First Class Killing

Chapter 39

HARVEY EMERGED FROM THE POOL, CLIMBING one shallow step at a time and gripping the silver bar with his thick, square fingers. His disease had not diminished his bulk above the hips-his torso was thick, and his spongy belly hung down over the waist of his bathing suit. Yet he seemed fragile. If the waist of his suit was too small, the leg openings were too big. As he climbed the steps, the wet fabric bunched around his shrunken thighs.

He found his glasses by the side of the pool and put them on. When he caught sight of me watching him, he reached across his body to grab the rail with his other hand. The effect was to turn his belly away and show me his back.

“You’re early,” he said. “You weren’t supposed to come back here.”

“They told me out front it was all right.”

He held himself perfectly still. All that moved were rivulets of water that dripped from the ends of his hair. He turned cautiously to look at me. His heavy glasses had slipped down to the end of his nose. I knew he wanted to push them back up but couldn’t let go of the rail. Instead, he peered over the tops, as if this were how corrective lenses were supposed to be worn.

“I’ll leave,” I said. “I’m going now. I’ll meet-”

“No. Stay here. I want to talk to you. Just…give me a minute.”

He managed to negotiate the last steps and climb onto the deck but then froze in the face of the several-foot-wide expanse that separated him from a rack of thick towels. He seemed torn between two bad options: standing in front of me with his pale body mostly exposed or lurching ungracefully toward the rack and risking a fall. I couldn’t stand it. I went to the rack, grabbed a towel, and draped it around his shoulders.

“I can wait for you out front.”

“No.” He pulled the corners of the towel together under his chin and pushed his glasses up. “Thank you, but that will not be necessary. It takes me a long time to get dressed.” He motioned to a grouping of deck chairs. “Let us sit here and talk.”

I pulled two of the chairs closer, sat in one, and waited for him to make his way to the other. To keep from staring at him, I scanned the swimming space. It had that echoing quality of all indoor aquatic facilities and that sharp aromatic cocktail of chemicals and the fungus it was supposed to kill. Two people worked in the water at the other end, an older woman wearing a rubber swim cap, possibly a stroke survivor from the way she moved, and her therapist, a black man with a slight build but strong arms and a soothing way about him.

“The exercise…” Harvey had settled in next to me, breathing hard. “It takes a lot out of me. I was never a good swimmer, but it is the only suitable exercise. Overheating exacerbates my symptoms. Do you swim?”

“I don’t like the water.”

“You?” His surprise was too exaggerated to be genuine. “I would have guessed that nothing scared you.”

“Plenty of things scare me, but the idea of drowning most of all. Harvey -”

“Can’t you swim?”

“I can swim. It’s not water. It’s drowning I’m afraid of. Not being able to breathe. I don’t know where it comes from. We need to-”

“Phobias by their definition are irrational. It is a terrible thing to be afraid.”

I watched him use the towel to tumble-dry his hair. Then he took off his glasses and carefully wiped both lenses. When he was finished, his hair stood on end, but his glasses were firmly in place, and he seemed connected to the world again. He also seemed more vulnerable than I had ever seen him.

“ Harvey, what are you doing back here? You weren’t supposed to be back until later.”

“I took the red-eye last night. I could not wait to come back to tell you our news.”

“Do you know that Angel is back?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“I did not ask.”

I blinked at him. “You didn’t ask?”

“It was the client’s decision. Do you wish to hear my news?”

This was not feeling right to me. The Harvey who had left two days before was not the one who was sitting in front of me. “How could you not ask? Don’t you want to know?”

“We have more important issues at hand.”

“We do?”

He turned his body slightly, enough to imply an attitude of confidentiality. “OrangeAir has offered us a contract. We are still working out the details, but I can give you the broad outlines, and I must say it is most exciting.”

I started to feel more uncomfortable. The thick green turtleneck I’d thrown on at home was perfect for the cool, dry weather outside but too heavy for the steamy air of an indoor swimming facility. “What kind of contract?”

“A guaranteed engagement of two years. We would act as outside security consultants working on projects as assigned by Carl Wolff.”

“Security consultants? Harvey, do you…” I had to pull that turtleneck off. I couldn’t have it on for one more second. I whipped it over my head, leaving the T-shirt underneath. “Do you know what’s going on here? Angel is on the rampage. She’s making threats. She’s after Monica. She’s after me.”

He dismissed it all with a wave of his hand. “We can make it part of her reinstatement deal that she stays away from you.”

“You just told me you didn’t know anything about her reinstatement.” I sat back and stared at him. “Are you lying to me?”

“Ticket fraud, theft and pilferage, smuggling. You said you wanted to specialize in crimes against airlines. What better launch could you have? This is the best part. The fees are guaranteed, whether we work or not. It is a retainer.”

The more excited he got, the more crushed I felt. I wanted to stop this conversation before we got to the truly hurtful part, but I couldn’t. I was having lots of hurtful conversations. “How did you get this deal, Harvey? It wouldn’t be because the client has returned a criminal to its payroll and doesn’t want us to tell anyone, would it?”

“Of course not. Miss Velesco has made certain guarantees as part of her reinstatement agreement. Whatever she was before, she is a criminal no longer.”

“In other words, they asked her to stop being a criminal, and she agreed. Why didn’t we think of that?”

“Your sarcasm is not appreciated.”

“Here’s something I don’t appreciate.” It was my turn to twist around to face him. “You suddenly turning into a company toady because they dangled a few bucks under your nose.”

If I had pulled his chair out from under him and let him tumble to the ground, he wouldn’t have looked any more surprised. I didn’t care. If I’d had any propulsion left, I would have been up and moving around. But I didn’t, so all my angry energy came right out of my mouth.

He finally found his voice again. “I negotiated a good deal for us. Guaranteed income for the next two years, a check that arrives in the mail every month whether you work or not. Can you not call that success?”

“I call that a bribe.”

“Do you want to know what I call it?” He pulled the towel tighter around his shoulders. “Health benefits. A way to pay my medical bills and premiums without having to worry about the next job and where it is coming from. That is what I call it.”

“What did you promise them?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Did you sign a nondisclosure form? Did you promise not to go to the police or tell anyone anything about this case?”

He sat uncomfortably in his chair. He looked as if he wanted to stand up and walk around but had nothing to hold on to. “I did what was standard.”

“If that’s what you had to promise, there is no way I can take that deal.”

“Those women are back at work. That was the client’s choice, and nothing will change it. Taking or not taking the deal will not change it. So tell me, what do you accomplish by turning it down?”

“We’re not just talking about her job anymore. The stakes are higher now, and she’s the one who raised them.”

“What does that mean?”

“She made a video of my brother having sex with her. I can’t leave this alone, because she has the ability to ruin his life. I will do whatever it takes to get that video back. Do you understand?”

“No, I do not. Why did your brother have sex with her?”

“It’s a long story and not relevant right now.”

“But it is. He made a choice. If he is in trouble for the bad choices he made, then I am sorry. But I did not make this choice to be ill.”

“Don’t put this on me. Do not put this on me.”

“I am not-”

“Yes, you are. You said it yourself the other day. I am not the one who makes you sick. It is the disease that makes you sick, and it is not my responsibility to make you feel secure.”

“Please do not ruin this for me. Do not take my one last chance at security.”

A noise drifted over from across the pool. Not a groan so much as a cry of physical exertion. The woman in the bathing cap was struggling with her left side. She was working hard, the way Harvey probably did when he was doing his therapy. His burden was a heavy one. From watching him, I knew that MS was a cruel and capricious disease. It toyed with him, came and went at will, changed symptoms without warning, and doomed him to a continually diminishing quality of life and an early death. I felt for him. I really did.

“ Harvey, your life sucks. You got a raw deal, and everything in me wants to help you and try to fix it for you and make it easier. I want to see things get better for you. But this woman is dangerous. She’s angry with me, she knows where my family lives, and I don’t believe the answer is to take the money and hope she goes away.”

“Because you do not need the money.”

“There is no amount of money that would make me trade my family’s future and my own peace of mind. But I understand if you need it. Take it without me.”

“Do you actually believe they would retain me while you are actively working at cross-purposes? That is your plan, is it not? To approach the authorities?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you think the authorities will be any more responsive?”

“If they’re not, I’m pretty sure I can find a newspaper that will listen. It’s a juicy story.”

“Then you are not above employing your own leverage.”

“That’s what it’s all about. If I learned anything from this case, that’s it.”

He stared at me for a long moment. Maybe we were both disappointed in each other. He finally flinched first, letting his gaze drop to the deck and the rust-colored, nonslip rubber tiles with the shamrock cutouts. His feet were crossed at the ankles in a bow-legged attitude that exposed the thick calluses on his heels.

“Is there nothing I can do to change your mind?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“I will inform the client.” He stood up, wrapped his towel close around his shoulders, and started to move off toward the entryway to a locker room.

“ Harvey…” He stopped but didn’t turn around. “ Harvey, I need to know. You won’t work against me, will you?”

Then he did turn on me, as quickly as his feeble state would allow, which wasn’t fast. In some ways, that made it even more devastating when he said it.

“Shame on you, Alex. Shame on you.”

Out on the curb, I sat in my parked car for a long time. More than once, someone pulled up next to me, hoping to grab the space when I pulled out. A vacant stare and an anemic shake of the head sent them off in a huff, but I wasn’t leaving until I had someplace to go. I was having a hard time catching up to what had just happened. But why should I be surprised? Harvey was motivated by a very real fear that he would run out of money and be too sick to earn any more. Carl Wolff had understood that and used it against him. Against me. Bastard.

I sat there a long time before my phone rang. I checked the spy window and answered. “Tristan?”

“I found Monica. You need to get back here, Alexandra.”

I felt for the keys and started the engine. “Is she with you? Will she talk?”

“Oh, she already is.”

“Anything good so far?”

“How about who killed Robin Sevitch?”