“Why is Evangeline Sidney-Gray after you, really?”
“She wants her book,” Celia said, looking down.
“No. Even a crazy billionaire like her would have to have a better reason than an old book to run a search like she has for you.”
There was no hair hanging down on Celia’s face but she pushed at phantom strands anyway.
“Tell me about it.”
“Why should I trust you, Mr. McGill?”
“Because I found you,” I said. “Because if I wanted to hurt you all I had to do was bring a little muscle to drag Paulie off and throw you in the back of a van. Because I knew all the players before we sat down.” I took out my PI’s license and put it on the table and said, “Because I’m a licensed private detective and if anybody ever needed somebody like me on their side it’s you.”
“I don’t have any money to pay your fee,” she said.
“I’m not working for you, darling,” I said, feeling as if I was in an old black-and-white movie. “That distant cousin you never met, Hiram Stent, asked me for help and I turned him down. He just needed somebody to believe in him and now he’s dead. I’m doing this for him.”
Celia was concentrating on my every word. In the past eleven months she’d learned to make decisions independent from family, friends, bosses, and even the law. She was on the run and dreamed every night about the life she had probably taken for granted.
She swallowed hard and said, “There was a letter pasted under the endpaper on the inside of the back cover. I noticed how puffy the page was and that made me curious. You know I studied antiquities at Yale. I knew that some of the royal families of old hid their secrets just like that.”
“And was it some kind of ancient secret?”
“No. It was a letter ten or eleven years old.”
“From whom?”
“Charles Sidney-Gray.”
“Her husband?”
“Son. He had gone on a killing spree in his youth. He killed homeless people, men and women, and buried their bodies under the family summer retreat in Cape Cod. Forty-nine bodies if the letter is accurate. He lured them there because he pretended to…pretended to work for a charity helping the homeless that his family ran.”
“Did you tell Paulie this?”
“No. My brother told me that I should only say that Dame Gray wanted her property back.”
“And what did you tell your brother?”
“I said the letter was about a crime but led him to believe it was like a theft. I don’t completely trust Donald either,” she said. “We love each other but he doesn’t have good sense. I only wanted a little money to get him a lawyer that might help get him out of prison. He’s dying down there.”
“And you somehow got in touch with Dame Gray and asked for the money in return for the letter.”
“Yes,” she said, looking down.
“What happened then?”
“Two men grabbed me in front of my apartment in Allston. I screamed and this vet from Afghanistan came out with a gun. He shot in the air and I ran. I ran. I didn’t pack or anything. I just went down to where the Chinese bus is and came to New York. I knew those men were working for Mrs. Gray. I was afraid.”
“Changed your name,” I said. “First you became an artist’s model for that fool Fantu Belair and then, after meeting Paulie, you became a stripper.”
“You know Fantu?”
“Met him. He wasn’t much help.”
“I started out modeling because no one wanted an ID and I got paid in cash,” she said. “Stripping was the same only it paid better.”
“Smart. But somehow they found out you came to New York. They sent the man of many names after you.”
“I called my boyfriend to tell him I was all right. I used a throwaway phone but somehow they traced it here.”
“Forty-nine dead bodies under her summer home,” I said. “Damn. Did you tell Evangeline that?”
“I think she already knew. The minute I said I had a letter from her son she was worried. I didn’t tell her about the storage space though.”
“What storage space?”
“Charles Gray killed himself soon after he wrote the letter. Before that he took a ninety-nine-year lease on a storage space in Wyoming. He says that there are forty-nine trophies there.”
“Forty-nine,” I said again. “The rich always go overboard.”
I had a storage space too, with my own variety of trophies. I hadn’t murdered anyone to get them but they were various pieces of evidence I had to prove that I had set up people for crimes they had not committed.
“I, I don’t think he expected anybody to find the letter for a long time. It was a mistake that the book came to the Enclave. The Gray family made a donation of less valuable books but somehow it got included. That’s why I studied it so closely. We don’t usually get such valuable gifts.”
“Do you have the book?”
“No.”
“No?”
“It’s too hard to bring things out of there. They search you with one of those machines they use at airport security. It can see if there’s a dime in your pocket.”
“So where is it?”
“There’s an old Bible that Indulf the Aggressor, an old Scottish king, used to hide his flask from his wife. It’s hollowed out and I put the book in there. I’m the only one who knows about it. It’s a part of the permanent collection and I, I don’t know. I kind of liked keeping it a secret…like I was helping the old king.”
“So it’s still in the Enclave?”
“Yes.”
“The letter, too?”
“Everything,” she said with a nod.
For some reason I thought of Marella. This made me smile. If she and I were working together this would be just another job. A few million dollars in the old suitcase and off to Argentina or maybe Monaco. Hell! This is the twenty-first century—we could go to Moscow or Beijing.
“I can get you out of this,” I said.
“How?”
“First we have to cut Paulie loose. He’s a good guy and he helped you but he’s not to be trusted when it comes to power and money like this.”
Not answering was her tacit approval.
I handed her the brown envelope with the money I’d taken from my office.
“There’s five thousand dollars in here. Go over there and give it to Paulie. Tell him that you’re working with me now and that if everything works out you’ll be giving him that much again.”
“This is too much,” she said. “I’ll never be able to pay you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “In for a penny…”
She took the envelope and went over to Paulie. They talked for maybe three minutes. He wrote down something and gave it to her, then he looked at me.
I smiled and waved.
When Celia came back to the table she was ready for business. Good. I was born ready.
43
While Celia used dead Josh Farth’s money to purchase our good-bye from Paulie DeGeorges, I made a call. It was over before she returned to the table.
“What he say?” I asked when she was seated again.
“That you had a reputation for being rough,” she said. “That he only half believed that people were really after me until you found him. He said that his friend had told him to stay away from you if he could.”
“Did Paulie give you the same advice?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He said that if it was you looking for me then I probably needed the help of someone like you.”
“He’s a puzzle, that Paulie. Usually the only thing you could expect from a guy with a record like his is to pick your pocket and then ask for a loan.”
“Donald said that without Paulie he would have never made it in prison. He said that if you respect him Paulie will do anything for you.”
“When’s the last time you ate?” I said.
“Yesterday.”
“Wha
t can I get you?”
“I’m not really hungry,” she said.
“You have to keep up your strength to be able to outrun the people Dame Gray’s gonna put on you.”
“I don’t want to run anymore. I’m willing to tell her where the book is without any money,” Celia said. “All I need is for you to tell her that.”
“You could have called at any time and said that,” I countered. “But you haven’t because you know that it’s not the letter but what the letter says. It’s what’s in your head that puts you in a sling.”
Celia actually started to cry.
“You still need to eat,” I said.
—
I called Bug while Celia ate a concoction called granola-oatmeal along with a chocolate croissant and a glass of factory-squeezed orange juice.
“Hello, LT,” he said. “You talk to Zephyra yet?”
“I’m calling you, Tiny,” I replied, using his lesser-known nickname. “You make any headway on that satellite connection?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d like you to meet me at Hush’s house in an hour so we can talk about it.”
“No.”
“No?”
Celia was eating lustily. Sometimes hope gives you an appetite.
“I’m not going to that man’s house,” Bug said. “Not ever.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to know where he lives or what he looks like.”
Bug was a genius. Of course he didn’t want to be familiar with a hit man that the president of the United States was willing to give license to.
“Okay,” I said. “Where then?”
“You know that place on Christopher called Smokers?”
“Two hours from now,” I said and disconnected the call.
“This is good,” she said, and I found myself hoping that she’d live to eat ten thousand breakfasts more.
“Hey, Pops,” Twill said.
He wore coal-gray slacks, a teal T-shirt, and a light jacket that was such a dark red that it almost ran purple.
I could see in Celia’s face what everyone saw when first encountering my son. He was beautiful, willing, and there was something about him that reminded you of Bible stories about great and sometimes evil men that stole hearts that never wanted to be returned.
“Son,” I said. “Pull up a seat.”
Twill kindly asked our nearest neighbors if he could take their extra chair and then pulled it close to Celia.
“Hi,” he said to her, holding out a hand. “I’m Twill, this old guy’s son.”
“Celia,” she said, shaking with one hand and wiping her mouth on a paper napkin with the other.
“Some people would like to talk to Celia here,” I said, “and I’d like to make sure that doesn’t happen until the time is right.”
“Uncle Gordo’s?”
“He still owes me a favor or two.”
“Okay,” Twill said, hunching shoulders. “The more the merrier.”
“Don’t you even want to know why?” Celia asked Twill.
“If he’s hiding you then it must be some kinda mayhem,” Twill said easily. “That’s how LT rolls.”
“My son is a detective in training, Ms. Landis,” I said.
Then I went into the story of her difficulties without revealing the secrets of the letter. I kept this secret for Celia’s sake, not my son’s.
—
“So should we go there now?” Twill asked.
“First I’d like to ask our friend here a question,” I said.
She looked at me. Her light brown eyes all attention.
“Why would you ever try to steal from and extort anybody, especially a woman as rich and powerful as Evangeline Sidney-Gray?”
I could see the question furrow in her brow. She had asked herself the same thing many, many times.
“My parents died when I was eleven. Donald took care of me and he helped me with my schoolwork. He kept me fed and safe. I’m not very good with money so I’ve never really been able to help him. And so when I saw that letter I just thought that that rich kid could pay for what he’d done by helping Donald.”
“Sounds like just the right move to me,” my son chimed brightly.
Celia smiled and I knew, and so did she, that I had left her in the right hands.
44
The sign read LANNY’S EATS but everyone who went there called it Smokers. It was the last place in Manhattan, that I knew of, that encouraged its customers to smoke while warning away those who somehow felt that there was a loophole in the Death Clause that came with each and every human body. The front door, on far west Christopher Street, opened onto a long corridor that was usually filled with tobacco smoke; this because the vent fans from the dining room blew through there. At the end of the hall was a sign that actually read GIVE UP ALL HOPE YE THAT ENTER HERE.
I had not asked Bug why he liked to go to Smokers. He had never smoked and, before he turned Mr. Universe, he never even went out. I figured it was a reaction to how much his life had changed since he’d met Zephyra. He didn’t want to believe that he’d given up a life of pessimism for love.
Given my druthers I wouldn’t have ever gone there. I don’t smoke but I love smoking. Sucking on a cigarette and letting the smoke waft up from my mouth into my nostrils made me feel invincible. But boxers in training could not put that kind of strain on their breath. I had been on the treadmill my whole life and so smoking would have to wait until I died.
After spending half an hour at Smokers I had fevered dreams filled with coffins and Lucky Strikes for days.
—
The floors and ceiling were painted white and the walls tar-black. Lanny Marks was the server and his brother (also named Lanny) worked the kitchen; that way no employee could sue them for health issues later on.
“Can you imagine somebody suing you over gettin’ sick?” Lanny the cook asked me one off-night when Bug and I were the only customers. “Everybody dies is sick first. You could kill somebody by kissin’ ’em or steppin’ on a toe and givin’ ’em a blood clot. I swear one day they gonna have a fine for BO.”
Bug was at a white table in a black corner eating pastrami and drinking a milk shake. He was hunkered down over the meal, looking like the runt of the litter that had grown into a timber wolf.
“Bug.”
He gazed up at me, unconsciously raising a hand to protect the meal.
“LT,” he said. “You didn’t say if you heard from Z.”
Young men and their virgin hearts. Bug had only fraternized with escort service girls before Zephyra, so now all he could think about was her and how he was bound to lose.
“She left a voice mail,” I lied, “saying she was on vacation.”
“Bitch.”
“What you got for me, B?” I said.
I pulled out a whitewashed chair and sat.
“What can I get you?” Lanny the waiter asked.
He was a ruddy-white and my height, so I liked him.
“You got that chicken rice soup today?”
“Every day.”
I nodded and he went off.
In the meanwhile Bug pushed away his sandwich, pulled a square and flat panel from a large leather bag at his side, and placed it at the center of the table. The white glass tile was maybe three times the size of an iPad. Bug touched a corner that didn’t look any different than anyplace else on the glassy rectangle. A bright light rose up from the surface, constructing what I can only call a pyramid of light above it. Rather than blocks of stone, this form was made from multicolored letters, words, images, and lines connecting them in horizontal, slanted, and vertical paths.
The topmost word was “Jones.”
There were eight other tables in the smoke-filled restaurant; three of these had two or more nicotine-addicted customers.
I looked around but Bug said, “Don’t worry, LT, in order to see this you got to be within three feet and you have to look at it straight on.”
To test
this claim I stood up. The words and images blurred into pleasant pastel colors before my eyes. I took three steps away and the colors muted even more.
“In ten years every house in the civilized world will have 3-D TVs like this in the living room,” Bug said when I was seated again. “I hear there’s a sheik in Qatar and an Internet mogul in China got whole ballrooms made from panels like these. Not only will you be able to watch the movie, you’ll be able to get inside it.”
“Pretty great scientific tool,” I said aloud. “You could actually postulate a molecule and then get inside it to see what you thought wrong.”
“Wow,” Bug said. To him I had been a brute until that moment.
“Nice lights,” Lanny the waiter said as he put the soup down in front of me. “But don’t turn up the volume.”
“Tell me what we got here,” I said to Bug when Lanny was gone again.
Bug smiled and I knew I was in for a frightful treat.
“Fourteen hundred and sixty-two names active,” he said. “Those are the names in red. There are other names but they’re coded either inactive, blue, or closed, black.”
“What about all these shades of green?” I asked, not needing any explanation on “closed” files.
“Those are what the system calls tasks,” Bug said. “A task could be a robbery or the end of the line of a smuggling run. The shade of green is judged by the time that the task is expected to happen. The darkest ones are in the next twelve hours; the lighter to lightest are sometime later than that. I don’t show anything happening more than a week from the system clock.”
“Damn,” I said. “There must be three hundred tasks listed.”
I wanted a cigarette.
“Two sixty-seven,” Bug said. He took a sip from his milk shake straw.
“And these lines connecting green tasks to red names are telling us who is expected to be involved?”
“The solid ones,” Bug averred, “and the lines made up from dashes are probable participants.”
“Is the when and where in here?” I asked.
“Mostly. It’s a beautiful system but it’s like he was never afraid of being hacked. There’s no firewalls whatsoever.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Jones figures either he can blackmail or kill anybody try and use this against him.”
And Sometimes I Wonder About You : A Leonid Mcgill Mystery (9780385539197) Page 21
