“ What do we do now?” I asked, sounding as innocent and ignorant as any beast of burden.
“ What do you suggest?”
I unrolled more tape and moved to cover our prisoner’s mouth again. He avoided me so I socked him, taking out the anger I felt toward Lowry. I hit him harder than I planned, because the chair fell over and he went to sleep.
I set him upright, put the tape on his mouth, and turned back to the question at hand.
“ What do you know about Brighton?” I asked.
“He’s a very rich man,” she said. “They say he’s in line for CEO. I can’t believe that he’d be involved in this.”
“Then explain Claudia Burns.”
“I can’t,” she said and I believed her.
“ What about this guy?”
She sighed and said, “It’s rumored that sometimes our international arm makes connections with mercenaries outside of the U.S. These resources are usually there for protective services. But they do perform other jobs for governments and the like.”
“Assassinations?”
“I have no firsthand knowledge of that but it is assumed.”
“International arm,” I said speculatively. “Alton Plimpton was sent after me by a guy named Harlow . . .”
“Leonard Harlow. He used to be in charge of the international arm before he was transferred to domestic affairs.”
“ What about him?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible. Nine years ago he would have been involved with monies held. He has connections in places where the mercenary armies work.”
“How much money was taken in the robbery?”
“Fifty-eight million.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Why?”
“ What’s the reward on that?”
“Like I told you, one and a half percent on all funds recovered.”
“That’s fifteen thousand per million, right?”
“Yes.”
“If I lead you to it, you’ll put my name up?”
“If you do.”
“ What about this guy?”
“I have some connections at the State Department,” she said. “From my military days. I’ll call them.”
“And what will they do?”
“ What they do.”
51
WE LEFT THE HOUSE with the would-be assassin still in his tape-and-nylon restraints. I didn’t like the idea but there were places to go and lives to save—not least of all, my own.
At a little after five I walked Antoinette to her vintage pink Jaguar. She stood in the way women pose when they expect you to try to kiss them and they haven’t yet made up their mind on how they might respond to the attempt.
I had no intention of failing or succeeding at said kiss. Antoinette thought I was stupid in spite of the progress I’d made on her case. This was an insult not deserving of any expression of desire.
I held out a hand. She took it, wondering, I believe, if I’d try to pull her into an embrace. But I just shook and released.
“ Will your State Department friends launch an investigation?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you what they’ve told me by early afternoon,” she said.
“Okay. You got my number.”
IN THE CAR on the way back to Manhattan I called the landline in my home. It was not yet six a.m. but I was concerned about my family and their safety.
“Hello?” She sounded awake and sober, if a little airy.
“Hey, Katrina,” I said. “I expected one of the kids to answer.”
“They are all asleep,” she said. “Is something wrong?”
“They still got cops on the door downstairs?”
“Mmmm, Twill said so. They are all here taking such good care of me.”
“Are you okay, Katrina?”
“Oh yes. I’ve been thinking of how lucky I’ve been. To be loved, to have my health, and to be able to make mistakes and not lose everything.”
“You sound like it’s all over.”
“ What is?”
“Life. Like you been beaten or something.”
“No. It’s just that I spent so long blaming you, Leonid. Blaming you and never questioning myself. And I can see now that I came so close to keeping Dimitri from becoming a man. He is a man, you know.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“ When will you be coming home?”
“Don’t know yet. I want to make sure that we’re all safe.”
“Thank you, Leonid.”
“For what?”
“For guarding over me,” she said, “for saving me from myself when I didn’t deserve it.”
I WAS DISTURBED after the talk with Katrina. She’d rarely exhibited such friendliness and certainly not any appreciable degree of self-awareness. She was the kind of woman who men loved for their inaccessibility. For her myriad lovers she was a trophy like the head of a saber-toothed tiger mounted on a wall that no one else knew existed. For me she had always been the woman who could never be satisfied.
I didn’t even consider the next call before I made it.
“Hello?” Aura Ullman answered.
“ Want to meet me for breakfast at the new restaurant?”
“They don’t serve breakfast.”
“Not for you?”
After a brief pause she said, “I’ll call Maurice and see if anyone’s up there. Take elevator eleven all the way up.”
THE MUSTACHE was on the ninety-seventh floor of the Tesla Building, just below the Observation Deck. It was a French restaurant that served lunch and dinner, but the cooks came in early, and the owner, Maurice Denouve, owed a lot to Aura for getting him in. There was a huge bidding war over the space, but Aura liked the Frenchman and paved the way for him receiving preferential treatment by the owners.
By the time I got there they were just serving our fruit-filled crepes and French roast coffee.
Aura was wearing a peach-colored summer dress and a shell-shaped white hat on the side of her head.
“Never seen you wearing a hat before,” I said, taking the seat across from her.
I took her hand and kissed it.
“You look kind of beat-up, Leonid,” she replied.
“You should see the other guy.”
“ We have found some bacon, mademoiselle,” a skinny black-haired, white-shirted waiter said. He wasn’t wearing a jacket; a silent complaint at the fact of being forced to work before the place was open to the public.
“No thank you,” Aura said.
“Mais lardons pour moi, monsieur,” I said in my subpar version of his lingo.
He frowned and went away.
“You speak French?” Aura asked.
“There’s some things I have to tell you,” I said.
“In French?”
“In the language of fools but not love.”
Her smile made me happy in spite of the exhaustion and feelings of inadequacy.
“ What is it, Leonid?”
“I know I asked you to wait three days, Aura, but I don’t want you to think that I’ve changed or anything. I mean, I want to be with you in the worst way. I want you in my life, every day. But, but things aren’t getting any easier . . .”
I told her about Zella and alluded to how I had framed and then freed her. I explained that the men coming to kill me were probably there because of my actions with Zella. I laid the whole thing out there in front of her.
Before she could answer the bacon came and then my phone sounded.
I looked at the little panel and said, “I have to take this.”
She nodded.
“ What you got for me, Ms. Lowry?” I said into the phone.
“The man who broke into the Quicks’ house has been taken into federal custody,” she began. “He’ll probably be deported, seeing that there’s no proof that he intended to kill anyone. He’ll be questioned but I don’t think that he knows anyone connected to the crimes from this end. He had a pay-as-you-go cell phone
and never met with anyone here in the States.”
“That doesn’t do much. What about Claudia?”
“She filled out an application for her job two weeks after she was put on the payroll. All earlier contact has been either altered or eradicated. I’ll have to talk to her myself if you want any more information.”
“That’s not gonna happen.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“I just ordered my breakfast,” I said, “in French.”
I disconnected that call and turned back to the woman I loved.
“Don’t worry about it, Leonid,” she said.
“About what?”
“Theda’s going away to college this year,” she said. “Brown. With her out of the house I won’t have to worry about anyone’s safety but my own.”
“But what kind of asshole would I be to put you in danger like that?” I asked. I meant it. “I’ve done some terrible things, Aura. There’s no getting away from that. And even when I try to make it right I only bring on more trouble.”
She took a mouthful of strawberry crepe and chewed it lightly. The window behind her looked up Central Park all the way to Harlem, almost to Yonkers.
“I joined an executive Internet dating site about nine months ago,” she said.
“Really?”
“Every other week I go out with some lawyer, banker, or entrepreneur.”
“Nice guys?”
“Most of them work out but not like you do. As a rule they have money and success. I’ve met at least three men who are tough-minded and equal to me in every way.”
“I see.”
“Twill and Theda had lunch yesterday,” she said. It seemed as if she was intent on keeping me off balance.
“Yeah?”
“He told her how you killed the men who broke into your house. He said that you wanted Katrina to go into hiding but she refused.”
I threw half a strip of the thick maple-infused bacon into my mouth and chewed.
“So?”
“Don’t you see, Leonid?” Aura asked.
“That Katrina’s gone off the deep end?”
“That you did not try to force her. That’s the difference between you and the men I’ve met.”
“ What’s that?”
“They’ve all become rich and powerful because they’re afraid of the world; they need to feel like they’re conquering everything and everyone in order to feel safe. You just face the problems and stand strong. Ever since I met you I’ve known that you are what I want in a man.” She paused a few seconds and then added, “In my life.”
52
AURA AND I talked for quite a while in that empty restaurant. The temporary wall that we’d thrown up over the past few years fell down and we were lovers again.
She talked about problems with some tenants and I told her that Twill had taken unwanted initiative on the first job I’d given him.
“He’s just like you,” she said of my son.
“ We aren’t even related.”
“Neither are we,” she said, “but you’re my man just like he’s your blood.”
FOR A CHANGE I was in the office before Mardi and Twill. I sat behind her ash desk, flipping through the notes she wrote in light purple ink.
She kept detailed handwritten records of every case I’d had since she’d been with me. She also had some more sketchy coverage gleaned from audiotapes I kept from previous jobs.
Mardi had a deeper understanding of human nature than did I. I could see, often, what people were trying to hide. But Mardi saw what was hidden beyond vain attempts.
Her take on a job I’d done three months before was especially enlightening.
A woman had come to me worried about what was going to happen with her ex-husband. He had been sending her threatening e-mails and leaving certain disturbing items at her doorstep. A thug named Lassiter had appeared at various places she frequented; her job, the supermarket, and sometimes he drove by her on the highway and would ring her cell.
This woman, Laverne Sails, had left the husband, Benjamin Lott, a decade earlier, taking with her their two children. He was a rich man and she was from a working-class background. The courts had granted him custody and she and the children, now nineteen and twenty-one, had run from Connecticut to New York. There she managed, with a women’s legal group, to fend off Ben’s attempt to strip her of her children.
Laverne Sails said that Benjamin hated her for what she’d done and the children for not wanting to come back to him. She thought he meant them all harm.
I investigated Laverne for five weeks trying to find a break in her story. But I couldn’t.
The thug Lassiter and I had a physical altercation that put him out of the picture for the eight weeks it took him to heal.
Ben was an egotistical freak who had used his money and power to break Laverne down and bend the local law to his will. His attitude toward the world came from the same place his wealth did—his father, Lincoln Lott.
The elder Lott had used his self-confidence to build an empire; his son used a similar force to destroy whatever displeased him.
I took what evidence I could amass to Lincoln and asked him what he thought a man like me should do about someone like his son. No more than a few dozen words passed between us.
The next day Laverne called and said that Ben had been transferred to a glass-manufacturing factory that the family owned in southern India and that she and the children had been invited to come live at the Lott family compound in Connecticut.
Lincoln’s will was rewritten. Laverne didn’t elaborate on the details but I was pretty sure that bodily harm against Ben’s family would end up with him being out on his ear.
These results were satisfactory for me. I’d played Laverne’s hand with just the right amount of risk.
Mardi had written down the essentials of the case with insight but it was her note at the end that impressed me most.
Mr. McGill realized that his client was in real danger and he went out of his way to resolve the issue because he knew that he had to either stop Benjamin Lott or end him, she wrote.
She was right. I don’t think that I was completely aware of the conundrum while in the middle of it but my receptionist knew.
“Good morning, boss,” she said.
I was so deep in her files that I hadn’t heard her turn the locks.
I stood up like a kid being found out while going through his father’s Playboys.
“Um,” I uttered. “I wasn’t snooping.”
The pale young thing smiled and shook her head. “It’s your office, Mr. M. Everything in my desk belongs to you.”
I suppressed the desire to say thank you and moved to the side, allowing the brilliant child to get behind her desk.
“People have been trying to kill everyone involved in this Zella Grisham thing,” I said.
All Mardi did was look at me and nod. She’d experienced worse fears in her short life.
“So keep the door locked until you know exactly who’s out there,” I continued.
“Okay.”
ABOUT AN HOUR LATER Twill knocked on my office door.
When he was seated before me I asked, “ What else is it about this Kent kid?”
“ What you mean, Pops? He was gonna kill that dude. Ain’t that enough?”
“It is but that’s not all of it.”
“ What’s that supposed to mean?”
“There’s something personal about this, something that got to you. I mean, if it was just that store owner’s life, you would have come to me.”
Twill grinned and looked away, then back at me.
“ Whatever,” he said.
All I Did Was Shoot My Man Page 24