I leaned over it, just one of a million-and-one shots of Dabney and his protean entourage, thirty or forty people, the rock star foreground with his equally famous organist just behind him, our Georges. And there was Nixie Kumar, their long-time drummer, and Ted Pounce, the wild-man guitarist (and second in the band to die after Dabney, years later in a drunken brawl), all their arms around one another, lots of hilarity, famous faces, the bunch of them out in front of the High Side, some kind of publicity shot, the photographer’s viewpoint lofty, perhaps from one of the High Side’s enormous stepladders. Where was Pete Pounce, Ted’s brother, the band’s bassist, who would go on to such fame as a comic actor? Ah, over here, his back to the camera, butt sticking out—big joke—no doubt the source of all the frozen laughter. Around the core of the band, half-a-dozen dazzling young women, bangs and pigtails, microminiskirts, legs, legs, legs. I studied each face with the glass. What was it I was supposed to find?
Desmond, looking stressed. Just in front of him, Linsey, grinning broadly. And beside Linsey, Kate, the actual girl next door! I lingered over her image—she was just a kid, no more than sixteen, gangly, thin, her hair bright blond and falling off her shoulders in thick waves, head thrown back in laughter but responsible eyes on Linsey, all her attention on Linsey, a particular shirt I recalled, heavy blue stripes, athletic shoulders, tiniest possible blue-jean skirt (contraband at our house, so she must have put it on High Side), legs up to here, bare feet.
Impatient, Sylphide put her finger on the other corner of the print, a couple more laughing faces, but wait: the one with a fist in the air was my dad—whoa—a big screaming grin on his face, his arm around another man, who was slimmer, grimmer: Kaiser.
I must have gasped, because Sylphide nodded emphatically, Ja, ja, ja, tapped the photo. I looked closer, closer yet, lifted the glass higher, dropped it lower. It was Kaiser all right, nice-looking young man, unmistakable strong chin.
Sylphide said, “You recognize him, even cleaned up.”
I felt a surge of violence. “Of course I know him,” I said.
“Brady Rattner,” she said. “The only photo of him like that I ever seen.”
“No, no,” I said. “It’s not Brady, Tenke, it’s Kaiser. Kaiser the killer.”
“It’s Brady,” she said again. “Dabney’s little stinking brother.”
“You sent him to my restaurant!”
“But he is Brady, too. Don’t you understand?”
“Kaiser is Brady?”
“We has just proven it, Lizano. Ja, ja. We got him.”
“And you understand, right? You get that this is Kaiser, the guy who shot my folks? That you’re saying he’s Brady Rattner? He’s Dabney’s brother?” I looked closely again at the photo, used the glass. It was Kaiser all right, and wearing the sweater, the awful yellow cable sweater Kate had secured from Turkle’s evidence vault. Slowly I said, “Tenke. I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“Ja! Well, until now I wasn’t being sure. Too scary when they turn up here! Brady Rattner?” I’d never seen her so exercised. She said, “Oh, he is being all so sorry and saying he is changed and how the years go by and he was an addict and, oh! Almost like a confession. But he doesn’t confess anything. Not what we know now! Just, Oh, dear Sylphide, my manners was so bad!”
“But why would he kill?”
“For money, Lizano. For Dabney’s money, don’t you see? And now they are back for mine.”
“But why my folks?”
“He is doing what Thierry says.”
“But why is he called Kaiser?”
“Dabney and Pete Pounce, they are always calling him Brother Kaiser after a pervert priest of their childhood. They found this a scream. Brother Kaiser!”
“He killed my folks!”
“He killed his own brother, too.”
Suddenly, I heard what she’d been saying. “He killed Dabney?”
“Now you are getting it. For the money. For the jealous. Your poppa, he didn’t know how bad Brady really is. But there is a plan and in the end Dabney is dying from the plan. But Brady did not have the brains. Only the brutal nature. Your father, I am sorry, he was spineless, a stumblebum. They use your father to get close.”
“Who used him?”
“You’re not getting it? Your Mr. Perdhomme and Brady Rattner, that’s who. Dabney put up with your father because of Kate, let him get close for no other reason! So there is a plan. Who is being the boss? Who is giving the orders? Not your poppa, too weak, I’m sorry. It is Thierry Perdhomme, that’s who.”
“So my father brought Perdhomme to the High Side?”
“He did. And Thierry, he stay after your father was bant. After Dabney’s murder, I mean. I trusted Thierry. Because he made it all right when your father made it wrong with Dabney’s money, first time. Then after Dabney is dead, he helps me again. Thierry, he is well-mannered, very sharp, very sweet, very generous, very shy. He rescues my finances. He is becoming my financial manager, my accountant, oversight of everything. He is being unjustly accused in your father’s case, I am thinking, and then he is cleared by the courts. And so I am trusting him. Fahn! Fie Fahn!”
I looked at the photo another minute—that very small representation of my father, the very small image of the man who killed him and killed my mother, too, and then ran out of bullets for me. “Tenke,” I said, more tears, “I was with my father the afternoon Dabney died. We were working on the roof of the garage. He kept going up and down the ladder to take phone calls. He was wearing his own boots.”
“Boots?”
“Oh. It’s complicated. I think Kaiser. I mean I think Brady. I mean the killer, that’s what I mean, that he tried to frame my father.” But I didn’t want to talk about my father anymore, couldn’t defend him if he was in with all these people.
We stared a while, each trying to absorb and sort the information we were getting.
Sylphide said, “That man who ruined my shoulder? He is hired. Brady, I think, is behind it. I am sure it is Brady. Because Brady is hating me more than he hates even Dabney. Freddy tracked that man. The shoulder man. He try to tell me. Loyal, loyal Frederick. He went out to Arizona to find him and instead he was kilt.”
“Freddy was killed?”
“In the desert, his head cut off.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Ja, hikers find him. And now they got to finish up. Brady and Thierry. Get my money, finally. Be rid of you. That’s what my husband think. He thinks Thierry cannot fund his schemes anymore—all the shells are empty, all the pyramids is fallen down. Daniel’s accounting group, they study all my papers—Desmond recorded everything, everything down to a penny. And fussy William, too. And then they study every Dolus transaction, and every thing Thierry is ever doing, ever. And Daniel’s people discover a ‘siphon,’ they call it, a paperwork thing that is drain my accounts for ten years and even more through medical billing for Linsey, later for Daniel, undetectable without these forensic methods. We could take down Thierry Perdhomme and his bloody Dolus on that business all alone. But now I see it is more. Dabney, kilt, your lovely mother, kilt, your Daddy, kilt, Freddy, too. Now that we know, ja? Now that we know without a doubt.”
“You still haven’t explained. I mean, Tenke, you sent them to my restaurant.”
“I did. They asked whatever became of you. I want to show no suspicion. I want you to see them. So we would be sure. Our common enemy. I am thinking, Firfisle and Tenke can take them down together.”
I felt my spirit sag—I’d been through all this futile stuff so often with Kate. “And what is it you propose?”
“Thierry is coming to me with Mr. Bournonville first, and then with Brady and a business proposition. Blood Banks for India, it’s called. Vast returns, untapped markets, they say. Brady is saying, Oh, Sylphide, you are like my sister and I want to make it up to you, all my foolishness! But large sums of money are required. Something they are cooking up to appeal to an old bleeding heart, mine. Thierry has checked every word of the
contracts, he is saying. He is saying, ‘As your financial manager, I am giving this my highest rating.’ The Dolus legal team, he calls it—they’ve checked every document. If not for my little Bournonville I might have been fooled again. I would have been. India? Public health? Medicine? Those are things they know I already support through the foundations. Why not invest further? And if not for Daniel, who is knowing not to trust anyone, ever.” She tapped the table, got my eyes back on hers. “But trust me, Lizard, darling Lizard, and listen. You was wanting to know. This is why they are staying at the High Side last month: I invite them. I am very good actress. I am letting let them talk about our big trip to India to inspect blood banks, how we should all travel there together. About all the papers I must sign immediately, about how my funds must be released soon as possible. People losing their life over there. Hurry! Poof-poof. We would all go to India and I would be dying there, Brady break my neck in an alley. Those papers? Three hunnert pages? Daniel’s people look them over. And it all is good and straightforward except one thing: if I were to die. And then—very tricky documents—if I die, then I am giving over my entire estate to Blood Banks of India, which is the same as give it over to Dolus Investments, which is same as giving it to Thierry, which is same as giving it to Brady. They are boyfriends, Lizard. That’s the other thing I realize, the other secret of their success. Brady making use of Thierry, of course, nosing out his secret life. More important thing is they are killers. I invite them to High Side those weeks ago because you and I must keep them very, very close. We must make a plan. And our plan must go off before theirs. Because their plan is the end of us.”
I took that in, said, “But, Sylphide. Honestly. Why would they even begin to think that that estate clause wouldn’t be noticed, that your lawyers wouldn’t strike it?”
“Because, Lizard, like I am saying already—I am always trusting Thierry. I am never question Thierry. It’s Thierry who reads my contracts, always. Thierry who okays them. Vast accounting department behind him. Head of Dolus! Always the most special attention for me! My money person, my financial manager. Why would I not be trusting him?”
“Yes, why,” I said.
The new houseman entered silently, carrying a tray. He placed a small glass of water and a single sky-blue capsule at the dancer’s hand. He rolled up the sleeve of her little jacket, took her pulse. He put a hand to her forehead. Had she gone hypochondriac? I put the magnifying glass back in its case, pushed the photograph aside. Out the tall windows I tracked the lights of a helicopter, watched it come closer, closer yet, watched it veer off at the last second, as if my gaze were a gale that blew it off course.
William withdrew, his shoes tapping off down the hallways back there, the maze of stairways. Tenke and I sat in silence, looking out at the view of the river, the coursing city beyond. I plucked one of the cognac snifters off the table, drank it down, aware again I was in my cook’s clothes, that I smelled of the restaurant. My dancer began to slip in her chair. Her eyes drooped closed. I’d have to ring for William, soon, shout for him, however it was done in that beautiful house.
“I have a plan,” she murmured suddenly. “But I don’t know how to carry it out.” She put a long hand awkwardly high on my thigh, intimately high, yawned extravagantly. “For that, I come to you.”
I thought a moment, said, “Kate hopes we might be able to use some kind of DNA testing. Put together some evidence, link Kaiser and Perdhomme. Brady and Perdhomme, I mean. Whoa.”
“DNA? Link? Evidence? Firfisle-mine, we are not needing any of that. We know what happen, we know exactly what happen.”
“Then what do you propose?”
“We think it through, Lizano. We think it through together. Sometime very, very soon? Talk it through? Because right now, I am falling asleep.” She really was, her frame twitching with it. Still she whispered: “To kill for passion, okay, ja, maybe I unnerstand. But to kill for money?” She yawned again, a vast, exhausted thing, said, “High Side? I am home there Monday. After this thing of mine they’re doing, this retrospective. You’ll attend—I leave the tickets. Then come see me, Lizano. Come row across your honest pond. Is time for us . . . is time . . . is for us to turn the game.”
I stood, looked for some sort of bell, something to call for William, couldn’t see how it was done. I said, “I don’t think it’s a game, Tenke. I don’t think it’s a game at all.”
“You lovely, lovely man,” she said. Her breath deepened, but still she talked, began to mutter, several sing-song sentences, something about Emily, something about Dabney, something more in Norwegian. And then something clear: “Is all written out, you know. Everything is fate. All written out in Heaven, or written out in Hell.”
William’s footsteps were coming up a stair back there. I picked up Sylphide’s hand, brought it to my lips—a deep bow from my height down to her chair—kissed her elegant long fingers as so many fans and admirers had done before me.
23
A Tuesday night in late October, like any other Tuesday at Restaurant Firfisle, the start of our fifth year, a full book of reservations. The staff was buzzing: Sylphide’s retrospective earlier in the month had been a smash, and now she was coming to Restaurant Firfisle for a private evening, party of three, her name right in the reservation book, greatest choreographer in the world. She’d been in the news as well because of Daniel Tancredi’s admission to New York Hospital after the event, a coma from which he was not expected to wake. His care and prognosis was undisclosed and closely guarded, but some fink managed to get a few photos that turned up in all the newspapers of the world: Sylphide in the ambulance doors, clearly distraught, still in her gown.
Within a week William had called to say that Sylphide wanted me to know Daniel had been stabilized, a thoroughgoing stroke brought on by his cancer treatment, brain death likely; soon there’d be a decision for his children and Sylphide to make. And she wanted my advice in that. For the time being, however, Sylphide wanted me to know she was free to travel, and that her plans for India remained unchanged. She’d be in Westport one evening very soon.
My dancer let me know which evening by simply letting herself in through the glass patio sliders in my kitchen. She made her way silently to my living room, where I was deep in my new easy chair reading.
“I come to you when I’m alone,” she announced.
I jumped, struggled to sit up in the face of the vision—just this girl in blue jeans and blouse, the girl of Dabney’s album cover, her toes turned in shyly. I hadn’t seen her hair out of its bun since our poolhouse days.
In addition to William’s call, I’d been receiving messages via Dr. Chun, destroying them in his sight after reading them, spy stuff. I’d sent my replies, which she in turn destroyed: Perdhomme and Kaiser would be coming again to Restaurant Firfisle in one week and one day—and in one week and one day and a few hours more she would accompany them to India, supposedly to investigate their blood banks proposal, whatever it was, saying she was doing it for Daniel. So Perdhomme and Kaiser couldn’t kill me right away, I thought: I was needed as a prop.
The dancer climbed on my lap. She kissed my face. “I feel very close,” she said.
“You are very close, Tenke. Close to me. Is that what you mean?”
“I’m not wanting to live without Daniel,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You, I am used to living without.”
Since we’d last seen Perdhomme and Kaiser, we seemed to have had interlocking fantasies about them. It was like we’d torn a playing card and matched our two halves: my revenge fantasy would never have worked without hers, hers would never have worked without mine. Serious business, this transporting of fantasy into the actual world. But our plan was in place. This visit seemed to have its own purpose. Emily had left that morning, as Tenke no doubt knew, off around the world after the honestly quite moving and impressive and appropriate tribute to Sylphide, an event that had rocked Lincoln Center, rocked the city, shock waves s
till spreading round the world, what with Daniel’s collapse as they’d arrived home.
Emily and I had had a week of harmony. Sylphide would outlive us both, we agreed, Sylphide would find the next very rich husband. All those legal documents, Tancredi’s imminent death, that had had nothing to do with us. Nothing, that is, except for the idea embedded in there, Sylphide’s idea, the idea that Emily and Lizard were fated to marry. We’d batted the idea back and forth. Not impossible. Not likely. But sex-drunk one evening I’d given her my mother’s old engagement ring, nothing too impressive. Still, the gesture had moved Emily. We fell into a mutual warmth like we’d never had, a sense of caring, none of the usual badinage and bittersweet kisses, but something a lot like love. She wore the ring three days before giving it back, pretty considerate: she knew my mother’s memory meant more to me than she ever would.
Sylphide in my lap rehearsed our plan for me one more time. It was very simple, really, and would be easy to abandon if at any stage things went wrong. Hard to see how we might get caught, though I suppose it’s always hard to see anything at all with your face in the icy mists of the dish served cold. Also—she’d written this in one of her notes—if we did get caught, we’d get caught only after the fact, deed done. Well worth it, we agreed.
And that was it for soul-searching.
“I always wanted,” she said reaching into my shirt, “to make love with you here in the house across the way.”
“Across the wa-ayy,” I sang softly, my froggy voice cracking, the refrain of Dabney’s greatest ballad, one of several love songs he’d written for my sister, a number-one hit, as everyone knows, one of those chartbusters, months and months of constant play on the radio.
“I suppose it is impossible,” Sylphide said.
“It would hardly be right,” I agreed.
“My Kjempe,” she said, and slipping her hands in my pants pockets, tugged her Giant upstairs and to his lair.
Life Among Giants Page 33
