And Sometimes I Wonder About You

33

The home behind the brick facade must have been an impressive Victorian at one time. The entrance hall was large, twenty-four feet deep and twenty-four yards wide, with a desk and secretary in each corner. Maybe eight yards from the wall on the left was a larger desk that was untenanted.

“Have a seat, Mr. McGill,” the black man in the better blue suit offered. He gestured at a box-shaped oak chair that had arms and a maroon pillow in the seat. This furniture was set before the larger, empty desk.

I did sit. From there I could appreciate the various office workers typing, talking on headset phones, and tracking unknown scenarios across broad computer screens.

“How may I help you?” my host asked. He lowered into a chair behind the formidable oak desk that was obviously the seat of his domain in the foyer of the Great Woman.

“Not at all,” I said, looking anywhere but at him.

“But you said you were here on the behalf of Hiram Stink.”

“Stent,” I corrected.

“So what can I do?”

“Either bring me to Ms. Evangeline Sidney-Gray or bring her here to me.”

The master of the reception area had a round head and long fingers. My head was more angular and my fingers could have been roughly rolled Cuban cigars.

“One does not just meet Ms. Gray or bring her anywhere,” the man said.

I noticed that the hubbub of the office area had slowed.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Mr. Richards.”

“Like in the Fantastic Four?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four,” I said as if I were talking Shakespeare to a cretin. “He married the Invisible Girl. She had a dalliance with the Sub-Mariner but finally came to her senses and married Mr. Fantastic.”

“My name is Henry Lawrence Richards.”

“Well, I tell you what, Reed. You call Ms. Gray and ask her if she’s willing to break protocol and meet some man off the street.”

Two big men walked up to the edge of a double-wide doorway opposite the knobless entry. Their dark suits were not as fine as Mr. Fantastic’s but still much better cuts than my poor ensemble. They were watched by the three women and one man stationed at the corner desks. The big men were looking at me but they refrained from actually entering the room.

“You will be talking to me,” the comic book hero said, “or you will be leaving.”

I luxuriated in the roomful of threats. My whole life had been spent in the company of enemies. If I listened to my father the whole world was my enemy; at least that’s what he used to say.

“A man named Hiram Stent,” I began, “approached me to locate a woman named Celia Landis. Ms. Landis it seems was the heir to a great fortune and she was Hiram’s distant cousin, though, before speaking to the representative of the lawyers from Briscoe/Thyme, he had not been aware of the relationship. He offered to pay me out of his finder’s fee but he wouldn’t obtain said fee unless he found Celia. I turned Hiram down and then someone broke into my office... Oh, yes, I’m a private detective. Anyway, someone broke into my office, knocked a hole in my wall, and murdered a young man who, though not legally married, had a significant other and three children. Hiram Stent was then slaughtered by persons unknown and a fellow named Josh Farth came to me and asked if I would find a woman named Coco Lombardi who fit the description of Celia to a tee.”

Staring at me with great concentration, Mr. Fantastic then raised both his palms and his eyebrows, asking, So what?

The big men took this as a sign to take three steps into the room.

“Briscoe/Thyme works solely for Ms. Gray. That means that she is the one who started the ball rolling; a big scary ball that has killed two men and which is headed for a young woman. I considered taking what information I have to the police but, as the policemen outside your door told me: Ms. Evangeline Sidney-Gray is an important woman. So I figured I should ask her what it is I should be doing. Now if Mr. Fantastic and two Things wish for me to depart, I’m willing to call the cops. Cops like to hear names associated with murders. They like to find missing persons and to press charges.”

The muscle had flanked the back of my box chair by then. They were ready to pluck me up and chuck me out the door.

“Send him up,” a dignified, if a bit wavering, woman’s voice commanded.

The black man in the blue suit swallowed hard and then nodded at the two men standing behind my chair.

“Stand up,” the one on my left ordered.

I pondered the command for twenty seconds and then rose. I turned to face the men and realized how much like an oversized boxing ring that entrance-hall-turned-office was. The suited muscle on my left wore dark gray. The one on the right was clad in burnt umber. The men were white, burly, and not unacquainted with violence and its uses. This combined knowledge brought a smile to my lips.

The brown-suited man put a hand around my right biceps. It was a big hand but when I tightened that muscle he realized that his fingers couldn’t even encircle half of the circumference.

“Let me go or we gonna rumble,” I said. “Right here, right now, win or lose, the three of us will fight.”

It was, most probably, me talking about dead Hector and the family he left behind that brought out the desire to hurt someone.

The man released me but now I posed another problem. If I was this violent what would their mistress say if they brought me in front of her? Maybe I’d start throwing punches in her den.

“Bring him up here now,” the woman’s voice ordered, punctuating each word.

“Right this way,” Gray Man said.

Beyond the entrance hall there was a room that could only be called the Staircase Room. On both sides and in front of me were stairways that seemed to be leading to completely different areas. I wondered if this structure was once three different buildings that had been cobbled together by an idle rich mind that had nothing better to do.

We headed up the curving, carpeted stairs on the left. I took the steps two at a time to keep my guards on their toes. On the fourth landing I was faced with a humongous library that had no doors or even a doorway. The entire floor was a room, thirty feet high and as wide and deep as the building it capped. The far wall was a window that looked down on the park and beyond. In front of that window was a big desk that was blond and not wood.

Behind the desk rose a tall and elegant woman wearing a cranberry-colored blouse and khaki riding pants. As I approached the woman I began to see subtler details. She was lean, gray-eyed, with the mostly erect posture of an arthritic ballet dancer. At one time she could probably have crossed that room in four or five leaps.

There was a spiteful sneer on her lips. Maybe she loathed anything that rose from the lower level to her aerie.

“Mr. McGill,” the brown suit said to the woman.

“Leave us,” was Evangeline Sidney-Gray’s reply.

“But, ma’am...” Gray Man protested.

“Leave us.”

And they did.

“Bones?” I asked when the help was gone.

“What?” she asked, insulted that I spoke without being spoken to.

“This desk,” I said. “It’s made out of bones. Done well, too. Tooled so that they fit together almost like real wood.”

I had never seen a sneer morph so seamlessly into a smile before. Her moods could switch from superior to vile to magnanimous in moments. I couldn’t think of a more dangerous personality.

I sat in the chair before her desk. It was cobbled from bone also.

The mistress of the mansions lowered into the chair behind her saying, “When I was a child my father told me that they were the bones of his enemies. Later I found out that it was even worse, that he slaughtered three bull elephants to get the right ivory and bone matter for his desk and your chair.”

“That’s worse than people’s bones?”

“Elephants are innocent.”

I was speechless mainly because I believed that she believed what she was saying.

“Why are you here, Mr. McGill?”

“I assume that you heard what I was saying to your man Richards,” I said.

“I did.”

“Good. I hate repeating myself. The man murdered in my office might not have been innocent but I liked him. He was just doin’ his job and people, probably working for you, cut his life short.”

“I have never been the cause of a murder, Mr. McGill. I mean, I pay my taxes and the president uses it to kill people but that’s as far as it goes. If, as you say, people working for me committed such a crime I should want them to be prosecuted.”

“Is that all you have to say to me?” I asked. I could be haughty too.

“What else can I say?”

“What about the murder of Hiram Stent?”

“I’ve never heard of that individual.”

“And Josh Farth?”

Ms. Sidney-Gray didn’t respond immediately. Her gaze honed down on me and there was something almost human in her eyes.

“You’re threatening to go to the police?” she asked.

“It’s not a threat but a duty, ma’am.”

“If it is your duty then why haven’t you already gone to them?”

“There are multiple responsibilities in most men’s lives,” I said. “Women’s lives too. Hiram Stent came to me, I turned him away, and he died. I feel responsible for that. Hector Laritas was trying to protect my property and he died. The police don’t care about the women and children that either man left to fend for themselves, but I do. I was abandoned as a child and so I’m here to give you a chance to do what’s right.”

What might pass for a knowing smile crossed the lady’s lips.

“What do you want?”

“Tell me why you’re after Celia Landis and give up the man who killed the people I represent.”

“You represent the dead?”

“I could just leave and let the NYPD take charge. I know a cop in Manhattan who’s not afraid of any sum of money or persons that bleed blue.”

“Is that a threat?”

“The cop is the threat,” I said. “I am merely the conduit.”

Evangeline Sidney-Gray took in a deep breath through her long, distinguished nose. She moved her head in birdlike fashion, taking me in from a series of slightly different points, like snapshots.

Finally she said, “There’s a library in Cambridge, Mass., called the Enclave. It’s a private institution that gathers collections of old books, documents, and letters. It is a very old organization funded by some of the wealthiest people in the world. Mostly people bequeath their libraries to the Enclave, but now and then they purchase a collection. A few years ago I donated a selection of my great-grandfather’s cache of forty-two-line Gutenberg Bibles. It turns out that, quite by mistake, mixed in with that lot was a thirteenth-century handwritten version of Herodotus’s Histories. It was never my intention to donate that book. It was my father’s favorite manuscript. It was turned over by mistake. I can prove this by my copy of the bequeathing letter to the Enclave.

“This Celia Landis worked for the Enclave and then left. When she departed, my great-grandfather’s manuscript disappeared. I want it back.”

“And are you sure this Celia Landis was the one who stole the book?” I asked. “It might have just been misplaced.”

“She sent me an electronic communication demanding money for the return of the book. She knew its value and that it was not consciously included in the gift.”

“May I see the e-mail?”

“I deleted it.”

“Oh. Okay. Well... let’s say I could do something for you,” I said. “What would that something be?”

“Bring this Landis woman to me.”

“And the manuscript?”

“Of course the manuscript.”

“Why not just the book? You don’t really need the thief if your property is returned.”

“I like to look my enemies in the eye,” Evangeline uttered.

“I could turn her over to the police for the theft,” I said, thinking about her father’s enemies and the material of her desk and chair.

“No. I will pay you one hundred thousand dollars for the woman and the book.”

“That’s a hefty late fee.”

“I’m paying for your discretion, Mr. McGill.”

“Most people already know the general content of the nine books of the father of history,” I said, feeling the need to sound knowledgeable in that room of rarefied access and wealth.

“Do we have a deal?”

“One hundred thousand dollars, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds good. One hundred for me and also equal amounts for Hiram Stent’s and Hector Laritas’s families.”

“All right,” she said as if the amounts were nothing.

“What about Josh Farth?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“What if Mr. Farth resents my intrusion on his business?”

“Mr. Farth works for me,” she said. “He will do as I say.”

“Some of us down below the top floor don’t see the world the same way you do, Ms. Gray. And anyway, I might have a problem with Mr. Farth’s way of doing business.”

“If Josh is guilty of some felony having to do with my requests then he will find himself on his own,” she said, rapping her knuckles once and with finality on the tabletop of bone.

Henry Lawrence Richards, not of the Fantastic Four, was tasked by the woman on the top floor to give me a cash down payment of ten thousand dollars. He handed me a brown envelope with the money sealed inside, the two bodyguards flanking me.

I tore the envelope open and counted the cash, twice, because when I was a child my father taught me that you could never trust the rich.