by Al Roker
“She’s pretty intuitive,” he said. “And we were lucky that it was Detective Hawkline’s partner who was on duty when the doctor said she was well enough for visitors. Before he began to ask her questions, she started throwing questions at him about how she’d wound up at the hospital and what exactly had been going on.
“He told her just about everything he knew. But he never once mentioned the word kidnapping. And later, when Detective Hawkline arrived, she wanted to know what Bettina had been doing at the boarded-up mansion, which meant none of us had said anything about the search for Ms. McCauley. So she improvised.”
“She wasn’t improvising about not seeing anything in that basement,” I said. “I know from personal experience it was too dark down there to see anything.”
“If Parkhurst hadn’t been so paranoid,” A.W. said, “he wouldn’t have gone after Betts and messed himself up.”
“Going after her wasn’t his idea,” I said. “Felix phoned him and sent him to the hospital. She’s the one who’s paranoid. Or maybe she wanted to set him up.”
“Whatever, it worked for her,” he said. “He’s dead and she’s still at large.”
“For now,” I said, with more hope than conviction.
Trina had left a message for me at the Bistro. It read, in Cassandra’s delicate hand, Meeting five p.m. at the Central Park Ritz-Carlton, room 601.
There was another note. Call Lee ASAP.
“Chef Blessing, dear,” Lee said, answering her phone. “I am still at JFK with two very uninteresting agents, awaiting the arrival of our client from London. The flight is forty minutes late, and we are not amused.”
“You called earlier?”
“Yes. To ask you to arrive at the hotel a little before the meeting. Say four-forty-five. There are a few things we should prepare.”
“No problem.”
“I assume A.W. is with you,” she said.
“He’s in the building. Want to talk with him?”
“No. Just tell him that he is to drop you at the hotel entrance. I will be waiting for you there.”
“I’ll tell him,” I said.
“Till four-forty-five, then. Are you still worried?”
“A little.”
“Don’t be. Everything will go as planned,” she said.
“Just like your client’s arrival time,” I said.
A.W. was having a late lunch in the main dining room at a table for two that provided a clear view of Cassandra at her hostess perch near the front door. I wondered which of them had picked that table.
Business had been brisk, and there was a fair amount of after-lunch dawdling. Middle-management types engaged in office talk, some well-dressed wedding-ringed ladies taking time out from their shopping, a tourist couple, a table of ten twentysomethings celebrating a birthday, and a few reliables from the nearby ad agencies, who ate with us three or four times a week and would return later for a pre-commuter cocktail.
I took the empty chair across from A.W.
He was halfway through his meal, a baby-lamb-shoulder salad, accompanied by, it pains me to report, some kind of soft drink. He was, after all, on duty.
I told him Lee’s request that we arrive early for the meeting. “You’re going to be in on this, right?” I asked.
“No. There’s a special team for takedowns.”
“We have to talk about that,” I said. “And I’m going to need a few things that you know more about than I.”
“Like what?”
I checked my watch. We had about three hours before magic time. Long enough for me to talk him into a slight adjustment to Lee’s plans that would make me feel a little less vulnerable. I smiled at him. “That salad looks good,” I said. “Maybe I’ll have one, too.”
Chapter
SIXTY-THREE
Lee must have been standing just inside the Central Park South entrance to the Ritz-Carlton. When A.W. pulled up behind an idling horse and carriage, she stepped through the door and waved to me.
“Here goes nothing,” I said to A.W.
He gave me a concerned look.
Lee took my arm and led me through the hotel lobby without paying much mind to its heralded antique/contemporary ambience. “How are you holding up, chef dear?” she asked.
“To reference an old joke: Like the suicide jumper said as he passed the fifth floor, ‘So far, so good.’”
“Relax. Everything is in place. And you will appreciate Goyal.”
“Appreciate?”
“I am sure you two will get along famously.”
“If you say so,” I said.
Of the three men in the suite’s almost too antique-y sitting room, Goyal Aharon was the last I would have picked to be ex-Mossad. His hair was blond, almost white, cut short and neatly brushed to the side. His eyes were gray. He was clean-shaven and tanned. He was on the thin side and maybe two or three inches shorter than me, six inches shorter and fifty or more pounds lighter than the two rugged InterTec agents who were guarding him. He was wearing pressed khaki trousers, a black Polo pullover, soft black leather loafers, and a crooked grin. He resembled an actor playing a young professor in a TV show set on a 1950s campus.
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Blessing,” he said, with only a mild accent. It was his handshake that offered the main hint of a rugged past. There was callused strength in it.
“Call me Billy,” I said. “Everybody does. Almost.” I glanced at Lee, who rewarded me with a smile.
“I understand you are a famous chef, Billy,” Aharon said. “Will we be talking about food tomorrow? I learned from my grandmother the Ashkenazk cuisine, but I am also conversant in other styles. I worked in a bakery in my youth. Perhaps I could demonstrate how one prepares sufganiot?”
“I think we’ll have plenty to talk about other than food,” I said.
“Where are you going, Lee?” Aharon asked, suddenly distracted.
I turned to see Lee and the two security brutes heading for the door.
“Just giving my men their final instructions,” she said. “As I mentioned, we have a specific plan that will be going into effect in just a few minutes.”
He turned to me and shook his head. “I do not quite understand what Lee expects to happen. Do you?”
“I get most of it, I think.”
He gestured toward an armchair with a red-velvet seat. It was part of a gathering of furniture surrounding a coffee table containing a French Limoges tea set. He waited until I was comfortable, then sat across from me on a Victorian love seat with a pale-blue silk padding. “So explain it to me,” he said.
“What don’t you understand, Goyal?” Lee asked as she joined us, sitting next to him on the love seat.
“To begin,” he said, “if I am in danger, as you keep telling me, why have you dismissed my guards?”
“They are not dismissed,” she said. “Merely less visible. They’re in the suite across the hall, watching everything we do and listening to everything we say via state-of-the-art visual and audio equipment hidden in this room.”
“Hidden where?” I asked.
“There are cameras in that enclosed bookcase,” she said, “and in the chandelier. Tiny transmitters have been placed in key positions. For example, the pen on that desk is a transmitter, but you can also write with it.”
“It seems so odd,” Aharon said. “You have reason to believe this Felix has been hired to kill me, and we are supposed to just sit here, bait for your trap. Why are we taking the chance she may succeed, when there is a much safer and more efficient way to handle the problem? Why not just remove her?”
“As the Irish have said for centuries, it is better to deal with a devil you know than a devil you do not know,” Lee said, filling our cups with tea. “If we merely remove Felix, we probably would have to face a new, unknown replacement. What we must do is get Felix to tell us who hired her so that we can stop the threat at its source.”
Aharon nodded. “I suppose you are right. Actually, I am interested in meeting this murderous lady
I’ve heard stories about. Call me a chauvinist, but I had assumed Felix to be a man.”
“We have Chef Blessing to thank for that bit of clarification,” Lee said.
Aharon turned to me. “Ah. Then you are not only a chef, a restaurateur, a television performer, and an interviewer, you also dabble in crime?”
“Only when forced,” I said.
Aharon took a sip of tea and settled back on his chair. “So what do you expect, Lee? That she will try to remove me with you and Billy sitting here?”
“I think she will try to remove all of us. But we will not let that happen.”
“Good,” he said. “I was hoping to write another book.”
“This might make an interesting chapter,” I said.
“In fact—”
Whatever Aharon was about to say was preempted by the chirping of Lee’s cellular.
Aharon and I stared at her as she brought the phone to her ear. “Yes?” she said, and was silent for the next several seconds. “Good” was her next and final word before she put away the phone.
“I’ve had a team shadowing Trina,” Lee informed us. “She is on her way up.”
We sat there, silently staring at the door to the suite.
It couldn’t have been more than a minute or two, but it seemed like an eternity until an electronic bing-bong sounded.
Lee rose, adjusted the purse strap on her shoulder, and went to open the door.
After a brief sharing of hellos, Trina Lomax entered the sitting room carrying a worn leather briefcase. Lee was a step behind her.
Aharon and I had risen.
I was staring at Trina, trying to decipher her expression. Curiosity, perhaps. Maybe a hint of annoyance. But no sign of suspicion. “Billy,” she said. “Early and eager?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“And this must be Mr. Aharon.” She stepped forward, hand extended. “I’m Trina Lomax, executive producer of Wake Up, America! on Worldwide Broadcasting.”
He hesitated for only a millisecond before shaking her hand. “A pleasure,” he said, smiling. “But, please, I prefer for beautiful ladies to call me by my first name, Goyal.”
“That’s very sweet, Goyal,” she said, putting the briefcase on the glass top of the coffee table, beside the tea service. “I hope you’ll call me Trina.”
She took the remaining chair, one similar to mine but with a purple-velvet seat. Aharon and I followed her lead.
Lee filled Trina’s cup, then raised her own. “To a successful tour,” she said, and we toasted Aharon.
Trina scanned the room and frowned. “Shouldn’t there be people guarding Goyal, Lee?”
“I am here. Others will be joining us shortly.”
“Good. Then I guess we should get to it,” Trina said, reaching for her briefcase. “I have something I hope we can agree …”
She seemed surprised when Lee grabbed the briefcase from her hands, opened it, and dumped its contents on the empty section of the coffee table.
“What the hell, Lee?” Trina said as printed sheets of paper, photographs, creased little notepads, and other bits of reporter paraphernalia flopped and fluttered to the table, some of them sliding to the carpet.
Lee looked inside the briefcase and, evidently satisfied that it was empty, tossed it aside.
“What’s going on?” Trina asked, looking at Aharon and me for answers.
“Tell her, Lee,” Aharon said.
“Just wanted to make sure you were not carrying something … lethal.”
“What are you talking about?” Trina asked, starting to rise. “What’s going on here?”
Lee removed a .44 Magnum from her handbag. “Sit down, Trina. Before you fall down.”
“What’s with the gun, Lee?” Trina asked.
Lee pointed the .44 at Trina’s midsection. “Sit. Down,” she demanded.
Trina obeyed. Once seated again, she blinked her eyes and gave her head a shake.
“Who has paid you to kill me, Trina?” Aharon said.
“Is everyone here crazy?” Trina asked.
Aharon looked at me. “I expected something more,” he said, “considering Felix’s reputation.”
“Beware what you ask for,” I said, looking at Lee.
She rewarded me with a smile of delight. “Oh, chef dear, you recognized my weapon.”
“All of them,” I said, “including the gun in your hand, which used to be in my office.”
“A gift to me from Teddy. He found it the evening he left the napkin drawing for you.”
“Considering how lame he was at the hospital,” I said, “I’m surprised he fooled me so completely with his drunk act.”
“I am now confused, too, Lee,” Aharon said. “What is happening here?”
Lee ignored him, continuing to address me. “Does your devious mind tell you why I have your revolver?”
“I suppose it’s because you’re going to shoot these two people and blame it on me.”
“Not at all. But you will be playing a big part.”
“Why me? What did I do to get involved in all this?”
“Don’t play coy,” Lee said. “It’s because you caused me so much trouble.”
“How did I do that?”
“You killed Rudy Gallagher.”
I was momentarily stymied. “Why would you think that? Even the detective assigned to the case is having doubts.”
“Then he is a fool. Gallagher took your woman, though I personally feel you are well rid of her, and he was about to destroy your career. Of course you killed him. But, unfortunately, he was in possession of an audio file that a smart investigator, or an obsessed journalist”—she bowed her head to Trina—“might use to endanger Felix’s anonymity. A purchase had been arranged with Gallagher. But you murdered him before that came to pass. And the file is still out there somewhere. Such trouble you have caused.”
“I didn’t kill Gallagher,” I said.
Trina made a little strangled cry and suddenly fell forward onto the carpet.
“One down,” Lee said, shifting her position to cover both Aharon and me with the gun.
He stood and reached for the weapon. But his reflexes were slow and Lee merely rose from the love seat and took a step backward. Aharon tried to follow, but his leg gave out and he fell very close to Trina. They both lay motionless on the carpet.
“My own little teapot brew,” Lee said.
“Is it fatal?”
“No. Basically a variety of flunitrazepam—what you Americans call a roofie—but with a special something that will keep them awake so that they will see the bullet coming. And the drug will be out of their systems long before your overworked forensics people will find time to examine them.
“And how are you feeling, chef dear? A little off the mark?”
“I feel … fine,” I said, blinking a little.
She looked at Trina’s scattered papers. “I’d love to read those, to see how close she’s come. I know for a fact she was snooping around Baghdad for information about the death of Di Voss’s son. I think that’s why she went to work at your network, for more background.”
“Did you kill him?” I asked Lee.
“Plastique attached to a vehicle’s undercarriage. To the geniuses trying to cope with the violence in Iraq, there is no difference between that and a road mine. Almost too easy.”
“Who … hired you?” I asked, as the teacup fell from my fingers to the carpet, spilling its contents.
“What difference does it make? Dead is dead.”
“Lee is … nickname, right? For Felice. Close enough to Felix.”
“Lee, Felice, Felix. They are all of my own creation. As is Franchette. That one may be too literary for you, chef. It’s a tribute to Colette’s favorite feline.”
“How many … have you killed?”
“Not so many,” Lee answered. “Nine, actually, including Lieutenant Di Voss. Teddy killed four, including that oaf Gault, who’d become something of a burden. Tedd
y was a talented amateur but needed supervision.”
“Who … hired you to kill Di Voss?” I asked again.
“That is of no consequence,” she said, “since, in a little while, Felix will be no more. The thing about enigmas is that almost anyone can be made to fit the image. As you once suggested, Trina is an excellent choice.” She reached into her handbag and removed an ugly serrated knife. “She will have the double satisfaction of using this, the same weapon that Felix has employed in the past, on the Mossad thug and you, chef dear. But before you die, you will, with your last strength, shoot her.”
“And what happens … to you?” I asked.
“I drink a lot of that tea and fall unconscious at the same moment the security guards across the hall, alarmed by the gunfire, break down the door.”
“It will take … perfect timing,” I said, just before my head fell forward.
My eyes were open. I could see her walking around the table to stand before me. She placed a hand under my chin and lifted my head. She leaned forward and kissed my motionless lips. Then she straightened and took a step toward the coffee table.
She placed my gun on the table, then, knife in hand, stepped over Aharon. She prodded his body with one pointed toe, rolling it so that he was lying on his back. She raised the knife. …
And I cleared my throat.
She turned swiftly and reached for the gun she’d placed on the coffee table.
It was no longer there.
It was in my hand, aimed at her lovely chest. “I spent a year at Gidleigh Park in Devon, working in Michael Caines’s kitchen,” I said, “but I never developed a taste for tea.”
She smiled and shifted her hold on the knife.
“Put the knife on the table,” I told her. She hesitated. “You’re too smart to bring a knife to a gunfight.”
She placed the knife on the table.
“Now what? You still have no proof. I can claim you were Felix, partnering with Teddy.”
“What about them?” I indicated the narcotized couple. “I think they might just back me.”
“They’ve been drugged. Unreliable. In the end, chef dear, it will be your word against mine. The word of a murder suspect against the word of a respected executive of an international security agency.”
