One Fell Swoop

by David Linzee

  They managed to smile at each other.

  “You’ve come over to consult with your boss?” she asked.

  “He has me come over every few weeks, whether we need to consult or not. Last Wednesday I was saying on the phone that St. Louis was still uncomfortably warm and stale, and he said, ‘Don, you must visit your native land. It’s a crisp, sunny autumn here. You need a few days’ rest. You’re working too hard.’ ”

  Renata nodded and said nothing. This was typical Don. People were always saying to him just what he wanted to hear. No wonder he didn’t need a therapist.

  “Time before this, he said, ‘Don, it’s August, you must join us for grouse shooting.’ So I ended up in this enormous house in Scotland, packed with billionaires armed to the teeth. The first day we bagged a hundred grouse.”

  “Were there enough of you to eat all these birds?”

  “Nothing went to waste. The surplus was sold to a restaurant in Edinburgh.”

  “Couldn’t you have given them to charity?”

  “Renata, poor people don’t want to eat grouse.”

  “How did you find this lovely employer?”

  “He found me. On LinkedIn. His staff do everything online. You should see them, in their office in The City, searching global property markets, pouncing on opportunities. Like the world is one big supermarket, and they’re strolling the aisles, eying the shelves, bunging what looks tempting into their trolley.”

  “And they found something tempting in St. Louis?”

  “Yes. But don’t get the idea it’s some sort of shady speculation. This is a good thing I’m doing. You’ll be proud of me when you find out.”

  “But you can’t tell me now?”

  “No.”

  “All right. Back to LinkedIn, then. This billionaire was looking for someone to buy St. Louis property and there you were.”

  “He flew me over, business class. Put me up at the Savoy. I was thoroughly vetted by flunkies. Then had to wait several days to meet the man. Would have been quite tedious if I hadn’t been at the Savoy. When we finally met, we got on like a house afire. He said, ‘Don, you are just the man I’ve been seeking.’ ”

  “Did you make a clean breast of it?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Where do you find these expressions? Old opera librettos, I suppose.”

  “Don, did you tell him—”

  “About the spot of trouble I got into in St. Louis last spring? No need to tell them. They knew all about it.”

  “And you got the job anyway.”

  “Renata, it was a point in my favor, having been in jail.”

  “It was?”

  “My boss and his people take a broad view. They say one can’t be overawed by the laws of whatever country one happens to be operating in. Money knows no borders.”

  “I see. But you’re quite sure this is not a shady speculation?”

  He was glancing around for a waiter. The restaurant was packed, service slow. “It is not,” he said rather huffily. “What comes out on the St. Louis end of the pipeline will be all good. What happens on the London end, though, shouldn’t see the light of day.”

  Renata laughed. “Oh, Don. You’re just trying to impress me, aren’t you?”

  Don’s cheeks stiffened. Though cavalier about other people’s feelings, he was quite touchy about his own. “I’m not one to waste time on a losing proposition like trying to impress you. I know what you think of me.”

  “Sorry. But it’s all so sudden. The last I heard of you, you were trying to sell houses in the St. Louis suburbs. And now you pop up in London, hobnobbing with billionaires, scattering twenty-pound notes to the four winds. It’s all a bit much.”

  “This conversation is becoming tedious. And the service in this place is not up to its reviews. Let’s pack it in.”

  He led the way out of the restaurant. From the looks of the people waiting for a table, they thought the date had turned out badly for the two queue-jumpers and were gratified. Apart from the fact that it wasn’t a date, they were right.

  The Radleigh siblings had another of those partings when they couldn’t wait to see the back of each other. She found Don on the curb trying to hail a cab. Her ride home was no longer on, apparently. She asked about her bag in his car, and he said he’d send it round, and she said no, he’d forget as usual. They waited in furious silence for his car to be brought round. Then he handed her the bag, got in, and roared away. So she ended up on the Underground after all, wearing her gown instead of carrying it.

  Chapter Two

  Renata would have been willing to live in a slum if it meant she could afford a place of her own, but so many years into the London real estate boom, the city had hardly any slums left. She and three other skint opera singers had banded together to rent a cramped basement flat in Ladbroke Grove, a nice enough area, if a bit out of the way.

  Her roommates were all absent, working at provincial opera houses, so she didn’t have to worry about making noise as she settled in the kitchen. It was the largest room in the flat, but even so the fridge door banged the edge of the dining table every time you opened it. She poured herself a glass of orange juice and sat down at her laptop.

  It was midnight, early evening in St. Louis, a good time to reach Peter Lombardo.

  Waiting for the computer to boot up, she reflected that she was lucky to be conducting a transatlantic romance at a time when Skype had been invented but they weren’t charging for it yet. Peter was on the service but not at his computer. Her screen showed her a section of the wall of his flat, with an elaborate pattern of cracks in the white plaster.

  This was all she had ever seen of his place, which she feared was as dismal as her own. When they’d met the previous spring, Peter had been living in a beautiful condominium, paid for by a cushy job in the public relations department of Adams University Medical School. He’d been dragged into her effort to rescue Don, which had embarrassed his employer. Peter stoutly maintained that he had not been fired but had quit. This did nothing to soothe Renata’s guilty conscience.

  Her heart lifted as he appeared on screen: mop of reddish brown hair, broad, smooth brow, hazel eyes behind steel-framed glasses, and big grin showing his white, microscopically even, all-American teeth.

  “Hello, my love,” she said.

  “You look great.”

  “It’s the makeup. I had a recital this evening. You’re rather well turned-out yourself. That’s a nice tattersall shirt.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Tell me you’re not wearing hound’s-tooth slacks.”

  He looked down. “No”

  “They’re glen plaid, aren’t they?”

  “It’s a very subtle plaid.”

  “Peter, you really must get in the habit of looking at clothes before you put them on.”

  “I’m trying to maintain the sartorial standard of the journalistic profession here. How did it go? Your gig, I mean.”

  “All right, I guess. There was a bit of a surprise after.”

  “Oh?”

  She hesitated and decided not to tell him about seeing Don. The encounter had annoyed her so much that she didn’t want to go over it again. “Never mind. How are you?”

  He said that he had enough freelance writing work to pay the bills, and all St. Louis was cheerful because the Cardinals had won the World Series. Things generally seemed to go pretty well in Peter’s world. He was a wonderfully even-keeled person, not like her at all. When it was her turn, she tried to strike an upbeat note. Instead of saying that she had no opera roles, she said that she had a couple of well-paying gigs singing in churches, as well as promising auditions coming up. Opera companies all over the word sent representatives to London to hire singers. That was the main reason she was here instead of with her lover.

  “Great,” he said, “who’s first?”

  “It’s Lyon on Monday.”

  “I thought they were last week.”

  “They didn’t get to me. They said I could come bac
k.”

  “Oh. How long had they made you wait?”

  “Only six hours. Then there’s Frankfurt on Tuesday.”

  “But you said you’d never audition for Frankfurt again.”

  “Did I?”

  “Remember, they promised you a part last year, but the contract never arrived, and neither did an explanation, and you’d turned down other parts while you were waiting.”

  “Yes, well, forgive and forget is my policy. I can’t afford any other. Wednesday is Buenos Aires. I have high hopes. They’ve hired me before.”

  “I remember. They put you in that awful dorm and you got head lice.”

  “But their opera house has such lovely acoustics.”

  Peter smiled—a trifle wanly. She blurted out, “Peter? How much longer are you going to put up with me?”

  “I have never asked you to give up your career, and I never will.”

  “Yes, I know, but do you ever wonder how we’re going to end up?”

  Peter, who was circumspect in the Midwestern manner, held his tongue.

  “You do. Of course you do. What’s your idea?”

  “You don’t want to have this conversation now. You’re tired.”

  “I’ll make it easy for you. You don’t see my career reviving. No one but myself could. In a couple of years, I’ll be giving piano lessons to bored, spotty teenagers. That’s taken as read. Now go on.”

  “That’s now how I see it at all. You have friends in opera companies all over America. Sooner or later one of them will offer you a job you can’t resist, in administration. And I’ll move to wherever you are.”

  “Peter, who would put me in a responsible position? I’m so gloomy and irritable.”

  “The only reason you’re gloomy and irritable is that people treat you like shit. That would stop if you didn’t have to go to auditions.”

  She sighed. “I’m going to change the subject, because you’re winning this argument.”

  “It gives me no pleasure to win it. You have a beautiful voice, and—”

  “That’s all right, I can always use it to sing you ‘Happy Birthday.’ ” Renata shut her eyes. “Sorry. Not your fault. Seeing Don’s put me in a filthy mood.”

  “Don? You saw him tonight?”

  “Sorry again. Didn’t mean to let that slip out. Yes. He’s on a business trip.”

  “I thought he was selling McMansions in west St. Louis County.”

  “He’s now ascended into the higher circles of international property speculation.”

  “Really?”

  Peter had been a newspaper reporter, and his curiosity was easily aroused. She started to recount the evening’s events, and once she got going, she rather enjoyed it. She’d been alone for a long time before Peter and had forgotten how it lightened the load to tell your troubles to a sympathetic ear. By the time she finished, they were both laughing.

  He said, “You want me to check it out?”

  “What … Don’s real estate deal? Certainly not.”

  “Well, do you mind if I check it out?”

  “Peter, this is just Don talking big, building up some mysterioso to impress me.”

  “I’m sure there’s some of that. But I’m wondering. What do we have in St. Louis that would interest a big-time international wheeler-dealer?”

  “You’re much too busy to waste your time on whatever dodgy scheme my gormless brother’s got mixed up in.”

  “He’s not gormless. Assuming I’m guessing right what gormless means. He’s a crafty guy. I’d like to know what he’s up to. When’s he coming back here?”

  “Oh, Peter, just leave him alone.”

  “Look, I don’t have to talk to him. I can find out what I need to know on the internet.”

  Renata said she supposed that wouldn’t do any harm, and they moved on to the endearments and goodbyes, which as usual took half an hour. But she went to bed with the feeling that she wasn’t going to sleep well tonight.

  Chapter Three

  The next morning’s email brought Peter Lombardo a long list of questions about an article he had written from a fact-checker at the Chicago magazine that was going to publish it. He dealt with them, and by lunchtime was free to turn his attention to Don.

  Before they had met for the first time, Renata had told him, in a minatory tone, that he and Don were chalk and cheese. He had no idea what that meant. Then she introduced him to Don, and the first thing the man said was, “CLH?”

  “What?”

  “You have CLH on your belt. Surely it should be P Something L.”

  Peter glanced down. “Oh. That’s the manufacturer’s logo, I guess.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s the owner’s monogram. You didn’t steal the belt, I hope?”

  “It’s from the same secondhand shop where I get all my clothes.”

  “It doesn’t bother you, wearing someone else’s monogram?”

  “No.”

  “Extraordinary.”

  The discussion advanced no further, because Renata was laughing so hard that they had to find her a chair and a glass of water. In subsequent meetings, Peter had noticed that Don was always wearing a monogram, a much subtler one than the CLH on the belt. There would be a DPR above the cuff of his shirt, or on the lining of his jacket, or woven, white on white, into his handkerchief. Don thought that the world was looking at him very closely, eager to be impressed.

  St. Louis seemed like a small town to Renata. She assumed that the people she knew there were constantly bumping into each other. In fact, Peter had not seen or heard from Don in months. After making himself a peanut butter sandwich, he sat down at the computer to find out what the man was up to.

  It was a straightforward if time-consuming matter of going from the web page where the city of St. Louis listed real estate sales to the page where the state of Missouri listed corporations. He learned that six corporations, chartered in Luxembourg, Panama, and other countries that respected the privacy of the rich, listed as their registered agent in Missouri Donald P. Radleigh. It was impossible to find out much else about these corporations. But they had been busy lately. In the last few months, each had bought apartment buildings in Parkdale.

  Peter knew Parkdale vaguely. It was an old, rather run-down neighborhood in western St. Louis, the sort of area Don Radleigh would drive through fast, with his windows rolled up and doors locked. But he was acquiring broad swaths of it. Why?

  One thing was clear already. While he might have been playing up what Renata called the mysterioso in order to impress her, Don really was handling large amounts of money, on behalf of somebody who wanted to keep his name out of the transactions.

  Peter sat back from the screen, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. The next step was to scout Parkdale. Then talk to Don. But Don would guess that Peter had been tipped off by his sister, and wouldn’t like it. Peter would have to come up with a plausible pretext.

  As he plotted his next move, it crossed his mind that he’d said something to Renata about confining his research to the internet. But he was sure he hadn’t actually promised.

  The afternoon was warm and sunny. November had begun, but Indian summer was lingering, as it often did in St. Louis. Peter was grateful; last month several paychecks had been delayed, and he’d been forced to sell his car to pay the rent. He was now getting around on a bicycle.

  In Parkdale, he pedaled slowly up and down the streets, looking the neighborhood over. This part of St. Louis had been built up in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Parkdale would have started out as a solid but not fancy middle-class neighborhood of small apartment buildings, mostly three- and four-story walk-ups. They had held up well, being built of the excellent local brick, in shades of red ranging from rust to burgundy. Tall old trees, mostly pin oaks that retained their dead brown leaves, shaded small crabgrass lawns.

  Some of the buildings were well maintained. Hedges were trimmed. Light-colored cement between bricks indicated recent tuck pointing, and the
stained-glass windows in the stairwells had been preserved. But other buildings showed peeling paintwork and broken windows, and on every block were uninhabited buildings with boarded-up windows, their lower walls covered with squiggles of spray paint. Peter couldn’t tell if it was gang graffiti. Here and there roofless brick walls stood amid tall weeds, and there were quite a few vacant lots.

  The people he saw were mostly African American. Carpoolers were returning from work: old cars chugged up to buildings and weary people got out. Neighbors sitting on the front steps of buildings exchanged waves with them. At curbside, men conferred over the open hoods of ailing cars. Children ran around, shouting and laughing.

  Earlier, Peter had found the website of the Parkdale Neighborhood Association, and their efforts were apparent. There were no abandoned cars on the streets. In most vacant lots, the trash had been picked up and the weeds cut. One lot had even been converted to a community garden, burgeoning with vegetables awaiting harvest. A single gardener was at work as Peter coasted by, a white woman who was ripping bindweed out of a sage plant with such vigor that he wondered if the plant would survive. Parkdale was trying, but as to why it had attracted the interest of a London speculator, Peter was none the wiser.

  He had sent a text asking for an appointment with the president of the neighborhood association and been told to come around anytime and look for a green Ford pickup with a lot of junk in its bed. He spotted it parked in front of one of the well-tended buildings. The front door opened, and a man came out, bald on top, long gray hair at the sides pulled into a ponytail. He was not tall, but his well-perforated Grateful Dead T-shirt revealed a muscular chest and arms. Segments of heavy metal tube held together by a chain were draped over his shoulders: Laocoön with a plumber’s snake, thought Peter. He was always coming up with classical allusions, which were not welcomed by the editors of the publications he wrote for.

  “Mr. Rubinstein?”

  “Even tenants who are behind on the rent don’t call me ‘Mister.’ It’s Joel.”