Hemlock Bay (19 page)

Second panel:
Sam Donaldson clearly isn’t happy. He grabs the photo, says, “I’m not bald, Remus, and I don’t wear a wig. This photo is a fake. You can’t blackmail me.”

Third panel:
Remus is gloating. “Why don’t you call Jessie Ventura? Just ask him what I did to him.”

Fourth panel:
Sam Donaldson, angry, defeated, says, “What do you want?”

Fifth panel:
Remus says, “I want Cokie Roberts. You’re going to fix it so I can have dinner with her. I want her and I’m going to have her.”

Lily was grinning when she turned to see Simon Russo standing in the doorway.

He looked fit, healthy, and tanned. She felt suddenly puny and weak, still bowed over a bit. She wished he’d just go away, but she said, “Yes?”

“Sorry to bother you, but you should be in bed. I just spoke to Savich, and he said to check on you. He knew you wouldn’t be following orders. You’ve got a strip nearly ready?”

“Yep. It’s not the final version yet, but close. Remus is in fine form. He’s blackmailing Sam Donaldson.”

Simon wandered over to look down at the panels. He laughed. “I’ve missed Remus, the amoral bastard. Glad to see him back.”

“Now I’ve got to see if the
Washington Post
would like to take me and
Remus
in. Keep your fingers crossed that they’ll agree. I won’t get rich anytime soon, but it’s a start.”

Simon said after a moment, looking down at the
Remus
strip, “I know a cartoonist doesn’t make much money until he or she is syndicated. Hey, I just happen to know Rick Bowes. He runs the desk. How about I give him a call, go to lunch, show him the strips?”

Lily didn’t like it, obvious enough, so he didn’t say anything more until she shook her head. “All right, then, you bring some of these strips to show him and I’ll take you both to a Mexican restaurant.”

“Well,” she said, “maybe that would be okay.”

“Will you take a nap now, Lily? You should take some of your meds, too.”

Sean hollered from the nursery down the hall. They heard Gabriella telling him that if he’d just stop chewing his knuckles as well as hers, she’d get him a graham cracker and they’d go for a walk in the park. Sean let out one more yell, then burbled. Gabriella laughed. “Let’s go get that cracker, champ.”

Lily heard Sean cooing as Gabriella carried him down the hall. She tried to swallow the tears, but it just wasn’t possible. She stood there, not making a sound, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Simon knew about tragedy, knew about the soul-deep pain that dulled over time but never went away. He didn’t say a word, just very slowly pulled her against him and pressed her face to his shoulder.

When the phone rang a minute later, Lily pulled away, wouldn’t look him straight in the eye, and answered it.

She handed it to him. “It’s for you.”

New York City

It was nearly ten o’clock Sunday
night. Simon was back in New York and had just finished a hard workout at his gym. He felt both exhausted and energized, as always. He toweled off his face, wiped the sweat off the back machine, stretched, and headed for the showers. There were at least a dozen guys in the men’s locker room, all in various stages of undress—cracking jokes, bragging about their dates, and complaining about injured body parts.

Simon stripped and nabbed the only free shower. It was late when he finally stepped out and grabbed up his towel. Only two guys were left, one of them blow-drying his hair, the other peeling a Band-Aid off his knee. Then, not three minutes later, they were gone. Simon had on his boxer shorts when the lights went out.

He grabbed for his pants. He remembered the circuit breaker was outside the men’s locker room, right there on the left wall.

He heard something, a light whisper of sound. It was the last thing he remembered. The blow just over his right ear knocked him out cold. He fell flat to the locker room floor.

“Hey, man, wake up! Oh God, please, man, don’t be dead. I’d lose my job for sure. Please, man, open your eyes!”

Simon cracked open an eye to see an acne-ridden face, a very young face that was scared to death, staring down at him. The young guy was shaking his shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m not dead. Stop shaking me.” Simon raised his hand and felt the lump behind his right ear. The skin was broken, and he felt the smear of his own blood. He looked up at the kid and said, “Someone turned out the lights and hit me with something very hard.”

“Oh, man,” the kid said, “Mr. Duke is going to blame me for sure. I’m supposed to take care of this place, and I’ve only been here a week and he’s going to fire me. I’m roadkill.” He began wringing his hands, looking around wildly, as if expecting to see Mr. Duke, the manager, at any minute.

“The guy who hit me—I guess you didn’t see him?”

“Nah, I didn’t see any guy.”

“All right. Don’t worry, chances are he’s long gone. Help me up, I’ve got to check my wallet.” Once on his feet, Simon opened his locker door and reached for his ancient black bomber jacket that had seen its best days at MIT a dozen years before. His wallet was gone.

A robber trips the circuit breaker, then comes into the gym locker room to steal a wallet? He must have known only one guy was left, which meant that he’d had to look in, to check. A mugger in a men’s locker room?

“Sorry, kid, but we should call the cops. Can’t hurt. Just maybe they’ll turn up something.”

Simon canceled his credit cards while he waited for the cops to show up. The police, two young patrolmen, took a statement, looked around the gym and in the locker room, but—

Simon waited to call Savich until he was back at his brownstone on East Seventy-ninth Street.

Savich said, “What’s happening?”

Simon said, “I had a bit of trouble just a while ago.”

Savich said, “You leave my house this afternoon after you get a phone call, don’t call me to tell me what’s going on, and you’re telling me you’ve already landed into trouble?”

“Yeah, that’s about the size of it. Is Lily better?”

“Lily is indeed better, and she’s pissed. She said tomorrow is Monday, her stitches are out in the morning, and she’s coming up to New York, no matter what kind of excuses you try to pawn off on her.”

“I’ll have to think about that,” Simon said.

“All right, tell me what happened.”

After Simon had finished, Savich said, “Go to the hospital. Have a doctor check out your head.”

“Nah, it’s nothing, Savich, the skin’s barely split. Don’t worry about that. Thing is my wallet was taken, and I really don’t know what to make of it all.”

Savich said slowly, “You think some people know you’re after my grandmother’s paintings?”

“Could be. Thing is, when I got that phone call at your house, I wasn’t exactly truthful with Lily. It wasn’t an emergency with a client here in New York. It was from an art world weasel I do business with occasionally. I’d called him from your house earlier and he said he’d heard some things, too, and now he’s put out some feelers for me on the Sarah Elliott paintings. He was expecting some solid results soon, would have something to show me, and he needed me up here in New York. I was supposed to meet him tonight, but he called earlier and said he didn’t have everything together yet. So it’s on for tomorrow night, at the Plaza Hotel, the Oak Room Bar, one of his favorite places. The guy’s good, really knows what he’s doing, so I’m hopeful.”

“All right, sounds promising. Now, just in case you were wondering how good a liar you are, Lily didn’t believe you for a minute. Your mugging, Simon, maybe it was just a mugging or maybe it was a warning. They didn’t hurt you seriously, and they could have. I’ll bet you a big one that your wallet is in a Dumpster somewhere near the gym. So take a look.”

Simon could picture Savich pacing up and down that beautiful living room with its magnificent skylights.

“How’s Sean?”

“Asleep.”

“Is Lily asleep, too?”

“Nope. She’s here, knows it’s you on the phone, and wants to lay into you. I can’t stop her from coming up, Simon.”

Simon said, “Okay, give her my address, tell her to take a shuttle up here. I’ll meet her unless there’s a problem. I wish you could keep her with you longer, Savich.”

“No can do.”

Simon said, “I changed my mind, Savich. It may be turning dangerous, real fast. I really don’t want Lily involved in this. She’s a civilian. For God’s sake, she’s your sister. I take it all back. Tie her to a chair; don’t let her come up here.”

“Do you happen to have any suggestions about what I should do, other than tying her up?”

“Put her on the phone. I want to talk to her.”

“Sure. She’s about to rip the phone away from me in any case. Good luck, Simon.”

A moment later, Lily said, “I’m here. I don’t care what you have to say. Just be quiet, go to the hospital, get a good night’s sleep, and meet my plane tomorrow. I’ll take the two-o’clock United shuttle to JFK. Then we can handle things. Good night, Simon.”

“But Lily—”

She was gone.

Then Savich’s voice came on. “Simon?”

“Yeah, Savich. Well, I’d have to say it was a nonstarter.”

Savich laughed. “Lily’s my sister. She’s smart, and they are her paintings. Let her help with it, Simon, but keep her safe.”

Simon bowed to the inevitable. “I’ll try.”

He took two aspirins and went back to his gym. There was a Dumpster half a block away. Lying on the top was his wallet, with only the cash gone. He looked up to see two young guys staring at him.

When one of them yelled an obscenity at him, Simon started forward. They didn’t waste time and swaggered away, then turned when they figured they were far enough away from him and gave him the finger.

Simon smiled and waved.

•
He was waiting for her, standing right in front of the gate, arms crossed, looking pissed.

Lily smiled, said even before she got to him, “I didn’t want to carry much because of my missing spleen. I’ve got a bag down on carousel four.”

“I’ve decided you’re going back to Washington to draw your cartoons.”

“While you find my paintings? Doesn’t look like you started out very well, Mr. Russo. You don’t look so hot. I think I did better on that bus than you did in your men’s locker room last night. And I want to find my grandmother’s paintings worse than you do.”

And she walked past him to follow the signs to Baggage Claim.

Simon didn’t own a car, had never felt the need to, so they took a taxi to East Seventy-ninth, between First and Second. He assisted her out of the cab, took her purse and suitcase, grunted because it had to weigh seventy pounds, and said, “This is it. I’ve got a nice guest room with its own bath. You should be comfortable until you wise up and go back home. How are they doing on that cult case in Texas? They got him yet? Wilbur Wright?”

“Not yet. What Dillon does is feed all the pertinent information into protocols he developed for the CAU—Criminal Apprehension Unit. Put that eyebrow back down. So you already know what he does and how he does it.”

“I should have asked, has MAX got Wilbur yet?”

“MAX found out that Wilbur Wright is Canadian, that he attended McGill University, that he’s a real whiz at cellular biology, and that his real name is Anthony Carpelli—ancestry, Sicily. Oh my, Simon, this is very lovely.”

Lily stepped into a beautifully marbled entryway, and felt like she’d stepped back into the 1930s. The feel was all Art Deco—rich dark wood paneling, lamps in geometric shapes, a rich Tabriz carpet on the floor, furniture right out of the Poirot series on PBS.

“I bought it four years ago, after I got a really healthy commission. I knew the old guy who’d owned it for well nigh on to fifty years, and he gave me a good deal. Most of the furnishings were his. I begged and he finally sold me most of them. Neat, huh?”

“Very,” she said, a vast understatement. “I want to see everything.”

There was even a small library, bookshelves to the ceiling with one of those special library ladders. Wainscoting, leather furniture, rich Persian carpets on the dark walnut floor. He didn’t show her his bedroom, but guided her directly to a large bedroom at the end of the hall. All of the furniture was a rich Italian Art Deco, trimmed with glossy black lacquer. Posters from the 1930s covered the walls. He put her suitcase on the bed and turned. She said, shaking her head, “You are so modern, yet here you are in this museum of a place that actually looks lived in. This is a beautiful room.”

“Wait till you see the bathroom.”

He didn’t tell her that he was leaving until he had the key in his hand that evening at 10:30.

“I’m meeting a guy with information. No, you’re not coming with me.”

“All right.”

He distrusted her, she could see it, and she just smiled. “Look, Simon, I’m not lying. I’m not going to sneak out after you and follow you like some sort of idiot. I’m really tired. You can go hear what your informant has to say. Just be careful. When you get back, I’ll still be awake. Tell me what you find out, okay?”

He nodded and was at the Plaza Hotel by ten minutes to eleven.

LouLou was there, pacing back and forth along the park side of the Plaza, beautifully dressed, looking like a Mafia don. The uniformed Plaza doormen paid him little attention.

He nodded to Simon, motioned to the entrance to the Plaza’s Oak Room Bar. It was dark and rich, filled with people and conversation. They found a small table, ordered two beers. Simon leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “How’s it going, LouLou?”

“Can’t complain. Hey, this beer on you? Drinks aren’t cheap here, you know?”

“Since we’re in New York, I figured the Oak Room would be our venue. Yeah, I’m paying for the beer. Now, what have you got for me?”

“I found out that Abe Turkle did the Elliotts. Talk is he had a contract to do eight of them. Do you know anything about which eight?”

“Yeah, I do, but you don’t need to know any more. I would have visited Abe Turkle second. You sure it’s not Billy Gross?”

“He’s sick—his lungs—probably cancer. He’s always smoked way too much. Anyway, he took all his money and went off to Italy. He’s down living on the Amalfi Coast, nearly dead. So it’s Abe who’s your guy.”