“We keep missing each other,” said Hart. “Where are you? David said you were coming back to New York tonight.”
“I just got in. I’m in a cab, just a few blocks from the apartment.”
“You’re not going back there, are you?” asked Hart, worried. “After your place was broken into, I thought you were staying in a hotel.”
“I did, for a couple of days, but I couldn’t stay there forever. I have to see you. I know it’s late, but is it possible tonight? I’ve just gotten something-I was in D.C. and…well, never mind, I’ll explain later. But it changes everything, all of it, The Four Sisters-the whole story about what happened that night. Look, can you come now, right away-my place on Sixty-third? You’ve been there before. Half an hour? Perfect. I’ll see you then.”
Burdick began to relax. He had his story, the story of a lifetime, and as for the rest of it, Bobby Hart would know what to do, how to stop what had started from going any further. He paid the cab driver and got out in front of the pre-war building on East Sixty-third where he had lived for the better part of the last twenty years. He was home, and even if, unlike California, the heat was almost as bad late at night as it was during the day, he could not imagine living anywhere other than Manhattan. Though he could not sing a note, the words “I like New York in June,” ran through his eager mind as if he were sitting somewhere in a jazz joint listening to some kid, some bright new talent, play a riff of it on the piano.
“Hello, Mr. Burdick,” said a woman with a soft, breathless voice.
He was just at the entrance, on the first of the three short steps that led to the door. He turned and saw a late-night apparition, a gorgeous young woman in a blue silk dress. She had that expensive New York look, a woman who was used to money.
“Good evening,” said Burdick, smiling to himself at how much she reminded him of the endless, priceless vanity of things, the way the city drew everyone to it, the promise of what was just waiting for you to take it, if you were young and ambitious and beautiful and rich.
“I love reading the things you write,” she said, sliding closer.
She had the brightest, most entrancing smile Burdick thought he had ever seen. She was still smiling at him, looking right in his eyes, when he realized that he had seen her before, seen her in photographs, six of them.
“You-!” he cried out, and then he felt it, the gun pressed hard against his stomach, and then, an instant later, everything went black and he did not feel anything.
Several people passed by on the sidewalk while Quentin Burdick’s dead body lay on the landing, three steps up, but if any of them noticed, none of them stopped. He lay there in a pool of blood, his eyes frozen in a vacant stare, until a cab pulled up and Bobby Hart arrived. Before Hart was halfway across the sidewalk, he knew that Burdick was dead. He bent down beside him to make sure, and then called 911. He did not think that it was a robbery, but he checked for Burdick’s wallet just to make sure. It was still in his jacket pocket and Burdick’s watch was still on his wrist. David Allen had told him something about a package that Burdick had treated as if it were the most valuable thing he owned. Hart glanced around, but there was nothing there; if Burdick had had it with him, it was gone.
He wanted to close Quentin Burdick’s eyes, to give him that much peace, but he reminded himself that this was now a murder scene and he had better not do anything more than he already had. So he sat down on the step and in the humid summer heat waited for the police, promising himself, and promising his friend Quentin Burdick, that this was going to be one New York murder that did not go unsolved. Then he pulled out his cell phone and called Austin Pearce.
“Quentin Burdick has been murdered. We better leave tonight.”
Chapter Sixteen
Laura tried to make a joke of it, teasing him about flying off to Paris with Austin Pearce instead of her, when he called from the airport to tell her where he was going, but he did not laugh, and she knew that something serious had happened.
“What is it, Bobby?-Tell me.”
“Quentin Burdick-he’s been murdered.”
“Murdered, like the others, like the president, like…?”
“I found him on the steps to his building.” He did not add any of the details. He did not want to tell her, and she did not want to know. “It’s all connected somehow: what happened to Constable, what happened to Frank Morris…and now Quentin Burdick. I have to find out. Whatever is going on, someone has to stop it.”
She wanted to tell him that someone else could do it, she wanted to tell him to come home, tell him that she could not survive if anything happened to him, but she knew that if stayed home safe he would think himself a coward, and so she did not tell him anything except that she loved him and wished he did not have to go.
“Go home tomorrow,” he told her; “go home to Santa Barbara. I’ll fly out as soon as I get back.”
There was a long pause. There was something he did not want to tell her, something that she had already heard in his voice.
“You don’t think it’s safe here; you think that the same people who murdered Quentin Burdick might be coming after you! That’s why you don’t want me to stay, why you want me to leave.”
“Promise me-you’ll go tomorrow, first thing.”
“I’ll need to phone the airline, I’ll need-”
“It’s been taken care of. You’re on a ten o’clock flight. Now try to get some sleep. I’ll be back before you know it.”
Laura slept, but only for a few minutes at a time, and even then she might as well have been awake, the only difference whether what she feared the most darkened her imagination or came to her in dreams. Bobby slept, but only for the last two hours of the flight, and only then because he knew he needed it to get through what he knew was waiting for him in Paris. After five minutes with the American ambassador he began to wonder if any amount of rest would have helped him keep his eyes open. Andrew Malreaux was among the most profoundly dull-witted men he had ever met.
“France is a really interesting country,” remarked the ambassador as if he were sharing a fact that not many people knew or could be expected to know. “Interesting people, interesting buildings, interesting food-interesting language, too, once you get the hang of it.” He said this with a bright, confidential look, as of one who has, after some effort, achieved the competence required to make a considered judgment.
In response, Austin Pearce spoke to him in near perfect French. The ambassador squinted and nervously scratched his chin.
“I got some of that,” he said, confirming with a silent nod of his head that he had indeed understood at least a few of the words.
Pearce beamed approval.
“Your French lessons are coming along, then? You’ve certainly improved.”
“Yes, well, I work hard at it. One of these days, I might even catch up with you, Austin. You never know.”
“That’s true, Andrew: You never do. We don’t want to take up any more of your time. Did you have a chance to arrange to have…?”
The ambassador stared at him, waiting to be reminded what it was he was supposed to have done.
“You were going to have someone brief us on someone. I’m sure you didn’t forget.”
“No, of course not. That was…?”
“Jean de la Valette, the head of a banking firm that the senator wants to know more about.”
“Valette! Yes, of course. Follow me.” He turned and led his two visitors down a long hallway. “The head of our political section-Aaron Wolfe, very intelligent fellow: Yale, Yale Law-has put something together.” He stopped in front of the second door from the end. “Poor Robert Constable! He had it all, and then, just like that, he’s gone. Tell me, are the rumors true: Was there a woman with him that night-is that how he died? I imagine that’s the way he would have wanted to go. He always did like a good piece of ass.” Malreaux started to smile at the thought of it, but the smile died on his lips. “I have to admit, though, I didn’t much like it when he made a pass at my wife.”