by Alan Hruska
“Who’s gonna protect us in New York?”
“We are,” he says. “She’s almost certainly under contract. We make killing us undesirable, at least for the people who are paying her. How well do you know Julian Althus?”
“He’s not the guy,” Elena says.
“You’re sure?”
“Sure? Well, very unlikely.”
“Okay,” he says. “Who else has a motive to want you dead?”
“Just me, you’re saying? You’re not part of this?”
“Of course I am. Now.”
She looks out on the moving roadside of generic foliage and signs. “Classic wrong-place-wrong-time guy.”
“Depends how you look at it,” he says.
“You’re having fun?” she asks incredulously.
“Has its moments.”
She straightens up in the seat. “Okay, so how do we turn this around?”
“I’m working on it,” he says.
Mike Skillan has, maybe, ten minutes a day to be alone in his office. Typically there’s a brief spell late morning, and another late afternoon. He enjoys those moments. Kick back, think. Clear his head, maybe close his eyes. Especially welcome now, since he has a summer cold. He really hates interruptions.
Intercom buzzer. His secretary. “You said to tell you if Perry Rauschenberg called.”
“He’s on?”
“Line one,” she says.
He picks up. “Perry?”
“Hi Mike. So here’s the deal. They’re willing to head back, see you in person.”
“When?”
“As early as this evening.”
“Bring ’em over.”
“No, that’s the thing. They want to see you alone. Here. In my office.”
“That’s bullshit. Who the fuck they think they are? These two are wanted for murder.”
“I know, Mike. But neither you nor I think they did it. In fact, we both think they’re being framed. And they have information on the framer, which should help you. So the reality is, you can see them tonight, judge firsthand for yourself, and get some information immediately, or you can stand on ceremony regarding the venue of this meeting and then spend a large part of your budget trying to track them down in God knows what part of this country.”
Mike puts the phone down for a few seconds, sneezes, and blows hard into a Kleenex. “I don’t like it.”
“They’re not being arbitrary, Mike. They have good reasons for wanting to see you alone here.”
“Oh, yeah? What reasons?”
“They’ll tell you tonight?”
“How ’bout you telling me now?”
“I can’t, but I’ll tell you this. When they do tell you, you’ll agree these conditions make sense.”
“I should just accept that?”
“Yes,” says Perry. “Because I’m giving you my word.”
Atlanta airport; shuttle train between terminals; Elena and Tom, holding onto the same pole, moving smoothly through the tunnel, listen to a recorded announcement of the oncoming station.
“That’s Hal,” Elena says. “From the movie.”
“Thought I recognized that voice,’” Tom says.
They hear Hal confirming their stop.
“Is this really wise?” she says.
“Using Hal in the airport?”
“Our staying in the airport, jerko. Traveling together. Undisguised. I mean—what was it, ten minutes ago?—your buddy Rauschenberg says the DA lifts the alert on us, and we’re supposed to think they already know that in Atlanta, a thousand miles away? Assuming it actually happened. And that there won’t be ten cops waiting for us at the gate to the New York flight?”
“Have some trust.”
“Really?” she says. “Why’s that? Why not just wait a day and be sure?”
“And give that killer woman another crack at us tonight in Atlanta?”
“If she can track us to Atlanta, she can follow us to New York. She probably lives in New York.”
“That’s probably right,” he says.
“So why’re you being so fucking calm about this?”
“Because now I have a plan,” he says.
“Which now you’re planning to share?”
“Not here.”
“And what? I’m supposed to just rely on that?”
“Wish you would,” he says.
Her look says, that’s not something I do, but then changes to something like wonder—at the way her body seems to relax into trust.
THIRTY-SIX
Mike Skillan, on his way to the elevator, is waylaid in the hall by Foster Donachetti. “You gotta see this. Just came in.” He hands Mike a hard copy of an email from the Atlanta police.
Mike reads a note apparently from Elena to a code-name addressee. “What’s this?”
“It’s off a BlackBerry belonging to the Riles girl. They found it in a B&B in New Orleans.”
“How’d they find the room?”
Foster looks confused. “Don’t know, come to think of it. Think I heard cops there checked on some disturbance.”
“Who’s it to, the email?”
“Presumably to the woman who shot up the bedroom in Ashaway, Kentucky.”
“How we know it’s a woman?”
“You’re right. We don’t. Riles told the local sheriff—the guy she was renting the house from—that it was a woman.”
“Which might have been misdirection.”
“Might’ve been.”
“And so could this BlackBerry message.”
“Well, this one’s against interest.”
“True.” Mike studies it again. “Okay, thanks. Got a meeting. See you in the morning.”
The elevator arrives, and he takes it. On the way down he thinks, I’m getting to see a very small piece of this.
Perry Rauschenberg works in a six-window corner office. Even at large firms there are relatively few of these to go around. In some, it’s allotted by seniority, but that’s rare. More commonly they’re a bargained-for perk. Occasionally—and this was true in Rauschenberg’s case—the perk is dispensed by consensus to a rainmaking star.
Tom and Elena are with him, straight from the airport. No one is seated: Perry, six feet tall, dark acne-scarred skin, black crinkly hair, is standing behind his desk, slitting mail with a letter opener while he talks. Tom looks out the window, parting the blinds with his fingers. Elena paces as if she were caged.
“And if he doesn’t believe us?” Tom asks.
“There’s nothing stopping him from arresting you on the spot.”
“We might run.”
“He might have cops downstairs, right outside the building.”
“There was no agreement as to downstairs?”
Perry looks up. “He’s limited only as to this office.”
Elena says, “Probably a set up.”
“I think he’ll give you a fair hearing.”
“He’s not the judge,” she says.
“In reality,” Perry says, “at this stage, he is.”
The buzzer. On the speaker, Rauschenberg’s secretary’s voice. “He’s at reception.”
Perry casts an inquiring look at his clients. Tom nods. “Bring him in,” Rauschenberg says.
There are three Corbu leather armchairs arranged in front of Perry’s desk. Tom and Elena take two of them.
Mike is led in, shakes hands with his classmate while glancing at the other two who have risen, nods to both when introduced, and settles in the third chair. “So,” he says. “At long last. The desperados.”
“You think it’s funny?” Elena says.
“No,” Mike says. “I don’t.”
“Desperate fits,” Elena says. “Grabbed, kidnapped, orphaned, hounded. Falsely accused!”
“Really?” Mike says. “You probably know the evidence against you. It’s been on the news for days. Your lawyer says you’ve been framed. Why should I believe that?”
“You already do,” Tom says.
“Or
I wouldn’t be here?” Mike loudly blows his nose. “You have something to tell me, or am I wasting my time?”
Tom says, “A woman, probably a contract assassin, has tried to kill us twice. In Kentucky, we put pillows under the blankets, and she shot up the beds in a dark room. She tracked us to New Orleans and stalked us outside our B&B. Whoever’s framing us wants us missing, apparently in flight, so the frame sticks. No one else has the motive to kill us.”
“How do I know you didn’t shoot up the bed yourself?”
“You talk to Charlie, the Ashaway sheriff?”
“He didn’t see her.”
“The waitress did.”
“Yeah, I got that. But nothing connecting her to the shooting—or to New Orleans—but your saying it. So there’s another scenario.” Mike hands Perry the copy of the email, supposedly from Elena to the purported assassin.
Perry studies it, and frowns. He hands it to Tom, who reads, shakes his head in denial, hands it to Elena, who shouts, “I didn’t write this!”
“It was on your BlackBerry.”
“Which they stole from me when they kidnapped us.”
Tom asks, “Where’d you get this?”
“New Orleans police. They found the phone in your B&B.”
“That right?” Tom says. “And how the hell they know to look there?”
“Presumably they were tipped.”
“I’ll bet they were.”
“Maybe by you,” Mike says.
“Why the hell would we do that?”
“So you could put on the show you’re now giving me?”
“And according to that email,” Tom says, “our plan was to get lost in America. Yet here we are. Whaddya know!”
“Part of the show.”
“I don’t think you believe that.”
“Frankly,” Mike says, “I don’t know what to believe. What I know is that there’s a lot of money at stake. People have been known to do a lot more for a lot less.”
“I’ll tell you the question to ask,” Tom says, “which will tell you what’s really happening. How the hell did that woman know we were in Ashaway, Kentucky, or anywhere close? From out of town somewhere, some woman no one’s ever seen makes a beeline trip to some no-account greasy spoon in the middle of nowhere, USA, where we happen to eat every day.”
“Traveling saleswoman?”
“You can check that. She did nothing in that town but follow us to our house and then shoot up our bed.”
“We’ll check it.”
“Yeah,” Tom says, “but I don’t think you’re really getting the point.”
“That you’re being framed? Yeah I get that’s your assertion.”
“What I said, you’re not getting it. Whoever’s framing us has a mole in your office. Because the only people who knew we were in Kentucky were the guy who dropped us close, the truck driver, and whomever he talked to in your office. I assume you talked to him. So who knew in your office? And what are they getting out of this?”
Mike’s reflex, when hit with the unexpected, is to show nothing but a smile. “Let me talk to your lawyer. Alone.”
Lawyer and clients exchange looks; Perry nods and beckons Mike out of the room. They walk to an open conference room a few steps down the hall.
“This is what I’ll do,” Mike says. “For their own protection, if they’re telling the truth, or for mine, if they’re not. They stay in a room, or an apartment, in this city, under guard. And no one knows, except the people I need for security.”
“For how long?”
“Indefinitely.”
“Jesus, Mike.”
“Until we can make some sense of this.”
“They are telling the truth.”
“Maybe.”
“Come on, Mike. You would have arrested them by now if you didn’t believe them. And they wouldn’t have come back if they weren’t innocent.”
“That young woman is set to inherit about five billion dollars. Pretty good motivation to return.”
“What you’re suggesting—requiring—is totally off the books, Mike.”
“Call it informal sequester. You can do anything by consent, Perry. And that’s what I need. Otherwise they go to the lockup. And we fight bail. Which we’ll win, and you know it.”
Strolling from his office to his co-op on UN Plaza, pleasuring in a gentle breeze off the river, Yasim notices the light on in his apartment on the sixteenth floor. He’s given the key to only one other person. He did this reluctantly, and with interdictions about using it except in emergencies. In the light of that light, Yasim rearranges his plans for the rest of the evening. Visualizing her upstairs generates a delicious concoction of desire and rage.
“I was so hoping you’d be here tonight,” Birdie says, holding the covers up to her chin, as Yasim enters the bedroom. Her voice is given a coquettish lilt by the question of whether she’s wearing anything under the sheet.
“Did you get my messages?” he asks. Though his anger is dissipating, it chills his voice.
“Yes, my love, but of what use are messages? They told me you missed me, but not when you were returning.”
“To get in here, you used the key I gave you?”
“Of course I used the key.”
“And what did I tell you about the use of the key?”
“But this is an emergency, darling.”
“Really?” he says in a tone mocking the thought.
“Have I done wrong?” she says. “Do I need to be spanked?”
She lowers the covers, answering the question of her attire—or lack thereof—in a manner that scatters his thoughts.
THIRTY-SEVEN
At breakfast in their West Side apartment, Dottie asks Mike, “Do you think they did it?”
“Not sure,” he says. He allows himself one fried egg a day, and he devours the last of this one. “Talking to them, you’d think it’s impossible, but it’s conceivable they’re great actors. Biggest problem is there’s not a single piece of exculpatory evidence. Clean evidence. Almost the best thing they have going for them is that there’s too much going the other way.”
“Difficult position” she says.
“For them?”
“For you,” she says. “Most of the evidence has leaked. The media’s convicted them. There’s an actual eyewitness, prints on the gun—which she bought illegally just before the murder—now this email message. My God, what will you say? If you release them? How will you explain that?”
“You’re the PR genius.”
“It’s beyond me, darling. Or anyone. It’s not spinnable.”
He takes a bite of his toast, glances at the news droning from the countertop TV. A financial analyst is excitedly reporting the launch of competing hostile takeover bids by two Manhattan-based companies for a third, General Technology & Media. Mike puts his toast down and listens. When Dottie interrupts, he hushes her.
“What?” she says.
“GT&M’s in play. Didn’t you represent them?”
“Not the company. I did some work for Sofi Harding, who owns a great deal of it. Controls it, as a practical matter.”
“One of the bidders is Riles Whitney.”
“How interesting,” she says.
“Indeed.” He drinks some coffee.
“What are you thinking, Mike?”
“I’ll let you know when I finish thinking it.”
In a sitting room off the lower gallery of a Fifth Avenue triplex, Rashid al-Calif waits to be told he’s deemed admittable upstairs. It’s not unlike being seated in an antechamber in Versailles. “Would you care for tea, sir?” asks a theatrical young man in livery.
“Down here?” Rashid says.
The young man shifts his eyes upward.
Rashid says, “That’s the option? I’ll wait, then, until.…” He lifts his own eyes toward the ceiling. “But thank you.”
“Won’t be long, sir.” The young man departs, as if yanked away by a string, leaving Rashid to make further study of
his surroundings.
He gets up, goes to a small window offering a view of the park south of the museum. From the tenth floor, he can see treetops and meadows, a system of ponds and paths, and, at Seventy-Second Street, a convergence of park drives and transverses. His own apartment also faces the park, but on Central Park West; on a much higher floor, in a new building. On balance, he prefers Mrs. Harding’s location and thinks he might change his own. It’s not only the view. He’s beginning to think of himself as more of an Upper East Side person.
The young man reenters. “Madame is ready for you, sir.”
They climb a straight, rather plain staircase into a high-ceilinged, forty-foot-long gallery lit by three ancient glass chandeliers. The gallery walls are papered in chinoiserie. On a pedestal in each corner stands a Teng horse, the four of them appearing to leap across centuries. The parquetry is covered in carpets woven by artists known only to experts, such as Rashid. The most conspicuous feature, however, is an ornate spiral staircase to the third floor, where, Rashid imagines, bedrooms abound of equally rarified furnishings and views.
He is led into an immense living room whose windows offer such sweeping park vistas he has the feeling he’s flying over them. Mrs. Sofi Harding greets him without rising from her sofa seat in the embrasure of the middle window. She wears a dress of teal blue silk, a bit shocking against the pale yellow of the draperies. Rashid takes not the opposite seat tendered, which would have blinded him with glare, but a side chair that forces Mrs. Harding to swivel toward him.
“So, Mr. al-Calif,” she says, “you wish to retire me from the fray? You and Lowell? All that new money and Arab money. Oil money, do I have that right?”
“Not entirely oil money,” Rashid says, admiring how young this woman looks, despite her white hair and reported sixty-four years. “And there are frays and frays.”
“Indeed,” she says with a bit of an edge. “Tea? I’ve only the English kind. It’s all I drink.”
“Literally?”
“Oh, you mean, do I drink booze? I do drink booze. Not excessively, of course. I don’t swill it. Do you?”
“Swill?” He laughs at the absurdity.
“Drink at all, I mean.”