Before I Say Good-Bye (8 page)

Five hours later, Lang, with a cracked rib, his lip cut and head bruised from the impact, was picked up at the hospital by a limousine service and driven through teeming rain to his home in Southampton.

His oceanfront estate, in the most exclusive section of that exclusive community, had been given to him by his parents when they decided to divide their time between Saint John’s in the Caribbean and Martha’s Vineyard.

The house was a turn-of-the-century, sprawling white colonial, with hunter-green shutters. The two-acre gated property also contained a swimming pool, tennis court and cabana, and was enhanced by a velvety green lawn, flowering shrubs and meticulously pruned trees.

Married at twenty-three and amicably although expensively divorced at thirty, Lang had cheerfully settled into the role of what was once known as a man-about-town. Blessed with blond good looks, sophisticated charm, reasonable intelligence and a quick sense of humor, he also had inherited an uncanny instinct for acquiring land that would someday become valuable.

That instinct had originally motivated his grandfather, prior to World War II, to buy hundreds of acres in rural Long Island and Connecticut, and his father to invest heavily in Third Avenue property in Manhattan when the elevated railroad tracks were about to be taken down.

As his father proudly boasted when he talked about his forty-two-year-old son, “ ‘Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations’ doesn’t apply to our family. Peter’s turning out to be the smartest of the lot of us.”

With his usual casual generosity, Lang tipped the limousine driver and let himself into the house. He had long ago pensioned off the couple that had been employed there from the time he was born. In their place he had hired a daily housekeeper and used a small catering firm to take care of the extra demand when he had guests.

The house was dark and cool. Whenever he found it necessary to be in the city for a meeting with his real estate partners—typically held on a Friday afternoon—he usually spent the night in his Manhattan apartment and drove to Southampton early the next morning. That was what he would have done if he had met Adam and the others on the boat today, but the accident on the way in had made that impossible.

Now Peter found himself glad to be in this house, glad to be able to fix a quiet drink and take stock of his aching body. His head throbbed. He ran his tongue over his lip and grimaced at the realization that the swelling there was increasing.

The driver of the tractor-trailer—Peter could still feel the moment when he knew the crash was inevitable.

The message light on the phone was flashing, but Peter ignored it. The last thing he wanted to do right now was to get into a conversation with anyone about the accident. And it probably was a reporter. Since he had become something of a “man-about-town,” he reflected, everything he did had become fodder for the gossip columns.

Carrying his drink, he walked across the room, opened the door to the porch and stepped outside. On the drive from the hospital the rain had been getting steadily heavier. Now it was pouring down and driven by the force of the wind. Even the porch’s long overhang did not fully protect him from the downpour. It was so dark that he could not see the ocean, but there was no doubting its presence, as the crescendo of the waves broke forcefully around him. The temperature was dropping sharply, and the sunny afternoon he had spent on the golf course seemed now to have been something in the distant past. Shivering, he went back inside, locked the door and headed upstairs.

Fifteen minutes later, and feeling somewhat better after a hot shower, he got into bed. Remembering to turn off the ringer on the telephone, he flipped on the radio and set the timer for fifteen minutes, just long enough for him to catch the eleven o’clock news.

He fell asleep, however, before he heard the lead story about the explosion of
Cornelia II
earlier that day in New York harbor, and among the facts he missed was that he, Peter Lang, prominent New York real estate entrepreneur, was one of the people presumed lost in the tragedy.

fourteen

A
T
7:30, Lisa began to listen for Jimmy’s car. She was looking forward to surprising him with the chicken-and-rice dinner that was his favorite meal.

Her last appointment at the salon had been canceled, and she’d been able to leave early, in time to do grocery shopping and still have the kids fed by 6:30. She’d decided to wait and eat with Jimmy. She had set the dinette table for the two of them and even had wine chilling in the refrigerator, a special treat. The vague uneasiness she had felt all day demanded that she take action. Jimmy had looked so lost, so defeated, when he left the house this morning. She hadn’t been able to get that image out of her head all day, and she felt an urgent need to put her arms around him, to show him how much she loved him.

Now the kids, Kyle, Kelly and Charley, were at the kitchen table, doing their homework. Kyle, the oldest, was twelve, and as usual needed no urging; he was a good student. Kelly was ten and a dreamer. “Kelly, you haven’t written a word in five minutes,” Lisa prodded.

Charley, the seven-year-old, was elaborately copying his spelling words. He knew he was in hot water because of the note from the teacher he had brought home saying that he had been talking in class again.

“Don’t even
think
about television for a week,” Lisa had warned him.

As usual the house seemed empty without Jimmy. Even though he just wasn’t himself these days—too quiet, sometimes too edgy—he was always a powerful and protective
presence in their lives, and the rare evenings he wasn’t with them felt odd and uncomfortable.

Maybe I’ve been bugging him, Lisa thought, always asking if he’s feeling better or nagging him to talk to me about what’s bothering him or begging him to go to a doctor. I’m going to back off on that, she promised herself as she checked the dinner keeping warm in the oven.

He had looked so troubled when he went out this morning, she thought. Was it possible that I heard him right, that he said, “I’m sorry,” just as he was leaving?

Sorry, for
what?
she wondered.

By 8:30 she was starting to worry. Where was Jimmy? Certainly he was not still on the boat. The weather was changing fast. Overcast skies had turned into a storm. It wouldn’t be safe to get caught out on the water in this.

He’s probably on the way home, she told herself. Traffic was always terrible on Friday evenings.

An hour later Lisa shooed the two younger children up to shower and put on pajamas. Kyle, homework completed, went into the den to watch television.

Jimmy, where are you? Lisa agonized as the hands on the clock approached 10:00
P.M.
Something’s wrong. Maybe you
did
get fired. Well, if so, then I don’t care. You’ll find something else. Maybe you should get out of construction. You always said there was a lot of stuff going on in that business that was downright crooked.

At 10:30 the front doorbell rang. Sick with fear, Lisa rushed to open it. Two men were standing there. They held up identification for her to see under the overhead light—and police badges.

“Mrs. Ryan, may we come in?”

Without thinking, the question came to her lips. Her voice dull with pain, Lisa sobbed, “Jimmy committed suicide, didn’t he?”

fifteen

C
ORNELIUS AND
G
ERTRUDE
M
AC
D
ERMOTT
shared a taxi when they left Nell’s apartment. They sat in silence, each deep in thought, not noticing when the cab stopped in front of Gert’s building at Eighty-first Street and Lexington Avenue.

Gert felt rather than saw the driver’s almost contemptuous, over-the-shoulder glance in her direction. “Oh. I didn’t realize,” she said. With an awkward motion she turned and saw that the doorman was already holding the door for her. The rain was now pouring down in drenching, windswept sheets. Even with the protection of an umbrella, she could see that the doorman was getting soaked.

“For God’s sake, Gert, get a move on,” her brother barked.

She turned to him, ignoring his brusque tone, aware only of the terrible concern they shared. “Cornelius, Nell
adored
Adam. I got the feeling tonight that she’s not going to be able to handle this. She’s going to need all the support we can give her.”

“Nell’s strong. She’ll be all right.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“Gert, that poor guy’s gonna drown waiting for you. Don’t worry—Nell will be fine. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

As she moved to leave the taxi, one word that Mac had said suddenly stuck in her mind.
Drown,
Gert thought, did Adam drown or was he blown to bits in the explosion? She realized her brother had the same thought, because he took her hand and leaned over and kissed her cheek.

She felt the familiar stabs of pain in her knees as she stepped out of the cab and straightened up. My body is wearing out, she thought. Adam was so strong, so healthy. This is a terrible shock.

Suddenly she felt infinitely weary and gladly accepted the doorman’s hand under her arm as she walked the short distance from the curb to the building’s entrance. A few minutes later, at last safely in the quiet of her own apartment, she sank into a chair. She leaned back and closed her eyes. They welled with tears as Adam’s face filled her mind.

He had a smile that would warm even the hardest heart. She thought back to the first time Nell had brought him to meet her. Nell had been radiant, so obviously in love. Gert felt a lump forming in her throat as she thought of the contrast between the happiness in Nell’s eyes that afternoon and the confusion and heartbreak that was so evident in them tonight.

It was as though a light went on in Nell’s soul when she met Adam, Gert thought. Cornelius never really understood how devastating it was for Nell to lose her mother and father when she was so young.

Cornelius did everything he could for her, of course, and spent every possible minute with her, but no one can replace two parents like Richard and Joan, Gert thought sadly.

With a sigh, she got up and went into the kitchen. She reached for the kettle and smiled to herself as she remembered how, soon after she met him, Adam had asked her why with all the tea she drank she didn’t just fill the kettle so that there was always warm water in it that would reheat quickly.

“It doesn’t taste the same if the water is reheated,” she had explained.

“Gert, I have to tell you that’s pure imagination,” he had responded with a hearty, affectionate laugh.

We laughed together a lot, Gert thought. He wasn’t like Cornelius, who gets so impatient with me. Adam even came here a few times when our psychic group met. He was genuinely
interested.
He wanted to know why I believe so devoutly that it’s possible to contact people who have passed on.

Well, it
is
possible, she thought. Unfortunately it’s not a gift that I have, but some of the others truly
can
become channels between those of us who are here and those who have left this plane. I’ve
seen
how comforted people are after they’ve contacted someone they loved who isn’t with us anymore. If Nell has trouble accepting Adam’s passing, I’m going to insist that she try to reach him through channeling. She will feel much better if she can find closure after this terrible loss. Adam will tell her that it was time for him to go, but that she mustn’t cling to grief, because he is
here;
it will make everything much easier for her.

That decision made, Gert felt comforted. The kettle was whistling, and she turned it off quickly as she reached for a cup and saucer. Tonight the usual cheery sound of the steam forcing its way through the narrow
passageway in the cover over the spout had become a mournful wail. It was almost like a lost soul shrieking for surcease, she thought uneasily.

sixteen

A
S A KID GROWING UP
in Bayside, Queens, Jack Sclafani had always wanted to be the cop when the neighborhood kids played cops and robbers. At school, he was a serious and quiet student, winning first a scholarship to St. John’s Prep, and then a second one to Fairfield College, where a Jesuit education honed his already logical mind.

Eschewing an academic career, his next step was to earn a master’s degree in criminology. Then, with his formal education behind him, Jack joined the NYPD as a rookie cop.

Now, some eighteen years later, at age forty-two, living in Brooklyn Heights, married to a successful real estate broker and the father of twin boys, Sclafani was a detective first class on the district attorney’s elite squad, an assignment in which he took great pride. In his time on the force, he had worked with many fine men, but the one he had known the longest and still liked the best was his partner, George Brennan. This was Sclafani’s day off, but he roused himself from his prebedtime nap when he heard Brennan being interviewed on the eleven o’clock news, fielding reporters’ questions about the cabin cruiser that had exploded in the harbor early that evening.

Using the remote, he turned up the volume and leaned forward, fully alert now, his attention riveted to the scene he was watching. Brennan was standing outside a modest house in Little Neck, only a fifteen-minute drive from Bayside.

“Mrs. Ryan has confirmed that her husband, Jimmy, an employee of the Sam Krause Construction Company, was planning to be at a meeting today on the boat,
Cornelia II,
Brennan was saying. “A man of his description was seen boarding the boat before it sailed out into the harbor, so we are assuming that Mr. Ryan was one of the victims.”

Jack listened intently as questions were thrown at Brennan.

“How many people were on the boat?” an off-camera voice asked.

“We’ve learned that in addition to Mr. Ryan, four other people were expected to attend the meeting,” he replied.

“Isn’t it unusual for a diesel-fueled boat to explode?”