Do Not Disturb (8 page)

“I’d like that,” she said. “Actually, I’ll be staying in town for a while, if you—”

But he’d already gone, hurtling out the door like he had a fire to get to.

She seemed to be having this effect on people a lot today.

“What do you know about that guy?” she asked Enrique, the barman, after he’d gone.

Now in his sixties, Enrique had been running the bar at Palmers since before Honor was born. As one of the few staff who knew for sure his job was safe, he was more than happy to stop and chew the fat with her.

“Devon Carter? He’s Mr. East Hampton,” he said, “or at least, he is for the summers. Comes out here every year with his family, sometimes for Easter too. He’s on the planning committee, secretary of the Golf Club, part-time deacon over at St. Mark’s…”

“Jeez, OK, OK,” said Honor, frowning. “I get the picture. He’s Ned Flanders.”

“Not quite so God Squad,” chuckled Enrique, surprising Honor by getting the
Simpsons
reference. Somehow he didn’t seem the type. “But he’s big on family values, yeah. Definitely not for you, my dear.”

“For me? Oh, don’t be so silly,” said Honor, blushing again. “Although, for what it’s worth, I’ll have you know I’m
huge
on family values. And I bet you my family’s
much
more valuable than Devon—deacon-of-St.-Mark’s—Carter’s.”

Enrique smiled and poured her another drink.

“It’s good to have you back, Miss Palmer.”

“Thanks,” said Honor with a sigh. “But I’m afraid you’re the only person around here who thinks so.”

L
UCAS TRIED TO
tune out the drunken ramblings of the stinking tramp sitting next to him on the tube as he reread the article in yesterday’s
Evening Standard
.

“What saddens me most,” says bubbly Heidi, her eyes brimming with tears, “is that Carina’s the innocent victim here. She’s a four-year-old child that desperately needs help. How can her own father let her down like this?”

The paper had devoted two full pages to the interview and pictures of “bubbly Heidi,” explaining that she was now a trainee nursery school teacher—although looking at her brassy hair and short black skirt it came as no surprise to Lucas to learn that her previous occupation was “exotic dancer.” It was in this incarnation that she’d met and become involved with the millionaire hotelier and hedge fund guru, Anton Tisch. The same Anton Tisch whose office Lucas was currently on his way to, for the third time in as many days.

“He makes himself out to be this kind, charitable man, like some sort of saint,” Heidi goes on damningly, “yet he won’t even provide basic medical care for his own kid. It’s disgusting.”

If the story was accurate, Lucas was inclined to agree. Apparently, having fathered a daughter by this cretinous-looking young woman, Tisch had only agreed to pay basic maintenance
for the child when forced to do so by court order. This, despite having, conservatively, nine hundred million–odd dollars in the bank. Like so many of the Eastern European and Russian superrich who’d washed up in London in recent years, the original source of Tisch’s vast wealth remained an open question. Certainly he was known to have close links with Ilham Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan and ultimate controller of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline responsible for piping a million gallons of oil a day into Western markets. Though no longer in the energy business—his passport described him as a fund manager and investor—Tisch’s money still reeked of Caspian crude.

When doctors had diagnosed his illegitimate daughter with severe autism a year ago, Heidi had gone back to her erstwhile lover asking for more money to pay for a nurse and to help fund a place for the little girl at a special school. But Tisch had told her to take a running jump. Unable to raise the legal fees to fight him a second time, Heidi had sold her story to the tabloids instead.

Of course, it might not be true. To be honest, Lucas wanted to believe it wasn’t; not least because it was depressing to learn that the man he hoped would soon be his employer was tighter than a mosquito’s asshole and had about as much compassion as a Nazi concentration camp commandant. But something about bubbly Heidi’s face told him she was telling the truth. She might be a tart, but she didn’t look like a liar.

“Embankment. This is Embankment.” The oddly soothing automated woman’s voice rang out through the speakers. “Next stop, Westminster. Change here for Charing Cross and other mainline stations.”

Only one more stop, thank God. There were lots of things Lucas hated about London: the weather, the prices, the way strangers kept calling him “mate.” But he reserved an especially vehement dislike for the filthy, overcrowded underground system. Normally he’d have walked the four-odd miles from the Cadogan, where he was staying, to Tisch’s office overlooking the
Thames. But despite the fact that it was August, the rain today was torrential, and he couldn’t afford to show up looking like a drowned rat.

He’d been to London before, to visit Ben, but never for more than a few days, and he’d spent most of those trips too drunk to know his left from his right, never mind what city he was in. But having lived here now for nearly two months, he was having serious second thoughts. Why couldn’t he have set his heart on a job somewhere warm and civilized, like Madrid or Rome? With his languages and starred MBA, he could have gone just about anywhere in Western Europe. Did he really have to pick this grayest, wettest, most astronomically expensive of cities and surround himself with a nation of people he had long ago learned to loathe?

Unfortunately, the answer to that was yes. Lucas had made a decision years ago never to aim for anything less than the best. And in the world of luxury boutique hotels, the Tischen Cadogan was the best. No question.

Two weeks ago he’d moved out of the squalid apartment he’d been renting in Tooting and checked himself in to the Cadogan. His room was the cheapest the hotel had to offer and was little more than five hundred square feet, but it had still cost him every penny of his remaining savings. Literally every penny. As of tomorrow morning, he had no idea how he was going to eat.

Still, it had been worth it. In the past two weeks he’d gotten to know the hotel’s inner workings every bit as intimately as Julia Brett-Sadler, the Cadogan’s bossy, schoolmarmish manager. He knew about the morale problems in the kitchen and the Michelin-starred, megalomaniac chef who made his staff’s lives hell. He knew about the barman who regularly slipped free drinks to girls he was sleeping with. He knew about the maître d’s two-hundred-pounds-a-day coke habit.

If he was going to have any kind of a shot with Anton Tisch—a guy who wouldn’t even give his own kid a break,
apparently—Lucas knew he would have to be more informed and more impressive than everybody else. Of course, he first had to swing himself an appointment with the guy, something that so far was proving depressingly difficult.

Battling his way through the commuters at Westminster station, he finally emerged into the drizzle of the street. Storm clouds hung low in the sky like a thick, heavy blanket, blocking out so much light that it almost felt like night. Not even the gold-faced splendor of Big Ben or the intricately carved towers of the Palace of Westminster could lift the atmosphere of dreary depression lingering in the air. Clicking open his umbrella with a curse, Lucas made his way along the now-familiar route by the river, toward the Adelphi building where the Tischen Corporation had its offices.

“You ’ere again, mate?” The doorman seemed less than thrilled to see him. “Don’t give up easy, do you?”

“No,” said Lucas, pushing past him into the lobby. “I don’t. I’m here to see Mr. Tisch.” He smiled firmly at the Asian girl at the reception desk, who glowered back at him.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked wearily. It was the third time she’d been through this charade this week, and the novelty was wearing thin.

“Yes,” lied Lucas. “He’s expecting me.”

The girl gave him a look that made it clear she knew he was bullshitting, but that at this point she really didn’t care.

“Sixteenth floor,” she sighed, handing him a visitor’s pass. “Once you’re up there, you’re Rita’s problem.”

Luckily for Lucas, Rita was much more amenable to his particular blend of Latin charm than the Thai harridan downstairs. Somewhere in the no-man’s-land between middle-aged and elderly, her sensible tweed suit and Miss Moneypenny manner hid a mischievous streak that Lucas was quick to pick up on. He guessed it had been a long time since any good-looking young man had bothered to flirt with Rita. And it seemed he was right.
No sooner had he started to banter with her than the floodgates opened.

“Darling.” Striding over to her desk, grinning from ear to ear, he kissed her hand while she laughingly attempted to get rid of another caller.

“Mr. Ruiz!” Switching off her headset, she pulled her hand away and tried to look stern.

“I know what you’re going to say,” said Lucas. “We must stop meeting like this. People are going to start talking. But you know, all you have to do is let me see him. Just for five minutes. Then I’ll be out of your hair forever.”

“I’ve told you,” said the secretary, blushing like a giddy schoolgirl, “it really isn’t up to me. Mr. Tisch’s diary is booked up months in advance. I can’t just squeeze people in willy-nilly. However charming they might be. I’d lose my job.”

“Ah, lovely Rita, surely not?” said Lucas. He’d perched on the corner of her desk now, close enough for her to smell his cologne. Really, he could be most distracting when he wanted to…“No man in his right mind would let you go. Won’t you at least let him know I’m here?”

“Well…” she said, her resolve already crumbling. “All right. I’ll buzz him. But I can tell you right now, he won’t see you. He’s having rather a bad day, I’m afraid.”

This turned out to be an understatement.

Inside his office, Anton reached for his open bottle of antacids and slipped another revolting, chalky pill into his mouth.

“No, I will not
calm down
, Roger,” he yelled into the phone. “She’s crucifying me. And that cunt of an editor’s giving her a free pass to do it! There’s more on the story in tomorrow’s paper, apparently. When I think of how much fucking money I gave to their bloody Help a London Child appeal last year.
I mean, where’s the fucking loyalty, Roger, huh? Answer me that!”

Anton Tisch was one of life’s winners. Having cleaned up in Azerbaijan in the midnineties, he’d gotten out of the oil business while the getting was still good, before he found himself poisoned or shot or shipped off to Siberia like so many of the Russians who’d gotten greedy and kept their fat fingers in the pie for too long. Diversifying into other industries, he had reinvented himself as a legitimate businessman. His hedge fund, Excelsior, was now one of the largest and most profitable in Europe. His media empire stretched from Delhi to Vladivostok and incorporated everything from online search engines to cable TV stations. And his hotel chain—the mighty Tischens—was among the most prestigious and well respected in a notoriously cutthroat and fickle business.

Dividing his time between his home in Mayfair—he’d had three exquisite Georgian mansions knocked together to create one of the largest privately owned residences in London—and his estate on the banks of Lake Geneva, Anton surrounded himself with every luxury that money could buy.

Of course, as for so many of the world’s wealthiest men, it was the things money
couldn’t
buy that kept him awake at night. Having grown up poor in an obscure village in rural East Germany, what Tisch craved more than anything was social acceptance among the English upper classes—to become part of the famously amorphous British Establishment. But like so many wealthy foreigners before him, he was discovering the hard way that in England there were numerous doors that money alone could not unlock. Abramovich had won over the masses as Mr. Chelski when he bought and poured money into Chelsea football club. But Anton wasn’t interested in being liked by lager louts and yobs. His social sights were set much higher.

His strategy—pouring funds very publicly into civic institutions and high-profile charities—was a good one. He wanted
people to see him as a modern-day Carnegie: generous, philanthropic, paternalistic; in short, everything that the English aristocracy considered themselves, however misguidedly, to be. Eventually, the plan was for his good works to earn him a knighthood, the social equivalent of an access-all-areas backstage pass.