And Sometimes I Wonder About You (10 page)

“I
’m leaving now, Mr. McGill,” Mardi said via intercom maybe five minutes after my talk with Zephyra. “Do you need anything else?”

“Tell Twill I’m askin’ about him if you see him and take your sister to some musical on the office account.”

“Thanks.”

“And one more thing,” I said.

“What’s that.”

“Try to find yourself a boyfriend.”

“Bye.”

I called the Chambre du Roi about midafternoon to make a reservation.

“Âllo?”
a young woman who was not French answered.

“Leonid McGill,” I said. “I want a table for two at eight tonight.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the woman replied, dropping all pretense at a French heritage. “We’re booked solid until the beginning of next week. If you want to make a reservation you have to call at least a week in—”

“Let me speak to Henry,” I said, cutting off her misplaced sense of hierarchy.

“Who?”

“In that French class you failed they called him Henri. But this is America and I want to talk to your boss.”

“Um,” she said and then she put me on hold.

“Âllo?”
a man who was French said after maybe fifteen seconds.

“Hello, Henri, Leonid here.”

“Tonight?”

“Two at eight.”

“See you then,” he said.

I disconnected the call feeling the little triumph of defeating the snobby young woman. I had many ins in New York. Most of these I’d earned by doing people favors saving their lives, getting them out of legal jams, or shedding a little blood here and there—but in Henri’s case it was simply that I tipped him a hundred dollars every fourth time I ate at the Chambre du Roi.

I stayed at my desk trying to see if I could find out anything about Coco Lombardi. It would have given me a great deal of pleasure if I beat Zephyra to the finish line on that search. I guess, looking back on that afternoon, I was trying to feel superior after my office had been violated like that.

Gordo sent me a text saying that Chin Wa wanted a rematch. I spent a good while wondering what I could do to the fast, hard-hitting middleweight now that he knew that I knew how to count to seven. Not coming up with a satisfactory answer, I failed to respond to the text.

At 6:30 I was prepared to walk up to Marella’s neighborhood. My head was telling me that maybe I should cancel but my pulse had a whole other set of expectations. As a compromise I called for a limo to pick me up at 7:30 and then called a number that was answered by a switchboard operator uptown.

“Tivoli Rest Home,” a woman answered.

“Katrina McGill.”

“Hello, Mr. McGill,” the operator said. “This is Sister Monica.”

“Hi, Monica, how are you?”

“I’m taking a group to the Metropolitan Museum of Art tomorrow. I asked your wife to come. She said that she’d think about it but she hadn’t signed up by dinner.”

“I’ll talk to her,” I promised and Sister Monica put my call through.

“Hello?” she answered on the fifth ring. Katrina never picked up the receiver before the fourth ring. At least she retained something of her premenopause sense of self.

“Hey, babe.”

“Leonid. Is everything all right?”

“You’re up there and not home with us. That’s not okay.”

“You know I’m too weak to maintain a home. Maybe I should give you a divorce and you could go get a younger wife.”

Maybe, I thought.

“Sister Monica says that you haven’t signed up for the museum trip,” I said. “You love the Met.”

“Too much walking.”

“You could take a wheelchair.”

“I’m very tired, Leonid.”

“What if I hired a nurse to come take care of you at home?” I offered. “You know, like we did for Gordo.”

“You’re a sweet man,” my wife of too many years said, “but you don’t want me.”

“I want you to come home.”

“As your wife or an invalid?”

“Katrina, we have lived in that apartment, raised three beautiful kids, and eaten ten thousand gourmet dinners on that dining room table. There’s not one in ten can lay claim to that.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

While waiting for her to say more I tried to think of some compelling argument for her to return to our flawed life.

Finally I said, “I’ll come by tomorrow.”

“Good-bye, Leonid.”

It wasn’t till after we hung up that I remembered to ask if Twill had dropped by like he’d promised. I wanted to call back but decided that Katrina would have been suspicious and worried at the insistence and so I let that opportunity drop. Twill was in trouble, I was sure of that, but he was a capable young man so would do what it took to survive—I hoped.

“Excuse me, mister,” a voice laced with Spanish song said.

It was the brown young man that Westley called Quintez. He was my height and so I liked him. Though soft-spoken he still looked me in the eye.

“Yes?”

“A lady at the door to see you, mister.”

“A lady?”

He nodded.

“A young lady?” I asked.

He hunched his shoulders. Young for him and for me might have been apples and pork chops.

“Send her on down.”

Quintez went away and I took a deep breath. It felt like I’d been on a twenty-mile forced march with eighty pounds strapped to my back.

And the real battle hadn’t even begun.

“Hello?” She was young even by Quintez’s standards, I was sure. He probably didn’t understand what I was asking.

Tall, maybe five-eight, and thin, she had brunette hair and skin that took to the sun; a white girl no more than twenty, her face was plain and pretty by turns with eyes promising intelligence, patience, and empathy.

“Can I help you?” I said.

“Is Twill in?”

“He’s out of the office right now. I’m Leonid McGill, Twill’s father and the chief investigator.”

“Oh. Maybe I should come back.”

“No,” I said. “Come on in and sit down. Maybe I can help.”

While she hesitated I studied her couture. The silk blouse was blue with an underlying patina of gray. Her black pants looked to be cashmere as did the emerald sweater she had draped on her shoulders. No purse. Not much makeup either.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Liza Downburton,” she said with a sigh. This release was enough to get her into a chair.

“Um,” she said. “What happened to your front room?”

“Nothing. I’m just making a few improvements to the security system. How can I help you, Ms. Downburton?”

“I just,” she said. “Well, I wanted to know what progress Twill has made.”

“Which case?” I asked as if there were a dozen projects I had to choose from.

“Getting Fortune away from Jones.”

“Yes,” I said even though the sentence didn’t quite make sense to me. Fortune and Jones. The one thing that I did know now was that Twill definitely took on a job when I was down in Philly on the Martinez case, and that job had nothing to do with some old high school friend. “Why don’t you fill me in on the background and I’ll try and get you an answer before you leave.”

“Oh,” she said, wondering what my role in her business might be. “I guess it’s okay. Twill told me that you were in charge.”

“Start from the beginning,” I said.

She turned her body in the chair until she was almost at profile to me and said, “I hired Twill, your agency, because of Fortune.”

“A friend of yours?”

“Well, um, not at first. Maybe eight weeks ago I was sleeping in my apartment in Park Slope when I heard something from the living room. I thought it was the dog caught behind the stuffed chair again but when I went out there and turned on the light I saw this young man—Fortune.”

“You didn’t know him?” I asked. That’s always a good question.

“No. He was there to steal.”

“A burglar?”

Liza nodded and said, “We were both surprised. For a long time, I mean a minute or so, we just stared. Finally he said, ‘I’m sorry about this.’ I asked him what he was doing and he told me that he was trying to steal my emerald necklace, the one that my grandmother from East Hampton had left me.”

“You didn’t know him but he knew about your necklace?”

“He is, was a part of a kind of gang. It’s these young people who work for a guy named Jones. Jones has organized dozens of young people, most of them under eighteen. They perform crimes for him. Fortune was one of the older members.”

“He told you all this?” I asked.

“After he apologized I offered to make him some tea. He said that he’d never had tea before and I said then he should probably try it with honey. We sat at the little table in the kitchenette for hours.

“He told me about Jones and how he lived in the subway tunnels and ran the gang of young people. He said that when Jones told any of them to do anything they had to do it or they’d be punished or even killed. He said that there were graves all over the subway tunnels that nobody would ever find except in the future.

“I asked him if this Jones man would kill him if he didn’t bring back the necklace and he said no. He thought he might get hit but that was all. He said that he’d just say that the necklace wasn’t there and maybe he wouldn’t even get in trouble at all.”

“How did he know about the necklace in the first place?” I asked.

“I go to NYU. My parents wanted me to leave it at home in my dad’s safe but it reminds me of my gran and so I brought it here. I told everybody about it. Fortune said that Jones has ears everywhere, especially in places like the Village.”

“What’s Fortune’s real name?”

“He’s an orphan so he doesn’t know. All he’s ever been called was Fortune.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“And so did this Fortune leave without taking your jewelry?”

Liza Downburton looked like a deer hypnotized by fear. She gazed at me, shook her head slightly, made to rise from the chair, and then fell back.

“I, we,” she said, “kind of fell in love.”

“I take it he’s a good-looking kid.”

“Yes but that’s not why, I mean, we really connected. Fortune was raised by a woman who worked for Jones. They lived in a tin shack in Queens not far from the Triborough Bridge. When people get too old to work for Jones in the street he pays them to take care of kids that will work for him when they’re old enough. Fortune lived in the tunnels after he was eight and now he has a room on Avenue D in the East Village and works at doing burglaries for Jones. He doesn’t like it. He wants to leave but Jones has killed people who left him and Fortune didn’t know where he could go.”

“So you gave him the necklace?”

She nodded.

“How much is it worth?”

“It’s insured for one hundred eighteen thousand dollars.”

“Oh. And you hired Twill to get the necklace back?”

“No. Since then Fortune and I have been seeing each other, when he can get away.”

I sat there looking at the lovelorn Liza Downburton thinking about one woman, Marella Herzog, who takes a man’s heirlooms, and another that gives hers away.

“He can’t let Jones know that he’s seeing you,” I surmised.

“No. He’s afraid that Jones’s people might try to get at me. Fortune wants to run away but he’s too scared so I came here to hire your office to help him. I talked to Twill and he said that he’d do it. He seemed so sure that I believed him. But he hasn’t called since then and I, and I wanted to find out what’s happened.”

“Did he ask you for a deposit?”

“No.”

Good.

“I talked to him yesterday,” I said. “He seemed to be deeply ensconced in the job.”

“Did he say anything about Fortune?”

“Not directly. He just said that he was on the job.”

“That’s something, I guess,” Ms. Downburton said.

“Let me ask you a question,” I said.

“Yes?”

“How often do you and Fortune see each other?”

“After every burglary Jones gives him three days off. That’s when we have the time.”

“So Fortune is still burgling?”

“Yes. I told Twill that.”

“Has he, I mean Fortune, asked you for more money or jewels?”

“No.”

“Well,” I said. “That’s some story. Like I said, I’ve been out of town but still Twill works for me. And I don’t like the idea of you out there with no protection while my son stirs up the hornets.”

I looked at my watch. It was 7:15.

“Come on downstairs with me, Ms. Downburton. I have an appointment but maybe we can talk to Twill before I have to be there.”

“You know how to reach him?”

“Come on. We’ll give it a try.”

A
t the curb, in a no-parking zone in front of the Tesla Building, sat a black sedan; coincidentally a Tesla. An almost nondescript white man somewhere in his forties stood by the passenger-side door. This man wore a cheap medium-green suit with a white dress shirt buttoned to the throat but sporting no tie. His hair was dark brown and just this side of unruly. He was neither tall nor short, and slight of build.

“Leonid,” the man said in a voice that was more an insinuation of resonance than an actual tone.

Hush owned the limo company. He bought the business not long after he gave up his lifelong calling: murder for pay.

“What’s the boss doing on the job?” I asked.

“I got my regulars,” he said. Liza Downburton came up beside me just then. Hush eyed her with an expression that maybe only I and his wife could read. “I also wanted to ask you a question. Maybe get some advice.”

“No problem,” I said. “I was going to call you anyway. This is Miss Liza Downburton, one of Twill’s private clients.”

Hush nodded at the young woman.

“Can you drive us down toward the Village?” I asked the driver.

“Not the restaurant?”

“All in good time.”

He opened the back door to the fancy electric car and I gestured for Liza to scoot in. I followed her and Hush went to his driver’s post.

As we tooled down Fifth Avenue I brought out a phone and entered a code for a very special number.

Within the last year Bug had made new and improved multichip phones for my use. I could turn off any of the numbers but there was one that my son, Mardi, Zephyra, and I kept on for emergencies. Twill’s emergency number was the one I called.

Three rings in he answered, “What’s the problem, Pop?”

The last word reminded me that I had found my father and lost him again.

“I’m in a limo with Hush driving and Liza Downburton sitting next to me.”

“That’s funny,” Twill said. “I’m in a green borough cab headed for Liza’s apartment.”

“You have anything to share with her, or me?”

“Did she tell you everything?” my favorite son asked.

“I have the basics.”

“I was gonna tell ya, Pop. It’s just I had to figure out what was goin’ on first.”

“And what, may I ask, is that?”

“I thought that the guy, the burglar Fortune, was settin’ Liza up for somethin’ but the deeper I got the more I came to understand that this Jones is the real thing. He got him a goddamned army and nobody seems to know about it. And once you get in you can’t ever get out—not ever.”

“And are you in?”

“All the way up to my nuts.”

I smiled then. There was something undeniably lovable about my sociopath boy.

“Are you compromised in any way?” I asked.

“I can’t be sure. I only met the dude once. He wears this fake beard and contacts that make his eyes a different color. The way he looks at you is spooky. Anyway—I heard him askin’ about Fortune so even if I’m in good with him, Liza and her boy might not be. That’s why I was goin’ to her place. I was gonna offer to put her at Mardi’s for a few days.”

“What if you asked Uncle Hush to do that?”

“That’d be like keepin’ a Christmas Club account at Fort Knox.” Twill listened to his elders and therefore had many of our outdated references.

“You tell your client,” I said. “I’ll ask Mr. Hush.”

I handed the phone to Liza and leaned forward over the seat.

“Twill needs you to put up his client for a few days,” I said to the killer who was something like a friend.

“Twill?” Hush uttered. “No problem. She knows the rules?”

“I’m willing to bet she’s a fast learner.”

By the time I leaned back Liza was handing me the phone.

“Twill says that he wants me to stay with Mr. Hush,” she said with trust in her voice that very few innocents ever had for me.

“Is that all right with you?”

“Can I call my parents?”

“Only if you don’t tell
’
em the truth. You really don’t want anyone comin’ around Mr. Hush when he’s feelin’ protective.”

“Are we in trouble?” she asked me.

“You already know the answer to that.”

I waited in the car while Hush walked Liza up the stairs to his twelve-million-dollar mansion on Fifth Avenue not a block from Washington Square Park. Hush had more security surrounding his home than most senators or CIA spooks. Tamara, his wife, and Thackery, his young son, would take care of Liza while I worried about my own son’s chances at survival.

While I waited I called the Chambre du Roi, telling them to inform my date that I might be a few minutes late if she got there before me.

When Hush returned I moved to the passenger’s seat beside him.

“You sure it’s okay?” I asked.

“Everybody loves Twill,” he replied. “The restaurant now?”

On the way up Sixth Avenue, just around Forty-second Street, I asked, “Have you ever heard of a guy named Jones runs an army of underage thieves?”

“No. New York?”

“Down in the tunnels.”

“Wow. You need to find out more?”

“Twill’s already down there. What I have to do is figure how to pull him out.”

“Need help?”

“Maybe later.”

Around Fifty-fifth Hush said, “Dude from the federal government asked me if I could kill a foreign head of state and make it look like natural causes.”

“Oh?”

“If I couldn’t do that, maybe I could make it look like some other unfriendly leader or group did the deed. Seven figures, legal, no tax.”

“Damn.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“You need the money?”

“No.”

“I thought you wanted to try and go the other way,” I said. “I mean whether it’s official or not, blood on your hands is still blood.”

“Yeah. Yeah. But you know, LT, I’ve been gettin’ this itch.”

I didn’t need to ask what needed scratching.

“Ever since I quit killing for pay I want to hurt people,” he continued. “I never felt like that before. Everything was cut-and-dry in the old days, you know? I killed for my supper and the dinner was always good.”

Sometimes there’s nothing to say; no rule book to quote, no homily that has weight. There are things about being a human that cannot be excused or even understood. Hush wanted to go out and murder someone just to get his passion under control. That was crazy—but so were thousands of truly senseless deaths from Palestine to Kandahar to Congo.

The car came to a halt and I saw that we were at the restaurant.

“So?” Hush asked.

“How long ago this guy come to you?”

“A week.”

“Give it another week,” I said. “Think it over. Maybe go to the Zen monastery upstate and meditate a day or two. Then, when seven days are up, call me and we’ll talk again.”

Hush gave me one of his rare smiles and held out a hand.

When we shook I couldn’t suppress the little shiver of fear that ran down my spine.