by Louis Begley
VIII
A note from Harry’s—now my—housekeeper, Jeanette, greeted me at my apartment. I worked all Saturday packing, she wrote, so you can move to Fifth Avenue on Monday. I’ll be in your apartment early on Monday to finish up.
Indeed, I could see that, except for the clothes I would need to have dinner with Kerry and first thing Monday morning, the closets were empty. My books were still on the shelves, but they, as well as the paintings and a few other odds and ends I wanted to take to Fifth Avenue that could not be easily transported by taxi, would be taken care of by the movers. The rest would be sold to whoever bought the apartment or given to the Salvation Army. So this was goodbye: a productive and happy period Harry had graced had come to a tragic and unnatural end. My laptop was on the desk in my study. I glanced at it longingly. Hidden inside it was as much as I had written of my new book. Somehow, its demands would have to be reconciled with the need to find the Voice and kill him.
It was too early to call Kerry unless I wanted to risk disturbing her while she worked with her team. I didn’t. Instead, grateful that Jeanette hadn’t packed or taken away the bottles I kept in the pantry, I made a stiff gin and tonic, carried it to my study, and let myself sink into my desk armchair. One gin and tonic called for another. I yielded to this evident logic, found an open can of cashews in the fridge, and returned to my armchair with the drink and the solid sustenance. Sipping much more slowly, I flipped through the mail Jeanette had left on my desk and found a hand-delivery envelope from Jones & Whetstone. In it was a letter from Hobson.
Dear Jack, he wrote, the partner I had thought might appropriately represent you in your capacity as executor of your uncle’s estate is unavailable. I assume that in the circumstances you will retain a lawyer from another firm to advise you, and suggest that you ask him or her to contact me in order to arrange for the transmission of your file.
Interesting, I said to myself. Perhaps Kerry will understand what’s going on, why no one can be found at J & W to replace legal-eagle Minot. She may even have ideas about some other trusts and estates lawyer I could turn to. Interesting also that Hobson chose to send this letter instead of emailing me. Why didn’t he simply call me on the telephone? I think I understood the reason: the fop in him liked the idea of telling me to fuck off in a hand-delivered note. I put the letter on top of the dresser in the bedroom next to Harry’s iPhone and was thinking of making a cup of coffee when my own phone rang. It was Scott.
I’m worried about you, he said. This stuff about being knee-deep in shit. It’s not good for you.
Absolutely true, I said. At least the shit isn’t of my making. Actually I was going to call you a little later this afternoon. I’m worried about Kerry’s physical safety. I’ve thought about the obvious precautions—making sure that she double locks her door, asking who else has the keys to her apartment, warning her against wandering after dark down deserted streets, which is something she probably doesn’t do anyway, but that’s about it—I don’t know what else to do. I thought you and your boys at Langley might have experience with this sort of problem.
After a pause, Scott asked, Just what kind of threat is this?
I wish I knew, I answered. It could be anything from someone breaking into her apartment to—far more likely—a fake mugging or a fake traffic accident, designed to hurt her, perhaps badly, or even to kill her. It could happen on her way to work or home from or to a meeting with a friend. Who knows? Mostly, I suppose, when she’s alone. I might as well tell you, I’ve fallen for her and I think she’s into me, so I hope to be with her most evenings. But you know how it is. People need space.
Right, Scott said. Congratulations! She’s beautiful, and I like her. I suppose you’ll explain the reasons for your anxiety on Tuesday, when you come here.
Yes, that’s why I’m coming to see you.
Look, he continued, when someone the agency is involved with is under threat we provide security. A kind of super bodyguard. You can’t organize anything approaching that, but that’s the template. What people usually do when they feel apprehensive, or there has been a real threat, and for one reason or another they can’t get police protection, is they hire a bodyguard.
He must have sensed that I wasn’t buying this idea because he added, Yes, and a bodyguard doesn’t need to be a muscle-bound gorilla with I’M A BODYGUARD stenciled on his forehead. There’s someone I know who’d do, a retired FBI agent, inconspicuous, smart, quite able to handle an unpleasant situation if necessary, and one hundred percent honest. His real mission though would be to prevent Kerry’s getting into such a situation. By keeping his eyes open and using his common sense. Of course, this guy’s services aren’t cheap.
Would it be possible, I asked, for this man to do his work without Kerry’s knowing it? She thinks she’s very tough. I can imagine her saying she doesn’t want or need a nanny.
As I expected, Scott told me that such an unorthodox arrangement would make the bodyguard less effective. He’d ask Martin—that was the FBI man’s name—whether he was available and would accept an assignment on those terms.
If you’re really worried, he added, perhaps you should play bodyguard yourself until we work something out. I’ll try to have an answer from Martin by tomorrow.
Not for the first time I thanked my lucky stars for having given me a friend like Scott. I knew he’d take a bullet for me, and I’d take one for him. That was how I’d felt about the men on my team and later in my Force Recon platoon. It was the one test that counted. I looked at my watch. Four-thirty. I had time for a badly needed nap before taking a bath and getting dressed for my date. But first I opened the locked file cabinet in my study. The top drawer held my arsenal: a tricked-out .45 and thirty rounds of ammo, my father’s USMC Ka-Bar I’d kept on me through the Iraq and Afghanistan deployments, and a good-luck charm, the razor-sharp switchblade I took off the mullah I killed with my father’s knife in Helmand, putting it right through his neck when I saw him start to pull the pin of a grenade. The asshole had come to the company HQ with a delegation of village elders who wanted to con the CO into releasing a Taliban we’d caught wearing U.S. infantry cammies, which was an offense punished by death. The pat down missed the grenade as well as the guy’s switchblade. I picked up my weapons, examined them—it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that I caressed them—and decided to slip the switchblade into the side pocket of my jacket when I went to pick up Kerry. It might have been a different ball game with Bozo-on-the-Beach, assuming he really intended to get wise with me, if I’d had it in my windbreaker.
—
Kerry cried so bitterly that momentarily I regretted having told her the recording existed, even though the reasons for doing so remained as compelling as when I made the decision. Unless she understood what had happened to Harry she would not believe that she might be in danger. Anyway, it was done and could not be undone.
My attempts to console her were in vain. She shook her head when I offered to bring her another drink of bourbon on the rocks, a drink I’d discovered she liked, and pushed me away when I tried to put my arms around her. I felt lucky we’d made love before listening to Harry’s iPhone. I don’t think either of us would have been up to it with the Voice in our ears. As for me, I hadn’t realized the urgency of my need for her until she opened the door and put her arms around me. Was this the hard-boiled litigator who could slice and dice a witness on cross-examination and who’d spent a day preparing for an upcoming courtroom battle? It seemed inconceivable. Her hair, her skin, were fresh and fragrant, her breath was sweet like a young child’s, the body burning its way to mine through the layers of our clothes that of a young girl waiting for the boy to whom she’d decided to give herself.
Shush, Jack, she’d said, shush! and covered my mouth with her hand when she saw I was going to speak. Sag Harbor can wait. First come to bed. I won’t let Harry and Sag Harbor take this evening away from us.
Afterward, when emptied and happy we lay quietly side by side, she ask
ed about the hour of our dinner reservation.
Nine, I told her.
In that case, let’s get dressed, have a drink, and talk.
It took her only a few minutes to get ready. I made her another bourbon on the rocks and poured one for myself. Then I ran through what Mary and Sasha had told me, gave her Harry’s letter to read, saying that both Mary and I had been careful not to touch it with our bare fingers.
You were right. She nodded and asked to borrow my handkerchief.
I can’t believe it, she said, and read it slowly once again, moving her lips as she did. But it’s he, it’s his tone of voice, only he seems to be mocking you. No, I can’t believe it.
And have you noticed that he wrote it with a blue ballpoint pen?
Yes, she answered, and I never saw him use one. No, that’s not right. Perhaps at his club, when he’d forgotten his pen and the waiter handed him one to use filling out the chit.
You’ve noticed he says he was expecting me to come back from Chile!
Yes, she said, it’s incredible.
All right, I said, there is more, and it’s worse. That is when I gave her Harry’s phone. She got the voice-memo feature going with two taps of an impatient index finger. We listened and she cried and cried.
After a long while, she regained control of herself, washed her face in the bathroom, came back to the living room, and said, I need another drink. Please make it very strong.
We sat with our bourbons in silence until I put the question that I thought was first on the agenda. Could we get the police—or the FBI—to go after this guy?
Certainly not the FBI, she answered, anyway not on the basis of what we know at this time. The FBI concerns itself only with crimes that violate federal law. There doesn’t seem to be any federal law involved here. Murders—this is almost surely a case of murder—are crimes under New York State law. Since the murder was committed in Suffolk County, I suppose it would be the Southampton police, perhaps with the help of state troopers—I really don’t know how that works—who’d be in charge of the investigation, but perhaps there is a special unit in the county that would be brought in. The prosecutor would be the Suffolk County district attorney.
That is not what I had hoped to hear, I said.
I know, she answered, but your real problem is that we have only one real piece of evidence—the recording—that a crime has been committed. It’s terrifying, but it doesn’t even begin to identify a suspect. And given that Harry is dead and there is nobody who could prove that the recording is authentic, it’s not at all clear that it could be introduced as evidence even if there were a trial at some point. The only thing we have, other than the killer’s voice, is Harry’s letter. It’s a bizarre letter, you and I know it’s not the kind of letter he would have written if he’d decided to kill himself, but it’s his handwriting. You have to get the police investigators and the D.A. to think and feel their way into why this letter was indeed extorted, as the recording indicates, and what exactly it would prove at trial. So the question is, suppose you go to the Southampton police with the recording and the letter, where does this get us, and where do we go from there?
Nowhere, in my opinion, I said, not after you’ve put it that way. Not if it’s the local police doing the investigation. You see what a great job they did when Mary called them. They didn’t look for fingerprints or anything like that. They’re dolts.
You may be too quick to judge them, she answered. There is a decent chance that they’d listen and open an investigation. Will they find this guy in Suffolk County? Unlikely. But perhaps there is a way of making this a statewide case.
Statewide case, I mocked. What makes us think he’s in this state? How do we know where he came from? The answer has to be as I suspected. I’ll have to find him, and I will find him, that much I can swear to you, but I don’t believe it will be with the help of the Southampton or Suffolk County police. Anyway, let’s go to dinner. I’m starved.
So am I, Kerry said, and this can’t be a late evening. I have to be fresh and alert tomorrow morning. The argument is set for ten, and Judge Fiori runs a tight courtroom. All hell will break loose if we don’t start on time.
I had decided not to mention Bozo-on-the-Beach to her, in part because I was coming to believe that the encounter meant nothing—how would the Voice and whoever sent him know that I was in Sag Harbor, and why would they want to attack me—and because, whether or not it meant something, I didn’t want to spook her. But after the food and wine had done their work, and I thought both of us were more relaxed, I said, Kerry there is something I have to say that you probably won’t like. I’m worried about you. You heard the Voice say that Harry was a traitor. Those lights going on and off through the house could have meant one thing only: the Voice was looking for documents. Presumably, he didn’t find them. But if whoever it was who decided to murder Harry did it because of what he knew, and what he might betray, then aren’t you at risk? You who were the closest to him?
She thought about it and said, It’s crazy. Then she thought some more and said, Perhaps it isn’t. What do you think I should do?
It’s simple, I said. For openers, what is your schedule tomorrow?
My team—three of them—is picking me up. We’re using a car service. We’ll go down to court together.
And then?
After the argument, we’ll go back to the office. The litigation bags weigh a ton, so we’ll use a town car again, instead of the subway.
And tomorrow evening?
I walk home, take a long bath, and wait for you.
That’s a perfect program, I said. Here is one refinement. I’ll pick you up at the office and walk you home. Then while you take that bath I’ll run an errand or two and will appear at your door at whatever hour you say. The rest of the evening I’ll leave to your imagination, and it could include dinner out or a dinner I will have picked up when I’m running those errands.
Jack, she said, are you intending to be my nanny?
Yes, for a day or two, I said. Then I plan to be replaced by a professional. Kerry, don’t protest, don’t resist, I love you and I don’t want you to be dead.
To my surprise, she didn’t blow up. Instead, she took my hand and kissed it and told me she wanted to think.
I can’t do it, she said finally. If we go to the police, months will pass before they find the monster. Or they won’t find him. You say you’ll find him and kill him. I know you’ll try to, and perhaps you’ll succeed. But that too will take time, especially as I’ll do everything in my power to keep you from doing something stupid that will send you to a maximumsecurity prison for a good part of the rest of your life. So we’re talking of having some guy or a team of rotating guys follow me around for months. I can’t live like that. But I can promise you to be very careful about where I go and when, like late in the evening. There is no reason for Harry to have told you, but I’m a karate black belt, and I’ve done karate for years. I’m pretty good at it. I don’t want to be dead either—I’ve just begun to be happy for reasons that have something to do with you—and you’ll just have to trust me. By the way, she added, I’ve checked on Harry’s papers. They’re gone. Either dispersed among the client files to which they pertained—that is, of course, perfectly proper—or shredded. His email account has been wiped clean. That is in fact standard procedure. It’s done four weeks after a partner’s death. I’m so sorry, Jack!
It was my turn. I took her hand, kissed it, and thanked her for confirming what I assumed was the case. Hobson was a thorough bastard. There was no point in arguing about Martin. I could tell her mind was made up. When I saw Scott, he’d tell me whether the guy could do anything he considered useful without Kerry’s knowing about him.
I hated to bring up more unpleasantness, but we had ordered coffee, and I wanted to get Hobson’s letter out of the way. I handed it to her and asked, What do you think this is all about?
Whoa! she said. It’s weird, but I think I understand. Harry was loved b
y his partners. The other T & E guys are straight arrows—one of them in fact is a woman I like a lot. Hobson could sell the shit about Harry to Minot; maybe he didn’t even have to sell it, he just told him what to do. You’ve probably realized that Minot is an idiot. What you surely don’t know is that his only trump card is that he’s Hobson’s brother-in-law. Hobson must have decided that once you told the J & W partner taking over from Minot the story about Harry’s supposed dementia, the lost codicil, and so forth, in all likelihood the word would spread. The partners wouldn’t buy it. And then all kinds of shit would hit the fan, to the great displeasure of Abner Brown.
I see, I said, and have you some lawyer you know I might go to?
After a moment during which she literally scratched her head, she cried out, I do, I do, my pal Moses Cohen, the super-Orthodox and superbright trusts and estates lawyer who has actually done a lot of litigation! After eight years as an associate at J & W he realized he was never going to become a partner, and four or five years ago he struck out on his own. He’s doing very well, and he’ll be thrilled to take you on. It’ll be a good deal all around. He’s a lot less expensive than J & W!
