“Of course, there is. I wrote it. You delivered it.”
“Doesn’t matter-the check’s gone.”
“Then where is it?”
“No idea. It wasn’t on Eric Parker’s body and it’s nowhere in that apartment. I have contacts at the NYPD. One of them was there when they removed the body, which was searched before Parker was pulled out. There was no check, Louis.”
“This contact,” Louis said. “This friend of yours-he can be trusted?”
“Are you questioning me? Of course, he can. He’s one of my best. While he was there, he also wired the apartment. You know as well as I do that Diana Crane will soon be missing those files. Now, we’ll know when she misses them. Now, we’ll be able to deal with matters more efficiently.”
Louis rose from his seat. “That check didn’t just disappear.”
Spocatti watched the man pace, delighted by how all of this was affecting him. “Of course, it didn’t disappear, but it’s nowhere in that apartment. That I can assure you.”
“Then where is it?”
“My guess is that whoever pushed Parker down those stairs is also holding that check.”
Louis, a man rarely stunned by the events of life, looked at Spocatti, stunned. “Pushed Parker down the stairs? You said he fell.”
“The police said he fell,” Spocatti said. “There’s a difference. And the police happen to be wrong. Eric Parker did not lose his footing and fall down the stairs like they said he did-Eric Parker was murdered. My contact and I are certain of it.”
“Who killed him?”
Spocatti smiled a slow, knowing smile. “You tell me.”
It was a moment before Louis responded. His mind filled with possibilities, made connections. And then he gradually realized that there was only one person who could have done it-Mario De Cicco.
He sat heavily in his chair.
Spocatti watched the color drain from the man’s face but felt no pity, no sympathy, only a slight annoyance at having been ignored. “I warned you, Louis.”
“I know you did.”
“Things aren’t as simple as they once were. You’re losing the game.”
“The hell I am.”
“But you are,” Spocatti said. “I told you not to send a check. I told you to wire the money from one of your anonymous accounts into one of his anonymous accounts. It would have been clean but you chose not to listen. You got greedy. You wanted that information so badly, you caved into Parker’s demands. That might turn out to be the biggest mistake of your life.”
Spocatti stood and leaned over the desk. “Now, unless you listen to me, unless you do everything I say, you probably will pay with your life-and Redman will win after all.”
Louis shook his head. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Good,” Spocatti said. “So, you’re going to listen to me? Do as I say?”
“That depends,” Louis said warily. “What do you have in mind?”
Vincent told him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The first thing Michael noticed when he and Leana cleared customs was Spocatti. He was moving in their direction, sifting through the crowds, eyes on Michael, tossing a cigarette into an ashtray as he passed it.
For a moment, Michael thought Santiago’s men had somehow followed him here, but he looked around and saw nothing unusual. He turned back to Spocatti, who now was at a restroom entrance. He nodded at Michael and stepped inside.
Michael was tempted to keep walking, but couldn’t. Spocatti once saved his life. If Santiago’s men were here, he might repeat the favor.
“I need to use the restroom,” he said to Leana. “Do you mind waiting a minute?”
The restroom was cool and quiet and painted deep blue. Spocatti was at the rear of the room, washing his hands at a sink. As Michael moved toward him, he noticed two other men standing at the urinals, both wearing business suits. Spocatti’s men.
“What is it?” Michael asked.
Spocatti turned off the water and shook his hands over the sink. Michael noticed two long, red marks running horizontally on each palm. They looked like burns. Rope burns.
“I’m here to help you, Michael.”
“Why? To make up for the life you took earlier?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Michael took a step toward him. “Why did you kill her sister?”
Spocatti raised an eyebrow. “Look at you-standing up so tall and brave.”
“She didn’t have to die.”
“I just do as I’m told.” He ripped a towel from a dispenser and began wiping his hands. “Actually, you’re right,” he said. “Of course, I killed her. And I enjoyed killing her. You should have seen the expression on her face when I cut the rope and tied it around her legs. Now we’re talking fear-”
Michael lunged forward and pushed Spocatti against the wall. The two men at the urinals looked over their shoulders. One laughed. The other went to the door and blocked it so no one else could enter.
“Who’s next?” Michael asked.
Spocatti didn’t struggle. Instead, he looked bemused. “Everyone is next, Michael. Everyone will die. It’s all going to be tragic. Blood will be everywhere.”
His hands soared up. He shoved Michael against the opposite wall and withdrew the gun concealed beneath his black leather jacket.
Tried to withdraw his gun.
It caught on his shoulder holster and tumbled from his hand.
As if in slow motion, Michael watched the gun bounce off Spocatti’s knee, drop to the blue tile floor and spin in his direction.
He lunged for it.
Tried to lunge for it.
The man at the row of urinals no longer was amused. Suddenly, he was standing in front of Michael, blocking his path to the gun.
Spocatti picked it up. He holstered it and said to Michael, “If you want to get through the next few days alive, and especially if you want to be rid of Santiago, I suggest you cut the bullshit, listen to me carefully and do as I say.”
Leana was nowhere in sight when Michael left the restroom.
He looked around the crowded corridor and found her standing across from him. She was on her cell phone, talking rapidly, gesticulating with her free hand. Michael wondered who she was talking to and if it concerned him and the conversation she overheard in Monte Carlo.
When she snapped the phone shut, he moved toward her, the knot hardening in his stomach-tightening. “Who was that?” he asked.
“Mario.”
“Mario?” He couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice. While they were in Monte Carlo, his father told him that De Cicco was running a check on them both. If the man somehow learned he was Louis’ son, Michael knew that Mario would take him out.
“And?”
“Eric’s dead,” she said. “The contract’s been canceled.”
He searched her eyes, trying to see if there was something more she wasn’t telling him.
“So, it’s over,” he said.
She looked incredulous. “Are you serious? Of course, it isn’t over. First, the spotlights explode, then my sister is murdered. Someone is out to hurt my family. Are my parents next? Is it me? Nobody’s been caught. Which one of us is next?”
Michael could say nothing.
Leana reached for the oversized handbag that was at her feet. “Look,” she said. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m sorry for getting upset.”
“You have every reason to be upset.”
“It’s just that I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.” She started to leave. “Can we go home now? It’s late and I’m tired. I want to get up early tomorrow morning and see my parents.”
For Michael and Leana, home now was a new apartment located at the top of a Fifth Avenue high rise.
As their limousine neared the glittering tower, Michael thought back to the phone conversation he had in Monte Carlo with his father. The man thought of everything. Not only did he know his son would
need a new place to live, but he also knew that that place would have to reflect the kind of wealth and power his new bride would be expecting.
He wondered if his father intentionally chose an apartment on Fifth Avenue. If Louis had, Michael wouldn’t be surprised. Only yesterday morning, his manuscript by the same name had been burned.
The car hit a string of green lights, sailed up Madison and turned onto 59th Street, where it crossed over to Fifth. As it began moving down the avenue, Michael looked at the people on the sidewalk, at the illumined store windows and remembered what Spocatti told him in the restroom. The doorman’s name is Joseph. He’s tall, dark hair, thick mustache. He’s expecting you. When you see him, act as if you already know each other.
The car pulled to the curb.
Michael looked out the window and saw a liveried doorman hurrying in their direction. For a moment, his heart seemed to stop. The man coming toward them was short and bald.
He looked past the man, toward the twin gilt doors, and saw one other doorman standing at the entrance-but he was young and blond.
His door swung open. “Mr. Archer,” the man said. “It’s a pleasure to have you back with us.”
Michael had no choice but to go with it. He stepped out of the car.
“And you must be Mrs. Archer,” the man said, looking past Michael. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
As Leana alighted from the limousine, the man flashed Michael an intimate, knowing smile. “She’s every bit as beautiful as you said she would be, Mr. Archer.”
Michael managed a smile of his own, hating Spocatti more now than he had before. “Where is Joseph?” he asked. “I thought he’d be working tonight.”
“Flu,” the man said. “We’re hoping he’ll be back tomorrow. Let me help you with your bags.”
They took an elevator to the fiftieth floor. When Michael entered the apartment, he found it as sumptuous as Spocatti said it would be. It was filled with items similar to those that he lost to the bank only a few short weeks ago.
As he looked around, it came to him that the apartment somehow seemed lived in, even though Spocatti said it had been furnished only that morning.
Leana dropped her handbag onto a side table. She moved toward the center of the foyer and appraised the room with a sweeping glance. “So, this is where you live,” she said.
Michael held out his hands. I guess so, he thought.
When he joined Leana in bed that night, sleep wouldn’t come. There were so many thoughts crowding Michael’s head, he knew he would go mad if he gave into them.
Instead, he allowed his thoughts to drift to his mother. Sometimes, Michael thought if he could just see her again and talk to her, he could feel the rage his father had felt for years and go on with this, knowing that what his father swore was right.
But his mother had died when he was three. What few memories he had of her were only fragments tarnished by time.
Some things he did remember-the way she smiled, the toys she showered him with, the pretty cotton dresses she wore. He wished he could remember more, but he couldn’t. It was his father who dominated his childhood memories.
Michael closed his eyes and let his mind slip into the dark.
He remembered…
He was a child and his father was moving toward him, loosening his belt, saying in his whiskey-stained voice that he wished Michael hadn’t been born.
He remembered…
It was a late, snowy February evening and he could hear his father’s drunken weeping in the next room, saying his wife’s name over and over, almost as if it would bring her back.
He remembered…
He was eighteen years old and on a bus headed for Hollywood. Michael would never forget that day, the stale smoky air, the countless hours on the road. Every bit of it was better than the prison his father had confined him to. When the bus left Grand Central, he became Michael Archer and he swore to himself that his father would never again control his life.
He wondered now how he could have let that happen.
He imagined…
Leaving his father and New York, catching a plane with Leana, flying to some remote part of the world, starting over in a land where no one knew them. But he knew he could do none of that. If he did, his father or Santiago would find them and kill them.
Michael’s eyes opened.
Or would they?
CHAPTER FORTY
On Sunday morning, George went through the rituals of death.
In his office at Redman International, he made phone calls. From the undertaker, he ordered an ornate mahogany casket with the initials CER engraved on each side. He phoned his daughter's favorite florist, ordered dozens of roses to fill the church and, later, the area surrounding her grave.
He phoned close friends and relatives, telling them the time and the place of the private wake and burial. And he spent time alone, still trying to accept the unacceptable. Not since his parents' death had George dealt with something so entirely personal. He felt numb, not vacant, but absent, as if he were standing outside himself, watching this hell happen to another man-even though he knew it was happening to himself.
Although the board was pushing to sign the final papers with WestTex and Iran on Tuesday, he shoved the takeover from his mind, not wanting or willing to deal with it until the day came and he had no other choice.
He left for her office.
When he stepped inside, it was like moving into a room where Celina still came to each morning. It was having her here that made him most proud. His office was next to hers. If a deal was going particularly well or sour, it wasn't unusual for them to communicate by yelling to each other through the wall. George's throat thickened at the thought.
He went to her desk.
Like himself, his daughter wasn't the neatest person. Her desk was cluttered with a litany of used Styrofoam cups and empty food containers. There were files pertaining to the takeover of WestTex and on the corner of the desk was a photo of them both framed in silver. They were standing in front of the new Redman International Building, father and daughter, smiling because this was their greatest moment. Together, they were invincible. Together, they had accomplished so much.
Who was he without her?
There was a knock at the office door. George turned to find Elizabeth standing in the doorway. She wore a simple black dress. Her mouth was a solemn line. She seemed like a ghost to him, as if this were still unreal, not happening.
Posture perfect, eyes dead, his wife lifted her head. "I'm ready," she said.
Walking into their daughter's apartment was perhaps the hardest thing George and Elizabeth had ever done. Looking around, it was as if she had just left for the weekend and would soon be returning. As they walked from room to room, each attaching a memory to objects Celina once held dear to her, they wondered how they would ever get through life without her.
They moved into her bedroom.
While Elizabeth stepped into a closet, George glanced around the room, noticing that the bed had been left unmade and that the shades were still drawn, shutting out an overcast sky. Behind him, he could hear the sharp clatter of wire hangers sliding rapidly across a metal bar.
"I think she should wear red," Elizabeth called. "Celina always loved red. It was her best color." Her voice was oddly light. It clashed against the sound of the clacking hangers.
George turned toward the closet, his brow furrowing as he said that he remembered.
"Or white," Elizabeth said. "I always liked her in white."
"Elizabeth…"
"I had no idea Celina had so many clothes," Elizabeth said. "She's not like me or her sister. I always thought she was a minimalist. But this? This rivals anything Leana or I have in our closets."
He stepped behind her.
"I thought it would take only a moment to find something appropriate, then we could leave." She pushed a rack of dresses aside-the metal scraped. "This is harder than I imagined it would be."
"
Why don't you let me help?"
"That isn't necessary." She pushed more clothes aside, moving quickly, then stopped and lifted a white dress from the bar. She turned to him. "How's this?"
"It's fine, Elizabeth."
"Are you sure? I want her to look perfect."
An image of Celina as he'd last seen her forced its way into his mind. She had been stretched naked on a cold metal table in the basement of the M.E.'s office, her skin pale blue, her damp hair curling around a face that was strangely swollen. A part of George died in that moment, dissolving into something darker, uglier.
"She'll look perfect," he said.
Elizabeth raised the dress and inspected it quickly. Without looking at her husband, she said, "I won't come here again, George."
"You won't have to. I'll take care of everything."
With a last look around, they left the apartment, the door locking shut behind them.
Elizabeth said nothing on the drive uptown.
Their daughter's dress folded like a barrier between them, her hands clasped neatly in her lap, she looked out the window beside her, oblivious to the two unmarked police cars following them, the sun occasionally glinting in her eyes, her breathing as quiet as the limousine's virtually soundproof interior.
She was fifty-four years old and she was beautiful, the fine lines around her mouth and beneath her eyes somehow enhancing, curiously enhancing. Watching her, George found himself thinking back to a time when they both were young and happy, the time when they first met and neither knew the storms that lay ahead.
He remembered their chance meeting at a mutual friend's dinner party and how he told her at the end of that evening that he was going to marry her. He remembered stealing a kiss with her on her father's doorstep and he remembered the way his heart used to quicken when she alighted from her home to greet him. Then, she was the most important thing in his life. But where were they now?
If someone had asked George that question two months ago, he would have had an answer. But now? Now, he was moving uptown to meet with the undertaker friends had suggested. Now, whoever murdered their daughter and caused the spotlights to explode was still out there, free. He had no answers for any of it. As the limousine stopped for a red light, George closed his eyes and began wondering who was behind everything that was happening to them.
Fifth Avenue wst-1 Page 31