Win

Chapter 8

How did you find me?”

We are in the backyard now. The dogs run free in two large pens — one apparently for smaller dogs, one for larger. A bearded collie is being groomed on a table. A bullmastiff is taking a bath. The sun is bright.

She waits for my answer, so I simply say, “I have my ways.”

“It was a long time ago. I don’t say this as an excuse. And my role was small. I don’t say that as an excuse either. But not a day goes by that I don’t think about that night.”

I feign a yawn. She gives me a little laugh.

“Okay, yeah, maybe I deserve that. Maybe that was a bit sanctimonious.”

“Oh, just a bit,” I reply.

She strips off the gloves, washes her hands thoroughly, dries them with a towel. She beckons me with her head to follow her toward a path in the woods.

“Why are you here, Win?”

I ignore the question by saying, “Tell me about the day Ry Strauss drowned in Michigan.”

Her head is down as she walks. She sticks her hands in her back pockets — I’m not sure why, but I find this gesture endearing.

“Ry didn’t drown,” she says.

“Yet you told the police that?”

“I did.”

“So you lied.”

“I did.”

We walk deeper into the woods.

“I’m guessing,” she says, “that Ry has surfaced.”

I do not reply.

“Is he dead or alive?”

Again I ignore her question. “When was the last time you saw Ry Strauss?”

“You’re not an FBI agent, are you?”

“No.”

“But you have a big interest in this?”

I stop. “Mrs. Dorchester?”

“Call me Lake.” She has, I admit, a rather potent smile. I like it. There is a quiet strength to this woman. “Why not, right?”

“Why not,” I repeat. “My interests are irrelevant, Lake. I need you to focus. Answer my questions and then I’ll be out of your life. Is that clear?”

“You’re something.”

“I am, yes. When was the last time you saw Ry Strauss?”

“More than forty years ago.”

“So that would be...?”

“Three weeks before I turned myself in.”

“You’ve had no contact with him since?”

“None.”

“Any idea where he’s been?”

Her voice is softer this time. “None.” Then she adds, “Is Ry alive?”

Yet again I ignore her query. “Where were you the last time you saw him?”

“I can’t see how it matters now.”

I smile at her. My smile says, Just answer.

“We were in New York City. There’s a pub called Malachy’s on Seventy-Second Street near Columbus Avenue.”

I know Malachy’s. It’s a legit dive bar, with harried hay-straw-haired barmaids who call you hon and laminated bar menus that make you reach for a hand sanitizer. Malachy’s is not an artificially created “dive,” not some Disney reproduction of what a dive bar is supposed to look like so that hipsters can feel authentic whilst remaining safe and comfy. I go to Malachy’s sometimes — it is only a block from my abode — but when I do, I don’t pretend I belong.

“Back in the seventies,” Lake continues, “there was an underground network of supporters taking care of us. Ry and me, we moved around a lot. These people helped keep us hidden.” She snags my gaze. Her eyes are an inviting gray that goes well with the hair. “I’m not going to tell you any of their names.”

“I have no interest in busting old hippies,” I say.

“Then what do you have an interest in?”

I wait. She sighs.

“Right, right, anyway, we moved around — communes, basements, abandoned buildings, camping grounds, no-name motels. This went on for more than two years. You have to remember, I was only nineteen years old when this started. We’d planned to blow up an empty building. That’s all. No one was supposed to get hurt. And I didn’t even throw one of the Molotov cocktails that night.”

She is getting off track. “So you’re at Malachy’s in New York,” I prompt.

“Yes. Stuck in a storage room in the basement. The smell was awful. Stale beer and vomit. It still haunts me, I swear. But the big thing is, Ry, he isn’t stable. He never was, I guess. I can see that now. I don’t know what part of me was so broken I thought only he could fix it. My upbringing was troubled, but you don’t want to hear about that.”

She is correct. I don’t.

“But locked in that foul, tiny basement, Ry was really starting to unravel. I couldn’t stay with him anymore. It was just too abusive a relationship. No, he never hit me. That’s not what I mean. The woman who got us the room under Malachy’s? She saw it too. That kind woman — I’ll call her Sheila but that’s not her real name — Sheila could see I needed help. She became a sympathetic ear. I had to leave him. No choice. But where would I go? I thought about staying underground. Sheila knew someone who could sneak me into Canada and then to Europe. But I’d been on the run for two years now. I didn’t want to live the rest of my life this way. The stress, the dirt, the exhaustion, but mostly the boredom. You either travel or you hide all day. More than anything, I think wanted people turn themselves in to escape the monotony. I just craved normalcy, you know what I mean?”

“Normalcy,” I repeat to keep her talking.

“So Sheila introduced me to this sympathetic lawyer who taught up at Columbia. He thought that if I turned myself in, maybe I wouldn’t get that much time, you know, being so young and under Ry’s influence and all that. So we came up with a plan. I made my way to Detroit. I hid out there for a few weeks. When enough time had passed, I turned myself in.”

“Did you tell Ry Strauss what you were doing?”

She slowly shook her head, her face tilted toward the sky. “This was all done behind Ry’s back. I left a note with Sheila trying to explain.”

“How did he react to your departure?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Once a plan like that goes into effect, you can’t look back. It’s too dangerous for anyone.”

“Did you try to find out after the fact?”

“No, never. Same reason. I didn’t want to put anyone in danger.”

“You must have been curious.”

“More like guilty,” she says. “Ry was getting worse — and my answer was to abandon him. His hold on me had loosened, but... God, you can’t imagine what it was like. I thought the sun rose and fell on Ry Strauss. I would literally have died for him.”

Which raises the question, which I decide not to ask right now: Would you have killed for him too?

“You told the FBI he drowned in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.”

“I made that up.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think? I owed him, didn’t I?”

“It was a distraction?”

“Yes, of course. Get the cops off his back. I also had to explain why I chose now to turn myself in. I couldn’t say it was because the great Ry Strauss was ranting at himself in a basement bar on the Upper West Side. Now we would diagnose him as bipolar or OCD or something. But back then? Ry used to go up to the bar at night, after it closed, and line up the liquor bottles so they were equidistant from one another with the labels facing the same way. It would take him hours.”

I think about the tower room at the Beresford. “Did he have any money?”

“Ry?”

“You said you were hiding in a basement below a dive bar.”

“Yes.”

“Did he have the money for nicer quarters?”

“No.”

“Did he have an interest in art?”

“Art?”

“Painting, sculpture, art.”

“I don’t... Why would you ask that?”

“Did you ever commit robberies with him?”

“What? No, of course not.”

“So you just relied on the kindness of strangers?”

“I don’t—”

“You know other radicals held up banks, don’t you? The Symbionese Liberation Army. The Brink’s robbery. Did you and Strauss ever do anything like that? I don’t care about prosecuting you. My guess is, the statute of limitations would be up anyway. But I need to know.”

A teenage boy walks by us with three dogs on leashes. Lake Davies smiles at him and nods. He nods back. “I wanted to turn myself in right at the start. He wouldn’t let me.”

“Wouldn’t let you?”

“Part of all worship is abuse. That’s what I’ve learned. Those who love God the most also fear God the most too. ‘God-fearing,’ right? The most devout who won’t shut up about God’s love are always the ones raving about fire and brimstone and eternal damnation. So was I in love with Ry or was I scared of him? I don’t know how thick that line is.”

I’m not here to get mired down in a philosophical discussion, so I shift gears.

“Did you see on the news about a stolen Vermeer being found?”

“Yesterday, right?” It slowly hits her. “Wait. Wasn’t someone found dead with the painting?”

I nod. “That was Ry Strauss.”

I give her a moment to take that in.

“He’d become a hoarder and a hermit.” I explain about the Beresford, the tower, the clutter, the mess, the painting on the wall. I choose not to go into my cousin’s predicament quite yet. There is a bench up ahead. Lake Davies collapses onto it as if her knees have given way. I stay standing.

“So Ry was murdered.”

“Yes.”

“After all these years.” Lake Davies shakes her head, her eyes glassy. “I still don’t see why you’re here.”

“My family owned the Vermeer.”

“So you’re, what, here to find the other painting?”

I do not reply.

“I don’t have it. When were the paintings stolen?”

I tell her the date.

“That was way after I turned myself in.”

“Did you ever see any of the other Jane Street Six after the murders?”

She winces at the word “murders.” I used it intentionally. “The underground divided us up. You can’t have six people traveling together.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Just one.”

When she stops talking, I put my hand to my ear. “I’m listening.”

“We stayed two nights with Arlo.”

“Arlo Sugarman?”

She nods. “In Tulsa. He was posing as a student at Oral Roberts University, which I thought was pretty ironic.”

“Why’s that?”

“Arlo was raised Jewish but prided himself on his atheism.”

I remember something I saw in the file. “Sugarman claimed he wasn’t there that night—”

“We all did, so what?”

Fair enough. “Wasn’t he a fine arts major at Columbia?”

“Yeah, maybe. Wait, you think Arlo and Ry...?”

“Do you?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know for sure, but...”

I think now about Cousin Patricia and the horror of what she went through. “You mentioned Ry Strauss hurting you.”

She swallows. “What about it?”

“You changed your entire identity. You pretty much went off the grid.”

“Yet you found me.”

I try to look modest. Then I ask, “Were you afraid Ry would try to find you?”

“Not just Ry.”

“Who?”

She shakes me off, and I can see she is starting to close down.

“There is a chance,” I say, “that Ry Strauss was involved in something more sinister than stolen art.”

“How much more sinister?”

I see no reason to sugarcoat it. “Abducting, raping, and eventually murdering young women.”

Her face loses all color.

“Perhaps with a partner,” I add. Then I ask, “Do you think Ry could have been involved in something like that?”

“No,” she says softly. “And I really think you should leave now.”