Big Jack (22 page)

“Yeah. If she’s still alive, he might try for her. Or the son. If neither one of them is a part of this, he might push those buttons. There’s nobody else left from back then, nobody with direct knowledge of what went down, and how. He can’t even be sure they exist.”

“Eat.”

Distracted, she looked down at the pizza. Because it was there, she picked it up, bit in, chewed. “It’s a kind of fantasy. Now that I see he’s younger than I assumed, it makes more sense to me. It’s a treasure hunt. He wants them because he feels he’s entitled to them, and because they’re valuable, but also because they’re shiny,” she added, thinking of Peabody outside the display windows at Fifth and Forty-seventh.

“You talked me into swimming around that reef off the island. Remember? You said not to wear my pendant deal. Not only because, hey, big fat diamonds can get lost in the ocean, but because I shouldn’t wear anything shiny in there. Barracudas get hyped up when something shines and gleams in the water and can take great big, nasty bites out of you.”

“So you have a barracuda on a treasure hunt.”

Yeah, she liked bouncing a case off Roarke, Eve thought. You didn’t have to tell him anything twice, and half the time didn’t have to tell him the first time.

“I don’t know where this is taking me, but let’s play it out. He wants them because he feels entitled, because they’re valuable and because they’re shiny. This tells me he’s spoiled, greedy and childish. And mean. The way a bully’s mean. He killed not only because it was expedient but because he could. Because they were weaker and he had the advantage. He hurt Cobb because there was time to, and he was probably bored by her. This is how I see him. I don’t know what it gets me.”

“Recognition. Keep going.”

“I think he’s used to getting what he wants. Taking it if it isn’t given. Maybe he’s stolen before. There was probably a safer way to get information, but he chose this way. It’s more exciting to take something that isn’t yours in the dark than to bargain for it in the light.”

“I certainly used to think so.”

“Then you grew up.”

“Well, in my way. There’s a thrill about the dark, Eve. Once you’ve experienced it, it’s difficult to resist.”

“Why did you? Resist.”

“I wanted something else. More.” He took her wine for a sip. “I’d built my way toward it, with the occasional and often recreational side step. Then I wanted you. There’s nothing in the dark I could want as I want you.”

“He doesn’t have anyone. He doesn’t love. He doesn’t want anyone. It’s things he craves. Shiny things that gleam in the dark. They’re shinier, Roarke, because they already have blood on them. And I think, I’m damn sure, some of that blood runs in him. They’re more valuable to him, more important to him, because of the blood.”

She rolled her shoulders. “Yeah, I’ll recognize him. I’ll know him when I see him. But none of this gets me any closer to where he is.”

“Why don’t you get some rest?”

She shook her head. “I want to look at the matches.”

 

Steven Whittier sipped Earl Grey out of his favorite red mug. He claimed it added to the flavor, a statement that caused his wife, who preferred using the antique Meissen, to act annoyed. Still, she loved him as much for his everyman ways as she did for his sturdiness, dependability and humor.

The match between them—the builder and the society princess—had initially baffled and flustered her family. Patricia was vintage wine and caviar, and Steve was beer and soy dogs. But she’d dug in her fashionable heels and ignored her family’s dire predictions. Thirty-two years later, everyone had forgotten those predictions except Steve and Pat.

Every year on their anniversary, they tapped glasses to the toast of “It’ll never last.” After which, they would laugh like children pulling one over on a bunch of grown-ups.

They’d built a good life, and even his early detractors had been forced to admit Steve Whittier had brains and ambition, and had managed to use both to provide Pat with a lifestyle they could accept.

From childhood he’d known what he wanted to do. To create or re-create buildings. He’d wanted to dig in his roots, as he’d never been able to do as a child, and provide places for others to do the same.

He’d structured Whittier Construction from the ground up, through his own sweat and desire, his mother’s unbending belief in him—then Pat’s. In the thirty-three years since he’d begun with a three-man crew and a mobile office out of his own truck, he’d cemented his foundation and added story after story onto the building of his dream.

Now, though he had managers and foremen and designers on his payroll, he still made it a habit to roll up his sleeves on every job site, to spend his day traveling from one to another or burrowing in to pick up his tools like any laborer.

There was little that made him happier than the ring and the buzz of a building being created, or improved.

His only disappointment was that Whittier had not yet become Whittier and Son. He still had hopes that it would, though Trevor had no interest in or talent for the hands-on of building.

He wanted to believe—needed to believe—that Trevor would settle down soon, would come to see the value of honest work. He worried about the boy.

They hadn’t raised him to be shallow and lazy, or to expect the world handed to him on a platter. Even now, Trevor was required to report to the main offices four days a week, and to put in a day’s work at his desk.

Well, half a day, Steve amended. Somehow, it was never more than half a day.

Not that he got anything done in that amount of time, Steve thought as he blew on his steaming tea. They would have to have another talk about it. The boy was paid a good salary, and a good day’s work was expected. The problem, of course, or part of it, was the trust funds and glittery gifts from his mother’s side of the family. The boy took the easy route no matter how often his parents had struggled to redirect him.

Given too much, too easily, Steve thought as he looked around his cozy den. But some of the fault was his own, Steve admitted. He’d expected too much, pinned too many hopes on his son. Who knew better than he how terrifying and debilitating it could be for a boy to have his father’s shadow looming everywhere?

Pat was right, he thought. They should back off a bit, give Trevor more room. It might mean taking a clip out of the family strings and setting him loose. It was hard to think of doing so, of pushing Trevor out of the nest and watching him struggle to cross the wire of adulthood without the net they’d always provided. But if the business wasn’t what he wanted for himself, then he should be nudged out of it. He couldn’t continue to simply clock time and draw pay.

Still, he hesitated to do so. Not only out of love, for God knew, he loved his son, but out of fear the boy would simply turn to his maternal grandparents and live, all too happily, off their largess.

Sipping his tea, he studied the room his wife laughingly called Steve’s Cave. He had a desk there as he more often than not preferred to hunker down in that room rather than the big, airy office downtown or his own well-appointed, well-equipped office in the house. He liked the deep colors of this room, and the shelves filled with his boyhood toys—the trucks and machines and tools he’d routinely asked for at birthdays and Christmastime.

He liked his photographs, not only of Pat and Trevor, of his mother, but of himself with his crews, with his buildings, with his trucks and machines and tools he’d worked with as an adult.

And he liked the quiet. When the privacy screens were on, the windows and the doors were shut, it might very well be a cave instead of one of the many rooms in a three-level house.

He glanced up at the ceiling, knowing if he didn’t go up to the bedroom shortly, his wife would roll over in bed, find him gone, then drag herself up to search him out.

He should go up, spare her that. But he poured a second mug of tea and lingered in the soft light and quiet. And nearly dozed off.

The buzzer on his security panel made him jolt. His first reaction was annoyance. But when he blinked his eyes clear and looked at the view screen, the image of his son brought him a quick rush of pleasure.

He rose out of his wide leather chair, a man of slightly less than average height, with the bare beginnings of a potbelly. His arms and legs were well muscled, and hard as brick. His eyes were a faded blue with webs of lines fanning out from them. Though it had gone stone gray, he still had most of his hair.

He looked his age, and eschewed any thought of face or body sculpting. He liked to say he’d earned the lines and gray hair honestly. A statement, he knew, that caused his fashionable and youth-conscious son to wince.

He supposed if he’d ever been as handsome as Trevor, he might have been a bit more vain. The boy was a picture, Steve thought. Tall and trim, tanned and golden.

And he worked at it, Steve thought with a little twinge. The boy spent a fortune on wardrobe, on salons and spas and consultants.

He shook off the thought as he reached the door. It didn’t do any good to poke at the boy over things that didn’t matter. And since Trevor rarely visited, he didn’t want to spoil things.

He opened the door and smiled. “Well, this is a surprise! Come on in.” He gave Trevor’s back three easy pats as Trevor walked past him and into the entrance hall.

“What’re you doing out this time of night?”

Deliberately, Trevor turned his wrist to check the time on the luminous mother-of-pearl face of his wrist unit. “It’s barely eleven.”

“Is it? I was dozing off in my den.” Steve shook his head. “Your mother’s already gone up to bed. I’ll go get her.”

“No, don’t bother.” Trevor waved him off. “You’ve changed the security again.”

“Once a month. Better safe than sorry. I’ll give you the new codes.” He was about to suggest they go into the den, share the pot of tea, but Trevor was already moving into the more formal living room. And helping himself from the liquor cabinet.

“It’s good to see you. What’re you doing out and about and all dressed up?”

The casual jacket, regardless of label and price, was hardly what Trevor considered
dressed up.
But it was certainly a step up from his father’s choice of Mets T-shirt and baggy khakis.

“I’ve just come from a party. Dead bore.” Trevor took the snifter of brandy—at least the old man stocked decent liquor—swirling it as he sprawled into a chair. “Cousin Marcus was there with his irritating wife. All they could do was talk and talk and talk about that baby they made. As if they were the first to procreate.”

“New parents tend to be wrapped up.” Though he’d have preferred his tea, Steve poured a brandy to be sociable. “Your mother and I, we bored the ears off everyone who couldn’t run and hide for months after you were born. You’ll do the same when it’s your turn.”

“I don’t think there’s any danger of that as I’m not the least bit interested in making something that drools and smells and demands every minute of your time.”

Steve continued to smile, though the tone, and sentiment, set his teeth on edge. “Once you meet the right woman, you’ll probably change your mind.”

“There is no right woman. But there are any number of tolerable ones.”

“I hate hearing you sound so cynical and hard.”

“Honest,” Trevor corrected. “I live in the world as it is.”

Steve let out a sigh. “Maybe you need to begin to. It must be meant to be that you came by tonight. I was thinking of you before you did. About where you’re going with your life, and why.”

Trevor shrugged. “You’ve never understood or approved of my life because it doesn’t mirror yours. Steve Whittier, man of the people, who built himself from nothing. Literally. You know, you should sell your life story. Look how well the Gannon woman has done with her family memoirs.”

Steve set his snifter down, and for the first time since Trevor had come in, there was a warning edge in his tone. “No one is to know about any of that. I made that clear to you, Trevor. I told you because I felt you had a right to know, and that if, somehow, through that book’s publication the connection was made to your grandmother, to me, to you, you’d be prepared. It’s a shameful part of our family history, painful to your grandmother. And to me.”

“It hardly affects Grandma. She’s out of it ninety percent of the time.” Trevor circled a finger at his ear.

Genuine anger brought a red flush to Steve’s face. “I don’t ever want to hear you make light of her condition. Or to shrug off everything she did to keep me safe and whole. You wouldn’t be here, swilling brandy and sneering, if it wasn’t for her.”

“Or him.” Trevor inclined his head. “He had a part in making you, after all.”

“Biology doesn’t make a father. I explained to you what he was. A thief and a murderer.”

“A successful one, until the Gannons. Come on now.” Trevor shifted, leaned forward, the brandy snifter cupped between his knees. “Don’t you find him fascinating, at least? He was a man who made his own rules, lived his life on his own terms and took what he wanted.”

“Took what he wanted, no matter what it cost anyone else. Who so terrorized my mother she spent years running from him. Even after he died in prison, she kept looking over her shoulder. I know, whatever the doctors say, I
know
it was him and all those years of fear and worry that made her ill.”

“Face it, Dad, it’s a mental defect, and very likely genetic. You or I could be next. Best to live it up before we end up drooling in some glorified asylum.”

“She’s your grandmother, and you
will
show respect for her.”

“But not for him? Blood’s blood, isn’t it? Tell me about him.” He settled back again.

“I’ve told you all you need to know.”

“You said you kept moving from place to place. A few months, a year, and you’d be packing up again. He must’ve contacted her, or you. Come to see you. Otherwise why would she keep running?”