From Manhattan with Revenge (The Fourth Book in the Fifth Avenue Series) (6 page)

She watched the first- and second-story windows
for movement, but saw none. After a moment, there was an audible buzzing sound,
she opened the gate and stepped down the stairs to the black front door, which
opened as she approached it.

Behind it was a middle-aged man with a
patch over his eye. But not just any patch. Sewn into the front of it was a
working watch, sapphire in color, with a ticking second hand, which caused her
to pause before she could collect herself from the surprise of it. He had short
graying hair and appeared as tall and as broad as the doorway itself. Clean
shaven. Face devoid of emotion. She knew an ex-Marine when she saw one, and she
was looking at one now.

“Carmen Gragera?”

She focused on his other eye, which was as
blue as the watch’s sapphire background. “That’s me.”

He moved to his right. “Step inside,
please.”

She did, and then he closed the door and
she held out her arms for him in the sunlit entryway. “It’s in my jacket
pocket,” she said as he patted her down. “After last night, I couldn’t be on
the streets without it. I hope you understand.”

“I don’t understand anything about what
you do. But it isn’t my job to judge.”

I think you just did.

He took the Glock and continued his
search. Even if Spocatti did send her here with his blessing, she felt nervous
and naked without her gun. When he was satisfied she carried nothing else on
her, he asked if he could take her coat.

She slipped it off and handed it to him.
When he took it from her, she noted that his hands were triple the size of
hers. Alex was six-foot-two, but this man was much taller. Six-foot-eight? She
looked around the wide, aged oak foyer and saw all the delicate antiques on the
side tables and walls. On this level, the ceilings were high. Probably twelve
feet.

She bet he was happy for the extra space.

“This way,” he said, motioning in front of
him. “Mr. Gelling is waiting for you in the library.”

Gelling? The name meant nothing to her.

“And your name?” she asked.

“Mr. Gelling will decide if you need
access to that information. Follow me, please.”

Jesus.

She followed him down a long hallway and
past a beautifully designed living room that had the sort of furnishings that
suggested either Gelling came from money or he knew exactly what to do with it
when he earned it himself.

On a round mahogany table in the center of
the room was a Lalique Bacchantes vase. Just from the depth of its opalescence
alone, Carmen knew it was an original made by Rene Lalique himself.

The current revivals the company made were
beautiful, but inferior. Some thought they looked like frosted glass. But this
was the real thing from the late twenties, something she’d only ever seen in a
museum. With its graceful series of nudes surrounding the vase, it was the
epitome of the Art Nouveau movement she loved so much. She was a long way from
her days as an art history major in Spain, but the bug hadn’t left her. A part
of her wanted to go over and admire the vase. She wanted to touch it.

But Big Ben was having none of that. There
was no slowing him down. Soon, they were in the library and she faced Gelling,
an ancient-looking man with a full head of white hair neatly combed back and an
inquisitive face that brightened when he saw her. In his plush, battery-powered
wheelchair, he buzzed quickly toward her.

“Carmen Gragera,” he said in a voice that
wasn’t as frail as it was when she spoke to him last night on the phone. “I’m
so glad you came.”

“Thank you for seeing me.”

He stopped just short of her and looked up
at her with clouded green eyes that reminded her of the sea. He reached out his
hand and she shook it. Here is where she felt his frailty. His skin was soft
and papery. His fingers, twisted from arthritis, were so slender, she knew she
could snap them with a brisk shake. On the back of his hands were brown spots
and purple bruises. It reminded her of her grandfather’s hands not long before
he died.

“My name is Gelling,” he said. “James
Gelling. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard about you, you know?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Vincent thinks a lot of you.”

“I’m glad to hear that. It’s mutual. I’ve
learned a lot from him.”

“Take it all in, my dear. Take it all in.
He’s the best. You’ve worked with him only once, correct? That Wall Street
job?”

“That’s right.”

“Didn’t go as planned, I hear.”

“Sometimes, it doesn’t.”

He waved his crippled hand in the air. “So
many things don’t. Look at me, for instance. Pretzels for fingers. Trapped in
this wheelchair. A slave to its batteries, not to mention to my own body, which
has betrayed me worse than my own children did.” He cocked his head at her.
“All of them are dead, you know? I outlived them all. Every last one. Isn’t
that unusual? And wonderful, given how they treated me. How old do you think I
am?”

She knew better than to stretch the truth
with this man. She studied his face and gave it her best shot. “In your
nineties?”

“High or low end?”

“Depends on how young you were when you
had your children.”

“I’m not saying.”

“Then I’m thinking somewhere in the
middle.”

“So, I’ve done well,” he said. “The
lotions worked. And you’ve fed my vanity, which doesn’t happen often enough.
I’m one hundred and three years old, Carmen. I could be gone during this very
meeting, so you should prepare yourself for that. I could just slump over in my
chair, shit my pants, and that’s it. Lights out. That’s what it’s like at my
age. You never know when death will hit. Being this old is the most surreal
experience. I go to sleep at night and think, ‘Well, that’s it. Surely, I’ve
snuffed the final candle by now.’ Then I wake the next morning stunned to
realize I have another shot to make a difference.”

“How do you make a difference?” she asked.

“In all sorts of ways. I believe one of
them is the reason you’re here. Come, come. Over to those sofas behind me. Have
a seat in one of them. If I’m going to help you, I want to get to know you
better. I want to know about you.”

She felt her guard go up. Carmen rarely
spoke about her personal life. Since her early twenties, the only person she
fully let in was Alex.

He whizzed over in his chair, which
whirred past her as if a gigantic bee had been let loose in the room. She
sensed he enjoyed the speed. Got a little thrill from it. “Would you like
something to drink? Iced tea? Coffee?”

“I’d love an iced tea.”

“Lemon? No lemon?”

“Lemon.”

“Sweetened? Unsweetened.”

“Unsweetened.”

“I figured as much. You’re trim.” He
looked up at her friend, Big Ben with the watch eye patch, who was standing
beside the sofa in which she sat, his massive forearms folded across the broad
expanse of his equally massive chest. “An unsweetened ice tea with lemon for Carmen
and the same for me, please. Don’t forget my straw. And stop looking so tense,
Frank. Carmen is a friend of Vincent’s and thus she’s a friend of ours. We’re
just going to chat for a bit before we get down to it.” He lowered his voice
and spoke to Frank as if she wasn’t there. “I’m curious to know how she became
an assassin.”

When Frank left, Gelling looked at Carmen
and said, “Did the watch render you useless for a moment?”

“I’m not sure about useless. But I’ve
never seen anything like it.”

“Frank’s an eccentric.”

“I’d finger him as a former Marine.”

“And you’d be correct. But the watch,” he
whispered. “I think it gives him an edge. It catches people off guard. You
wouldn’t believe the situations it’s helped him out of. He’s a beast of a man,
of course, but when he appears, what people see first is the watch. They can’t
help but stare at it. It’s actually very shrewd of him. It allows him that
additional moment to act. You should try it?”

“I prefer my Glock to a clock.”

“Clever. So? Back to you. How did you fall
into that line of work? You don’t look the type.”

You haven’t seen me cut a
man’s throat.

“Mr. Gelling...” she said.

“I understand. You’re uncomfortable
talking about how your past led to your present. Many of you are. But to help
you, I need to know you. Not everything. But as a former psychiatrist, I’m
naturally curious. How does one choose a career of delivering death? What
happened in their lives to make such a decision—and then to master the
craft? You don’t need to give me every gory detail, Carmen, but if you want me
to help you find Katzev, which I can, I do expect you to play nice and tell me
how you got to where you are now.”

At first, she didn’t speak. It was
unnatural for her to share such intimate information with a stranger. Even Vincent
didn’t know anything about her personal life—he never asked, likely
because she’d turn the tables and ask him how he got involved in the business.
But looking at Gelling and his growing impatience, she knew she had no choice
if he was going to help her. “My father was an assassin,” she said. “I learned
from him.”

“What a curious inheritance. When was
this?”

“When I graduated college.”

“What did you study?”

“Art history.”

“Well, there’s a stretch. From Matisse to
murder. That would be fun to read on a resume. Did you always know about your
father’s line of work?”

“I didn’t.”

“What did you think he did for work?”

“I was told that he worked as a corporate
consultant. Turns out that was true, only when I found out what he was
consulting them on, it wasn’t exactly as innocent as it sounded at the time.”

“How did you find out?”

“I was abducted.”

She watched Gelling’s face light up again.
He was enjoying the story. It didn’t matter to him that reliving that time in
her life was painful for her. If Spocatti hadn’t sent her here, she’d leave.

“By whom?” he asked.

“Men my father was hired to kill. They
caught wind of it—don’t ask me how, because I don’t know—and they
came after me. I was working at the Met at the time. I used to walk part of the
way home, especially in the fall, because for me, this is the best time of year
to be in Manhattan. I was on Fifth. They pulled alongside me in a limousine,
held a gun on me, told me to get inside, and took me hostage. They warned my
father that if he didn’t allow them to leave the States and go back to their
country, where they stupidly thought they’d be safe, they would kill me. My
father agreed. I was released. They got on a plane and went home. My father
waited two months, hopped on a plane, and killed them in Stockholm.”

“It’s always Stockholm,” he said. “Or
Berlin or Beirut. Or Moscow or Madrid, but never Brisbane. Never Canada. Never
Maine. How those areas must feel slighted by assassins.”

She just stared at him.

“How did you feel when you knew who your
father was?”

“Betrayed.” She paused and thought back to
that time. Now, Carmen was thirty-eight. She was twenty-three when she was
abducted. Had it really been fifteen years since she first learned the truth
about her father? She was surprised by how quickly the time had passed, and
also by how much she had changed during that time. “But also relieved. He saved
my life.”

“But only after he put it in jeopardy.”

“Indirectly, but you’re right.”

Gelling was about to speak when Frank
entered the room with the iced teas. The room’s bright sunlight reflected off
the watch, making it appear like a sphere. Carmen wondered if it glowed in the
dark.

Frank stopped beside them. Gelling’s tea
had a straw in it with an extendable tip. When the drinks were delivered, he
shooed the man away.

“During those two months, you and your
father must have talked.”

“We did. And I’m not going to lie to you.
There’s no question I felt betrayed, but I also became intrigued by his life. I
always considered my father a gentleman. He wasn’t violent. He was nondescript,
just an average-looking man who happened to have superior skills in areas that
were foreign to me. I was a young woman when I first learned about his other
life. My father and I were never very close. After the abduction, I knew why.
We began to talk. He told me stories and let me in. Because I didn’t judge him,
I think part of him wanted to share his life with someone, because he’d never
had the opportunity to do so with anyone else.”

“He didn’t share it with your mother?”

“We never discussed my mother. She left us
when I was four.”

“Why did she leave?”

“You’d need to ask her.”

“Do you keep in touch?”

“Mr. Gelling, I don’t even know if she’s
alive.”

“Where is your father now?”

“In a Madrid cemetery.”