Vienna (21 page)

Justine smirked. “You make it sound rather lackluster.”

“My brother once told me his talent is seeing the exact moment when a woman is more math than biology. He says topology is erotic to the hindbrain. It appeals to primordial pattern recognition and survival instincts.” Emily sipped the sorbet from her spoon. “Whatever the case, there are usually fifteen or sixteen worthwhile pictures from a given shoot. With you, George agonizes over thirty.”

“Out of hundreds taken.”

“Thou too are mortal.”

“I just want to know what the police said about Sinoro.” Vienna's voice sounded pouty to her own ears, something else she was learning to hate.

“He had a room at the Airport Ibis. In that room, he had a notepad. And on that notepad, he had written: ‘J.D. 4:30, Ruben's House, Antwerp. Joan: Hg—.247 ounces. Au—.035 ounces.' Does it mean anything to you?”

Vienna shook her head. “No.”
J.D.—Julian Dardonelle!
The connection came a second after she spoke.

“Since you would be a worse liar than your girl, I believe you,” Emily said. “Sinoro had also written a large block of uppercase letters. Perhaps a code or just as likely a random doodle. The London boys couldn't make heads or tails of it, so they gave me scratch paper and let me play with it for a while. I gave up after a couple of hours but somehow pocketed a copy.”

“Illegally,” Justine said.

“You going to turn me in?”

“Do you have it with you?” Vienna asked.

“Yes.”

“May I see it?”

Emily reached down to her plain bag and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. She opened it just long enough for Vienna to see a large block of letters. “You can study it all you want if you tell me what's going on.” She folded it closed.

Justine remained silent, and once again Vienna felt a gentle squeeze on her knee. The way seemed difficult, but Vienna came up with a way to change the topic like Justine was always doing. “I may have made a mistake with Sinoro.”

“No ‘may' about it. But given that one photographer is already dead, this might affect me more than you.”

“I don't think so,” Vienna said, gaining confidence. “A lot of people photograph Justine. Only one has been murdered.”

Emily looked at Justine. “You know this is no fluke.”

“Then let her protect you in her own way,” Justine said.

“I'm going to keep digging.”

“Why risk ending up like Sinoro?”

“I'm too smart.”

“Smarts don't help breathing under water. Let it go. We aren't in any direct danger.”

“Why are you keeping secrets?”

Justine smiled. “You know that fairy tale about London cops casually letting you see evidence from an ongoing murder investigation? Never happens this side of Hollywood.”

Emily's spoon dipped into the sorbet again. “But it sounded so good.”

“You have your own secrets.”

“Bet mine are more harmless,” Emily said.

“Bet Gary Sinoro would agree,” Justine answered.

Back at the hotel, Vienna felt the weight of the day. Every breath a prelude to a yawn.

“Did you get it?” Justine asked.

“Get what?”

“Emily's letters.”

“Yes. But I can't make anything of it. It may not be in English,” Vienna said.

“I think it is. Sinoro certainly understood it, or some of it anyway.”

“It's a code then, and I hate codes.”

“Could you put it on my computer?”

“Not tonight.”

Justine closed her eyes for a second. “There will be time later.”

Vienna turned her thoughts inward. An agate bowl and a unicorn horn in a museum. But no star. There was a reason, but there seemed no way to rediscover it. Caught between exhaustion and Justine's verbal tricks and the onset of cramps, she gave up and went to bed.

Emily's square of letters flickered through layers of REM. Vienna was in the Cart House chapel with ruby sunlight coming through stained glass. The room was empty except for her and Uncle Anson, and for once the telly was off. Laughter drifting in from a distant corner of the Cart House, where men often played cards. She was showing the block of letters to Lord Davy. They had been written on a single piece of paper and put in a huge, boring book that was written in that old-fashioned style where every “S” was an “F.” She thought the book was about prayers you had to say every hour so that God would like you.

“What does this mean?” She held the loose paper up to Uncle Anson.

“Why are you reading such boring tomes?” He took the paper from her. “There are more exciting things for our little princess to look at. Here we have a history of knights in shining armor. Isn't that more fun?”

She inhaled warm pine resin, drifting from sun-washed trees beyond the windows. Birds singing in the formal garden. Davy's oversized book was heavy in her lap. It opened to a picture of sixteenth-century plate mail made in a place called Styria.

Salet, Bevor, Pauldron …

She turned the page and there was that picture of Justine, skipping next to the manikin in Prague. And Justine was looking at the camera so she couldn't see that the manikin was moving behind her. Wooden arms reaching out, fingers curled into hooks.

 

17

Midnight left two e-mails on Justine's BlackBerry. The first from Emily:

I'm cheering for her, but don't go mental trying to fix something you didn't break.

Justine glanced over at the bed; Vienna curled in her fetal tuck. Hair falling from her temple to her eyes. On cue, Vienna's body spasmed tight in the grip of a nightmare. How terrible must this have been when she lived alone in Brussels? Justine went to her side, brushing her hair. “Shh. I'm here. It's only a dream.” Vienna's muscles went limp and she took a deep breath. “It's okay, Vienna.” Her breathing steadied.

Emily was right; Vienna's troubles weren't going to simply fade away. Justine thought of Simone back in Tribeca. Still the obvious choice and still the wrong one.

More and more, she didn't want to think about it. She returned to the table.

The second e-mail had a URL of alphanumerics. A week ago, Justine would have deleted it. Now there wasn't anything else to look at.

There was no salutation.

There comes a time in an old man's life when fear of his foster daughter's dating is overshadowed by fear that she will wither away in gray spinsterhood. If the old man is powerful, he has the means to see this does not happen. I was employed as one such means.

We sent her to Brussels, believing it a healthier environment for a young woman than Berlin or Paris. Far enough away to force her to begin her own life, but close enough to come to her aid. We forced her to find employment in an attempt to draw her from seclusion. When that failed, we began sending well-healed men in her direction. The girl is pretty enough and her excessive shyness is considered fetching by some. Inevitably the situation soured. Failure to elicit a response, even a negative one, is the worst form of assault upon the male ego.

I suggested she might prefer women. My patron was not amused, but as months passed, anxiety overcame objection. The results, while different in degree, were identical in substance. Women found her as boring as Parliament.

We retreated to getting her involved in any social arena at all. She would meet the most caring of her peers, Cecile, with the hope that some bond of friendship might form. Best laid plans and all. Cecile kicked up a loose cobble, leaving her less altruistic companions to meet Vienna. In what I gather was a moment of youthful spite, they sent you headlong into our project.

We assumed the rich model would move on. But after our clash in Brussels, I looked into the matter. I hardly expected to find top marks at the Stanford School of Medicine, despite being admitted at the age of sixteen. Nor that a term short of graduating you would suddenly depart.

It was bad enough that you were a woman, unthinkable that you were American, and distasteful that you were a creature of the mass media. Such is our well-deserved reward for meddling.

Given the girl's clinging desire for your company, my patron has made peace with circumstance. I leave you with a final plea on the girl's behalf. In the course of maturation, there lies a sharp distinction between
want
and
love
. I understand how harsh this must sound, but her heart can break over merely wanting a thing. I don't think yours can. If you must leave, the sooner the better.

As you have guessed, there is money behind our girl. Her foster father is Arthur Grayfield, of whom you can discover everything you might wish by checking his foundation's website. For now it is enough that he is wealthy and that a portion of that wealth will be used to assist Vienna as my patron sees fit. If you wish to contact me, you have this address and she has my number. I wrote it for her once and I doubt she has forgotten it.

I remain,

Your humble servant;

Lord Wanker

So Lord Davy was the hidden general, sliding Vienna to Brussels like a plastic marker on a battlefield map. He put her in Holler the night they met. Didn't that make him the enemy? Justine looked at the letter again. No obvious connection between Lord Anson Davy, Knight Companion of the Garter, and David Andries, Minister of the Cheap Scam. Hard to imagine them sharing dry martinis at the bar; the murderous con man and the … whatever Lord Davy was. Something beyond the event horizon that separated the ostentatious from the powerful.
I could ring Davy up and ask.

Justine sat up. Call Davy. No, not Lord Davy. David Andries.

Andries, at least in his Grant Eriksson persona, believed three was his lucky number. He'd worked eight of them into his phone number. Justine was certain it had surfaced since his murder. Someplace it shouldn't have been. Had Davy mentioned it?

The more Justine pushed, the more distant the memory became. She gave up when the BlackBerry's clock hit one. Vienna was still curled up, unaware of the strings that had looped themselves around her.
What should I do with you?

Any pretense of a typical relationship, even allowing same sex standards, was out of the question.
Was it even moral to be with Vienna?
Lord Davy publically accepted it, even joked about it. He should know, shouldn't he? Assuming he was on her side, which looked more questionable by the second.

Eight threes …

Justine stripped down and stepped into the shower. Off to Iceland tomorrow evening. Three days there, and then to Vienna. Then, one way or another, it would be over. She let blood-warm water run over her as sleep came on. Willed it to wash away the fear she had soaked up from Vienna.

By morning, London was finally London. Gray streets under gray buildings under a gray sky. A shadow-girl at the laptop. Justine couldn't help a smile at the unaffected charm of Vienna's concentration. Useless but oh-so-stylish glasses and fingers mussing her hair. Her nails carefully trimmed.

“What are you working on, lover?”

“Lover?” Vienna's panic meter jumped to wounded impala at a lion convention.

“Isn't that what we are? Lovers?”

“But, I can't! I'm sorry.”

Justine wrapped her arms around the girl. “You're being silly.”

Vienna's breathing slowed. “After what you said at dinner I thought … I can take medicine so I never have another one, if you want.”

“I do not want. Your hormones are part of you. Drugs that stop them are not.”

Vienna frowned. Her voice was heavy. “It's harder not knowing the right questions than not knowing the right answers.”

“Questions and answers will come.” Justine released her. “What are you working on?”

“The block of letters that Emily got from Gary Sinoro's room.”

Justine looked at the screen.

MOEEEXLHWTCIESXKQTKTTHTIOEKRBZIQVAMMOIAPMCXVJCMSHMLS

FWYUKKICXATALWTKZOYWSHIDTALWPEDEMOIXIMSNYIDWFAKAATXT

TALWFRMNWPRELQOKKICSRTALTWEZEMZEYHMLPHCDEETALTWEZEMZ

QZZQOGLXZQQALBVPHUSMHRNIANXASXIMSNYIEMYEBUXSIOIMF

SQXTEPOMEIIAESWOMPMXUIDAQAKAMPWFAKVJSSDULHVZYZ

DAPWYIOKAPWASIEKPWZYDSWVASEFTAVYHMXTILENINRH

ALPVEAGKWTWFEKZFPPUEOLEWPYIZOXMIYAWLPPZQL

Words surfaced from the random background. “Lenin,” she said, pointing to the end of the sixth row.

“What?”

“You know. Vladimir Ilyich? Famous revolutionary and dictator of the Russian persuasion? Maestro of the Red Terror? That has to be important.”

“The word ‘vase' appears ten letters before. Are we going to look for suspicious flowers next? Don't be daffy.” The change in temper came breathlessly fast.

Justine snapped back. “Vienna, it can't be coincidence.”

“Yes it can. Any idiot would see that.”

“Well, thanks for your support. What do you make of it?”

“It's a code.”

“You think?”

Sarcasm was lost on Vienna. “The underlying pattern is too strong for chance.”

Justine looked at the letters. “I don't see it.”

Vienna's voice took a brittle edge. “The sequence ‘TAL' appears five times, each repeating letter separated by fourteen, then twenty-eight, then twice by twenty-one letters.” She took a quick breath, rocking back and forth. “The letters ‘MOI' appear twice, forty-nine letters apart. ‘KKI' is separated by sixty-three letters. ‘VJ' is also duplicated once; 196 letters apart. The longest repeating string is ‘TALTWEZEMZ,' which is separated by twenty-one letters.”

“I can't see all that.”

Vienna slapped keys to put the letters in lowercase.