West 47th (38 page)

“If I had the emeralds why should I give them to you for a million when I could get twenty-five million for them?”

“Because you're not greedy. Because the million I'd pay you wouldn't come with any bad feelings along with it, no hurt, nothing like that. Because you don't need the money. You got a rich wife, who, by the way, you should worry about when she goes out shopping and places. Even in the daytime, on any street, you should worry about the wrong people fucking with her.”

Riccio's brain was rotten, Mitch thought. There were calluses on his eyes. He was eaten with pathology, putrefied by habit, perhaps by birth. The air that had the misfortune of being sucked into him came out contaminated. He had a wife and children he kissed, a priest he confessed to, holy water went to his head, the chamber of his rottenness, each week.

“How about it?” Riccio pressed.

“No deal,” Mitch replied unequivocally. He was surprised how much pleasure he got out of telling Riccio that, how angry and yet calm he was. “And, as for my wife,” he said, “I'll look out for her. Anyway, no need for me to worry about her for a while.” He paused and did a smug punishing smile, “She's leaving tonight to spend some time in France … with her mother.”

Chapter 27

Shortly before nine that night she came out of the Sherry. Her luggage had preceded her and Billy and the doorman had loaded it into the trunk of the Lexus.

She was wearing an outfit suitable for traveling: slacks and a pullover and an amply cut, lightweight, long coat. Her hair was contained in a latter-day cloche.

When she reached the curb she hesitated in order to adjust her dark glasses. The open, rear door of the Lexus awaited her. Her right hand searched and found the upper part of the car's frame along the roofline before she ducked down and got in.

Caselli and Fratino, Riccio's two have-arounds, were parked across the avenue. When the Lexus pulled out they followed along behind. Crosstown to the FDR Drive and up to and over the Triborough and all the way to Kennedy to the TWA terminal.

“Maybe she really ain't going,” Fratino said.

Caselli agreed.

They watched Billy help get her luggage checked at the curb. A TWA courtesy attendant showed up with a wheelchair. She refused it. The attendant guided her. Through the automatic doors and on into the terminal.

Caselli stayed with the car.

Fratino got out and followed her. That she had checked some luggage didn't prove anything. The luggage could make the trip without her.

Fratino followed her to the security pass-through and on to the gate. The attendant remained with her. She was traveling first-class, could board then or later. She waited to be last, then she and the attendant entered the boarding ramp and were out of sight.

Within a short while the attendant emerged and the doors to the boarding ramp were closed.

Fratino was beginning to believe. He watched from a window as the 747 disconnected and pulled away. As it taxied out to the runway he thought he caught a glimpse of her in a window seat of the first-class section.

Still, he waited, allowed more than enough time for a takeoff before going to the nearby bank of telephones to call Riccio.

“The cunt's gone,” he said.

“What did you do to her?”

“I didn't do nothing to her. I'm at Kennedy. She got on a plane and it took off.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

Chapter 28

At that moment Mitch and Maddie were going seventy-five through the heavy night air, northbound on the Taconic State Parkway. The unrelenting growl of the Harley beneath them seemed strong and reassuring, as though declaring
make way, I'm carrying my owners to safety
.

They arrived at Kinderhook and Uncle Straw's house at half past eleven. The house was summer stuffy from having been shut up for several days, so, first thing, they went about opening windows to allow the slight breezes from the west across the Hudson to flow through.

Maddie turned down the bedcovers in their usual room, second floor rear. Mitch, meanwhile, made some toasted cheese sandwiches and brought them up on a tray. Oven-warmed potato chips, two sweating bottles of St. Pauli Girl.

“Want some music?” he asked.

“Got some,” she replied, meaning the chorus of the pastoral night being performed by the tiny creatures moving about enormously brave deep among the grasses and perched higher upon the platforms of leaves.

Mitch placed the tray upon the table by the window. He lighted an old glass oil lamp and switched off the electric ones, thinking it would lend to the mood. He was immediately reminded that lighting did not matter to Maddie. It had been a while since he'd made such an oversight.

“I smell an oil lamp,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“That's one of the countless things I love about you,” she smiled, “you have a sense for the appropriate.”

Somehow she knows when I need to be saved, Mitch thought. The oil lamp was smoking, blackening its glass chimney. He reduced the wick.

They ate in silence. Mitch observed her. Actually, it was more an examination the way he employed his sighted advantage, took lengthy notices of her various features, appreciating them so much and focusing so intensely upon them that at times they seemed magnified. The left corner of her mouth, the perfect crease of it that made a faultless transition to her cheek. It alone momentarily occupied his entire visual field. As did the textures of her various parts. The space between her eyelid and brow. Her instrumental hands.

He rode her finger up to her teeth. Caught a glimpse of the slick pink pillow of her tongue. His thought came with an ache. I won't let anyone harm her, he vowed. They'll have to go through me, over me.

He loathed being reminded by his practical side they would probably do just that.

He left the oil lamp burning when they went to bed. Its captive flame projected a shadowy ring upon the ceiling. Maddie snuggled into the cave of his arm and fell asleep quickly. He was left awake with his worry. Shirley was thirty-five thousand feet over the Atlantic. Riccio's have-arounds had bought the impersonation. They wouldn't be coming this night. This night was a stay; he could rest easy.

Still, when he finally gave in to sleep he remained in the shallows.

The birds woke him at dawn with their chirping. He got up, dressed quietly and went down to grind some coffee and set it to brewing. He stood there at the kitchen counter as though caught in a spell by the explosive hisses and drips of the automatic coffee maker. His mind felt dull and vulnerable, a heavy head. The glass pot seemed to be purposely slow to fill. He couldn't wait for it, went out onto the covered rear porch, intending to go back inside shortly and pour himself a cup.

His legs, however, as though they were independent and, at that moment, in charge, took him down the porch steps and across the wide rear lawn to a gated opening in the neatly masoned brick wall on the south. That gave to a buffer of mowed meadow and a piled rock wall beyond which lay the expansive area where the neighbor's cows were permitted to pasture.

The cows.

The sight of them caused both his mind and body to brighten and snap into alignment for this day. They were mere black and whites in the distance, being let out; however there was no mistaking they might be other than cows.

He had patience for them, could have stood and waited for all the time it would take for them to make their slow amble to him. A large herd. How many? Fifty at least, more.

He strode right at them and soon was among them. They with only slight or no acknowledgment of him, the most meager curiosity. Their huge dark eyes. Their barreled girths and bony rumps. Tails switching out of habit.

Mitch was lost in them, their simple worthiness. They were so removed from diamonds, emeralds and such, and above all, threat-less.

He circled back to the piled rock wall and walked along beside it for quite a ways. He climbed up onto it and sighted across the West Meadow, that large gently undulating open area of crotch-high grass that he'd waded the weekend before last. No trace of his trek through it now. The grasses and the Queen Anne's lace that his weight and motion had injured had fully recovered.

He traversed the meadow by the old equipment barn where he'd taught Maddie to shoot, and entered the woods. The sun was not yet high enough to cause dapple. Patches where the branches did not umbrella still had some night wet on them. Offsprings of maples and oaks were submissive whips. The chatter of a squirrel. The metallic cry of a jay. The leaves of last year, superficially dry, damp a layer down, especially slippery on the inclines. And, underneath, the accumulated drop and rich decay of countless autumns, spongy.

About a quarter of a mile in ledges broke the regularity of the woods. Blocks of nearly black granite, more massive than high. A modular series of those individualized by their varying heights and defining faults. Water, from what seemed their secret source, seeped from them, ran down their faces, preferred the grooves of their fractures. Mitch's mouth was dry. He stood at the base of a ledge, leaned to it for his tongue to catch some of the trickle. He pressed his forehead against the rough wet. Closed his eyes and imagined his brain being bathed.

With his face dripping and shirt-front soaked, he followed one of the runoff gullies down to the lower land. The marsh there was at its summer low, having receded and left all the clumps of skunk cabbage standing on their roots like columns. The water of the marsh was no more than a foot or two deep out in its middle. It appeared blacker because of that, its surface closer to the black silt of the bottom.

Mitch found a fallen branch and used it to poke at the bottom. The branch went down into the silt easily, penetrated nearly a foot before it met resistance, and that was just there at the edge.

The bass croaks of frogs. Their frantic leaps for underwater. Mitch knew, of course, that he was not out on some empty-stomach, early morning hike. It was reconnaissance, looking at the lay of the land in a way that he had never perceived it. A battleground. If Riccio's have-arounds came, and chances were they eventually would, they'd outnumber him. He was desperately in need of allies. Possibly, he was finding some.

He crossed several clearings. One was particularly wide, had blackberries growing in a thorny patch. He picked as many as his hand could contain and ate them on the way out to the bluff overlooking the Hudson. The wide river, two hundred feet below, was silvery green. It seemed to be at a standstill. The deceptive river, hiding its currents. It was too formidable to be friendly, Mitch thought. He climbed down the bluff by way of the unapparent, back-and-forth trail that he was certain had once been used by the Mohicans. There was a more accessible, roundabout way down to the Strawbridge boathouse but Mitch had seldom used it.

The boathouse was a well-preserved wooden structure situated on a float that allowed it to adjust to the rise or fall of the river. It consisted of three slips below a room used for storing boating equipment, life jackets, oars, seat cushions, pennants and the like. Its interior smelled of oil and gasoline and baked wood. There were three boats:

Two were Chris-Craft speedboats: a relatively new one and a sixty-year-old classic. The other boat was far more ordinary: an outboard with a fiberglass hull. Mitch had been out in the Chris-Craft several times with Uncle Straw, but the outboard was the one they used to go upstream to fish the mouths of the tributaries for trout.

Mitch took a comprehensive look around the boathouse. Then climbed the bluff and went straight home. Maddie was in the kitchen, barefoot and half dressed. Her hair was spiking every which way. She was about to scramble a half dozen eggs. The butter in the pan was scorched. She poured the bowl of disturbed eggs into the pan and overdosed them with Worcestershire.

“Great coffee!” she said, raising her mug to the level of her smile.

Mitch poured some. It was a little too strong, on the bitter side. He was hungry, tempted to settle for a bowl of cereal and raisins; however he waited for her eggs, endured them with large bites and quick swallows. “Good eggs,” he fibbed.

She knew better. “You're nice,” she told him.

“What would you like to do today?” he asked.

“You,” she replied wickedly, “but later.”

There were three phone calls that morning. The first was from Shirley to say she was staying at a charming hotel off Boulevard St. Germain and that if she wasn't so worried about them she'd be having a marvelous time. When would this crisis be over? She'd met an extremely attractive businessman on the plane. Please let her know as soon as all was well so she could breathe easy and take full advantage of him.

The second call, not a half hour later, was from Uncle Straw and Wally, both on the line at the same time, so it was a four-way conversation. They'd done well at the casino in London, although actually, they hadn't spent all that much time at the tables. Now they were in Monaco, staying at the Hôtel de Paris, had been there two days and hardly been out of the suite. They had some surprising news, Straw said, and Maddie tried to drag it out of him, but he remained cryptic, would only say it was happy news, which caused Wally to confirm that it couldn't be happier. Maddie had all she could do to keep from guessing aloud that they were either married or had agreed to be. She was sure that was it, that Straw wanted to wait until he got home to more intimately share it. When were they coming home? They weren't sure, thought they might go on to Baden-Baden or somewhere or anywhere. They sounded so up.
Pick the tomatoes
were Straw's words before disconnecting.

The third call came an hour later. Mitch picked it up. His several hellos got no response. He heard background sounds and what he took to be breathing and then only dial tone.

“Who was that?” Maddie asked.

“A wrong number,” he told her.

While Maddie went out to the garden to pick some tomatoes, Mitch went into Straw's study. A cabinet there was where Straw kept his guns. Three shotguns, a rifle and four pistols. Mitch settled on a shotgun. The one he liked the weight and feel of was a Moss-berg 500 pump-action 12-gauge with a short eighteen-and-a-half-inch barrel. It wasn't loaded and there didn't seem to be any ammunition in the drawers of the cabinet.