Marked Man (25 page)

“And with you gone, Mrs. Randolph’s marriage and Mrs. LeComte’s place at the trust were both secure.”

“Yes. But even after I was forced to leave, Wilfred took care of me. Gave me money when I needed it and then got me a position at the gallery here. He was really very sweet. Is there anything else?”

“Where did she go?”

“Who?”

“Mrs. LeComte. On her sabbatical. Where did she go?”

“Europe, Asia, Australia. She came back through the West Coast.”

“California.”

“That’s right.”

“Hollywood.”

“I suppose.”

“Stayed there awhile.”

“I think so, yes.”

“Took a lover.”

“That’s what I believed, yes.”

“I bet I know who it was.”

“Really?” She leaned forward, captured for a moment by a piece of gossip from decades in her past. “Who?”

“Sammy Glick.”

The brown building of
the Randolph Trust, with its great red door, stood once again before me.

I couldn’t look at it now without thinking of its sordid history. The philandering Wilfred Randolph, his long-suffering wife, the catfights between the two mistresses in Randolph’s life. And then the robbery of jewels and golden figurines and two priceless paintings that was carried off by a quintet of neighborhood mooks, aided by someone inside. The investigation, the accusations, the missing girl, the lovely young curator who shared Randolph’s bed and was framed for the crime. All of that past was as much a part of the building as the stones and mortar.

But now Randolph was dead and his wife was dead, Serena Chicos was raising a family in Rochester, and Agnes LeComte was shriveling by the day as she searched for a young man to sexually mentor. Chantal Adair was still missing, and Charlie Kalakos was in exile, and Ralph Ciulla was murdered, and Joey Pride was on the run. To top it all off, the forces of power and money were trying their mightiest to wrest the fabulous art collection from this very site, and it looked very much like they were about to succeed.

It was sad in its way that the collection was bound for another location, it was part and parcel of this very building and its history—sad, but not tragic. The Randolph Trust was a monument to a man and his money, but what does a great Cézanne canvas or a Matisse portrait care about such a monument? Put the works in a museum, put them in a brothel, it wouldn’t make a difference, they still would shine. In the
end the paintings Randolph collected were too luminous, too perfect to be controlled; mediocrity could be contained, but the greatness of the art Randolph bought had now transcended the cage he built around it.

I was tempted to bang on the door and go inside, to see them all once again, but this wasn’t the second Monday of the month or the alternate Wednesday or Good Friday, and I wasn’t there for the art.

I found her around the back. I had called first, been told that she was working today in the gardens. Did I want to leave a message? “No,” I said, “no message.” What I needed to ask, I needed to ask in person.

“So you’ve come to me at last, my darling,” said Mrs. LeComte. “Are you here to take me up on my offer?”

She was sitting on a small green cart, leaning over and weeding a bed of bright flowers as red as her lipstick. She glanced up at me as my footsteps approached and then turned her attention back to her work. She was wearing a smock, gloves, a wide-brimmed hat, and she looked every inch the suburban dowager tending her garden, except that she was still wearing her improbable high heels and this garden was spectacular, with brilliant beds and marble statues and lovely stone paths. Each tree and bush and patch of flowers was carefully labeled with a neat green sign inscribed in Latin. Around her a crew of gardeners in their blue overalls pruned and raked while she tended her own small plot.

“No, thank you,” I said. “I’m afraid I have to pass.”

“That is rather a shame. In these sorts of mentor-protégé relationships, I’ve found that even with very little sexual desire at the start, through time and intimacy the sexual attraction can grow positively voracious.”

“They say the world will be destroyed in five billion years.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Victor, I’m sure whatever repulsion I feel for you now can eventually be turned around, if you are ardent enough.”

“Is that what happened between you and Mr. Randolph, your repulsion for him was turned around?”

“To whom have you been talking?”

“I just came back from Rochester.”

“How is the little tramp?”

“Older, with children.”

“Serves her right. Whatever she told you was a lie. Wilfred and I were violently attracted to one another from the start. Our passion was a force of nature.”

“As long as it lasted.”

“But while it lasted, it was glorious. I wouldn’t trade our time together, I wouldn’t trade all he gave me, for anything in the world. It was the most precious period in my life.”

“Until the end.”

“Endings are always a problem. Have you seen a film lately? Wilfred, especially in his later years, was attracted to youth. Mine was going, hers was in full bloom. And she wore that tacky turquoise jewelry around her neck like an invitation to rut. But we reconciled after everything, Wilfred and I, so at the end we were simply the best of friends with a delicate shared past. We would sit here in this garden, Wilfred and Mrs. Randolph and myself, sit and drink wine and talk. We talked about everything.”

“About your love life?”

“The Randolphs were quite liberated about those things, and Mrs. Randolph especially liked to hear the details. She much preferred to listen than to participate.”

“But my guess is you never talked about the lover you took between your ending with Randolph and your reconciliation. Was that another mentor-protégé relationship?”

“He was so young, he had so much to learn. And I had all this experience, this wealth of knowledge passed on to me by Wilfred. I was bursting with it all, it needed an outlet.”

“And so you found your Sammy Glick. Ambitious, ruthless, a willing pupil.”

“A mutual friend from Philadelphia made the introduction. Talk about an ardent lover. Wilfred was passionate but somewhat soft where it counted, if you catch my drift. A bit like you, I’m certain. But Teddy was something else entirely. Violent and stirring, filled with a need to devour. Whoosh. I can still feel the tingle in my loins.”

“Yuck,” I said.

“Squeamish, Victor?”

“Absolutely. So who came up with the idea of robbing the trust and taking your revenge on the lover who had jilted you?”

“It just came up. We were on the beach, at night, in each other’s arms, and it just came up.”

“Oh, I bet it did.”

She laughed. “That, too. And then, on the beach, with a fire blazing and our naked bodies up against each other, covered with sweat and between two blankets, with the soft sand beneath us and the velvet sky above, we worked it out.”

“Love is a many-splendored art heist. How did you pull it off?”

“Oh, Victor, some secrets must remain, don’t you think?”

“I’m surprised you’ve told me as much as you have.”

“I don’t respond well to rudeness.”

“I’ve tried to be polite.”

“Not you. I care as much about your manner as I care about the manner of the worm that burrows in my soil.”

“So you’ve heard from him in the past few days.”

“Not directly, but yes. You must be worrying him. For some reason he thought it opportune to send me a message.”

“Let me guess. It was hide the Monet and keep your mouth shut.”

“Don’t get too clever, Victor, you’ll end up in therapy.”

“And you’re disobeying. Aren’t you afraid of what he’ll do to you?”

“I’m tougher than I look, dear. I love him still, but if ever we came face-to-face again I’d pluck his eyes out quick as a raven.” She took hold of one of the flowers she had been tending and, with a quick tug, yanked it from the ground. “Such brilliant crimson. Aren’t they a vision?”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have an idea.”

“No. None. Not anymore.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“The day after. He said he’d send for me.”

“And you’re still waiting.”

“I think of him in the late hours when the wind blows gently outside my window. There is always one that comes to you in the middle of the night, like a ghost, and for me it is he.”

“Do you know anything about the girl?”

“What girl? Oh, the one in the picture. Why do you keep asking about her?”

“Let me ask one other thing. Who passed along his message? Was it a little man with a sweet scent and a Southern accent?”

“Don’t be silly. What would I be doing with such a creature?”

“Then who?”

“You know what time it is, Victor?”

“About noon?”

“No, dear. It’s that time when dusk approaches and the dark night beckons. A good time to settle old scores.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” I said cheerfully.

“He asked a favor. This is many years ago, when I was no longer waiting like Falstaff for the summons. ‘I shall be sent for in private to him.’ For a while after, we were still in touch. A few phone calls, idle talk about our life together. Australia was the plan. I had been, he said he wanted to go. But he couldn’t yet leave, he said. It would be too suspicious, he said. In those days he was back in California, where we had first met. I wanted to rush out, but I heeded his warning. What else was I to do? Years passed, the urge died. And then he called, a voice out of my past, asking a favor. A young lawyer was looking to hook up with a large, prosperous firm. It would help if there was a prestigious client he could bring along with him. Could I perhaps convince Mr. Randolph to give him a look? When he appeared at the trust, freshly scrubbed for the interview, I recognized him at once, and yet I put in the word.”

“What do you mean, you recognized him?”

“He was one of them, one of the thieves.”

There was only one possibility. “Hugo Farr?”

“That’s not the name he goes by now. I thought I was helping a young man traverse the difficult road of life. He was handsome enough and young enough and, like a fool, I believed there was a chance for something new in my life. But instead of a lover, I was bringing into the trust a spy whose purpose, I soon learned, was to keep me quiet and under his thumb.”

“Who?” I said.

“Oh, Victor, don’t be so slow.”

“Be quick, is that it?”

“I think my job here is done. Thank you for coming. I’ve so enjoyed our chat. Time to start packing, I believe.”

“Taking another trip?”

“I’ve waited long enough. If ever you make it to the other side of the world, please don’t look me up.”

“What was he going to do with the money?”

“What everybody wants to do with their money out there. It was what the whole thing was really about. He was going to make a movie.”

It went off in my head like a camera shutter. Click, click, Sammy Glick.

I drove right back
to the city, parked on the street by my office, and without stopping in to check my mail, I headed for One Liberty Place. I took the elevator to the fifty-fourth floor. The doors opened onto a huge lobby with shiny wood floors and antique furniture. Talbott, Kittredge and Chase. Oh, my.

“I’m here to see Mr. Quick,” I said to the receptionist.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

“No, but he’ll see me,” I said. “Tell him Victor Carl is here.”

A few minutes later, a slim young woman in a blue suit appeared in the lobby looking very grim. I was thinking that whoever she was coming for was in for a nasty surprise, when I realized she was coming for me.

“Mr. Carl?” she said.

I abruptly stood. “Yes?”

“You’re here to see Mr. Quick?”

“That’s right.” I recognized her suddenly, the paralegal from my earlier visit. Jennifer.

Jennifer gestured me to a spot away from the center of the lobby, beside the great wall of windows gazing down over the eastern edge of the city. Her hair was pulled back primly, and her lips were only discreetly painted, but even so her raw, youthful beauty shone through. As we stood there, she moved in close and lowered her voice.

“What did you wish to see Mr. Quick about?”

“We have an ongoing matter involving the Randolph Trust,” I said. “Why, is there a problem?”

“Did that matter involve any emergency travel?”

“Not that I know of.”

A swift glance away. “I’m sorry, Mr. Carl, but Mr. Quick isn’t in today.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No. That’s the thing. He didn’t call in and he always calls in.” A nervous laugh. “Every ten minutes if he’s away from the office. He can’t stand to be out of touch. We are in constant contact.” Hands playing one with the other. “But I haven’t heard from him in two days.”

“Maybe he’s at home?”

“He’s not answering his cell phone, and his wife said he wasn’t there, but I’m not sure if I believe her. She’s not the most reliable source.” Lips pressed together. “What with the drinking. Frankly, I’m worried.”

“Maybe there’s a reason he doesn’t want the office to know where he is. Maybe he’s sick or out playing golf. Does he belong to a club?”

“Philadelphia Country Club.”

“Of course he does. If you give me his home address, I could run over and check if he’s at the house for you.”

“I’m not supposed to give that out.”

“Stanford and I are old friends, Jennifer. And I’m sure he wouldn’t want you to worry like this.” She nodded in agreement. “And as soon as I find out something I’ll give you a call.”

“Would you, Mr. Carl?” Her hand on my forearm. “I really am desperate to know he’s okay, and I’m afraid, for some reason, Mrs. Quick isn’t so cordial to me.”

Funny how that works, I thought as she leaned forward and gave me her cell phone number and Stanford Quick’s address.

“Can I ask a question, Jennifer?” I said.

“Sure.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.” Her shoulders squared. “I just graduated from Penn.”

“Let me say Stanford’s very lucky to have you.”

D
RIVING BACK
into the suburbs, I had the wheel in my left hand and the cell phone in my right.

“Philadelphia Country Club,” came the voice over the phone.

“Can I talk to the starter, please?”

“Hold on one moment?”

Merion might have the highest-rated golf course in the city and its suburbs, but Philadelphia Country Club’s is rated almost as highly, and it has the distinction of being an even snootier place. You want to play golf, you join Merion; you want to hob with the nobs and flaunt your social connections, you join the Philadelphia Country Club. But despite their differences, there is one towering concept on which all the members of both clubs violently agree: They would never have me as a member. Truth be told, I couldn’t get into either joint as a caddy.

“Starter shed, here. Chris speaking.”

“Hello, Chris. I was tentatively scheduled to play with Mr. Quick this afternoon, but I haven’t heard from him, and I wondered if he was already on the course.”

“Nah, Mr. Quick hasn’t been in all day.”

“Has he called in to set up a tee time for us?”

“You must have gotten the days mixed up. We have a ladies’ shotgun going out in forty-five minutes. The course won’t open up until something like five.”

“It must be my mistake, then. Thanks.”

“If I see him, do you have a message?”

“Sure. Tell him to call Carl if he can to reschedule, because I am aching to get out there and punish those links.”

I
HAD ALWAYS
imagined myself in a massive stone Tudor with a wide front lawn and a willow tree in front. There would be a pale dog sleeping in the shade of that willow tree, just beside the hammock swaying gently in the wind. A basketball hoop would be attached to the detached stone garage at the end of the long, looping driveway and a pitch-back would stand beside the tall hedges so my kids could throw
high pops to themselves. The lawn would be mowed, the trees trimmed, the sun shining. And parked right beneath that basketball hoop would be some behemoth of an SUV, and beside it, neat and black, a BMW, nothing too grand, let’s not be too ostentatious, maybe something out of the 5 series.

The good news was that if ever I came into a boatload of cash, I now knew where to find it.

The dog woke up as I pulled into the driveway. When I slipped out of my car, it jumped to its feet beneath the tall willow and scampered over. I reached out my hand, palm up. It sniffed and licked and let me rub the folds at the bottom of its neck.

“How you doing, fella?” I said.

It stepped back and barked loudly.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”

The door to the massive stone Tudor was red, the same red as the door at the Randolph Trust. Fitting, no? I dropped the heavy knocker once and then again. The dog barked. I held myself back from yelling out, “Honey, I’m home.”

The door swung wide, a woman stood in the opening, the dog slid past me and rubbed its side against her leg. Lucky dog.

“Hello?” she said.

“Mrs. Quick?”

“Yes.” She was tall and lovely and about thirty years younger than her husband. I wondered if her name was Jennifer, too. She wore jeans, a white oxford shirt, her hair was blond and cut short. She smiled nervously as she took hold of the dog’s collar. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, I think you can. My name is Victor Carl. I’m a lawyer, and I’m looking for your husband.”

She tilted her head and stared at me with unfocused eyes, as if I were a puzzle which she really didn’t care to solve. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Why do you need to see my husband at his residence?”

“It’s something important that really can’t wait. Is he at home now?”

“If you have a summons or such to deliver, you should really deliver it at his office. He doesn’t bring his work home with him.”

“Well, you see, he’s not at the office.”

Her lack of reaction told me she knew this already. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

“You don’t know where he is, Mrs. Quick, is that it?”

A voice came from behind her. “Mom, I’m going to be late.”

She stepped aside. Behind her I could see a young boy, about eight, dressed in his baseball uniform: maroon shirt, maroon socks, baseball cap with a big
LM
on it.

“In a minute, Sean.”

“But I’m going to be late.”

“In a minute.” She turned back to me. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

“How long has he been gone?”

Her eyes slowly came into focus, and she looked me over as if I had just materialized in front of her. Then she stepped forward with the dog and closed the door behind her. “You were the one on television, the one with the client that has the painting.”

“That’s right.”

“Stanford was very upset about what was happening.”

“I’d bet he was.”

“Leave him alone. Leave us alone.”

“It’s not me you should be worried about, Mrs. Quick. Do you know where he is?”

“No. I don’t.”

“When did you see him last?”

She looked at me again, then turned her gaze toward the perfect expanse of her perfect front lawn with its graceful willow tree. “Yesterday morning. He left early. He was upset.”

“Did he say anything about where he was going?”

“He just said he might be away for a while. He said he had heard from an old friend who was in trouble.”

“Has he called at all?”

“No.”

“Have you tried his cell phone?”

“All I get is his voice mail. I’ve left four messages.”

“What kind of car did he take?”

“We have a Volvo station wagon. Green.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Will you find him for me?”

“I’ll try.”

“And if you do, will you tell him I forgive him?”

“Yes, ma’am, I will.”

A
T FIRST
I didn’t know where I was heading. I was behind the wheel of my cramped gray car, and I was driving for sure, stopping at red lights and going on greens, but I wasn’t concentrating on the road. Instead I was swatting away the bluebirds of happiness that were flitting around my shoulders and crapping on my head. Why were they crapping on my head? Because they weren’t the bluebirds of my happiness, they belonged to Stanford Quick, who had somehow stolen the life to which I had always aspired.

He had the house, the wife, the job, the country club, even the little piece on the side—
oh, Jennifer
—which, while maybe not part of my original plan, certainly didn’t help the envy any. And how he had gotten it all was what really gouged my heart. He had simply up and taken it. Hugo Farr had been offered a chance by Teddy Pravitz to leap the abyss and become someone new, and he had seized his destiny. And if he had to cross the line of legality, and if he had to change his name, and if he had to pretend to be something he wasn’t, so what? He hadn’t let niggling details get in the way of what he wanted from his life.

Hugo Farr. Stanford Quick. Success on a stick. Sammy Glick. Son of a bitch.

And I guess what was bothering me the most was that he had blasted away the fiction with which I had justified the weakness in myself that seemed to stay my hand whenever I was finally reaching for the life I so desired. Sure I always had my reasons, failure always does, but underlying the hesitancy was a belief I somehow couldn’t shake. We are what we are, we can’t transform ourselves, the die is cast and we play out our fates. I might hit upon the million-dollar case, I might stumble upon the love of my life, something hard and clean might fall into my lap and change everything, but it really wouldn’t change anything. I’d still be Victor Carl, I’d still be second tier and second class, I’d still be less than I ever hoped to be.

But now, in the short span of just a few hours, Stanford Quick had shown me the lie that underlay my blighted state. Transformation was possible, absolutely, he was living proof, and my failure to transform was failure indeed. It wasn’t just bad luck, it wasn’t just a sorry twist of fate; I simply wasn’t man enough to take hold of my destiny and steer it myself. So I bobbed and floated and meandered to where the currents of my life led me, which was very much like the way I was driving right now, heading in whatever direction the road turned.

Except I wasn’t heading just anywhere, I was heading someplace very specific. And when I recognized the direction in which I was driving, I knew where and why. He had heard from an old friend in trouble, had said his wife, which meant he was heading back into his past. And I knew enough now to know where that lay.

I was looking for a green Volvo wagon, the kind you’d see at horse shows and suburban soccer games in Gladwyne, not the usual ride for the Northeast row-house set. I first checked Hugo Farr’s old street. Nothing. Then Teddy Pravitz’s old street. Nothing. Then Ralph Ciulla’s street. Nothing. I was about to head toward Mrs. Kalakos’s house when I remembered, despite my suburban heritage, that every row house in the city has an alley behind it. And there it was, parked in the spot right behind Ralphie Meat’s house.

Beside a door on the level of the alleyway, a wooden stairway led up to a small, rickety deck. There was police tape, wrapped around the banisters of the stairway, blocking the way up. And there was more of the yellow tape lying flaccid on the ground beside the door, yet the door itself was clear. Nothing too tricky to figure out there. The knob turned easily in my hand, but the door wouldn’t open right off. A push with my shoulder shoved it a few inches, and another shoved it open enough for me to slip through.

I entered a narrow passageway that led to a cluttered, musty basement, ragged cement floor, strange stacked boxes, old furniture piled haphazardly, legs and arms rising menacingly out of the shadows. It smelled damp, airless, it smelled of spilled laundry soap. With the help of the light coming through the open door and a mottled window, I could see the bulky cubes of an old washer and dryer in the corner, copper tubing leaning against one wall and casting twisting shadows,
a heap of bizarre implements on a makeshift worktable fashioned from thick cast-iron pipes.

“Mr. Quick?” I yelled out.

The sound died swiftly in the darkness of the basement. There was no answer.

I took a step forward. I heard something creak. I spun and saw nothing and I knew right away. I think I had known as soon as grim-faced Jennifer approached me in the lobby of Talbott, Kittredge and Chase.

A narrow wooden stairway rose from the left side of the basement. I followed it up, sagging wooden steps groaning, to a closed door. I pushed it open and stepped into the kitchen, bright with sunlight. The room was wide, the appliances were avocado green and from the era before my childhood, the yellow linoleum floor was stained and badly scuffed.

“Mr. Quick? Stanford?”

No answer. But I smelled something I didn’t like, something familiar enough and yet too strange for words. I had smelled it before, not too long ago, in this very house. The homey aromas of decades of gravy stewing in the kitchen, of garlic and sausage and spices that clung to the very walls, along with the fetid coppery scent of death. Of an unnatural, murderous death. Ralph Ciulla’s death. His body had been found in this very house, which the police had closed down pending further investigation. And now I was inside, smelling it again.