House of Secrets - v4

by Richard Hawke

  Dimitri exploded, in Russian. “Tell me how my brother is! You do not order me around! I am home when I am home! Tell me where he is and how he is doing!”

  Irena held her ground. “Where are you? Why are you so secret, Dimitri?”

  Dimitri looked down at the laptop. The scene on the screen nearly made him gag.

  He snarled into the phone. “I am somewhere to make us money, okay? I work! I make you happy. That is all you need to know, Irena. I am working!”

  He glanced down at the laptop again. There had been a movement. Not from the bloodied form on the bed, but from the naked man on the floor. The man was rising unsteadily to his feet and turning to look at the bed. His long, gruesome moan was easily audible to Dimitri. Irena began to speak, but Dimitri cut her off.

  “Wait! Hold on.”

  The man on the screen made his way haltingly around to the far side of the bed. A black trickle ran from the side of his head all the way down onto his chest. He paused and then bent down slowly, placing his ear gently against the woman’s chest. Dimitri stared fiercely at the close-up image.

  I know this man!

  Over the phone, Irena was calling his name. “Dimitri? Dimitri, are you still there?”

  Dimitri leaned down so close to the computer that his nose was nearly touching the screen.

  “Dimitri?”

  He jerked upright.

  “Irena! Listen to me. Do not ask me any questions, but listen to me. This is very important. I will explain to you. Later.”

  “What is—”

  “No! Leave the apartment! Leave it, Irena. Right now. As soon as you hang up. Do not tell anyone where you are going. Are you listening? Pack a suitcase and go to a hotel. Not in Brighton Beach. Somewhere else. Do this now.”

  “But Dimitri—”

  The veins in his neck bulged. “Now, Irena! You will call me tomorrow. At noon. Twelve o’clock. You will tell me where are you, and I will go there.”

  “But I am going to see Leonard in the—”

  “No! Do not see Leonard. Do you understand? Do not see anyone, Irena! This is more important than I can tell you. You must do this. Tell me.”

  There was a pause. “You’re scaring me, Dimitri.”

  “Good. Be scared. Now do what I tell you. Go to a hotel. Pay with cash. Stay off the street. Do not let anyone see you. Call me tomorrow.”

  “Hotels are—”

  “Just do this!” The man on the computer had lifted his face from the woman’s chest. Unknowing, he was staring directly into the camera. “I must go. I am hanging up.”

  Dimitri broke the connection and tossed the phone onto the bed.

  I know this man.

  Dimitri took up his pack of cigarettes, but his hands were working as if they were thumbless. The pack was ravaged by the time he managed to extract a cigarette. The match trembled as it neared his face.

  Everybody knows this man.

  The phone on the bed chirped again, and Dimitri squeezed his eyes closed. He had exactly three seconds to think. Answer? Don’t answer? He wanted to bellow at the top of his lungs.

  One second.

  He reached for the phone. “It’s me,” he said.

  “Well? Let’s hear it. Did we get a good show?”

  The face looking out from Andy Foster’s mirror was a wreck, the mask of a man who had just passed a sleepless and bewildering night. At the moment, Andy could not envision where the next possibility of sleep would be fitting into his schedule — he was due over on the Hill in less than two hours — but even when it did finally arrive, he knew that no lurid concoctions of his own subconscious would be even remotely capable of rivaling the events of the past twelve hours.

  And any nightmare would be preferable to this.

  The man in the mirror touched his fingers tenderly against the right side of his head. The gash above the ear had stopped its active bleeding hours ago, but the wound remained spongy and had not stopped its intermittent seeping. Andy knew that the injury was too large for him to trust its closing up on its own. He would need to have it looked at. Likely there would be stitches. He prayed that no infection had already started during the twelve hours required to make his way first off the island and then all the way back down to Washington.

  Even without his touching the wound, it felt to Andy as if hot knives were being thrust into his head. It hurt to blink. It hurt not to blink. There was no middle ground. Blink and bear it, Andy told himself grimly. Or not. It’s a free country.

  Andy cranked on the shower water, then stepped into the kitchen. The nickname for the apartment complex where Andy stayed when he was in D.C. was Boxtown, so named for the aesthetics-free efficiency of its architecture. Cellblock Six was Christine’s designation for her husband’s home away from home. When Andy signed his lease on the apartment, Christine had declared a zero-intervention policy concerning the furnishing and decorating of the several small rooms. Her own trips down to D.C. were rare, and when she did visit, she and Andy always took a room in a Georgetown guesthouse that Christine was particularly fond of. By her own admission, Christine was not immune to a little pampering touch now and then. And Andy Foster was all too happy to pamper.

  He did love his wife.

  Andy was ravenous, though he was not convinced that food would actually stay down. He tried a few bites of a banana, followed by some orange juice. He checked the wall clock. It was nine thirty. According to the set of misdirections he had fed his wife and his staff, his morning flight from Miami would have landed several minutes ago at Reagan National and he would be on his way into the city, well rested after a good long sleep in his Miami hotel room.

  Andy felt like a shit.

  Pouring himself another glass of juice, he turned on the radio to take in the news. The lead story, predictably enough, concerned the growing troubles of the new vice president. A whispering campaign that had begun earlier in the month over alleged shell companies and kickbacks purportedly connected with Vice President Wyeth, back in his days as New York’s attorney general, was growing noticeably louder. Although President Hyland had issued a statement overnight declaring “complete trust and faith” in his vice president, the new president’s statement of confidence was so boilerplate as to be laughable. Andy happened to know from completely reliable sources that John Hyland held no such fuzzy feelings toward his veep. Prior to his party’s convention the previous summer, Hyland had been pressured to include Chris Wyeth on the ticket, due as much as anything else to Wyeth’s inside-the-Beltway experience. Andy had known Wyeth for well over a decade, himself having come up under the veteran pol’s shadow in the Empire State. The two had a standing tennis date every Tuesday night at the East Potomac Tennis Center. Even prior to the current media dustup, Wyeth had grumbled to Andy about the chief executive’s coolness toward him.

  “I understand the man’s position. Nobody likes being on the receiving end of a shotgun proposal. It’s a reminder that you’ve been given power, which is a reminder that there are forces out there who have the power to take it back. Which means your hot shit ain’t really the hottest shit in town after all.”

  Political discourse: Andy couldn’t get enough of it.

  For his part, Chris Wyeth had yet to reply publicly to the allegations. And his failure to do so was beginning to make some party stalwarts nervous, especially those who had crowbarred Chris Wyeth onto Hyland’s ticket. The news spot concluded with a former secretary of state remarking that as the administration was not even three months old, “it can ill afford to shoot itself in the foot while it’s still coming out of the gate.”

  Right, Andy thought. And we’ll cross that bridge when that dog don’t hunt because it takes two to tango.

  In other news, China was still showing belligerence in response to the latest calls that it curb its aggressive release of contaminants into the atmosphere. A tornado had ripped through parts of Nashville overnight, killing two and blowing out several stained-glass windows of the Ryman Auditorium but oth
erwise sparing the fabled structure. A child actor from one of the seventies sitcoms had been found dead in his Glendale apartment. The Nikkei was up in modest trading and the dollar was taking a hammering in London.

  Nothing about Joy Resnick.

  Andy got up from the table and turned off the radio. Holding on to the counter for support, he bowed his head and allowed his heavy eyelids to lower.

  Think.

  Had he tried hard enough to defend Joy Resnick? Yes. No. Somewhat. He didn’t know. It had all happened so fast the question had no real meaning. Andy remembered lunging at the attacker, but being swept aside like a piddling pest when the intruder landed his weapon against Andy’s skull. He’d tried a second time to intervene, but this time the weapon had come down with full force, and Andy had remained on the bedroom floor, semiconscious, while the intruder delivered his full butchery to Joy. By the time Andy had finally pulled himself to his feet and made the too-easy determination that Joy was dead, the killer was long gone. The thought of phoning 911 had passed in an instant. Anonymous or not, the risk was too great. And the gain at that point was minimal. For Joy, it was nonexistent.

  Steam was misting out from the bathroom as Andy made his way into the bedroom, carrying a white plastic kitchen garbage bag. The clothes he had been wearing the night before were folded on the bed and neatly stacked atop his shoes. Andy deposited the clothes into the plastic bag, but he paused a moment before including the shoes. From one viewpoint, this level of precaution was ridiculous. If circumstances were to unravel to the point where someone was even considering pressuring Andy to produce any sample of his wardrobe to be tested for DNA evidence with connection to the events at the Resnick family beach house, then his goose was already cooked. In the world Andy moved in, mere suspicion spelled total calamity.

  Andy dropped the shoes into the bag. Imagining himself lurking around a dumpster behind some Safeway store in some Maryland suburb, he had to lower himself shakily onto the edge of the bed.

  Think!

  After determining that Joy was beyond rescue, what Andy had felt most of all was the basic need to get away. The smashing of the sliding glass door, Joy’s screams, and who-knows-what-other sounds must have carried through the night air and reached someone. At the very instant that Andy had been determining that Joy Resnick was dead, somebody might have been making their way up to the house. New York’s junior senator had certainly not wanted to be found standing naked next to the bloodied bed when the lights came on. Not to mention that he didn’t relish the idea of being there should the attacker decide to return, thank you muchly.

  Andy had dressed quickly, panicking a moment when he couldn’t find his overnight bag. Then he recalled Joy taking the bag from him after they’d entered the house and dropping it onto a bamboo chair in the living room. He’d fetched the bag, filled a dish towel with ice from the freezer, then made a frantic stab at wiping clean anyplace he might have left his fingerprints. He exited the house through the destroyed glass door, crossed the moist grass, and plunged into the trees behind the house. Stumbling through the woods, Andy had remained mindful of protecting his face from nicks and cuts from the low branches. Instinctively, he knew that the fewer lies required down the line to explain his appearance — should it come to that — the better. Finally, he fell forward into a small clearing of dead leaves, and it was there that he had collected himself and focused on the task of building a plan. Commiseration. Regret. Self-loathing. All that could wait. If ever there was a time to be solution-oriented, this was it. Every single person who was in a position to know Andy’s declared itinerary for that day and evening assumed that the senator was spending the night in a comfortable Miami hotel after his bookstore appearance and then flying first thing in the morning up to Reagan National. The fact that the oyster moon rising over Shelter Island was sending its soft glow down onto the results of an alternate itinerary gone horrifically wrong was something that Andy had to confront, and confront quickly. He couldn’t undo the foolish escapade. Simple fact. There was no undoing the clandestine flight he’d made from Miami to JFK, nor his rendezvous with the woman who had helped to mastermind his most recent reelection campaign. He could not un-dead Joy Resnick. He could certainly not un-make love to her. And the fact he had dared not dwell on: He could not un-cheat on his wife.

  Seated gurulike on the dead leaves, Andy had known that if he could just keep his focus out ahead of his panic, he could damn well get himself off that damn little island. He could somehow travel the several hundred miles down to D.C. and pick up from where he should have been all along. Only at that point would he let himself turn his prayers to a thousand gods that his involvement with Joy Resnick go completely unsuspected and undiscovered. But until then he had needed a plan, a definitive plan, something to successfully reposition himself from the whole ungainly, surreal mess. The blood loss from his head wound had enfeebled his faculties, which required Andy to muster extraordinary concentration. But eventually he had managed to move all the pieces around in his mind and come up with the plan. Once that was done — conceived, reviewed, tweaked, and approved — he had pulled his cell phone from his pocket and made the one call he had determined could start things rolling.

  And it had. Thank sweet Jesus and his retinue of saints.

  As he started into the bathroom, Andy pushed his fingers gently against the gash on his head. This next part of his plan — he prayed it would prove to be the final part — was grim business. But the injury to his head had to be tended to. There was no thought of attempting to let the wound go untreated. The very first person he encountered would drag him bodily off to the nearest doctor.

  But first he had to give the injury a story; he had to give it a lie. Andy rubbed a circle into the steamy mirror. The man in the reflection looked contrite. Authentically so. He did not look conniving, or in any way proud of himself for his deft maneuverings. He looked sad and shaken and brimming with genuine remorse. Although his mind was swirling with lies, both the ones already decided on as well as the ones still being auditioned, a sharp truth sliced through them all. This one glinted with certainty. In a hoarse whisper, Andy gave it voice.

  “You don’t deserve to get away with this.”

  The statement wasn’t even completed before the steam from the shower blurred his reflection completely. Andy stepped into the tub. He moved into the searing stream and turned his face up into the water, tilting his head slightly to keep the water from pummeling his wound. Andy balled his fists as tight as he could.

  I am a fool.

  I love my wife.

  I am an idiot.

  I love my wife.

  I will never, ever, ever do something so goddamned boneheaded again.

  I love my wife.

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He got the cry of pain under way even before he started his head toward the tiles.

  Christine limped into the JFK arrivals terminal. The slender architect from San Diego who had chatted her up nearly the entire flight from Denver was insisting on steering her roller bag for her. It was his Hugo Boss, after all, that had come down on Christine’s ankle and pinned it to the cabin floor as the two had been jostling against other passengers to extract their bags from the overhead bin.

  Christine wanted nothing but to get to ground transportation and grab a cab into the city and be home. As the thin joke had it, flying was for the birds.

  But walking was for the capable-of-foot, and as she cleared the departures desk Christine had no choice but to hobble painfully to the nearest seat and slide onto it. Her architect-assailant rolled her bag over and parked it at her feet.

  “You need to elevate it. Just stay put, I’ll go get you some ice.”

  The man insisted on helping her ferry the injured limb up onto the roller bag. The slight elevation seemed inconsequential to Christine, but she said nothing about it. The man was as fussy now about trying to help her as he had been blunt with his flirting during the flight.

  While
the quasi Good Samaritan headed off in the direction of the food court, Christine pulled out her phone to call her daughter. Michelle wouldn’t be home from school yet — Rosa would be fetching her — but Christine wanted to leave a message to let her daughter know that she was on her way.

  There was a message on her phone from Andy. Christine called home first.

  “Hey, darling, it’s Mommy. I’m back now. I just got off the plane. I’ll be home soon. Tell Rosa not to start any dinner. I thought the two of us could get some takeout from Mama Buddha, does that sound nice? Don’t forget we’re going to Grandpa and Jenny’s this weekend. We’ve got some eggs to color! I’ll see you soon, goofy. I love you, sweetheart.”

  Christine played her messages. By the time the architect returned with a plastic baggy of crushed ice, she was already clambering out of her seat.

  “Hey. Whoa. You’ve really got to ice that—”

  Christine cut him off, gesturing with her phone. “That was my husband. I’ve got to go. He slipped in the shower this morning. The fool man has got six stitches in his head!”

  Andy and Christine Foster lived on the top floor of an apartment building on Greenwich Avenue, overlooking the Hudson River. Their view to the west took in the river, and beyond that, the stretch of New Jersey towns bordering the river. Most important, it included the large empty expanse that overtopped both the river and the far shore, the luxury craved by all New Yorkers: sky.

  Christine’s father had not exactly given the couple the apartment when they got married. But nearly. Although he’d no longer been in office at the time, the former governor’s spheres of influence had remained expansive, and as construction of the apartment building on Greenwich neared completion, remarkably generous financing for one of the top-floor apartments had fallen into place for then congressman Andrew Foster and his pretty fiancée, bolstered by a sizable down payment that had been wired directly from the Bermuda-based account of Ambassador Hoyt. The card from Whitney and Lillian — which Andy had insisted be framed and displayed in the front hallway — showed an Appalachian lean-to tilting perilously close to an equally dilapidated outhouse.