I did, she knew that. It was the Plan.
“If you can wait until around midnight, then the house should be empty. I told you he was a night owl.”
“What have you done?” But I knew.
“He thinks he’s going to meet me at a hotel in Syosset.”
“Thinksbeing the operative word, I hope. Where will you be?”
“At my mom’s house in Scarsdale. She’s in Florida right now.” She paused. “Carlstein sounded like he was expecting my call, like I was only surrendering to an irresistible summons he’d started to transmit on the deck at his house. The man believes he sweats an unchallengeable phenome or pherome or whatever it’s called.”
“Are you sure he doesn’t know where you are or where you will be?” If he could transmit, maybe he could receive as well.
“I don’t see how.”
The letter writer, the wall painter, the fish killer—they knew how. It obviously wasn’t rocket science.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said.
“It’s done already. If there’s no car at the house, then it’s on the way to me with him behind the wheel. If it’s there, then I failed. And it’s over to your Plan B.”
I didn’t have a Plan B.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I’m not just doing it for you. Find something good, Fin. Carlstein’s not going to like being stood up. Make it count. I don’t know how fast he drives, but allow yourself no more than an hour in that house before you get the hell out. I can’t give you a floor plan, so I can’t tell you where he keeps the computer; I only remember the deck and some big open living area overlooking the water. That and the fact that I never want to go back there.”
“I’ll call you when I’m through.”
“Sure. But if you get voicemail, it means I’m sleeping.” She gave me her number in Scarsdale and then seemed to prime the defenses against any further meaningful dialogue.
Paula clicked her tongue. “Looks like I can sit in the car and be Jane to your Tarzan, after all,” she said when I finally and reluctantly pressed the cancel key on the cell phone.
“Looks that way.”
We slept in the car. I’d driven until we reached a park about ten miles from Oyster Bay and pulled up in the shaded corner of a lot that ran alongside. I’d gotten out Ernie’s letter and the battered copy of Rudyard Kipling’sIn Black and White,determined to decode the language of the Geminis, but pain and fatigue corroded crossword puzzle reasoning: numbers on a sheet of paper, words in a book. How and where did they meet? ABC, one-two-three. Discrete worlds. It should be straightforward enough, I thought. Find the pattern and substitute. The sun was low, it was warm, a gentle breeze zephered through the open window, I could hear the birdsong syncopate with the little snicks of Paula’s breathing.
Paula awoke when I returned to the car after taking my legs for a short postsleep stretch.
It was dark, the lot was empty, and we had just under an hour to cover the final tranche to Center Island, more than enough time.
“You want to get out and unbend yourself?” I asked the yawning Paula. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
She shook her head. “Let’s get this over with.”
We drove.
“You know what—at first McIntyre was charming,” Paula said suddenly. “He showed me around the place, talked me through the paintings on the walls, the landscapes, the portraits—not his own family, I wasn’t sure it was even his own house. Anyway, he said the place had been built by the son of a bootlegger who’d gotten respectable. He told me that most money cast a shadow, that the French were maybe right when they said money had no smell, but they ignored the shadow, always a shadow. I remember laughing and asking what lay in the shadow of his millions. He seemed to take my question seriously and thought hard. History will have to be the judge of that, he said.”
Paula took some gum out of her bag and handed me a strip before folding a piece against her teeth and closing her lips around it. She seemed to suck hard on it, as if its spearmint sap would strengthen her against the fury of her memory.
“I was at the house to help prepare for a symposium of bigshot lawyers who were flying in for a powwow on international regulatory cooperation. Naïvely, I suggested that cooperation sounded like a good idea. He was polite but dismissed my childish outlook.”
I could imagine it. The highbrow lawyer talking down to his secretary, his condescension at the idea that cooperation was good in and of itself. For him, cooperation would be bullshit, bad for business, had to be scattered, sabotaged. Division, diversity, plurality spawned uncertainty, a quicksand of uncertainty from which only the lawyers could pull the poor bewildered businessman and for which they could charge egregiously.
“He asked me if I was shocked by his cynicism,” Paula continued. “He was oily and unsteady with drink, kind of scared and careless all at once. I decided to play cool, I was used to his dark view on things anyway and so made out I didn’t understand him, that I was the airhead he always supposed me to be. But cool wasn’t going to work this time, he seemed to have his moves all mapped out regardless, all the angles covered like one of those kung-fu guys who know what you’re going to do before you do. Everything moved quickly, kind of blurry, like being wheeled on a trolley from the ward to the operating room, looking up—the ceiling lights, faces with masks, muffled talk. Then I was sitting in a chair in a room with one light on. No portraits on the wall, just lewd stuff, Indian—kama sutra, real dirty, people in knots; except the wall in front of me didn’t have pictures, only a mirror. And McIntyre was standing over me, a knife at my neck, a hunting knife, I think, the sort of blade that Rambo would use.”
I mentally felt the weight of the knife, its carefully engineered ridges and serrations—precision intimidation.
Paula removed the gum from her mouth and carefully folded the tinfoil wrapper around it and dropped it in the ashtray. The muscles in her face tightened.
“He made me do things to myself. Things that I couldn’t imagine, things that God has been kind enough to smudge in my head. But the stain’s still there. And all the while he threatened me, my family, Doug. Told me what would happen to them if I didn’t play ball, if I didn’t do the kind of things that a black bitch does, if I didn’t keep my silence. He didn’t touch me with his hands. Talk and the knife—stroking me, turning circles on my skin, playing with pressure, seeing how far itcould go without cutting. And his hand was a piston, down . . . down there. On himself.”
She looked out of the window for a while. “And I was thinking. If I had stood up to him later, taken it all the way, ruined him, then none of this would be happening and we wouldn’t have to take this drive. As it was, I agreed to the price that I thought was at the high end of what people like me could get: seventy thousand dollars and a ticket back to the pigsty.”
“I doubt whether much would have been different,” I said. “Except that you might have gotten killed.” Then I asked, “Did you ever tell Doug what happened?”
“Not the detail,” she said. “Just that McIntyre made a pass, acted improperly. Doug had a theory about McIntyre and his kind. It was a Wall Street thing, he’d say. How anyone who was anyone only wanted compliant shadows around them. They want you to be faded—the color of the wall. Then they’d need something from you. And if you didn’t give it to them they’d get mad. They’d smash up the things you love, just so you knew who controlled the place. When Doug knew his condition was terminal, he’d read me newspaper articles about rich or famous people who’d died of cancer. He was straight about it, he said it cheered him up to know that these guys couldn’t take out a contract on cancer and have it rubbed out. It was a great leveler, he said.”
“He was right,” I said.
“He was right about a lot of things, I guess,” she said. “I doubt if his view would have been different if I’d told him the full story. It would just reinforce his theory, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“He wasn’t religious or
anything, but he always said that what Jesus preached about the meek inheriting the earth made him feel real good.” Her voice cracked. “I just told him that was his excuse for being weak.” She turned away from me; her shoulders shook a little. “I shouldn’t have said that to him,” she murmured.
“We all say things we shouldn’t.” But maybe that wasn’t as bad as saying nothing at all.
FORTY-FIVE
Iturned to Paula. “How far?” I asked.
Her slender finger snaked along the map, dimly lit by the courtesy light. If her finger stopped, maybe we’d stop too.
“A town, then the causeway to Center Island,” she said.
“Which town?”
“Bayville,” she said without looking at the map. She was only giving me information I needed.
Bayville. That was the post office box address for Preeti. I could see Raj’s flame-wreathed face in the windshield, telling me the box number: 9735.
We were driving through a leafy residential area, no sign of the water that I assumed lapped against the borders of the seaside-sounding town. “How soon? Bayville, I mean.”
“Soon,” Paula said. A sign welcoming us to Bayville immediately came into view and, turning a sharp right, we found ourselves on a waterfront, a beach stretching into darkness to one side and a modest, but amiable, row of shops and restaurants on the other.
My stomach contracted as we passed a small carnival, unlit, its little bumper cars draped in canvas, reminiscent of the wretched carnival on Chowpatty Beach on the way to the Towers of Silence. I sensed my foot press harder on the accelerator.
We were soon out of the town and the gray-black scenery spread around us, flat as a page. It was all beach, empty but for the skeletons of lifeguard towers and the odd, abandoned inflatable kiddy-boat or spade sticking out of the sand, as if some midget gravedigger had been disturbed and skadaddled. Even the late-night barbecuers had crawled home, leaving their scorched signatures and empty bottles.
A convoy of three limos came toward us.
Windows and sunroofs open. Drunk, tired, and happy revelers hanging out or standing up saluting or waving. A topless girl swirling her bra like a lasso above her head.
As they passed us, they hung farther out from the car, whistling and shouting. The causeway narrowed, and the beach all but disappeared. A dark shadow loomed ahead, a few lights winking above sea level indicating that the shadow was land. Center Island.
Another two limos passed. Clones of the first three.
There were lights at sea level too, on the road in front of me, not a car though. A light from a window. I slowed down.
There was a booth and a barrier. Fancy houses meant fancy security.
And next to the booth was a police car.
I picked up the map to see if there were any other points of entry. Stupid. It was a fucking island.
Carol had mentioned a yacht club. A summer party maybe. I glanced at the map.
I was now almost alongside the booth. Inside, a fat cop started to heave himself out of an easy chair in front of a little television.
I let my window open. The cop slid back the glass and poked his head out.
I smiled. “Cleaners for the Seawanaka Yacht Club.”
The cop nodded and laughed. “It must be some party they’re having up there.”
“You bet,” I said, slapping my hand against the steering wheeland returning the laugh. “I got a trunk full of clean-o-crap and ten extra pairs of rubber gloves.”
The cop moved away from the glass divider and opened the door to the booth.
“You won’t mind if I take a quick look inside. Just routine. I hope you folks don’t take offense.”
“Sure.” I nodded, easing the gear shift into reverse, but keeping my foot on the brake.
As the cop swept his flashlight across the backseat, I could see headlights weaving toward us. A horn sounded.
The cop stood back. “Sweet Jesus.” He sighed.
He moved back toward the booth as a pickup loaded up with about six teenagers in tuxedos and evening dresses came to an uneasy stop, inches away from the barrier.
“Say, Miller,” shouted one of the teenagers, waving a bottle of champagne like it was a flag. “Open up. How about it?”
The cop turned to me. “See what I mean?” he said under his breath. “I wouldn’t want to clean up after these assholes.” He waddled into the booth and the barrier rose.
“Josh,” the cop shouted as the pickup tore past, “there’s a patrol not far up ahead, so I better not hear you been stopped and found DWI.”
Through the exhaust and teenage laughter I could just make out: “You got it, Officer Miller-not-so-Lite.”
I pointed at my watch. “I don’t want to be rude, but—” The barrier was still up, but I didn’t want to rush it unless I had to. If I ever wanted to get off the island, I’d have to come back this way.
“Heck, sure.” Miller waved us through with a broad grin. “You be sure and drop off some of the half-empties on your way out of here.”
Paula leaned across me. “You got it, Officer Miller,” she said huskily.
The island’s hinterland closed in around us. We were on a narrow road lined with high shrubs and big gates blocking long driveways to big houses.
“What kind of American accent do you call that?” Paula asked.
“The kind employed by a Brit who wants to sound like a contract cleaner who hasn’t just shit his pants.”
“We were lucky that Miller was a Grade A klutz. Next time you want to go native, warn me so I can bale out.”
“That was a pretty neat idea about the Seawanaka Yacht Club, though?”
“You got lucky.” Getting a compliment out of Paula was harder than making a claim for a stolen camera on a vacation insurance policy.
We heard the Seawanaka Yacht Club before we saw it. Or rather, we felt it. A seismic bass from a music system pumped through the car.
As we passed the white floodlit frontage of the club, we could see gaggles of partygoers goofing around on the front lawn, necking, throwing-up, tossing bottles and cans at each other, passing joints, usual party behavior. In the background, yacht masts swung in unison, kindly sentinels to carousing youth.
I drove carefully through a confusion of turning cars and exhausted bodies. The light faded and the music died back to a gentle vibration as we turned a corner and found ourselves looking out over an oily black slice of bay.
The road meandered toward a hill, and two houses gradually took shape out of the shadows. As I headed for the nearer, smaller one, I became aware that Paula, her face drained, had her eyes locked on the mansion at the top of the hill.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Just drive.”
We coasted a little farther and stopped about twenty yards away from Carlstein’s front door. A swathe of light spilled from an uncurtained picture window.
I heaved the Wal-Mart bag off the backseat and got out of the car. Almost immediately, I felt a sting on my hand, my burnt hand. Then I heard the whine of mosquitoes. To my left, a cloud of the little bastards circled above the lagoon, ready to scramble.
Ankle-high garden lights lit the uneven steps leading up to the front entrance. The door was the only piece of wood I could see; the rest of the one-story house seemed to be sheet glass. It didn’t bode well for the means of entry I had I mind.
I skirted the garage—door open, thankfully empty—and went around the back, finding myself on a deck that projected out over the bay.
The tide was coming in. Beneath me, I could just about make out a pile of rocks and a few hunks of steel-sprouting concrete, fringed by water.
A loud crackle and fizz broke the silence. I wheeled around.
A mosquito zapper smoldered in an alcove at the back of the house. I tried hard to regain a normal breathing rate before peering into the shadows around it. There was a conventional window, to a bedroom, I guessed, in the wall to my right.
I took out my honey, new
spaper, and hammer and laid them on the ground beneath it, but before going any farther, I checked the sliding glass doors that ran down one side of the deck. I didn’t want the humiliation of finding one was open after I’d smashed my way in.
It was locked.
I checked the time. Fifty minutes to go.
The lid on the honey jar didn’t want to budge and I was contemplating using the hammer when it suddenly gave and spun open.
Using one of the sheets of paper, I smeared a thick layer of honey over the window and then stuck another sheet flat across it, like a giant stamp on an envelope. I looked at the newsprint. Classified ads. I’d been careful to choose a section that didn’t have anything featuring me.
Picking up the hammer, I gave the window a smart tap. There was a satisfyingly muffled crack and I saw the paper start to sag and split. I gathered up the broken glass before it fell to the ground.
I listened for an alarm, then reached through the hole and undid the catch.
Although the bottom of the frame was less than three feet off the ground, climbing into the darkened room reopened my wounds, and they hurt like hell.
I eased the curtain back and stood at the threshold. I felt my heart pounding. The wounds throbbed in unison. I breathed in, as slowly and deeply as I could; a blend of eau de toilette, stale sweat, incense, and maybe dope.
The room was silent, but it didn’t feel empty. There was a low groan from somewhere to my left, followed by a series of juddering breaths. The hairs prickled on the back of my neck. I’d never felt them do that before.
The light wasn’t good enough to see the bed immediately. There was a door ajar, a glimmer of tile beyond. The bathroom. Gradually, the outline of a dressing table started to coalesce, the reflection of the window I’d just climbed through bouncing back at me from a large, oval mirror.
I started to edge carefully to what I hoped would be the door out of the room.
Suddenly I felt something soft underfoot. A cushion? I stood still, let my heart slow down a little, and then moved one foot gently forward, testing the terrain. It was like walking across a minefield.
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