They had reached the beach and were walking across the sand, toward the water.
“That day I got back to the house?” Roy said. “The first day?”
“What about it?”
“The police came to my door. I’ve never had police come to my door, ever, and they come on that day. And they called again this morning, but Penny wouldn’t let me talk to them. She passed them on to Atticus. Then there’s this reporter calling me. An investigation into Eden.”
“I’m getting nervous listening to you, buddy.”
They stopped at the edge of the ocean, a wave just lapping across the sand to wet Roy’s sneakers. He squinted at the horizon, the thin line that separated heaven from earth.
15
Roy jogged up eight flights of gray granite steps to the top floor. There, on a claustrophobic red-brick landing whose only light came from a cracked skylight twenty feet overhead, stood two massive wooden doors. Apartments 4A and 4B. The doors were finely engraved in trapezoidal patterns, but a dozen layers of black paint over the years had smoothed and glossed the features. He tried to focus on the design, but the edges seemed to blur into each other. At the center of each door hung a heavy brass knocker. Roy grabbed the one for 4A and was about to rap when he saw that the door was ajar.
“It’s open,” a voice announced.
“Mr. Rodriguez?” Roy pushed the door slowly, feeling its solid mass and noticing the four locks down the left edge. Why bother having all these locks if you were just going to leave it open?
He peered around the corner at green ceramic floors and clean white walls. An open loft some fifty feet long and thirty wide, with a ceiling that went right up to the pyramidal roof twenty-five feet up. Potted eucalyptus trees, artfully placed, defined the open space, and spider plants and creeping vines draped from the rafters. In the middle hung an intricate Native American dream catcher.
A compact olive-skinned man sat reading a magazine on an overstuffed green couch, his black-socked feet up on an ottoman. He had on jeans and a crisp white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar. Cuban guitar music played in the background over the distant honking of car horns on Third Avenue below. Eden’s corporate headquarters stood on the same Third Avenue, just three miles away but an entire world apart from the barrios of East Harlem.
“Come in,” the man said, putting the magazine down. He nodded toward the matching couch opposite him and handed Roy a business card. Thick stock, very simple, with small, neat letters: “Miguel Angel Rodriguez, Private Detective.”
“You can call me Angel, or Miguel, but my friends call me Angel.” The way he said it, it was clearly better to be a friend.
This wasn’t the dingy, cramped ashtray of a place Roy had imagined on his way over. The west-facing wall was lined with five-by-five squares of industrial-style windows looking onto the bare treetops at the north end of Central Park. Spanish Harlem. Bright sunshine streamed in, lighting up dust motes floating in the air.
“Would you like a drink, Mr. Lowell-Vandeweghe? A coffee”—he pronounced it “coif-ee”—“maybe Perrier?”
“Roy, just call me Roy. Do you have anything stronger?”
“Sorry, don’t drink. Would keep booze around, but …”
A recovering alcoholic. At least this much fit Roy’s idea of a private eye. “I’m fine.”
Angel leaned forward and steepled his hands together, elbows on knees, his chin resting on outstretched thumbs. “Okay, Roy, so what made you call me?” A shiny red slash ran down the man’s left cheek, just inside the jawline. He stroked the scar with the back of his right hand.
“I have a problem.”
“Everybody’s got ninety-nine of those, but how’d you get my name?”
“You’ll laugh, but the Yellow Pages.”
The private investigator didn’t laugh. “And you took Rodriguez? Needed a Puerto Rican for some dirty work?”
The man sat straight upright, his palms coming apart, his eyes opening wide to expose the whites, eyebrows raised. Almost comical, but also threatening, in a way that Roy imagined only a Latino could manage without looking ridiculous. Or maybe an Italian. The man’s accent sounded more Brooklyn than San Juan.
Roy said, “I looked at your website, too.”
“So you did some research.”
It wasn’t a question, but the steady unblinking eyes made it feel like a test.
“It said you were a Navy SEAL.”
“You want someone killed, is that it?”
“Wanted someone strong, I guess. Liked the sound of it.”
“So you don’t feel safe? Is someone threatening you?”
“I don’t feel anything, to be honest.” Roy scratched at his neck under the polo top. “And no, I don’t want anyone killed. I just need information.”
A pause stretched into uncomfortable silence.
“I did my research, too.” Angel leaned back into the couch. “And I know who you are, too, Mr. Royce Lowell-Vandeweghe. That must itch like hell.” He put a finger against his own scar. “Tingles where the nerves were cut, but man, they cut all your nerves. I got buddies that came back all busted up, but my god, what they did to you …”
“His handle in Afghanistan was ‘Angel of Death,’” said a new voice.
Roy turned. A pink-faced, freckled man, six feet and chubby, closed the front door and locked it.
“Is that your partner?” Roy asked, turning back to Angel.
Angel gave a lopsided grin. “Yeah, this is my partner. Charlie.”
The newcomer stopped to shake Roy’s hand. The fingers were thin and warm, the grip soft. He deposited himself next to Angel, then turned and kissed the former frogman tenderly on the lips. “You want me to put some coffee on?”
Roy’s eyes must have widened.
“You okay?” Angel asked, looking straight at Roy.
“He’s an investigator?”
“He’s a veterinarian, man.”
Charlie was at least a foot taller than Angel but looked as though he’d never been to a gym or seen the sun in his life—a sharp contrast to his tanned and muscled lover. The realization was a mind flip, like seeing a line-drawn 3-D cube switch orientations.
“My mistake,” Roy said quickly. “I thought you meant business partner.”
“Business partner, life partner, everything partner.” Angel gave Charlie’s leg an affectionate squeeze as Charlie got up. Roy must still have been staring, because Angel added, “What, you didn’t think there were any gay SEALs?”
“None of my business.”
“If we’re going to work together, this is exactly your business.”
“I don’t … I mean, it doesn’t—”
“I’m one hard-core-as-fuck operator-killer, my friend, but I’m queer as a nine-dollar bill, too—that’s ‘queer’ squared.” He pointed at his midsection. “Every cracker’s nightmare, in a sleek brown Puerto Rican package. You got a problem with that?” Angel’s nostrils flared.
No one would suspect that this guy was a private investigator. “No problem with that.”
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Charlie called from the kitchen area at the end of the loft, singing the last few words. “He’s just teasing.”
Angel slouched back into the couch and laughed. “Sorry, man. Part of my process.”
“So a thousand a day—is that the rate?”
“How many days you need?”
“As many as you got.”
Angel looked at his feet, back at Charlie, and then back at his feet.
Roy thought he was about to turn him down. “I can pay more if—”
“I can start full time, tomorrow after I finish a few things, but it’ll be fifteen hundred per diem, plus expenses, a month in advance. Can you get that?”
“No problem.” Roy pulled a fat wad of bills from his coat po
cket. “Here’s for the first ten days. I can write you a check for the rest or be back in half an hour with cash.”
“First, let’s talk about what you need done.”
“Right.” He put the cash down on the table anyway.
“So explain to me the situation, my newest friend. What do you need to find out?”
Roy pointed at his own chest. “Who this body belongs to.”
* * *
“Always follow the money, that’s my golden rule,” Angel said. “How much is in this trust fund? Your best guess?”
Through the windows, the setting sun lit stratospheric clouds fiery red over the north end of the park. Angel and Charlie sat side by side on the opposite couch from Roy, so close that their thighs touched. An empty coffeepot and half-full cups encircled a plate of biscotti rapidly turning to crumbs.
“Maybe five million, at a guess. It started off at ten, but with the annual allowances, upkeep on the houses …”
“And you and your mother get payments from it?”
“About three hundred thousand a year. Started at a hundred and thirty each, twenty years ago, indexed at four percent per annum.”
“That’s after-tax money?”
“The trust pays our taxes.”
“Not bad for sitting on your ass. And five million is still a lot of money.”
“Not really, not anymore.”
“Excuse me if I don’t feel sorry for you,” Angel said.
“Hey, be nice,” Charlie admonished.
A veterinarian who was an amateur sleuth. Or maybe both he and his boyfriend were. Roy had no way of determining whether a Navy SEAL had what it took to be a detective, but he liked Angel and his boyfriend.
“You know the things I’ve seen people do for money?” Angel replied, slapping Charlie’s knee. “But if you die, all this cash …”
“Would go to charity. That’s the deal.”
“Same if you went to jail.”
“Before my father died, I’d just been kicked out of Yale. I was dealing pot.”
“Just pot?”
“And some other stuff,” Roy admitted. “Stupid. Not as if I even needed the money. No other college would take me after that. It was the second one I’d been kicked out of. Only added to my father’s stress. He was being investigated by the SEC at the time. Then he had his heart attack.”
“So nobody wants to kill you to get your money. They need you to stay alive for that money to stay alive. That’s a twist.”
“Right.”
“What was your dad being investigated for? Is that important?”
“Can’t see how it would be. Was twenty years ago.”
“And your dad set up this trust fund because he didn’t trust you?”
“Or my mother. I figure she was sleeping around, but I don’t know.”
“Something else to find out. Why not get a divorce?”
“He was old school.”
“I don’t get it,” Charlie said. “I thought we were supposed to be finding out who Roy’s donor body belonged to.”
“Honey, leave the investigating to me, okay?” Angel said. “Why don’t you go make us some sandwiches?”
Charlie pouted but didn’t budge.
“He’s right,” Roy said. “What I really need to know is whose body this is.”
“Because you think something isn’t right, right?”
“Right.”
Angel sat up straight and smoothed his jeans. “We gotta go on your instinct. Your gut feeling. If you think something about all this is wrong, then we gotta assume someone is to blame. When you first woke up, who was in that room? Your lawyer, Atticus—he was there. Was that normal? My lawyer doesn’t turn up at family functions.”
“Normal enough. He’s an old family friend.”
“Like your friend Sam.”
“He’s more a part of my family than just a friend.”
“And your wife? How’s home life? Is she happy about you giving that ten-million-dollar house to your mother like you promised?”
“Penny’s family has their own money. To be honest, she married down. They’d be just as happy if she left me and went home.”
“Was there anyone there who didn’t fit?”
Roy rubbed his face. They’d been talking for two hours already. “Captain Harris, from the East Hampton Police. Barely met him before.”
“And your mother was there, too.” Angel scribbled more notes. “So that just leaves Dr. Danesti. He was your mother’s doc? For these, uh, rejuvenation treatments?”
Roy had explained about the young-blood transfusions. “That’s right.”
“That is goddamn creepy.” Angel looked at his notes, then glanced at Roy and cringed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean … And what about the Chegwiddens? You said they paid for part of your medical costs. Maybe they were worried about you suing them.”
“I wouldn’t do that, and they know it.”
“But maybe your mother and your wife would.”
“They’re barely on speaking terms.”
“You said they’re working together on that new charity, right? And who knows what deals they made when you were in a coma.”
“Are you serious?”
“That’s what you’re paying me for.”
Roy sat back in the couch. A headache began to pound in his sinuses. He rubbed his eyes again, then looked at Angel and Charlie, then Charlie and Angel. He laughed. “Oh, I get it. You’re Charlie’s Angel.” He frowned, then laughed again. “And you’re both vets.”
Angel smiled but didn’t look up from his notes.
“So we’re looking to find out who the donor body is,” Charlie said, his pale brows furrowed. “And we think there’s foul play, so maybe someone killed your donor? So Roy could inherit a few million dollars?” The veterinarian took a biscotto and bit off the end. “If that’s true, then someone is protecting you more than anything else.”
“But even if they killed someone to get the donor body for Roy, you don’t just drop a body off,” Angel pointed out. “Transplants are controlled by—what did you call it?” He looked at his notes. “The Organ Procurement and Transplant Network. OPTN. That’s who controls the body parts?”
“It’s operated by the United Network for Organ Sharing—UNOS. Headquartered in Virginia but has a big office here in Manhattan. I already sent in a letter. Recipients can send letters to the donor families, requesting to get in touch.”
“And you already sent a letter?” Angel said. “So if they can get in touch, that means they have records of who the donor is. So somebody knows. We need to find out who. Not sure if it’s legal, but not exactly illegal … probably.”
“A few million dollars is a drop in the ocean to these people. It’s something else. Something …” Roy couldn’t articulate what he felt. “I just want to find out whose body this is. Can’t we start with that?”
“But you didn’t get a letter back from UNOS. You said the donor families could respond. Doesn’t that mean that maybe they don’t want you to know? Maybe they got your letter.” Angel’s voice softened. “You sure you want to open this can of worms? Some of this stuff might be better left buried. Maybe someone is trying to protect you. You might want to let sleeping dogs—”
“And my dog—I want you to look into that.”
“Your dog?”
“When I was in the hospital, my wife said my dog died, but I’ve never gotten a straight answer.”
Angel didn’t look convinced that this had anything to do with anything, but he wrote it down just the same.
“What should I do about the policewoman?” Roy looked down at the arms that weren’t his. The creeping sense of vertigo was never far away. “This Detective Devlin?”
“Did you talk to Atticus—your lawyer—about it yet?”
“Not yet.”
“You want information? You get out there and do some digging. Go meet Detective Devlin yourself.”
16
“Hey, man, you got some money?”
The too-thin young man hopped and skipped backward in front of Roy along the gravel path through Tompkins Park. The greenspace was in the middle of Manhattan’s Alphabet City neighborhood, just at the edge of the red-brick towers of Stuyvesant Town.
The young man cracked a hopeful grin—he hadn’t been shooed away yet—and asked again. “Just a few bucks, man. My Ferrari’s in the shop, you know?” The kid cast a sidelong grin at his hoodied crew of friends lounging on and around a green park bench.
“That is a shame,” Roy said, but he smiled, too.
It was still warm enough for T-shirts, but Roy had on a thick high-necked sweater and scarf. He’d read in the Times that the crustypunks and pushers had moved west to Washington Square Park, but as the last rays of slanting sunshine gave way to almost-winter twilight, the creatures were coming out in Heroinville.
The kid in front of him backpedaled, not giving up, his brown Afro swaying in time with his oversize Ramones T-shirt and blue-checked flannel pants ripped at both knees. After another pleading request, he spotted another target and moved on. Roy still had an hour to kill, so he let his feet wander, circling back around past the dog park and stone tables. The soft exo-suit whirred and whined under his jeans. He must look like a junkie himself, complete with the stuttering walk.
The day before, he had rented a basement walk-up on Eleventh near the corner of Avenue C, just across from a bodega. Seven hundred bucks a week, fully furnished, the landlady had explained before asking, with her hand out, for two weeks’ advance payment. “Furnished” was optimistic for the haphazard stained and scratched contents of the apartment, but Roy had paid at once without even looking. Something about it fit, like easing into a worn but comfy chair to watch the big game. Two days before, he had told Penny he was leaving, that he needed some space. He said he was freaked out about the baseball-bat incident, that he needed to think.
All this was true, as far as it went.
More of the truth was that he needed to escape before he couldn’t. He had to get out from under the smothering weight of the mansions and manicured hedges of the Hamptons. His wife had protested that it was dangerous, saying that she was going to call Dr. Danesti. Roy had replied that he was available by phone at any time, but he’d ditched his cell phone as soon as he got into the city, then picked up a pay-as-you-go cheapie from a Duane’s drugstore in Times Square.
The Dreaming Tree Page 9
