Too Close to Home

by Andrew Grant

  “Thank you, Paul. Always the gentleman.” She topped up her cup, and as she was about to replace the makeshift pitcher I nudged the table over an inch. That shifted the rim of the turntable just enough to end up under the pitcher and cause it to overbalance, tipping the last of the milk all over the floor. Mrs. Vincent yelped and hurried to her purse to grab a pack of Kleenex and mop up the mess.

  We sat in silence for the next ten minutes while we drank our tea. I was the first to finish. I set my cup down on the table and saw Mrs. Vincent glance inside, checking it was empty.

  “You were right,” I said. “The tea did help me think. It clarified something about your problem. There are two dimensions to it. The recorder. And me.”

  Mrs. Vincent didn’t answer.

  “You only need to neutralize one.”

  The ghost of a smile played across her face.

  “The recorder’s hard to find. I’m not.”

  “You should have thought faster.”

  “Did you put the same thing in my tea as in my father’s? It stands to reason, if you couldn’t risk me recognizing your voice on that tape, you certainly couldn’t risk him listening to it. And you’d just overheard him telling his partner he was going to have this place cleared out.”

  Mrs.Vincent nodded. “I used K-2.”

  “Good choice. Old school. Effective. If the victim was a diplomat in Moscow or some such place, the navy would have known to screen for it. But with a civilian and a suburban doctor, you figured an old KGB favorite would slip through unnoticed.”

  “I did. And I was right.”

  “But you disposed of the tainted cup, anyway.”

  “Of course. I was trained to be thorough.”

  “And when it was my turn you couldn’t shoot me, because then the police would investigate. Instead you’d make it look like I was doing some vigorous DIY and collapsed just like my father had done. Weak hearts must run in our family.”

  “That was the neatest solution. I like neat.”

  “Let me ask you one other thing about your thorough training. You studied the culture of the nation you were assigned to?”

  “Of course.”

  “That was smart. Helps you anticipate people’s moves.”

  “The battle won is won in the mind.”

  “You learned that men in America tend to be chivalrous.”

  “Or as we call it, sexist.”

  “Before you came to the United States you knew that would be true of people in general. You found from experience that it was true of my father in particular. I showed signs of it myself, just now. So it was a reasonable assumption that I’d leave you the cup with the space for milk.”

  “It was less suspicious to let you pick your own cup, but I needed you to choose the right one.”

  “Did I choose the right one, though? Have a closer look.”

  Mrs. Vincent glanced down, her face suddenly creased with doubt.

  “I saw you check just now when I put the cup down.” I pointed to it. “You were focused on whether it was empty. But what you should have been looking at is the color of the dregs.”

  She picked up the cup and stared inside it.

  “That one was left by the guy who shares the house with me. It’s one of dozens he leaves strewn around. He takes milk.” I reached down to the side of my chair and produced a full cup. “Here’s the one you brought for me.”

  Mrs. Vincent’s expression hardened and she scowled at the empty cup as if it had personally betrayed her. Then she crushed it and dropped it on the floor. “So.” Her voice was soft and barely audible. “Where do we go from here, Paul? After everything? All the years? We’re like family, you and me, now.”

  “You’ve done a lot for my family. That’s true. You murdered my father. You watched my mother die. You just tried to kill me. History aside, that limits our options.”

  “I was only doing my job.” She grabbed my arm. “We’re both professionals. You of all people should understand.”

  “About my mother, maybe. If you’re telling the truth. You didn’t know us then. But my father? You lived under his roof all those years. And then killed him to save your own skin.”

  “No. Everything I did was an act of war. I was doing my duty. Your mom and dad were hurt. I regret that. But they chose their paths, the same way I did. The same way you did. How many people have you hurt over the years? How many have you killed?”

  I pulled my arm free and crossed to the window.

  “What are you going to do, Paul?”

  I looked at the houses on the other side of the street and wondered which neighbor had told Mrs. Vincent about seeing Rooney’s van. Whoever it was, something needed to be done about them.

  “Can you forgive me, Paul? If not as one professional to another, then for all the meals I made you. The clothes I washed and ironed. The times I didn’t tell your father when I heard you sneaking into the house after curfew.”

  I could feel the weight of my phone in one pocket. Her gun in the other. I knew which tool I wanted to use to end this.

  “Whatever you decide, Paul, please, let’s settle things between us. Whether I walk out of this room or not, I don’t want to get locked up. I don’t want to be disgraced. I don’t want to be deported to a country that doesn’t want me back.”

  Triggering a police investigation wouldn’t be a problem for me, if I put a bullet in her head. She was an enemy agent, and she’d just tried to kill me.

  “Please, Paul. Let me go.”

  I closed my fingers around the grip of her gun and felt the textured aluminum warm up under my skin.

  “If you can’t do that, then shoot me. Please. Just don’t turn me in.”

  I pulled my hands out of my pockets, turned to face her, and held up my phone. “I can’t do that. It’s not my decision. I have to make a call.”

  “I knew you’d say that, Paul.” Mrs. Vincent put the cup back on the table. The one she’d intended for me. It was empty. “I don’t know how you can drink tea without milk, though. It’s disgusting.”

  “No!” I reached her chair in two strides. “You shouldn’t have—”

  “I told you, Paul. I couldn’t go to jail here. I couldn’t get sent back there. You couldn’t turn a blind eye. So this was the only option.”

  I held up the phone. “Shall I call 911? There’s still time, if I tell them what they’re dealing with.”

  She shook her head. “No. I’ve made my choice. This is the way I want to go. But you can sit with me. So I’m not alone when…you know. It won’t be long.”

  I sat and took her hand. “Remember when I was little, and I couldn’t sleep? You’d sit with me for hours.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t want to go back downstairs. The mask didn’t feel so tight in the dark, with just a kid to fool.”

  “You used to sing to me. You said they were songs your father taught you, back home in Mississippi. I guess you were fooling me then, too.”

  “I learned those stupid songs from cassette tapes. In a classroom. In Leningrad. I’ve never been to Mississippi. And I never knew my father.”

  “I’m beginning to think I never knew mine. You said you could tell me things about him.”

  “There’s no time.” Her voice was tightening. “I can feel it. It’s close. Later, go to the house. My bedroom. Inside the drapes. At the bottom, where they’re hemmed. I kept copies. All my notes. I wasn’t supposed to, but the radios. Couldn’t rely on them.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  We sat in silence for a minute—or it could have been an hour—then she turned to look at me. “It was my mother who liked to sing.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “I wanted to sing her songs. I couldn’t sing them here. Too dangerous. I should have stayed home. Sung to her. My sisters. Their kids.”

  “You
can sing those songs now, if you want. There’s no danger.”

  “There’s no time.” She gripped my hand tighter. “It’s coming. I can feel it. Goodbye, Paul.”

  “Прощай, Mrs. Vincent.”

  “No. Call me by my real name. Just once, after all these years.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “My name—oh. It’s strange to say out loud, after so long. I thought I never would again. It’s Anna Alekseyevna Vasiliev.”

  “Then farewell, Anna Alekseyevna Vasiliev. I wish we’d met under different circumstances.”

  “Really? I wish we’d never met at all.”

  Robson was not happy about the body in his trunk.

  “Come on.” I slammed the lid. “What are you complaining about? It’s clean.”

  “It’s covered in plaster dust.”

  “That’s no big deal. You can hoover that out. It’s not like we’ve had to tape a bag over her head to keep the blood and brains off the carpet.”

  “That’s not the point. This is a Cadillac.”

  “That’s exactly the point. Anna—Mrs. Vincent—is not taking her last ride in a rented Chevrolet.”

  * * *

  —

  We made sure to dump the body outside the boundary of the Fifteenth Precinct. I didn’t want there to be a chance of Detective Atkinson catching the case. Not because I thought he might trace the body back to me. Anna Alekseyevna Vasiliev was the definition of untraceable, destined to spend eternity as Jane Doe even though I finally knew her real name. It was more that I liked the guy and didn’t want to be responsible for adding an unsolved case to his record.

  Robson dropped me at Foley Square when we were done and I stopped after a few yards to gaze up at the courthouse. It looked magnificent in the low fall sun. I figured I had a little time to kill, so I strolled over to the steps and sat for a while, enjoying the warmth and the view. I found it was also a good place to think. About Pardew—how to keep him out of jail now that I knew he wasn’t responsible for my father’s death, rather than to make sure he stood trial. And about Marian. Maybe it was time to take Harry’s advice and ask her out to dinner. Maybe sometimes it was better not to give in to old habits.

  I took out my phone and was about to text Harry and ask him to track down Marian’s cell number when I felt someone watching me. I looked up and saw a familiar face. It was Len Hendrie. The guy who’d burned down Jimmy Klinsman’s house. I stood up and nodded a greeting.

  “Paul, how are you doing?” Hendrie hopped up a couple of steps and we shook hands.

  “Good to see you, Len. Are you heading in? Working on your defense?”

  “No need.” Hendrie smiled. “My case is over. I’m a free man.”

  “Fantastic! What a result. I remember you thought you didn’t stand a chance. You must have made one hell of an argument.”

  “No. I didn’t have to. The lawyer you recommended to give me some advice? Di Matteo? He reached out to me. Then a weird thing happened. A guy approached me and said he had a way to nix my case, if I paid him.”

  “Did you take him up on his offer?”

  “Are you crazy? No way. I went to the police. Offered to wear a wire on the guy. It turned out he was part of some really big thing. Even a crooked judge was involved. So this di Matteo, he picked up my case. Got me a plea deal. Guilty—because I did set the fire—but sentenced to time served because of my cooperation with the bribery thing.”

  “That’s tremendous, Len. You stood up when it counted, so I’m glad you came out of this thing all right.”

  “Thanks. You want to hear something even weirder, though? Di Matteo told me that Jimmy shorted the shares in the deal that hurt me as part of a whacked-out game. He’s in some kind of legal trouble himself now, but when the guys he played with found out the consequences of what they’d done, they all threw some cash in a pot. Enough for me to buy back my house. Can you believe it? I have a roof over my head again.”

  “That’s wonderful. It’s not often you hear about guys like that doing the right thing.”

  “It is wonderful. And none of it would have happened without di Matteo.”

  “I told you he was good. Didn’t I tell you that?”

  “You did. But there’s one thing I still don’t understand. How did he know to contact me?”

  “The law’s a business, just like any other. Attorneys are always looking for new clients.”

  “But how did he pick me, specifically?”

  I shrugged. “Luck? Good fortune?”

  “No.” Hendrie shook his head. “Do you know what I think? I think he pays people at the courthouse to find him leads.”

  “He could do that, I guess. That would actually be smart.”

  “But the thing is, Paul, you’re the only person I gave my cell number to. You’re the only one who could have sold it to him.”

  I shook my head. “Absolutely not. I didn’t sell him your number, or anyone else’s. You have my word on that.”

  “Look, if you did, if you work for him on the side, that’s totally cool. I’m not here to cause you trouble. I’m here to thank you.”

  “I appreciate that, Len. But there’s nothing to thank me for. I don’t work for di Matteo, or any other lawyer. I’m just a janitor. I work for the city of New York.”

  For Gary Gutting, who made windows where there were once walls

  I would like to extend my deepest thanks to the following for their help, support, and encouragement while I wrote this book. Without them, it would not have been possible.

  My editor, the excellent Kara Cesare, and the whole team at Random House.

  My agent, the outstanding Richard Pine.

  My friends, who’ve stood by me through the years: Dan Boucher, Carlos Camacho, Joelle Charbonneau, John Dul, Jamie Freveletti, Keir Graff, Kristy Claiborne Graves, Tana Hall, Nick Hawkins, Dermot Hollingsworth, Amanda Hurford, Richard Hurford, Jon Jordan, Ruth Jordan, Martyn James Lewis, Rebecca Makkai, Dan Malmon, Kate Hackbarth Malmon, Carrie Medders, Philippa Morgan, Erica Ruth Neubauer, Gunther Neumann, Ayo Onatade, Denise Pascoe, Wray Pascoe, Dani Patarazzi, Javier Ramirez, David Reith, Sharon Reith, Beth Renaldi, Marc Rightley, Melissa Rightley, Renee Rosen, Kelli Stanley, and Brian Wilson.

  Brendan Vaughan.

  Everyone at The Globe Pub, Chicago.

  Everyone from Fish Creek Ranch Preserve, Wyoming.

  Jane and Jim Grant.

  Ruth Grant.

  Katharine Grant.

  Jess Grant.

  Alexander Tyska.

  Stacie Gutting.

  And last on the list, but first in my heart—Tasha. Everything, always…

  * * *

  —

  I’d also like to extend extra-special thanks to Ruth Troyanek for generously bidding on a character name which she dedicated to her mother—the real Patricia Lee Spangler—in support of the wonderful Albany County Public Library.

  By Andrew Grant

  Invisible

  False Witness

  False Friend

  False Positive

  RUN

  More Harm Than Good

  Die Twice

  Even

  About the Author

  ANDREW GRANT is the author of RUN, False Positive, False Friend, False Witness, and Invisible. He was born in Birmingham, England, and attended the University of Sheffield, where he studied English literature and drama. He ran a small independent theater company, and subsequently worked in the telecommunications industry for fifteen years. Grant and his wife, the novelist Tasha Alexander, live on a wildlife preserve in Wyoming.

  andrewgrantbooks.com

  Facebook.com/​andrewgrantauthor

  Twitter: @Andrew_Grant

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