Fifth Avenue

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

As soon as Elizabeth laid eyes on him, she knew that something else was wrong, knew it had to do with the envelope he just received by messenger. It was not a familiar look, that brief glimpse of horror she saw in his eyes, but she recognized it just the same.

She closed the door behind her and stood there, not far from him or his desk, watching his features slowly return to normal as he folded the letter in half and tucked it in his jacket pocket. For a moment, he was unmoving, his gaze fixed on the photo of Leana that was on his desk. Then he took a breath and looked up at his wife. The years he had never shown were suddenly there on his face.

Elizabeth took a step forward, out of the shadows and into the light. “What is it?” she asked. “Is it about Celina?”

George didn’t answer. With an effort, he rose from his seat and crossed to the bar. He chose a gold-rimmed highball glass and poured himself a glass of Scotch. He drank.

Watching George, sensing his fear almost as surely as she sensed this sudden tension, Elizabeth felt inept, unable to help him.

She stepped beside him.

George put the empty glass down onto the bar and poured himself another drink. It seemed that forever passed before he finally spoke. “No,” he said. “This isn’t about Celina.”

“Then what’s it about?”

“I can’t tell you,” he said. “At least not now. So, please don’t push me on this. I have to leave.”

Elizabeth watched him walk away from her.

Across the room, through the long stretches of darkness and silence, was the dim glass of an enormous, 18th-century beveled mirror. George hesitated before it and his back stiffened. Framed in gold and heavy with age, his pale face loomed in the night, glowing like some odd, faraway moon. He stared at himself, and there was the sense that he didn’t recognize the person staring back.

Elizabeth went to him.

She put her arms around him and held him. She was eager to know where he was going, but she trusted him enough not to ask and instead stood there, holding him, feeling his body relax slightly against hers.

“I have to go,” he said.

“I know.”

“I want you to stay here.”

“I can’t.”

He turned and kissed her on the lips. They looked at one another for a long moment and then George broke the embrace. He made and effort and smiled at her. “I might be a while,” he said. “Don’t wait up for me. Okay?”

Elizabeth suddenly felt sick. She took a step back and watched him look around his office. It was as though he was seeing it for the first time, maybe the last.

Reluctantly, she watched him move toward the twin mahogany doors and step into the hall.

She went after him.

“I’m really not that tired,” she called. “I can’t imagine falling asleep.”

The hallway was long and in shadow, so dim it seemed almost gaslit. Isadora, the family cat, left the library and now was trotting after George, her tail high and full. Above them, their shadows joined on the ceiling in a delicate sort of embrace.

“Well talk when you get back,” Elizabeth said. “All right?”

“I love you,” she said.

George lifted a hand in response. He turned the corner and was gone.

Ten minutes later, when he pushed through Redman International’s revolving glass doors, George hesitated only a moment before he walked the few steps to the black Mercedes limousine that was waiting for him at curbside.

Vincent Spocatti was leaning against the driver’s side door. “Mr. Redman,” he said, with a slight bow of his head. “Glad you could make it.”

George looked at the man, committed his face to memory, but said nothing. He stepped inside the limousine and came face to face with a woman.

She was striking. She was dressed completely in black, her long, dark hair pulled away from her face. Her mouth tightened slightly when he sat down next to her.

And there was someone else in the car. He was sitting next to the woman, his own face a frozen mask. It was Michael Archer.

The two men stared at each other. Ropes of silence spun out between them.

George was about to speak when the woman started frisking him. Her hands were quick and thorough. She looked at Spocatti when he leaned inside the open door. “He’s clean.” she said.

Spocatti glanced at Michael and George. “Jesus,” he said. “Would you look at yourselves? You’d think we were going to a morgue and not a party. Lighten the hell up.”