Authors: Jeffrey Robinson
“Everything,” Zeke said. “Except . . . maybe I'll pick and choose a little for the plane tonight.”
“Where are you off to?” Kravitz asked.
“New York.”
“You just came back from New York.”
“Big party tomorrow night with Bill. And an appointment on Wednesday morning.”
“Bill who?”
Zeke made a face.
“Oh,” Kravitz said, “that Bill.”
“I'm back Wednesday night.”
“Listen, if you and Birgitta want to come down to Cabo in ten days, Arnie said he wants to come down, so it will just be the five of us.”
“Arnie called me,” Zeke said. “I like him. But how the hell do you book the ex-governator into a rom-com with Jennifer Aniston?” Then Zeke took a deep breath and confessed to Kravitz, “Birgitta and I are splitting up.”
“Oh,” Kravitz said. “I'm sorry to hear that. Is there someone . . .”
“No.”
“Come alone if you want. Otherwise, take a rain check. You're always welcome.” He patted Zeke on the shoulder. “What do you think of our new best friend, Mr. Isbister?”
“Strange man,” Zeke said.
“Wouldn't even loosen his tie,” Bobby added.
“Yeah, but . . .” Kravitz said, “when he heard the numbers, he didn't even blink.”
“Hey,” Zeke said, “you wouldn't blink either if your boss controlled twenty percent of the world's rice.”
D
r. Robert Gildenstein and his wife, Dr. Susan O'Malley, who were both orthopedic surgeons, lived in a large three-bedroom apartment on the thirty-seventh floor with their twin four-year-old daughters.
About a year ago, right after they'd moved in,
New York Magazine
ran a big feature story about them titled, “The Most Powerful Husband-Wife Doctor Team in the City.”
According to the magazine, Susan and Robert had saved so many athletic careers that more than one hundred former patients had since been inducted into various Halls of Fame or won world records or owned World Cup medals.
“If you're an athlete whose career has been cut short by injury,” the story concluded, “there is hope. But first you need to find their unlisted number, and then you'd better have a world-class athlete's salary because hope for those who enter the inner sanctum of their unmarked, very private, world-class clinic on Park Avenue comes at a very steep world-class price.”
Pierre Belasco liked them because their taste level was also world class.
He admired their furniture. Most of it was George III, like the fall-front desk that lived in their study. It was a sister piece to one owned by Thomas Jefferson and on display in the South Square Room at Monticello.
He also liked their art. They owned two good Constables and a very respectable Turner, in addition to several small Whistler drawings.
But it was only when he arrived that night, after the residents' board meeting, that he discovered he also liked their food.
Serving board members a cup of coffee and some pound cake might be fine for other people, but the Gildensteins were offering six different minisized French pastries and ice-cold 2002 vintage Dom Perignon champagne.
“You cater a very good meeting,” he told Susan when she insisted he have another glass of champagne.
The gathering had been called for 8:30, had adjourned by 9:20, and now, at five to ten, most of the board members had already left.
“Robert and I decided that if we don't set the standard,” she said to Belasco, “then, at the next meeting, whoever hosts it will serve prunes wrapped in bacon and diet Dr. Pepper.”
He grinned, “I don't believe that for a moment.”
“Maybe . . . well, not quite . . . but almost. We live in a building where people don't cook. This is reheat city.”
“Surely not everybody . . .”
“Pierre, I have visited perhaps three dozen apartments in this building, and in at least two out of every three of those, the kitchen has never been used. Not once. I notice these things.”
“I suppose if people send out every night,” Belasco nodded, “it's like room service.”
“Remember when Robertos Santos first moved in?” She reminded him, “He was hurt and on the Yankees' disabled list for two months. I know because I operated on his knee. Well, he decided he wanted to be neighborly . . . not a lot but a little . . . so he invited us and half a dozen other people up to his place to watch the All-Star game. He said he was feeling sorry for himself, not playing, and wanted company.”
“Sounds like a nice thing to do. But don't tell me you were expecting him to cook.”
“Of course not. He catered the party . . . with hot dogs brought in from Yankee Stadium.”
“Relish and sauerkraut? Beer in plastic cups? Sounds right for baseball. And all the more reason why you and Robert should be nicer to Mrs. Essenbach. She has her own chef and doesn't do ballpark hot dogs.”
“After tonight . . .” She shook her head, “. . . any food she serves us will be laced with strychnine.”
“That bad?”
“Unanimous against her.”
Prakash Advani walked up to say hello to Belasco and goodnight to Susan. “Your desserts were splendid.”
“Thank you. I was telling Pierre that Katarina Essenbach won't be a happy camper when she finds out.”
“Unanimous,” Advani said to Belasco. “Not even one abstention that might have otherwise been in her favor.”
Belasco wondered, “Who gets to be the lucky one to tell her?”
“We write her,” Susan said.
“If you like,” Belasco volunteered, “I will break the news to her. She'll only hear about it anyway. And it might be better for everyone if she heard it from me.”
Susan bowed. “You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”
Advani looked at her in an odd way. “Gunga Din?”
“Sorry about that,” she said. “Nothing personal. Care for more champagne?”
L
EAVING THE
Gildenstein's apartment, Belasco worried that ten o'clock might be too late but dialed Mrs. Essenbach's number, anyway. “I hope I haven't disturbed you.”
“Pierre . . .” she gushed, “you never disturb me. How lovely to hear your voice this late in the evening. Where are you?”
“I'm in the Tower.”
“Oh yes,” she said, as if she wanted him to believe she'd forgotten, “the residents' board meeting.”
“Indeed.” He hesitated, “Would it be convenient if I stopped by?”
“It is never anything but convenient,” she assured him, “to see you. Especially after hours.”
“I'll be right there,” he promised, rang for the lift, and when the doors opened, he told Ricardo, “Forty-two, please.”
Her front door was already open.
Still, he rang the bell.
“Let yourself in,” she called from deep inside the apartment.
He did.
“Keep walking, and you'll find me. A bit like hide and seek.”
He didn't like that. “Mrs. Essenbach . . . unfortunately, I cannot stay long.”
“Did you ever play hide and seek when you were a young boy, Pierre?”
“I'm afraid it's late . . .”
“All right then,” she sighed. “I'm in the study.”
He found her sprawled out across the couch, wearing a fur dressing gown. There was a bottle of champagne on the table in front of her.
“Good evening.”
“You can pour us both a glass,” she said.
“None for me, thank you.” But he did pour one for her.
“Give me the news.” She raised her glass, and motioned for him to sit down. “Tell me that God is in heaven and all is right with the world.”
“I'm sure he is,” Belasco said, still standing. “But I'm afraid the news is not good. The board voted no.”
Her mood changed instantly. “How did that happen?”
“I don't know how or why, except that they voted no.”
“How close was the vote?”
He could see her anger building up. “It was . . . not at all close.”
“Who voted for me?”
He wanted her to know the truth. “No one.”
“What about you?”
“I'm not on the board. I don't have a vote.”
“This is Advani's doing. He's the instigator.”
“Again, Madame, I don't know what was discussed, as I'm not privy to the meetings . . .”
She demanded, “Tell me how this happened? How could you let this happen.”
“I assure you, Madame . . .”
“You already assured me. You assured me that you would see this through for me. Now you've turned your back on me . . .”
Without warning, she threw the champagne glass at him.
“Madame . . .”
It missed.
“. . . if you will excuse me, there is nothing more to discuss this evening.”
“You let this happen . . . you gave me assurances . . .”
“I did nothing of the kind, Madame.” He turned on his heels and started to leave. “Good evening.”
She screamed at him, “You assured me that you would take care of this. You made promises to me.”
B
ELASCO IMMEDIATELY
returned to his office, shut his door, sat down at his desk, and wrote a very detailed two-page report of his confrontation with Mrs. Essenbach.
He e-mailed it to the boss and copied Anthony Gallicano, because he wanted them to hear it from him, first.
By the time he got home, Gallicano had answered. “I am forwarding this to the lawyers. It's important that, should the matter somehow escalate, although I don't think it will, we have something on the record from you. Don't worry about her. She has been a pain in the ass to everyone since day one. Good job and good night.”
Half an hour later, an e-mail came in from Bill Riordan. “You've made my night. Us 1, Man in Underwear 0.”
A
licia was in her double-sized, heated bathtub, up to her neck in bubbles, with her head on one of the two pillows at the end, holding several typed pages high out of the water to keep them dry, when Carson walked in.
“Excuse me, madam, I'm working my way through medical school, may I examine you.”
She glared at him. “Is there no privacy anymore?”
He started pulling off his clothes. “Not when you're naked.”
When he was, he got into the tub with her, sitting at the other end so that he could face her, spilling bubbles and soapy water all over the floor.
“As I was saying . . .” He leaned forward and moved his hand all the way up her leg.
Her eyes opened wide. “What do you think you're doing?”
“Say . . . ah.”
“Hey,” she squirmed, bent her left knee, picked up her foot and put her heel up against his groin. “Leave me alone or else . . .”
“You're so mean.” He pulled back his hand.
She moved her foot so her toes were touching him there. “Really?”
He smiled. “Not really.”
Then she moved her foot away.
“Yes, really. Put it back.”
She shook her head, “Not really,” and started to read to him from the typed pages she was holding out of the water. “Like the English pilgrims of the seventeenth century, the Finfolkmen left the Orkney Islands to escape religious persecution . . .”
“What?”
She repeated, “The Finfolkmen left the Orkney Islands . . . he's surrounded by them.”
“Who is?”
“L. Arthur Farmer. They protect him.”
“Who does?”
“The Finfolkmen.”
“What the fuck are Finfolkmen?” He asked, then wondered, “And why does that sound like an answer on
Jeopardy
?”
“They're a mythical creature.”
“From Finland?”
“No, from the Orkney Islands.” She flicked through a few pages. “Here,” and handed one to him.
He looked at it. “Finfolk kidnap fishermen and force them into servitude.” Then he looked at her. “Huh?”
“Read on,” she ordered.
“They are territorial and greedy. They have a special weakness for silver.”
“See?”
“See what?”
“They have a special weakness for silver. L. Arthur Farmer's silver?”
“L. Arthur Farmer's silver? The rice guy? Does it say somewhere that they can't tell the difference between Chinese food and dimes?”
“This is for real,” she said.