The Lure (36 page)

“Noel! Do as I say!”

“Shut up, Eric!” he shouted, and at the same time rammed the Mercedes through the space, leaning on the horn. The cars’ fenders were only inches away on either side of them, one car honking and swerving away.

“He’s coming in after us,” Eric said.

They cleared the two cars, Noel gunned the Mercedes, swerving, onto the exit ramp, praying that the wheel would turn in time, that they would clear the trees on the side of the road.

“You’re going to kill us!” Eric screamed.

But the tires squealed and held; the car rocked into the curve dangerously, then up the ramp. Noel braked it slowly to a stop. Out the side window he could see below on the highway. Ahead, the Continental had broken through the other two cars only to find itself alone. It had worked!

“We lost the fuckers!” Noel shouted, banging both hands on the steering wheel in glee. “They don’t know where we are!”

Eric was sitting still, pale, drawn, as though someone had shoved him back against the seat. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” he asked in a tight voice.

“We got away, didn’t we?”

Only as he said it did Noel realize what an incredible risk he’d taken. One mistake and they would have been totaled. They—and at least three other cars.

“Go back down on the highway,” Eric said, and when they were driving along the road again, “pull over.”

“Pull over?”

“Right there,” Eric said. “I’m getting out.”

The car bumped over the abutment and came to a rest on grass. “Drive on to the house. Let yourself in. We’ll catch up.”

Eric got out.

“You wanted me to get away from them,” Noel protested. “I got you away.”

“I wanted to drive myself,” Eric said.

“Why are you getting out now?”

“Because I can’t stay in the car with you driving. I’m not safe.”

Noel was suddenly very serious. “I thought we were becoming friends, Eric. If this is the way you trust me, maybe I’d better get out. I’ll hitch back.” As he got out of the SL, he added, “Better not wait up.”

“I can’t use this car,” Eric said.

·Why not? It’s yours.”

“No, it’s not. I had the registration put in your name.”

Noel could barely make out Eric’s face in the dim light of the overheads. “In my name? What for?”

“I was going to surprise you with it.”

They leaned against the car. Eric lighted a joint, took a drag, handed it to Noel. Behind them was the whoosh of auto tires on asphalt. In front of them the rustle of trees. Noel was exhausted after the recent escape and exhilaration. He didn’t know what to say, what to do. The least he’d expected was thanks from Eric. Maybe even shared triumph. He got nothing.

Nothing but the SL. They passed the joint back and forth.

Finally, he asked, “You’re really waiting for them?”

“McWhitter will ride with you,” Eric said. “I don’t completely trust him either.”

Silence, until the joint was only a glowing spark, too short to grab hold of.

“They tapped the phones,” Eric said, “until I baffled them with a device I put together. Okku picked up the phone once to dial, right after you had finished talking to someone, and heard two men talking.”

The loops! Noel tried to control his panic.

“What?” he asked. “When?”

“Last week.”

“What were they saying?”

“Okku was so surprised he didn’t recall. They heard him and clicked off. I’ve had baffles on in the city for the last few years. I didn’t think we’d need them here.”

So, Eric didn’t know about the phone call. It was all guesswork, deduction, and the ridiculous visibility of Loomis’s operatives. What a stupid thing to do! Yet it answered what could have been the worst possible discovery—the loops.

“And McWhitter?” Noel asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s all coincidence. But none of this began out here until he arrived. His references checked out. He used to be a local hit man for the mob on the West Coast. Things got a little tight for him there. I don’t know.”

“Do you think Okku will see us and stop?” Noel asked.

He did see them, or at least Alana did. The Silver Cloud pulled onto the embankment and McWhitter had to be aroused from his nap and led like a big child to the SL where he was put into the passenger seat, and promptly dozed off again.

Noel followed the Rolls for a while, then the expressway met a crossover that fed in a great deal of traffic, and Noel lost them. He had another twenty minutes to drive by himself, thinking about what would happen when he returned to the town house. Every day seemed to complicate matters more. Eric was onto Whisper, without knowing he was onto it. Yet Noel would not allow that much information to get back to Loomis through him: let him find out through someone else. That might be construed as annoyance, he knew, but something about the Fisherman’s methods was beginning to bother Noel deeply. He felt stained by it. Everything about his life these days—everything but Alana—had something rotten about it.

“Wake up, sleeping beauty.” He shook McWhitter hard when they emerged from the Midtown Tunnel into Manhattan. As they approached the town house, McWhitter came fully awake, growling to himself.

“All out,” Noel said at the down ramp into the garage.

“You’re real friendly with Eric, aren’t you?”

Noel didn’t know what the bodyguard was getting at. “Sure.”

“Well, that’s too bad. ’Cause I don’t like you.”

“Get over it!” Noel said in a hard voice. “I live here.”

But he was still shaking after McWhitter slammed the door and exited, loping over the wall around the house in a single leap.

After he dropped off the bodyguard, Noel drove to find an all-night gas station where he could fill the tank and have the oil checked. He found one finally, near the Queensboro Bridge. The station attendants were all busy. While he waited, Noel opened the glove compartment. He found the fake ceiling, opened it, saw the material it had nestled in, but no gun. So Eric had taken it out of the car altogether.

Closing the panel, he found a slim leather packet. Sure enough, the car’s registration had been made out in his name, sold to him for a dollar. All that was needed to make it legal was Noel’s signature. Weird. The last thing he expected from Eric was the Mercedes as a gift. He wondered if professional ethics would allow him to keep it. Then he wondered what Eric expected in return: what was worth twenty-five thousand dollars? Nothing about Redfern made any sense. As soon as Noel thought one thing, Eric seemed to unconsciously go out of his way to do exactly the opposite.

When he returned to the town house, the limo wasn’t in the garage. Yet lights were on in three floors.

Okku met him on the main floor. Eric and McWhitter had gone out to dinner and would probably be out the rest of the night, he said. Noel was to remain in.

That seemed to be a good sign. It meant that Eric had forgiven him for his reckless behavior on the expressway. Or, having had time to think about it, probably saw how foolish his own behavior had been.

Noel went up to his rooms on the fourth floor, showered, changed, then decided to see if Alana was still awake.

He found her a half hour later on the top floor. She was sitting in a lounge chair on the roof garden.

Noel’s first impulse was to take advantage of the still beauty of the warm summer night, the flowers richly, odorously in bloom, to go to her and try to reestablish the rapport they’d had that afternoon, to make it something more.

Instead, he didn’t move, holding one hand on the sliding door leading onto the deck, watching her, sensing that she was not to be disturbed right now, that she was enjoying a few rare moments of privacy, or meditation.

She broke the silence for him. “What are you waiting for?” she said, without turning to face him. “Come and sit.”

“I thought I was interrupting…” he began to explain. A thin mist over the night sky here, compared to the clarity of the skies over the Hamptons, made it seem as though a gauze scrim had been pulled over them. The few distant, lighted higher buildings made the deck garden float in a pool of darkness.

“You are very considerate,” she said stiffly, motioning him to the chaise lounge next to hers.

“Okku said I was to stay in tonight.”

“He meant that you were to remain here. You may go out if you wish, of course. They went to the Window Wall. It is only two o’clock. You can still go.”

“I’ll stay. I’ve had a pretty busy day.”

He wanted to ask her for reassurances. He knew it was asking for too much. So he said, “We had an argument. In the car.”

“I know. Eric said you were terrible. You frightened him, I’m certain of it. Not many people can frighten Eric.”

“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

“It is your utter unpredictability that he is afraid of. His father was just so. Always, he needed him, but he could never rely on him, never trust him. Eric needs you, Noel. But you are not there for him. I don’t think he completely understands that even you are not sure what you will do next.”

That was a pretty shrewd estimate. “Maybe you’re in the wrong business,” he suggested.

“I know Eric inside and out.”

“Me, too?”

“No. I am still guessing about you.”

“Alana,” he took her hand and she let him hold it without any protest, “tell me, why am I still here in this house? Eric doesn’t need me. Especially with Mr. Muscles around.”

“He’ll grow tired of Bill in a few weeks. That is how Eric is. But with you it is different. You and he have a different bond.”

Close to target again, he thought. And thanked her for taking his part on the drive back to the city.

“I did nothing of the sort,” she declared.

They were silent for some time, then he decided to ask her some questions. He was certain she would answer truthfully.

“Why is Eric so paranoiac? Is he involved in crime?”

“Crime?”

“You know. Drugs. Smuggling. Is that why he’s acting so odd?”

The minute he said it, her hand pulled out of his. Her tone of voice said what he couldn’t see for the darkness: she was affronted.

“What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. Things I’ve heard.”

“What things? That he is a drug pusher? Nonsense. He buys drugs, of course. Friends of his bring him cocaine from South America. But it is never enough to resell. And you see how generous he is with it. Every time you turn around it is finished.”

“I also heard he ran prostitution rings. Women. Boys.”

“Who told you that?”

“I just heard it.”

“It is not true.”

“And that he made pornographic movies.”

“Who told you all these lies!” she asked, angry now.

“People.”

“They are wrong. Wrong. They are envious. Jealous of us.”

“Then why is he so goddamn paranoid, carrying guns, changing from one place to another so quickly, telling me we’re being followed, that the phones are tapped?”

The last question would bring something about the phone call into the open, he supposed. But she chose not to take up the challenge.

“He says he has enemies. People want to…throw him away.”

“To get rid of him, you mean?”

“Yes. To get rid of him.”

“Who? What enemies?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “Eric thinks he knows. He tells me they are fanatical against him. It has something to do with the council he is forming, he once told me.”

“I thought that was just businessmen? Gay businessmen?”

“It is. Don’t ask me, Noel. All I know is what he tells me. He says he must protect himself. You don’t think I prefer Eric like this, do you? He is so—changed. And all these deaths around him. He tells me he is unlucky, that he should keep away from people he likes, that they are always taken away from him. He can never do anything important without losing someone he likes. He wants me to go away.”

“And will you?”

“It’s
you
he worries about most.”

“So he told me. And in the next breath said he didn’t trust me. It’s inconsistent.”

“That is how Eric is. He grows wilder every day. Now with this karate and jujitsu. I never know what he’ll do next. I am losing my influence over him. So you must be careful, Noel. More careful than you’ve ever been in your life.”

She took his hand again briefly to say that, then stood up, insisting he remain seated, while she went downstairs.

For a moment Noel wondered whether, despite everything, he should go to her. But in the single turning glance he had of Alana’s face as she stepped into the elevator, she looked so drawn, so exhausted, that he knew he must not.

The mailbox in his apartment building was jammed full. He had not opened it for over two weeks. The bulk was subscription magazines, giveaways and other junk mail, cards from colleagues at school with whom he seldom exchanged more than ten minutes of conversation over two terms of classes, who seemed to feel compelled to send vacation postcards from all over the country, the world, covered with tiny, scarcely decipherable script detailing amusing anecdotes of their misadventures and curious local customs they’d encountered. Nothing from Mirella. The rest seemed to be bills.