But he’d had no answers. And now, ten months later, Agent Sugarman was in Boston. And an envelope left for her by Sugarman was in her hand.
What if—? Just do it, damn it.
Maggie turned away from the rain, tore the seal, and tipped out the contents. An 8 x 10 black and white photograph spilled into the light. Stunned, she dropped the photograph to the carpet as if it burned her fingers.
“My God. It can’t be—”
CHAPTER SIX
BOSTON. EVENING, JULY 2
This is impossible.
Maggie shook her head in disbelief. The gold cat, asleep on an easy chair, stirred, looked squarely at her, and turned away to contemplate the rain-washed window.
“Thanks for the support, Gracie.”
She bent to retrieve the photograph and ran down the hall to her son’s old bedroom. Turning on the lamp, she brushed past the new cradle, nestled so close to Brian’s boyhood bed, and stopped before his bureau. The cat had followed her, curious. She could hear the small creak of rocking wood behind her as Gracie settled into the cradle Maggie had bought for her first grandchild.
Her fingers shook as she searched the cluttered surface of Brian’s bureau, where framed snapshots were scattered among Red Sox mementos and sports trophies. She lifted one picture, then another. Brian at the piano, and with his Little League team. His favorite photo of her, bowing on the stage of Carnegie Hall. And there—Johnny and Brian, brown and windblown, on Johnny’s sailboat, the Green Eyed Lass.
I will not cry.
The small silver frame she sought was hidden behind a forgotten baseball mitt. Maggie lifted the photograph of Brian’s biological father, Zachary Law. Zachary Law, MIA, disappearing somewhere in the deserts of Lebanon in the fall of 1983—just weeks before his son Brian was born.
Maggie stared at the youth trapped forever behind the dusty glass. This photo was one of the few keepsakes Brian kept of the father he had never known. It was a small black and white snapshot of Zach—sensitive dark eyes shadowed by tortoise-framed sunglasses worn, as always, slightly askew and low on his nose, face still unlined by experience—taken the day he left for the Middle East.
Zach. Turning to the window, she leaned her forehead against the cool windowpane. A pale, hollow face was reflected in the glass. Then the wind blew raindrops hard against the dark glass and blurred her image with silver tears.
The rain is full of ghosts tonight, she thought. My husband. Sofia and her little boy. And now, Zach. My life would have been so different if Zach had come home. If we had married...
The pregnancy had been totally unexpected, undiscovered until her third month. A shocked and frightened Maggie, barely eighteen and with no family to support her, had written to Zach in panic. But his reply never came. Months later she’d received a brief message suggesting she contact the State Department. Instead she’d called Zach’s estranged father in New York. And Cameron Law had told her, in a curiously flat voice, that Zach had been working with a multinational force for a USAID program in Lebanon and volunteered for a special mission. It was a dangerous time, with the Lebanese involved in a terrible civil war.
Her breath caught in her chest, remembering.
October 23, 1983. Two truck bombs had struck the barracks housing US and French forces. The numbers of dead were engraved in her memory. Two hundred ninety-nine dead.
“Two hundred twenty Marines,” she whispered, remembering every terrible word of Cameron Law’s unemotional recitation. “Eighteen navy, three army. Sixty Americans injured…”
Zachary Law had been listed MIA following the explosion. His body was never found.
Not to have known! The black, awful shock of it. She had vomited right there, in her tiny kitchen. Even now, after all these years, the memory still sickened her.
By then seven months pregnant, she’d gone to the Vineyard to grieve. Sofia had joined her, insisting that she shouldn’t be alone.
That night, she’d gone into labor. Sofia had held her hand and kissed her forehead and cajoled and threatened her through the worst of it. Fifteen hours later, on the last day of November, Brian Zachary Sophocles Stewart was born. When she’d called Zach’s father from the neonatal unit to tell him he had a grandson, he had asked her, coldly, how many men could lay claim to the child.
And so Maggie and Brian were on their own.
It was many years before she spoke to Zach’s father again, and only because Johnny worked so hard to set things right between Brian and his grandfather. “The boy should know his blood,” Johnny had insisted. “His father is gone. But he should know his grandfather.” And because it was impossible to say no to Johnny O’Shea, grandfather and grandson, both so tall and hawk-nosed and stubborn, finally had come to know each other.
Over the years, so often when she’d looked into her son’s dark eyes, she’d seen Zach. Thought of all the things Zach had missed, not knowing his son. Brian’s first words, the home runs, the cigarettes behind the garage, prom night. Brian’s music.
A grandchild coming…
Maggie looked down at the stiff, smiling figure of young Zachary Law in the silver frame. Her son’s father.
Her husband’s words echoed in her ears. Brian should know his blood.
I need to know the truth, she thought. For Brian.
Under the strong light of Brian’s lamp, Maggie held the two pictures side by side, her eyes moving back and forth, comparing the youthful Zach to Sugarman’s photograph.
Sugarman’s print showed four people grouped beneath an umbrella at a crowded European café. A beautiful young woman, her fashionably cut short hair fringed around a gamine face. A tall male, fair-haired with a hint of mustache, caught in mid-motion as he rose from his chair. His lean wolf-like face, partly hidden by mirrored aviator sunglasses, wore an expression of anger as he stared directly into the camera.
Towering above the people at the table stood an older, barrel-chested man dressed in the loose clothing of a laborer. His face, too, was shadowed by dark glasses and a cap pulled low over his brow. But the strong, square-shouldered body was familiar. She’d met him only once, six years ago, after Fee’s son was born. Victor Orsini, Sofia’s husband.
“You rotten bastard,” whispered Maggie.
Orsini’s thick, ringed hand rested with familiarity on a third man’s shoulder. Sitting to the woman’s right, he was slender, his graying bearded face upturned, profile sharply defined against the light. Maggie’s eyes locked on the handsome, bearded face.
The thrusting chin beneath the close beard. Glasses askew, slipping low on a nose that jutted out like the prow of a ship. The boney ridge of forehead. A strong silhouette, angular and unforgettable. It was a profile exactly like Cameron Law’s. Exactly like Brian’s.
Exactly like the face of her son’s father, staring out from the silver-framed photograph.
Maggie turned off the lamp and sat alone in the dark on the bed of her son.
“Zach?” whispered Maggie into the blackness.
Are you alive?
CHAPTER SEVEN
BOSTON. DAWN, JULY 3
The black Stein way concert grand piano stood at the edge of the rocky beach, stark against a sky that pulsed with dark-blue light and flickered with wild rain.
As Maggie sat down on the bench, the wind caught the long gossamer scarf on her shoulders, lifting it behind her like a ghostly banner. With a crash of chords she began to play the Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor.
A tiny sailboat, just a glimmer of white in the ink-blue darkness, speared through the curtain of fog. It slid across the wild water toward rocks thrusting black and sharp as dragon’s teeth.
At the moment of impact there was no sound. Just the small bright boat, slamming silently into cold stone. Spinning, end over end, in slow motion, high into the air. Then down, down through the darkness. Suddenly a ball of water blossomed, like some monstrous black flower, against the rain swept night sky.
Johnny!
She ran toward the swi
rling black water and flung herself into the sea.
PleaseGodPlease. Then she saw his hand, just beyond her reach.
Take my hand, hold on to me!
Black water engulfed him.
Then fingers, pale and wavering, gripped her ankle and began to pull her down. Her lungs filled with water as she spun down, down into a swirling vortex of terrifying black.
Somewhere beyond the blackness, as if from the bottom of a well, the shrill ringing of a telephone and the deep, sorrowful chime of bells.
Then only silence.
Maggie’s eyes flew open. She flung out her arms blindly, gasping for breath. Drowning.
Johnny...
Her heart was beating frantically against her chest like a trapped bird. She struggled to sit up, clutching the tangled sheets to her trembling body. The white nightshirt she wore, an old Oxford shirt of Johnny’s, was soaked with sweat.
The same nightmare as always. The stark terror of the hand. Sinking into the cold blackness. And—something more. Something she desperately needed to remember.
She turned on the radio for company and sat very still, holding her knees tightly.
* * *
Maggie stood in the hot, stinging shower trying to scrub away the lingering coldness of the nightmare. Just concentrate on today, she told herself. Simon Sugarman will be here in thirty minutes. You need to know about that photograph.
You need to know if Zach could be alive.
She arched her neck under the hot water and closed her eyes.
For so long, she’d believed that Zach was dead, lost to her somewhere in the deserts of the Middle East. She tried to imagine him—a man now, thirty years older—living somewhere overseas. Deliberately choosing not to come home. Had her letters ever reached him?
Would he even know that he had a son? A grandchild coming?
Maggie turned off the taps and reached for a towel.
There had to be another explanation for the photograph. A stranger who resembled Zach. But why else would Sugarman have left the photograph for her to see?
Why else, her brain hammered at her.
The shower had not washed away her fears after all. But her thoughts had triggered another long-forgotten memory. Quickly she drew a terry robe around her body and moved into the bedroom to search the drawers of her desk. The yellowed newspaper clipping lay forgotten in the bottom drawer.
It was a Boston Globe music review from late 1982, just after she had met Zach. Her eyes skimmed the small print. “Last night, Bostonians were treated to a rare performance in the Jordan Concert Hall,” it began. “Pianist Zachary Law, native New Yorker and graduate fellow at the New England Conservatory, performed Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor with uncompromising, dazzling virtuosity, more than a century after the first performance took place in this very city in 1875. From the moment the imperious horn opens the concerto, Mr. Law’s consummate skill…”
Maggie sat back on her heels and closed her eyes, remembering. She was a girl again, shivering with excitement in the balcony, as Zach’s fingers flew across the keys with the inspired touch of a sorcerer conjuring forth a new world. She still could see the way his eyes, dark and shining, had sought hers at the moment when the audience surged to its feet and shouts of Bravo! rang like cymbals in the air.
It was all so long ago, thought Maggie. A relationship between two innocent young lovers, both strangers to her now. Let the past stay buried.
And yet… She dropped her eyes to the last lines of the clipping. “Zachary Law is indeed a new force to be reckoned with in the musical world. Expect to hear his name again and again. In Moscow’s competitions. In Europe’s concert halls. In New York City. This young pianist could well be the Horowitz of the future.”
If you really are alive, Zach, then whatever happened to your music?
Her face was ashen in the vanity mirror. Small wonder, she thought. My husband and dearest friend die, just one month apart. And now, my son’s father might be alive.
Maggie dressed, swept a brush through her hair, and closed the bedroom door behind her. For just a moment, she paused on the landing at the top of the stairs. Then she went down the steps to face her past.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BOSTON. MORNING, JULY 3
The powerful, brilliant first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony filled the front room of The Piano Cat, surrounding Maggie with deep vibrating sound. Fate knocking on the door, the composer had explained. A perfect choice, thought Maggie. Come ahead and knock on my door, Agent Simon Sugarman, I’m ready for you now. I hope.
Outside on Charles Street, as if on cue, a red cab slid to a stop in front of the music shop. A tall, broad-shouldered African American in a fitted suit stepped out of the cab. He turned his head slowly toward the window, as if he sensed her presence behind the purple panes. Maggie took a step back and moved to the door.
Simon Sugarman entered the shop. Suddenly the doorway seemed too small, as if a dark granite spire blocked out the light.
In his mid-fifties, Sugarman was built like an athlete, his close-cropped hair the color of coal and skin black as asphalt. A thin sheen of whiskers surrounded his jaw. Luze was right. Gorgeous.
He wore the standard bureaucratic uniform—dark suit, white shirt with striped tie—but night-blue Nikes took the place of polished wingtips. The deep brown eyes conveyed a sharp intelligence and some impatience. And the well-cut suit barely seemed able to contain his strength and energy.
She took a breath and moved toward him.
“What the hell is going on, Agent Sugarman?”
* * *
Sugarman tried to hide his shock. Good God, he thought. She’d lost weight in the ten months since he’d seen her, but…hair the color of night, just as Ahmed had predicted. And as beautiful as the Nile at sunrise. He’d forgotten—or suppressed?—how much she resembled Sofia Orsini.
She stood in front of him, the angry question in her eyes. He’d have to be careful…
Giving Maggie a rogue’s grin and holding out his hand, he broke the silence between them. “So this is Chez O’Shea. Nice.”
“Thank you. And you’re here because…?”
“Because we need to talk.” He bent toward her. “Last time I saw you, you were demanding justice outside my office door, with your duffel packed for France. I had one helluva time convincing you to let the professionals do their job.” His hand closed around hers like a boxing glove. “How are you holding up, Mrs. O’Shea?”
“I’m fine.”
Her voice, deep and resonant as a cello, was surprising in one so small. “Liar,” he said gently.
“Okay, so I’m a mess. But I’m not your problem. Have you found Tommy Orsini, Agent Sugarman?”
“No, Mrs. O’Shea, I’m sorry.”
“Have you found Sofia’s murderer?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Then why have you shown up now, ten months after Tommy disappeared? Are you here to tell me you’re giving up the search? Because Tommy is alive, Agent Sugarman. My godson is out there somewhere. You can’t stop looking for him.”
“You take no prisoners, do you, Mrs. O’Shea? No, that’s not why I’m here either. Exactly.”
“Then why are you here, Agent Sugarman? Exactly.”
“Ouch,” he said. “We’re on the same side here, Mrs. O’Shea.”
She went still. Her eyes locked on the Steinway for a long moment, then moved back to him. “God,” she breathed. “I’m sorry. I’m not ever this rude. But it’s been one hell of a year, and I haven’t heard from you, and my godson is still missing. And all you have for me is a damned photograph.”
“Let’s sit down, Mrs. O’Shea, and I’ll explain everything.” Sugarman moved toward the wing chairs, but stopped in front of the Doctorates of Music diplomas framed on the wall. “Two Doctorates?” he murmured, turning to her. “Do people call you Doc?”
“No.”
He smiled, then tapped a score left open on the music c
abinet. “Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Love it.”
“You’re a fan of classical music, Agent Sugarman?”
“Call me Simon. My mama insists I’m rhythmically challenged for a black man, but I know my way around a concert hall.” His eyes dropped to the words on her t-shirt—Bend It Like Beethoven. “Can’t beat Beethoven’s Fifth,” he murmured as he finally settled into one of the red wing chairs.
The look on her face told him he’d chosen her husband’s chair.
Maggie took a deep breath and sat down across from him. “I need to know why you’re really here. You haven’t found Sofia’s murderer or my godson. What else do you do at Justice that could possibly involve a classical pianist?”
“My job is finding lost ‘Cultural Property.’ I specialize in illicit importation and distribution, illegal trafficking of stolen art, antiquities, sculptures. There’s a hell of a black market for private collectors.”
She was staring at him.
“Even music,” he went on. “Helped track down a stolen Stradivarius last year, found it in a decaying palazzo. Who knew there was a vast global business empire in stolen violins? “And a long-lost Mozart manuscript discovered in a Philadelphia seminary was just auctioned off for $1.7 million! That’s big money.”
She held up a hand to stop him. “I read about that. I only thought…maybe you were here because of my husband.”
“Your husband?” His voice was suddenly careful. “Why would you think such a thing?”
“I need to know. My husband was Johnny O’Shea, the journalist. He had a great many contacts in Washington. He died not long after you and I met.”
“I heard about his death. I’m sorry.”
“You knew Johnny?”
“Only by reputation. Foreign Affairs expert, internationally syndicated columnist. My pals in the government swore they read Johnny O’Shea every morning so they’d know what was really goin’ on in the world.”
She looked down at her fingers, clasped tightly in her lap. “That was my husband. Always in search of the big story.”
The Lost Concerto Page 4