One Got Away

by S. A. Lelchuk

  “I don’t know,” she replied evenly. “Can I?”

  I held her gaze. “I want the amount of money you were being blackmailed for—the same amount you would have paid. Let’s round up to a nice round number. Ten million even.”

  Her face relaxed, a little, but there was something new in her expression, a look that was both more understanding and also, deeper, a note of gentle contempt, as though she now saw something she hadn’t at first recognized. “Greedy,” she said. “Somehow I misjudged you, Nikki.”

  “But you’d give it to me, just the same?”

  “To stay quiet and go away?” She thought for several seconds, then came to a decision. “Very well. It’s yours. Assuming what you said is true and these people will not bother my family anymore, we have an agreement.”

  “Good.” I named several charities and nonprofits. Legal aid firms, domestic shelters, women’s rights groups. The Monterey shelter was one of the names. “We can divide it up between those places,” I said. “I might think of a few others, too.”

  Her voice was mild. “As you wish.”

  “I can’t help but get the sense I disappointed you.”

  “There’s always a moment,” Mrs. Johannessen observed, “when you realize what someone’s price is. To me, the most interesting part of meeting someone is before that moment. Because a price is just a number. It’s people that are interesting to me—not numbers. Maybe part of me didn’t want to learn your price, Nikki, even though I’m very glad I did.”

  I said nothing.

  “No matter.” Her voice grew brisk as she stood. “You do what you like with the money. It’s no concern of mine. As for me, I intend to have dessert.”

  “I wasn’t done. Not quite.”

  She looked down at me. “But I am, Nikki. I am quite done. I admire your tenacity, but I can be pushed only so far by anyone, and you’ve reached that point. I’ll trust you to provide us with the necessary banking details for these places. We’ll wire the money tomorrow.”

  She walked into the dining room.

  I followed.

  Not much had changed in the ten minutes we’d been gone. Ron had a fresh napkin pressed to his nose. That was the only difference I could see. He and Martin were in furious conversation, their voices low and urgent. William lolled in his wheelchair.

  Ron looked up. “I think you broke my nose.” There was hatred in his voice.

  I gave him a big smile. “Finally, we agree on something.”

  Mrs. Johannessen said, “Nikki and I have settled this matter to my satisfaction.” She motioned to the butler. “We’ll take coffee now, and you can show Ms. Griffin out. And I suppose we had better call a physician to come look at Ronald’s poor nose. Get him some Tylenol, in the meantime, too.”

  I didn’t move. “You didn’t give me a chance to finish. There’s something else I want.”

  She barely looked at me. “I should think you’ve asked for—and gotten—quite enough.”

  “I want your son to turn himself in.”

  “What?”

  Mrs. Johannessen pressed her hand against the table hard enough to rattle the glassware as everyone in the room stared at me. I had her attention now. That was for sure.

  “They’re going to find out anyway,” I said. “The whole business—the brothel, the girls, the recordings—it’s all about to come crashing down. You can get ahead of things, if you want. The money I asked for—announce you’re making a major donation, set up a foundation. And come clean about what he did. Your family name can probably get through this if you set an example. I’m sure if you step forward first, voluntarily, prosecutors will offer a good deal—and there’ll be plenty of other headlines, I bet. Or, skulk in the shadows, deny, conceal, bloviate, threaten—and between the courts and the press, your family will be torn to pieces.”

  “Nikki, this is outrageous.” Mrs. Johannessen looked as close to shocked as I could imagine her ever looking. “That would ruin us.”

  “Take the chance. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Come clean about what, exactly?” Martin said.

  I had no idea how much Martin knew or didn’t know, and didn’t care. “Your brother. He decided to dip below the age of consent.”

  Ron threw his napkin down, his eyes glinting with anger. There was dried blood crusted under his nose. “I’ve never done such a thing in my life.”

  “Not you.”

  I pointed a finger.

  “Your other brother. William.”

  * * *

  Everyone except William stared at me. His head lolled like he had fallen asleep. I wasn’t done. “And I’m only the third person in this room to know that.” My finger stayed on William. “He knows, of course.” My finger moved. “And so does his mother.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Mrs. Johannessen asked. “Even if all of these crazy allegations are true, how could William do anything?”

  I said, “Play dumb all you want. He’s on a videotape with a teenager. It’s time stamped. That was before his accident, of course. Then, after the blackmail began, William had the bad luck to be on the wrong end of that hit-and-run. Someone decided a smart move would be for him to play possum, pretend brain damage, until you all figured out how much trouble he was in. Like that mob boss, Vincent Gigante—people don’t like to convict crazy.” I addressed William directly. “You knew there was a chance the whole thing would leak. If worse came to worst and you did end up in a courtroom, no jury would ever convict you. Not babbling and drooling in a wheelchair.”

  William’s eyes showed no comprehension, so I kept going. “The best part? Once things were settled you could suddenly get better. That’s the thing with brain injuries. No one really understands them. And hinting to anyone poking around that it was Ron was a nice touch—because he does seem the type, doesn’t he, especially with the Princeton thing in his background?”

  Ron’s teeth were clenched. “Are you implying that I’m some sort of sacrificial lamb?”

  “Not at all.” Seeing his furious bewilderment, I felt almost sorry for him. “That’s what was so clever. Just disinformation. Muddying the waters to confuse anyone looking at your family. The only way anyone could find out about William was the same thing that definitively absolved you—the actual tape.”

  Very calmly, Mrs. Johannessen asked, “Which tape might that be, Nikki?”

  I held up a DVD case. Predator, from 1987. Hillman, or someone else, had possessed a sense of irony. “Like I said. Come clean. I’ll give you the weekend. This goes to the police on Monday.”

  No one said anything.

  Then Mrs. Johannessen said, “You can’t do that.” Again, I felt the power of her will pressing against me like tangible weight. “This is a family matter and will be handled as such. My son has been confined to a wheelchair since his injury.”

  “This is absurd,” Ron put in. “Will’s a goddamn vegetable—look at the poor bastard.”

  “He’s not bad,” I said, “although personally, I think the coo-cooing and rhyming was overdoing it a bit. Less is more—just my two cents.”

  “Give that to me.”

  A new voice. William’s nurse. He had stepped into the room, muscles bulky under aquamarine scrubs.

  “You’re supposed to at least act like a nurse,” I said as he walked toward me.

  He was closer. “Of course I’m a nurse.”

  “Nights plus days, now? Hope you’re getting overtime.”

  He spread his hands as though trying to defuse an argument. “I’m substituting. The regular guy is out sick. That’s all.” The nurse got closer.

  Then he grabbed my wrist just as William startled all of us by bursting out of his wheelchair, seizing the DVD from me, and bolting from the room.

  * * *

  The nurse was even stronger than he looked. He had an iron grip on my wrist. I kneed him in the groin, felt him falter, and, in an insult to fair fights all over the world, I jabbed my free thumb into his eye and twisted ha
rd. He shouted in pain, fingers loosening, as I threw his arm off and got past him.

  My boots pounded against the parquet floor. I saw the open front door of the apartment.

  The elevator door closing.

  Going up.

  There was an adjoining stairwell. I sprinted up the stairs, taking them two at a time, legs pumping, breath burning, grateful that Mrs. Johannessen lived toward the top.

  The final flight of stairs ended at a plain, unpainted door. I pushed it open and found myself on the building’s exposed roof. Wind howled. San Francisco glittered below. Tatters of clouds swept across a bare wedge of moon. The Bay Bridge and Golden Gate were strings of light strewn across inkpot blackness.

  William was standing across the roof from me. A row of blue emergency lights marking the roof’s edge cast an eerie cobalt pallor over him, and his face looked beaked and dangerous. He watched me warily as he cracked the DVD into jagged pieces that disappeared over the edge.

  “You’re not thinking,” I told him. “You think that’s the only copy? Breaking DVDs all night won’t solve your problems.”

  “How did you know?” he asked. His voice was cracked and deep. I thought of frozen pipes, rusted and unused, water gradually starting to resume its flow.

  “Little things. Your exaggerations. And your so-called nurse. He said you’d been a lion before the accident—why would he have known anything about you until afterwards? But I didn’t know for sure until down there. Just now. When I told your mother I was going to turn in her son.” The statement, deliberately harsh, abrupt, spoken to shock. “Not Ron but son. You weren’t prepared for that—you couldn’t help but look at me, same as everyone else in the room.” I added, “Jumping out of the wheelchair, though—that did surprise me.” I shrugged. “I guess if you can fake a brain injury, why not your legs, too?”

  A river of emotions was flowing across his face, anger and hope and cunning and desperation, so fluid that I could barely tell one from the next. “Please,” he said. “There has to be some way we can work this out. Don’t let this ruin me. Don’t you care about all the good I’ve done in the world? My contributions? My philanthropy? And I’ve suffered—the accident, my health. I’ve been punished enough.”

  “Come on downstairs, William. Let’s not stay up here all night.”

  “I can give you money,” he said. “Whatever you want. Anything at all.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “There has to be something. I can’t change your mind?”

  “No. You really can’t.”

  He considered this.

  Then he nodded, resolute, grim, like a prisoner being walked to an execution.

  “Very well. Let’s go, then.”

  I had turned and was walking back toward the stairwell when I heard his steps behind me, following. A little too fast. Too hurried. I lunged sideways, spinning around and throwing my arm up as I saw the ascending flash of silver, and then there was a gash in the leather of my jacket sleeve as William turned the ivory-handled steak knife and reset his feet for another try.

  I stepped toward him, not away, surprising him, the opposite of what someone with a knife expected, and got my left hand low on his right forearm, just above the wrist, and the other high up on his right biceps, under the shoulder, my right elbow pressing under his chin, rotating us, hunching in behind my forward shoulder so that the flailing blows from his free hand were nothing more than an annoyance.

  Then I drove my shoulder hard against him, feeling his feet take an involuntary step back, off-balance, and as I felt his foot lift I twisted my right elbow up several inches into his chin, a sharp, short, precise motion that clipped him perfectly on the point of the jaw.

  He grunted and wobbled. His hand loosened and the knife fell.

  I picked up the knife.

  He retreated back across the roof.

  I stepped after him.

  He reached the edge.

  The edge of the roof was bordered by a waist-high stone parapet, like a miniature castle wall. Beyond that, a sheer drop to the asphalt twenty floors below. It had started to rain, a cold, mean drizzle that slashed almost sideways, driven by the wind.

  I took another step forward.

  “Are you going to kill me?” William asked.

  I put the knife in my pocket. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

  He licked his lips, eyes darting. “I’ll jump,” he said. “I will.”

  “I think suicide might be overreacting.”

  “They’ll lock me up. I can’t survive prison.”

  “They don’t put people like you in the kinds of prisons you can’t survive. Besides, think how many good lawyers you must have.”

  “My family’s name will be ruined.”

  “The world will move on. You’ll be a story for a few weeks. Then something else bad will happen, and people will pay attention to that, instead. Now come downstairs, will you?”

  “I can’t,” he said miserably. “I should just jump.” His hair was bedraggled, his shirt untucked and soaked.

  I was tired. It had been a long day. A long week. I didn’t feel like standing on a roof in the rain all night doing free counseling. I didn’t want to be anywhere near this man. I didn’t want to be anywhere near this family. I wanted to leave all their schemes and machinations and gloomy opulence behind. I wanted to leave San Francisco behind. I wanted to cross the bridge and go home. Back to the East Bay. Ethan, Jess, my brother. My bookstore. Everything I had.

  “I don’t think you should jump,” I said. “But then again, I’ve always been a big believer in free will. You decide.”

  I walked back to the stairwell, leaving him poised and uncertain at the roof’s edge.

  With one last thing to do.

  One last person to see.

  37

  The apartment above Susan Johannessen’s Hayes Valley gallery looked deserted. Shades drawn, dark, no sign of life. I had to ring the buzzer for at least a minute before I heard anything on the other side of the door. I kept ringing. Buzzers were easy. Just push them. Not like knocking on a hard door all night. No need to hurt the knuckles.

  When I finally heard movement I called, “Susan, open up. It’s Nikki. I can hear you.”

  There was no answer.

  I waited.

  When I was tired of waiting I started buzzing again. “Susan, it’s Nikki. Don’t make me stand here in the rain all night.”

  More silence. Then the clicking of a lock or latch.

  The door opened, just an inch. The voice that spoke was timid and frightened. “Who is that?”

  “You owe me a coffee,” I said. “I’ve come to cash in.”

  * * *

  Her apartment was furnished with plenty of taste and plenty of money. Scandinavian appliances, Italian fixtures, modernist furniture. The colors were monochrome, all grays and blacks and whites. Paintings hung off the walls, colorless, abstract works, along with a series of photographs taken at such extreme close range it was impossible to tell anything about the larger scenes depicted.

  “How did you know I was here?” Susan wondered. She was wearing comfortable clothing, no makeup, square graphite glasses over her nervous brown eyes.

  “We’ll get there,” I said. “But I was serious about that coffee. Black works fine for me.”

  While Susan went into the kitchen I looked around. Not much to see besides the art on the walls. Not many possessions. Not a primary residence. A pair of curtained French doors led to a covered balcony. I opened the doors and stepped outside. The rain was falling harder and the air smelled sweet and clean and new. I looked down onto Grove Street, seeing cars passing on pavement shiny with rainwater, brake lights glimmering off the puddles.

  “Here you go.”

  Susan had come up behind me. I turned, accepting the mug of coffee she handed me, and took an appreciative sip. “Thanks.”

  She shivered. “Would you mind if we talked inside? I’m getting over a terrible cold.”

  I did min
d, a little. The fresh air had felt good. I was tired of being inside. But without a word I followed her to the kitchen table.

  “I was reported missing,” she said after a moment. “Did you know that?”

  “I knew they couldn’t find you. Not sure if that’s the same thing.”

  “I called the police this evening,” she admitted. “I told them I was okay—that I had fallen quite ill but was feeling much better.”

  “Tell them whatever you want. Not my business.” I sipped coffee. “Since you mention it, how did you explain your car being left at the beach? Lapse of memory?”

  “My car?” Her eyes showed surprise and she paused, as though asking herself something. Then she said, “A friend had borrowed it. I own several. A misunderstanding.”

  “Like I said. Tell them whatever you want.”

  “How did you know I was here?” she asked again. Her face was wan, anxious lines showing around her brown eyes. “How could you possibly have known that?”

  “Don’t give me the credit. You told me.”

  Now she looked astonished. “What?”

  “When we first met. You said you were so busy you were practically living at work. It got me thinking—someone with plenty of money, an apartment above your gallery—why wouldn’t you want to own the place, be able to relax, invite an artist up for a private conversation, have somewhere to sleep after working late? Instead of having some stranger live above you. I’m sure your family has a hundred different trusts and LLCs to buy up property. No wonder the police didn’t know about this one. They couldn’t possibly have—not right away.”

  She looked more worried. “Police? They contacted you?”

  I helped myself to more coffee. “Of course they did. You made sure of that. I was one of the last people you called. Leaving your car in a place sure to arouse suspicion.”

  “You didn’t wonder if I had drowned? Or thrown myself into the sea?”

  “Not really. The timing was too much of a coincidence. The location, too. Not just any old beach, but the deadliest beach in the whole damn state. If anything, I thought you’d been kidnapped by the same people I was looking for.”