The Fifth Avenue Series Boxed Set (86 page)

Jack moved to the wooden rail and leaned forward.
 
He watched her bounce thanks the bungee cord strapped to her ankles and her long dark hair cracked like a whip in the humid air.
 
Watching her and listening to her jubilant cries, he felt strangely at peace and knew what he was doing was right.
 
This was part of his own healing.

Beside him, a young Venezuelan woman began pulling the frayed bungee cord back to the bridge.
 
She was tall and slim, her arms and shoulders taut with muscle.
 
Her bare feet dug into the gray wooden planks as she continued to hoist up the heavy cord.
 
Once the cord was retrieved, she turned to him.

“Listo?” she asked.

Jack nodded.
 
“Listo.”

“You do this before, yes?”

“I’ve done this before,” he said.
 

From his pocket, he removed the blindfold he promised to wear when Celina jumped all those months ago.
 
He showed it to the woman, who shrugged.
 
She helped him over the wooden rail, attached the bungee to his ankles, pulled hard on the nylon strap and checked the buckles.
 

Jack put the blindfold into place.

With the sudden darkness, his senses became acute.
 
The river was louder, the sun somehow stronger.
 
He could feel the thrum of nature and then his heart beating in his chest.

The woman touched his arm.
 
“Jump,” she said.
 
“Fly.”

Poised at the edge of the bridge, Jack took a breath, nodded and let go of the wooden rail.
 
For a moment, he just stood there, perfectly balanced with his arms held out at his sides.
 
His hair stirred in the breeze.
 
His palms faced a brilliant, cloudless sky he couldn’t see.
 
He was aware of everything and nothing.
 
The faint, exotic smells of the jungle enveloped him, consumed him and for the first time in months, he smiled.

He thought of Celina then and when he jumped, he jumped hard, rising gracefully into the air and into the sun.
 

For an instant, he was free.

*
  
*
  
*

Michael Archer remained in New York.
 
In the six months that had passed since his annulment from Leana, he had left their apartment on Fifth and moved into a large, airy loft in the Village that overlooked the Hudson.

His life was quieter.
 
He rarely went out and he saw only close friends.
 
He refused prime roles in movies and on Broadway, and he refused to be interviewed.
 
Although his agent was hounding him to write another book, he hadn’t written a word in months.
 
His dreams were bad.
 
He supposed he was now something of a recluse.

It was in late September, two months after the incident at The Hotel Fifth, that he received a letter from one of George Redman’s attorneys, suggesting that he join George for a blood test.
 
Michael refused.
 
He didn’t need a blood test to confirm that he was George Redman’s son.
 
His mother’s journal confirmed it.
 

In her own hand, Anne described—in detail—her affair with George and how she knew that Michael was George’s son.
 
If Redman couldn’t accept that, then Michael decided it was best that he wasn’t part of the man’s life.

Leana came to him in dreams.

He would be walking up Fifth Avenue and she would suddenly appear in the crowd, wearing the very dress she wore that night at The Hotel Fifth, her skin pale and lucent, a tiny pinpoint of bright light wavering from the hole in her stomach.
 
In the dream, she held out her arms to him, called out his name in a voice that wasn’t her own but one that he assumed was his idea of his mother’s.
 
And then she disappeared.
 
When Michael ran after her, it was Louis Ryan’s face he saw, not Leana’s.

He heard from Leana only once since they annulled their marriage.
 
When she called, she was somewhere in Europe with Mario De Cicco, though she wouldn’t say where.
 
In spite of all that had transpired between them—and the truth that they were half brother and sister—he admired her for keeping the conversation as light as she could.

“I’m an expat,” she said.
 
“Imagine that.
 
And I’m happy.
 
For the time being, we’re travelling Europe.
 
We’ll visit other parts of the world and then we’ll choose a place to settle and raise a family.
 
I’ll call you when that happens.
 
Could be several months or several years, but I’ll call.”

“I’m sorry for everything, Leana.”

“I know you are,” she said.
 
“But it’s not your fault—we both were used by him.
 
Just hear me on this—if we don’t let go of all of it, if we don’t move forward, it will color the rest of our lives until we do.
 
And if that happens, he wins, which we can’t let happen.
 
I’m moving on with my life.
 
I want the same for you.
 
We deserve to have our lives back.”

“You’re right.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“Call me when you’ve settled.”

“You’ll hear from me again,” Leana said, and she was gone.

It wasn’t until January that he was ready to sit at his desk and look seriously at his typewriter, the one his agent sent him months ago as a gift.
 

He knew he couldn’t go on like this.
 
By withdrawing from the world, by hanging onto the past, he was killing himself and everything he’d worked so hard for.
 
His agent had given him a number of story ideas, but only one mattered to Michael, only one was paramount, and if he wanted to move on, if he really wanted to deal with the past, the only way to do so would be to write about it.

He looked at the typewriter.
 
He never wrote on a computer and his agent knew it.
 
He liked the sound of a typewriter.
 
He liked the feeling of removing a piece of paper when he was finished creating something on it.
 
He liked the rhythm of the words as they were pounded out.

He put a blank sheet of paper into the typewriter and closed his eyes.
 
That title, that opening sentence and the first few paragraphs came to him at once.
 
They had been lingering in his mind since the original manuscript was burned.
 

But could he do it?
 
Could he really write the story that had changed so many lives? And if he did write about it, if he did tell the truth even if he did change the names, would he be ready for all the controversy that would ensue?
 
Michael wasn’t sure.
 
Novel or not, people would know the story he’d written was based on fact.

Maybe he’d change the names later.
 
Maybe he wouldn’t.
 
What mattered now was getting it on paper.

And then he remembered what the man Cain said to him that day in his apartment.
 
Just moments after he read the first chapter and destroyed the manuscript, Cain asked how Michael could use these events, these places.
 
Michael’s answer was immediate—perhaps he would use a pseudonym.

He rested his hands on the typewriter and was relieved to find that it no longer seemed as threatening.
 
He thought of Leana then, thought of all the Redmans, chose a generic pseudonym and after a moment, he began to type:

FIFTH AVENUE

A novel by:

Christopher Smith

BOOK ONE

FIRST WEEK

CHAPTER ONE

July

New York City

The bombs, placed high above Fifth Avenue on the roof of The Redman International Building, would explode in five minutes.

Now, with its mirrored walls of glass reflecting Fifth Avenue’s thick, late-morning traffic, the building itself seemed alive with movement.
 

On scaffolding at the building’s middle, men and women were hanging the enormous red velvet ribbon that would soon cover sixteen of Redman International’s seventy-nine stories.
 
High above on the roof, a lighting crew was moving ten spotlights into position.
 
And inside, fifty skilled decorators were turning the lobby into a festive ballroom.

Celina Redman, who was in charge of the confusion, stood before the building with her arms crossed.
 
Streams of people were brushing past her on the sidewalk, some glancing up at the red ribbon, others stopping to glance in surprise at her.
 
She tried to ignore them, tried to focus on her work and become one with the crowd, but it was difficult.
 
Just that morning, her face and this building had been on the cover of every major paper in New York.
 

She admired the building before her.
 

Located on the corner of Fifth and 49th Street, the building was the product of thirty-one years of her father’s life.
 
Founded when George Redman was twenty-six, Redman International was among the world’s leading conglomerates.
 
It included a commercial airline, office and condominium complexes, textile and steel mills and, soon, WestTex Incorporated—one of the country’s largest shipping corporations.
 
With this building on Fifth Avenue, all that stood in George Redman’s way was the future.
 
And by all appearances, it was as bright as the diamonds Celina had chosen to wear later that evening.

####

Thank you for purchasing and reading “Fifth Avenue.”
 
I hope you enjoyed it.
 

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Below is the second in the Fifth Avenue series, the Wall Street thriller “Running of the Bulls.”
 
Look for the third in the series, Park Avenue, in 2012.