“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Liza Downburton,” she said with a sigh. This release was enough to get her into a chair.
“Um,” she said. “What happened to your front room?”
“Nothing. I’m just making a few improvements to the security system. How can I help you, Ms. Downburton?”
“I just,” she said. “Well, I wanted to know what progress Twill has made.”
“Which case?” I asked as if there were a dozen projects I had to choose from.
“Getting Fortune away from Jones.”
“Yes,” I said even though the sentence didn’t quite make sense to me. Fortune and Jones. The one thing that I did know now was that Twill definitely took on a job when I was down in Philly on the Martinez case, and that job had nothing to do with some old high school friend. “Why don’t you fill me in on the background and I’ll try and get you an answer before you leave.”
“Oh,” she said, wondering what my role in her business might be. “I guess it’s okay. Twill told me that you were in charge.”
“Start from the beginning,” I said.
She turned her body in the chair until she was almost at profile to me and said, “I hired Twill, your agency, because of Fortune.”
“A friend of yours?”
“Well, um, not at first. Maybe eight weeks ago I was sleeping in my apartment in Park Slope when I heard something from the living room. I thought it was the dog caught behind the stuffed chair again but when I went out there and turned on the light I saw this young man—Fortune.”
“You didn’t know him?” I asked. That’s always a good question.
“No. He was there to steal.”
“A burglar?”
Liza nodded and said, “We were both surprised. For a long time, I mean a minute or so, we just stared. Finally he said, ‘I’m sorry about this.’ I asked him what he was doing and he told me that he was trying to steal my emerald necklace, the one that my grandmother from East Hampton had left me.”
“You didn’t know him but he knew about your necklace?”
“He is, was a part of a kind of gang. It’s these young people who work for a guy named Jones. Jones has organized dozens of young people, most of them under eighteen. They perform crimes for him. Fortune was one of the older members.”
“He told you all this?” I asked.
“After he apologized I offered to make him some tea. He said that he’d never had tea before and I said then he should probably try it with honey. We sat at the little table in the kitchenette for hours.
“He told me about Jones and how he lived in the subway tunnels and ran the gang of young people. He said that when Jones told any of them to do anything they had to do it or they’d be punished or even killed. He said that there were graves all over the subway tunnels that nobody would ever find except in the future.
“I asked him if this Jones man would kill him if he didn’t bring back the necklace and he said no. He thought he might get hit but that was all. He said that he’d just say that the necklace wasn’t there and maybe he wouldn’t even get in trouble at all.”
“How did he know about the necklace in the first place?” I asked.
“I go to NYU. My parents wanted me to leave it at home in my dad’s safe but it reminds me of my gran and so I brought it here. I told everybody about it. Fortune said that Jones has ears everywhere, especially in places like the Village.”
“What’s Fortune’s real name?”
“He’s an orphan so he doesn’t know. All he’s ever been called was Fortune.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“And so did this Fortune leave without taking your jewelry?”
Liza Downburton looked like a deer hypnotized by fear. She gazed at me, shook her head slightly, made to rise from the chair, and then fell back.
“I, we,” she said, “kind of fell in love.”
“I take it he’s a good-looking kid.”
“Yes but that’s not why, I mean, we really connected. Fortune was raised by a woman who worked for Jones. They lived in a tin shack in Queens not far from the Triborough Bridge. When people get too old to work for Jones in the street he pays them to take care of kids that will work for him when they’re old enough. Fortune lived in the tunnels after he was eight and now he has a room on Avenue D in the East Village and works at doing burglaries for Jones. He doesn’t like it. He wants to leave but Jones has killed people who left him and Fortune didn’t know where he could go.”
“So you gave him the necklace?”
She nodded.
“How much is it worth?”
“It’s insured for one hundred eighteen thousand dollars.”
“Oh. And you hired Twill to get the necklace back?”
“No. Since then Fortune and I have been seeing each other, when he can get away.”
I sat there looking at the lovelorn Liza Downburton thinking about one woman, Marella Herzog, who takes a man’s heirlooms, and another that gives hers away.
“He can’t let Jones know that he’s seeing you,” I surmised.
“No. He’s afraid that Jones’s people might try to get at me. Fortune wants to run away but he’s too scared so I came here to hire your office to help him. I talked to Twill and he said that he’d do it. He seemed so sure that I believed him. But he hasn’t called since then and I, and I wanted to find out what’s happened.”
“Did he ask you for a deposit?”
“No.”
Good.
“I talked to him yesterday,” I said. “He seemed to be deeply ensconced in the job.”
“Did he say anything about Fortune?”
“Not directly. He just said that he was on the job.”
“That’s something, I guess,” Ms. Downburton said.
“Let me ask you a question,” I said.
“Yes?”
“How often do you and Fortune see each other?”
“After every burglary Jones gives him three days off. That’s when we have the time.”
“So Fortune is still burgling?”
“Yes. I told Twill that.”
“Has he, I mean Fortune, asked you for more money or jewels?”
“No.”
“Well,” I said. “That’s some story. Like I said, I’ve been out of town but still Twill works for me. And I don’t like the idea of you out there with no protection while my son stirs up the hornets.”
I looked at my watch. It was 7:15.
“Come on downstairs with me, Ms. Downburton. I have an appointment but maybe we can talk to Twill before I have to be there.”
“You know how to reach him?”
“Come on. We’ll give it a try.”
20
At the curb, in a no-parking zone in front of the Tesla Building, sat a black sedan; coincidentally a Tesla. An almost nondescript white man somewhere in his forties stood by the passenger-side door. This man wore a cheap medium-green suit with a white dress shirt buttoned to the throat but sporting no tie. His hair was dark brown and just this side of unruly. He was neither tall nor short, and slight of build.
“Leonid,” the man said in a voice that was more an insinuation of resonance than an actual tone.
Hush owned the limo company. He bought the business not long after he gave up his lifelong calling: murder for pay.
“What’s the boss doing on the job?” I asked.
“I got my regulars,” he said. Liza Downburton came up beside me just then. Hush eyed her with an expression that maybe only I and his wife could read. “I also wanted to ask you a question. Maybe get some advice.”
“No problem,” I said. “I was going to call you anyway. This is Miss Liza Downburton, one of Twill’s private clients.”
Hush nodded at the young woman.
“Can you drive us down toward the Village?” I asked the driver.
“Not the restaurant?”
“All in good time.”
He opened
the back door to the fancy electric car and I gestured for Liza to scoot in. I followed her and Hush went to his driver’s post.
As we tooled down Fifth Avenue I brought out a phone and entered a code for a very special number.
Within the last year Bug had made new and improved multichip phones for my use. I could turn off any of the numbers but there was one that my son, Mardi, Zephyra, and I kept on for emergencies. Twill’s emergency number was the one I called.
Three rings in he answered, “What’s the problem, Pop?”
The last word reminded me that I had found my father and lost him again.
“I’m in a limo with Hush driving and Liza Downburton sitting next to me.”
“That’s funny,” Twill said. “I’m in a green borough cab headed for Liza’s apartment.”
“You have anything to share with her, or me?”
“Did she tell you everything?” my favorite son asked.
“I have the basics.”
“I was gonna tell ya, Pop. It’s just I had to figure out what was goin’ on first.”
“And what, may I ask, is that?”
“I thought that the guy, the burglar Fortune, was settin’ Liza up for somethin’ but the deeper I got the more I came to understand that this Jones is the real thing. He got him a goddamned army and nobody seems to know about it. And once you get in you can’t ever get out—not ever.”
“And are you in?”
“All the way up to my nuts.”
I smiled then. There was something undeniably lovable about my sociopath boy.
“Are you compromised in any way?” I asked.
“I can’t be sure. I only met the dude once. He wears this fake beard and contacts that make his eyes a different color. The way he looks at you is spooky. Anyway—I heard him askin’ about Fortune so even if I’m in good with him, Liza and her boy might not be. That’s why I was goin’ to her place. I was gonna offer to put her at Mardi’s for a few days.”
“What if you asked Uncle Hush to do that?”
“That’d be like keepin’ a Christmas Club account at Fort Knox.” Twill listened to his elders and therefore had many of our outdated references.
“You tell your client,” I said. “I’ll ask Mr. Hush.”
I handed the phone to Liza and leaned forward over the seat.
“Twill needs you to put up his client for a few days,” I said to the killer who was something like a friend.
“Twill?” Hush uttered. “No problem. She knows the rules?”
“I’m willing to bet she’s a fast learner.”
By the time I leaned back Liza was handing me the phone.
“Twill says that he wants me to stay with Mr. Hush,” she said with trust in her voice that very few innocents ever had for me.
“Is that all right with you?”
“Can I call my parents?”
“Only if you don’t tell ’em the truth. You really don’t want anyone comin’ around Mr. Hush when he’s feelin’ protective.”
“Are we in trouble?” she asked me.
“You already know the answer to that.”
—
I waited in the car while Hush walked Liza up the stairs to his twelve-million-dollar mansion on Fifth Avenue not a block from Washington Square Park. Hush had more security surrounding his home than most senators or CIA spooks. Tamara, his wife, and Thackery, his young son, would take care of Liza while I worried about my own son’s chances at survival.
While I waited I called the Chambre du Roi, telling them to inform my date that I might be a few minutes late if she got there before me.
When Hush returned I moved to the passenger’s seat beside him.
“You sure it’s okay?” I asked.
“Everybody loves Twill,” he replied. “The restaurant now?”
—
On the way up Sixth Avenue, just around Forty-second Street, I asked, “Have you ever heard of a guy named Jones runs an army of underage thieves?”
“No. New York?”
“Down in the tunnels.”
“Wow. You need to find out more?”
“Twill’s already down there. What I have to do is figure how to pull him out.”
“Need help?”
“Maybe later.”
Around Fifty-fifth Hush said, “Dude from the federal government asked me if I could kill a foreign head of state and make it look like natural causes.”
“Oh?”
“If I couldn’t do that, maybe I could make it look like some other unfriendly leader or group did the deed. Seven figures, legal, no tax.”
“Damn.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“You need the money?”
“No.”
“I thought you wanted to try and go the other way,” I said. “I mean whether it’s official or not, blood on your hands is still blood.”
“Yeah. Yeah. But you know, LT, I’ve been gettin’ this itch.”
I didn’t need to ask what needed scratching.
“Ever since I quit killing for pay I want to hurt people,” he continued. “I never felt like that before. Everything was cut-and-dry in the old days, you know? I killed for my supper and the dinner was always good.”
Sometimes there’s nothing to say; no rule book to quote, no homily that has weight. There are things about being a human that cannot be excused or even understood. Hush wanted to go out and murder someone just to get his passion under control. That was crazy—but so were thousands of truly senseless deaths from Palestine to Kandahar to Congo.
The car came to a halt and I saw that we were at the restaurant.
“So?” Hush asked.
“How long ago this guy come to you?”
“A week.”
“Give it another week,” I said. “Think it over. Maybe go to the Zen monastery upstate and meditate a day or two. Then, when seven days are up, call me and we’ll talk again.”
Hush gave me one of his rare smiles and held out a hand.
When we shook I couldn’t suppress the little shiver of fear that ran down my spine.
21
The Chambre du Roi was a big round room with tables set out in an off-center spiral. I got there at 8:12. Monique, the hostess, installed me at a booth that was in the outermost circle. I needn’t have worried about Marella waiting for me. She didn’t get there for another twenty-two minutes.
She stopped at my side of the stall before I had the chance to stand, and leaned over gracefully giving me a wet kiss on the lips. She was wearing a red dress that was close-fitting on the torso but flouncy below the waist.
“You look delicious,” she said.
“You took the words right out of my head.”
Depositing herself in the seat across from me, she smiled prettily and cocked her head to the side.
“I asked them to bring a Beaujolais when you got here,” I said.
“Thoughtful and sexy,” she replied.
I usually feel a lump in my throat when a woman riles me but with Marella the bulge was in my chest. I think she could see the impact she was having because she pursed her lips and let her lovely dark head loll a little farther, bringing her right shoulder up like the back end of an oil derrick.
The wine came along with menus.
“You order for me, Lee,” she said. I couldn’t remember anyone ever calling me Lee; some encounters are just unique.
“I may have to answer my phone from time to time,” I apologized. “My son works for me and he’s in a little trouble.”
“I guess I’ll have to punish you for that.”
“Okay.”
“What kind of trouble is he in?”
“He’s in the company of killers and thieves but they haven’t recognized him for what he is…yet.”
“That shouldn’t be any problem for a strong man like you.”
There had been many times in my life that I’d come across just the right woman at the wrong time, but it was rare that I chanced upon
the perfect wrong woman at just the right moment.
We toasted and I almost forgot my problems.
“You sounded tense on the phone last night,” Marella said.
“Son’s in deep shit, wife tried to kill herself three months ago—”
“You’re married?”
“Yeah.”
She shrugged, tossing off this knowledge as unimportant, and I fell a little deeper into the dark passion she offered.
“I turned down a client two days ago,” I went on, “and he was murdered. The man who killed him, I believe, hired me this afternoon. Somehow I have to take all of that and make it right again.”
“My problems are small potatoes compared to yours,” she said, somehow managing to be both light and serious at the same time.
Before I could speak the waiter came to tell us the specials; at least he tried to. I cut him off, ordering the chef’s specialty Canard la Maison for myself and coq au vin for Marella.
When he left I said, “You probably have a close relationship with your father.”
Frowning, she asked, “Why do you say that?”
“Because only old men use the term ‘small potatoes.’ ”
Marella gasped and stood up. I wondered if I had somehow insulted her and now she was about to walk out.
She held out a hand to me. I took it and she pulled me from the booth.
At the front podium she told Monique that we’d be right back—in French.
Across the street from the restaurant there was a recess between a stationery store and bank. It was a dead-end alley blocked off at the mouth by a large locked plastic crate that was there to hold trash bins. This crate was maybe four feet high.
Marella pulled me until we were partially hidden by the receptacle container. She turned her back to me and lifted the flouncy red skirt. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
“I know you know what to do with that,” she said over her shoulder.
I did know and did not hesitate. There’s not nearly enough said about the smooth warmth of entering a woman without protection or worry. When she pressed back against me I noticed that she was clutching the same sacklike black satin bag she’d carried on the train. A sound erupted from us both simultaneously and I began to move with force that threw her against the wall more than once.
And Sometimes I Wonder About You : A Leonid Mcgill Mystery (9780385539197) Page 10
