The Big Score

by Kilian, Michael;

  He knew very well she didn’t.

  “If you insist, Peter.”

  “I don’t insist. You wanted to go back on the Lady P. Why don’t you? Curland’s got to sail it back anyway. There’s a nice cabin. Some booze. You’ll have a nice time.”

  She looked across the table at Matthias, who was talking to the blond girl from the crew.

  “Whatever you say,” Diandra said. She thought of something. “I’d like to stop at Door County on the way back. I’ve never seen it.”

  “Great. Whatever you want.”

  “I’ll need a car there. I want to look around.”

  “I’ll have Lenny drive the stretch over. Where do you want him to meet you?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  “Make it Ephraim. It has a good harbor. Okay?”

  “Have a nice trip, Peter.”

  He gave her a kiss on the cheek, then stood up, clutching his golden cup and patting her back.

  “Matt,” he said. “You’ll have just one passenger tomorrow, okay? Mrs. Poe. I’m taking a plane back.”

  “You are?”

  “Business.”

  “I’ll try to make it as pleasurable a voyage as possible.”

  “I’m sure you will. She wants to stop over at Door County. I’ll have a car waiting at Ephraim. Good-bye, everybody. Great job.”

  Poe waved to the crew members, then started walking quickly away. Abruptly he stopped and motioned to Matthias to join him. Curland, uncertain, rose and came forward.

  “You got the job,” Poe said. “I want you to do my building. That jake with you?”

  “More than jake.”

  “Sure?”

  “That building’s becoming something of an obsession with me.”

  “Terrific.” Poe slapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t say a word to anyone, not even Sally. I still want to make the announcement in a very big way, okay?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Your fee will run large, won’t it? Like maybe a million when all is said and done.”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Well, I do.”

  Poe started off again.

  “Excuse me, but which design do you want?” Matthias asked. “The tower, or the whole thing?”

  “Haven’t decided yet,” Poe said, over his shoulder, and kept going.

  Cindy asked Matthias to dance, and kept him out on the floor for two more numbers. When they returned, Diandra was sitting all alone, looking bored and unhappy. The music was a little faster than Matthias liked, but he went to her and asked if she’d like to dance. She accepted, but with a weary reluctance.

  As he expected, she danced beautifully, if formally, keeping her body at some distance from his. In her high heels, she was again an inch or two taller than he.

  “Having a good time?” he asked.

  She turned her head to look into his eyes. “It’s improving, but not enough.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Diandra glanced around the room. “Can we go outside?”

  “Whatever you like.”

  “I’d like to take a little walk. Maybe down to the river.”

  Despite the northern latitude, it was a warm night. Diandra maintained her distance from him, until they reached the walkway along the riverbank, when she slipped her arm in his.

  “Peter seemed subdued,” she said. “I thought he’d be doing cartwheels. Jumping up and down. Shouting.”

  “I guess he’s preoccupied.”

  “He’s always preoccupied. The only way to get his mind off business is with a lobotomy, and I’m not sure that would work.”

  They passed under some trees, and then came out into the clear again. Boat lights twinkled in the soft darkness.

  “Why did you marry him?” Matthias asked.

  She turned, her eyes meeting his.

  “I’m sorry,” Matthias said. “That was impertinent.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just that—it’s funny, I was just now asking myself the same question. Though it’s one I’ve asked myself many times, including on my wedding night.”

  “I was rude.”

  “Stop being so stuffy, Matthias. It grates on me after a while.”

  They moved on. The band music seemed to be floating in the air behind them.

  “I married him mostly because I was curious, I guess,” she said finally, her voice soft again. “I was doing very well as a model, making five hundred dollars an hour doing the New York shows. Modeling work is hard. You don’t dare turn anything down. Your meter’s running, if you know what I mean. What you turn down in your twenties you know you’ll never get in your thirties, when you start to go old. But it was rewarding. I liked the life. I traveled. I had no interest in getting married, not then. Certainly not to an egomaniac like Peter. When he proposed, I said no. I think it threw him.”

  “But eventually you said yes.”

  “It wasn’t his money, if that’s what you’re thinking, though I’ll admit that was nice. I’d been proposed to by wealthy men before, most of them empty-headed fools, for all their business expertise. You know the type. That party of Bitsie Symms was full of them.”

  She slowed her pace. Their bodies bumped closer.

  “They all wanted to buy a beauty. That was part of it with Peter. Be sure of that. But there was more. He found me capable, useful, not just a decoration. He was different in another way. He didn’t just want to be rich and smiled upon. Peter’s got a big game going on with the world, a contest, a war if you like, and he means to win. I was fascinated by the idea of being with him at the end, to see if he did. I was curious to know what it would be like to be Mrs. Peter Poe.”

  “And now you know.”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  She turned to look at him in the dim light, her eyes seeking trust. “It isn’t what I expected. There’s no excitement, no challenge. He hasn’t made me a part of things. I suppose I’d be appalled by what I discovered if he did, but it’s hard being left out. I’m bored to tears most of the time, and my life is very lonely.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. We all have our sorrows. Mine aren’t as bad as some.”

  “Do you love him?” His boldness surprised him. Something about pulling that dirty trick on the commodore had changed him, brought something long hidden deep within him to the surface.

  “Do you love Sally Phillips?”

  Boldness for boldness. He had no answer.

  “Don’t take this wrong, Matthias, but I used to hope I’d someday fall in love with someone like you—cultured, romantic, very intelligent. Someone who might write me poetry—or paint my portrait.”

  She took her hand from his arm. “That was when I was in college, a long time ago.”

  She halted suddenly, looking up. “What on earth is that?”

  A long, iridescent, gauzy cloud was dancing overhead, far, far overhead. It was an astonishing thing, for the sky was otherwise clear, with bright stars everywhere.

  “It’s not on earth at all,” Matthias said. “It’s the aurora borealis. A plume of gases thousands of miles away. It’s picking up the light of the sun.”

  “It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen such a thing before.”

  “Normally you don’t this far south, but sometimes the atmospheric conditions are just right.”

  “God, it’s marvelous.”

  She leaned close to him again. They stood together, heads tilted back. She took a deep breath, then another, then closed her eyes, swaying slightly.

  He couldn’t help himself. He suspected he wasn’t intended to.

  Her lips parted slightly when they kissed. He gently pulled her closer. She yielded, then stiffened, finally pulling away.

  “This is going to get us both into very big trouble.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She took his hand. “No. Don’t be. I’m just not thinking very clearly.”

  “Perhaps we should go back.”

>   “Yes. You must be tired after all that sailing.”

  “Not really. Winning is always invigorating.”

  “That’s what Peter always says. You can dance with your friend Cindy then. She certainly seems up tonight. I’m going to bed. I want to do some reading.” She stopped and turned. “Across the bay there, that’s Door County?”

  “Yes. A little bit of Maine, here in the Midwest.”

  “Can we have lunch there?

  “Sure. There’s a Scandinavian place in Sister Bay with live goats on its roof.”

  “I hope it’s a thick roof.”

  They walked back to the hotel. In the lobby, by the elevators, he kissed her hand and said good night, then paused.

  “Your husband told me he wants me to do his building.”

  She smiled, a little cynically. “Matt, he decided that the instant he looked at your plans.”

  Matthias stayed at the party only long enough to chat with a few old friends and make sure that the crew were being treated hospitably and were enjoying themselves. He thought of checking the boat, but his fatigue from the race was beginning to catch up with him. Excusing himself, he went upstairs, hoping they wouldn’t lose too much time making the side trip to Door County. He was anxious to start work on the project, as anxious as a child on Christmas Eve.

  Matthias entered his room to find that a maid had turned down the bed, leaving the lights on. There was a bottle of gin and another of scotch on the dresser, along with ice and some mixers. Presents from Poe. He ignored these, but noticed an envelope left with them. It bore the words “Matthias Curland, Architect.” Inside was a check from Poe made out for $25,000.

  And more to come. A million dollars, the man had said. Enough to end all his worries for good, to fulfill his obligation to his ancestors, to buy the freedom that would enable him to set his life on course again, to strike for another, different horizon.

  He sat down on the bed, staring at the check, then folded it and put it in his wallet. He turned on the television set. After the last few minutes of a situation comedy, the evening news from Green Bay came on. To his surprise, he didn’t have to wait for the sports segment. The yacht race was the lead news story. It opened with a long shot of the Lady P crossing the finish, then cut to a much closer view of Poe at the helm, beaming—himself and Cindy in the background. There was more of Poe on the dock. Matthias had no idea how the Chicago TV stations would play the event, but here Poe was getting everything he could possibly have wanted. In closing the story, the news anchor made no mention at all of the commodore’s protest. Matthias smiled. The man was blessed, or had made a pact with the devil.

  The news program moved on to a story about a car wreck on the interstate. Matthias turned off the set and started for the bed, thinking how blissful would be this night’s sleep, in contrast to so many he’d endured in recent weeks. It was then that he noticed that the red message light on the telephone was blinking.

  The message was from Diandra, and brief. She’d left her suite number. It was just down the hall. Matthias picked up the phone, then set it down again. She hadn’t said to call.

  He sat quietly a moment, trying to think. All he needed to do was sink to his pillow and fall instantly asleep. He could talk to her in the morning. He could plead fatigue, or a late night. Or lie, and say he hadn’t noticed the message.

  He rapped on her door gently, half hoping that she’d be asleep and not hear. He was about to turn away when it opened. The room within was dark.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

  She closed the door behind him. She was wearing a silken robe. She tugged at its belt, opening it, then without hesitation came into his arms. Her kiss was hard and hungry, a glancing sharpness of teeth, the warmth of tongue. Heat was radiating from them, enveloping them. Her robe came off. His hands were everywhere over her. She was tugging at him. He stepped back. Together, clumsily, frantically, they pulled off his clothes. Then they were moving, spinning, falling into her bed. The sheets were cool, then warm, then forgotten. He felt her flesh moist against him—legs, stomach, breasts—her arms tight around his back, his face buried in her silken hair, his head swimming in the luxuriant scent of her neck. Then a sudden stiffness of her muscles, a brake swiftly and urgently applied.

  She was breathing heavily. “Do you … have … something?”

  He paused, poised awkwardly above her, then realized what she meant. He scrambled to his clothing, yanking forth his wallet.

  When he returned, she was lying straight and still, but turned to him, her body curving, her legs rising and moving apart. The interruption had cost them little, except now he was thinking. Was he mad? What could have provoked this craziness, in him, in her? It was more than loneliness and attraction and passion. There was resentment. They were both the property of Peter Poe, and they were rebelling against him. The hell with you, Peter Poe. Fuck you, Peter Poe. He never talked like that, but he was saying it, over and over, in his mind, and now aloud.

  She silenced him with another kiss, wrapping herself around him. The words vanished, were forgotten. An extraordinary giddy happiness swept over him, hushing all sound, all sense of movement, all else.

  They fell asleep in each other’s arms. Later, he awoke to find she had moved away to the other side of the bed. He thought he heard her crying, but there was only a vague sense of it. Sleep was hovering near. It returned.

  When he awakened again, it was to a soft gray light from the windows. She lay with her back to him. He had wondered how she would look without clothing. He was surprised at the feminine roundness that softened the edges of her long and slender frame. Botticelli had indeed painted such women. Modigliani had. He would. This woman.

  Matthias sat up, a pain throbbing at the back of his head. He was fully and sharply awake, feeling oddly cold. It was the next day. Whatever price was to be paid for this rash abandon, it would start soon.

  He kissed her shoulder, but she did not stir, so he rose and quietly dressed. He looked at her one more time, sensing somehow that she was awake, but not wanting to speak to him. Then, still groggy, he returned to his room.

  CHAPTER 11

  To Zany’s and the town’s relief, the crime rate in Grand Pier fell back to its normal, drunks-and-minor-nuisances level, making the added presence of sheriff’s deputies and State Police troopers in town seem a little embarrassing. Nevertheless, Zany continued to make himself as visible as possible, dropping in at the stores, restaurants, and cafes throughout the day and patrolling the streets and main highway himself at least twice a night. As an added, pointed gesture, he had his officers increase their traffic stops. Anyone who drove a gray van into town was automatically pulled over.

  He was wasting time, of course. He had come to the irrational, paranoid, but dead-certain conclusion that as long as he let the Langley case languish, this blissfully peaceful state would continue. He had no doubt that, the moment he should turn up on the snoop in Chicago again, Grand Pier would be hit once more—the deputies and troopers notwithstanding. It was like one of his more fiendish computer games, only for real.

  His first stop this morning was at his wife’s beach shop, where he picked up a copy of the day’s Chicago Tribune and read it over coffee at her little lunch counter. As he turned to the sports section, the four-column picture on its front page jumped out at him. It was of Peter Poe’s triumphant finish at the big Lake Michigan sailboat race, showing Poe, Matthias Curland, and some good-looking girl standing by the helm of Poe’s boat, smiling at him in smug triumph from the newspaper page. He grinned back, then poured some of his coffee on them. His wife Judy looked at him as if he had gone nuts. In some ways, maybe his frustration was making him a little loopy.

  He’d stayed out of Chicago, but he had called Frank Baldessari a couple of times—reiterating all the links between Jill Langley, the Curland brothers, Laurence Train, and Peter Poe; almost begging his old friend to treat them as leads and pursue th
em. But the lieutenant couldn’t be budged from his disinterest. When Zany had suggested he try for a matchup of the prints taken from the seat of O’Rourke’s car with those of the hooker who’d had her throat cut, Baldessari even got angry.

  “Don’t you think I did that?” he’d said. “They weren’t hers. But so what? O’Rourke must have had half the whores in Chicago in that car.”

  “Did you run them through the FBI computer?”

  “Let me do my job, all right, Zany? Seems to me you got enough stuff to worry about on your own turf.”

  Baldessari did help Zany to a small degree—having his detectives talk to as many of Jill Langley’s friends and acquaintances as they could find. He’d also had his men canvass the boat owners at the harbor where Jill Langley had last been seen. He’d sent Zany a voluminous report, but none of it was of any use. He laughed at Zany’s suggestion that he go for a wiretap on Train and the Curlands.

  There were other ways of making progress. Zany leaked to an old reporter friend in Chicago all that he knew about the mystery of the paintings, along with the interesting fact that his copy of The Red Tower had been stolen along with all the personal items that had turned up in the apartment of the hooker presumed to have murdered Chairman O’Rourke. The newsman, Marty Killeen of the Tribune, at least sounded interested.

  Zany also began calling police departments in cities other than New York that might have art theft or forgery details in their burglary units. Initially starting down the list of big cities, but then concentrating on those that had substantial German-American populations—Milwaukee, Baltimore, and, of course, Philadelphia. He got promises of assistance, a couple sounding quite genuine.

  It then dawned on him, as it should have early on, that his own phone might in some way be tapped, and that all this long-distance sleuthing might invite another round of local crime. Thereafter, he started using pay phones and his A.T.&T. credit card, hoping Judy wouldn’t scream too loudly at the bills.

  After landing at Meigs Field, Poe and Mango went to his penthouse, where she laid out his casino predicament in grim detail and then gave him one of the finest nights of his life. The next morning they helicoptered out to the Michigan City casino. They found Bobby Mann working the floor, talking to the pit boss. He dropped his drink when he saw Poe and Mango come in. Poe was sure now that something seriously bad was up, and that Mango had in no way been exaggerating the problem. It surprised Poe to see Mann drinking at such an early hour. He almost never did that.