The Tin Man (17 page)

“But my name’s Barbara.”

“Your name is Tatyana
.”

Rolling her onto her back, h
e climbed on top of her, put his hand over her mouth to shut her up, and took her with a forceful thrust. She thrashed and squealed, enflaming his ardor. When he felt her teeth in his palm, he withdrew his hand and slapped her across the face. As her head snapped to the side, she let out an ear-piercing scream.

“
Georgi, for the love of God,” Ivan complained. “Shut that bitch up before somebody calls the police.”

Georgi
grabbed a pillow, pressed it over Barbara’s face, and held it there as he hammered her. She struggled under him, rocking, writhing, beating him with her fists, clawing at his back with her fingernails. As he came, he cried out in his native tongue: “O Tatyana. My precious angel. How much your Georgi misses you!”

He waited until the last shiver of ecstasy had passed before he
removed the pillow. Barbara, gasping and cursing, took a swing at him. He caught her arm mid-punch and squeezed her wrist until she shrieked in pain.

“You fucking bastard,” she
shouted, trying to wriggle out of his grip.

Glaring at her in disgust, he said, “My Tatyana is a goddess and you are nothing but a
kurva
. A stupid fucking worthless
Amerikanski kurva
.”

“Fuck you, you Euro-trash piece of shit,” she
ground out, still fighting to break his hold on her arm.

Though s
he sounded brave, he could see fear dancing darkly in her pale eyes. Just as he raised his hand to slap her again, his cellular telephone started chirping.

With a disparag
ed sigh, he let her go and climbed off the bed. Retrieving his slacks, he withdrew the phone and checked the caller ID, hoping to see Tatyana’s name. Disappointment nipped at his insides when he saw it was only his lunatic client.

He shot a
n exasperated look at his brother as he said into the receiver, “This is Wint.”

“Good morning,
Mr. Wint,” the client said in an English accent. “I need you and Mr. Kidd to take a trip to the City of Brotherly Love right away.”

Buchanan didn’t stick his hand in the Liberty Bell’s crack—both on principle and because, as it turned out, touching the fractured icon of American freedom was prohibited. As he exited the viewing area, he took out his map of the park, cracked it open, and said to Thea, “Where to next?”

“Witherspoon said to meet him at the Merchant’s Exchange,” she
informed him.

“
It’s right up there,” he said, pointing up the street, “across from the First Bank of the United States, which reminds me—are you by any chance descended from Alexander Hamilton?”

He thought he saw her
face flush. “Only in the sense that our fathers both played fast and loose when it came to taking care of their families.”

The sudden bitterness in her tone
hooked his interest and lifted an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

“Hamilton’s father and mother were never married,” she began to explain, “on account of her first husband, who wouldn’t grant her a divorce. Apparently, he was a real controlling asshole.
After she got involved with Mr. Hamilton, her husband had her put in prison for adultery, even though they were separated. Can you believe that shit?”

He just looked at her
. He knew quite a bit about Alexander Hamilton, having read the biographies by Ron Chernow, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Gertrude Atherton. Hamilton was, after all, an old Scottish surname.

“I meant, how was your father similar to his?”

She got quiet for a minute before she said, as if reporting a story, “My parents divorced when I was just a girl. Not that he was around much when they were together. He worked for a big law firm and rarely got home before Robby and I were in bed. After they split up, we hardly saw him.”

“I’m sorry,
Thea,” he said, feeling hopelessly inadequate. “I truly am. Do you want to talk about it?”

She shrugged
as if it didn’t matter, but he could see tears glistening in her eyes. “I got a card from him after my mother died. He asked to see me, said he was sorry for not being there for me and Robby, tried to blame it on my mother. He said her bitterness toward him made it hard to deal with her, which, actually, might have been true. She had anger issues, you see, and it didn’t take much to set her off.”

P
oor Thea. Her father abandoned her. Her brother killed himself. Her mother died of cancer. And now her grandfather was missing—and almost certainly in mortal danger.

“What did you tell
your father…when he asked to see you?”

She looked away,
clearly avoiding his gaze. “I told him to go fuck himself.” After drawing a ragged breath, she added, “Tell me something, Buchanan: why is it that you need a license to drive a car or own a dog, but any piece of shit with a penis can father children?”

He felt a dizzying swell of compassion and outrage. He also felt a sudden urge to take her in his arms. But, standing in the middle of the street, still unsure of his
feelings, he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. So, he simply shrugged and limped on toward the bank. Reaching it, he stopped to catch his breath while admiring its imposing stone edifice.

“I have a theory,” she
offered, coming up beside him. “My own conspiracy theory, if you will, about Hamilton’s assassination.”

He snorted
with skepticism, but said, “Go on, then.”

“Hamilton was starting to make a comeback,” she began
, gazing at the bank, as he was. “People were starting to forget about his little indiscretion, and the Virginians were scared he could mount a serious campaign against them. Burr was simply a dupe. They convinced him that he’d be revered as a hero for killing Hamilton, that he’d gain enough popularity to be the next president. So, over some slight that’s long been forgotten, he challenged Hamilton to the infamous duel.”

When s
he looked into his eyes, he felt a twinge of longing.

“Hamilton, who didn’t believe in dueling, tried to get out of it in all the ways gentlemen did in those days. But Burr refused to relent. Hamilton’s sense of honor was extreme. As a self-made man,
his reputation was everything. So, he went through with it, vowing that he would fire into the air.”

“Which, by all accounts, he did
,” he put in.

“
Yes,” she said, nodding, “but Burr wanted him dead. His bullet lodged in Hamilton’s spine, paralyzing him. The poor man died hours later, after suffering extreme agonies.”

He was starting to find her closeness disconcerting. He wanted to touch her, to
put his arm around her and pull her close, but he didn’t dare. Feeling overwhelmed, he swallowed hard and inched away.

“When news of
Hamilton’s death reached the public,” she went on, “far from being praised, Burr was ostracized. Dueling, however, was still legal at the time, so he got away with murder. The duel took place in eighteen hundred and four, while Jefferson was president. Five years later, James Madison was elected, followed by Monroe. Need I say more?”

He eyed her circumspectly
. “So, what you’re suggesting is that Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe conspired to murder Hamilton, even though they’re hailed as some of America’s greatest heroes?”

“Remember,
Alex,” she said with an enigmatic smile. “History was written by the winners.”

She’d called him by his Christian
name, which seemed noteworthy. So did the fact it made him feel warm in his wame. Turning away from her and the feeling, he looked across the street. There, down a wide gravel drive, stood an old limestone building with a half-circle portico supported by Grecian pillars. “That must be the place,” he said, pointing.

As he
limped toward it, she grabbed his jacket and pulled him back. “Can I ask you something?” She didn’t wait for an answer before adding, “How do you usually break up with someone?”

The question struck him as odd, but also suspicious. Why did she want to know? He searched his mind for a safe answer, reluctant to admit that his usual M.O. in the romance department was not to get involved in the first place.

“As delicately as I can,” he said, weighing his words carefully. She was gazing at him in earnest, making him uneasy.

“You strike me as one of the good ones
.”

“I try to be,” he said,
still unsure about where this was going.

“You should be married,” she
said, flooring him. “Nice guys like you should be married, so they can be good husbands. And fathers.”

Clearly, this wasn’t about him.
“Thea, I—”

She held up a silencing hand.
“I know. You think you’re the Tin Man, that you’ve got no heart. But I think you’re mistaken.”

“Am I?
” He cleared his throat. “In what way?”

“You’re not the Tin Man,” she
told him, a sad smile flickering on her lips. “You’re the Steadfast Tin Soldier.”

His jaw dropped in astonishment. “You know that story?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

His
jaw clenched. “You’d be surprised.”

When she
glanced across the street, he followed her gaze. There was now a man standing out in front of the Merchant’s Exchange. Riley Witherspoon, he presumed. They started walking toward him. Closer now, he could see that Witherspoon was about his age, tall and slender, with a slight stoop to his shoulders. His hair was short, sandy-brown, and thinning on top. He wore a nondescript gray suit, yellow bowtie, and wire-rimmed spectacles.

He
offered his hand as they approached. “It’s good to see you again,” he said as she shook it.

She
introduced Buchanan as “a friend,” then cut right to the chase. “What do you know about my grandfather?”

Witherspoon’s
gaze shifted uneasily between them as he said, “The professor was here two nights ago. I left him in the Assembly Room and went to get dinner. And when I returned, he was nowhere to be found.” He paused to draw a wavering breath. “I assumed at first that he’d been called away by something urgent or decided to go back to the farm, which might explain why I’ve been unable to reach him on his cell…”

“We’ve just come from the
re,” Thea told him, brow creased with concern. “And not only wasn’t he there, the place had been ransacked.”

Witherspoon
looked aghast. “But...why?”

“Obviously, someone’s looking for something,”
Buchanan put in, meeting the curator’s piercing blue eyes. “Any idea what it might be?”

“
Well, no,” Witherspoon replied, his mouth pinched.

“
Think hard,” Buchanan pressed. “Did he say anything, reveal anything, anything at all, that could give us a clue?”

The curator took a minute to reflect
. “This may mean nothing, but I did find something on the floor, in the very spot where he’d been standing when I left him.”

Reaching into his coat pocket,
Witherspoon pulled out a neatly folded one-dollar bill, which he handed to Buchanan. Thea peered over his shoulder as he examined both sides. It appeared to be an ordinary bill with no unusual markings.

“It probably means nothing,” Witherspoon continued, “but I thought I ought to mention it
—just in case it struck a chord.”

“Does it?”
Buchanan asked her.

She
was concentrating so hard on the dollar bill, he began to wonder if she was willing it to speak. At last, she shook her head and said, “I can’t imagine what it might mean.”

Buchanan
looked to Witherspoon. “Can you show us exactly where you found it?”

“Of course,”
the curator replied, “but it will be best if we wait until the tours are finished for the day. Would it be too much to ask for you to meet me in front of Independence Hall at say five o’clock?”

“We’ll be there,”
Thea told him.

“In the meantime, have a look around,”
the curator advised with a broad sweep of his hand. “There is much to see, especially if you take an interest in American history.”

As
luck would have it, Buchanan did. An interest deeper, he was sorry to say, than most Americans he knew.

* * * *

Milo Osbourne loosened his tie as he exited the New York headquarters of his television network, having just finished taping a commentary slated to run later that evening. As he strode confidently toward his Rolls Royce Phantom, idling at the curb, he admired the gleaming exterior color.
Anthracite
, the manufacturer called it—a rich charcoal gray with a metallic luster.