WIN

by Coben, Harlan

  I do, however, see movement.

  I could perhaps open my eyes a bit wider, but I don’t want whoever is entering to know that I’m awake.

  Still, I make out a man. My first thought is one that makes my pulse spike.

  It’s Trey Lyons.

  But I can see now that this man is too large. He stays in the doorway. I can feel his eyes on me. I consider my next move.

  The call button.

  Every hospital room has one, of course, but being that I am not good about asking for help, I had paid little heed when the nurse explained it all to me. Hadn’t she wrapped the cord about the bed railing? Yes. Had that been on my left or right?

  Left.

  With my body still under the covers, I try to snake my left hand toward the call button without being seen.

  A male voice says, “Don’t do that, Win.”

  So much for playing possum. I open my eyes all the way now. My vision is still murky, and the lights are low, but I can see the big man—and he’s very big, I see now—standing by the door. I make out a long beard and a cap of some kind atop his head. Another man—swept-back gray hair, expensive suit—steps fully into the room. He is the one who warned me off the call button. He nods at the big guy. The big guy steps out of the room and closes the door behind him. Swept Back grabs a chair and pulls it up to me.

  “You know who I am?” he asks me.

  “The Tooth Fairy?”

  It’s not my best line, but Gray Hair still smiles. “My name is Leo Staunch.”

  I had guessed that.

  “My men were following you.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You picked up the tail fast.”

  “Amateurish move,” I reply. “Almost insulting.”

  “My apologies,” Staunch says. “What’s your involvement with Ry Strauss?”

  “He had my painting.”

  “Yeah, we heard. What else?”

  “That’s it,” I say.

  “So all your snooping. It’s just about an art heist?”

  “It’s just about an art heist,” I repeat. “Also: Did you just use the word ‘snooping’?”

  He smiles, leans closer to me. “We all know your rep,” he whispers.

  “Do tell.”

  “People describe you as crazy, dangerous, a psycho.”

  “Nothing about my natural good looks or supernatural charisma?”

  I realize my rather feeble attempts at humor may seem out of place. If you think these lines are cringeworthy, you really must meet Myron. But they do serve a purpose. You never show fear. Not ever. My reputation, which I’ve carefully cultivated, is to appear unhinged. That’s intentional. Cracking wise during moments like this lets your opposition know that you will not be easily intimidated.

  Staunch pulls the chair a little closer. “You’re looking for Arlo Sugarman, aren’t you?”

  I don’t answer. Instead I ask, “Did you kill Ry Strauss?”

  And he predictably replies: “I’m the one asking questions.”

  “Can’t we both?”

  Staunch likes that one, though Lord knows why. “I had nothing to do with Ry Strauss’s murder, though I can’t say I’m sorry.”

  I try to read his face. I can’t.

  Staunch says, “You know they murdered my sister, right?”

  “I do, yes.”

  “So where is Arlo Sugarman?”

  “Why?” I ask.

  His eyes turn black. “You know why.”

  “And yet,” I continue, “you want me to believe you had nothing to do with Ry Strauss?”

  “Didn’t you just tell me this is only about an art heist to you?”

  “I did, yes.”

  Leo Staunch turns both palms to the sky and shrugs. “Then you don’t give a shit who killed Strauss, do you?”

  Staunch has me there.

  We sit in silence for a moment. In the distance, I can hear a beeping noise. I wonder how they got in, but I imagine hospital security is nothing for a man like Leo Staunch.

  When he speaks again, I can hear the anguish in his voice. “She was my only sister. You get that?”

  I wait.

  “Sophia, she had her whole life in front of her. And then, poof, gone. Our poor mother, happiest woman you ever met before that day, she cried every day for the rest of her life. Every. Single. Day. For thirty years. When Mom finally died, all everybody kept saying at the funeral was, ‘At least, she’s with her Sophia again.’” Staunch looks down at me. “You believe in that stuff? That my mom and my sister are reunited somewhere?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Me neither. It’s just the here and now.” He straightens his back and puts his hand on my forearm. “So I’m going to ask you one more time. Do you know where Arlo Sugarman is?”

  “No.”

  The door opens, and the big guy leans his head in. Leo Staunch nods at him and rises. “When you find him, you’ll let me know first.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “Why Sugarman?” I ask. “What about the others?”

  Leo Staunch moves to the door. “Like I said before, I know your rep. If we go to war, you’ll probably take a few of my men down. But I don’t care about the casualties. You don’t want to cross me, Win. The price will be too high.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Three days later, I am transported by helicopter to Lockwood Manor.

  I am better, of course, but I recognize that I am nowhere near one hundred percent. I would estimate that I am working somewhere between sixty-five and seventy percent capacity, and modesty prevents me from saying that I, at sixty-five percent, am still a potent force.

  Nigel Duncan greets me by saying, “You look better than I thought.”

  “Charmed,” I reply, and because I have no more time to waste: “Tell me about the Armitage LLC.”

  We stroll toward the house in silence.

  “Nigel?”

  “I heard you.”

  “And?”

  “And I won’t respond. I won’t even bother responding whether I know what you’re talking about or not.”

  “Loyal to the end.”

  “It isn’t loyalty. It’s legality.”

  “Attorney-client privilege?”

  “Precisely.”

  “No, sorry, that doesn’t play here. You are already listed as the attorney on the holding.”

  “Am I?”

  “Duncan and Associates.”

  “There are probably other firms with that name.”

  “Do you know who benefits from Armitage LLC?” I ask.

  The main house grows ominous as we draw closer. It has always been thus for me, since I was a young child. Every home is its own independent country. I stare at Nigel. I see his mouth is set. His jowls bounce with every step.

  “Ry Strauss,” I say. “It paid his bills.”

  Nigel’s expression does not change.

  “You need to tell me what’s going on,” I say.

  “No, Win, I don’t. Even if I knew—and again I won’t confirm whether I have a clue what you’re talking about—I don’t need to tell you anything.”

  “It could be connected to Uncle Aldrich’s murder. And Cousin Patricia’s abduction. It could give us the answer to the Hut of Horrors. It could save lives.”

  He almost smiles. “Save lives,” he repeats.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re usually not one for hyperbole.”

  “I’m still not.”

  “Ah, Win, I love you. I’ve loved you all your life.” He stops and turns to me for the briefest of moments. “But if you want my advice, I would stay out of this.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Want your advice.”

  Nigel lowers his head, smiles. “You want to right wrongs, Win. But you always seem to leave collateral damage in your wake.”

  “There is collateral damage in everything.”

  “That may be true. It’s why in the end I stick
to the rule of law.”

  “Even if that leads to greater collateral damage?”

  “Even if.”

  “I could press my father on this.”

  “You could, yes.”

  “I assume Windsor Two was the one who set up the shell company.”

  “You can assume what you want, Win.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s on the practice facility.”

  “So he’s feeling well.”

  Nigel doesn’t bite. “I’ve set up the east wing suite for you. We have medical personnel and a physical therapist on call should you need it.” His eyes are moist. “I’m glad you’re okay after your ordeal, but if you insist on keeping this up, one of these days…”

  With that he turns and leaves. I head up to my room and unpack. From the corner window I can see the practice facility. It is for golf—more specifically, the short game herein defined as shots within fifty yards of the hole. There is an oversized green with several cups to practice putting. There is a bunker so as to work on sand shots. The grass around the facility is cut to various lengths to duplicate chips and pitches from a multitude of lies.

  I change into golf khakis and a polo shirt with the famed logo of Merion Golf Club—a wicker basket atop a pin rather than a flag. I will let you in on a secret that most people don’t know. Several of your most exclusive courses sell shirts and paraphernalia to visitors and guests—this is big business—but if the name of the club is written under the logo, it means that you are a tourist. If the name is not there, as it is not on mine, if there is only the logo and no words, that indicates that the wearer is a bona fide club member.

  Class distinctions. They exist everywhere.

  There is a pair of golf shoes in the closet. I slip them on and pad out to where my father is practicing pitch shots from thirty yards out. He turns and smiles as I approach. We don’t bother with hello. This is golf. Words become superfluous. I grab a 60-degree Vokey wedge.

  My father goes first in our endless rounds of Closest to the Cup. In his youth, Dad was a champion golfer. He won the Patterson Cup, Philadelphia’s top amateur prize, when he was only twenty-one. A lot of his game has deteriorated with age, but he still has that feathery touch around the greens. He is using his old Callaway 52-degree pitching wedge. When he pitches, he keeps the ball flight low. The ball lands at the start of the green, follows the break, and curls up within two feet of the cup.

  Merion Golf Club is down the road and around the corner. My father and I would walk there with our carry bags on our shoulder. That was where we played. My best childhood memories all revolve around being on the golf course, mostly with my father. We rarely spoke as we strolled. We didn’t have to. Somehow my father and golf were able to convey life lessons to me—patience, failure, humility, dedication, sportsmanship, practice, small improvements, missteps, mental error, fate, doing everything right and still not getting the desired result—without words.

  You may love the game, but as in life, no one—no one—gets out unscathed.

  It is my turn. I open the clubface all the way so as to hit with a high-lofted trajectory with maximum spin—what is commonly called a flop shot. The ball sails into the sky and lands softly with minimal roll. My shot ends up six inches closer to the cup. My father smiles.

  “Nice.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But the low roller is the higher percentage shot,” he reminds me. “The flop is great on a practice facility. But on the course, when the pressure mounts, that shot is risky.”

  He doesn’t ask me how I am, but then again, I’m not sure that he knows about my recent mishap in the van. Would Nigel have told him? I don’t think so.

  “Try another?” he asks.

  “Sure.” Then I say: “Per our last conversation, I asked Cousin Patricia why you and Uncle Aldrich became estranged.”

  The smile slides off his face. Using his pitching wedge, he scoops another ball forward and lines up for his chip. “What did she tell you?”

  “About his Peeping Tom incident during her Sweet Sixteen.”

  Dad nods a little too slowly. “Tell me exactly what Cousin Patricia told you.”

  I do. We continue to chip. The practice green has six holes, so that he never hits the same shot twice. Dad doesn’t believe in that. “You never hit the same shot twice in a row on the course,” he would tell me. “Why would you do it on the range?”

  “So,” my father says when I finish, “Cousin Patricia told you that Ashley Wright’s father came to see me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Carson Wright has been my friend since we were twelve,” Dad says. “We played in the juniors together.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s an honorable man.”

  I don’t know whether he is or he isn’t, but I say, “Okay,” to keep the conversation flowing.

  “It wasn’t easy for Carson.”

  “What wasn’t?”

  “Coming here. To this house. Telling me the full story.”

  “Which was?”

  “Your uncle did far more than merely peep.” Dad held the follow-through on his next chip, checked his wrist position, and watched the ball roll. “I don’t know what the term for it is now. Pedophilia. Rape. Inappropriate relationship. When it began, Aldrich was forty. Ashley was fifteen. And if you want to defend it—”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, even if you did. People did in those days. ‘You’re sixteen, you’re beautiful, you’re mine.’ ‘Young girl, get out of my mind.’ Songs like that.”

  “So Carson Wright came to you?” I prompt, trying to get him back on track.

  “Yes.”

  “And said?”

  “That a few months before the party, when your uncle wouldn’t return her calls, his daughter Ashley swallowed pills. She had to have her stomach pumped.”

  “Yet she came to the Sweet Sixteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t know?”

  I wait.

  “Normalcy. That was the way it was, Win.”

  “Sweep it under the rug?”

  My father scowls. “I always disdained that analogy. More like you get over it. You bury it so deep no one will ever unearth it.”

  “Except that didn’t work.”

  “Not that night, no.”

  “So what did you do after Carson’s visit?”

  “I confronted Aldrich. The situation turned ugly.”

  “Did he deny it?”

  “He always denied it.”

  “Always?”

  “This wasn’t his first time,” my father says.

  I wait. My father turns to me. He waits. This is a game we’ve both played before.

  “How many others were there?” I ask.

  “I couldn’t give you a count. When a problem arose, we moved him around. That was why he didn’t stay at Haverford like the rest of us.”

  “I thought he chose NYU to be different.”

  “No, your uncle started his collegiate life at Haverford. But there was an incident with a professor’s fourteen-year-old daughter. No sex, but Aldrich took photographs of her scantily clothed. Money was exchanged—”

  “Meaning her father was paid off.”

  “Fine, yes, if you wish to be crude about it. Payments were made, and Aldrich was sent off to New York City. That was one example.”

  “Can you give me another?”

  “Your aunt Aline.”

  “What about her?”

  But I knew already, didn’t I?

  “When Aldrich came back from Brazil with her, he told us she was twenty and a teacher in the school the family founded. We checked. She wasn’t a teacher. She was a student. She wasn’t the first he groomed, just the one he liked best. Our best guess? Aline was fourteen or fifteen when he brought her home—even our investigator couldn’t say for certain.”

  I don’t gasp. I don’t bother with the inane why-didn’t-anyone-report-him li
ne of questioning. We are a powerful family. As my father said, “money was exchanged,” often accompanied by threats both subtle and crude. It was also, as my father pointed out, a different era. That doesn’t excuse it. It puts it in context. There is a difference.

  “So how does the Armitage LLC fit into this?” I ask.

  My father does not do coy well. He is not an actor nor a liar. When he looks genuinely baffled by my question, I am thrown. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “A shell company set up by Nigel.”

  “And you think I set it up?”

  “It stands to reason.”

  “I didn’t.”

  There is no reason to follow this line. If he denies it, he denies it. “When was the last time you saw Uncle Aldrich?”

  “I don’t recall. There was a family function at Merion perhaps six or eight months before his murder. Perhaps then. But we didn’t speak.”

  “How about the night before he was murdered?”

  My father stops in his backswing. I have never seen him do that. Never. Once he is committed to his swing, you’d have to shoot him to stop it.

  “Pardon?”

  “Cousin Patricia says you were at their house the night before he died.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I just told you that I hadn’t seen Aldrich for at least six to eight months before his murder.”

  “So you did.”

  “I would call that a conundrum.”

  “I would as well.”

  My father strolls back to the house. “Good luck with that.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, through his legendary character Sherlock Holmes, said, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

  I am thinking about this quote, even though it is not fully apropos to the situation. Based upon what I am learning—and assuming I believe that my father is telling the truth about not setting up the shell company—the answer as to the creator of Armitage LLC becomes rather obvious.

  My grandparents.

  Sexism has always ruled, of course, but whenever you see a family like ours, a family that has managed to hang on to its power and prestige across generations, the hoary, patronizing chestnut of “Behind every successful man there is a woman” doth usually apply. When my grandfather died, it wasn’t my father who stepped up, except perhaps in a ceremonial manner.