She could tell he was staring at the Crate and Barrel lamp on the credenza against the long wall. Here, too, he lightly ran gloved fingers along the overhanging undersides of the desk, the side table, the credenza. When he bent slowly to look up under the lampshade, Val saw his eyebrows shoot up. With great care his right hand felt up inside the lampshade, made a short, fast movement, and returned to view. Between two of his fingers, Bale held up what looked like a small piece of metal, maybe one square inch in diameter. When she opened her hands helplessly at him, he tapped his ear, and she suddenly understood.
It was a bug.
Whoever had broken into her apartment had bugged it.
But why?
Val felt a chill.
Bale gave her a long look with sad, narrowed eyes. She had to look away. But she was aware he had apparently unzipped the thermal lunch bag before she had even met up with him, because now all he had to do was noiselessly draw back the soft lid and set the bug inside the insulated space. Clearly he didn’t want to risk the rasp of the zipper, so he lowered the lid into place, then carried the bag by the bottom. Let’s go, he mouthed at Val, letting her lead the way, barefoot, back through her apartment. While she locked up and slipped on her Keens, he drew out his iPhone, tapped to a playlist, and blasted U2 next to the lunch bag. During the racket, he zipped it up, then stuffed Adrian’s periwinkle blue winter gloves into his pockets.
The two of them rode in silence down to the first floor.
Bale looked preoccupied, carrying the bug removal thermal bag by the handle. All Val felt was tense and hungry, staring at the initials penned into the finish of the sleek metal finish of the elevator. The seductive aroma of Mrs. Dellarosa’s Bolognese sauce receded by the time the door slid open and Bale waited for Val to alight. And she alighted in a way that felt very far from light. At least when she was mucking around up in the Canadian Northwoods looking to sign a writer of space junk thrillers to a publishing contract, running into a black bear was her greatest fear. But once a barge operator told her a bear could pretty much be chased off by banging together a couple of metal pots, she had a plan. And it didn’t involve a slew of professional lock picks, some sophisticated ruse to get by the doorman, diabolically imperceptible care in going through her stuff, and state-of-the-art electronic surveillance equipment.
When they emerged onto the street, Bale took a quick look around, grabbed Val by her upper arm and jerked his head in the direction of Second Avenue, beating the light just as a lurching cab came bearing down on them. There at the corner of 51st and Second was a half-full trash can. With no hesitation, Bale dropped Adrian’s thermal lunch bag that was really her daily purse into the can, where it sank out of sight. His hand still on her arm, he gave it a squeeze. “I’m hoping by the time the garbage on Second Avenue gets collected, your intruder will have lost interest in what can only seem like a defective piece of equipment to him. One dead bug.”
Bale steered them in the direction of Morning After eatery two blocks down. “What’s to keep him from coming back and giving it another shot?” asked Val, who realized she truly believed there was nothing she could do to prevent it. In her arsenal, all she had were pots.
Dodging a gray-haired woman in a purple fleece grimly power-walking against the rush hour foot traffic, Bale eased Val into a narrow doorway where all that was left of a millinery store was its sign CHAPEAUX by Posey. “In about half an hour from now, Val, your door’s getting an additional lock that will be impregnable. It will only open to a secure ID, and the password will change daily until we get this guy, okay?”
They were standing so close together she felt his breath on her face. “You called a locksmith?”
A tight shake of his head. “Not a locksmith. Are you hungry?”
“Not a locksmith,” she went on, “then who? Who does that kind of work, Antony?”
“A friend. Someone I know from…other file folders in my life. Let’s eat.”
“Why did you throw it away?”
“What?”
“The bug. Why did you throw it away? Shouldn’t we have given it to the cops?”
“And what would they have done with it? Trace it? Try to lift prints off it? Not likely. If I wore gloves to prowl around your place now, believe me, he did.” Bale shot her a wry look. “And his fit. And we would have tipped our hand, Val. That little bug would have picked up the hand-off to the cops and any conversation they went on to have about the Yankees’ chances until they either bagged and tagged it—or destroyed it.”
She looked out toward the street, where she guessed everyone else was leading a normal life that probably had very little to do with murder and any desperate attempts to stay one step ahead of a killer. “I see.” Then, she smiled at him, although it felt shaky, like she was losing muscle control in her cheeks. “Really.”
“All our guy knows now about his slick bit of electronic surveillance is that he’s getting nothing for his trouble. It’s not picking anything up.” He took a big breath, and slung an arm around her, and when he pulled her in for a quick hug, her hand landed against his chest. “Believe it or not, Val, we’ve actually bought ourselves some time.”
She gave him a gentle pat and took a step backwards. “I say we eat.” As Bale dropped back to follow her, Val noticed he gave the street a quick scan. It struck her it was a habit. She’d noticed it before, every time they had been in each other’s company since the day after Adrian’s murder. For a Carmelite lay brother in an order where, for all she knew, prayer was their riskiest business, there was a kind of hyper-alertness to Bale that she was beginning to suspect had nothing to do with either caffeine or general street smarts. Or even, she thought, catching herself up short, with Adrian’s violent death. It was simply the way Bale was. Or simply the way…he had been trained. What else was going on at Burnham Norton Abbey that Adrian had forgotten to mention in all her attempts to bring together her brother and her best friend?
They agreed over Greek omelettes and house salads that she would call the cops about the break-in as soon as they were finished. “Call Cleary directly,” he advised, “because it’ll be in her wheelhouse soon enough anyway.” In the middle of his doppio, Bale took a call from the friend—whose voice was clearly female—who was going to render Val’s apartment door impassable to mere mortals. He listened noncommittally to what she was telling him, barked a quick thanks, and ended the call. Dabbing a napkin to his lips, he explained to Val that apparently something had come up and his friend couldn’t get to the building to install the new security until three thirty or thereabouts.
Val’s eyes widened. “In the morning?”
“Right. Have you got someplace to stay tonight?”
With a quick nod, she pulled out her phone and called Aunt Greta while Bale watched her inscrutably. What followed was her usually cool aunt fumbling for the phone and sounding like Val had caught her making her way uptown through the crush of tourists meandering around Times Square. “Hello? Hello?” Another fumble.
“Hey, it’s me,” said Val.
“I know.”
“Where are you?”
“At my place.”
Val was surprised. “You sound out of breath.”
“Oh, dinner, you know the drill.” Greta let out a cry. “Goddamn stuffed mushroom caps. The devil’s own appetizer, I swear. What’s up, darling?”
Val rolled her eyes at Bale. “Can I stay with you tonight?”
To whatever alarm mushroom caps were creating on E. 65th Street, Greta sprang at the question. “Why? What’s happened?”
Val shot Bale a quick look—can I tell her?—and he gave her a slow shake of his head. Not here, he mouthed at her. “Trouble at home,” was what she settled for. “I’ll tell you when I see you,” she added. Bale opened his hands like that’d do.
“Hell, honey, I can’t,” cried her aunt. “I’ve got a friend coming over.”
Hence the mushroom caps. Val should have guessed. Followed by her excellent veal marsala and potatoes mashed with shallots and chervil. “I can sleep on the couch.” She shot Bale a smile. “Even arrive long after she’s left. Who is it? Veronica?” She speared the last little morsel of feta. The last time her aunt’s friend Veronica had come over, the three of them had sat up late polishing off a fine Barbaresco until Veronica caught a cab uptown to her apartment in Morningside Heights.
“It’s not Veronica, Val.” Greta’s voice dropped. “It’s a different friend.” Her voice sounded humorous. “And he won’t be going home after we finish off the wine. At least,” she went on, with sounds of scraping a baking pan in the background, “not if I have anything to say about it.”
Val couldn’t tell whether she felt more shocked at her aunt or herself for failing to see the possibility that the aunt who had raised her, years after the longstanding beau Ben Biderman had upped and died on her, actually still had a sex life. Val won. She herself was the more shocked of the two of them. “Ah,” was all she could say in what she hoped was a casual way.
“You’ll be okay?”
“Of course.” The lie came out of her high and easy.
“A burst pipe? Something like that?”
“A malfunction.” Whatever that meant. Although at the moment, Val felt like she was referring to herself. “Talk tomorrow?”
The devil’s own appetizer was forgotten. “We’re going together to the Morgan Library.” Greta was suddenly all business. “Tell me you remember.”
What with bugs and violations of all sorts and—well, the company of Bale—Val had forgotten the appointment over lunch the next day with Greta and the Hunter College professor who had called in the Artifact Authentication Agency. “I remember, Auntie. Love you. See you tomorrow. Have fun tonight,” she added as she hung up, wondering why she included the company of Antony Bale in with everything else she found unsettling.
“Homeless?” Bale leaned back.
She set down her phone. “I’ll figure something out.” She glanced at the scallop-shell Key West tote she had grabbed on her flight from her home. At least she had gotten James Killian out of the way until the next time he ambled into her office world. One less disturbance in a time of heightened—tension. Bale was leaning on one hip and drawing out his billfold. “No, no.” She caught his other hand where it rested on the table. “This one’s on me,” she said. “I insist. You came to my aid, you arranged for a—” she blinked at him, trying to find the word “—a friend to make my home a fortress.” It sounded very commonplace…
The hand she had caught turned very easily in her own, which he held—and stared at—long enough not to mistake it for just a gesture. She sat very still. “My pleasure,” was all he said, then released her hand as he opened the billfold. “Thanks for dinner,” he added, drawing out a hard plastic card he set on the table. Two fingers pushed the card over to Val. “Take it.”
“What is it?”
“Key card to my room at the Iroquois.”
“But—” she started.
He smiled. “I’ll stay at Adrian’s tonight,” he said easily. “I could use the time there. Really. It’s no problem. There’s the memorial service day after tomorrow at the Coleman-Witt, and I’ve been looking through old photos. And, of course,” he said with some energy, “I’m working my way through everything, looking for…something.” He was slipping his billfold back into his pocket when the waiter placed a check on the table.
Val picked up the check, and then reached for the key card. “I accept your offer,” she said. She even managed to keep the primness out of her voice. “I’d like a shot at Adrian’s too, Antony. If you don’t mind. I might find something—” She didn’t quite like what she was implying.
“That I might overlook?”
She shrugged. “Or not understand.”
“You’re right. But let’s talk about it tomorrow. You should get some sleep.” He squeezed her hand—that one felt more like a gesture—and she could see in his face that what he wasn’t telling her was how worried he was. Behind the smile, there it was. And it had something to do with her. Val might be able to interpret some of Adrian’s crazy notes on mementoes from concerts and dance clubs, but Bale understood some kind of grim mechanics to the world that made it smart to worry. When it came right down to it, she thought, strangely without fear as they slid out of the booth to head into the Manhattan night, he understood this killer in a familiar way. Not Bale’s first intruder. Not his first killer. Only she didn’t know why.
All she knew for sure as he turned to leave was that she was grateful for his kindness. She resolved to do whatever she could to lessen the worry. She grabbed his lapel about as awkwardly as she had ever been with a man. Pushing right past his quizzical look, she stepped up and kissed his cheek, registering citrus and scruff. “Thank you,” she said quietly, her hand flopping by some way of explanation no more articulate than the rest of her.
Very slowly Bale’s thumb and forefinger lifted the strand of Val’s hair that always, by the end of every workday, jumped the off-center part and hung over her cheek, out of place. He guided the strand back to where it belonged, smoothing it into place with the backs of his fingers. Val stood very still, and panic over the break-in felt very far away. “Let’s head back across town. I’ll walk you to the hotel. Then I’ll catch a cab.”
She nodded, then added her own good sense to the night she could swear had gotten warmer. “I’ll call Cleary. But first,” Val found herself saying, “let’s duck into BXL East and I’ll buy you a drink.”
Bale scratched his face. “When will all this gratitude end?”
“Is it getting in the way?”
“Of what?” Bale challenged her.
Her breath caught. She let the challenge sit there. No smart answer was quite good enough. She had come up against something else that mattered, besides Adrian both alive and dead, and the excellent books she could bring out into the world. That was all, in that moment, as the two of them walked companionably around the corner and headed up 51st Street toward the Iroquois Hotel. Nothing felt like the truth—because she didn’t know yet the shape and color of it. “I take it you’ll have a drink with me.”
“I will.”
She linked arms with him, her raffia tote holding a change of clothes and—she was pretty sure—a toothbrush, bumped against their hips. “You can tell me about monastery life.”
“That I can do. And what will you tell me about?”
“Oh, so it’s got to be an even exchange.”
“Nothing less,” he said with an ambiguous smile. “Or I’m not interested.”
“Let’s see,” Val breathed, and repeated the problem. “What will I tell you about?” He couldn’t possibly know how difficult the question was. Mostly, in her experience, males got the spray off the skates of her life. Light, quick, easy, gone. There were some, not many, who got to a few of the tender places that had nothing to do with sex. Lines from Dylan Thomas. The bleak beauty of Edward Hopper. The memory of her mother, Claire Bistritz Cameron, chasing her playfully around the dining room table when she was all of three, before Valjean even knew the world could break up into fuselage and blasted wings and scattered body parts over a town in Scotland.
But even these things, shared, were carefully managed by Val. They looked more like intimacies than they really were. They simply passed as revelations. Because she had chosen and groomed them for limited distribution. Oh, yes. Even the memory of her mother. Even with Adrian, who never even knew the difference, because the two of them together had created a friendship that still at thirty-five had all the quippy swagger of their college days. And as she stood there in the nightfall that might very well be limited to where they stood outside the BXL East bar, Val studied the brother she had never wanted to meet.
He asked her quietly, “What will
you tell me about?”
The answer, when it came, was easier than she had ever believed it could be. “Anything you like.”
21
It was late.
Animus was sitting on the window seat in his study on the second floor of the brownstone attached to the Robus Christi chapel. Millard had raised the window because his employer suddenly felt too weak, and the midnight sounds on Gramercy Park West drifted up to him. With what was left of his favorite port, he silently toasted the month of April and his life’s work…and his disease. Lymphoma. Every consonant and every vowel of that word was beautiful and had spared him from old age. Had he lived to eighty-nine, like his parents, look at how many, many more years it would have taken his beloved Robus Christi to fulfill the prophecy of what he had come to think of as a sacred fragment.
Instead, now, at fifty-one, lymphoma had centered him, the architect of the organization, at precisely the perfect time in the life of man: still sharp enough to plan, still strong enough to act. The cancer had poised him for what he knew would be coming shortly, at just the right possible moment, between the last of life and what had always been experienced as death. He, Animus, truly spirit, was poised to change man’s experience of this forever. Of this exquisite moment, none of the others knew anything, not even Alaric or Millard.
It had to be that way.
It was Millard’s night off, so Animus had poured his port himself. From where he sat, leaning against the bay window, he closed his eyes and let the distant sirens and hurrying steps and gay laughter seep into his head like well-learned arpeggios. This room across from his bedroom that he kept as his study held the random furnishings he had found especially beautiful, with no thought of design. A nineteenth-century scrivener’s table. A Victorian stuffed egret. A Danish modern settee in mustard yellow. A fifties pinball machine from a roadhouse along Route 66. A chandelier by the glass artist Chihuly. A Victrola once owned by the famous tenor Beniamino Gigli. Even a lamp from IKEA. First issues of National Geographic, first editions of the work of Willa Cather, first vinyl pressings of the earliest work of Thelonius Monk. And what appeared to be an old wooden Bible box that held the loose pages in Spanish that, when he was still at the Morgan Library, he had the prescience to Xerox against the rules.
A Killer's Guide to Good Works Page 15