The Homecoming (5 page)

An older man in a civilian version of Army dress blues stepped up and opened the door for Nick, saluting smartly as he did so. Tall and lanky, with a body that may at one time have been well muscled but now looked dried out and spidery, he had oversized ears and a marine crew cut and a sardonic expression on his sallow face.

A shining brass plate on his crisp blue uniform was engraved with the letters
EDGAR
.

“Detective Kavanaugh,” said Edgar Luckinbaugh, as Nick stepped out of the car. “We’ve been expecting you.”

“Thanks, Edgar. This very large guy on the far side is my partner, Detective Norlett.”

“Sir,” said Edgar, offering Beau a far less precise salute, displeased with what he was seeing.

“Welcome to the Marriott.”

Beau, well aware that Edgar was displeased, and why, returned it with precisely the same level of insolence. He also decided to “forget” the big box of honey-glazed Krispy Kreme donuts they’d brought along for him. Edgar led them through the glass doors and into the cool shadows of the lobby.

Faint music came from everywhere, a lilting piano sonata. A slender Asian man with porcelain skin and stony black eyes watched them as they crossed the gleaming floors. Small and neat, in a well-cut black suit and lavender shirt, he was sitting behind a French escritoire with his tiny hands resting on a large green leather notebook. He smiled at Nick as Nick glanced over at him.

His name was Mr. Quan and he was the concierge, which explained the black suit and the lavender shirt but not the oversized bow tie in chrome-yellow silk. Perhaps nothing could.

Nick was halfway across the lobby when his cell phone rang. It was Kate.

“Hold on a second, okay? I gotta take this.”

He stepped away a few feet, leaving Beau Norlett and Edgar Luckinbaugh alone to consider, in a stiff and stony silence, each other’s salient deficiencies in character and tint.

“Kate, how’s Beth?”

“Well, Reed called. What’s this about Byron being arrested?”

Nick sketched out the basics.

Kate was a quick study.

“Do you really think he had anything to do with that awful robbery?”

“I’d find it damn strange if even Byron was dumb enough to keep cash from a robbery-murder beef lying around in his truck. But the Chinese angle, that’s another story. How’s Beth taking it?”

“She’s shocked. But not sad. I don’t think anything Byron did would surprise her. She’s downstairs right now, talking to Axel and Hannah.”

“Did Reed have any news about your dad?”

“Not yet. He’s driving back down today. I told him to come here. Can you get back for dinner?”

Nick looked at his watch.

“I think so. I guess a family meeting is in order?”

“Yes, it is. Please try to make it. There’s a lot going on. I’ve asked Beth and the kids to stay with us for a while. We could fix up the carriage house for them. Is that okay?”

“You’re still feeling the same way about bringing Rainey Teague home too?”

“I am. He’ll be out of physio soon. He has to go somewhere. I’m his guardian.”

“Full house, Kate.”

“Yes. For a while. Maybe it would be good for Rainey to have other kids around.”

“It might.”

Would it be good for Axel and Hannah to have Rainey around?
he was thinking.
That’s the question
.

“Nick … are you okay with all this?”

A pause.

“I will be, Kate. I will be.”

“Thank you, Nick. You know how much this means to me. Can you really make it home for dinner? Reed will be here by then. We can talk about everything. Okay? The whole family?”

“I’ll be there. Look for me by moonlight, though Hell should bar the way.”

“The Highwayman got shot, didn’t he?”

“I won’t. Love you, babe.”

“Me too. Bye.”

Nick could see that Edgar and Beau had been together long enough to perfect their dislike. He tried to ignore the tension between them as Mark Hopewell, the duty manager for the day, young and keen and looking like a gun-locker in a three-piece suit, came around from behind the registration desk with a troubled expression on his face.

“Detective Kavanaugh. I’m so sorry to hear what happened at Mauldar Field.”

“Thanks, Mark. This is Detective Norlett. Edgar, don’t go,” he said, as the bellman turned to leave. “We’d like to talk to you as well.”

“We can use my office,” said Hopewell, leading them back around the registration desk to a small, cluttered room, harshly lit by a brutal blue fluorescent buzzing overhead. Hopewell poured them coffee—it smelled marvelous—and handed it around. Nick sat, Beau loomed, Edgar hovered, and Hopewell perched himself on the side of his desk, holding a sheaf of papers in his large pink hands.

“Can I ask, Detective—”

“Mark, we know each other. I’m Nick, okay?”

Mark nodded, but couldn’t manage a smile.

“Thanks, Nick … were there any survivors?”

Nick shook his head.

“You’re Air National Guard, aren’t you?”

Hopewell nodded.

“Then you know the phrase ‘vertically deployed into the terrain.’ ”

Hopewell winced.

“Jeez. Where did it come down?”

“Middle of the fourteenth green at Anora Mercer. Killed a woman on the green, injured her husband.”

“What caused it?”

“Bird strike. Flew into a flock of crows.”

“Man. I did that once in an Apache. One of those damn Canada geese.

I mean, only one. We had to auto-rotate from six hundred feet.”

“Better you than me. Are those the papers on these guys?”

Hopewell handed them over.

“Yes. Everything we have on them, including calls received and made. Flew in from Shanghai, checked in on Friday, five rooms booked a month in advance. Charges went on an Amex Centurion card presented by Mr. Zachary Dak. Not an ounce of trouble, kept to themselves. Stayed well clear of the boys in the Old Dominion. Dinner at SkyLark—the pilots at a separate table—and according to Mr. Quan, they spoke a kind of Chinese he called Hakka—Quan didn’t like to hear it and said they were ‘peasants’—Quan’s a Mandarin. Guess it’s a class thing. Other than that, they didn’t stand out in any way at all. That is, until this morning.”

Nick looked up from the papers.

“This morning? You mean the crash?”

Hopewell shook his head.

“Nope. Before that. Edgar here can tell you the story. I was interviewing an applicant in one of the meeting rooms. Edgar …?”

Luckinbaugh straightened up, showed a mouthful of tombstone teeth, and tugged an old Sheriff’s Department notebook out of a side pocket.

“Yes sir,” he barked out, and began to read from his notebook in the strangled syntax of a cop testifying in court. Nick stopped him after the second repetition of “the subject was observed.”

“Jeez, Edgar. You’re not up in front of Judge Teddy. Just lay it out straight, okay?”

Edgar looked disappointed, and he folded the notebook away with a disapproving frown.

“Well, okay … Like Mr. Hopewell says, I was on the portcullis—”

“The what?”

“Edgar calls it that,” said Hopewell. “It’s an old word for the entrance to a fort.”

“Edgar,” said Nick. “Please.”

“Sorry. I was on the main doors. Time marker was nine-forty-two hours this ay emm. Black Benz Six Hundred pulls up out front, marker was alpha delta nine seven six nevada bravo—”

Nick looked at Beau, who gave him back a wide grin and shook his head, moves which Luckinbaugh picked up but chose to ignore. There was a right way to do things even if these young pups didn’t appreciate it.

“—driver was a big ole cullud fella name of Phillip Holliman—”

The word
cullud
landed on the floor with a dull clank. Everybody but Beau tried to ignore it.

“Deitz’s guy,” said Nick.

Luckinbaugh nodded.

“Yes. I take the keys and as he’s walking inside he asks me what room Mr. Zachary Dak is in and I say well Mr. Dak and his party they all checked out earlier this morning and Holliman he says what the—he utters an obscenity or two—and then he asks me how long and I say maybe thirty, thirty-five minutes—well, I figure Holliman was like to explode—his face goes all purple and his eyes get big and he grabs me by the arm and says I gotta take him to Dak’s room right this—obscenity—moment do I get it and I start to say well I can’t without Mr. Hopewell—”

“Did you take Holliman to Dak’s room?” Nick asked, thinking that maybe letting Edgar read from his notebook might have been a better idea.

“Yes sir, pardon me, Mr. Hopewell, but he was making a scene and there were guests coming and going and he was snarling and yapping at me and people were staring at us so I says okay and I took him to Mr. Dak’s suite—the Glades—and no sooner do I slide my pass card in the slot than Holliman he just crashes right by me—the maid hasn’t been there yet so the rooms are all in a hooey and Holliman he goes charging from the living room to the master and the bath like a crazy man and all the time he’s swearing and growling—I thought he was gonna pitch a fit—and then he comes back and grabs me and he wants to know are they all gone and I say yes sir they all took a shuttle up to Mauldar Field—all gone every fucking one he says, right in my face, gettin’ his cullud spit on my cheek and all—and I say yes and then he’s on the cell phone—has it at his ear—”

Luckinbaugh stopped, took a breath.

“Now Detective Kavanaugh, at this point I will have to refer to my notes, because what he said on the phone is I think revelant to the case—”

“ ‘Relevant,’ you mean?” put in Beau, which got him a stern look from Luckinbaugh.

“Yes sir, that’s what I said. Revelant. So I gotta read the transcript if it’s okay?”

This was addressed to Nick. For Luckinbaugh, Beau was now invisible.

“Yes it is, Edgar. You go ahead.”

Luckinbaugh, suppressing a triumphant sneer at Beau, tugged out his notebook, flipped through the pages, and then began to read aloud.

“Exchange went as follows, Detective Kavanaugh. Holliman says ‘they’re gone Deitz’ from which I implied that he meant his boss Byron Dee—”

“ ‘Inferred,’ ” said Beau, who just couldn’t help himself. “
Inferred
.”

“That what I said.”

“No,” said Beau. “You said ‘implied.’ That means to assign a quality or state to something by indirect reference. ‘Inferred’ means to draw an inductive meaning—”

“Beau,” said Nick.

“What if I did? Same damn thing,” said Luckinbaugh, arriving at a verdict on the kid and filing him away under
uppity
.

Nick gave Beau a head shake and Beau managed a blank expression. Edgar shrugged his shoulders, settled his feathers, and resumed …

“And I was close enough to hear the response from Mr. Deitz, which
was ‘Gone? Who’s gone?’ to which Mr. Holliman replies ‘Zachary Dak and his whole crew. They checked out thirty minutes ago. They’re in the wind’ and Mr. Deitz says ‘Jesus and what about the item—’ ”

“Deitz said ‘the item’?” Nick asked. “His exact word?”

Luckinbaugh nodded gravely.

“His word exactly. He said ‘what about the item?’ ”

“Did you have any idea what he meant?”

“No sir. But from his tone I figured whatever it was, it was real important. I’m a go on, then?”

“Please.”

“So Holliman says ‘I’m standing in their room. There’s nothing here. Nothing. They’re taking the item with them. They were always going to take it with them’ and Mr. Deitz says ‘Jesus H. Christ on a fucking crutch’ and Mr. Holliman says ‘yeah well I’ll give him a call then if you think he’ll help’ outta which I
implied
was Holliman being sarcastic and then Mr. Deitz he says ‘no wait—the Lear. It’s at Mauldar Field. That’s a half hour from the Marriott. Call the field boss, tell him not to give that Lear clearance to take off until I get there’ and Mr. Holliman cuts in saying ‘I’m just a security guard Deitz’ and Mr. Deitz starts screaming at him so loud that Mr. Holliman pulls the phone away from his ear and Deitz is saying ‘tell him whatever—make sure that plane never gets spooled up. Go. Now.’ And then Deitz hangs up and Holliman is staring at me.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“Yes sir. He walked up to me and stuck a finger in my chest and he says ‘you heard nothing you follow Edgar not a fucking thing are we clear’ and I said ‘yes sir we are clear’ and Holliman shoves me out of the way so stern I bounced off the door and he’s gone.”

There was a silence as everyone took this in.

“The item?” said Nick, more to himself than to the others. “Mark, did they put anything in your safe?”

Hopewell shook his head.

“Not a thing. And the in-room safe was never touched.”

“So you and Edgar, you never saw this Dak guy with anything that looked unusual.”

Both men shook their heads.

“Did they ever meet with anyone on the premises?”

“Not that we saw,” said Hopewell. “I asked Mr. Quan if he had performed any services for them. He said he had ordered up a black Lincoln Town Car from Airport Limos and he had provided a detailed map of the
town. Other than that, he found a source for a kind of green tea they liked.”

Hopewell paused, seemed to be working out how to say something.

“There was something Quan said, I thought was funny at the time. Funny odd, I mean. He’s Mandarin—or at least he speaks it—but he used a word that I always thought was Cantonese, and the way he used it, after what I’m hearing, I was wondering—”

“Uh, Mark … is there a point?”

Hopewell grinned.

“My wife says I wander, Nick. The word was
‘gway-lo,’
which, when Quan uses it, he means it as an insult for white folks. It means ghosts, and I guess the idea is we’re all so pale we look like ghosts. But this time he used it to describe Mr. Dak and his people. So what I was thinking is, did he mean it literally?”

“You mean ghosts as in
spooks
?” said Beau.

“Yeah. Yes. So I asked him just a while ago and he got all antsy and weird but finally he said that to him they all ‘had the stink of
guangbo
’ on them. I asked him what
‘guangbo’
meant and he said they were like the Chinese secret police and that everybody in China hated them.”