“I’m afraid there’s more.”
“No!” I cried. “I know more than I want to now!”
Willie knelt beside me, put his arm across my shoulders. “All right,” he whispered. “How small you are, Perse. And how very female.” It was this quality that had attracted him so powerfully when we had first met. “You need to be protected,” he had once told me long ago, “from everyone who’ll want a piece of you because of your talent.” He’d sucker-punched me, in an emotional manner of speaking. Because what he had meant was “I can make you into anything I want.” And in the beginning he had been right. He could see that I was all too delighted to let him make the hard choices. Being an orphan had drained me, and falling into evil on the street had taken whatever had been left. It was as if he had lifted an insupportable weight off me. What had resulted was a folie á deux.
“Why?” I whispered. “Why didn’t we know all this before the wedding?”
“It took all this time for Yates to get the goods.” Willie kissed my temple. “It wasn’t easy. Initially, he hit a stone wall; Eddie’s clever, I’ll give him that. But Ross is smart. That’s why I hired him. It’s Eddie’s clients who made it so difficult for Yates to find out what he is. It’s his clients who are protecting him. If he goes down, they’ll follow. They can’t afford to let that happen.”
I turned to him. “What-what d’you mean?”
“I can’t go to the police with this. Ross hasn’t given me any proof that’ll stand up with the DA.”
“Meaning?” I knew a weak spot when I saw one. Willie had made certain of that.
He shrugged. “You don’t know Ross. He sometimes uses methods that are… well, let’s just say not open to the cops.” There was that tone again, putting me in my proper place, protecting me from the world. “But it doesn’t matter. Even if he had, he’s assured me no one would listen. It’s been hushed up.”
“Oh, Willie-“
He picked me up tenderly and carried me across the threshold into the bedroom. He kissed my cheeks and damp forehead as he placed me into bed. How he adored me when I was utterly helpless. I could see him melt like ice cream in the sun.
“What about Caro?” I whispered up into his face. “What’ll happen now?”
“Don’t worry.” He held my hand while he peered into my eyes. “I’ll go talk to Eddie. He’s venal. I’ll make him an offer.” A grim smile shone down on me. “The boy will recognise what’s best for his own interests.” He patted me. “Now go to sleep, Perse. I’ll take care of everything. I promise. I’ve always been right, haven’t I?”
I nodded. I watched him as he went into the bathroom, unfastening his silk braces. I heard him turn on the taps, then unzip his cosmetics kit bag. When he came out, my eyes were closed and I made sure my breathing was slow and steady.
As soon as Willie left the suite, I jumped out of bed.
In the bathroom, I turned on the light and rummaged through his kit bag. It was oversized, custom made for him from stiff belting leather. I pushed aside shave cream, styptic pencil, dental floss. My fingertips found the hidden tab and I pulled. The zipper went right around the circumference of the bottom, revealing the pouch in which he kept his gun. Ever since he’d gotten the E-mail death threats a year ago, he’d obtained a permit and carried the.25-caliber Glock with him at all times.
I checked twice to make sure. The gun was gone. I hurried back into the bedroom.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls… I thought.
In the living room, one lamp was on. Within the halo of light it threw on the carpet, I could see the blue-white papers of Ross Yates’s fateful report. I carefully gathered them up, placing the last page on top.
Ross Yates was nothing if not thorough. He’d discovered more than Willie had seen fit to tell me. Eddie had been previously married-to a woman both rich and young. She had died in a sailing incident. In heavy weather, the boom had caught her on the side of the head and she’d been pitched overboard. The Coast Guard had found no evidence of foul play, but the girl’s sister had tried to keep Eddie from inheriting. It was her contention that he’d murdered his wife. Her efforts, it seemed, had come to nothing.
Now Eddie was married to Caroline.
I stared at the typewritten words. I could imagine what had gone through Willie’s mind when he’d read this. All of his innate distrust of Eddie must have centered around this report. And God had hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
I hurried back into the bedroom, pulled on leggings and a clingy jersey top, slipped my feet into suede flats. I found that these simple acts left me breathless. I tried to calm myself with a mantra given to me by my yoga teacher, without success. I opened up a box in the closet, grabbed the black suede clutch bag that lay within, then, without a sound, I ran very quickly out of the hotel room.
Willie and I had secured for the newlyweds the presidential suite, a truly vast set of rooms that took up an entire corner of the hotel’s penthouse floor. It was just for the wedding night. Late this afternoon, Caroline and Eddie would fly to Tortola, where he had a sailboat ready to take them through the Caribbean for two weeks.
I took the stairs. That made good sense, since I had insisted that Willie book the suite directly below.
The hallway carpeting was even thicker here on the top floor of the hotel. I went quickly and silently to the impressive double doors of the presidential suite. Glancing behind me down the empty corridor, I put my ear against the wooden door. I found that I was trembling.
Almost of its own accord, my slender shoulder pushed against the door. Unlocked and unlatched, it opened inward.
On the threshold, I paused. The slice of semidarkness beyond the door spilled over my feet, as if a grasping hand was pulling me inward. I felt as if I stood on the brink of another world, one that, even now when I confronted it, seemed inconceivable. I was reminded of Ross Yates’s description of scuba diving. “The ocean is the great unknown,” he had told me one morning over coffee. “It’s dark and it’s cold and there are things down there-creatures we can’t even imagine. But I can because I’ve seen them. That’s why I get off on it.”
Holding my breath, I slipped my body sideways through the opening and plunged into the unknown. I stood absolutely still. I listened while the suite breathed. It was like the sound of a sick person on life support.
What came to me at length was a sob. It was a sound so stifled I swear I felt my heart constrict.
“Caro?”
With my musician’s ear, tone was something I could identify in a heartbeat. I had recognised my daughter’s voice.
“Caro!”
My daughter’s voice was muffled by the bathroom door. “Caro, darling.” A swhimpering wrenched at my heart. “What are you doing in there, sweetheart? Please come out.” That’s when I saw the pale outline of the desk chair wedged under the doorknob.
“Get the hell away from there!”
I whirled, saw Willie standing in the open doorway to the master bedroom of the suite.
“I locked her in.”
I moved to pull the chair away, but he grabbed my wrist.
“For her own protection, Perse. She would have tried to save him.”
That was when I saw the gun in his hand. “What the hell have you done?”
“What had to be done.” How can I say this right? He was trembling from head to foot. Not with fear, but with elation. “I’ve freed her.” He meant Caro, of course. He was not wrong there.
“For God’s sake, Perse. I have it all worked out. Why did you come up here? I told you I’d take care of everything. You were meant to sleep through it all.”
I pulled away from him, and went into the bedroom. At first I saw very little. Willie or perhaps Caro had pulled the heavy drapes back so that the city’s lights spangled the raindrops on the windowpanes, sending golden fingers into the darkness. I saw the huge bed with its rucked sheets. I walked slowly around the foot as if drawn by a magnet toward the far side. But then, death is the most powerful kind of magnet, isn’t it?