“Life settlements sound scummy.”
“Warren Buffett invests in them.”
“My dad doesn’t,” Emi replied.
Cusack drank a Coke. The two sat in silence for a while.
“Barnes wasn’t drunk,” Emi said, breaking the silence, “when I saw him.”
“He had plenty of time to tie one on.”
“I think we should call the police.”
The red-haired woman looked up from her coffee.
“And tell them what, Em? That I’m suspicious. That seventy-year-olds die when the market tanks. That you’ve been stalked by a woman with a scar on her hand?”
“Her scar is hideous.”
The red-haired woman, grimacing, stood up and walked to the Somba coffee counter. She ordered another cup of coffee and returned.
“The police will run from you,” Cusack announced, his voice firm but uncomfortable.
“Why?”
“Prosopagnosia. Lawyers will tear you up in court.”
“Quit your job, James.”
“That’s a no-brainer.”
“Afterward, we go to the police,” she asserted.
“There’s no proof those deaths are anything more than a series of unfortunate coincidences.”
“I don’t care. The whole thing is creepy.”
Cusack smiled crookedly, not sure what to say. He finally replied, “I’ll resign on Monday. But no cops.”
“Why go to the office?”
“To get the video.”
“It’s not worth the risk, James.”
“It’s a bigger risk if I don’t go.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s say the insurance policies are more than a coincidence. I don’t want Leeser coming after us.”
“That’s why we go to the police,” she said.
“No way. They investigate but drop the case due to insufficient evidence. Label us as goofballs. And we wake up one day with Shannon standing over our bed. That scares the shit out of me.”
Emi’s eyes turned glassy and wide—more grouper than sapphire blue.
“I resign,” he continued, “and we act like nothing’s wrong.”
“What about that woman with the scarred hand?” Emi asked.
“Surveillance. I think she works with Shannon. And I think she goes away when LeeWell Capital goes away.”
“But you’re resigning. If you’re right about the insurance policies, Cy will suspect you immediately.”
“Not when I tell him I’m joining your father’s business.”
“What! You said that would never happen.”
“I’m not taking one dollar from your father. But I’ll do anything to protect our family until the coast is clear.”
“Will Cy buy it?”
“The way I sell—yes.” Cusack leaned forward and pretended to address his boss. “‘My resignation, Cy, is the next logical step. I join my father-in-law, kick the tires from the inside, and then we buy his operation. You and me, Cy. What’s better than an inside job?’” He smiled crookedly to punctuate the sales pitch.
“I don’t know, James.”
“‘Cy, I can’t think of anything sweeter than giving Caleb Phelps a pink slip. I’ll deliver it myself.’”
“I don’t know,” Emi repeated.
“In the meantime, don’t walk alone. Don’t go anywhere by yourself, including the bathroom. And whatever you do, make sure your cell phone is with you at all times. If you see the woman with the scar again, we go to Plan B.”
“Which is what?” she asked.
“Call the police. Otherwise, we pretend everything is normal.”
“I trust your instincts,” Emi consented.
“What can happen?”
The red-haired woman sipped her coffee.
* * *
“Remember when you said, ‘Not my problem’?”
“I also remember asking you to stop calling me.”
“Now we have a problem.”
“You sound like my wife,” observed Leeser, suspecting it was another money call from his partner. “What is it now?”
“Cusack suspects you.”
“That’s crazy,” argued Leeser. “The kid wants to buy his father-in-law’s company with me.”
“He’s resigning on Monday, you idiot.”
“You sure about that?” Cy sounded skeptical.
“The Cusacks spent the last forty-five minutes discussing life insurance at LeeWell Capital.”
“What do they know?” asked Leeser, growing alarmed.
“Enough to be suspicious. Enough to question our life insurance policies.”
“Oh, shit. That’s a problem,” he agreed.
“But one we can handle.”
“And how’s that?”
“After I finish with Emi, we take Jimmy Cusack for a ride in your helicopter.”
“A ride, where?” asked Leeser.
“As far over the ocean as you can fly. To a place where he gets an anchor for a parachute and nobody notices.”
“No way. That’s your job,” protested Leeser. “That’s what I think.”
“And I think you’re a few bricks short of a load. The Cusacks can tie you to those insurance policies.”
“But you’re the one that handles these situations. Why me?”
“One: You can fly. I can’t. And we don’t have time for something more creative. Two: I’ve been thinking about our arrangement. There’s no insurance on either of the Cusacks, and I’m not working for free. And three: The police will link Cusack to his wife’s death when he disappears.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s always the spouse.”
“Great.” Cy found the logic unsettling.
“You sound thrilled.”
“I’m not.” Leeser balled his right hand into a fist. And rubbing it with his left hand, he added, “But it is what it is.”
“You worry too much. We’ve got the element of surprise.”
“You sure they didn’t recognize you?”
“Jimmy Cusack,” explained the limited partner, “never saw me before.”
“What about his wife?”
“Have you ever heard of prosopagnosia, Kemosabe?”
“No. What’s that?”
“Emi Cusack won’t know what’s happening at the polar bear pen,” explained Rachel, rubbing her hand, “until it’s too late.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
THAT NIGHT IN GREENWICH …
As twilight shadows dappled the grounds outside, Bianca shuffled through the great room of her Greenwich home. Restless and alone, she stewed underneath a vaulted ceiling with eight-by-eight beams. The surrounding walls once played host to cubists, modernists, and other “ists” that shared no common denominator other than the heft of their price tags. But that was last week.
The explosions of color were gone. So were the ephemeral whims of Cyrus Leeser and his well-hung checkbook. All that remained were a few picture hooks, scattered here and there. They held nothing other than the ghosts of her husband’s social aspirations, like the five-child corporation that never happened.
Cy was gone, out of her life, out of their 19,000 square feet of Greenwich hell. The last sixteen years were a bust, everything except for the twins. Bianca had tried. For chrissakes, she had tried. “You gotta know when,” she told herself. “You gotta know when.”
A glass of mineral water perspired on the table to Bianca’s left, beads of condensation rolling like snowballs to the coaster underneath. A MacBook Pro rested on her lap. She reminded herself there was work to do.
Bianca studied a small square centered horizontally on the upper edge of her laptop. With equal parts amusement and apprehension, she appraised the deep circle inside the square. Her eyes glimmered. Her full-tilt lips twisted into a broad grin that stretched from ear to ear as she savored the sweet elixir of revenge.
“I can do this.”
The camera on the MacBook Pro eyed Bianca—her breathta
king mocha-and-cream complexion; the happy crow’s-feet, alluring with the seductive appeal of experience; and the dark hair, untainted by bleach, much to her husband’s annoyance. The camera found the massive fireplace behind Bianca and the surrounding walls, curiously empty throughout the sprawling house. When Bianca spoke, low echoes accompanied every word.
“You may know me as Bianca Santiago, author of ten bestselling romance novels,” she said. “But I doubt you know me as a desperate housewife. And I’m not talking about the sitcom where everybody’s laughing.”
Bianca sipped her water.
“There are many ways to suffer through an empty marriage,” she continued. “For years, I sacrificed everything for my husband’s career. Blamed myself when our home wasn’t perfect. When dinner wasn’t right. When he disappeared with younger women or watched the same television show downstairs that I was watching in our bedroom. I found every excuse to take responsibility.” She paused and leaned into her laptop. “You know what I mean?”
Her eyes widened. The MacBook lens caught more than a woman’s image. It caught an unruly mob of emotions—love and hate, strength and vulnerability, joy and fear. In front of the camera Bianca returned to the populist woman, to the author whose pen flowed nonstop with the stuff of romance and good cries. She turned charismatic, a winning voice that resonated near and far.
“Why did my husband lose interest?” she lashed out, the question rhetorical. “Is it me?”
More water.
“Let me ask you something. Do you hate workouts at the gym?” From nowhere Bianca produced a bowl of ice cream and ladled out big spoonfuls, one after another. She savored the Belgian chocolate as the camera, frame by frame, recorded every mouthful.
“Well, ladies,” she said, “nobody tells this old girl I’m ‘past my shelf life.’”
In that moment Bianca morphed into the consummate politician. “It’s time we work together.” Her rhetoric fierce, she exuded power. She bubbled, all charm and winsome personality, a woman who knew her friends. “We won’t be taken for granted. We won’t bear children for our husbands. We won’t trade our careers for diapers, while our husbands cavort around the globe. Eating what they want. Unzipping their flies for whom they want. We won’t watch passively from the sidelines as our husbands leer at younger women.”
Bianca paused for effect. She stared into the camera, cool, commanding, and charismatic. She added, “We won’t allow them to betray us in public for all our friends to see. We need each other.”
Putting the ice-cream bowl aside, Bianca adjusted the MacBook forward on her lap. She leaned into the camera. And with the all-powerful brawn of feminine charm, she said, “And I need you.” She waited in silence for her words to register. “Nobody tells me I’m ‘one divorce away from cougar’ and gets away with it. Ladies, meet my next ex-husband.”
Bianca reached down and produced a nine-by-twelve headshot of Cyrus Leeser. “Call him Cy. Note the sculpted chin, the piercing black eyes, the long black hair.”
More water.
“Ladies, are you suffering? Are you withering under an endless storm of expectations? Are you like me?”
Bianca leaned forward—powerful, breathtaking, and conspiratorial for the camera.
“I’m serving divorce papers on Monday,” she explained. “Would you help me give notice? Would you e-mail my husband and tell him what you think about guys who control-freak their women into submission? Cy’s e-mail is [email protected]. Let’s see what happens.” She added Leeser’s cell, fax, and office phone numbers, repeating them twice for good measure.
Five minutes later, YouTube had Bianca’s entire rant—a masterpiece of unbridled emotion. She uploaded the clip under the title “Bianca Santiago’s Husband Is an Idiot Scumbag.” Simple and to the point.
Inside the mammoth great room of their Greenwich estate, Bianca surveyed the empty walls. She sat back and smiled to herself. She liked Siggi. She liked his cousin Ólafur. They did good work. She hoped her movers were just as competent.
* * *
Somewhere in the wilds of Montana, a forty-something housewife watched a YouTube clip. The woman was a lifelong fan of Bianca Santiago’s. Read every one of her books twice. Yearned for another installment, even all these years later.
At times the Montana woman rocked back in horror. Other times she laughed out loud. When the clip finally ended, the woman sat back and considered what she had seen. She thought about Montana’s bitter and desolate winter, just around the bend.
“I’m in,” she finally uttered in the darkness of her cottage.
She forwarded the link to twenty-two friends with the short message: Let’s join Bianca’s tribe.
* * *
Somewhere in the money canyons of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, a mother of three sipped her glass of chardonnay. She knew how to mobilize people. After all, she was a high-school drama mama. Used to be a publicist. Missed her career. She wondered if any of her girlfriends knew the remarkable lady from Greenwich.
She sent the YouTube link everywhere: nine women in book club number one; seven women in book club two; sixteen friends that cycled through the Columbus Avenue divorce bar on Thursday nights with white wine spritzers in one hand. And that was only the start. She could enlist several women from her Pilates and yoga classes, too.
“I’m in, Bianca,” announced the mother of three.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5
MARKETS CLOSED
By that morning, Bianca’s video had gone viral. There were over 2.6 million hits. The average rating was four stars. There were 759 comments, starting with one labeled “Bianca’s brigade.”
Female comments outnumbered male remarks about eight to one. A few men quipped about “MILFs and cougars.” But angry responses flamed them into submission. The fervent missives, women to women, beseeched all ladies to demand respect—or else.
* * *
“That’s it,” announced Siggi. “We’re done.”
It was dark outside. Ólafur wiped perspiration from his brow with the sleeve of his black sweatshirt. “I’d love to see Leeser’s face when he walks into his office tomorrow.”
“Bianca wants to see that expression, too,” observed Siggi. “She is one pissed-off woman.”
“You got that right, cousin.” He asked hopefully, “Can we hit a bar, sort of a mini celebration for old times’ sake?”
“No, Ólafur. We need to return Bianca’s key.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
MONDAY, OCTOBER 6
BENTWING AT $25.06
Cusack hopped into his black-and-blue Beemer and rattled all the way to Greenwich—indifferent to the car’s knocking. He marched through the parking lot, the six-figure imports unwashed and unkempt, curiously flaccid during the ugly markets. He pushed through the etched-glass doors of LeeWell Capital.
“It’s a good thing you’re here,” reported Amanda the receptionist. “Today is what our traders call a ‘shit show.’”
“What’s wrong?”
“Hang on, Jimmy. Cy Leeser’s line,” Amanda announced to the caller in her receptionist voice, shades of CNN. She paused, listened to the caller, and finally said, “Let me take your number so he can get back to you.”
Amanda returned to Cusack. “Cy hasn’t stopped screaming all morning.”
“About what?”
“Hang on,” she repeated, holding up one finger and grabbing another call. “Mr. Leeser needs to call you back, ma’am.” Amanda frowned at the response.
Cusack, sensing an extended conversation, headed back to Nikki’s cubicle. Her phone rang, and he noticed the console resembled Times Square at night. Lights. Lights. Lights.
Nikki picked up the line, listened attentively, and said, “No, he won’t call you back.” And with that she slammed down the receiver.
“What’s going on?”
“Cy’s phone is ringing off the hook,” she said. “Lots of angry women.”
“Is he in his office?”
�
�He’s in, all right.” Nikki’s tone rang with a careful-what-you-wish-for intonation. “I wouldn’t go in. He chewed Victor out something fierce.”
“About what?”
“Not sure. But Victor stomped off to the men’s room and didn’t come out for thirty minutes.”
“Oh.”
“No kidding. I sent one of the guys to check on him.”
“Why’s Cy so angry?”
“See for yourself.”
* * *
Rachel paid the driver and hopped out of the yellow cab. Black hair, black lipstick, black pants, and black jacket—a few black tats and she would be a damn Goth. The irony, Rachel mused, was she had no need for the disguise. Emily Cusack would never recognize her. Unusual in the cleaning business.
There were always visitors to the Bronx Zoo. Rachel worried about them. She had studied the grounds, walked every square inch around the polar bear compound. But all the surveillance, her dogged and unrelenting search for blind spots, could never eliminate the risk. Somebody might be watching from the distance. And these days, it seemed like everyone had a camcorder on hand. Or a cell phone with video camera.
Rachel relished the taste. Thrill—her heightened sense of risk—smacked of salt and sweaty endorphins after a killer workout. Her skin tingled. She heard everything, a dog barking, feet shuffling on the pavement, an engine backfiring in the distance. Faces became photos, which she stored in her memory. She saw every flash of movement, every turn of the head.
Hunting. Hunting. Hunting.
Rachel’s fingertips morphed into human sensors. She anticipated every change around her. Inside her head, she journeyed to the familiar zone. To the netherworld where she went from good to great. To her second life as a “cleaner.” To the place where no avatar was needed.
At the zoo entrance on Southern Boulevard, Rachel paid the cashier. She walked through the gates and checked her knapsack one last time. The 100-unit syringe was loaded and primed for action. So was the pink trophy from Henrietta Hedgecock’s purse. So were the hot dogs. All twelve of them.
“Where are you, Mrs. Cusack?” Rachel asked in a low whisper as she hiked toward the World of Reptiles.
* * *
Cusack poked his head inside Leeser’s office. He did not detect the noise, the rapid-fire sonar pings, not at first anyway. The walls caught—no, they snared his attention. They engulfed his internal musings like a fisherman’s net, wrapping round and round him, choking him until one question repeated over and over:
The Gods of Greenwich Page 31
