“Better off how?”
“Better off by not ruining what I’ve got going. And better off for your own safety.”
“Now you’re concerned about my safety?”
“Yes, goddammit, I am.”
Justin snorted in disbelief. “Is this coming from Silverbush?”
She looked disgusted. “Give me a break. Larry Silverbush doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. But I’m telling you, you should listen to me on this one, Jay. Nothing good is going to come out of it if you force your way in.”
“What have you got going? Tell me how the two murders are connected.”
“I’m not telling you any such thing. I’m trying to keep you out of trouble, not drag you in.”
“This is bullshit, Wanda.”
“It’s anything but.”
“Prove it.”
“I don’t have to prove it. But I’ll prove that I know a lot more than you give me credit for.”
“Let’s hear.”
“You should stay away from Bruno Pecozzi, too.”
He thought about what Bruno had said to him, that he had to watch his back. “Have you been tailing me?”
Wanda didn’t answer.
“Is Bruno connected to all this?”
Again, not a word from the FBI agent. The silence hung in the car like a cloud of cigarette smoke, thick and unpleasant. Justin knew better than to try to pry more information out of her. And she had to know him well enough to know her words weren’t going to keep him from doing what he wanted to do. So the question was: Why was she saying all this to him? What was her goal? What was her angle?
“I hope you don’t think this is payback” is what he finally said.
“What I’m telling you just might keep you alive,” she said. “So, yes, I think this counts as payback.”
“A warning to mind my own business? That’s not good enough.”
“If you listen to me, you’ll thank me.”
Justin shook his head. “You’re a long way from payback,” he told her, “and you know it.”
“The only thing I know is that you’re a stubborn damn idiot. Which I knew all along, so I can’t say I thought you’d really pay attention to me. But you can’t say I didn’t try,” she said.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Then you’re on your own now, Jay.”
“It always does seem to come down to that, doesn’t it?” he said. Then he opened the door to her car and stepped out into the Rhode Island sunshine. Half a block away, he saw the first thing he’d seen in a while that brightened up his day. An absolutely stunning woman walking toward him. She was tall and moved like a dancer. There was something overwhelmingly sensual about her. Her dark, straight hair rustled in the slight breeze. Her bare shoulders rose and then sloped perfectly, and her arms were muscular and beautifully tapered. Her legs were long and, like the rest of her, perfect. But it was her eyes that grabbed him the most. He caught only a glimpse of them as they passed each other in the street. She had perfect eyes: the color, the shape, the way they seemed to devour her surroundings. She was Asian. Chinese, he thought. The light brown of her eyes seemed to glow against the polished, darker color of her skin. He smiled at her, couldn’t help himself, and she turned her head in his direction. Just the slightest of turns. Not really welcoming his silent greeting but not ignoring it, either. Just accepting it as if it were her due. Neither of them slowed down as they passed each other, going in opposite directions, and Justin forced himself not to look back at her. As he kept walking, he felt as if he were leaving a little part of himself behind. And when he knew she would be out of sight, this heavenly creature, he realized that the temperature had turned colder than it was supposed to be. And the sky was grayer. The summer weather had stopped making sense.
Like everything else,
Justin thought.
Just like everything else.
And he headed back to his car.
At first she thought,
Shit, I did it again,
thinking she’d twisted her knee and torn her cartilage. She’d done it two years before, just walking down the street. The operation wasn’t bad, but the recovery was a bitch. Then she realized,
No, this is worse. This pain is much, much worse. What the hell did I do?
And then she saw the Asian woman—a beautiful woman, breathtaking really—and she wondered why the woman looked so happy, how could someone be so happy when she was in so much pain, and it wasn’t just her leg now, it was her back, and then her neck—and then she didn’t see the Asian woman anymore or anything else. Her eyes closed and she felt herself falling, and then the pain was gone.
For the moment.
Li Ling wondered what it must be like to go through life being as unattractive as this woman. Her body was toned but had no real shape. Her legs were thick from ankle to thigh. Her hair was thin; there was no pleasure in touching this hair. This woman’s hips were wide and her breasts were small. Her skin was dry and colorless and cracked, not soft and touchable like Ling’s own lustrous skin. Li Ling looked down at the naked woman and all she felt was curiosity. Did this woman have lovers? Did men stare at her and lust after her and want to fuck her? Did women?
Ling was alone with the woman now. Togo had gone to get the transportation. They no longer needed the woman; they had gotten the information they’d needed from her. It hadn’t been easy. She’d been tougher than the man. Stronger. It had taken Togo’s best effort to get what they’d needed. But of course they’d gotten it. They always got what they needed. The naked woman had given them more names. And more information. She had put them one step closer to their ultimate goal.
Ling admired this woman. She was impressed by her strength. As physically unappealing as she was, that strength made Ling want to touch her, to caress her, to have some physical contact other than the pain she’d helped inflict.
The woman wasn’t moving, but Ling knew she was still alive. She bent down, put her hand on the woman’s forehead. She ran her fingers down the woman’s neck, gently stroking it. The hand moved farther down her chest, to her left breast. Ling let her hand rest there, rubbing the breast softly. She bent farther down, put her mouth on the woman’s nipple. Ling’s tongue snaked out and she tasted the nipple. It was salty from the woman’s sweat. It tasted good.
She put her mouth up against the woman’s mouth, put her lips against her lips. She could feel the soft breaths coming in and going out. She kissed the woman, very slowly, then she pressed harder and harder still. She could feel the woman stir ever so slightly.
Ling thought that perhaps she was making the woman happy. She deserved happiness.
Li Ling believed that all people deserved happiness before they died.
She was aware that someone was touching her. It was as if she were dreaming. And perhaps she was. The touch didn’t feel real, but it felt comforting. A caring touch amid the terrible pain. Perhaps she was at a doctor’s. Perhaps the miracle she’d been praying for had occurred. Perhaps someone had saved her.
She felt movement on her cheek and then the gentle touch slid downward. She felt warmth on her breast. And she wasn’t sure, but she thought the same warmth was somewhere near her mouth. Then the warmth and the light pressure of the touch stopped. And she felt as if she were being transported. For a moment she thought,
I’m on a stretcher, yes, I have been saved.
But that flash of happiness didn’t last long. Because something else occurred to her. What if she wasn’t on a stretcher? Maybe it was something else.
Maybe this was what death was,
she thought.
It was hands picking you up and moving you to the afterlife.
She felt nothing for some time after that. No hands, no warmth, no movement.
She did hear a steady drone, though. So she was still alive. Maybe this was what you heard when you were flying toward heaven. It was the noise generated by the world of the living, slowly fading as you went to a quieter place. Quiet was appealing. Quiet sounded nice. But suddenly she was overcome by a yearning for noise.
The drone stopped—she had no idea how long it had been going on; the line between conscious and unconscious was way too blurry for her to conceptualize the passage of time—and then she felt hands on her again. And more movement. Yes, she was being carried once more. She had a brief moment of panic as she began to suspect that she was not being lifted toward heaven. She was not going upward; she felt herself falling now.
She began to realize that she was far, far from heaven. And even enveloped by the pain and the darkness and the jumble that her senses had become, she understood that heaven was not a reality for her. Not now. Now she was being dropped straight down into hell.
Li Ling knew what her instructions were. And she had no real problem carrying them out. Togo had left the killing to her, knowing how much pleasure it usually gave her. But this time she did not feel the glow that normally accompanied a kill. She felt a touch of sadness that such a strong woman was disappearing. Ling could tell the woman was struggling to live. She had no chance, of course—it was a battle she could not win; one that Ling could not let her win—but still Ling felt she deserved the chance to fight and to die on her own terms. She put her two fingers on the pulse that was beating ever so faintly in the woman’s neck, but she didn’t press down and still the pulse. She kept her fingers there until she felt the pulse begin to slow naturally. Then she turned and walked away.
There was no need to make the kill.
The unattractive woman with the will of steel would be dead in seconds anyway.
There was no noise at all now, nothing at all really, no sense of movement around her, no warmth or even cold. She couldn’t tell for sure, but she felt as if she were alone. As if she were the only person left in whatever world she was in.
She didn’t know if she was able to move, but she thought that perhaps she could. She felt some connection to her arm and to her fingers. She tried moving her hand, and it seemed to work.
It also brought the pain back.
It was so strong, so overwhelming, that she almost willed herself to die on the spot. She understood where she was now. It made perfect sense. And she understood, too, that she did not have long to remain on earth and that it seemed so much easier to die without all the pain.
But she knew there was something she could do before she died.
No, not could do.
Had to do.
She had to make things right. That was what was important to her. Finishing her job. And making things right.
This thing especially.
Her hand moved enough to touch her own chest. She almost passed out from the sharp stabs that seemed to plunge themselves into her arm. But the pain didn’t matter; she understood that now. Living was important. Dying was important. Pain was something in between that ended and was forgotten. She knew that her pain was very close to being over. So she forced her arm and her hand to move and that’s when she realized she was naked. That was okay, she thought. It didn’t matter. She could make things right
using
her nakedness. Her eyes opened now, just a slit of an opening—it was all she could manage. It wasn’t really relevant anyway; she couldn’t really see. The pain was already disappearing; she could feel it fading the way she could feel the life fading from inside her. Her hand moved to the ground again, felt around. She needed something. Something sharp. She didn’t know if she could even tell the sensation of sharp anymore. Then she felt it. Something with an edge. She pressed her finger against it and there was a different warmth than she’d felt from whatever had been touching her body. This warmth was not as pleasant. But it made her happy, happy enough to move her lips into a simple and glorious smile.
Yes, she could do this, she was positive. She could make things right.
She
would
make things right.
And then, she hoped, if she was lucky, she’d die with the smile still on her face.
The OGM on Abigail Harmon’s cell phone was the same as the one on the answering machine in her New York City apartment. Neither was in Abby’s voice. Justin could assume only that a housekeeper had either been recruited for the task or had taken it upon herself to make sure that the message was singular rather than plural, or at least no longer made reference to the deceased Mr. Harmon: “You’ve reached the Harmon residence. Please leave a message and your call will be returned as soon as it’s convenient.”
Justin left the same message on both machines: “I’m in Providence. I’m just making sure you’re okay. Nothing much to report . . . just checking in.”
He hung up, feeling unsatisfied. He had a discomforting feeling that it might not be convenient for his message to be returned for quite a while.
Glancing at his watch, he looked up at the ten- or twelve-story glass building he was now facing. He had a few minutes yet before he had to be at his appointment. He decided to loiter and make believe he was savoring a smoke. That lasted thirty seconds or so before he decided his imagination was not what it should be. Pretending didn’t provide much satisfaction.
He hoped the meeting he was about to have would provide a bit more.
In keeping with the safe and conservative personality that Victoria LaSalle had extolled, her husband’s company was simply named the LaSalle Group. The name held no promises of riches or glory. No sense even of what services the company provided. Unfortunately, it also held no key as to why its founder and president had been murdered.
Justin appeared exactly on time and was ushered into a small conference room by Ronald’s assistant, an attractive but grim-faced woman wearing a conservative gray skirt suit and white shirt and who appeared to be in her late twenties. They were quickly joined by two men, also seemingly in their late twenties or early thirties and also dressed in crisp gray suits with white shirts. Justin was only a few years older than they were, but they all made him feel old and tired and out of shape and somewhat soiled.
Justin thanked them for coming into the office. It was Saturday, and already six-thirty in the evening, but Justin had wanted to meet there, to get a feel for the surroundings. He also was expecting them to provide material and information that might be available only in the office files or on the office computers. He didn’t want to wait to get that information. They all murmured that it was no problem, that they’d like to help in any way possible, that they often worked late and on weekends anyway. They said they’d all spoken to Victoria and she had instructed them to give Justin absolutely anything he needed. He thanked them again, then he did his best to tell them what he needed. He began by explaining what he was looking for and why.
One of the men—his name was Harry Behr and Justin took him to be the highest up of the three—explained how Ronald LaSalle had operated his business.
“He was a good teacher,” Harry said. “He believed in discipline and intellectual . . . I’m not sure of the exact word I’m looking for here . . .”
“Integrity,” the woman said. Her name was Ellen Loache.
“Yes,” Harry said, and looked pleased. “He believed in intellectual integrity. One of the reasons he started his own company was that he said he always felt that when he worked at a large firm he was letting external sources control his time and his thinking. He didn’t think that was the best way to get the right results.”
The other man nodded and spoke up now. His name was Stan Solomon. “Ronald liked the freedom this place gave him. He said he used to spend his mornings taking phone calls, his lunchtimes listening to other people telling him what they thought he should do, and his afternoons meeting with analysts and strategists who did nothing but talk
at
him.”
“What he used to drum into us,” Harry said, “was that he wanted us to give him facts, not opinions. He didn’t really care if we saw anyone or talked to other people; he wanted us to read newspapers, trade publications, magazines, corporate reports, legitimate financial analyses. He wanted to ignore the junk—and there’s a lot of junk in this business—and try to dig for the reality. Ronald always said you couldn’t really trust people but you could trust ideas and facts.”
“And results,” Stan added. “He believed in the Bill Parcells school of economics. You are what your record says you are.”
“Okay,” Justin said. “I’ve got the theory he lived by. But what did
he
do during the day?”
“Mostly the same as what we did,” Stan said. “He read, he researched, he focused.”
Justin nodded and scratched at his half day’s growth of beard. He wondered how the two guys in the room managed to stay so perfectly clean shaven. “And you didn’t notice anything different over, say, the last few months?” he asked.
“Different how?” Ellen Loache asked.
“I don’t know. Different behavior on Ronald’s part. Different business practices. Different in any way.”
“Well,” Ellen said, “things definitely changed about six months ago, but that was only natural.”
“Why?” Justin asked.
“The nature of our business changed,” Harry said.
Justin didn’t have to say anything. He just moved his fingers in a “come on” motion. Harry continued talking.
“Originally we were basically just a research company, providing services for other companies. That’s mostly what Ronald did at the Rock.”
“The Rock?”
“R and W. Rockworth and Williams.”
“Wait,” Justin said. “What does Rockworth and Williams have to do with Ronald?”
“That’s where he used to work before starting TLG.”
“He used to work at Rockworth?”
“Sure. He pretty much
was
Rockworth up here. He ran the Providence office. Ellen and I worked for him there.”
“He brought me over from Citibank,” Stan said, “in Boston.”
Justin held his hand up, motioning for them to be quiet. He didn’t know what the Rockworth connection could possibly mean, but it was too strong to ignore. The one thing that had popped up at every turn so far was the financial institution of Rockworth and Williams. Justin decided that he sure as hell was going to find out what that connection meant.
“Okay,” he said after a few moments. “Go on. How did the business change?”
“We began doing a lot more of our own investing, dealing directly with clients rather than only working through Rockworth.”
“And this changed things how?”
“A lot more personal service for one thing. When you’re dealing directly with clients, you’re at their beck and call.” That was from Harry. He clearly didn’t like being at other people’s beck and call.
“A lot more travel for another,” Ellen said. “Particularly for Ronald. He was spending a lot more time out of the office dealing with clients.”
“Do you have a list of the clients and the places he traveled to?” Justin asked.
Ellen nodded and handed over a folder. “Mrs. LaSalle told me you’d be wanting that, so I already prepared it.”
“This is everyone?”
“Certainly everyone I knew about.”
Justin picked up on her hesitation. “Is it possible there were clients you didn’t know about?”
Another hesitation. “I don’t think so,” Ellen Loache said, “but . . .”
“But Ron seemed like he was becoming more secretive about things,” Stan said.
Harry shot Stan a sharp glance, but Justin turned to face Stan and asked him to be more specific.
“It’s hard to really be specific,” Stan said. “I just got the feeling he was doing something he didn’t want to discuss with us. Or with me, anyway. To be honest, I thought maybe it was because he didn’t think I was doing a great job.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Ellen said quickly.
“Well, I mean, I know that,” Stan said. “I had a great year. But still, he just didn’t seem to want to include me sometimes.”
Justin turned to Harry Behr. “Did you think the same thing? About you, I mean, not about Stan.”
Harry also hesitated, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It was weird. But not so weird that I felt like I could say anything.”
“That’s exactly the way I felt,” Stan said. “It was subtle.”
Justin had a few more questions but before he could ask anything else, Ellen said, “It’s crazy, isn’t it? Ronald and Evan Harmon . . . having this happen so close together. It creeps me out.”
Justin managed to keep his voice calm and quiet. “Ronald knew Evan Harmon?”
“Sure,” Harry said, “from Rockworth.”
“Did they do business together?”
“Some.”
“Recently?”
“Pretty regularly,” Ellen said. “Particularly since we expanded the business.”
“Was Ascension one of your clients?”
“One of our biggest,” Stan said. “Maybe
the
biggest.”
“Do you know the specifics of what they were doing together?”
“We did a lot of research for Ascension. Evan and Ronald talked a lot,” Harry said.
Ellen indicated the folder. “Whatever I have is on that list. I tried to make it as thorough as I could.”
The conversation went on for another twenty minutes or so. But Justin had run out of questions. He was staying because it was easier to sit there and talk with the three younger people than it was to get up and move. But he could tell that they were becoming fidgety and impatient, and it was Saturday night after all. He thought about taking them to dinner, having a few drinks with them. It would be nice. But he realized it would be nice only for him. They didn’t want to spend their big night of the week drinking with a melancholy cop immersed in a murder case. They wanted to go home to their spouses or lovers or even their pets and TV sets. Dining with him would be way down on their list of desirable things to do. Maybe number 101 out of a hundred. So he thanked them one last time, and told them to go and try to enjoy themselves. They said that they’d do their best.
His parents had waited to have dinner and Justin appreciated the gesture. He was starving and bone tired and it was nice to relinquish control, even if for only a couple of hours. He made himself a perfect vodka martini with three olives, exactly the way his father liked his drink fixed, and his father joined him. Then Jonathan opened a superb bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape and they sat at the table and Justin did his best to fill them in on his day. He left out details he knew they wouldn’t want to know—what had happened at Dolce, his encounter with the FBI agent on the steps of the police station—but he gave an in-depth accounting of the time he spent at Victoria’s house. As he spoke, he could hear his words tinged with disappointment, even anger.
“Her grief is very raw right now. And even if weren’t, people deal with grief in different ways,” Jonathan said. “Some people are afraid of it.”
“And some people wallow in it,” Lizbeth added. “It took you a long time to get over yours.”
Justin looked up from his wineglass. “Do you think I’m over it, Mother?”
She smiled softly. “What I think is that when we suffer loss and pain, it makes us a different person. It’s like a physical wound. When you break your leg, you’re not the same afterward—you’re left with a scar or a limp or an ache whenever it rains. At some point it heals—the scar is barely seen, the limp is hardly noticeable—but your body is still different. Altered. Not necessarily worse, I suppose, but still different. And at some point you accept the fact that this is your new body; you realize you can still run, just maybe not as fast or as long; and you move on. It’s the same when we grieve, except no one can see the scar, not when it’s raw and not when it heals. But it changes you just as much, and the change is permanent. And at some point you accept the change and realize this is the new you. Emotionally battered and bruised and maybe even forever heartsick, but you move on.”
“I’m not as sure as you are that I’ve moved on.”
“It doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten. And it doesn’t mean you’re not still sad. Of course you are. The scar is permanent. But I’ve seen enough of you now . . . you’ve become a different person. And I think you’ve accepted this new you. I’m very glad about that.”
It was the longest speech he’d ever heard his mother utter, and he loved her for it. He started to thank her, to tell her he hoped she was right, to say he thought she just might
be
right, but his downtime had ended. He hadn’t gotten two hours; he’d barely gotten a full sixty minutes. He hadn’t even finished the salad that Louise had made. Didn’t matter. His cell phone was ringing, and when he pulled the phone out of his pocket and glanced at the caller ID, he knew he had to answer the call.
“Can I call you back?” Justin said. “I’m in the middle of dinner.”
He got the answer he was expecting.
“I think your dinner’s over,” Billy DiPezio said. “Wrap the rest of it up to go.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes. I’ll tell you on the way.”
“On the way where?” Justin asked.
“Drogin’s lot,” Billy said.