WIN

by Coben, Harlan

  “Did you tell Ry Strauss what you were doing?”

  She slowly shook her head, her face tilted toward the sky. “This was all done behind Ry’s back. I left a note with Sheila trying to explain.”

  “How did he react to your departure?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Once a plan like that goes into effect, you can’t look back. It’s too dangerous for anyone.”

  “Did you try to find out after the fact?”

  “No, never. Same reason. I didn’t want to put anyone in danger.”

  “You must have been curious.”

  “More like guilty,” she says. “Ry was getting worse—and my answer was to abandon him. His hold on me had loosened, but…God, you can’t imagine what it was like. I thought the sun rose and fell on Ry Strauss. I would literally have died for him.”

  Which raises the question, which I decide not to ask right now: Would you have killed for him too?

  “You told the FBI he drowned in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.”

  “I made that up.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think? I owed him, didn’t I?”

  “It was a distraction?”

  “Yes, of course. Get the cops off his back. I also had to explain why I chose now to turn myself in. I couldn’t say it was because the great Ry Strauss was ranting at himself in a basement bar on the Upper West Side. Now we would diagnose him as bipolar or OCD or something. But back then? Ry used to go up to the bar at night, after it closed, and line up the liquor bottles so they were equidistant from one another with the labels facing the same way. It would take him hours.”

  I think about the tower room at the Beresford. “Did he have any money?”

  “Ry?”

  “You said you were hiding in a basement below a dive bar.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he have the money for nicer quarters?”

  “No.”

  “Did he have an interest in art?”

  “Art?”

  “Painting, sculpture, art.”

  “I don’t…Why would you ask that?”

  “Did you ever commit robberies with him?”

  “What? No, of course not.”

  “So you just relied on the kindness of strangers?”

  “I don’t—”

  “You know other radicals held up banks, don’t you? The Symbionese Liberation Army. The Brink’s robbery. Did you and Strauss ever do anything like that? I don’t care about prosecuting you. My guess is, the statute of limitations would be up anyway. But I need to know.”

  A teenage boy walks by us with three dogs on leashes. Lake Davies smiles at him and nods. He nods back. “I wanted to turn myself in right at the start. He wouldn’t let me.”

  “Wouldn’t let you?”

  “Part of all worship is abuse. That’s what I’ve learned. Those who love God the most also fear God the most too. ‘God-fearing,’ right? The most devout who won’t shut up about God’s love are always the ones raving about fire and brimstone and eternal damnation. So was I in love with Ry or was I scared of him? I don’t know how thick that line is.”

  I’m not here to get mired down in a philosophical discussion, so I shift gears.

  “Did you see on the news about a stolen Vermeer being found?”

  “Yesterday, right?” It slowly hits her. “Wait. Wasn’t someone found dead with the painting?”

  I nod. “That was Ry Strauss.”

  I give her a moment to take that in.

  “He’d become a hoarder and a hermit.” I explain about the Beresford, the tower, the clutter, the mess, the painting on the wall. I choose not to go into my cousin’s predicament quite yet. There is a bench up ahead. Lake Davies collapses onto it as if her knees have given way. I stay standing.

  “So Ry was murdered.”

  “Yes.”

  “After all these years.” Lake Davies shakes her head, her eyes glassy. “I still don’t see why you’re here.”

  “My family owned the Vermeer.”

  “So you’re, what, here to find the other painting?”

  I do not reply.

  “I don’t have it. When were the paintings stolen?”

  I tell her the date.

  “That was way after I turned myself in.”

  “Did you ever see any of the other Jane Street Six after the murders?”

  She winces at the word “murders.” I used it intentionally. “The underground divided us up. You can’t have six people traveling together.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Just one.”

  When she stops talking, I put my hand to my ear. “I’m listening.”

  “We stayed two nights with Arlo.”

  “Arlo Sugarman?”

  She nods. “In Tulsa. He was posing as a student at Oral Roberts University, which I thought was pretty ironic.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Arlo was raised Jewish but prided himself on his atheism.”

  I remember something I saw in the file. “Sugarman claimed he wasn’t there that night—”

  “We all did, so what?”

  Fair enough. “Wasn’t he a fine arts major at Columbia?”

  “Yeah, maybe. Wait, you think Arlo and Ry…?”

  “Do you?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know for sure, but…”

  I think now about Cousin Patricia and the horror of what she went through. “You mentioned Ry Strauss hurting you.”

  She swallows. “What about it?”

  “You changed your entire identity. You pretty much went off the grid.”

  “Yet you found me.”

  I try to look modest. Then I ask, “Were you afraid Ry would try to find you?”

  “Not just Ry.”

  “Who?”

  She shakes me off, and I can see she is starting to close down.

  “There is a chance,” I say, “that Ry Strauss was involved in something more sinister than stolen art.”

  “How much more sinister?”

  I see no reason to sugarcoat it. “Abducting, raping, and eventually murdering young women.”

  Her face loses all color.

  “Perhaps with a partner,” I add. Then I ask, “Do you think Ry could have been involved in something like that?”

  “No,” she says softly. “And I really think you should leave now.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Back on the plane, I start reading through the FBI file. I call it a file, but in fact it is a three-inches-thick binder with photocopied pages. I take out my Montblanc and jot down the names of the Jane Street Six:

  Ry Strauss

  Arlo Sugarman

  Lake Davies (Jane Dorchester)

  Billy Rowan

  Edie Parker

  Lionel Underwood.

  I stare at the names for a moment. When I do, when I think of these six and the fact that only one (now two, if you include Ry Strauss) has been seen or heard from in forty years, it becomes apparent that PT is probably right about their fate.

  Odds are strong that at least some of them, if not all, are dead.

  Then again, perhaps not. Hadn’t Ry Strauss managed to survive all these years before he was brutally murdered? If Strauss could hide in the center of the largest city in the country, why couldn’t the others stay underground?

  Oddly enough, I am not buying my own rationale.

  One could stay hidden. Two perhaps. But four?

  Unlikely.

  I start with the timeline and write down the following question:

  Who has been seen since the night of the Molotov cocktails?

  Day One, Two, and Three post-attack there were no credible sightings of any of the Jane Street Six. Pretty remarkable when you think of the manhunt. On Day Four, there was finally a break. The FBI received an anonymous tip that Arlo Sugarman was holed up in a brownstone in the Bronx. Alas, we know how that turned out—Special Agent Patrick O’Malley ends up being shot and killed on the stoop. I jot this i
ncident down next to Sugarman’s name because it is his first known sighting. The second sighting, according to what I just learned from Lake Davies, places Arlo Sugarman in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as a student at Oral Roberts University in 1975. I mark that down too.

  That’s it on Sugarman. No third sighting.

  I move on to Billy Rowan. According to the FBI file, Rowan was spotted only once since the attack—two weeks later—by Vanessa Hogan, the mother of one of the victims, Frederick Hogan, a seventeen-year-old from Great Neck, New York. Vanessa Hogan, a devoutly religious woman, had gone on television almost immediately after her son’s death to say she had forgiven those who harmed young Frederick.

  “God must have wanted my Frederick for a higher purpose,” she said at the press conference.

  I hate this sort of justification. I hate it even more when it’s reversed, if you will—when a survivor of a tragedy claims something to the effect that “God spared me because I’m special to Him,” the subtle implication being that God didn’t give a damn about those who perished. In this case, however, Vanessa Hogan was a young widow who had just lost her only child, so perhaps I should cut her some slack.

  I digress.

  According to the FBI report, two weeks after Vanessa Hogan’s press conference, when the intensity of the search had waned just enough, Billy Rowan, who had also been raised in a devoutly religious home, knocked on Hogan’s back door at approximately nine p.m. Vanessa Hogan was home alone in her kitchen at the time. Billy Rowan had purportedly seen her on TV and wanted to apologize in person before he went fully underground.

  Okay, fine. I note this next to Rowan’s name. First and only sighting.

  I move on to the rest. Edie Parker, no sightings. Lionel Underwood, no sightings. And of course, when I was handed the file: Ry Strauss, no sightings.

  I tap my lip with my Montblanc and mull it over. Let’s suppose that they had all successfully stayed underground for all these years. Do I really believe that they never, not once, reached out to family members?

  I do not.

  I scan through the file and jot down the names of close relatives I could potentially question. Ry Strauss had a quasi-famous brother, Saul, a progressive attorney who represents the downtrodden. He’s a television talking head, but then again who isn’t nowadays? Did Ry never contact his brother Saul, even though they lived in the same city for perhaps forty years? It’s worth an ask. Saul Strauss, I know, has been on Hester Crimstein’s news program, ridiculously named Crimstein on Crime. Perhaps Hester could offer an introduction.

  The Strauss parents are deceased. In fact, of the Jane Street Six’s potential twelve parents, only two are still alive—Billy Rowan’s father, Edie Parker’s mother. I write their names down. Next I go through surviving siblings besides Saul Strauss. That adds another nine people, though two of those belong to Lake Davies, so I won’t need them. I add those names to my list. If I have more time or help, I might spread my family tree out—uncles, aunts, cousins—but I doubt that I will.

  There are a lot of names here. I will need help.

  My thoughts naturally gravitate to Myron.

  He is down in Florida, taking care of his parents and helping his wife settle into a new job. I don’t want to take him away from that. Those who know us well would note that I always came through when Myron would engage in similar quixotic quests and ask for my help—that in fact, after all the times I marched into battle for him without question or pause, Myron “owes” me.

  Those folks would be wrong.

  Let me clue you in on the advice Myron’s father, one of the wisest men I know, gave his son and his son’s best man—that would be yours truly—on Myron’s wedding day: “Relationships are never fifty-fifty. Sometimes they are sixty-forty, sometimes eighty-twenty. You’ll be the eighty sometimes, you’ll be the twenty others. The key is to accept and be okay with that.”

  I believe this simple wisdom is true for all great relationships, not just marriages, so if you add it up, how my friendship with Myron has improved and enhanced my life, no, Myron owes me nothing.

  My phone pings a reminder that I have not yet responded to my rendezvous app. I doubt there will be time tonight, but it would be rude to not reply. When I click the notification and scan the request, my eyes widen. I quickly change my mind and set up a meet for eight p.m. tonight.

  Let me explain why.

  The rendezvous app has a rather unusual “bio” page. No, it’s not like the dating apps where you spew out exaggerated nonsense about how you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. This page starts about akin to ratings one might give an Uber, but because most members use the app on rare occasions (unlike yours truly), the developers have supplemented personal ratings with what could crudely be called an appearance ranking. It’s a far more complicated algorithm than that, scoring in many specific physical fields and on many levels. One of the app rules states that if you ask another client about your ranking—or if that client tells you—you are both immediately forced to relinquish your membership. I, for example, do not know what my rankings are.

  I am confident that they are high. No need for false modesty, is there?

  To give you an idea, Bitsy Cabot’s aggregate ranking was an accurate 7.8 out of ten. The lowest I would go for is a 6.5. Well, okay, once I went with a 6.0, but nothing else was available. The app’s scoring is very tough. A six on this app would be considered at least an eight anywhere else.

  The highest ranking I’ve seen on the app? I was once with a 9.1. She’d been a renowned supermodel before she married a famous rock star. You know her name. That was the only woman above a nine I’d ever seen.

  The woman who had currently pinged me for a rendezvous?

  Her ranking was a 9.85.

  There is no way I was passing that up.

  PT calls me. “How did it go with Lake Davies?”

  I start with the obvious: “She lied about Strauss being dead.” I then fill him in on the rest of our conversation.

  “So what’s your next step?”

  “Go to Malachy’s Pub.”

  “Forty years later?”

  “Yes.”

  “Long shot.”

  “Is there any other kind?” I counter.

  “What else?”

  “I have compiled a list of people I may want to interrogate. I need your people to get me current addresses.”

  “Email me the list.”

  I know how PT works. He gets the information before he gives the information. Now that I’ve done my part, I prompt him: “Anything new on your end?”

  “We got week-old CCTV footage from the Beresford. We think it’s from the day of the murder but…”

  I wait.

  “We don’t know how helpful it will be,” he says.

  “Is the killer on it?”

  “Likely, yeah. But we can’t really see much.”

  “I’d like to view it.”

  “I can email you a link in an hour.”

  I mull this over for a moment. “I’d rather stop by the Beresford and have one of the doormen show it to me.”

  “I’ll set it up.”

  “I will go to Malachy’s first.”

  “One more thing, Win.”

  I wait.

  “We can’t keep the ID quiet any longer. Tomorrow morning, the Director is going to announce the body belongs to Ry Strauss.”

  * * *

  “Ain’t you a good-looking fella?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I am.”

  Kathleen, the longtime barmaid at Malachy’s, cackles a half laugh, half cigarette-cough at that one. She has a rye (I mean that in two ways) smile and yellow (as opposed to blonde) hair. Kathleen is comfortably north of sixty years old, but she wears it with confidence and an old-world sultry appeal that some might describe as burlesque. She is buxom and curvy and soft. I like Kathleen immediately, but I recognize that it is her occupation to be liked.

  “If I was a little younger…” Kathleen begins.r />
  “Or if I were a little luckier,” I counter.

  “Oh, stop.”

  I arch an eyebrow. It’s one of my trademark moves. “Don’t sell yourself short, Kathleen. The night is young.”

  “You’re being fresh.” She playfully slaps me with a dishrag last laundered during the Eisenhower administration. “Charming. Good-looking as hell. But fresh.”

  On the stool to my right, Frankie Boy, who is closer to eighty, wears a tweed flat cap. Thick tufts of hair jut out of his ears like Troll dolls turned on their side. His nose couldn’t be more bulbous without cosmetic surgery. I have been to Malachy’s perhaps five times prior to tonight. Frankie Boy is always at this stool.

  “Buy you a drink?” I say to him.

  “Okay,” Frankie slurs, “but just for the record, I don’t think you’re that good-looking.”

  “Sure, you do,” I say.

  “Yeah, maybe, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna have sex with you.”

  I sigh. “Dreams die hard in here.”

  He likes that.

  As I said before, Malachy’s is a legit dive bar—poor lighting, stained (and I mean that in two ways) wood paneling, dead flies in the light fixtures, patrons so regular that it’s sometimes hard to see where the stool ends and their butts begin. A sign above the bar reads, LIFE IS GOOD. SO IS BEER. Wisdom. Regulars blend well with the newcomers, and pretty much anything goes but pretension. There are two televisions, one set up at either end of the bar. The New York Yankees are losing on one, the New York Rangers are losing on the other. No one in Malachy’s seems to be too invested in either.

  The menu is standard pub fare. Frankie Boy insists I order the chicken wings. Out comes a plate of grease with a smattering of bone. I slide it to him. We chat. Frankie tells me that he is on his fourth wife.

  “I love her so much,” Frankie Boy tells me.

  “Congrats.”

  “’Course, I loved the other three so much too. Still do.” A tear comes to his eye. “That’s my problem. I fall hard. Then I come in here to forget. Do you know what I’m saying?”