by Harlan Coben
Win nodded. “Every year you were supposed to watch the King Family Christmas Special. There must have been a hundred of the buggers—big Kings with beards, little Kings in knickers, Mommy Kings, Daddy Kings, Uncle and Aunt and Cousin Kings. Then one year—poof—they’re gone. All of them. What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Strange, isn’t it?”
“I guess.”
“And what did the King clan do the rest of the year?”
“Prepared for the next Christmas special?”
“What a life, no?” Win said. “Christmas passes, and you start thinking about next Christmas. You live in a snow globe of Christmas.”
“I guess.”
“I wonder where they are now, all those suddenly unemployed Kings. Do they sell cars? Insurance? Are they drug dealers? Do they get sad every Christmas?”
“Yeah, poignant point, Win. By the way, did you come down here for a reason?”
“Discussing the King Family isn’t reason enough? Weren’t you the one who came up to my office because you didn’t understand the meaning of a Sheena Easton song?”
“You’re comparing the King Family to Sheena Easton?”
“Yes, well, in truth, I came up here to inform you that I quashed the subpoenas against Lock-Horne.”
Myron shouldn’t have been surprised. “The power of payoffs,” he said with a shake of his head. “It never fails to amaze me.”
“Payoff is such an offensive term,” Win said. “I prefer the more politically correct assisting the contribution-challenged.” He sat back, crossed his legs in that way of his, folded his hands on his lap. He gestured at the phone and said, “Explain.”
So Myron did. He filled him in on everything, especially on the Lucy Mayor incident. When Myron was finished, Win said, “Puzzling.”
“Agreed.”
“But I am not sure I see a connection.”
“Someone mails me a diskette with Lucy Mayor’s image on it and a little while later Clu is murdered. You think that’s just a coincidence?”
Win mulled that over. “Too early to tell,” he concluded. “Let’s do a little recap, shall we?”
“Go ahead.”
“Let’s start with a straight time line: Clu gets traded to New York, he pitches well, he gets thrown out by Bonnie, he starts collapsing, he fails a drug test, he desperately searches for you, he comes to me and withdraws two hundred thousand dollars, he strikes Esperanza, he gets murdered.” Win stopped. “That sound fair?”
“Yes.”
“Now let’s explore some possible tangents from this line.”
“Let’s.”
“One, our old fraternity chum Billy Lee Palms appears to be missing. Clu purportedly contacted him shortly before the murder. Aside from that, is there any reason to tie Billy Lee into all this?”
“Not really. And according to his mother, Billy Lee isn’t the most dependable tool in the shed.”
“So maybe his disappearance has nothing to do with this.”
“Maybe.
“But that would be yet another bizarre coincidence,” Win said.
“It would at that.”
“Fine, let’s move on for the moment. Tangent two, this Take A Guess nightspot.”
“All we know is that Clu called them.”
Win shook his head. “We know a great deal more.”
“For example?”
“They overreacted to your visit. Tossing you out would have been one thing. Roughing you up a bit would have been one thing. But this sort of interrogation complete with knife slashes and electrocution—that’s overkill.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that you struck a nerve, poked the hive, stirred the nest, choose your favorite cliché.”
“So they’re connected into all this.”
“Logical,” Win said, again doing his best Spock.
“How?”
“Heavens, I haven’t a clue.”
Myron chewed it over a bit. “I had thought maybe Clu and Esperanza hooked up there.”
“And now?”
“Let’s say they did hook up there. What would be the big deal about that? Why the overkill?”
“So it’s something else.”
Myron nodded. “Any more tangents?”
“The big one,” Win said. “The disappearance of Lucy Mayor.”
“Which happened more than ten years ago.”
“And we must confess that her connection is tenuous at best.”
“So confessed,” Myron said.
Win steepled his fingers and raised the pointers. “But the diskette was addressed to you.”
“Yes.”
“Ergo we cannot be sure that Lucy Mayor is connected to Clu Haid at all—”
“Right.”
“—but we can be sure that Lucy Mayor is somehow connected to you.”
“Me?” Myron made a face. “I can’t imagine how.”
“Think hard. Perhaps you met her once.”
Myron shook his head. “Never.”
“You might not have known. The woman has been living in some sort of clandestine state for a very long time. Perhaps she was someone you met in a bar, a one-night stand.”
“I don’t one-night stand.”
“That’s right,” Win said. Then with flat eyes: “God, I wish I were you.”
Myron waved him off. “But suppose you’re right. Suppose I did meet her but didn’t know it. So what? She decides to repay me by sending me a diskette of her face melting into a puddle of blood?”
Win nodded. “Puzzling.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Puzzled.”
The speaker buzzed. Myron said, “Yes?”
Big Cyndi said, “Your father is on line one, Mr. Bolitar.”
“Thank you.” Myron picked up the receiver. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hey, Myron. How are you?”
“Good.”
“You readjusting to being home?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Happy to be back?”
Dad was stalling. “Yeah, Dad, I’m great.”
“All this stuff with Esperanza. It must be keeping you hopping, huh?”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“Soooo,” Dad said, stretching out the word, “think you have time for lunch with your old man?”
There was a strain in the voice.
“Sure, Dad.”
“How about tomorrow? At the club?”
Myron bit back a groan. Not the club. “Sure. Noon, okay?”
“Good, son, that’ll be fine.”
Dad didn’t call him son very often. More like never. Myron switched hands. “Anything wrong, Dad?”
“No, no,” he said too quickly. “Everything’s fine. I just want to talk to you about something.”
“About what?”
“It’ll keep, no biggie. See you tomorrow.”
Click.
Myron looked at Win. “That was my father.”
“Yes, I picked up on that when Big Cyndi said your father was on the line. It was further reemphasized when you said ‘Dad’ four times during the conversation. I’m gifted that way.”
“He wants to have lunch tomorrow.”
Win nodded. “And I care because—?”
“Just telling you.”
“I’ll write about it in my diary tonight,” Win said. “In the meantime, I had another thought, vis-à-vis Lucy Mayor.”
“I’m listening.”
“If you recall, we were trying to figure out who was being injured in all this.”
“I recall.”
“Clu obviously. Esperanza. You. I.”
“Yes.”
“Well, we must add a new person: Sophie Mayor.”
Myron thought about it. Then he started nodding. “That could very well be the connection. If you wanted to destroy Sophie Mayor, what would you do? First, you’d do something to undermine any support she had with the Yankee fans and management.”
“Clu Haid,” Win said.
“Right. Then you might hit her in what has to be a vulnerable spot—her missing daughter. I mean, if someone sent her a similar diskette, can you imagine the horror?”
“Which raises an interesting question,” Win said.
“What?”
“Are you going to tell her?”
“About the diskette?”
“No, about recent troop movements in Bosnia. Yes, the diskette.”
Myron thought about it but not for very long. “I don’t see where I have any choice. I have to tell her.”
“Perhaps that too is part of the theoretical plan to wear her down,” Win said. “Perhaps someone sent you the diskette knowing it would get back to her.”
“Maybe. But she still has the right to know. It’s not my place to decide what Sophie Mayor is strong enough to handle.”
“Too true.” Win rose. “I have some contacts trying to locate the official reports on Clu’s murder—autopsy, crime scene, witness statements, labs, what have you. But everyone is tight-lipped.”
“I got a possible source,” Myron said.
“Oh?”
“The Bergen County medical examiner is Sally Li. I know her.”
“Through Jessica’s father?”
“Yes.”
“Go for it,” Win said.
Myron watched him head for the door. “Win?”
“Yes?”
“You have any thoughts on how I should break the news to Sophie Mayor?”
“None whatsoever.”
Win left then. Myron stared at the phone. He picked it up and dialed Sophie Mayor’s phone number. It took some time, but a secretary finally patched him through to her. Sophie sounded less than thrilled to hear his voice.
She opened sharply. “What?”
“We need to talk,” Myron said. There was distortion on the line. A cell or car phone probably.
“We already talked.”
“This is different.”
Silence. Then: “I’m in the car right now, about a mile from my house out on the Island. How important is this?”
Myron picked up a pen. “Give me your address,” he said. “I’ll be right over.”
CHAPTER 19
On the street the man was still reading a newspaper.
Myron’s elevator trip down to the lobby featured mucho stops. Not atypical. No one spoke, of course, everyone busying themselves by staring up at the descending flashing numbers as though awaiting a UFO landing. In the lobby he joined the stream of suits and flowed out onto Park Avenue, salmons fighting upstream against the tide until, well, they died. Many of the suits walked with heads high, their expressions kick-ass-runway-model; others walked with backs bent, flesh versions of the statue on Fifth Avenue of Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders, but for them the world was simply too heavy.
Whoa, again with the deep.
Perfectly situated on the corner of Forty-sixth and Park, standing reading a newspaper but positioned in such way as to watch all entering or leaving the Lock-Horne building, was the same man Myron had noticed standing there when he entered.
Hmm.
Myron took out his cell phone and hit the programmed button.
“Articulate,” Win said.
“I think I got a tail.”
“Hold please.” Maybe ten seconds passed. Then: “The newspaper on the corner.”
Win keeps a variety of telescopes and binoculars in his office. Don’t ask.
“Yep.”
“Good Lord,” Win said. “Could he be any more obvious?”
“Doubt it.”
“Where’s the pride in his work? Where’s the professionalism?”
“Sad.”
“That, my friend, is the whole problem with this country.”
“Bad tails?”
“It’s an example. Look at him. Does anybody really stand on a street corner and read a newspaper like that? He might as well cut out two eyeholes.”
“Uh-huh,” Myron said. “You got some free time?”
“But of course. How would you like to play it?”
“Back me up,” Myron said.
“Give me five.”
Myron waited five minutes. He stood there and studiously avoided looking at the tail. He checked his watch and huffed a bit as though he expected someone and was getting impatient. When the five minutes passed, Myron walked straight over to the tail.
The tail spotted his approach and ducked into the newspaper.
Myron kept walking until he stood directly next to the tail. The tail kept his face in the newspaper. Myron gave him Smile 8. Big and toothy. A televangelist being handed a hefty check. Early Wink Martindale. The tail kept his eyes on the newspaper. Myron kept smiling, his eyes wide as a clown’s. The tail ignored him. Myron inched closer, leaned his über-wattage smile within inches of the tail’s face, wriggled his eyebrows.
The tail snapped closed the newspaper and sighed. “Fine, hotshot, you made me. Congratulations.”
Still with the Wink Martindale smile: “And thank you for playing our game! But don’t worry, we won’t let you go home empty-handed! You get the home version of Incompetent Tail and a year’s subscription to Modern Doofus.”
“Yeah, right, see you around.”
“Wait! Final Jeopardy! round. Answer: He or she hired you to follow me.”
“Bite me.”
“Ooo, sorry, you needed to put that in the form of a question.”
The tail started walking away. When he looked back, Myron gave him the smile and a big wave. “This has been a Mark Goodson-Bill Todman production. Good-bye, everybody!” More waving.
The tail shook his head and continued down the street, joining another stream of people. Lots of people in this stream; Win happened to be one of them. The tail would probably find a clearing and then call his boss. Win would listen in and learn all. What a plan.
Myron headed to his rented car. He circled the block once. No more tails. At least none as obvious as the last. No matter. He was driving out to the Mayor estate on Long Island. It didn’t much matter if anyone knew.
He spent his time in the car working on the cell phone. He had two arena football players—indoor football on a smaller field, for those who don’t know—both of whom were hoping to scratch a bench spot on an NFL roster before the waiver wire closed down. Myron called teams, but nobody was interested. Lots of people asked him about the murder. He brushed them off. He knew his efforts were fairly futile, but he stuck to it. Big of him. He tried concentrating on his work, tried to lose himself in the numb bliss of what he did for a living. But the world kept creeping in. He thought about Esperanza in jail. He thought about Jessica in California. He thought about Bonnie Haid and her fatherless boys at home. He thought about Clu in formaldehyde. He thought about his father’s phone call. And strangely, he kept thinking about Terese alone on that island.
He blocked out the rest.
When he reached Muttontown, a section of Long Island that had somehow escaped him in the past, he turned right onto a heavily wooded road. He drove about two miles, passing maybe three driveways. He finally reached a simple iron gate with a small sign that read THE MAYORS. There were several security cameras and an intercom. He pressed the button. A woman’s voice came on and said, “May I help you?”
“Myron Bolitar to see Sophie Mayor.”
“Please drive up. Park in front of the house.”
The gate opened. Myron drove up a rather steep hill. Tall hedges lined both sides of the driveway, giving the aura of being a rat in a maze. He spotted a few more security cameras. No sign of the house yet. When he reached the top of the hill, he hit upon a clearing. There was a slightly overgrown grass tennis court and croquet field. Very Norma Desmond. He made another turn. The house was dead straight ahead. It was a mansion, of course, though not as huge as some Myron had seen. Vines clung to pale yellow stucco. The windows looked leaded. The whole scene screamed Roaring Twenties. Myron half expected Scott
and Zelda to pull up behind him in a slick roadster.
This part of the driveway was made up of small loose pebbles rather than pavement. His tires crunched them as it drew closer. There was a fountain in the middle of the circular drive, about fifteen feet in front of the door. Neptune stood naked with a triton in his hand. The fountain, Myron realized, was a smaller version of the one in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. Water spouted up but not very high or with much enthusiasm, as if someone had set the water pressure on “light urination.”
Myron parked the car. There was a perfectly square swimming pool on his right, complete with lily pads floating on the top. A poor man’s Giverny. There were statues in the gardens, again something from old Italy or Greece or the like. Venus de Milo–like except with all the limbs.
He got out of the car and stopped. He thought about what he was about to unearth, and for a brief moment he considered turning back. How, he wondered again, do I tell this woman about her missing daughter melting on a computer diskette?
No answer came to him.
The door opened. A woman in casual clothes led him through a corridor and into a large room with high tin ceilings and lots of windows and a semidisappointing view of more white statues and woods. The interior was art deco, but it didn’t try too hard. Nice. Except, of course, for the hunting trophies. Taxidermy birds of some sort sat on the shelves. The birds looked upset. Probably were. Who could blame them?
Myron turned and stared at a mounted deer. He waited for Sophie Mayor. The deer waited too. The deer seemed very patient.
“Go ahead,” a voice said.
Myron turned around. It was Sophie Mayor. She was wearing dirt-smeared jeans and a plaid shirt, the very essence of the weekend botanist.
Never short of a witty opening gambit, Myron countered, “Go ahead and what?”
“Make the snide remark about hunting.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Come, come, Myron. Don’t you think hunting is barbaric?”
Myron shrugged. “I never really thought about it.” Not true, but what the hey.
“But you don’t approve, do you?”
“Not my place to approve.”
“How tolerant.” She smiled. “But you of course would never do it, am I right?”
“Hunt? No, it’s not for me.”
“You think it’s inhumane.” She gestured with her chin to the mounted deer. “Killing Bambi’s mother and all.”
