Mosaic

by Gayle Lynds

  The door closed, and David said, "I've been thinking about the trusts Mom gave us. I'm going to insist Julia turn back control of Marguerite's to us. Marguerite never did anything with it. She just liked the idea that she could if she wanted. What a bitch she could be." He drank his Bloody Mary and glanced at his younger brother. "Don't get me wrong, Brice. I'll miss her as much as anyone. We had a lot of fun as kids. You were too damned young to know she had her faults."

  "Don't we all," Brice said coolly. David never changed. Everything was about David and money.

  "Julia should give you no trouble," Creighton said hastily, heading off another angry comment from Brice, who seemed to be coming out of the subdued state that had afflicted him for months. "All she cares about is her piano. Got that aberration from Jonathan, I suppose. Old Dan Austrian loved his 'culture,' and he ruined Jonathan as a businessman. It makes sense we manage her money for her. And I plan to keep her here until she adjusts. Marguerite turned her into a baby by doing everything for her. It'd be dangerous to let her live on her own. She'd probably fall down some flight of stairs and break her neck. Certainly she'd be at the mercy of every swindler in the city."

  "Another death might hurt you in the polls," David decided in his half-joking manner. "Too many disasters and a candidate looks weak. Like he attracts trouble."

  "Thanks." Creighton rolled his eyes. "That certainly cheers me up."

  "My pleasure. Any little ray of sunshine in the gloom."

  But Creighton knew David was right, and by keeping Julia here, he hoped to stave off more problems, because the next might work against him, unlike Marguerite's death. The two brothers exchanged a smile. They understood one another.

  David set down his glass and his voice hardened. "Assuming you win, you've got to get a bill passed right away to help the family. My God, the estate taxes we face when the old man goes! Clinton's estate bill didn't scratch the surface. We'll each be hit with at least an eight-hundred-million-dollar payout to the IRS."

  Creighton's expression turned sober. "I know. It's at the top of my agenda. Senator Beaver is putting together a draft . . ."

  Brice had been listening idly. But now as Creighton fleshed out his plans and detailed other bills he intended to push through, Brice realized Creighton was talking as if he knew—really knew—he was going to win. It was in the certainty of his physical demeanor, and it was in the complete detail of his tactics. Creighton was a pragmatist. He'd proved that on the Supreme Court and on the bloody battlefields of Vietnam—

  "Creighton?"

  Creighton scowled. "What is it, Brice? Something else you don't like?"

  Brice leaned forward, all the hairs on his arms standing up. He felt a chill, as if he were a child again and his older brothers had just locked him in one of the hundreds of closets in the mansion. "Your pollster told us it's impossible for you to win this election." He paused, looking for the troth in his brother's dark eyes. "That wasn't another empty pep talk you gave the troops back there in the library, was it? You've figured out a way to do it." Sudden pride radiated through Brice. "You sonofabitch! How are you going to pull it off? Tell us, dammit!"

  Creighton chuckled. "There are some things you shouldn't know, little brother. Right, David?"

  David growled, "He won't tell me either, Brice. The asshole's keeping this war plan to himself. If he manages it, it'll be the political upset of the new century." He smiled. "And I'm betting he does."

  For another half hour they talked in the quaint pub in the magnificent manor house that their father had bought more than a half century before. Creighton never budged from his amused refusal to discuss any surefire turnaround plans he might have. In fact, he wouldn't admit he had any. David berated Creighton in his usual cynical, half-mocking manner every time the older man paused.

  As Brice watched their interplay, he began to feel an odd restlessness. He studied his brothers, and wondered. With Marguerite, their only sister, they'd grown up on this estate and roamed its woods and sailed its bay. This was where they brought their own children and grandchildren. This was where their mother had died after Brice's birth. Where as children they'd tried to escape the ironfisted rule of their father and then had acquiesced and created their own stature and riches.

  Their father had been the center of their childhood, the pivot on which their world had whirled. He'd been a god and a demon, and his psychological imprint was as firmly placed on them as any genetic material.

  Perhaps it was being home again or Creighton's acting so much like their father, but as childhood memories rushed through Brice, he felt a stab of the long-ago fear of old Lyle. It was irrational, and he dismissed it quickly.

  After all, his father was no longer in control. They'd seized his fortune and his power. They'd had to. He'd gone totally crazy.

  The breaking point had come slowly. At first Lyle had just donated trees to Auschwitz. Then it was a building for the University for Peace outside San José, Costa Rica, and some hefty cash gifts to do-gooder nonprofits like the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. What had forced them to do something about it all was the Redmond Foundation for Conflict Resolution. Lyle was about to sign the final papers giving half their wealth—some ten billion dollars—to establish it when one of the servants leaked word to Creighton. It would've been the second-largest private foundation in the world, behind only the Eli Lilly and Company Foundation with its nearly twelve billion dollars, but it was a harbinger of how the rest of their inheritance—their money—would be squandered.

  The old man had abandoned everything he'd taught them to believe.

  They'd had no choice, and the brothers had gone into action. David had quietly found a doctor who'd drugged the old man and diagnosed him with Alzheimer's. Creighton made certain the case went to a friendly judge, who'd rendered the desired verdict—incompetence. When Marguerite was briefly in town, they showed her the doctor's report, and on drugs the old man had been as incoherent as they'd described. Even she'd had to agree. Brice had arranged to buy the nursing home in Westchester County. And they'd locked their father away.

  With an atavistic sense of survival, Brice knew it'd been necessary. Everything he was, everything he'd ever believed, everything he'd spent his lifetime working for was at risk if he'd supported his father's irresponsible shedding of the family riches.

  But as he listened to his brothers, he felt a moment of disquiet. Then he told himself sternly no one had to be afraid of the old man anymore. Not even of his memory.

  10

  9:30 AM, SATURDAY

  WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NEW YORK

  Lyle Redmond was eighty-five years old, weak, tired, and pissed as hell. He lay in his narrow bed in the nursing home and listened to the beat of his heart. He could almost hear it throb out words, explain the past, and wipe away his guilt. He kept listening through the gray Saturday morning, knowing he'd failed again. Knowing he had to figure out some other way to stop his sons and finish his grand scheme. But then what? Was there any meaning in any of it?

  There was only one solution. He had to get out of this hellhole.

  The problem was, the plan he'd had was destroyed. And he hadn't been able to figure out another one yet.

  Everything had come to a head earlier this week when the security chief, John Reilly, had told him his favorite orderly had died in a drug deal gone sour: "He was a small-time dealer. Got in a knife fight with one of his clients. They found him in an alley cut to pieces. Dead. Too bad. I know you liked him."

  The old man was shocked and frightened. "Crap," he stormed. "You had that kid killed!"

  "You're dreaming, Mr. Redmond." Reilly's words were polite. "You're just a poor, sick old man having hallucinations." He had a face like raw hamburger and narrow, pale eyes. Like everyone on staff, he was employed by Lyle Redmond's sons.

  To punish the old man, one of the medicos injected him with pentobarbital. As the poison swept through his system, a crew of three tore apart his room. Despite his wooziness, he soon understoo
d they'd found out he'd paid the kid to send the two packets off to his daughter in London and to that nosey CIA guy at Langley.

  They pulled the photographs off his walls and ripped off the backings. They cut up the furniture. Batting exploded everywhere. They dumped the bureau drawers. The closet. The medicine cabinet. They rooted like hogs through his clothing and belongings. There was nothing they didn't touch, examine, tear, or dirty. Violate.

  He was shocked that it upset him. That he still cared about these few irrelevant possessions. It must be a sign he really was old. And that he felt guilty for the kid's death. Fear riddled him, too. He knew what they were looking for.

  When they found the prize—his journals and diamonds—he moaned. He'd labored on his story for a year. His journals were the only way to escape this lousy nursing home, and the diamonds were his last source of power. He'd hidden them and a piece of amber behind the metal plate that protected the air-ventilation duct. As the men crowed with victory, his eyes dribbled moisture and his throat tightened.

  There went his future. He felt so hopeless that if God had beckoned at that very moment, he would've eagerly died.

  But God didn't. The old man lived on, painfully aware he was helpless, nailed to his bed by the pentobarbital and his past mistakes like Christ to the cross.

  As the days passed, the medical staff closely monitored him. He seemed to float on a sea of sewage. When he was lucid, he focused on his daughter, Marguerite. He loved her with every fiber of his cantankerous being. She was the only luminous spot in his life, and even though her brothers had tricked her into thinking he was senile, she visited him whenever she was in the country. She'd sit for hours beside his bed as he raved in the drug-induced madness that his sons made certain he maintained for his family. He'd ache for days afterwards, longing for her.

  She might've gotten the packet by now. Right this moment she could be fighting with her brothers to get him out of here. Or maybe the CIA man was checking out the information in his packet. Maybe he was on his way to rescue him and set matters straight.

  Where were they? Why didn't they come?

  Three days later the doctors switched him to phenobarbital. Although a less hazardous drug, it was still risky. If they gave him too much, his breathing could get so shallow he'd die. He knew his sons didn't want him to die, at least not yet. It wasn't because they felt any fondness for him. He had no illusions. According to the rules of good business he'd taught them—and the U. S. taxation system—he was worth more to them alive than dead. So they'd order him medicated as much as they dared, but not so much it'd kill him.

  Yesterday the doctor had changed the drugs again, this time to the less-dangerous chlorpromazine. They'd started him with twenty-five milligrams, and an hour later they'd given him another twenty-five. They were small doses, because too much initially could cause cardiac arrest.

  Soon they would've increased the size. But he knew drugs. He'd forced himself to focus as the doctor gave orders. He knew how much they were injecting into him. So he pretended compliance. Medicated obedience. That had lulled them, and the asshole doctor had changed his mind and decreased the chlorpromazine.

  Now it was Saturday morning. During the week while he'd been sedated, someone had painted, cleaned, and put his room back together—white walls, cheerful print drapes, hardwood floors, rag rugs, tidy new furniture, and huge windows full of the dull gray sheen of the cold November sky. The room smelled of lemon wax.

  They'd also installed two needle-nose cameras up in the corners across from his bed. That told him more than he wanted to know. Because they hadn't shipped him out of the nursing home, they weren't worried about the police coming to check on him. Which also meant they must've gotten back the packets somehow. Maybe grabbed them from the orderly before he'd had a chance to send them on their way. Or tricked Marguerite and Sam Keeline, the CIA guy, into handing them over.

  The little hope that had kept the old man going evaporated. He'd lost. It made him sick and furious. But at the same time he felt a sorrow so deep it immobilized him. He was breathing, but his life was over.

  His great mass of white hair was a lionlike frame around his waxen face as he lay weak in his bed, sheets pulled protectively up to his chin. He'd been a heavy man with beefy shoulders and a deep rib cage, but no longer. Beneath the sheet he appeared shrunken, as if he'd been squeezed down to a shadow. Next to him the radio was turned on just high enough that it was a low, comforting hum in his ear. Dozing, he listened to his favorite music—mostly Gershwin and tunes from the 1930s and 1940s. They took him back to a safer time, when life was ahead.

  When the news came on, he heard the name "Marguerite Austrian." He went rigid. As the newscaster read the Associated Press copy, a bolt of lightning seared through him.

  Marguerite was dead. Shot to death in London.

  His throat closed. His heart seemed to fracture. Tears exploded from his eyes. He howled a sound so deep and anguished that John Reilly and half his musclemen rushed to his room.

  Two hours later, he sat in a wheelchair in the lobby. They'd wanted him to stay in his room with its isolation and mechanical guards. But he was an open wound, and he threatened to inject himself with some lethal dose. He'd suffocate himself, he told them. Hang himself. At his age, they couldn't keep him unconscious forever with their hellish drugs, because they'd eventually kill him, too. He knew their orders were to keep him alive.

  They exchanged worried glances. John Reilly allowed one of them to roll him out here as he'd demanded.

  "He'll come," the old man insisted as he studied the double glass doors that opened onto the bricked drive. Maybe there was a remote possibility one of his grandkids might drive up to comfort him, too, but he doubted it. They had wrong ideas about him now. He considered Julia, Marguerite's daughter, and his lips almost smiled. She used to come with Marguerite.

  The lobby was furnished with plush chairs and sofas in pastel grays and pinks. He'd always hated the prissy colors.

  John Reilly shrugged. "Whatever you say." He sat down in a lobby chair and read Playboy. He glanced up occasionally to make certain the old man was there and alive. After he finished the magazine, he wandered off, apparently bored.

  The old man tried to stop the tears that leaked from his eyes. Part of him couldn't believe his daughter was dead. Another part realized it'd been inevitable.

  And it was his fault. By involving Marguerite, he'd caused her death.

  He tried to swallow the baseball-sized lump in his throat. For a moment he could see her as a little girl, feel her tug his pants leg, watch her raise her small arms up asking to be carried. She'd always smelled so sweet. Like talcum powder. She'd loved spaghetti. She'd pick up one strand at a time with her tiny fingers and, her face solemn with concentration, poke it into her sweet, red-lipped mouth. He couldn't believe that little girl was dead.

  That he'd killed her. Grief and guilt slashed through him.

  He wiped a trembling hand across his eyes. He made himself watch outdoors as one of the security patrol walked past on his regular rounds. His sons had loaded the place with security—not to keep intruders out so much as to keep him in. Thinking about it made him furious.

  Rage was a lifelong friend. Familiar, comforting. He relaxed a bit. Felt more like his old self. He'd known he'd get over his weakness. It was inevitable, because he didn't believe for one minute it was a simple robbery gone bad that had got Marguerite killed. He knew in his gut who had to be behind it.

  When the battered Volkswagen van turned into the drive, Lyle abruptly rolled his chair forward toward the automatic doors. The staff converged on him from everywhere, showing how important he was and how edgy they were about him. John Reilly appeared from nowhere. Lyle had underestimated him. Wherever Reilly had gone, he'd somehow maintained close watch.

  Reilly froze Lyle's roll toward the front doors. "Where are you going, sir?" His face was devoid of expression.

  "To the curb, asshole. Take me down there."

&n
bsp; The chief of security gazed outside through the glass doors at the leafless trees and bushes, straight ahead to the kiosk that monitored everyone who entered and left, at the drive empty but for the approaching van, and at the parking lot off to the right where the staff left their cars. Two of the other inhabitants of this so-called rest home were out for "walks" in their wheelchairs, pushed by attendants. Other than them and a few sparrows picking at the brown grass, there was no other movement.

  "Ten years ago I would've put you on my personal payroll, Reilly," Lyle growled. "I would've made you rich for your natural talents. How come my sons keep you in this godforsaken dump in the hicks?"

  "You can wait here for him." Reilly held the wheelchair just inside the door.

  He decided to humor Reilly. "Fine with me. Either way, he's here. But I warn you. He and I are going for one of our walks. I got to get out of this place. He's the only one comes to see me anymore. You're all driving me crazy."

  Just then the van stopped in front of the rest home, and the driver's door opened. A friar jumped out onto the circular drive. He wore a full-length, hooded habit, with a narrow coiled rope around his waist. As he strode briskly across the drive and up the steps, the brown wool skirt flapped against his legs. He was in his mid sixties, some twenty years younger than the old man. He had a jowly face and pouches under his eyes. He radiated kindness and concern.

  As soon as the friar saw Lyle, he smiled. Lyle felt something old and painful soften inside. Lyle was a secular Catholic—baptized and raised in the faith, just as his parents, children, and grandchildren had been. Despite the fact that he seldom went to mass and gave only lip service to a God he hadn't spent more than five consecutive minutes thinking seriously about since he was an altar boy, the church was as much a part of him as any of his limbs. He'd never turn his back on it. He couldn't. Besides, there might be something to it, and only an idiot didn't cover all his bases.