jackson Pollock’s tombstone.
In the parking lot where they said good night, he handed her an old book tied with a red ribbon.
“Merry Christmas, Scotti. What I do every year is recycle old favorites from my library, and give them as gifts to friends. This one’s Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad.”
He bent over and kissed her cheek.
When Scotti got home she found a FedEx package her mother had put on her bed. It was a Christmas gift from Claris Hayworth, an MTF who’d gone through the program with Scotti, moved to San Francisco after her surgery, then found work there as a cellist with a symphony orchestra.
scott free Page 6