“How much information you have on the red names?” I asked to cover the epiphany.
“Almost everything. Addresses, cell phone numbers, even birthdays. There’s also a history list of the ‘tasks’ they were involved in.”
“Take the data from this pyramid and print it out like a report. Have it delivered to my office.”
I put my black hands on the white table, ready to rise and run.
“What about my question, LT?”
I sat back and gazed at the butterball who had exercised himself into the form of a demigod. He was still a child in my eyes. It struck me that Twill had never been that innocent.
“Why you got explosives knitted into every wall in your house, Tiny?”
“For protection.”
“That’s right. You know that you got a house full’a treasure. There are things you know that nobody else does. That’s valuable and dangerous.”
“So?”
“Now think about Zephyra. She can go out with sheiks and kings, princes and billionaires, but she took you.”
“And she still goes out with them.”
“And so you hit the detonator and blow it all to shit. Live with it, brother, or find a new way.”
45
Bug and I separated at Hudson and Charles, where he turned to visit the old building that he maintained for storage. I suspected that he was going there to gorge on the pie.
I continued up Hudson double-thumbing my phone as I went.
“Is anything wrong, Mr. McGill?” she asked on the sixth ring.
“How’s the southern hemisphere?” I asked.
“We’re on a deserted beach,” Zephyra said, a little breathless. “It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. Have you ever been here?”
“South Africa, yeah,” I said. “But what I saw was not beautiful.”
“Is there something wrong?”
“I think it’s time for you to come home, Z.”
“But I just got here.”
“I know. But you leaving hit Bug so hard I don’t think he’ll make through all those nights. Know what I mean?”
“I can’t put my life on hold for some guy who never learned how to take one step at a time,” she said coolly. “I like David but I don’t owe him anything.”
“That’s a fact,” I agreed. “But there’s another one.”
“What’s that?”
“If David fell back in on himself and I didn’t tell you about it first, I might lose the best Telephonic and Computer Personal Assistant I ever had.”
She took a beat to digest my words and then asked, “Do you need anything else?”
“If you have the time.”
“He’ll fly me back on the private jet,” she said. “I can do everything over the Internet on the eight-hour flight.”
“It’s more like eleven, isn’t it?”
“Not if you fly in an SST.”
I called the Hotel Brown, got connected to Marella’s room, and had her order champagne, oysters, and caviar — all on ice.
“Are we celebrating?” she asked.
“It’s more like a going-away party.”
“Are we going somewhere?”
“Just me,” I said. “Just for the day tomorrow.”
“That hardly rates a party.”
“There’s a celebration in my heart every time I see you, girl.”
“You’re not going to start talking about love, are you?”
“What’s love got to do with it?”
Katrina sounded truly sad that I wasn’t coming home.
“Sorry, honey,” I said, making a rare apology for an absence. “But I have to go down to Philly to tie up some loose ends. You and Clarence can go out to dinner or something.”
“Bill went home this morning. He told me that he wanted you to call.”
“You got his number?”
“Hold on.”
“No, Katrina. Just text it to me. I’ll call him when I can.”
“I have a lot to talk to you about, Leonid.”
“I’ll be back in a day or so.”
Marella and I nibbled and sipped the icy treats and then we had sex like two lifers allowed their first conjugal visit in years.
I left her asleep in the bedroom of her suite at 5:30 the next morning, but before I was out the door she called to me, “Lee?”
She was standing three steps behind me, naked.
“What?” I asked.
“Where are you going?”
“Down to Philly.”
“Eddie and Camille again?”
I was surprised that she remembered my little story on the train. Then I remembered that she was a con artist; that meant she had to remember everything, both truth and lie.
“Yeah, it seems like Eddie had some unfinished business with a guy selling protection in the mall. I’m going down there to take an elevator ride with him.”
“Be careful,” she said sweetly, standing there naked, knowing that she was gravity — a force that a fool like me could never break.
The Acela first-class waiting room offered mediocre coffee, loud businessmen and — women who felt that they had to shout to be heard on cell phone calls, and a large space with a big TV that was almost always dialed in to the news. Luckily there was a smaller area with two round tables separated from the television and its loyal acolytes.
Johnny Nightly was sitting at the table closest to the entrance, reading a newspaper and looking like a GQ ad.
I checked in with the concierge and went over to Johnny (whom I had called the night before between bouts with the lovely if loveless Marella).
“LT.”
“Johnny.”
“The ticket Zephyra sent me says DC.”
“Mine too.”
“What we got on the itinerary?”
I explained as well as I could. When I finished Johnny simply nodded. Not long after that the train was announced and we, Johnny and I, boarded the first-class car for the three-hour ride down south.
We sat in single seats that faced each other over a table that was little more than a tray.
Johnny brought out a magnetic chess set with red and white plastic pieces that he’d owned since he was a boy of six. Back then, maybe forty years ago, Mrs. Nightly would bring the boy once a week to visit his father at Sing Sing. She would sit off to the side as Ring, the boy’s father, taught Johnny the nuances of chess.
Time allowing, Johnny still visits on Thursdays to play his old man.
He gave me a choice of hands. I got white and we applied our wills against each other for nearly the full ride. In two and a half hours we made twenty-five moves.
My iPad told me that Zephyra had traced credit card charges attributed to Melbourne Westmount Ericson to the bar at the Crown Hotel almost every weekday going back a year or more. She’d also sent a few photographs of the man in question. He was short for a man but tall for me, flesh-colored like the old-time Crayola crayon, and had a build that workingmen around the world maintain to keep their jobs if not their dignity. Even his tailor-made suit couldn’t hide the bulge of his belly.
Outside the hotel I asked Johnny if he had his gun.
“Two,” the good son replied.
I was also armed. As a rule I didn’t carry firearms across state borders but sometimes you find that you just have to cross that line.
We decided that Johnny should go into the bar first and set himself up at a point advantageous for interference if things went sideways. I introduced myself to the clerk at the front desk of the posh hotel and asked for group rates if my organization, the Benevolent Association of Landscape Artists of Color, decided to have our annual convention there. I had a business card that identified me as the secretary of that organization. There was also a website and an answering service to cover me.