The Double (12 page)

“Yes.”

“But you still have the Grant Summers e-mail address. So reach out to him. Try to ferret him out. Tell him you want that particular car and will overpay to get it. Let him lick his chops while you dig out pieces of information that you can use to identify him. Basically, bait him. If he’s about money, he’ll surface.”

“You think?”

“He’s a lowlife,” said Starr. “Dangle some dollars in front of his face. He’ll rear his ugly head.”

Lucas pedaled back to his apartment and phoned Grace Kinkaid. He had been looking through the notes of their first meeting, and something had come to him.

“You said you had the painting assessed not long before you met Billy Hunter,” said Lucas.

“That’s right,” said Grace.

“Who appraised it?”

“Charles Lumley.”

“How did you get his name, originally?”

“I met him at a get-together here in the building. The Realtor sponsors these rooftop parties, open bar, ostensibly to let the residents mingle and get to know one another. But I think the real motive is to entice people who are thinking of buying and moving in here. There are always a few folks who show up who don’t live in the building. That’s where I met Charles.”

“He was considering buying a unit?”

“No, I don’t think so. He said he had a friend who owned a condo on one of the upper floors. Charles buys and sells art. He has a little place, a by-appointment thing, around Dupont Circle. We got to talking, and I told him about my painting, that I was curious about its value. He said he’d be happy to look at it. A couple of nights later he swung by and did the assessment. He was a nice man.”

“You have his contact information?”

“Hold on.” Lucas waited for her to find the phone number and address for Charles Lumley. He heard the rustle of a piece of paper as she got back on the line. “Ready?”

“That’s great,” said Lucas, after typing the data into his iPhone.

“Are you making any progress?”

“Yes,” said Lucas, though it didn’t feel that way to him. “I’ll get back up with you soon.”

After lunch, Lucas opened his laptop and set up a Hotmail account under an assumed name. Using this account, he then typed a message to the Grant Summers e-mail address.

Hello, my name is Rick Bell. I am very interested in the 2003 Mini Cooper S you advertised months ago on Craigslist. I know you have taken the ad off the site but I’m wondering, is the car sold? I’ve been looking for this particular car for some time. Not to get into a long story, but my wife owned one just like it when we were dating, and it had tremendous sentimental value to her. We had to sell it after we got married for financial reasons, but those concerns are behind us now. I’ve been trying to find this Mini, this model, this year, and this color, to surprise her for our anniversary. Is the car still available? Assuming it is in good shape, I’d like to make you a generous offer.

Please respond to the e-mail provided.

Thank you,
Rick Bell

Lucas hit Send. He checked his laptop several times over the course of the afternoon but there was no reply to his query. Then he got a call from Charlotte Rivers’s disposable. She was sorry she’d been out of touch, but she’d been very busy. She had a meeting in the dining room of the hotel on 16th Street, and then she had a few hours of free time, but only a few hours, because she had an obligation that night. Was he interested in stopping by the suite around four?

“Uh…,” said Lucas.

“Don’t you want to see me?”

Lucas hesitated, but only for a moment.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

They began to make love as soon as he entered the suite. She greeted him by the door wearing slacks with a silk blouse and camisole, and he undressed her there, in the entranceway, piece by piece. Soon she was nude, standing before him, curvy and full of breast, her hair about her face, and Lucas kissed her deeply and thought, This is what I fought for, to come back to someone like her. This is what every boy dreams of.

With the clumsiness of haste he removed his clothing as well, and they found themselves naked in the middle of the plush suite. Charlotte reached down and found his engorged pole and pulled him to her, rubbed his helmet on her lips. They broke apart suddenly and both of them laughed.

“What’s wrong with us?” said Charlotte. Lucas knew what she meant. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

“I missed you,” said Lucas.

“I missed
you,
” said Charlotte. “How’s your hand?”

“It won’t affect my performance, if that’s what you mean. I’ve got a backup.”

“Do what you do.”

They moved to the bed. She had downloaded more music,
Soon Forward
by Gregory Isaacs, the perfect lovers’ rock, and the insistent rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare gave Lucas a beat, and he became a machine. As she came he felt himself chuckle, and an image flashed of a smiling Billy Hunter on top of Grace Kinkaid, and Lucas shook that out of his mind and let himself go.

“What got into you?” said Charlotte, after they had separated and lay beside each other atop the sheets.

“Why?”

“I thought I lost you there for a while. You were, I don’t know…a little focused. Workmanlike.”

“You got there, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t pleased,” she said. “It was different for us, is all.”

Lucas got up, uncorked the Barolo that was on the dresser, then returned to the bed. “Next time, let me bring a good bottle of wine,” said Lucas.

“I thought you liked this.”

“I just want to contribute something,” said Lucas. “You never let me pay for anything.”

“I can afford it.”

“So can
I.
”

Charlotte brushed his short hair with her fingers. “Relax, honey. Enjoy this.”

“Because it might not last?”

“Because it’s good. Most people never get this, not even once in their lives.”

“I don’t want it to end.”

“Don’t be greedy.” She kissed him. “Don’t think past today.”

A little while later, she got up off the bed and dressed. She was going to a neighbor’s house with her husband for dinner, she said, and she had to get home.

“When will we see each other again?” said Lucas, watching her from the bed as she fixed a gold bracelet to her wrist.

“I’ll call you, Spero.”

Lucas thought,
When?

He returned to his apartment. He should have been satiated, but instead he was lonely and a little bit empty. His mother had phoned him, and he returned the call. She asked him where he had been when she’d called, and he said, “Out,” and when she pressed him he said, “I went to a movie,” and when she asked him which one he thought of a title and said it. They talked some more and he told her he loved her, and when he hung up with her he winced, thinking, On top of everything else, I lied to Mom.

Lucas checked his laptop. Still no response from Grant Summers.

He ate some pasta and a salad and decided to watch a DVD. Lucas had intense interests in music, books, and film, and often homed in on a movie director and his work to the point of obsession. He had once watched a different film from the Robert Aldrich library every night for two straight weeks, and had done similar home film festivals for John Sturges, Peckinpah, and Don Siegel. Lately he had been checking out the work of John Flynn, an underrated director who had a spotty filmography that also included a couple of stone classics:
Rolling Thunder
and
The Outfit
. After many years out of circulation,
The Outfit,
based on a Parker novel by Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark, had been rereleased. Lucas smoked down half a joint, got a Stella out of the refrigerator, and slid the disc into his player.

The movie had a plot that was familiar, but the execution was flawless and true to the no-nonsense spirit of the book. Robert Duvall was Macklin, a stand-in name for Parker, teamed up with Joe Don Baker as Cody and Karen Black as Bett, Macklin’s squeeze. In the penultimate scene, Macklin robs a mobbed-up card game in a hotel room, where at the table sits a vulgarian named Menner, played by the infamous character actor Timothy Carey. Menner explains the premise of the film to Macklin as he is being taken off: “You hit a bank. You and your brother and a guy called Cody before your stretch. Midwest National in Wichita. The Outfit owns it. So you know how it is: You hit us, we hit you.” Menner previously used a cigarette to burn a hole in Bett’s skin, in an attempt to get her to talk. Before he leaves, Macklin says to Menner, “You shouldn’t use a girl’s arm for an ashtray,” and puts a close-range round through Menner’s hand.

Lucas, high and transfixed, stared at the screen.
You hit us, we hit you.
He and his platoon had executed the same creed in the streets and houses of Fallujah.

The film ended. Lucas went to his laptop and checked his Hotmail account for messages, and found a response from Grant Summers:

Rick:

The car is still available. You want to make generous offer? How generous?

Grant Summers
4th Combat Engineer Battalion
United States Marine Corps
One Team, One Fight

The Marine Corps insignia appeared below the text.

Lucas responded with an offer of five thousand dollars. He also wrote,
My father was a marine. I respect you guys and hope we can do business.
He waited, got nothing, and took a shower to pass some time. When he returned, Summers had sent him another message:
Ten thousand is the price.
Lucas immediately countered with an offer of eight thousand dollars. Summers sent another message that simply said,
Ten
. Lucas replied,
I will pay you ten thousand after I inspect the Mini. If I find it to be in top shape, I will give you the full payment. I do want the car.
Summers’s response was,
Deal. I will contact you tomorrow with payment instructions.

“Deal,” said Lucas, and smiled grimly.

THIRTEEN

A
message from Grant Summers appeared on Lucas’s laptop the next morning. In it were steps for setting up an escrow account and instructions for wiring the money. It was the identical system Summers had proposed for Grace Kinkaid, along with the identical guarantees, stating the money would be held in escrow for five days while Lucas drove the car, inspected it, and was fully satisfied with the vehicle.

Lucas replied:
As I told you, I need to inspect the Mini myself
before
I give you the money. I am not a tire kicker. I want this car. I am only protecting myself. I think you would do the same if you were in my position. Sincerely, Rick Bell.

He got no response. Lucas changed into his bike shoes, lifted his LeMond onto his shoulder, and walked it downstairs. Out in the front yard, he used Miss Lee’s garden hose to fill his water bottle, and saw his young neighbor Nick Simmons out in the street, detailing his beloved baby blue El-D with the gold spoke Vogue wheels, which he co-owned with his dad. Nick, his hair in full Rasta, his beard untrimmed per the Old Testament he studied assiduously, deuced Lucas up with a two-finger salute.

Lucas swung onto his saddle and rode his bike north over the Maryland line, pedaling along the shoulder of the flat Sligo Creek Parkway, and into the hilly woods of Wheaton Regional Park. There he turned around and retraced his path. It was a solid twenty-mile ride.

When he got into his apartment, pleasantly sweaty and loose, he checked his laptop. Grant Summers had replied:
I cannot come to you with the car. I am about to deploy to Afghanistan. They do not allow us to leave base.

Still deploying, thought Lucas, after all these months. Lucas hit him back with a phone number for one of several disposable cells he owned and said,
Call me so we can discuss.

Immediately Summers replied
, I cannot use phone, it is against regulations for deploying soldiers.

You mean, you cannot use
the
phone, thought Lucas. And you’ve forgotten, you’re not in the army. Marines don’t call themselves soldiers. They’re marines.

Lucas wrote back:
I am willing to pay you seven thousand dollars over your original asking price, cash. If you want to make this deal, I need to see the car first. Respectfully, Rick Bell.

Lucas waited and got no reply. He did some research on regional American painters on the Internet and found an artist who was neither nationally famous nor unknown, which made her suitable for his purposes. This took about an hour, and in that time he still had not received a response from Summers. It didn’t seem fruitful to wait around the apartment any longer. He wondered if he had been too aggressive. Perhaps he had pushed too hard and scared Summers off. Anyway, he had sent the e-mails. He couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle now.

Lucas had a shower, dressed in nice clothing, and drove over to the Fort Totten Metro Station, where he took the Red Line around to the Dupont Circle stop. He was hoping to talk to an art appraiser. Specifically, he was looking for Charles Lumley.

He found Lumley’s small, unmarked storefront on the ground floor of a stone town house on 22nd, west of Connecticut Avenue, between R and S. The neighborhood north of the Circle was clean, pricey, with primarily white residents. In style and layout its streetscape was reminiscent of northern or northwestern Europe.

Lucas looked through curved plate glass. A man, turning the corner on forty, was inside the shop, seated behind a desk, working or trolling on an open Mac laptop. A couple of paintings, landscapes and portraits, were set up on easels, and a few were mounted on the white walls, but otherwise the store appeared to be low on saleable merchandise. Lucas tried the door and found it locked. He tapped on the window and got the man’s attention. The man inspected Lucas, then put up one finger and buzzed him in. Lucas entered as the man stood.