We'll Meet Again

52

Lou Knox lived in an apartment over the garage that sat to the side of the Whitehalls ’ residence. The three-room unit suited him well. One of the few hobbies he enjoyed was woodworking, and Calvin Whitehall had allowed him use of one of the storerooms in the oversized garage for his tools and worktable. He also had permitted Knox to refinish the apartment to suit himself.

Now the living room and bedroom were paneled with bleached white oak. Shelves lined the walls, although one would not call them bookshelves, since Lou Knox was not a reader. Instead, his television, state-of-the-art stereo, and CD and video collections filled the shelves.

They were also excellent cover-ups for the large and ever-growing collection of incriminating evidence he had accumulated for possible use against Calvin Whitehall.

He was fairly certain that he would never need any of it, since he and Cal Whitehall had long ago reached an understanding on what his duties were to be. Besides, Lou knew that to use that evidence would be to incriminate himself as well. Therefore, that was a hand that Lou had no intention of ever showing except as a last resort. To do that would be to cut off your nose to spite your face, as the grandmother who raised him used to say when he complained about the butcher for whom he’d worked as a delivery boy.

“Does he pay you regular?” his grandmother would demand.

“Yes, but he asks his customers to put the tip on the bill,” Lou used to protest, “and then he counts it as part of my salary.”

All these years later it gave Lou satisfaction to remember how he had gotten back at the butcher. On his way to deliver an order, he’d open the package and take out part of it-a piece of the chicken, or a slice from the filet mignon, or enough chopped sirloin for a good hamburger.

His grandmother, who worked the four-to-midnight shift as a telephone operator at a motel ten miles away, would have left him a meal of canned spaghetti and meatballs, or something else he would find equally unappetizing. So on those days he had managed to filch some of the customers’ meat, he’d come home from his after-school job and feast on beef or chicken. Then he’d throw out whatever his grandmother had left him, and no one was the wiser.

The only person who ever caught on to what Lou was up to was Cal. One evening when Cal and he were sophomores, Cal stopped over just as he was frying a steak he’d taken from a package the butcher had sent to one of his best customers.

“You’re a jerk,” Cal had said. “You broil steak, you don’t fry it.”

That night forged an alliance between the two young men: Cal, the son of the town drunks, and Lou, the grandson of Bebe Clauss, whose only daughter had eloped with Lenny Knox and returned to town two years later just long enough to deposit her son with her mother. That burden out of her life, she’d disappeared again.

Despite his background, Cal had gone off to college, helped by his cunning and a drive to succeed. Lou drifted from job to job, in between serving thirty days in the town jail for shoplifting, and three years in the state penitentiary for aggravated assault. Then, almost sixteen years ago, he’d received a call from Cal, now known as Mr. Calvin Whitehall, of Greenwich, Connecticut.

Gotta go kiss the feet of my old buddy, was the way Lou characterized the summons to Greenwich. Cal had made it eminently clear that their reunion was based solely on Lou’s potential value to him as a kind of all-purpose handyman.

Lou moved to Greenwich that day, into a spare bedroom in the house Cal had bought. The house was far smaller than the one he lived in now, but it was definitely in the right location.

Cal ’s courtship of Jenna Graham was an eye-opener for Lou. Here was a classy, drop-dead beauty being pursued by a guy who looked like an ex-prizefighter. What on earth could she be expected to see in him?

Even as he asked the question, Lou figured out the answer. Power. Raw, naked power. Jenna loved the fact that Cal had it, and she was fascinated by the way he used it. He might not have had her pedigree, and he might not have come from her kind of world, but the guy could handle himself in any situation; her world was soon his home. And no matter what some of the old guard might think of Cal Whitehall, they knew better than to cross him.

Cal ’s parents were never invited to visit their son. When they died within a short time of each other, Lou was the one sent to make arrangements and to rush their bodies to the crematorium as fast as possible. Cal was no sentimentalist.

Over the years, Lou’s value to Cal had increased significantly-he knew that. Even so, he had no doubt that if at any point it suited Calvin Whitehall to dispose of him, he, Lou Knox, would be thrown to the wolves. So it was with a certain degree of grim amusement that he remembered how jobs he had carried out for Cal were planned in such a way that Cal could wash his hands of any involvement. So if anyone was left holding the bag, guess who that would be?

Well, two could play that game, he thought with a sly smile.

Now it was up to him to see if Fran Simmons was going to be merely a nuisance, or if she was becoming dangerous. It should be interesting, he decided. Like father, like daughter?

Lou smiled as he remembered Fran’s father, that eager-to-please jerk whose mother never taught him not to trust the Calvin Whitehalls of this world. So when he finally learned his lesson, it was a little too late.