Fifth Avenue wst-1

by Christopher Smith

  Her anger dissolved into frustration and sadness. Once again, another opportunity had passed her by. Once again, it wouldn’t be her front and center. “Well,” she said, more to herself than to anyone else, “I came close, didn’t I?”

  The lieutenant didn’t know what she was talking about, but Louis did and when Leana looked at him, hoping to find sympathy and a hint of understanding in his eyes, she saw nothing but a controlled look of rage that was becoming difficult for him to suppress.

  He addressed the lieutenant. “Would you please excuse us? I’d like a moment alone with her.”

  The lieutenant nodded and started moving in the direction of the two barmen.

  “No,” Louis said. “You’ve got three men watching them already. I want you in the lobby, where there could be others. Find Zack Anderson and tell him to inform the crowd that for personal reasons, Leana Redman will not be delivering tonight’s speech.” He saw the hesitation on the man’s face and said, “Let’s not forget that you work for me.”

  The man left the room.

  “I know how much that speech meant to you,” Louis said to Leana. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out.”

  Leana lifted her head. I’ll bet you’re sorry, she thought. She knew that having that speech delivered by her meant more to him than the opening of this hotel. But she had more important things to address. “I need you to tell me what you know. Who murdered my sister?”

  He led her across the empty lobby, toward an illumined bank of elevators. “I’ll do better than just tell you,” he said. “I’ll take you to him.”

  “Take me to him?” she said.

  “Spocatti has him upstairs. Right now, the man you’ve been looking for is waiting in your office. I suggest we confront the son of a bitch and end this now.”

  Jack Douglas heard the clicking of Elizabeth Redman’s heels and saw her shadow stretching along the far north wall before he actually saw her.

  He stopped pacing in the rose-colored foyer and turned to watch her round the corner at the end of the long hallway. She was wearing a cream silk suit that was so delicate, it might have been transparent had it not been for the paleness of her own skin. As she came toward him, Jack saw nothing in her demeanor that suggested she was annoyed or surprised by his unexpected presence.

  Yet he knew she wouldn’t be pleased to see him. She had made it well known that she held him personally responsible for Celina’s death.

  Jack started walking toward her, thinking that if she didn’t cooperate with him, she might be facing the reality of another dead daughter. “I’m sorry for intruding,” he said. “But I have to speak to George. Do you know where he is?”

  At the mention of her husband’s name, there was the slightest hesitation in Elizabeth Redman’s stride. Then she stopped in the center of the hallway and said coolly, “My husband isn’t here, Mr. Douglas.”

  And without another word, she stepped into the sitting room.

  Jack stood there a moment, weighing his options and then he went after her. He found her across the room, facing a window that looked uptown, toward the swirling lights of The Hotel Fifth. If she knew he was there, she didn’t let it show.

  There was no time for games. “I know who murdered Celina,” he said. “I know who rigged those spotlights with explosives. If you want me to catch the man and put a stop to this, then I suggest you cut the bullshit, Mrs. Redman, and help me.”

  Stunned by the tone of his voice and what he’d just said to her, Elizabeth turned.

  “Where is George?” he said again. “You must know where he is.”

  “You know who killed Celina?”

  “I do,” he said. “But I need to speak to George.”

  She stepped away from the window and sat in a white chintz chair. She seemed very tired when she said, “I don’t know where he is. He left an hour ago. He didn’t tell me where he was going.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Of course, it’s unusual.”

  “And you have no idea where he could have gone?”

  “None,” Elizabeth said. “He received that letter by messenger and then he left. He wouldn’t tell me where he was going.”

  Jack’s mind was racing. “What letter?” he said. “Who sent it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “He wouldn’t let me.”

  “And he left after receiving it?”

  “Yes. Whatever was in that letter disturbed him very much.”

  “Disturbed him how?”

  “It was a look I haven’t seen in him before. George looked frightened. I could see it on his face when he put the letter in his jacket pocket. It was clear that he was scared, but there was something else, some other emotion I couldn’t define. At least not then.”

  “But you can now?”

  Elizabeth was silent a moment, but then she nodded. “Yes. I’ve seen that look before. I saw it quite a bit in Leana when she was growing up.” She took a breath. “George looked incredibly sad, as if he had been cheated out of something he always wanted. That’s what I saw in his face-beneath the fear.”

  “What could it be?”

  “I don’t know. But I might have a better idea if you tell me who murdered my daughter

  “It was Louis Ryan.”

  She had little reaction to this and while Jack was surprised by that, he supposed that perhaps a part of her always had known it was Ryan, but that she never assumed he would go this far after so many years.

  For a moment, she was still, then she rose and stepped again to the windows that looked uptown. “And now he has Leana.”

  Jack picked up the phone on the table beside him.

  “Who are you calling?” Elizabeth said.

  “The police.”

  “That letter was from Louis Ryan,” she said. “You do know that, don’t you?”

  “I know it now. I think your husband is with him.”

  “He thinks George killed his wife, Anne. He’s always thought that. But I suppose you know that, too.”

  A dispatcher came on the line. While he spoke to the man, briefly telling him what he knew, Elizabeth started talking. “But George didn’t kill her,” she said. “How could he? Anne Ryan was his first love.”

  Jack looked sideways at her. The mood in the room was changing. “Forget it,” he said to the dispatcher. “A lot of people are involved in this-including my parents. Tell Lieutenant Greenfield that I will meet him at the hotel. And get a crew out at JFK. Diana Crane’s plane will be landing there at midnight. I want to make certain nothing happens to her or her mother.”

  He hung up the phone. “I have to go,” he said.

  But Elizabeth was in another place, another time. She looked at Jack and said, “What would you have done, Mr. Douglas, had you been in my shoes? He didn’t think I knew, but I did. I followed them one night to a hotel in Hartford. While I sat in my car, no more than a hundred yards away, I watched them go inside.’’

  He was about to say this was none of his business, that he needed to go, when he realized what was unfolding here.

  “You can’t imagine how much that hurt,” she said. “Seeing them like that, laughing, holding hands. But I loved George. We were engaged and I was willing to do anything to keep him. As far as I was concerned, Anne Ryan was poison. And so I killed her. I took one of George’s shotguns, drove out to her home and saw that her car was gone.”

  She looked up at the ceiling. “It was late,” she said. “I knew she would be coming back sooner or later, and so I parked my car a mile down the road and hid in the woods near her house. The weather was awful that night. We were having a blizzard. I must have stayed in those woods for hours before I saw her car coming down the road and skidding in the snow as she approached the bridge. When I pulled the trigger, I remember being perfectly calm, like I am now. Even the sound of gunfire didn’t startle me. And when her car toppled over the bridge, I felt nothing but relief. She was out of our lives. Proble
m solved. I hurried back to my car and left before the police could arrive.”

  Jack couldn’t believe she was confessing this to him. “You killed Anne Ryan?” he said.

  Elizabeth smiled. “You’re a sharp man, Mr. Douglas. Brighter than I imagined. Yes, I killed her. I was desperate and so I killed her. It was the best and worst thing I’ve ever done in my life. While I may have gotten Anne Ryan out of our lives, my daughter is now dead because of what I did, and now my husband and my other daughter are at risk.”

  Jack stood there, dumbstruck. “You could have stopped this.”

  If she heard him, it wasn’t apparent.

  “I’ve never told George,” Elizabeth said. “But I think he’s always known. He’s just never had the heart to ask.” She looked at Jack. “But you’ll change all that, won’t you, Mr. Douglas? You’ll tell George. And you’ll tell the police.”

  “I have no choice.”

  “Of course you don’t,” she said. “You’re an honest man.”

  It was getting late. He had to meet Greenfield at the hotel before he and his men went inside. He was walking past Elizabeth when she said, “I love my family, Mr. Douglas. I’ve told you this for their benefit, not mine. I understand the repercussions-I’ll go to prison. But the trade-off is worth it if you get there in time and don’t let Louis Ryan hurt either of them.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  “Have I ever told you that you remind me of my wife?”

  They were standing in one of the exterior glass elevators. Beyond the tinted windows that overlooked Manhattan’s Upper East Side, glittering Fifth Avenue skyscrapers rushed past them. Leana looked at Louis, who seemed to be leaning against the city, his hands resting along the chrome rail, a faintly nostalgic look on his face. While the subject had never been discussed between them, Leana knew that he once accused her father of murdering Anne Ryan.

  She didn’t know why he mentioned this and she certainly wasn’t about to ask-Leana had other things on her mind. She looked up at the elevator’s lighted dial and said, “We’re almost there, Louis.”

  But Louis ignored her dismissive tone. “I think Anne would have enjoyed tonight,” he said. “She always liked parties. She was the perfect hostess-beautiful, smart, witty, sophisticated. Anne could make friends as easily as I seem to make enemies.” He smiled at the memory of her. “If she were alive today, you can bet your ass that the Baron and Baroness would have invited us to one of their dinner parties. They would have fallen in love with her just as I did. Everyone liked her.”

  Leana knew that she should respond to this, but she didn’t want to encourage him. The man who murdered her sister was in her office. It was this she wanted to focus on, not Louis Ryan’s wife. Willing the elevator to move faster, she said, “She sounds wonderful, Louis. You must miss her very much.”

  “Oh, I do,” Louis said. “We were perfect together, Leana. You can’t imagine how much I miss her.”

  He looked away and she saw something in his expression change, as if a switch had been shut off, a curtain dropped. “I suppose that’s why your father murdered her.”

  He leaned forward and pressed the button that stopped the elevator. Beyond the windows, the city froze.

  Fear crept into Leana’s heart.

  “She died thirty-one years ago,” Louis said, his finger still on the button. “Victim of a freak car accident.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “At least that’s what the police said. But I know differently. I’ve always known differently. Your father murdered my wife. Have I ever told you what happened, Leana?”

  She didn’t answer him. She checked the dial and saw that they were between the twentieth and twenty-first floors.

  “I see that I haven’t. But I do think you should know what your father did. I think it’s time that you and the whole world knew exactly what happened.”

  Leana’s heart was beating in her throat. She remembered how strangely he acted on the dance floor, how preoccupied he had been with her father and she had a sudden premonition of danger.

  “The weather was terrible that night,” Louis said. “Anne and I had an argument and she left the house in the middle of a blizzard. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t listen to me. Instead, she got into her car and left. I couldn’t go after her. We had only one car back then and I remember how worried I was for her. Anne never drove in the snow. Hours passed and nothing, not a word. So I started calling around to friends, family-but nobody had seen her. Nobody knew where she was.”

  He seemed to slip further into the past, sinking straight into a time and a place in which she sensed he wasn’t comfortable. He closed his eyes. “And then the police called,” he said. “They told me that Anne’s car went off the road and over the bridge that was down the road from our house.”

  He removed his finger from the glowing button and the elevator lurched into motion. Leana watched him pull his hand away. All of this was a set-up. She’d played right into it. She looked at the elevator doors and wondered what would be beyond them when they opened.

  “It was awful,” Louis said. “Leaving the house, running through the snow to the bridge, seeing her car like that in the river, knowing there was no way she could have survived that fall, knowing that my Anne was dead.” Anger shot into his voice. “Do you know what that did to me? Do you know how long I’ve waited for this moment?”

  What moment?

  Leana pressed her back against the elevator doors. Somewhere, far in the dark corners of her mind, she knew where this was leading, knew what he was saying, but she refused to believe it, because it couldn’t be true.

  Louis closed the distance between them, the rage suddenly there on his face, heated and alive. It was as dark as her fear, as black as her dress and it filled the elevator to capacity. In a low voice, he said, “Even before I learned her tires were flattened by a shotgun, I knew this was no accident. Your father and I had been battling in court for years. When I won that final appeal, he got his revenge two days later by killing one of the few people who ever mattered to me.” His eyes became hard stones of hate. “And now I’m taking everything away from him.”

  She shrank away from him, her eyes growing wide with disbelief. She felt her knees start to give as realization washed over her. Her world began to blur as all of the pieces of the past several weeks clicked into place. “You!” she gasped.

  Louis reached out and grabbed her by the arm. “That’s right,” he said. “Me.”

  The elevator stopped.

  The shiny chrome doors slid open, revealing a long, elegantly appointed corridor that stretched before them in varying degrees of light and darkness.

  Leana’s office was at the end of the hall. Louis pushed her so hard through the doors that she hit the wall opposite the elevator. A table was there. She reached out to grasp it in an effort to stop the momentum, but she missed. She fell on the table and went down with it.

  “Get up.”

  But the table wasn’t bare. On it was a lamp, which now was at her side. Leana clutched it and turned to throw it at him, but Louis was there. He grabbed the lamp as she swung it at his face and flung it across the room, where it smashed on the floor.

  “You’ll need to be quicker than that,” he said. “Get up.”

  She did what she was told. He took her by the arm and they started walking toward her office, their footsteps echoing like drum taps on the polished marble floor.

  Leana was numb. Louis Ryan’s words beat in her head. He killed her sister. It was him all along. “You won’t get away with this,” she said. “Everyone knows I’m here.”

  “That’s right,” Louis said. “Everyone knows you’re here. But what you’re forgetting is this, Leana. Everybody also knows what happened to your sister. The whole world knows that somebody is out to harm your family. If you’re found shot dead tonight, no one’s going to be surprised by it.” He thought of the two barmen that had been found in the lobby. “Security already has been breached.”

  Leana looked
furiously at him. “You planted those men at the bar.”

  “Actually, I didn’t,” he said. “I don’t know who they are or why they were here. But I am glad they came. Their presence just made things a lot easier for me.”

  They were nearing the end of the hall. Leana could faintly hear voices coming from her office. She turned and looked back down the length of the corridor, toward the elevator. She had to escape. She had to get help. But how? She could feel Louis looking at her.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “And I have to tell you that you’d be wasting your time. This entire floor has been sealed off. Every door is locked, every exit is barred. Your only way out is through that elevator and in a moment, Vincent Spocatti is going to take care of that. You run and I promise you’ll get shot in the back.”

  They were at her office. He opened the door and said, “By the way-your husband’s last name isn’t Archer. That’s just a pen name he used to escape from me. His legal name is Michael Ryan.”

  Leana looked at him in disgust. “Bullshit,” she said.

  “Hardly.” He pushed the door open and they came face to face with her father and Michael.

  Time and space drew in on themselves.

  They were seated across the room in matching red velvet chairs. The city blazed behind them. Pale as ghosts, they looked up at her when she walked inside. Seeing them here, realizing just how carefully Louis Ryan had orchestrated this, Leana could no longer still the panic rising up in her. He’s going to kill us.

  “Stand up, Michael,” Louis said.

  Michael did as he was told.

  “Michael isn’t my son, Leana,” Louis said in an oddly detached voice. “There was a time when I thought he was, a time when he meant the world to me, but when I found Anne’s journal and read that final entry, I knew what George Redman did to her. I knew how he manipulated my wife.”

  He looked across the room at George, who was unmoving. “Michael’s not my son,” he said. “He’s your father’s son. You married your brother.”