A Cool Breeze on the Underground (29 page)

36

U.s. senators with chauffeurs and limos and twenty-dollar bills park where they want to at Kennedy airport, even right beside signs saying UNLOADING ONLY. Chase and Lombardi sat in the backseat. Chase drummed his feet and looked at his watch. The plane was due any moment and Liz hadn’t shown up yet. Hung up in traffic. How could a helicopter get hung up in traffic? Lombardi was on the phone to his people at the convention. The Senator was still hanging in there. That cracker bastard was taking his time, though. Probably praying about it.

Ed Levine was set. Standing at Arrivals outside the Customs gate, he checked his troops again. He had brought along four muscle types. They were spread out well. Little Neal wasn’t getting by. Two would grab the kid and waltz her over to Daddy for the hugs and kisses. The other two would grab Neal and stick him in a car. They would drive to some lonely parking lot, where Ed would expound on his displeasure. He had reluctantly promised Graham he wouldn’t break anything; after all, Neal, had brought the girl back.

A few minutes later, the light flashed on BA 177. Ed stepped outside to the car. Lombardi rolled the window down.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want to bother you or anything, but they’re down and headed into Customs.”

Chase set the car phone down. “How long?”

“Depends.” Fuck you.

Chase gave him a dirty look. Levine could care less. This thing was about over and then he wouldn’t have to deal with the sleazy SOB anymore.

“We’ll be there in a minute. You haven’t seen my wife, have you?”

Ed knew thirty-eight good answers for that one but didn’t use any of them. “One at a time, Senator. One at a time.”

Chase stood with the flowers Lombardi had handed him—a nice touch, in case any snoopy reporters stumbled on the scene. He watched an endless throng of people come out of the gate, none of them Allie. Just like her, though, he thought.

Lombardi wished they’d hurry the hell up so he could get back to the convention. Christ only knows what they were up to back there without him to handle it.

Levine knew that Neal was holding back deliberately, letting most of the crowd come through—the less chance of a scene. He checked his guys one more time. They seemed to pick up on the tension. They were alert, on edge. Just the way he liked them.

“Daddy!”

The high-pitched squeal echoed through the hall.

Levine watched as some little schlump with short blond hair advanced toward Chase with her arms out.

“Daddy!” she screamed again, throwing her arms around him.

“You’re not my daughter,” Chase said, trying to disentangle himself from her more than fervent embrace.

“No fucking shit?” she whispered. “Flowers! For
me?
How sweet! I’m famished. You know airline food.” She proceeded to eat them, one by one. She did hand one to an anemic-looking boy standing beside her. He popped a daisy in his mouth and swallowed it whole.

“I’m Crisp. Can I call you Dad?”

The security types started to move in. Ed beat them to it. He grabbed Vanessa and lifted her off her feet.

“Where are they?”

“You must be Ed. Get your greasy hands off me, Ed. Before I scream for a reporter. That’s better.

“I have a message for all of you from Neal. First, you’re to let us go immediately. Or I call the press. Second, you’re not to try to find him or the girl. Third, he told you not to send him on this thing. Alrighty right? Now, where can I get a taxi?”

Chase started to grab her. “You bitch—”

“Let them go,” Levine said. He was red with rage, but he knew Neal Carey. “Let them go, Senator.”

His boys were slick. They moved the Senator as if it was his idea. They steered him back to the car, forming a wall that masked his furious face and muffled his yelling.

Rich Lombardi stood there for a moment, shaking his head. Then he looked up at Ed Levine. “Title this bit
You’re Finished in This Business.”

Ed Levine shoved him a big middle finger. “Title this.” But as Lombardi was hustling away to catch up with Chase, Ed was thinking; I’ll kill him. I’ll find Neal Carey and kill him. It’s over for him—his job, his apartment, his education. Hosed. Let him try the world with no friends and no family.

The guy at boston’s Logan Airport didn’t want to let them in, but their papers were in order, this fucking guy with the shaved head and a safety pin through his ear, for Chrissakes, and his broad with the orange and purple crew cut.

So he hassled them a little, then said, “Welcome to Boston, Mr. Griffin, Miss Brownlow.”

Neal blushed. The needle through his ear had stung, but not like this homecoming. He felt like a jerk. He looked like a jerk.

The heavily muscled guy in the black polo shirt grabbed Neal the second he stepped out onto the street. He was professional. His hand was like a soft vise around Neal’s bicep, while his partner gently took Allie.

“Neal?” She wasn’t nearly strong enough to put up a struggle, but she leaned away from the muscle toward Neal.

“It’s okay, Allie. It’s okay,” he said as his guy pushed on his chest, blocking his way to the girl. “They’re going to take good care of you. They’re going to get you straight.”

“Neal?” She started to cry and held on to him tighter.

“Allie, listen, I do love you. But sometimes the best thing you can do for someone you love is to leave.” He pried her hand off his arm, then softly kissed the tips of her fingers. “Goodbye, Allie.”

The muscle started moving her toward a limo parked on the street. Neal looked over the thug’s shoulder and saw Liz Chase get out of the back.

She stood on the sidewalk, crying, her fingers touching her bottom lip.

The thug started to turn neal away.

Allie was looking back at Neal as they pushed her along toward her mother. She looked scared and hurt.

He didn’t see her collapse in her mother’s arms, didn’t see their embrace. All he saw was a big chest and a big forearm hauling him away. Then he heard a voice say, “Hurt him and I’ll cut your balls off.”

The guy let him go. Neal saw Graham standing there, an evil smile that didn’t cover up his worry spread across his face. Neal looked behind him and saw Allie’s head through the rear window of the car. It was rested on her mother’s shoulder. Ethan Kitteredge sat next to them.

Ash blond hair. Impossible blue eyes.

“Hello, son.”

“She’s
his
daughter, isn’t she?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s news to me, Graham.”

“News to me, too. News to Kitteredge. News to the kid, soon.”

“How—”

“Long time. All these blue bloods know each other. When you called the other night … let me change that, when you
finally
called the other night, told me what kind of shape she was in, told me your demands—and thank you very much and, by the way, fuck you—I called the mother like you said. She must’ve gotten on the honker to The Man, because in less time than it takes Guidry to tank a three-run lead, the phone goes off again and guess who, Neal?”

“Kitteredge.”

“Who says okay. Fuck Chase, and the kid goes to the best laughing academy money can buy. Along with Mom, by the way.”

“And you kept all this from Ed?”

“Yeah.”

“He set me up, Graham. He was working the other side.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“How—”

“Trust me.” He gave Neal that satanic grin, then put a fatherly arm around his shoulders. “By the way, kid, Levine thinks you deliberately fucked us over. So does Chase. They don’t know anything about Allie being The Man’s daughter or nothing. They’re going to think you made an arrangement with Mrs. Chase for a cut of the divorce settlement, which should be wicked big.”

“But you’re going to set them straight, right?”

“No. The Senator is still useful to us.”

“After what we know about him? The Man can say that knowing what he knows about the Senator and his daughter?”

“It’s business, kid. Nothing personal.”

“Ed’s going to think it’s personal.”

Graham tightened his hold a little. “Yeah, well, that’s why we want you to disappear for a while. Let things cool off, you know?”

So I get to take the fall, Neal thought. You do the right thing and you get nailed for it.

“Now,” Graham continued, “I know you’re worried about graduass school. Your professor says you’re on leave of absence. To do research.” He handed Neal an envelope.

Neal opened it. The note from Kitteredge read: “Thank you for my daughter. You are, indeed, a friend of the family. I hope this partially compensates you for any inconvenience we may have, or will have, caused you.” There was a draft for ten thousand pounds sterling and an open return ticket to London.

He handed the bank draft back to Graham.

“Take half of it, and get it to Allie. Send me the change.”

“Are you crazy? The kid’s got more money than God.”

“I owe it to her. It’s hers.”

“You’re sick.”

“Tell me about it. Did I get any mail?” he asked.

“Not from Diane.”

How does he know these things? Neal wondered.

“You want me to track her down? Tell her where you’ll be?” Graham asked.

Neal shook his head.

“You think she’ll be okay?”

“Diane?”

“Allie.”

“Yeah, she’ll be okay. What, you got something for this kid?”

Neal snorted. “Just another job. You think I could chance going into town, catch a ball game, couple of hot dogs before I get back on a plane?”

Graham pulled two tickets out of his shirt pocket: Yankees versus Red Sox—box seats, Fenway Park.

“Your old Dad takes care of you, doesn’t he?”

“Box seats?”

“Father and son night. Two for one.”

“Figures.”

They started walking to the cab stand. “Did I mention,” Graham said, “that you look like shit, with your head shaved and a safety pin sticking through your ear? Doesn’t that hurt, for Chrissakes?”

“Not as much as the needle that made the hole.”

“Well, take it out. I don’t want people thinking you’re a fag.”

“I’m getting to kind of like it.”

“Great. What’s next? A simple strand of pearls?”

They stopped at the cab stand:

“You did good, son.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

37

Rich lombardi slipped into the driver’s seat of his Porsche. All in all, things hadn’t worked out too badly. The Senator hadn’t gotten the Veep, but that was okay. This cracker wouldn’t last more than one term and then they’d have a crack at the number-one slot. And Allie was tucked away in a rubber room somewhere and couldn’t shoot off her mouth. He leaned back into the seat and was about to start the engine when he heard that flicking sound again, that rubbing. But it was only for a split second, because something cold and sharp was pressing into his neck.

“You know what I read in the papers this morning?” Joe Graham said. “I read they’re training monkeys to help out quadriplegics, you know, guys who can’t move their arms or legs? Yeah, these monkeys run all around their apartment and bring them things. Books, food, beer … you want one of those monkeys, Richie? Because if I press just a little right here … you’ll need a monkey to make your calls to London for you.”

“Don’t.”

“You set my kid up, didn’t you?”

“No, I—”

The knife pricked his flesh.

“Yes.”

“What for?”

“Afraid she’d talk.”

“About what?”

He hesitated. Then he felt a trickle of blood running down his neck.

“Things we did.”

Was there anyone who wasn’t tapping that kid? Graham thought.

“That was worth Neal getting killed?”

“I didn’t think they’d kill him.”

“Allie going down the tubes?”

“She was there already.”

“You’re scum, you know that?”

Lombardi was trembling so hard, Graham was afraid he’d cut him accidentally.

“Put both hands on the wheel. Lean forward. Close your eyes.” Lombardi started to cry as he did what he was told. Graham slipped out the passenger door and came around to the driver’s window.

“Take a message to your boss. From Kitteredge. From me. When this term is up, he packs it in. He quits. He also doesn’t fight this divorce. Tell him. And then you resign. You got that, hotshot? We see you anywhere near a politician again, you’re on a waiting list for one of those monkeys.”

He stepped away from the Porsche and into the waiting car. “You still want a piece of him?” he asked Levine.

Ed shook his head in disgust. “Not worth it.”

“Right.”

“I can’t believe Neal didn’t trust me,” Ed said as they were driving away. “Pisses me off.”

“Neal doesn’t trust a lot of people.”

“You gonna call him? Tell him he can come home?”

“No. Let’s leave him be for a while.”

Levine pulled the car out onto the street.

I’ll miss the little bastard, though, Graham thought.

EPILOGUE: JUST NEAL

The ringing startled Neal.

He set the
Pickle
down with a tinge of annoyance. He stepped outside and saw the postman walking his bicycle up the road, ringing the bell on the handlebars.

“I’d have come to the village, Bill. You didn’t have to come all the way up.”

Hadley handed him a big pile of mail wrapped in string. “From the States, looked important.”

“Well, thanks for the trouble.”

“No trouble.”

“Can I offer you a cup of tea? Kettle’s on. Take the chill out…”

“Wish I could, but I haven’t the time. Next week.”

“Well, ta, Bill.”

“Ta, Neal.”

He watched the postman pedal down the track and then he checked out the sky. It might snow before nightfall. Hardin would be bringing the sheep in early. He’d stop in for tea.

He went back into the cottage and looked at the mail. A postcard from Graham; another letter from Allie, who was getting out in a week and going to a halfway house. A journal on eighteenth-century lit. A letter from a don at Oxford extending permission to use the archives.
Sports Illustrated.
Ten of them, and bless you, Graham. An envelope with Diane’s return address on it.

I told you not to do that, Graham, but thanks.

He set the letter down unopened and went back to his book. Maybe he’d open it later, when he had a scotch or two to help him. Maybe not.

He was lonely, but he was used to that. He had his books to read.