WIN

by Coben, Harlan

  My grandmother ran the show.

  I wish I could talk to her. She would know what to do. Grandmama is still alive, but she is ninety-eight and hasn’t spoken a word in a year. Still, I know where the answer lies—in the wine cellar.

  As I start down the steps, I hear Nigel ask, “Where are you going?”

  “You know where.”

  “I think it’s best if you leave this alone, Win.”

  “Yes, I keep hearing that.”

  “Yet you don’t listen.”

  I shrug and quote Myron: “Love me for all my faults.”

  Lockwood Manor’s wine cellar is modeled on the original one at the Château Smith Haut Lafitte. The walls are stone, the ceiling arched. There are bottles and wooden barrels and oak shelves. The room is always kept at 56 degrees Fahrenheit and 60 percent relative humidity.

  I head past the collection, some bottles worth thousands of dollars. In the far right-hand corner, I find a magnum of Krug Clos d’Ambonnay on the top shelf and pull it. A door opens, and I enter the back cellar. Yes, it is a secret room, if you will, and this cloak-and-dagger may seem a tad much, I suppose, but I think my grandmother just wanted a decent workspace away from prying eyes, yet still close to the grape.

  All four walls are lined with six-foot-high file cabinets.

  I am not intimidated by the sheer amount of paperwork. I am, in fact, at home here. One reason Myron and I make such a good team is that he is a big-picture guy whilst I am more detail oriented. He is a dreamer. I am a realist. He has an uncanny way of seeing the end game. I am more of a plodder. I don’t take shortcuts. I do the grunt work. A huge part of my occupation involves looking at the minute details of various corporations with a fine eye, to study every facet of a business, to understand their pros and cons, their ins and outs, before making a buy or sell recommendation.

  Despite what some masters of the universe claim, you can’t do that on instinct.

  I am thus big on due diligence.

  Much of my family, especially my dear Grandmama, is the same. She has kept meticulous records on our family. Here, in her favorite sanctum, is every birth certificate, old passports, family trees, schedulers, calendars, bank statements, diaries, financial records, etc., dating back to 1958. There is a square table in the middle of the room with four chairs, legal pads, and sharpened Ticonderoga pencils. I start going through the files. I take fastidious notes. So much of this is in Grandmama’s handwriting, and while I’m not a sentimental fellow—I don’t display family photographs and you will rarely hear me waxing nostalgic—there is something so personal about penmanship, especially hers, the purity and consistency in her cursive, the beauty and the lost art and the individualism, that I cannot help but feel her presence.

  I dig into my family’s past. I get lost in it. My mind wants to jump to conclusions, but I resist the temptation. Again, that would be Myron’s forte—spontaneous, disorganized, sloppy, brilliant. He can keep dozens of ideas in his head. I cannot. I slow myself. I need to have backing documentation. I need to see it visually, on the page, before it makes sense. I need a timetable and a map.

  Still, as the hours pass, the pieces start coming together.

  I hear footsteps behind me. I look up as Cousin Patricia steps into the room. “Nigel said you’d be down here.”

  “And so I am.”

  “Shouldn’t you be resting?”

  “No.”

  “You’re okay then?”

  “Yes, fine, can we move on now?”

  “Sheesh, I was just being polite.”

  “Which you know I detest,” I say. Then I ask, “Do you know how old your mother is?”

  Patricia makes a face. “Come again?”

  “When your parents came back from Brazil, the family didn’t believe that Aline was, as he claimed, twenty. Nigel’s father hired a detective firm in Fortaleza. Their best guess is that she was fourteen or fifteen.”

  Patricia just stands there.

  “Did you know?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  I don’t know whether that surprises me or not.

  “It was the seventies, Win.”

  The same defense as my father. Interesting to hear it from his niece. “I’m not interested in judging your father. I don’t care right now about the legality or ethics or morality.”

  “What are you interested in?”

  “Getting the answers.”

  “What answers?”

  “Who stole the paintings. Who killed your father. Who killed Ry Strauss. Who harmed you and the other girls.”

  “Why?”

  It is an interesting question. My first thought is about PT and his five decades of guilt over his dead partner. “I promised a friend.”

  Patricia’s face displays skepticism. In truth, I don’t blame her for that. My answer sounds hollow in my own ears. I try again.

  “It’s a wrong that needs to be righted,” I say.

  “And you think the answers will do that?”

  “Will do what?”

  “Right the wrong?”

  It’s a fair point. “We will find out, won’t we?”

  Cousin Patricia tucks her hair behind an ear and starts toward me. “Show me what you have.”

  * * *

  Perhaps I should warn Cousin Patricia that she will not like what I have to say.

  Alas, no.

  I would rather get her unguarded, unfiltered reaction. So I dive straight into the breakdown.

  “Your father matriculated to Haverford College in September of 1971.”

  She arches an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

  “What?”

  “You’re using the word ‘matriculated’ in casual conversation?”

  I have to smile. “My most heartfelt apologies,” I say. “Do you know your father originally attended Haverford?”

  “I do. Like your father and their father and their father before them for however far we go back. So what? My father didn’t want to go, but he didn’t feel as though he had a choice. That’s why he transferred.”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “That’s not why he transferred.”

  I produce the honor code report as well as the covering letter signed by the Dean’s Disciplinary Panel. “These are dated January 16, 1972—the beginning of your father’s second semester of his freshman year.”

  We are seated at the square table in the center of the room. Her purse is on the floor. Patricia reaches down and pulls out a pair of reading glasses. I wait for her to skim through the report.

  “It’s pretty vague,” she says.

  “Intentionally,” I say. “Apparently your father took inappropriate photographs of the underage daughter of his biology professor named Gary Roberts.” I hand her a canceled check. “On January 22, Professor Roberts deposited this check, made out from one of our shell companies, to his bank account.”

  She reads it. “Ten grand?”

  I say nothing.

  “Pretty cheap.”

  “It was the early seventies.”

  “Still.”

  “And I’m not sure he had a choice. Scandals like this never saw the light of day. If it did, Professor Roberts was probably convinced that his young daughter would be the one blamed and made worse for wear.”

  Patricia reads the letter again. “Do you have a photograph of her?”

  “Of the daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. Why?”

  “Dad liked young women,” she says. “Girls even.”

  “Yes.”

  “But there is a difference between a physically mature fifteen-year-old and, say, a seven-year-old.”

  I stay silent. Patricia has asked me no question, so I see no reason to speak.

  “I mean,” she continues, “sorry to sound anti-me-too and I’m not defending him, but have you seen photographs of my mother at their wedding?”

  “I have.”

  “She’s…my mother was curvy.”

&n
bsp; I wait.

  “She was built, right? What I’m saying is, I don’t think my father was a pedophiliac or anything.”

  “You prefer ephebophilia,” I say.

  “I’m not sure what that is.”

  “Mid-to-late adolescents,” I say.

  “Maybe.”

  “Patricia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s not get bogged down in definitions right now. It will only cloud the issue. He’s dead. I see no reason to pursue his punishment at this moment.”

  She nods, sits back, and lets loose a deep breath. “Go on then.”

  I look down at my notes. “There isn’t much mention of your father for the next few months in any of the diaries I’ve located so far, but my grandfather kept all of his scorecards from his rounds of golf.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not.”

  “He saved scorecards?”

  “He did.”

  “So I assume my father’s name is on some?”

  “Yes. He played quite a bit starting in April. With my father, our grandfather, family members. I’m sure he played with his friends too, but of course, I wouldn’t have those cards.”

  “What was his handicap?”

  “Pardon?”

  “I’m trying to lighten the mood, Win. What does that prove?”

  “That he was in Philadelphia throughout the summer. Or at least, he golfed here. Then according to the calendar, a Lockwood staff member drove Aldrich to Lipton Hall, his residence housing on Washington Square, on September 3, 1972.”

  “Where he started at NYU.”

  “Yes.”

  “So then what?”

  “For the most part, it seems everything is calm for a while. I need to go through the files more thoroughly, but as of now, nothing major pops out until your father arrives in São Paolo on April 14, 1973.”

  I show her the relevant stamp from Brazil in his old passport.

  “Wait. Grandmama kept his old passport?”

  “All of our old passports, yes.”

  Patricia shakes her head in disbelief. She turns to the photograph in the front and stares down at the image of her father. The passport was issued in 1971, when her father was nineteen years old. Her head tilts to the side as she stares at the black-and-white headshot. Her fingertip gently brushes her father’s face. Aldrich was a handsome man. Most Lockwood men are.

  “Dad told me he stayed in South America for three years,” she says in a wistful voice.

  “That seems right,” I say. “If you page through the passport, you’ll see that he traveled to Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Venezuela.”

  “It changed him,” she says.

  This too is not a question, so I see no reason to comment.

  “He did good work down there. He founded a school.”

  “Seems he did, yes. According to the passport, he didn’t return to the United States until December 18, 1976.”

  “December?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was told earlier.”

  “Of course you were.”

  “So my mother was pregnant with me,” Patricia says.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I didn’t. But it doesn’t make a difference.” Patricia sighs and leans back in her chair. “Is there a point to all this, Win?”

  “There is.”

  “Because we are now up to 1976. The paintings were stolen from Haverford in, what, the mid-1990s? I still don’t see any connection here.”

  “I do.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The key is your father’s departure from New York City to São Paolo.”

  “What about it?”

  “Your father was still a student at New York University. He hadn’t graduated. He seemed to be doing well enough. But suddenly, in April of that year, with the end of the semester less than two months away, he chose to travel on his overseas mission. I find that odd, don’t you?”

  She shrugs. “Dad was rich, impulsive. Maybe he wasn’t doing great that semester. Maybe he just wanted out.”

  “Perhaps,” I say.

  “But?”

  “But he departed April 14, 1973.”

  “So?”

  I have the old newspaper article on my phone. Even I feel a chill when I bring it up to show her. “So the Jane Street Six murders occurred two days earlier, on April 12, 1973.”

  * * *

  Patricia is up and pacing. “I don’t get what you’re saying here, Win.”

  She does. I wait.

  “It could be a coincidence.”

  I don’t make a face. I don’t frown. I just wait.

  “Say something, Win.”

  “It can’t be a coincidence.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Your father runs off to Brazil almost immediately after the Jane Street Six murders go down. Twenty years later, valuable paintings of ours are stolen and end up in the hands of the leader of the Jane Street Six. Care for more? Fine. At Ry Strauss’s murder scene, we find the suitcase you were made to pack when you were kidnapped after your father’s murder. Oh, the icing: Nigel set up a shell account to purchase Ry Strauss’s apartment—the murder scene—and to take care of his maintenance payments. Enough?”

  Patricia stands and crosses the room. “So what are you saying? My father was part of the Jane Street Six?”

  “I don’t know. Right now, I’m still presenting the facts.”

  “Like what else?”

  “I met a barmaid who works in a place called Malachy’s. She had a relationship with Ry Strauss. She told me that Ry would often visit Philadelphia.”

  “So if I’m reading you right, you think my father was part of the Jane Street Six. He escaped. Our family paid off Ry Strauss to keep quiet, I guess, about his role. Did we pay off the others?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t you tell me you talked to one? Lake something.”

  “Lake Davies.”

  “Wouldn’t she know?”

  “She might, but I’m not sure she would tell me, especially if she’s been receiving payments. She also claims the women of Jane Street were low-level, so she may not know.”

  “But my father is dead,” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “So why would anyone still be paying to keep his reputation intact?”

  Now I do make a face. “You just entered the gates of Lockwood Manor. Do you really need to ask that?”

  She considers that. “Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say my father was somehow part of the Jane Street Six.”

  I hadn’t said or even concluded that yet, but I let it go for now.

  “What does that have to do with stealing the Vermeer and Picasso all those years later? What does it have to do with my father’s murder or…” Patricia stops. “Or what happened to me?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit.

  “Win?”

  “Yes?”

  “Maybe we know enough now.”

  “Come again?”

  “I’ve built this charity on our family story. A large part of that is my father spending time helping the poor in South America and my desire to carry on his legacy. Suppose it comes out that the story is built on lies.”

  I think about that. She makes an excellent point. Suppose what I find ends up being damaging to the Lockwood name and, more specifically, Patricia’s worthwhile cause.

  “Win?”

  “It’s better if we are the ones to unearth the truth,” I tell her.

  “Why?”

  “Because if it’s bad,” I say, “we can always bury it again.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Kabir hops off the helicopter, keeping one hand atop his turban so the slowing rotors don’t blow it off his head. He wears a black silk shirt, a green puffy down vest, worn blue jeans, and bright-white throwback Keds. I look behind me and up, and I see my father at his window, predictably frowning down at what he sees as a foreign interloper.

  I wave
Kabir toward me and lead him down through the wine cellar to Grandmama’s back room. When we arrive, Kabir takes it all in, nods, and says, “Bitchin’.”

  “Indeed.”

  When the press finally learned that Ry Strauss had been the murder victim found with the stolen Vermeer, the story, as you might imagine, generated enormous headlines. In the past, those headlines would have lasted for days, weeks, even months. Not today. Today our attention span is that of a child receiving a new toy. We play with it intensely for a day, maybe two, and then we grow bored and see another new toy and throw this one under the bed and forget all about it.

  I spent most of the Ry Strauss media frenzy in the hospital. In the end, every news story, and yes, I’m moving if not mixing my metaphors, is a burning fire—if you don’t feed it a new log, it dies out. So far, there was nothing new. A stolen painting, the Jane Street Six, a murder—all delicious in their own right and together forming an intoxicating brew—but that was eleven days ago.

  The media had not yet learned about the suitcase with my initials found at the scene or the case’s links to Cousin Patricia and the Hut of Horrors. That is good, in my view. That makes my investigation somewhat easier to navigate now.

  Kabir carefully lays the file folders out on Grandmama’s old table. The key to hiring a top assistant and working cooperatively is having a shared vision. Kabir understands that I am visual and that I like facts and evidence displayed in organized patterns. The folders are all the same size (legal, nine inches by fourteen) and the same color (bright yellow). His neat handwriting is on the tab of each.

  “The Jane Street Six,” Kabir says.

  The six folders are in a neat row. I read the names in the tab from left to right: Lake Davies, Edie Parker, Billy Rowan, Ry Strauss, Arlo Sugarman, Lionel Underwood. Alphabetical order. To answer your question, I am not OCD, but much like the Kinsey Scale, I believe that we are all more on a spectrum than we care to admit.

  “Okay if I start?” Kabir asks.

  “Please.”

  “We know the fate of Ry Strauss and Lake Davies,” he says, sweeping the two files away, leaving only four. “So let me update you on the others.”