Revenant Rising

by M. M. Mayle

  “Language.”

  “Get over it, I’m not twelve anymore and that’s the way I talk sometimes. As I was saying . . . about the will. It’s almost funny when you think of it. How could she set forth all those stipulations designed to make me into an overburdened overachieving grind before I could inherit her mantle—much less her money—and then leave out such an obvious clause?”

  “Maybe it was premeditated. Did you ever think of that?

  “Of course not. I’ll never buy that. It was an oversight, nothing more. She would not have let me off the hook that easily. Not after requiring that I graduate everything from middle school to Columbia Law with high honors, work as a Public Defender, then distinguish myself as an Assistant District Attorney . . . Oh, and get published in my spare time. It’s a wonder I wasn’t expected to claim a seat on the high court before I’d be deemed worthy of her trust. In the literal sense! And all because her daughter chose to run off with her lit professor and have us kids instead of following in her mother’s goddammed footsteps!”

  David takes away the spoon she’s been rapping on the table for emphasis. He pats her hand and then holds it for a moment.

  “Laurel . . . dear. There’s no need to get so worked up. She’s dead—ding-dong, the witch is dead.” When he lets go of her hand she half expects him to chuck her under the chin as he would have at the start of their relationship.

  “I . . . I’m sorry, I don’t know where that came from,” she says.

  “I do. We both do. You forgot for a moment that you’re free. That you’re truly out from under. Your school loans are paid off, your brothers and sister are well provided for and living independently, and you are—for perhaps the first time in your life—free to make choices.”

  “Somehow, I didn’t expect you to be the one pointing that out.”

  “Well, you’ve just pointed out that you don’t have to be an active partner, so I’d be seriously remiss not to recognize that you might not always be with us.”

  Their breakfasts arrive and the subject of choices is left hanging long enough for the mood to lighten somewhat.

  Two or three bites into his egg-white omelet, David asks what she would do if she did quit law.

  “I think I’d pursue teaching. Elementary school. Try to influence the little ones before they’re all screwed up by those dregs of society you’re so eager to represent.”

  “Okay, that’s it.” He lays down his fork. “That’s enough. I don’t want to hear anymore derogatory remarks about my musician clients even if you are teasing. Especially not if you agree to sit in on contract discussions tomorrow with Colin Elliot and—”

  “Who is Colin Elliot?”

  David groans. “Don’t you ever read anything but the Wall Street Journal? Is your television on the fritz? Elliot is the Brit rock star who turned the Icon telecast on its ear last night. Don’t tell me you didn’t watch the Institute Award show.”

  “I didn’t know it was on, I was doing something else.”

  “Why don’t I find that hard to believe?” David groans again and takes a couple more bites of his unappetizing breakfast. “All right,” he continues, “in a nutshell, Colin Elliot made a surprise appearance and unscheduled performance at the award ceremony last night and this alerted me to something I’ve been suspecting for the last several months—that he’s not receiving appropriate guidance from his management. The insult causing him to take matters into his own hands at the Icons should never have been allowed to happen, and the rampant speculation attached to Elliot after a string of personal disasters could have been avoided by more judicious handling of the press. Elliot’s manager, Nate Isaacs, was right to stringently protect his client’s privacy during the upheaval following a life-altering event. He’s wrong, though, to maintain official silence more than two years after the event. That serves no rational purpose.”

  Laurel finishes up the oatmeal she’s been eating throughout the impromptu oration. “Nice speech, but I still don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Maybe you’ll remember November of ’eighty-four, when I had to drop everything and go to a remote area of Michigan. Colin Elliot is the client I was responding to then. He’d been grievously injured in the car accident that killed his wife and the situation was aggravated by any number of sordid details.”

  “Oh, right, I’ve got it now. The year you were stranded in Detroit by a snowstorm and missed Thanksgiving. You’d been to that place with the long name.”

  “Portage St. Mary.”

  “Yes, that’s the one I was thinking of, but none of the other names stuck and I don’t think I ever did hear the sordid details. If I did they didn’t stick either.”

  “You never heard them.” David pushes the remains of the pallid omelet aside and signals for the waiter. “They weren’t mine to share.”

  “I see.”

  “However, if you are interested in a little background on Elliot—saying you do take my request seriously enough to prepare for tomorrow’s meeting—that little assistant you brought with you from downtown is your go-to. Word has it there’s very little she doesn’t know about the contemporary music scene.”

  “Really? I had no idea.”

  “Are you serious or is that more of your facetiousness?”

  “I’m serious. I wasn’t aware she followed that scene.”

  “Only stands to reason, I suppose. Those knowing your inherent prejudice in that area wouldn’t exactly trumpet their expertise, would they?”

  “Okay, now I’ve had enough. And I’m done here, I’m ready to leave. Are you going straight back to the office?”

  David nods as he signs the guest check.

  “Good, then I’ll walk with you. I parked here at the hotel to save time and now I see no sense moving the car just a few blocks.” She gathers up her coat, handbag, and the gift box of stationery.

  Halfway across the room they’re stopped by an individual who’s introduced to her as an old sailing buddy of David’s. Laurel excuses herself from the conversation as soon as it’s polite to do so and indicates to David she’ll wait for him outside by the fountain.

  Activity in the lobby has markedly increased in the last hour and most of it is outward bound. There’s the beginning of a lineup for the doors facing Grand Army Plaza and the Pulitzer Fountain. Laurel steps to one side to wait her turn as a coterie of hotel staff appear, flourishing walkie-talkies that can only mean a VIP is on the way in.

  Laurel is prepared to witness the arrival of an established movie star, a Saudi prince, a head of state—not the bogus VIP the hotel personnel are whisking into the hotel. This so-called VIP is dressed in a rumpled tuxedo worn with a T-shirt and running shoes. The shoes are untied and the laces are dragging. He’s unshaven, and his shock of collar-length dark-blonde hair is tousled and lank. His demeanor is arrogant, and his bearing self-assured. He’s tall, his gait is athletic, and his profile is classic—suitable for commemoration on an idealized coin.

  Along with everyone else in the congested entryway, she stares unabashedly. When everyone else breaks into spontaneous applause, she reverts to ADA mode, storing her impressions of this oddity as though they might one day be used against him. Whoever he is.

  The celebrity appears to be looking straight at her as an accompanying bodyguard and hotel staff close ranks around him; he appears to have recognized someone, so it can’t be her he’s looking at. The entire incident is over in less than thirty seconds and she’s left with the unsettling feeling that she, too, recognized someone.

  David comes up behind her and helps her on with her coat. “Sorry for the delay. First I couldn’t get away from the old salt in the restaurant, and then the hotel people were clearing the way for a VIP arrival. Who was it, did you see?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Laurel says as they exit through the now freed-up doors. “Could have been one of your clients, though, because he looked like a rock star—his evening clothes looked slept-in, and he appeared not to have bathed in a
while.”

  David laughs. “Well, that narrows it down to a few dozen and might even describe Colin Elliot, except he’s slated to stay at his manager’s place while he’s in town. You ready? Let’s go, then.”

  ELEVEN

  Morning, March 31, 1987

  Colin allows Bemus and the hotel personnel to hustle him into the lift, then thinks better of it. “Did you see that?” he stage whispers to Bemus.

  “What?”

  “The brunette in the lobby when we came in.”

  “You have any freakin’ idea how many brunettes were in that lobby just now?” Bemus responds in a loud voice.

  “The spectacular one by the door,” Colin continues in an undertone. “You had to have seen her—the one holding her coat and a gift box. She was wearin’ a wine-colored outfit and if we reverse this bleedin’ lift right now she may still be there.” Colin makes a stab for the control panel and a button that will at least stop the lift.

  “Not!” Bemus blocks the action. “There’s people waitin’ for you upstairs. They’re lettin’ you register in the suite instead of at the VIP desk.”

  “Then you go. You go back to the lobby and see if you can find her.”

  “Okay, okay, I did see her and she was a looker, but jeezus, man, do I hafta remind you my contract says I don’t supply porn or do procuring,” Bemus moans for everyone to hear and the hotel people stifle smiles and snickers. “I gotta ask, though,” Bemus continues, “what you’d have me tell this spectacular brunette if I did glom onto her? Would I congratulate her and proclaim her Colin Elliot’s pick-of-the-day? Is that what you’ve got in mind?”

  “Okay, leave off, you’ve made your point.” Colin laughs, freeing the other passengers to join in.

  They’re all still in high spirits when they reach a high floor and the one-bedroom suite where the general manager and a personal concierge are waiting.

  Colin signs in with a nom de hotel of longstanding—Boris Gudonov—and tolerates a certain amount of bowing and scraping from lower-echelon hotel staff who have scurried in to demonstrate the obvious.

  “Thank you,” he says to the bloke showing how to open and close the curtains. “Thank you,” he says to another bloke working the controls for the telly. “I can take it from here,” he says to the bloke lining up bottles and glasses on a bar cabinet equipped with a mini-fridge and herds the lot of them out the door. This without any interference from Bemus who’s apparently got something else on his mind.

  “What?” Colin says once they’re alone. “Let’s have it, then.”

  “I’m waitin’ to hear why you’re puttin’ up here ’stead of at Nate’s place the way planned.”

  “That’s easy. It came to me whilst I was pacing the aisles of the plane last night. I naturally got thinkin’ about confinement and—”

  “I thought you were only thinkin’ about keeping your fans entertained.”

  “Give me a break, I needed the exercise. I wasn’t swanning, I was stretching my legs, and it came to me that if I went through with the plan to stay at Nate’s he’d be breathin’ right down my neck, wouldn’t he? Telling me what to do, when to do it, overseeing what I eat and drink, doing bed checks, I can even imagine.”

  “So this is another bid for independence.”

  “Call it whatever you want. Now, can you see about getting my things sent over here? All I’ve got left is a change of underwear and a pair of jeans.”

  Bemus busies himself with the phone. Colin rifles through the one bag he does have with him, the designer duffel that’s seen him from Denver to L.A. to New York. He’s in a sudden hurry for a dose of the headache powder that’s been his all-purpose fallback remedy for donkey’s years or for however long ago it was introduced to him by a half-forgotten studio technician in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

  “If he’s home he’s not pickin’ up,” Bemus says just as Colin retrieves the box of Polks Extra Strength from his sponge bag.

  “What the fuck,” Colin mutters when he sees that the box that was factory-sealed when last seen is now open, half empty, and leaking the fine white powder that makes the medication so quick-acting.

  “Did you hear me?” Bemus says. “Nate’s either not home or not—”

  “You been sampling my stuff?” Colin waves the box at him, creating localized fallout.

  “Not hardly. Not that crap that’s gonna get you in a boatload of trouble one of these days.”

  “Save the lecture. I’m asking if this was open when you packed my stuff in L.A.”

  “Can’t really say. All I did was gather up any loose items and zip the bag shut. But if I’d known you were carryin’ that powdered crap I might of pitched—”

  “Leave off, will you? Not the time for it. This has obviously been tampered with.”

  “If I’d seen that the box was open I woulda thought you opened it, wouldn’t I?”

  For answer Colin dumps the entire contents of the duffle on one of the couches and paws through the assortment of toiletries and clothing with mounting concern when his photo wallet doesn’t show up.

  “Somethin’ else been tampered with?” Bemus asks. “If it’s your dirty underwear you can be real damn sure it wasn’t me messin’ with it.”

  The bodyguard keeps it up, this low-level banter designed to conceal his belief Colin left home with an open, half-consumed box of Polks and simply doesn’t recall. So what’s Bemus going to believe if Colin suddenly announces the photo wallet is nowhere to be found? What then?

  Bemus soon loses interest in the laughably transparent ploy and returns to the desk to ring Nate’s numbers again. Colin uses the opportunity to search through the contents of the duffle once more and turn out all the pockets of the rumpled evening clothes he’s wearing. Still no photo wallet.

  “Now what?” Bemus notices and hesitates his dialing.

  “Relax, will you? I’m just gettin’ this ready for the valet,” Colin says of the tuxedo. “Little too expensive to just toss.” As afterthought he asks Bemus if housekeeping serviced the rooms whilst he was out.

  “Out where? Oh, you’re talkin’ about the rooms in L.A. Jeez, man, how long you gonna be hung up on that? Yeah, as a matter of fact housekeeping did come in to replace towels and a guy came in to inventory the minibars while I was waitin’ to pick you up from the Icon gig.”

  That’s it. Colin clears off a space for himself on the couch. That has to be it. He sinks down in the cushy space. And not the first time his personal effects have been dipped into or stolen from. He resigns himself to seeing current photographs of his boys splashed across the pages of whichever rag paid most to the hotel employee that nicked them.

  But wait a minute. The boys’ names weren’t on the photographs, and the only name on the case was the name of the manufacturer. The cuttings that included his own name—carried in the wallet as bitter reminders—are long gone. Disposed of on the flight to L.A. Flushed, they were.

  So what’s the big deal? Why is he getting his knickers in a knot when it can’t be dead-proven those are his sons in the photographs? And what of the tampered-with headache remedy? Didn’t Anthony, his older boy, once secretly confiscate everything in his sponge bag, the thought being to hasten Colin’s return from an overnight to Manchester? The diminished supply of Polks has Anthony’s name written all over it, although it may take some doing to figure out when and how the lad carried out the scheme.

  Bemus interrupts the partial relief taken from these reasonings by signaling that he’s got Nate on the line.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Colin says when the bodyguard-assistant attempts to hand over the cordless receiver. “No need for me to talk. Just tell him where I am and to send someone with my gear.”

  Bemus relays the request even though Nate could have heard it direct from the source without straining much.

  “He’s bringin’ it himself. This afternoon,” Bemus says after a slight pause.

  “Is he havin’ a meltdown over the change in plans?”

  “
Not that I could tell.”

  Bemus makes no secret of his own meltdown when relieved of duty a short time later and told to make himself scarce for the next twenty-four.

  “But you can’t be left . . . You’re not supposed to be . . . But you can’t . . .” the brawny bloke whines and carries on as though he’d been ordered to leave a fast-crawling infant in the middle of a dual carriageway—enough reason to give him a furlough even if he hadn’t earned it.

  “Oh but I can, my good man.” Colin springs to his feet and maneuvers Bemus to the door. “Just watch me . . . No, don’t watch me!” Colin gives him a shove into the hallway and quick bolts the door.

  That leaves Colin unattended for the first time in recent memory. It’s not as though he hasn’t been alone in a room for hours at a time, but for the last two and a half years there has always been someone in the very next room, ever-watchful and always expecting him to take a misstep. If Nate was an executive nanny in the days before the accident, what is he now? A warden? A warden with a seemingly endless supply of prison guards?

  He takes another look at the accommodations, ignoring the perks and peculiars the worshipful staff—guards?—pointed out earlier. He takes the whole tour, eyeing potential for this to become a prison with wainscoted and damask-covered walls, marble and parquetry floors, chandeliered ceilings, and sumptuously curtained windows. The reassessment notes the softening effect of sculpted carpet, the civilized colorations of numerous upholstered pieces, the luster of polished pieces, the gleam of gilt, the sparkle of crystal—none of these features brand new or in absolute first-rate condition, a discovery he finds pleasing without knowing why.

  A quick look out the windows says why. Seen from this height, Manhattan’s Central Park reminds him of nothing so much as home where the first yellow-greens of spring will also be veiling trees and brightening lawns—home, where lack of newness and perfection are treasured qualities.

  He sighs and turns his back on the windows. He can’t be homesick already. Gone less than a week and now that the notion’s planted, home is all he can think about.