by James Tucker
From the refrigerator she took a bottle of half-finished chardonnay from her family’s vineyard in Paso Robles, filled a wine glass, and sipped at it. Then she took the top off a cookie jar and pulled out a pack of Camel Lights. She lit one with a Bic lighter, inhaled gratefully, and blew the smoke toward the partly open window over the kitchen sink. Sipping the wine, she looked at the gray afternoon light outside and, for the first time in months, missed LA. The weather, mostly, but also her friends. And normal guys. She thought it was weird that men in Los Angeles seemed more real and dependable than men in New York. She’d met more than a few in her time here, and more than a few had wanted to date her, but she couldn’t understand them. What they wanted—other than to be in bed with her—seemed cloaked in mystery. But she was familiar with mysteries, and the biggest one of her life was the reason she’d moved to her grandmother’s former apartment in Chinatown.
It had taken months, but she’d solved the impossible riddle of who’d given birth to her and then given her up and left her outside a hospital. Her discovery had been by happenstance. Two weeks ago she’d been in her dentist’s waiting room, paging through that morning’s copy of the Gazette. Without thinking, paying more attention to the Fleetwood Mac song coming through the speakers in the ceiling, she’d noticed an image of a woman. The woman was smiling in a close-up. The article was about the woman, but the image was what mattered to her. The woman’s eyes were pretty, like Sloan’s. The woman had a perfect right eye, the lid slender and well above the brown iris, like Sloan’s. But the woman’s left eye was different. The lid didn’t tuck up nicely but drooped, ever so slightly, obscuring, by the slightest degree, the brown iris of the eye beneath it.
Just like Sloan’s left eyelid.
Still holding the newspaper, Sloan had stood and faced a mirror in the waiting room. She’d stared at herself, then held up the image of the woman in the article.
They shared the same face, except the one in the image was more than three decades older than hers.
She’d taken out her phone and called the woman who’d written the article. They’d spoken, although Sloan hadn’t been sure what to do, and she hadn’t revealed anything on that call.
Now she’d decided to take the next step and meet with the Gazette’s reporter. The reporter had assured her of maximum coverage.
Soon, she thought. Very soon.
Remembering the single sheet of paper on the counter, she set down the wine glass, unfolded it, and read.
When on a tiger’s back, it’s hard to dismount.
—Old Chinese proverb
She laughed aloud. “What assholes.”
The cigarette lighter came in handy. She held the paper over the kitchen sink and watched as it burned brightly for a moment, and then disintegrated into gray ashes.
Going over to the window, she looked out and saw a work crew installing construction fencing. The men were below her, but as she stood under the kitchen lights, she knew they could see her.
She gave the men the finger.
They didn’t react, only continued with their work.
53
The blinds were closed. In the glow of the light on the nightstand, Stella Bannon looked down at Vance McInnis, Cromwell Properties’ vice president of development. At his handsome face with two days’ growth of beard, small dark eyes, and short dark hair. She admired his muscular chest, and she felt him inside her, thick and firm.
He groaned and touched her breasts.
She’d waited for ten minutes, and so had he. It was time to release both of them. She quickened her pace, wrenching her hips over him, squeezing him until he came inside her.
“Yes!” she called once, loudly, but only once.
He shouted aloud, three times. Not her name nor his wife’s, but some indistinguishable word.
Immediately she rotated off him and lay on her back, her slender limbs extending over the soft linens. She didn’t curl up against him but lay free, not even touching him. She’d taught him to do the same. She’d taught him not to discuss what they’d done together—not their sex today or their sex any of the many preceding days over the past three years. It was a private matter, so private they never mentioned it.
She said, “Would you get me a drink?”
He caught his breath and sat up on one elbow. “I have a bottle of Dom.”
“Not tonight. Do you have vodka?”
“I think so.”
“Over ice, please.”
As he got out of bed, his eyes caressed her naked figure. She didn’t mind. She was happy with the way she looked. His lips parted, and he seemed on the verge of uttering a compliment, but she frowned. Without dressing, he left the room. His footsteps on the walnut floors were soft and soon faded from her hearing.
This wasn’t her bed, but it was familiar to her. This wasn’t her bedroom, but she’d approved its design before Cromwell Properties, the company she ran, had purchased the site on Little West Twelfth Street in the Meatpacking District, demolished an old warehouse, and built this tower that had become famous for its engineering and wavy exterior. This unit had two bedrooms, one of which Vance used as an office. It also featured two bathrooms, a kitchen and great room, plus a small foyer. It wasn’t large, about two thousand square feet, but it was expensive. The finishes were custom. The bathrooms’ surfaces were marble, the kitchen countertop white quartz, the appliances Wolf and Subzero. She knew that Vance didn’t need this condo. He lived with his wife and two children in Montclair, New Jersey. But it saved him from having his wife notice hotel bills on his credit card statements, and from the risk of being recognized at various hotels around Manhattan.
As she lay uncovered on the mattress, wearing only the silver bracelet she never took off, with the sensation of him still warming her, she wondered if he’d ever taken others to this bed. And did it matter if he had?
Not to her.
Glancing around the room, she decided the architect and the general contractor had done a good job with the space. But she’d grown used to more space, to something larger. Having a huge space in Manhattan, as she did up on West Seventy-Third Street, communicated something much different than it did in the Midwest or the Southeast. Ample space in Manhattan created not only jealousy, but awe. And she admitted to herself that she derived great satisfaction from that awe.
Vance returned to the bedroom carrying a glass filled with ice cubes and at least two inches of vodka. Sitting up, cross-legged, she took it from him and sipped.
He hadn’t put on clothes or covered himself with a towel. He stood before her naked.
She didn’t mind. He was handsome and had every attribute she thought a man should have, and then some. He’d gone to Yale for college and to Stanford for his MBA. He had the perpetual suntan of an avid golfer. But his pedigree hadn’t made him ethical, and that was why she needed him.
He said, “Are we still at twenty percent for me, for Haddon House?”
She took another sip of the vodka before setting the glass on the night table to her left. “What about the usual fifteen percent?”
He smiled, but without warmth. “More for this project,” he told her. “Because of the . . . difficulties.”
She studied him for a moment. His flat stomach and the tuft of black hair around the part of him that had given her much pleasure. What was it that made her desire him so consistently and for so many years? She didn’t know, and if he disappeared tomorrow, she’d find someone else. But as long as their time in this bedroom continued, she’d be generous. He hadn’t been greedy about anything, ever. It was his family, not hers, that he risked by seeing her. For she had no family, not anymore. “All right,” she said. “Twenty percent.”
“Thank you, Stella.”
“Sure.”
He walked into the master bathroom, away from her view, and turned on the shower.
She reached for the glass of vodka and continued sipping the liquid that warmed her chest and stomach and helped her to relax, to take pe
rspective and consider the deaths of others. She thought of the people who’d needed to die for the success of Cromwell Properties’ projects. It was unfortunate, she’d be the first to admit, but wasn’t accident and death the price for great works, great monuments?
Workers had died building the pyramids at Giza, in Egypt. During construction of the Empire State Building, no? And the Eiffel Tower. Certainly, the Three Gorges Dam in China.
People shouldn’t have opposed the greatness of her firm’s projects, should have embraced those projects’ permanence—as much as anything in the modern world could be considered permanent. Hadn’t the holdouts brought misfortune upon themselves?
Yes, she thought. On themselves.
Work couldn’t stop because a few people objected. That was the way of the world, and those who stood in its way were naive or stupid if they expected anything else.
The way of the world, she thought. She lay on her left side, facing the window and the darkness beyond the blinds, and rested the glass of vodka on the mattress.
She heard Vance turn off the shower and, a few moments later, come into the bedroom. She didn’t turn to watch him put on his clothes. He didn’t say anything to her, only left the bedroom, his shoes making a flat sound on the walnut floors, followed by the opening and closing of the door to the hallway outside and the elevator that would take him downstairs to the parking garage and the Lexus sedan that would return him to Cromwell Properties’ offices. Her own car was waiting on the street outside, and she had the same destination. She’d work until ten or eleven, just as he would. She knew he’d then return here for a late dinner before driving out to Montclair and his family.
After climbing out of bed, she carried the empty glass to the kitchen, wiped it off with a damp paper towel, and set the glass in the dishwasher. She didn’t shower. She dressed, made sure to take all her clothing and her earrings, and leave nothing. This, to avoid scandal, to show the world, if it cared, that theirs was a professional relationship. And in case she had to cut him off.
For her, self-preservation and survival were all. She’d warned Vance not explicitly but clearly—in her approach to business, by her references to a higher morality in which achievement outweighed ethics—that others might fall, others would fall, but she’d remain.
She’d been careful, and she was careful still. There were no connections between herself and any crimes. None that could be proven or even seen. The better part of her work wasn’t the gleaming towers of steel, glass, and granite that rose into the sky, but her movements, almost imperceptible, in the shadows.
54
Buddy scanned the sidewalk in front of him and the cars on Eleventh Avenue to his left. He didn’t see anyone following or waiting to attack.
After the SUV had rammed him, he wouldn’t chance a cab. So he walked to Eighth and descended into the subway. He went slowly, his right hand on the railing so he wouldn’t lose his balance and tumble down the concrete stairs.
People jostled past him, elbowed him. He blinked, eyed everyone, but saw nobody who seemed out of place.
At the bottom of the stairs, he saw the E train about to leave. Knowing it would take him east where he could transfer, he jogged into the nearest car and sat in the back-left corner, giving himself a good view. He kept an eye on everyone who moved and everyone who didn’t.
Two big guys in their twenties wearing black jeans, black jackets, and black boots held his attention. They noticed him but didn’t move. He studied their faces and necks. Too much fat, he thought. Not like Tan Jacket. Not like the man who’d driven the SUV into his Charger. Those men had been big but strong. Leaner. Not only trained but trained recently. They moved like the athletes they were. Military or paramilitary, he thought again.
The train snaked deep underground, lurching to a stop every few minutes. He got off at Lexington and caught the 6 train. After a few minutes the rocking of the car grew monotonous. Buddy thought about Mei and Ben at the house in the country. He wondered if it was nice like Ward’s place in Greenwich or more modest. He imagined himself arriving at a large house, taking them in his arms, listening to Ben describe their adventures, celebrating because Judge Miles had awarded custody of Ben to him and Mei. Until he caught himself.
He’d nodded off, his spine bent forward until he was nearly collapsing onto the floor. Instinctively, he reached through the folds of his overcoat and suit coat and put his right hand around the Glock. He scanned the car.
No visible threats. But also, no Mei and no custody of Ben.
The anxiety returned. He and Mei wouldn’t be awarded custody of Ben. They’d lose him forever. There was nothing he could do to stop it. He made a fist with his left hand, his fingers and thumb tightening as he tried to squeeze the rising anger out of his body. Because he couldn’t let it cripple him. Because Ben wouldn’t return to the city until this case was handled.
Looking up, he studied the map above the windows.
Not long.
He didn’t sleep again. Ten minutes later he exited at Eighty-Sixth Street and walked north two blocks and then east to the intersection with East End Avenue. There he saw the white-and-yellow guardhouse across the street.
Approaching the guardhouse from its left, he observed the closed iron gate between two thick posts of red brick. Taking his hands from his pockets, he held them easily at his sides and in plain view.
A guard walked out to meet him. The guard wore a pistol on his waistband and said, “May I help you?”
Buddy said, “I’m Detective Lock, with the NYPD. I’d like to see the mayor.”
“You have an appointment?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry, but the mayor’s schedule is full.”
Buddy said, “If the mayor’s here, I don’t need an appointment.”
The guard hesitated, stared at him a moment. The guard’s expression changed, softened.
He’s recognized me, Buddy thought. From television.
The guard said, “Let me see your badge.”
55
Buddy reached through the lapels of his overcoat and into the left breast pocket of his suit coat. He took out his badge wallet, opened it, and held it up for the guard to see.
Squinting at the ID, the guard nodded once. He said “Wait here,” before returning to the guardhouse.
Buddy went over to the gate. He was going to put a hand on it but decided he didn’t need to brace himself. The minute or two that he’d slept on the subway had eased his headache and vertigo, at least for a while.
Suddenly the gate swung inward, and the guard walked over to him.
The guard said, “Straight ahead. Security will meet you at the front door.”
Buddy said, “Thanks, man.”
But the guard had already turned away.
A few minutes later, Buddy was led by a squat female security guard into a sitting room. He knew Gracie Mansion was just that—a mansion—but this cozy wood-paneled space might have been owned by his grandmother. Wing chairs faced a sofa covered in amber fabric. A rug in blues and creams covered much of the oak floor. In the large fireplace with a gray marble mantel, a fire crackled and glowed orange and red with heat. By the fireplace stood Mayor Blenheim.
She wore black pants, a white shirt with a collar, and a finely knit black sweater. Not a strand of her light-brown-and-silver hair out of place, she seemed calm and at ease in the mansion. She gave him a warm smile. “Detective Lock, it’s a pleasure.”
He held up a hand. “I’m sorry for intruding, Mayor Blenheim.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble. None at all.” She motioned toward the coffee table between the wing chairs and the sofa, where there were two silver pots. “Coffee or tea?” she asked.
He held up a hand. “Neither, thank you.”
“Would you care to sit down?”
“Sure. Yeah.” Buddy sat in one of the wing chairs but leaned forward, a hand on each thigh.
She relaxed into the sofa opposite him, crossing her legs and pla
cing a hand on the armrest. “How may I help you?”
“I’m sorry for bothering you, Mayor. I thought I wouldn’t have to take you up on your offer, especially not this soon. But I need help.”
She tilted her head sideways. “What would you like me to do?”
He wasn’t sure how to ask, how to phrase his request in the appropriate way. So he said it plainly. “Unless you put a word in for me with Chief Malone, I won’t be able to do my job.”
Her forehead grew lined. “Chief Malone is preventing you from doing your job?”
He said, “I’m investigating a couple—the Sungs—from Chinatown found in the water far off Long Island Sound. They were holdouts at a project that’s going to replace the Nanjing building down on Hester Street. I’m trying to find out what happened to them.” Buddy said nothing about the attempts on his and Mei’s lives, keeping his rundown focused on the Sungs. “They got out in the Atlantic somehow,” he concluded, “but it wasn’t because they jumped or were pushed off a bridge close to land.”
Mayor Blenheim uncrossed her legs and sat up straight. “It sounds like you’re right, Detective. Why is Chief Malone resisting?”
Buddy said, “The case is ‘solved.’ Mr. Sung had terminal cancer. He and his wife were inseparable. They wrote a suicide note. It makes a kind of sense.”
She lifted her chin and looked up at him. “But not to you?”
“No, ma’am. Not to me.”
“I see.”
He leaned forward. “I’ve got nowhere else to turn.”
She watched him carefully. Silence filled the room.
He heard wood popping in the fireplace. He’d begun to sweat and wanted to take off his overcoat, but he didn’t want to stand and interrupt her consideration of his request. He’d have to wait, even if he felt queasy in the hot room.
