Natural Suspect (2001)

by Brad Meltzer

  "Mmm." She closed her eyes dreamily. "Big juicy ones, with the cheese all melted and blistering over it."

  Patrick nodded appreciatively.

  "And the bun lightly toasted," she went on. "The lettuce and tomato cold and crisp."

  He licked his lips.

  "With fries on the side, hot and salty."

  "Oh, God," he moaned out loud.

  A second flash of headlights penetrated the car, and he grabbed Devin and kissed her long and hard.

  "Wow," she said, stunned, as they broke apart. "That was fast thinking. I didn't even hear that car coming." She turned to watch as a red sports car slowed for the security gate and then drove through as the bar lifted.

  "Know what else I was thinking?" Patrick said, breathing hard. "The Sweeney Hotel seems to be the intersection of a lot of different paths. I think we should go there and check in--I mean, check it out."

  "Good idea," she said. "Especially since I'm a little nervous about going to my apartment tonight. Let s get a room at the Sweeney and see what we can find out."

  A room? Patrick thought, his heart boomeranging inside his chest. "Great," he gulped.

  "Wait a minute," she said sharply.

  Damn, he thought.

  "That cars headed for the Starry Night" she said. "And look-- Cordelias coming out to meet it."

  Patrick leaned forward to watch. Cordelias face was turned down; she seemed to be speaking to someone below her on deck. Then she stooped and lifted a small child into her arms. It was a chubby little toddler, a bouncing baby boy, and she held him close as a man jumped out of the sports car and climbed aboard. Cordelias face glowed in the starlight as he approached. He took the little boy from her and swung him in the air, then cradled him in the crook of his arm as he leaned in to kiss Cordelia.

  "Who is he?" Devin breathed, as all three of the figures on board merged into one.

  "Turn around," Patrick urged him in a whisper. "Come on, buddy. Turn around and show your face."

  Without turning, the man wrapped his arm around Cordelias shoulders, and the threesome moved toward the cabin.

  "Who are you?" Devin cried.

  The man paused on the threshold to look out over the seaport, and for a fraction of a second the starlight shone down on him, just long enough to illuminate the face of Morgan Hightower before he took his mistress and child inside.

  Chapter 8.

  We need to get on board that boat!" said Devin.

  Patrick pouted, choked back a protest that he knew would come out as a whine. Boat? What happened to the Sweeney Hotel idea? What happened to the notion of clean sheets and a warm lithe body that might to some degree pay him back for all the humiliations that he'd suffered, and take his mind off the phantom pain he still felt in his absent toe? Then again, he understood that the lissome attorney was absolutely right. Here was an opportunity too crucial to pass up: the mysterious Cordelia linked to the son of Arthur Hightower with, presumably, the elusive carved-up body of Joe Kellogg thrown in for good measure.

  Reluctantly, he said, "Okay, okay. But how will we--"

  "Wait a second," Devin interrupted. "I can't go. There's no way I can go."

  Hope sprang once again into Patrick's heart and other organs. Maybe it would be back to the Sweeney after all.

  "Morgan Hightower knows my face," she said. She reflected briefly and with genuine surprise on the unsought fame this case had brought her. "Everybody knows my face! You better go alone."

  "Excuse me?" Patrick said. He stared miserably across the frozen parking lot, filthy snow piled up at its perimeter. He was hungry. His foot and his prostate were throbbing. It was February. What kind of fool went yachting in February? There could be icebergs out there, for Pete's sake.

  Thinking aloud, Devin McGee repeated, "Yes, you better go alone. Because you're, you know ..."

  Because I'm what? thought Patrick, with a mix of pique and self-mockery. Because I'm a nobody? Is that what she's thinking? Because no one would recognize a pathetic wuss who's never accomplished anything and who just got fired from his idiotic job? Is that what she's saying about me? In a heartbeat he'd worked himself into a lather of secret indignation. They'd kissed. They'd breathed deeply of each other's laps and come up talking cheeseburgers. After intimacy like that, she was calling him a nobody?

  Then he remembered that she'd left her sentence uncompleted. She hadn't called him anything. Hed been calling him a nobody.

  "Because you're . . . you know ... a reporter," Devin said.

  Patrick blinked at that. Then he smiled and for a brief moment he felt very brave. Yes! He was a reporter! He had no one to report to, but that was secondary. The main thing was that he had a story and the will to bulldog it, to see it through. These were fine and manly things and gave him certain privileges. With a new assurance he reached for Devin McGee and kissed her once again. His urgency and her bewilderment caused him to somewhat miss her lips. He sucked her cheek and felt her hair against his neck. Then, feeling as though he were going off to war, he threw open the car door and exited theatrically. His four-toed foot buckled underneath him and made the performance seem a trifle less heroic.

  Once outside in the frigid night, his courage soon eroded. He felt a craven impulse to dive back into the Taurus before Devin drove away and all was lost. Instead, he forced himself forward, forming a strategy as he went. He was in a bastion of privilege, he reminded himself. At places like the Commodore Marina, any sign of insecurity would evoke a torrent of suspicion and contempt. The only thing to do was to stand tall and stride onto the grounds like he owned the place. In spite of his cheap clothes. In spite of his ignorance of all things yachty. In spite of everything.

  On tingling feet he walked across the frozen parking lot. His breath steamed; the insides of his nostrils stung. But he must have looked at least passingly imposing, because the valet parking guys saluted as he limped by. Bucked up by their gratifying subservience, he continued toward the wharf where the zillion-dollar boats were tied. Uptick. Acquisition. Dream Chaser. Most of the boats were dark and battened down, their owners having the sense not to use them in the dead of winter. Only the fleet of the crazy Hightowers saw service now. Passing the vacant berth where Silver Girl VI had been, Patrick thought he caught a whiff of gin. But no, that was impossible; it was only his fevered imagination. . . .

  He forced his feet to keep moving toward the Starry Night. But with every step his jauntiness waned. His posture slumped, and he looked ever less like a visiting admiral and ever more like what he was--an intruder, an uninvited guest, a parvenu. By the time he reached the yacht where Morgan Hightower and Cordelia Baxter were trysting with their little bastard, he was positively skulking, seeking streetlamp shadows, his breath as taut and labored as that of a burglar.

  For a moment he just stood there. He saw nothing, heard nothing. The boat, a cabin cruiser, was maybe seventy feet long. Its high sides blocked his view of the interior; the smoked glass of its companion-way panels muffled all sound. He looked back across his shoulder, then dared to put a foot up on the transom. From that height, he was tantalized by a hint of soft yellow light from the cabin. He took another step, then one more, and to his own surprise found himself standing in the cockpit, near the wheel.

  Dodging into shadow, he studied the scene in the cabin below. It struck him as deflatingly benign, bourgeois. The little bastard was playing with Legos. Morgan and Cordelia were sitting side by side on a leather settee, sipping cocktails like Ozzie and Harriet drank milk. A burly fellow who seemed to be captain, crew, and steward was setting out a plate of canapesAll very cozy. Not exactly the stuff of Pulitzer prizes.

  Patrick thought of sneaking out the way he'd come, taking one more shot at luring Devin to the Sweeney. But just then Morgan Hightower gestured toward his hired skipper. The skipper shrugged, then slipped into a peacoat and headed for the companionway. Patrick didn't think, just reacted. There were molded benches in the cruiser's cockpit. The benches were latched; their sea
ts were the lids of storage compartments. Patrick popped one open and dived in. As if he were closing his own coffin, he pulled the cover down just as the captain emerged on deck.

  After a moment, the engines started.

  Amid the drone and vibration of the diesels, Patrick tried to get comfortable. This proved impossible. He was nestled amid coils of rope and fenders plump as mortadellas. It was freezing cold. It was pitch-dark--except for a louver that vented into the main cabin. Scuttling toward that vent, Patrick found that he could see between the slits; sound came to him above the engine's groan. He hunkered down as lines were released and the Starry Night slipped into the icy, fetid waters of the East River.

  He watched as Morgan and Cordelia finished up their drinks. Then, rattling the last of his ice, Morgan said, "Hungry?"

  Cordelia shrugged. Like many women who trafficked in their beauty, she was loath to admit that her body actually required food.

  "Come on," her lover coaxed. He nodded toward the locker from McGinty's, and went on with a leer. "We've got some really special meat."

  No! thought Patrick, his eyeballs nearly popping through the vent's narrow slits. Was it possible? The folklore certainly had it that the rich were bloodsuckers . . . but cannibals?

  "Perfect rump steaks," said Morgan Hightower.

  Oh, my God! thought Patrick. In spite of himself, he pictured Joe Kelloggs backside, perched upon its barstool. Unbidden, the thought came to him that it would probably be very tender, given all the time that lawyers spent sitting on their asses. Unbidden, too, came the old Jeffrey Dahmer line: So many meny so little freezer space . . .

  "And a nice fresh hot dog for Junior," Morgan said. He turned a goofy face toward his bastard. "Yummy yummy!"

  Patrick gagged, whether at the image or the baby talk he could not be sure.

  The Hightower heir rose from the settee and went to the meat locker. He opened it. The lid blocked Patrick's view of the contents. He strained to see, expecting . . . what? A bleeding hunk of Kelloggs tuchas? Would he even recognize, without context, a severed buttock? Would it look more like a meat loaf or a blancmange? No matter--as Morgan turned away, the would-be reporter could clearly see what he held in his hand. It was . . . beef. Or at least it looked like beef. And the hot dog, to paraphrase Freud, seemed to be only a hot dog.

  Patrick sighed. But relief was not unmixed with disappointment. They were not going to eat Joe Kellogg. Then why was he here? He was cramped, trapped--and why? To watch a family have dinner?

  Time went very slowly now. The out-of-wedlock family cooked and ate. Shivering and famished amid the ropes and bumpers, Patrick saw no romance in yachting. Finally dinner was finished, dishes were cleared. Then something happened that riveted the stowaway's attention once again.

  Morgan Hightower poked his head up toward the companionway and shouted for the captain to come down and help him for a minute. The engines revved down to idle speed. After a moment, Hightower and the skipper could be seen wrestling the meat locker toward the steps between the cabin and the cockpit.

  Patrick was confused. Dinner had been eaten. The menu was boeuf. Was it conceivable that Kelloggs remains had been in there with the boeup. What kind of cockamamie meat order was that? One dead body, two rump steaks, and a hot dog . . .

  His eyeballs squeezed against the vent, he watched them climb the stairs. But then they moved into the cockpit and beyond his field of vision. This was unbearable--to have come this far, endured this much, and then to miss the main event. Patrick struggled onto his side. With frozen fingers he punched the latch that held down the compartment cover. He opened it a crack and beheld a weird tableau: a swath of New York skyline; some distance away, a single boat plying the otherwise empty river; and two men swinging a meat locker, working up momentum to pitch it over the side.

  Morgan Hightower said, "One . . ."

  The burly skipper said, "Two ..."

  They both said, "Three!" And heaved the McGinty's box skyward. It cleared the yacht's railing, but then it started to somersault, and as it somersaulted its lid popped open. The meat box paused an improbable moment at the apex of its flight, and then a head rolled out of it. The head had a dismayed expression on its face. There was still some neck attached to the bottom of it, and a short section of windpipe or esophagus stuck out like an electrical connector or a sprinkler attachment.

  Patrick retched. Loudly. So loudly that his retching could be heard above the splash of body parts and meat locker.

  The other two men turned in his direction. The hapless Patrick slammed shut his compartment. Too late. The burly captain opened it again, reached down, and lifted him out by his coat. He tried to bring him to his feet, but Patrick's ravaged and frozen toes wouldn't let him stand.

  "Who the hell are you?" demanded Morgan Hightower.

  Patrick couldn't speak. The severed head still swam before his eyes. He mumbled, "Ah, erg, um ..."

  The Hightower heir, as though he'd just now noticed, said, "Christ, it's cold out here."

  Patrick said, "Hnnn, brrr, duhhhh ..."

  The captain looked at his boss. In his eyes was a mute question as to the imbecilic stowaway's fate. Morgan Hightower just nodded.

  And Patrick felt himself launched from the skipper's grasp, over the yacht's side, and down, down into the river's filthy frigid water, presumably to join the myriad corpses, whole and sundered, already gathered there like urban sediment, the suicides and rubouts, those who'd swan-dived off the Brooklyn Bridge and those who wore cement shoes. The East River, Patrick thought in the instant before losing consciousness-- at least it was a fabled place to die.

  "For who would blank bear*" said Henry Cloutier.

  "Fardels," said Devin McGee.

  "I haven t even said how many letters," said the night watchman at Miller Tool and Die.

  "Trust me," Devin said. "It's fardels. It's Shakespeare."

  Cloutier, with his penchant for brainy women, was impressed. "Fits," he said, his lips moving as he counted out the spaces. "What's a fardel?"

  "I have no idea. No one does. Maybe Shakespeare didn't even know. But listen, Henry, I didn't come here to do crossword puzzles."

  In fact she'd gone to Miller Tool and Die because it was the only move she could think of that might conceivably be useful. She'd waited in the parking lot of the Commodore Marina until the Starry Night had loosed its dock lines and motored off, taking Patrick with it. Watching it go, she'd suddenly felt helpless and empty. Her client had taken it on the lam. Her one ally--whose unexpected kisses now tingled in her memory--was being swept off God knows where. Maybe she could at least learn more about the versatile Cordelia.

  But Henry Cloutier was still thinking about fardels. "Maybe they're, like, small farts? Silent ones?"

  "Maybe," Devin conceded. "But Henry--Patrick told me you started on this crossword kick to impress Cordelia. Isn't that true?"

  "Yup," he said laconically. They were sitting in his tiny office. A bank of closed-circuit monitors confirmed that nobody was breaking in. Of course they weren't. There was nothing worth stealing at the Tool and Die. How did you fence a two-ton lathe?

  "But I thought Cordelia just broke up with you," the lawyer pressed.

  Henry bit his lip, as if fending off heartbreak. "I'm not convinced its final. Besides, now I seem to be addicted to the stupid things. Oh, here's one: If a blank be washed to sea ..."

  "Clod."

  "Now, miss," said Henry. "That isn't nice. I never said I was the smartest. I'm just a simple working man trying to better myself."

  "If a clod be washed to sea," said Devin. "John Donne."

  "Hey, you're a whiz at this. Got a boyfriend?"

  "Yes," she lied. "I do. But about Cordelia--how did you two meet?"

  Henry's eyes took on a faraway look. "I guess you could say it was fate."

  "I guess you could say everything is fate," said Devin. "That's why they call it fate. Could you be a little more specific?"

  The watchman sighed. "G
ee, I don't know. It's a little bit embarrassing. Truth is, it was a rebound kind of thing."

  "Rebound?"

  Henry squirmed, sought refuge in his puzzle. "Wait," he said, "here's a long one. Journalistic poultry dish?"

  "Pullet surprise," said Devin. "But Henry--rebound from what?"

  He put his pencil down and exhaled slowly. "Okay. Okay. Used to be," he said, "that when I finished my shift here, I'd go up to the Sweeney for a nightcap. I met Cordelia in the bar up there, late on a night when she'd been dumped by someone else. She was a mess. Half-drunk. Teary. That's why it's embarrassing. I don't kid myself. She would never have been interested in me, except I found her at a very vulnerable moment."

  "Who dumped her, Henry? Who'd she been with?"

  "I don't know. She didn't say a name. I didn't ask."

  "And you never talked about it after?"

  "Hey," he said, "the past is past."

  Devin briefly pondered, thinking about Cordelia with deep disapproval and maybe just a touch of envy. She was Morgan's mistress plus she had another guy plus she took up with the watchman the same night she got dumped? "Henry," she said, "do you remember what night this was?"

  "Oh, yes," he said, "I remember very well. November the fourth."

  "The fourth!" said Devin. "Isn't that the night you saw Arthur Hightower . . . ?"

  "It is," said Henry. "I told Patrick that I took Cordelia to the Sweeney. That was a little fib, to save face for both of us. But the truth is she started the evening with someone else, and ended it with me."

  "But you don't know who?"

  Infuriatingly, the little watchman shrugged and went back to his puzzle. The lawyer tried a different tack.

  "Has anyone ever said you look just like Robert Rutledge?" "Who?"

  With only limited success Devin fought off exasperation. "Don't you read the papers?"

  "Sure I do. The sports page. And the crossword."

  "But not the business section?"

  "What's that got to do with me?" said Henry.

  Her frustration clear now, Devin exhaled loudly as she rose to go.

  "Before you go, miss--one more clue? A woman, to some. Four letters. The last three are u-n-t."