And Sometimes I Wonder About You

50

Soon after the announcement Melbourne whisked Marella away in his limousine while Sackman asked the doorman to get him a taxi. When they’d gone I asked the front desk for a few pieces of stationery and sat down in the bar to pen a note to my lawyer, Breland Lewis. I put the last three sheets of the serial killer’s confession in an envelope and sealed it; then I wrapped the envelope in my letter. I put this package into another, larger envelope and brought the whole thing to the front desk. The man there put my communication into a FedEx pouch bound for Lewis’s office the next morning.

It wasn’t until I was in the elevator that it hit me. In just a few moments my connection with Marella had been severed, hacked off. For the past week, I realized, her name and face had been repeating over and over in my mind like a madman’s mantra. She was, in many ways, the perfect woman for me. Sure, that passion would kill me one day but we, all of us, die.

I tried to accommodate the loss in my mind, to leave it in the hotel lobby as I rose upward in the elevator car. But when the doors slid open she was still with me and I knew that the best I could hope for was the pain I felt.

“Pop,” Twill greeted when I entered our suite.

“Son.”

“That Mr. Ericson seemed like an all-right guy but you know he’s a fool.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Takin’ off with a woman like Marella is kinda like seein’ a tornado comin’ and runnin’ out to say hello.” Twill was subject to dialect when he waxed philosophical.

“What does a New York City boy know from tornadoes?” I asked.

“I seen my share,” he said. “You want a drink? They got four little cognacs in the minibar.”

We seated ourselves at the coffee table in the common room of the suite. I was thankful for both the liquor and the company of my son.

“You know I would prefer it if you didn’t get killed,” I said.

“I know,” he muttered shyly. “It just looked so simple.”

“That’s not the kind of detectives we are. You keep goin’ it alone and one day you won’t come back.”

“What time tomorrow morning?” he asked and I knew that he had accepted my terms.

“Nine forty-four.”

“Okay,” he said and then stood. “I’ll see you there sometime before nine thirty.”

“Where you going now?”

“I know these people.”

“What people?”

He shrugged. “You know, a girl and some’a her friends. There’s this club over in Somerville where they don’t even start up till midnight.”

“Somerville? How many times have you been up here?”

“A few. You know.”

I couldn’t stop him. In the end I wouldn’t be able to save him. But in the meanwhile I could run interference.

“You’re going in that suit?”

Twill gave me a big smile, beautiful.

He struck a pose and said, “I kinda like it.”

“Be careful.”

“You know it, Pops.”

I was sound asleep, my veins running amber with cognac, when the cell phone sang. If I’d been at home and sure of the safety of my kids I might not have answered.

“Hello?” The digital clock next to the bed read 3:54.

“Do you still want me, Lee?”

Drowsiness, hangover, heartache — all gone.

“Are you there?” she asked.

“Yeah, yeah I’m here.”

“Are you alone?”

“From the moment you took off.”

“I offered to stay.”

“Yeah. That’s why I thought you were gone forever,” I said honestly. “I had it in my mind to let you go.”

“I’ll call you from time to time, Lee. Maybe one day you’ll be ready.”

“That would be nice,” I said.

“Good-bye.”

I have overslept exactly three times in my life. I’ve gotten up on time through concussion, blood loss, and fever. But that morning I didn’t get out of bed until 9:23.

I staggered to the bathroom but even the ice-cold shower didn’t completely revive me.

I was in the taxi on the way to South Station when I realized that I had left my phone plugged into its charger back at the hotel.

When I got to the small table at the coffee kiosk in the great rotunda of the train station, Twill was sitting there with Celia Landis.

“Hey, Pops,” he greeted as I let my weight fall into the extra chair set there for me. It was a bouncy metal chair dipped in blue latex the same color as Harlan Sackman’s suit.

“You didn’t answer your phone,” my son said. “Five minutes more and I was going to take Celia and go looking for you.”

Even though Twill probably hadn’t been to bed, or at least been to sleep in a bed, he was bright-eyed and alert.

“Too many jobs all at once,” I confessed. “One day I’m gonna have to retire.”

“But not today,” Twill assured our client.

“No,” I agreed. “Not today.”

“Remember,” I told Celia. “I’m here representing you and I will do all the talking. You and Twilliam are my silent backup.”

We were ten steps away from the knobless door of Evangeline Sidney-Gray’s city mansion.

Mounting the stairs, I called out loud, “We’re here.”

It was a three-minute wait.

Black and beautiful, but not necessarily likable, Henry Lawrence Richards answered the door. He didn’t speak at all, just led us through the foyer-turned-office and to an elevator that delivered us to Dame Gray’s top-floor library.

The kids stayed half a step behind as I led them to the rich woman’s bone desk. This time there were three calcified chairs waiting for her visitors. I imagined that there was some butler whose sole job it was to get the right number of chairs set out for whatever guests his mistress entertained.

“Mr. McGill,” she said, looking at my wards.

“Ma’am,” I replied with courtesy and a slight bow of my head.

“And who have you brought with you?”

“Twilliam my son and Celia Landis.”

The shadow that moved across the rich woman’s brow was like the image of a planet turning its face away from the sun.

“I wish to speak with you, my dear,” she said to Celia.

“But instead,” I interposed, “you will be speaking to me.”

“I don’t know who you think you are, Mr.—”

She stopped because I stood abruptly. I took Charles’s letter from my breast pocket and leaned over the desk to put it in her hand.

“This is who I am,” I said.

As she paged through the bloody scrawl of her son’s mind, many emotions crossed the elder’s face. She was in turn horrified, saddened, and disgusted. There were even a few times where she showed a brief smile. I suppose these few happy moments came when she recognized the son she bore when he was still innocent — or at least seemed so.

“This is not the full text,” she said, her voice temporarily drained of authority.

“No,” I agreed. “In the last few pages he talks about a place where he kept his souvenirs.”

“His what?”

“You know,” I said, waving my left hand slightly, “fingers, skin, pictures of frightened faces before the subjects were put to death.”

Celia gasped and Dame Gray snapped her gaze from me to the young blackmailer.

“Where is the rest of this letter?” she asked, still gazing at Celia.

“Far away but safe as long as I and my client remain — what should I say... unmolested.”

“Give me those pages now or you will never be safe again.”

My laughter surprised me. After all I’d been through a threat from a face I could see and name wasn’t bad.

“Listen, lady,” I said. “You will do as I say or the Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor online, and the New York Times will all have a copy of the last three pages of your son’s confession.”

Dame Gray was stopped by the threat. She’d probably studied me since our last encounter and knew a thing or two about what I could and would do.

“What do you want?” she spat.

“One and a half million dollars. Five hundred thousand in a trust fund for Hiram Stent’s children—”

“Who is Hiram Stent?”

“The first man Josh Farth murdered trying to get at Celia. Another half a million for Ramona Vasquez, the life partner of the second man your people killed. Then two fifty each for me and Celia here.”

“That’s blackmail, Mr. McGill.”

“I’ve done worse... and so have you.”

“I will not bow down to extortion.”

“Have it your way, Ms. Gray. But I got bills to pay and a few of them come from your people wanting to rob and then kill me.”

“You are preying on my vulnerabilities, my weakness,” she said.

“Lady, your son’s been dead eleven years now. And I’m sure you knew or at least suspected that he was a monster. They didn’t find a suicide note but I bet that he left one; that it told you what he had done and probably where the bodies were. That’s why you believed Celia. That’s why you hired Josh Farth to kill her.”

Celia started crying.

“Twill.”

“Yeah, Pop?”

“Take her out of here. I’ll meet you guys back at the room.”

After the young people were gone Evangeline and I continued our conversation.

“So?” I began.

“My son was a monster as you say, Mr. McGill. But I am not. I have a large family. One granddaughter and two of my grandsons have political ambitions and this kind of notoriety would be a deep wound in our legacy. Can you see that?”

“I’ll send you the names and all pertinent information about the people you have to pay,” I said. “I will also send you the name of a lawyer that will handle the transactions.”

“And the letter will remain safe?”

“It will be destroyed the day you die.”

She scrawled something on a small piece of paper.

“My private e-mail,” she said.

I stood up and almost left but then I remembered that there was one more facet to our business.

“And one other thing, ma’am.”

“What’s that?”

“You will almost certainly get in touch with people like Josh; maybe some of his friends. You will ask them if there’s a way to eliminate me and Celia so quietly that the apparatus I set up will not spring into action.” She stared at me, trying to hide this truth. “But when you talk to them make sure you say that I have an insurance policy and its name is Hush.”