One Fell Swoop

by David Linzee

  McAllister folded his arms and meditated.

  “Do you believe any of what I’ve been telling you?” she asked at length. “They were sent by the same man who had Neal Marsh killed last night. Tonight he tried to have me killed.”

  “We can’t assume that was their intention.”

  “What?”

  “The one you call Flathead was armed. He could have shot you.”

  “Perhaps I was too far away. Or it was too dark.”

  “Or perhaps they only intended to rough you up. Or throw a scare into you.”

  “Only.” She suppressed an urge to slap his bland, pink face. “Can we at least agree that their intentions weren’t friendly?”

  “Most definitely.” The eyes under the tufts turned kindly. “You’ve had a very frightening experience. That’s why I suggest you stay with a friend for a while.”

  “Inspector, please tell me. Do you believe my story?”

  “In police work, it’s not a question of belief or disbelief. We will find evidence to support your assumptions, or not, as the investigation develops. We have a procedure we follow in a homicide.”

  “Would you mind telling me what it is? What you’re going to do next, I mean.”

  “It’s standard procedure, no secret about it. We start with the body. Identifying the body, in this case. The man you call Orangefoot had no ID on him. Either he wasn’t carrying a wallet or it’s at the bottom of the canal. We’ll drag the canal tomorrow. Or we will use fingerprints or if necessary DNA tests to find his name. It is likely he’s known to the police. The file on him will tell us his address and associates, and we will use the information to find the man you call Flathead.”

  “That could take some time.”

  Unperturbed, McAllister nodded.

  “And you’re not even going to look for the Indian billionaire meanwhile?”

  “Come in tomorrow and we will sit you down with an artist. Try to come up with a sketch of this woman you call Jhumpa.”

  “It’s not a question of me calling her that. Jhumpa is her name.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Right. She didn’t show me her passport. What about Grinevich then? He lied to you.”

  “I’ve already put in a call. Grinevich is in the pit at Covent Garden now, conducting Eugene Onegin. I left a message for him to call me tomorrow. He won’t, of course. It will be his solicitor. In any case, I would like to have more leverage when I talk to Grinevich.”

  “Leverage?”

  “Once we have your man Flathead in custody, facing charges for the murder of the man in the canal, he’ll tell us who he’s working for.”

  “And while you’re looking for him, this deal will be going forward in America. They wanted me to keep myself incommunicado for three days, remember? There simply isn’t time. Can’t you ring the police in St. Louis?”

  “The crimes have been committed in London, Ms. Radleigh. Not St. Louis.”

  Her tired mind grappled with this bald statement. Was it possible McAllister was inadvertently giving her cause for hope? She folded her arms and bowed her head. Let him wait while she thought things over, for a change.

  Don hadn’t broken any laws yet, as far as she knew. Not important ones, anyway. He didn’t know what kind of man he was working for. He was keeping himself willfully ignorant of what was going on in London. Maybe there was still time to stop him before he went over the edge. If only she could go to see him, face to face, and convince him of what she knew ….

  Anyway, she longed for the sight of Peter’s face and the touch of his hand. She was in dire need of cosseting.

  “Going back to your original question, Inspector,” she said, “I do have a friend that I can stay with.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  When he got up that morning, Peter found on his phone a text message from Renata saying that she was on her way to St. Louis and would arrive tonight. His joy at the message was clouded by worries about the medium. Why hadn’t she called? This news was worth waking him up for, wasn’t it? And why did she have a new phone number? He sent her a reply, asking if anything had happened.

  There was still the whole day to be gotten through before he saw her. He went to his desk and made a freelancer’s usual round of phone calls, begging some editors for work and politely reminding others to pay him for work already done. Then he got out the mop and broom. His apartment wasn’t much—one dingy room with a kitchenette and small bathroom—but at least it would be clean for his guest.

  By the time he was finished, he had another text. She was at Heathrow, waiting to board. Something had happened. She would tell him about it when she got there. She was fine and had learned nothing new. This enigmatic message set his nerves to jangling. He called Renata immediately. Her phone was off. The flight must be airborne.

  Keyed up and frustrated, he decided to go out. He shouldered his bicycle and went down the stairs, headed for Forest Park.

  It was another of those pleasant but eerie between-seasons days St. Louis got in November. The grass was covered with dead leaves, but the temperature was in the sixties. Trees stretched their bare gray limbs against cloudless blue skies. His phone chirped: a call, not a text. He put his feet on the ground and took off his helmet. The screen of his phone showed an Adams University number. Peter hoped they hadn’t caught on that he had kept his employee ID so he could borrow WeCars.

  “Peter Lombardo? Please hold for Roger Merck.”

  It turned out to be a long hold. He swung off his bike and propped it against a tree as he wondered what this could be about. Roger Merck was his former boss, the Associate Deputy Vice Chancellor for Public Relations. Peter liked Roger—he was an affable man—but they had been happy to see the last of each other. During l’affaire Don Radleigh last spring, Peter had been compelled to do things that embarrassed Adams University.

  The deep, mellow voice came over the line. “Pete! How are you, young man?”

  “Fine, Roger. How are you?”

  “Couldn’t be better. Say, I want to see you about a job.”

  “A job?”

  “You’re a free-lancer, aren’t you? I want to hire your lance for a week or two. Can you come see me?”

  “At your office?”

  “No, I’m at the medical school. Your old stomping ground. How soon can you get here?”

  “Well, I’m in Forest Park—”

  “Excellent! I’m in my car, parked at Euclid and Clayton. See you in a few minutes.”

  “More than a few. I’m on a bike,” Peter said, but Roger had hung up. Peter mounted up and headed east. Soon, over the trees, the bulky form of Granger Hospital, the medical school’s teaching hospital, came into view, along with the familiar towers of its labs and clinics nestled among the luxury apartment buildings of the Central West End. He hoped Roger wouldn’t mind that he was in T-shirt and shorts. And that he’d be rather sweaty by the time he arrived.

  As it turned out, Roger, climbing out of his Volvo and waving to Peter as he arrived, was in athletic gear himself, all of it prominently stamped with the Adams name and shield. He was an African American of about sixty, with café au lait skin, dense, pure-white hair, and gold-framed glasses that glinted in the sun as he put out his hand.

  “You’re looking well. Lock up your bike and come with me.”

  They headed not toward any of the buildings, but the tennis courts atop one of the medical school’s large underground parking lots. “Now for the job,” Roger said. “Let’s talk money first.”

  “You must have dealt with free-lancers before.”

  Roger laughed, his familiar deep-in the gullet rumble. “You’ll be writing press releases and fielding calls from the media, probably a lot of them. So let’s not bother doing it piecemeal. A set fee okay with you? Ten thousand.”

  “That’s okay with me,” said Peter, who had not seen a check that big in a long time.

  “We’ll throw in a little extra for expenses. We may have to set you up with an
office and a secretary, depending on the volume of queries.”

  “If you must. Uh, Roger, mind if I ask … why me? Considering my role in last spring’s shit storm?”

  “Some shit storms can’t be helped. We didn’t blame you. And you have familiarity with the subject matter already.”

  “I do?”

  “Joel speaks highly of you.”

  “Joel Rubinstein?”

  “Yes.”

  “So the subject is Parkdale?”

  “Yes. But the chancellor wants to tell you about it himself.”

  To avoid further questions, Roger forged ahead, leading him along the fence of the tennis courts. They were surprisingly busy for a weekday, but it was easy to spot Philip G. Reeve, chancellor of Adams University, because he had only one arm.

  As they approached, Reeve was walking back to the service line. He was dribbling the ball with his racquet. Peter had read somewhere that it was his right arm he had lost and he had been right-handed, but neither that nor anything else had stopped him. “Hello, Roger,” Reeve called out. He added, “Hello, Pete,” though they had never met. “Be with you in a sec.”

  Standing behind the service line, he let the ball roll off the racquet. It bounced, and he gave it a hard tap with the racquet. The effect was the same as when an expert player tossed it: the ball ascended to its predetermined height and seemed to hover there. Reeve coiled and sprang. With a crisp pop, the ball rocketed across the net.

  The rally was a long one. The chancellor’s opponent was also a strong player, covering court effortlessly, hitting drives that passed only a couple of feet over the net and landed deep in Reeve’s court. But Reeve had no trouble dealing with them. Peter had not realized before that he had lost his entire arm: not even a stub protruded from the short sleeve of his shirt. He used a Continental grip, so he did not have to shift it between backhands and forehands, and he put his racquet head to the ground to help him keep his balance when he changed directions. His lopsided silhouette emphasized the grace and power of his movements.

  Various explanations—surgical, neurological, and immunological—circulated about why he did not use an artificial limb. Some suspected that the real explanation was political. To the right, he was a wounded warrior. To the left, a man who had overcome a disability.

  Much speculation, friendly and unfriendly, centered on Philip G. Reeve. He was the biggest celebrity in St. Louis who was not a Cardinal, and his fame extended far beyond the town. Adams University, an ambitious institution, had gone out and acquired a star as its leader. Reeve was the scion of an old Virginia family. Like many of his forebears, he had gone to West Point. Then he had studied engineering at MIT. As a young officer fighting in Iraq, he had been badly wounded in an IED blast.

  The book he had written about his long, difficult recovery had become a bestseller and a television movie. Reeve had served in high posts in the Veteran’s Administration and Defense Department, then become dean of the engineering school at Purdue, where he demonstrated a magic touch as a fundraiser. When Purdue made the mistake of not elevating him to the presidency, Adams pounced.

  He had been here three years, generating controversies that gained national attention. When the helicopter parent of an undergraduate had written to complain to him about her darling’s disappointing B- in organic chemistry, Reeve’s scolding reply had gone viral. He had ejected from campus a fraternity notorious for drunken parties. He had promulgated tough policies against date rape that had won him plaudits from feminists. At the moment, he was in the news for raising Adams’ international stature with a new campus in the Gulf States of the Middle East. New York University had a campus in Abu Dhabi, the University of Missouri had one in Dubai, and the former president of Cal Tech had gone to Saudi Arabia to found a new university. Adams would not be left behind—not with Reeve at its head. It would become a university to the world. The next generation of the world’s leaders, he promised, would include many Adams graduates. Still, some complained that he was more interested in his own career than in the university, and that he had one ear cocked toward Washington, for a call to take up a Cabinet seat.

  Naturally Reeve kept Roger’s department busy. Peter gradually realized that this was not a tennis match but a PR event. The players on the bank of courts were all medical students, warming up while waiting to take their turn with the chancellor. Each one got about ten minutes. If they just wanted to rally, he was gentle with them. But if they were good and wanted to play games, he played with fierce concentration.

  Recognizing him, people were coming over from the street to watch and take pictures with their phones. Peter noticed some of his former colleagues at work, keeping them on their side of the fence. Other PR people were shooting photos and video, or interviewing whichever student had just played the chancellor.

  A van from one of the local TV stations pulled up, and a woman jumped out. She strode toward the courts but was intercepted and politely repelled by another of Roger’s minions. Peter said, “Does the chancellor do this often?”

  “Phil likes to be accessible to students. He plays touch football in the quad on the main campus, too.”

  “Touch football? Really?”

  “He makes amazing catches.”

  Reeve hit an overhead smash that almost bounced over the fence. It must have been the last point of the game, because he put down his racket and waited at the net for his opponent to come up. No exulting or fist-shaking, but he looked pleased. Since Peter was going to have to shake hands with the chancellor soon, he watched how it was done. The answer was with the left hand.

  Aides flocked around Reeve as he crossed the court, throwing a jacket over his shoulders, taking his racquet and offering him a towel. He patted Roger’s shoulder, then offered his hand to Peter.

  “I know your byline from the alumni magazine,” he said. “You wrote that profile of the heart surgeon. Doctor ….”

  “Vaughn.”

  “Excellent piece.” Reeve was average height, with a wiry build. His hair, dark brown with just a little gray at the temples, was cut very short, which emphasized the angularity of his face. He had a lined forehead, long, straight, thin-bridged nose, and cheekbones so sharp they seemed to threaten to break the skin. His eyes were a brilliant blue—the same color as Renata’s, Peter realized with a start. The face of Philip Reeve made you think it might be true that suffering ennobled.

  “Excuse us, guys,” he said to his entourage, as he took Peter’s elbow to lead him a few paces away. Roger trailed behind.

  “We’ve got a great story for you, Pete,” he said. “We—that is, the medical school—are buying some buildings in Parkdale.”

  “Oh, really,” said Peter. He struggled to keep a straight face. “Uh … how many buildings would that be?”

  “Two hundred.”

  “Two hundred thirteen, to be precise,” Roger put in.

  “But … that’s all the buildings there are in the neighborhood,” Peter said. “You’re buying up Parkdale, in one fell swoop.”

  “Yes.”

  “How much money are we talking about?”

  The chancellor and Roger shook their heads in unison. The latter said, “We don’t want you to put an exact figure in the press release.”

  “I’m afraid it’s the first question reporters will ask me.”

  “What we want you to emphasize is that this is a great thing for the medical school. It will quadruple the amount of housing we can offer to students and employees.”

  “Do you actually need that much housing?”

  “No, but we have to own the neighborhood to bring it back. It’s a good thing all around for the med center to be surrounded by healthy communities. And we’re going to invest the effort and the funds to make Parkdale what it used to be.” The chancellor had been briefed on the high spots of Parkdale history, which he rattled off. It had one of the first synagogues in western St. Louis. Graduates of its public high school included a Hollywood director and a Yankees short
stop. Eighty of its sons had served in World War II. “Please mention those facts in your release. Roger will give you the file. We’d like you to get started on the release right away, though of course it will be embargoed until the public announcement.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Five p.m., in Parkdale.”

  “Five p.m. today?”

  “Yes. All the details are in here,” said Roger, handing him a bulky manila envelope.

  “Look forward to seeing you there, Pete,” said the chancellor.

  On the way back to his bicycle, Peter reflected that there was one thing he knew: why the university was hiring him. Joel had told them he’d written about Parkdale, and they thought he might have picked up rumors about the impending sale. They wanted him on the payroll, writing an embargoed story, instead of going to the newspapers.

  The papers would be interested. He recalled joking with Renata about how it would take an Oklahoma land rush of middle-class renters descending on Parkdale to turn the neighborhood around quickly. And that was exactly what was going to happen.

  The sale was good news for Adams U and good news for Parkdale. It was absolutely wonderful news for Don Radleigh and his mysterious investor, who were about to sell, at a handsome profit, all the eighty-nine buildings they had just bought.

  The news was not going to be a surprise to them.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Peter spent the afternoon at home, working on his embargoed press release. It wasn’t long before his phone began to ring. Word was leaking out. In St. Louis, the usual pattern for big real estate deals aimed at saving urban neighborhoods was that they be talked about for years but never actually happen. The Parkdale buy, which nobody had heard about until it was a fait accompli, was exciting keen interest and a certain amount of suspicion. There were going to be plenty of reporters at the announcement. At four o’clock, he donned tie and sport coat, stuffed his pockets with press releases and business cards, and set off.

  The event was staged with typical Adams U munificence. A vacant lot, freshly mown and devoid of litter, was hung with banners, ribbons, and balloons in the Adams colors of green and gray. Posters on easels showed how the lot was going to look after Adams transformed it to a park with a playground, fitness trail, and water feature. Bleachers were set up to face a dais, and as five p.m. approached, associate provosts and vice-chancellors—including Roger—mounted it and took their seats. Peter was willing to bet there hadn’t been so many men in dark suits in Parkdale since the synagogue had closed.