His cell phone rang. It was Carl, a buddy from work.
“You anywhere near a TV, man?”
“Nope. Why?”
“There’s been a car bombing in Long Island. Looks like a Mafia job. The victim’s the wife of one of those Quorum guys you keep talking about. Preston.”
Mitch stopped pushing the swing.
“Maria Preston?”
“Daddy! Higher!”
“She’s dead?”
“Very dead. Nothing left of her, apparently.”
“Daddeeee.”
“You gotta watch this, man, it’s all over the news.”
Mitch hung up and started running to his car. He had to get to a TV.
A woman ran after him. “Sir? Excuse me. Sir!”
Mitch turned around.
The woman pointed to Celeste, sitting forlornly on the stationary swing. Mitch had forgotten all about her.
JOHN MERRIVALE WAS LATE. HE HATED being late. Hurrying into his office, he sat down and started pulling open drawers, looking for papers while his computer fired up.
“You all right, John?” Harry Bain put his head around the door.
“F-fine, thank you. Sorry I’m late in this morning. The p-press keep badgering me for a statement about Maria Preston.”
“Poor woman. Terrible thing. You expect car bombs in Beirut or Gaza, but not in Sag Harbor. She was a friend of yours, wasn’t she?”
John looked irritated. “No, not really. Her husband was a c-c-colleague. But the media hear the word Quorum and I’m their f-first call. I wish to God they’d leave me be.”
Harry Bain frowned. It seemed an oddly detached, clinical response to such an awful tragedy. But then he never had figured out John Merrivale. He let it go.
“Are you still all set for Mustique?”
“Of course.”
The task force had discovered that one of Lenny’s family trusts, Brookstein Dependents in Guernsey, had made a number of payments to a financier called Jacob Rees. The FBI was interested in what had become of that money, but so far Mr. Rees’s business managers in New York had been less than cooperative. John Merrivale was planning a surprise visit to the great man’s Mustique estate. Jake Rees’s mansion was less than a mile down the beach from Lenny’s own (now seized) compound, and the two men had once vacationed together.
“I guess if you have to spend years of your life chasing a money trail, there are worse places to go, right?”
John forced a smile. “I suppose there are…”
“How long do you think you’ll be gone?”
“A day or so, I hope. It may take longer if Jake’s not immediately r-receptive.”
“Well, if you need any help, you know where I am.” Harry Bain walked back to his own office. John Merrivale breathed a sigh of relief.
You’re in the home stretch now, John. The hard part is over.
It was all coming together at last. Grace was back behind bars. Whispers had already started around the office that the bureau was growing tired of throwing good money after bad and that Harry Bain’s Quorum task force might soon be quietly disbanded. John had suffered a terrible moment of panic last week when the prospect of exposure had suddenly loomed from a most unexpected quarter. But now that, too, was over.
In a few days, he’d be on an airplane.
At last.
THE MARIA PRESTON MURDER CASE HAD been given to an old rival of Mitch’s from his own precinct, an overweight family man in his fifties named Donald Falke. With his tonsure of white hair, big belly and full, salt-and-pepper beard, Detective Falke’s nickname on the force was Santa. Not that Don’s cases called for much ho-ho-ho-ing. An NYPD lifer, Don Falke specialized in Mob killings.
He told Mitch, “The media’s getting folks all stirred up about terrorism. It’s bullshit. If this was a terror attack, I’m Dolly Parton. This wasn’t al-Qaeda. It was Al Capone. It’s got Mafia written all over it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Don Falke’s eyes narrowed. “Experience. What makes you so interested? This ain’t your case, Connors.”
“What if it wasn’t a Mob hit? What if Maria Preston knew something? Something about Quorum, maybe. Something important enough to make someone want to kill her.”
“We looked into all that,” said Don dismissively. “This had nothing to do with Quorum, okay? Definitively. Someone didn’t kill her; this was a sophisticated car bomb, not a knife or a gun. It’s a classic Casa Nostra MO.”
“Do you know who invented the car bomb, Don?”
Falke rolled his eyes. “I don’t got time for a history lesson, Connors. I have a murder to solve. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
“It was a guy named Buda. Mario Buda. He was an Italian anarchist back in 1920.”
“What’d I tell you? Italian.”
“It was a hot day in September…”
“Jesus, Mitch.”
“…this guy, Buda, parks his horse and wagon on the corner of Wall Street and Broad, across the street from J. P. Morgan’s offices. He gets out and wanders into the crowd. Twelve o’clock, all the bankers are heading out for lunch, right? You can hear the bells of Trinity Church ringing.”
“Very poetic.”
“Then boom, the horse and cart are blown to bits. It’s mayhem, dead bodies everywhere, rubble, shrapnel. Right on Wall Street. Nineteen twenty. Two hundred people were wounded. Forty killed. Not including old J.P. himself, I might add. He was the intended target, but he was in Scotland at the time.”
Don Falke had humored him long enough. “Where are you going with this, Mitch?”
“The car bomb was invented by one lone, ignorant immigrant with a grudge against rich Wall Street bankers.”
“So?”
“So it was a hundred-odd years ago, but the principle’s the same. Why does this have to be Mafia? Any idiot with a grudge could have strapped some Semtex to that car. Some fruit loop might have linked Maria in his addled brain with Quorum or Lenny Brookstein.”
Don Falke laughed. “Dubray’s right. You are obsessed. This doesn’t have a fuckin’ thing to do with Lenny Brookstein, okay? I think you need to go and lie down.”
“I want to interview Andrew Preston.”
Donald Falke finally lost his temper. “Over my dead body. Now you listen to me, Connors. Stay the fuck away from my case. I’m serious.”
“Why, Don? Are you worried I might uncover something inconvenient?”
“If I hear you’ve been within ten miles of Andrew Preston, I’m going to go to Dubray and he is going to fire your ass. Drop it.”
Drop it. Mitch was starting to feel like a naughty Labrador retriever with his jaws around some other dog’s stick. He left Donald Falke’s office and walked straight to his car.
IT HAD BEEN A MONTH SINCE Mitch last visited the Prestons’ midtown apartment. He remembered it as an expensive piece of real estate, an enormous five-bedroom pad in a tony, well-maintained building. But what had struck him most about it was how little it struck him. Everything about Andrew and Maria’s home was bland, from the nondescript street outside to the dutifully tasteful cream-and-brown decor inside. Mitch couldn’t imagine having that much money to spend and wasting it on something so safe. Maria Preston had been an irritating woman. Mitch loathed drama queens. But at least she’d had some color to her. Some life. She must have felt entombed in that apartment. As if she’d been cut and pasted into a page from the Pottery Barn catalog, laminated for all eternity onto a cream B&B Italia sofa and left there to rot.
Turning onto the Prestons’ block, Mitch slowed. Uniformed beat cops were in the process of having the street cordoned off. Mitch pulled up at the same time as two ambulances and a fleet of squad cars.
“What’s with the circus? What’s going on?” He flashed his badge.
“It’s Maria Preston’s husband, sir.”
“What about him?”
“Looks like he hanged himself, sir. About an hour ago. They’re cutting him down now.”
&
nbsp; THIRTY
UPSTAIRS, PARAMEDICS LEANED OVER ANDREW PRESTON’S body, pumping the chest. Mitch could tell instantly that it was hopeless. They were just going through the motions.
“Crime-scene guys got here yet?”
One of the medics shook his head. “You’re the first. Detective Falke is on his way.”
“Any note?”
“Yeah. Through there.”
The medic gestured toward the living room. The window was open. On the tasteful oak coffee table, between the two tasteful beige suede armchairs, a piece of paper fluttered in the breeze, pinned down by a heavy glass ashtray. Without bothering to put on gloves, Mitch moved the ashtray and picked it up. In neat, cursive handwriting, Andrew Preston had written seven words.
It was my fault. Forgive me, Maria.
“What the FUCK are you DOING?”
Mitch jumped, dropping the note. Detective Lieutenant Dubray’s voice boomed off the walls like an angry giant’s. “Are you out of your mind?”
Mitch opened his mouth to explain himself, then closed it again. What could he say? He knew he shouldn’t be here. Still less should he be messing with another detective’s crime scene. Dubray was incandescent with rage.
“That’s evidence tampering! Do you understand how serious that is? I could have you thrown off the force. I should have you thrown off the force.”
“I’m sorry. I needed to talk to Andrew Preston.”
“You’re a little late for that.”
“Yeah. So I see. Look, sir, I would have waited for Falke, but I knew he’d be obstructive. He probably wouldn’t even have let me see the note.”
“Of course he wouldn’t! And why the fuck should he? This is not your case, Mitch.”
“But, sir, he’s not even asking the obvious questions. Like what was Maria Preston doing in Sag Harbor anyway. And who knew she was gonna be there.”
“Don called me half an hour ago. He told me you were poking your nose in, rambling about Lenny goddamn Brookstein. He thinks you’ve lost it…”
“Oh, come on, sir. You know Don Falke’s always had it in for me.”
“I think you’ve lost it, too. I’m sorry, Mitch. But you’ve gone too far this time. You’re on suspension until further notice.”
“Sir!”
“Consider yourself on indefinite leave until you hear from me otherwise. And don’t look so goddamn hard done by. You’re lucky you aren’t fired. If I didn’t know how much Helen and Celeste count on that paycheck, I wouldn’t think twice. Now get out of here, before I change my mind.”
ON HIS WAY HOME, MITCH PASSED the bar where he’d first met with Davey Buccola. He went inside and ordered a scotch. “Keep ’em coming,” he told the barman.
“Bad day?”
Mitch shrugged. Bad year. Bad life. Part of him wished he had never laid eyes on Davey Buccola. If it hadn’t been for Davey’s ferretlike digging into Lenny Brookstein’s death, none of this would have happened. Mitch would have arrested Grace and been done with it. Moved on to the next case, like everyone wanted him to. Maybe even made captain.
Instead, here he was, alone, suspended from duty, all because of Buccola’s file and the promise he’d made Grace. Grace. Mitch wondered again where she was. No one would tell him anything. He imagined her being interrogated, locked in solitary confinement, sleep-deprived. He thought about her sad eyes, her courage, her surprising sense of humor, even in the direst of situations, and hoped her spirit hadn’t already been broken.
Through the whiskey haze, Grace’s words floated back to him.
Forget about me.
It was much too late for that. Mitch realized that in the last two months, he’d barely thought about Helen. Grace had taken her place in his subconscious, his dreams. Now it was Grace he was letting down, Grace he was failing. Just as he’d failed Helen and Celeste. Just as he’d failed his father. I’ve disappointed everyone I ever loved. I let them all down.
Fuck suspension. Fuck toeing the line. And fuck giving up.
Tomorrow Mitch would take a flight to Nantucket Island.
The truth couldn’t wait.
THIRTY-ONE
MITCH COULDN’T UNDERSTAND IT.
You have all the money in the world. You can go anywhere you like—Miami Beach, Barbados, Hawaii, Paris. Why the hell would you buy a house in this dump?
Clearly, Lenny Brookstein didn’t have the best judgment in the world. He’d had a beautiful wife who adored him, but had chosen to shack up with an ugly mistress who loathed him. His so-called friends were about as trustworthy as a bunch of used car salesmen. But this took the cake. As far as Mitch could see, Nantucket had nothing to recommend it. With its gray, clapboard houses and rain-swept, desolate beaches, it was the sort of place that could make anyone depressed.
“What do people do here?” he asked the pharmacist at Congdon’s on Main Street, one of the few stores that kept its doors open off-season.
“Some people paint. Or write.”
Write what? Suicide notes? Leonard Cohen lyrics?
“Some people fish. It’s pretty quiet in March.”
This was an understatement. The guesthouse in Union Street where Mitch was staying was as silent as the grave. The only noise in the evenings was the heavy tick, tick of an antique grandfather clock in the parlor. A couple more weeks of this and Mitch would end up like the Jack Nicholson character in The Shining.
But it wouldn’t take two weeks. Within twenty-four hours of his arrival, word went around the island that a strange guy was in town, asking questions about Leonard Brookstein. Instinctively, collectively, the islanders clammed up. Felicia Torrez, Grace and Lenny’s cook up at the Cliff Road estate, now worked at Company of the Cauldron, the only high-end restaurant that catered to locals outside of the summer months. Mitch went to find her there.
“I’m trying to get a clearer picture of the events in the days leading up to the storm, back in the summer of 2009. You were living at the Brooksteins’ home at that time?”
Silence.
“How long had you been in their employ?”
More silence.
“Look, ma’am, this is not an official investigation, okay? You don’t need to be nervous. Did you notice any tension among any of the houseguests that particular weekend?”
At first he thought she had poor English. Then he wondered if she was mute, or deaf, or both. Whatever it was, Felicia was about as forthcoming as a clam that had swallowed some Superglue. Mitch tried the housekeeper, the maid, the gardener. It was always the same story.
“I don’t remember.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“I did my job and went home.”
Tomorrow he would head down to the harbor and talk to the fishermen. Some of them must have been out on the water that day. But he didn’t hold out much hope. It’s like they’re all part of some secret club, like the Masons or something. But it made no sense. Lenny Brookstein was already dead. What did they think they were protecting him from?
HANNAH COFFIN CALLED TO HER HUSBAND.
“Tristram! Come see this.”
“In a minute.”
The Coffins worked at the Wauwinet Hotel, a five-star retreat in one of the quietest, least-populated parts of the island. Like all the big hotels, they were closed through the spring months, but kept a skeleton staff to work on maintenance and repairs. Hannah and her husband acted as caretakers, overseeing the off-season staff. It was a job with a lot of down-time, which Tristram Coffin spent tinkering with his Ducati motorbike, and Hannah spent watching daytime television.
“Tristram!”
“I’m busy, honey.” Tristram Coffin sighed. Just buy the damn earrings already, or the super-duper potato peeler, or the Greatest Hits of Neil Diamond, or whatever it is they’re selling! You don’t need my opinion.
“It’s important. Come on in here.”
Reluctantly, he put down his wrench and wandered into the living room of their modest ground-floor apartment. As usual, the tele
vision was on.
“Do you remember that guy?”
Hannah pointed at the screen. A man was being interviewed about Maria Preston’s murder. The story was getting juicier by the day. It now looked as if the husband had done it, hired a Mob hit man to kill his wife because he suspected her of having an affair. Hannah Coffin was particularly interested in the murder because Maria Preston had stayed at the Wauwinet once.
Tristram studied the man’s face.
“He looks familiar.”
“He is familiar!” said Hannah triumphantly. “Where’s that cop staying? The one that’s been asking all the questions about Lenny Brookstein?”
“Union Street. Why?”
“I’m gonna call him, that’s why.”
Tristram looked disapproving. “Come on, honey. You don’t want to get involved.”
“Oh yes I do.” Heaving her two-hundred-pound frame up off the couch, Hannah lumbered toward the phone. “I know where I’ve seen that guy before. And when.”
“ARE YOU SURE?”
Mitch felt like pinching himself. If he weren’t scared of putting his back out, he’d have picked Hannah Coffin up in his arms and kissed her.
“One hundred percent. They checked in here together. It was the day of the storm. Him and Maria Preston.”
“And they stayed…”
“All afternoon, like I told you. I’ll write it down for you if you like. Make a statement. He was on TV, acting like he hardly knew her. But he knew her all right. Intimately, if you know what I’m saying.”
Mitch knew what she was saying. He was due at the harbor in half an hour, but this called for a change of plans. He headed for the airport.
NANTUCKET AIRPORT WAS LITTLE MORE THAN a shed, a simple L-shaped shingle structure with a pitched roof, one-half of which was designated “Departures” and the other half “Arrivals.” As single-and twin-engine Cessnas landed, passengers got out and helped the pilot unload luggage onto the tarmac. In the departure lounge, “security” consisted of a gray-bearded old man named Joe who glanced at the locals’ bags before waving them through with a cheery smile and a “See you at the Improv Friday night. Baptist church, don’t be late now.”
Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness Page 27
