Forty floors below, The Hotel Fifth was quietly being surrounded by members of the New York City Police Department, while inside, a special task force led by Lieutenant Vic Greenfield was rapidly combing each room on each floor.
Jack Douglas already had been debriefed by Greenfield, but for security reasons, he wasn’t allowed inside the building. He stood across the street on the sidewalk, watching yet another trio of police cars turn onto 53rd Street and drive without lights to the hotel’s east entrance.
All eighteen hundred guests had been evacuated. Crowds of people were along the sidewalks. The press was there, recording it for the world. Jack heard a faint chopping sound and turned to see a sleek police helicopter moving up Fifth Avenue, toward the swirling lights of The Hotel Fifth.
He felt his stomach tense and his head pound in time with the rapid beating of his heart. It was happening, he thought, but was it happening fast enough?
In Leana’s office, the silence expanded like a balloon.
Spocatti stood at the rear of the room, watching the color drain from Leana Redman’s face. George Redman didn’t deny Ryan’s claim. Neither did Michael. Spocatti watched her lips part and felt a kind of thrill.
George stepped forward. Spocatti gripped his gun and longed to use it.
“This is between you and me, Louis. Nobody else. Why don’t you be a man and let them go?”
Louis pushed Leana forward. He shut the door behind them and started moving across the room, toward Spocatti. “Be a man?” he said. “Is that what you were when you fucked my wife? Is that what you were when you got her pregnant? Were you a man when you loaded that shotgun and killed her?”
“I never touched your wife.”
Incredulous, Louis stopped mid-stride. “Never touched her?” He shoved a finger at Michael. “Then explain him. Explain your goddamn son. You read the portion of Anne’s journal I sent to you. In her own words, she wrote about how you got her pregnant only weeks after I terminated our partnership and bought Pine Gardens on my own.” He looked at Leana. “He was fucking her while he was engaged to your mother.”
Spocatti glanced at his watch. He wanted to be out of there in five. He looked across the room at Amparo Gragera, who was standing beneath one of the illumined Sisley paintings, watching it all go down with interest. He told her to take care of the elevator. He waited for her to leave the room before coming around Leana Redman’s desk and moving in front of the windows that overlooked 53rd Street.
He gazed across to the neighboring building he’d visited with the Realtor earlier that day, raised a hand and then looked down at his chest as a swarm of tiny pinpoints of red light spiraled over his heart.
He nodded at men he couldn't see and the red lasers winked off.
Spocatti knew the risks he’d taken by meeting here tonight. He knew the hotel was crawling with security. But he also never finished any deal without having secured a safety net. The one he had tonight was airtight.
He turned away from the window and waited for someone to speak. If things didn’t happen soon, he would take matters into his own hands.
“So, this is it, Ryan?” George said. “You’re going to kill us with a lobby full of people? Is that the plan?”
Louis shot him a fierce, warning look. He went to Leana’s desk, opened a side drawer and removed the gun he placed there earlier. He pointed it at George. “Yes,” he said. “That’s the plan.”
“And what do you suppose that will solve?”
“Everything,” Louis said. “You ruined my life. You murdered Anne. Did you really think I’d let you get away with it forever? I’ve waited years for this.”
“Anne’s death was an accident,” George said levelly. “You know that as well as I do. I did nothing to Anne. I loved her more than you ever did. Your problem is that you’ve never been able to accept the fact that Anne fell out of love with you and in love with me.”
The words were like a blow to Louis. For an instant, the gun wavered in his hand.
“If you want someone to pay, then I suggest you shoot me and let Leana and Michael go,” George said. “This has nothing to do with them. This is between you and me.”
Louis moved to speak, but then turned and pointed the gun at Leana. Alarmed, she took a step back.
“I know you can't stand your own daugher, George. Still, maybe this will give you an idea of how it feels." He fired the gun.
The sound echoed hollowly in the room. Thunderstruck, George watched Leana stagger back, her eyes wide with horror and surprise. There was a tiny hole in her dress, just to the left of her navel. Leana looked down at the hole and covered it with her hands as blood leaked between her fingers and spilled onto the floor. She looked at her father, then at Louis and Michael, and crumpled to her knees. A rush of air escaped her lips.
Michael ran to her side. He knelt beside her, put his hands around her waist and applied pressure to the wound.
Outside, in the hall, Amparo Gragera was suddenly shouting. There was a rapid exchange of gunfire and she screamed.
Spocatti removed his gun and hurried across the office. He closed the office door, locked it and became aware that his cell phone was ringing. He snatched it from his belt, listened to the frenetic shouting on the other end and turned in disbelief to the windows. For a moment, he saw nothing. Then the police helicopter descended into sight, its blinding spotlights flooding the office.
Spocatti looked into the light and for a moment, he couldn’t see. “Why didn’t you warn me?” he said into the phone.
The machine was hovering just beyond the office windows. Furious, Louis turned to look at Spocatti, but instead came face to face with George Redman as he lunged for the gun in Louis’ hands. George tried to wrench it free, but couldn’t. And so he tackled Louis so hard, the gun slipped from the man’s hands and spun across the floor. With everything he had in him, George kept moving, kept pushing Ryan back until he was mashed against the great panes of glass.
The police were pounding on the office door.
Nerves wired, heart pounding, Spocatti backed away from it. He looked briefly at Leana and Michael, then across the room at George and Louis, who were struggling against the glass, the gun somewhere between them.
He had an impulse to shoot them both, to finish this once and for all, but there was no time. He darted to an area of the office where there were no windows and ripped the cover off a heating duct. He threw it aside just as Ryan’s gun rang out.
Spocatti watched George Redman slump to the carpet, his face caught for an instant in the brilliant glare of the helicopter’s spotlight. Louis shot him in the chest. George fell on his side and lay there, his eyes opened and unseeing.
Ryan pointed the gun at the man’s head. He said something Spocatti didn’t hear and was about to fire when the office door crashed open and the police burst into the room. Their guns were drawn.
“Put the gun down!”
In that split second, Louis made his decision. He fired the gun-and saw the bullet go into the floor beside George Redman’s head. He missed! Missed!
He was about to shoot again when the police peppered his stomach and chest with a flurry of bullets.
Louis’ mouth gaped open.
The gun jerked from his hand and fell to the floor.
He took another bullet in the chest and stumbled back against the trembling windows-just beyond them the helicopter roared. One of its doors was open and two men with sniper rifles were tethered to a rail and leaning out. Their guns were pointed at Louis. As he turned to them, they let loose a hail of bullets, which splintered the glass and sent Louis stumbling backward. Spocatti felt nothing. How many times had he asked Louis to keep the blinds closed?
Louis sank to his knees, his crown of silvery gray hair caught by the helicopter’s sharp beams of light. He was on the cold rails of death. He was leaving himself. There was no pain, only a dull, spreading warmth in his chest and stomach. He knew he was dying and he didn’t care. He looked across at Michael
and saw Anne staring back at him in horror. His body was nearing weightlessness. He was wondering if this was all an illusion when his brain flickered out, he fell forward and his face struck the floor.
Spocatti shrank into the shadows. He was standing at the opposite end of the office, watching the police watch Louis Ryan die before their eyes. He said something into his cell phone and then listened to his men in the neighboring building empty rounds of bullets into the helicopter’s gas tank.
Spocatti leapt into the heating duct and began the rapid plunge.
In spite of all the noise, there was a moment when it seemed that everything went quiet, when the helicopter’s glinting blades hesitated, and then the machine sank, it ignited and exploded into the building.
SIX MONTHS LATER
EPILOGUE
Diana Crane, Chief Attorney
Redman International
49th Street amp; Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10017
(212) 555-2620
Dear Jack:
So, here we are again. Will you receive this letter? Will you answer it this time? I have sent you about a dozen letters over the past few months, only to have them returned unopened. Where are you? I send the letters to your parents and they tell me they forward them to you. Are they? They only tell me that you’re well. Are you traveling? Has it gotten easier?
I don’t know if you’re connected to the world or if you unplugged yourself from it. Knowing you, I’ll assume the latter and hope for the former.
Wherever you are, do you get the news? Are you aware that the stock market crashed? We survived it. That Monday, while Wall Street was crumbling, we were signing a deal with Anastassios Fondaras for $8 billion. Iran insisted he buy more ships to keep up with demand and we were happy to offer up WestTex. After a massive round of layoffs and restructuring, Redman International’s stock is now trading in the high fifties. Not where it used to be, but better.
If you’ve been reading any of these letters, then you know that George made a full recovery. What you might not know is that Elizabeth was indicted last week. Ten years. I think she’ll do five. Maybe three, if she’s lucky. I did my best.
Also, I’ve written this before but the status hasn’t changed. Leana is still missing. No one has seen her since she left New York Hospital last August. She disappeared, though we know she’s alright. At a benefit last Saturday, Helen Baines told me that Leana has called her, but she refuses to tell anyone where she is. I’m thinking she’s with Mario De Cicco. I checked and he’s no longer in New York.
I’ll leave you with this. Three weeks ago, I was on Wall Street when I saw Vincent Spocatti in the crowds on the street. I know it was him, just as he knew it was me. We looked at each another and then he lifted his head and smiled before turning the other way. I reported it to the police, but there’s little they can do and Spocatti knows it.
There’s nothing more to tell you, really, only that I miss you and wish you were here in your office at Redman International. Nothing is the same anymore. Everything’s changed. I don’t live at Redman Place. I sold my apartment and moved to the West Side. Now, I have a different view of Central Park, a cat for company and…what else? Nothing, really. Thank God for work. As my father used to say, work saves us.
If you receive this, please write. You’ve had time. I need to know that you’re all right and that at least one of us is moving forward.
With love,
Diana
P.S. I still think about him, you know? Given all that he did, it’s ridiculous. But after all this time, Eric is still part of me. Do you still think of Celina? Sometimes, it’s as if they never died, isn’t it?
Jack Douglas folded the letter in half and returned it to its envelope, which he’d carefully opened with a knife. Like all the letters Diana sent, he would return this one to his parents and they would forward it back to her. He sealed each letter in such a way that suggested he’d never opened it or read its contents. Jack wasn’t ready to renew their friendship. He would contact her again, but he would wait a while longer before doing so.
Just now, he was sitting in the back of a dusty white Jeep, his skin brown from months in the sun, the top of his sandy hair bleached with streaks of blond. He was leaner than he had been in years, his body hard and toned from hiking through the jungles of Venezuela. Above him, he could hear the faint but familiar shrieking of macaws and cockatoos. Below him was the sound of rushing water. He was thousand of miles away from New York City and he loved it.
He thought of Diana’s letter. Of course, he still thought of Celina. A day didn’t go by that he didn’t think of her and all that could have been. He loved her. With Elizabeth Redman now going to prison, he wondered if he ever would see the Redman family again.
He wondered if he cared?
He left the jeep and walked to the center of the long, rickety bridge that stretched before him. A woman had just jumped from its rotting planks and now was screaming as she plummeted to the roiling river below.
Jack moved to the wooden rail and leaned forward. He watched her bounce thanks the bungee cord strapped to her ankles and her long dark hair cracked like a whip in the humid air. Watching her and listening to her jubilant cries, he felt strangely at peace and knew what he was doing was right. This was part of his own healing.
Beside him, a young Venezuelan woman began pulling the frayed bungee cord back to the bridge. She was tall and slim, her arms and shoulders taut with muscle. Her bare feet dug into the gray wooden planks as she continued to hoist up the heavy cord. Once the cord was retrieved, she turned to him.
“Listo?” she asked.
Jack nodded. “Listo.”
“You do this before, yes?”
“I’ve done this before,” he said.
From his pocket, he removed the blindfold he promised to wear when Celina jumped all those months ago. He showed it to the woman, who shrugged. She helped him over the wooden rail, attached the bungee to his ankles, pulled hard on the nylon strap and checked the buckles.
Jack put the blindfold into place.
With the sudden darkness, his senses became acute. The river was louder, the sun somehow stronger. He could feel the thrum of nature and then his heart beating in his chest.
The woman touched his arm. “Jump,” she said. “Fly.”
Poised at the edge of the bridge, Jack took a breath, nodded and let go of the wooden rail. For a moment, he just stood there, perfectly balanced with his arms held out at his sides. His hair stirred in the breeze. His palms faced a brilliant, cloudless sky he couldn’t see. He was aware of everything and nothing. The faint, exotic smells of the jungle enveloped him, consumed him and for the first time in months, he smiled.
He thought of Celina then and when he jumped, he jumped hard, rising gracefully into the air and into the sun.
For an instant, he was free.
Michael Archer remained in New York. In the six months that had passed since his annulment from Leana, he had left their apartment on Fifth and moved into a large, airy loft in the Village that overlooked the Hudson.
His life was quieter. He rarely went out and he saw only close friends. He refused prime roles in movies and on Broadway, and he refused to be interviewed. Although his agent was hounding him to write another book, he hadn’t written a word in months. His dreams were bad. He supposed he was now something of a recluse.
It was in late September, two months after the incident at The Hotel Fifth, that he received a letter from one of George Redman’s attorneys, suggesting that he join George for a blood test. Michael refused. He didn’t need a blood test to confirm that he was George Redman’s son. His mother’s journal confirmed it.
In her own hand, Anne described-in detail-her affair with George and how she knew that Michael was George’s son. If Redman couldn’t accept that, then Michael decided it was best that he wasn’t part of the man’s life.
Leana came to him in dreams.
He would be walking up Fifth Avenue and
she would suddenly appear in the crowd, wearing the very dress she wore that night at The Hotel Fifth, her skin pale and lucent, a tiny pinpoint of bright light wavering from the hole in her stomach. In the dream, she held out her arms to him, called out his name in a voice that wasn’t her own but one that he assumed was his idea of his mother’s. And then she disappeared. When Michael ran after her, it was Louis Ryan’s face he saw, not Leana’s.
He heard from Leana only once since they annulled their marriage. When she called, she was somewhere in Europe with Mario De Cicco, though she wouldn’t say where. In spite of all that had transpired between them-and the truth that they were half brother and sister-he admired her for keeping the conversation as light as she could.
“I’m an expat,” she said. “Imagine that. And I’m happy. For the time being, we’re travelling Europe. We’ll visit other parts of the world and then we’ll choose a place to settle and raise a family. I’ll call you when that happens. Could be several months or several years, but I’ll call.”
“I’m sorry for everything, Leana.”
“I know you are,” she said. “But it’s not your fault-we both were used by him. Just hear me on this-if we don’t let go of all of it, if we don’t move forward, it will color the rest of our lives until we do. And if that happens, he wins, which we can’t let happen. I’m moving on with my life. I want the same for you. We deserve to have our lives back.”
“You’re right.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“Call me when you’ve settled.”
“You’ll hear from me again,” Leana said, and she was gone.
It wasn’t until January that he was ready to sit at his desk and look seriously at his typewriter, the one his agent sent him months ago as a gift.
He knew he couldn’t go on like this. By withdrawing from the world, by hanging onto the past, he was killing himself and everything he’d worked so hard for. His agent had given him a number of story ideas, but only one mattered to Michael, only one was paramount, and if he wanted to move on, if he really wanted to deal with the past, the only way to do so would be to write about it.
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