Hard Stop

TWENTY-THREE

“YOU MUST BE KIDDING ME,” said Zelda Fitzgerald, through a crack in the window next to her front door. “I’m just sitting down to breakfast.”

“Sorry about the timing. I only need a few minutes.”

She huffed and slammed the window shut. The door lock clicked and the door opened.

“Acquillo, right?” she asked.

“Sam is good enough.”

“For you,” she said, walking away before I had a chance to follow her through the sepulchral dinge inside the house. I made it all the way to the kitchen without getting lost.

“Sashimi and wheat toast,” she said, pointing to a tidy place setting on the kitchen table. “I’d offer you some but I only buy for one.”

“Ever tried North Sea fin tail? It’s all I eat.”

“You want tea?”

I said no thanks and watched her pour herself a cup and settle down in front of her meal.

I picked a small framed photograph of her with Bobby and Elaine off a shelf filled with jars of flour and colorful dried pasta. I looked at it, then looked at her.

“You lied to me,” I said.

Zelda had a hunk of pink salmon gripped between a set of chopsticks, about to shove it in her mouth. She paused.

“Pardon me.”

“You said Bobby brought Iku home to Vedders Pond, but it wasn’t Bobby. It was Elaine.”

She ate the salmon and shrugged.

“It was one of them. I wasn’t too with it myself that night.”

“It wasn’t the first time Elaine dragged somebody home in a drunken stupor. But this was different. Iku Kinjo wasn’t just another girl. She was a force. A brilliant, beautiful force. Attractive doesn’t even begin to describe her. You’ve known that since living with her at Princeton, where she made you feel invisible. You were half in love with her yourself.”

She tightened up and slammed her chopsticks down on the table.

“That’s enough,” she said.

“It’s like a nightmare. Your rival, long since gone from the scene, suddenly back again. Bobby and Elaine fawning all over her. Inviting her to stay at the house. I can see you watching Elaine as she watched Iku’s every move, licking her chops.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“What part?”

She took a bite of her breakfast, then pointed her chopsticks at me, as if taking aim.

“I loved Iku,” she said. “But not in that way. I admired her. Look what she did with her life, coming from next to nothing. And look at me. Coming from everything and achieving nothing. I was worried when she started staying at the pond, I admit it. Even if I don’t have to. But it wasn’t long before I only felt pity. I’ve never known a person so stressed out and exhausted. And heartsick.”

“Heartsick? What do you mean, heartsick?”

“Oh, please.”

“Tell me,” I said.

“In love? Ever heard of that? The poor girl was gone, all the way. Weeping like crazy over George, whoever the hell George is.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. All I know is she thought she’d betrayed him somehow, ruined his life. You want to talk about guilt. Half of it was pure babble, but I got the gist. He started out as the devil and ended up St. George. She’d gotten mixed up in an illegal business deal, and in the process betrayed him. She said she was afraid to ever face him again. When I tried to talk her out of it, she said she was too ashamed. She wanted to go to the cops, to make things right, but was worried about George. After watching her down endless bottles of Campari and spill her guts all over the place, I could see the problem. Those creeps she worked for sent her in to entrap George, and instead she gets trapped herself. Ms. Genius falls in love with the old bastard. Like crazy in love.”

I sat across from her at the kitchen table and plucked a piece of salmon off her plate.

“So how did it feel to finally have the upper hand?” I asked. “Which came first, the pity or the triumph?”

“What a strange thing to say.”

I suddenly didn’t like being that close to her, so I stood up from the table to get a little distance.

“Ah, come on. Quit with all the phoney sanctimony. Having Iku around wasn’t the best thing that could have happened to you. It was the worst. The best was having her dead.”

She finally put the chopsticks gently on the table, capitulating to the inevitable: this was not going to be just another lively tit for tat.

“I want you to leave,” she said.

“When I’m ready. If you don’t like it, call the cops. They’d love to get in on the conversation.”

Her shoulders dropped, and she cast her eyes down to where her hands were clenched in her lap.

“If I’m not mistaken, you’re about to accuse me of something,” she said.

“Why’s would I? Because you invested hours consoling and extracting dangerous information from the very woman who was ripping up your carefully crafted world? A woman you might have admired, likely envied, but most certainly feared and loathed, who is conveniently found murdered in the bedroom next to yours.”

“You don’t honestly think …”

“Who else?” I asked, in a voice that was likely louder than I meant, because it made her jump in her seat.

“You can’t,” she said.

“Who else knew?”

“Knew what?”

“About Iku’s change of heart? Who else knew?”

Zelda grabbed the abandoned chopsticks and snapped them in half. “What difference does it make?” she said. “It wasn’t exactly a secret around the house. Everybody knew. Elaine. Bobby was just sick about it. Just sick. And her boss, what’s his name. He was concerned, too.”

“Jerome Gelb.”

“That’s right, he called too. On Iku’s cheap little cell phone. She was passed out, and I thought, what’s the harm? He was a very interesting man. Very articulate.”

“What the hell did you tell him?”

“I don’t remember. We just talked.”

“You told him how she felt about George.”

“I guess. Probably. What was the guy’s name again?”

“Jerome Gelb,” I said.

“That’s right. Jerome. He said he wanted to come see her, so I gave him directions to the house. Didn’t do him much good. Couple days later she was dead.”

“So you told Gelb where Iku lived, even though she made you all promise to keep it a secret.”

Zelda dismissed the thought with a sneer.

“Ridiculous. There are no secrets in this world.”

She used the back of her hand to sweep her half-eaten meal and the broken chopsticks off the table. There was more I could have said to her, but we both knew it was pointless. So I let myself out into the glimmering East End light, where I stuck my face in the freshening breeze and fled the evil banality that clung like mist to her grim fairytale home.

Hoping to hide from caller ID, I drove all the way back to North Sea so I could use the landline in my kitchen to roust Angel for the second day in a row—with any luck, jet-lagged and groggy from his trip in from the Coast.

“Who’s this?” he said.

“Sam Acquillo. How’re the nuts? Still working?”

It was quiet a moment.

“I told you not to call me.”

“I’ve never been good at following directions.”

“What do you want?”

“Your ass. Now that I’ve met the rest of you, it’s irresistible.”

“I told you I’d meet with you.”

“You did. I’m ready now.”

I tapped a Camel far enough out of the pack to pull it out with my teeth. I lit it with one hand, bending the match in half and striking it with my thumb, a move I learned in high school. The hell with rations, I thought. Not today.

“My patience has just about run out with you, Acquillo.”

“You remember where they found Iku?”

“Vedders Pond.”

“Meet me there at exactly twelve noon. That’s almost two hours from now.”

I hung up and finished my cigarette and made a pot of coffee, which I took out to the Adirondacks to drink while watching the morning sun burn off the haze and heat up the day.

On the way to Vedders Pond I listened to public radio, which was promoting a Mozart festival at Southampton College. That was a nice surprise. Mozart always had a calming effect on me.

I knew Angel would want to arrive a little early, so I got there a little earlier than that. The sun was reaching its high point of the day, so there was still plenty of light falling through the trees and glancing off the surface of the pond.

I lit a cigarette and sat down Buddha-style in front of the statuette of the Virgin Mary, who accepted the irony without remark.

Angel’s black Mercedes AMG showed up a few minutes later.

He had a sideman with him who looked a little like Frankenstein, tall as a tree with a squared-off jaw and crew cut. Everything but the little bolts in his neck.

“Hey, who’s your handsome friend? You guys going together?” I said, trying to set the right tone.

“Don’t mind if we stand,” said Angel, looking around the rocky, weed-infested lawn.

“I’d rather you sit. More friendly.”

He didn’t like it but he dropped his lumbering bulk to the ground and ordered his pet ghoul to follow suit.

“So, what’re you peddling?” he asked me, after getting semi-comfortable.

“That’s all the foreplay I get?”

“Enough of that shit,” said Valero. “What’s the deal?”

“Okay. Silence. That’s the offer on the table. You pay me whatever I think it’s worth to stay quiet about your conspiracy with Jerome Gelb and Iku Kinjo to,” I used my fingers to tick off the list, “threaten exposure of Con Globe’s fraudulent sale of the TSS division, in return for George Donovan agreeing to break up the company, and to sell the most valuable assets to you. How am I doing so far?”

“Depends on what you have to back that up,” he said.

“What about you?” I asked his silent partner. “What’s your opinion?”

He just stared at me.

“His opinion is he’s looking forward to ripping off your arms and legs,” said Valero. “But don’t let that distract you.”

“Okay,” I said. “You want back-up.”

I reached in the laundry bag and pulled out Iku’s computer. Angel frowned.

“It’s hers. You can see the little Eisler, Johnson sticker on the bottom.” I showed him. “It’s got her name and some kind of code. I’ve already had a night to go through the files. It’s all there. Even some of Ozzie’s ginned-up spreadsheets. Is that what you showed him before he killed himself?”

“Okay,” said Angel.

“Okay what?”

“Okay. What’ll it cost me to get that computer back?”

“You told me to start discounting. So I did, and got all the way to zero.”

“You don’t want anything?” he said.

“I’m not saying that. I don’t want any money. Just a single piece of information.”

“What?”

“Why did you kill Iku Kinjo?”

The tall guy started to stand, looking at Angel for the go-ahead. Angel leaned back against a tree stump and waved him forward.

“Get me that computer,” he said.

The guy was so long and awkward, it took him forever to get all the way to his feet, plenty of time for me to knock over the Madonna and retrieve Marve Judson’s gun. I pointed it at Angel’s head.

“Up to you,” I said. He opted to have Frankenstein retake his seat.

“Answer,” I said, now aiming the barrel of the gun at Angel’s chest.

“Gelb told me she was losing it, on the verge of blowing the whistle. He was freaking out, but I said it was just a case of pre-deal jitters. Happens to people. I’d already put the thing on hold when she stopped returning our calls. I figured she’d snap out of it. I’m a patient man. I could give it a month. After that, who needs her? We had the goods from Endicott. The only one who’d want to fight us was Donovan, and he was dead man walking, thanks to Iku. It’s all documented in there,” he said, pointing to the computer. “Which you probably know.”

I held up the laptop with the hand not holding the automatic.

“And you killed her for it,” I said.

He shook his shaggy head like the enraged bull he was.

“Gelb, that pinheaded geek, showed up at my house with her computer. He said people were nosing around his office, so it was safer here with me. He didn’t say where he got it, but when I heard the news about Iku the next day, I figured it out. I should’ve never got involved with that piece of crap, but that’s business.”

I could see it all starting with a phone conversation, or a harried meeting. Bobby Dobson telling Jerome Gelb some guy’s looking for Iku. The description fits Floyd Patterson. Alarms start to go off. Dobson says this couldn’t happen at a worse time. Iku’s having some kind of emotional breakdown. He tells Gleb that she’s fallen hard for George Donovan, and that her remorse over what she’d set out to do was about to drive her into the arms of the state’s Attorney General. Gelb is now really starting to panic. He tells Bobby that he has to see Iku, to talk some sense into her. In a rare display of character, the weak-willed Dobson holds out, though he gives up Iku’s disposable cell number. Gelb then hits the jackpot with Zelda. She gives up everything, including the location of Iku’s bedroom, right inside the patio door, which is completely hidden from the street and the other houses. He knocks, and in her semi-stupor she opens the door.

As the head of Eisler, Johnson’s Tokyo office for ten years, Gelb knew something about Japanese ritual suicide, but hadn’t counted on her putting up such a fight. After trying without success to slash her throat, as the practice dictates, he was forced to jam the knife straight up into her brain. A faked-up suicide was still a worthwhile misdirection, so he cleaned up as well as he could and staged Iku in the middle of her bed. Then he unplugged the computer, dropped the Cat 5 cable down behind the dresser, and strolled back out the way he came.

I shared this thinking with Angel Valero.

“All I gave a shit about was leveraging Donovan’s wandering dick into a takeover of Con Globe assets and a quick liquidation,” he said. “I liked that girl. I didn’t kill her.”

I put down the computer and took the digital recorder out of my inside jacket pocket. I shut it off and set it on the ground.

“Maybe not directly, but you played your part. So did everybody else. Even the ones who loved her,” I said.

We heard sirens in the near distance. Angel’s face had reddened considerably during our conversation, but the tone now shifted toward purple. I hoped he wouldn’t pop an artery before the various authorities were done with him.

“I might forgive you for nailing a brain to my door and sending two of your countrymen to kill me, El Cerebro, but their families probably won’t,” I said, watching the blue lights from Sullivan’s undercover and a pair of patrol cars light up the surrounding trees, mixing uncomfortably with the golden red glow off the pond as it reflected the sun at the apogee of its daily arc.