HardScape (25 page)

“No.”

“It had to be a paying passenger, Gwen. Somebody local he'd leave his car for. Somebody he trusted.”

***

I was half a mile from the trailers when I spotted headlights in the woods. It looked like I had left Gwen just in time: “The boys” were coming home. They were angling along one of the two-rut tracks that joined the dirt road. But when they reached my road they turned right and continued on ahead of me.

“Son of a bitch.”

My own headlights revealed a long, dark van similar to the one that had blasted Connie's Lincoln. I hit the gas to pull up for a closer look and hung tight on his tail until a curve in the road gave me a glimpse of its battered right side. Same van.

I edged closer, to read the mud-spattered license plate. Brake lights flashed and he stopped dead. The Oldsmobile's brakes are good, but not great, and I came within six inches of smacking his bumper. Before I could wonder, What next?, pickup-truck roof-rack lights blazed on behind me. I had not seen the second vehicle following me with his lights out. I had six inches of maneuvering space in front, six inches in back, and thick woods on either side.

Chapter 21

Doors thumped. I locked mine. Someone rapped hard on the driver's-side window, and when I did not open it fast enough, someone else smashed the opposite glass with a shotgun butt and pressed the barrels against my temple.

“Open the door.”

“Just take it easy,” I said. “You can see both my hands, right here on the wheel.”

“Open the door.”

Very slowly, I reached and pressed the lock release, unlocking all four doors with a thud much softer than my heartbeat.

“Get out of the car.”

Slowly, keeping my hands conspicuously in view, I opened the door and climbed out, relieving the pressure on my temple.

“Turn around.”

They helped me with that one, turning me roughly to face the truck lights. I was blinded. I sensed one of them circle the car and knew he had when the shotgun touched my head again.

“Step away from the car.”

I stepped sideways until he said to stop.

“Put your hands behind your head.”

I raised my hands, clamped them around the back of my head, and waited, distinctly aware of my exposed front and my elbows pointing at the sky. We all knew they were going to hit me. I was the only one who didn't know where. I guessed an elbow. Off by a mile.

A second shotgun whipped across my gut—a direct hit to the solar plexus that slammed me to the dirt, retching for air. When I could breathe again, one of them shoved a shotgun muzzle against my lips.

“You hear me, Abbott?”

“I hear you.”

“Got anything to say?”

“Yeah. I don't know why you're doing this.”

“Guess.”

“Shoot the son of a bitch, for chrissake. Let's get it over with.”

“No, wait. I want to hear this.”

I couldn't see their faces. If I had to guess, I thought the one baiting me might be Pete Jervis. I could smell beer. The impatient one was just a lanky stick figure against the glare.

“Guess!” yelled the first, and I was pretty sure it was Pete. A familiar something crazy in his voice.

“Shoot him.”

“Speak.” Pete pulled the shotgun back an inch so I could move my lips.

I said, “I also don't know why you ran me off the road the other day.”

“Same reason.”

“Come on, Pete. Let's do it and go home. I'm fuckin' freezing.”

I knew that wasn't Bill, which was both good and bad. Good because Bill was undoubtedly a murderer several times over. Pete, on the other hand, drank, and when he drank he got crazy. It was Pete who had run Renny off the road.

I said, “I don't know why you're doing this. But you'll bring a shitstorm down on yourselves if you kill me.”

“You already brought a shitstorm down on us, you son of a bitch.”

I asked him what he meant and got a gun barrel in the groin for my temerity. It was a little while before I could douse the pain enough to think. When I started thinking, the fear threatened to overwhelm me.

“Admit it,” said Pete, “and we'll let you go.”

And invite me home for supper too, I thought. I knew he was lying, and fear spiraled down to despair. We were miles from the nearest house. Even Ollie didn't patrol these woods. They'd bury me in a hole in the ground and disappear my car in a Waterbury chop shop.

I began to feel a strange peace. I'd read somewhere that people attacked by tigers all admitted the same sudden loss of will to resist. Maybe Heaven was simply the end of the fight. Maybe I'd meet Renny there, maybe Ron Pearlman. Maybe we'd feel sorry for the ones we'd left behind. I heard a voice at a distance—my own, it turned out, some other part of me, ever the friendly salesman—negotiating the last breath.

“Pete, whatever shitstorm came down on you, it can't be as bad as this, and frankly, I don't know what you're talking about.”

I think it was the conversational tone that slowed him for a brief moment. I certainly didn't plan it, and he certainly didn't expect it. I couldn't see his face, but I could see him move his head to look at the other guy as if asking, Is this character real?

It was the best chance I'd get in my life. I slapped the gun barrel. Pete yelled. The double-barreled twelve-gauge bellowed fire into the ground. I rolled, fell in the shallow ditch beside the road, scrambled onto my feet, and ran past the pickup-truck lights into the dark.

“Get him!”

Another weapon roared. Buckshot whistled, fanned my face, and spattered the trees. I ran with all my strength. I was going in the wrong direction, back to the Jervis camp, but the first thing was to put distance between me and the guns. I got fifty yards. A flashlight smacked me in the eyes. I found myself looking past it, down the barrels of a break-breech Savage into the disdainful gaze of Herman Jervis.

“That was real cute, sonny. Now you will turn around, very slowly, and go back and finish talking to my boy.”

I felt like he had ripped me open with his deer knife and drained all my blood. I shambled back to the pickup, the gun prodding my spine. This time I got a good look at Pete, and the other guy, whom I'd never seen. Pete was red-faced and shaking with rage.

“You son of a bitch.”

“Explain,” said Herman Jervis. “Why'd you sic the cops on us?”

“I didn't.”

“You're going around stirring things up about Renny Chevalley. State police raided my camp.”

“I never mentioned your name or anyone in your family.”

“Pete hears you did.”

I looked at Pete Jervis and got mad. “You can hear a lot of things at the White Birch. Guy the other day heard I was sleeping with his wife. A dumb drunk named Tom Mealy. It wasn't true. What you heard wasn't true either.”

“You son of a bitch,” Pete said again.

“What, exactly, did you hear?” asked old Herman.

“You gonna listen to him instead of me?”

Herman looked at him without saying a word. Pete shuffled his boots in the dirt. “I heard Ben Abbott was going around checking up on Renny. Heard he was asking everybody how coke was brought in.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “You've been talking to Freddy Butler.”

“I'm not saying who.”

“You tried to kill me on the word of
Freddy Butler
? You son of a bitch. You wrecked my aunt's car. Almost killed her.”

Old Herman jabbed me hard in the back with his gun. “Shut up.”

“Who?” he asked Pete in a gravel-pit voice.

“Freddy Butler's a good guy, Dad. I trust him.”

“Go home,” said Herman Jervis. “You too,” he snapped at the skinny one. “And you too,” he said to me. I hurried to my car, brushed the broken glass off the front seat and got in. The engine was still running. As I put it in gear, Herman rapped on my window. I lowered it.

“You be careful around my daughter, sonny. She's got plenty of sorrow in her life.”

“I understand.”

“I don't mean don't call on her. Just do it right.”

“Well, we've been friends a long time.”

The old man's interest had already shifted. He said, “Like I told you earlier, my son Bill calls the shots now. Don't cross him.”

As it was pretty clear that the Jervis clan had had nothing to do with Renny's death, I already planned to avoid all Jervises on general principles. But I didn't tell old Herman, who might have taken it the wrong way. So I promised him I wouldn't cross Bill and drove home to drink something.

Chapter 22

They had a long memory at Le Cirque, and a table ready.

I noticed a higher percentage of ladies lunching since the Drexel Burnham mob had dispersed. Their increased presence made for a prettier room, though oddly more decadent, perhaps because most of the Drexel boys never fully understood what they were selling.

Otherwise the New York I saw on the walk from Grand Central didn't seem all that changed. Recessionary malaise was notably absent. Traffic was dense as ever; Madonna, naked, couldn't have nailed an empty taxicab. There may have been fewer construction sites blocking the sidewalks, though, and the women definitely looked younger.

Alex Rose arrived for lunch glowering suspiciously, an expression that neatly complemented his camouflage. In his pinstriped suit and Brooks tie, he looked like a truculent lawyer, or a wary pension-fund manager. Perfect.

I myself was resplendent in an Italian midnight-blue double-breasted suit, vaguely redolent of mothballs, and a Sea Island cotton Dunhill shirt. On my wrist was a gold Piaget moon watch I should not have accepted from an arbitrager. Little Alison could have attended a week of boarding school for what I had paid for my necktie.

“I don't get this,” Rose said, looking around the lavish room. “Wha'd you hit the lottery?”

I didn't tell him it was Rita's lunch tab.

“Like I told you on the phone, I got nothing new on your cousin.”

“I figured after we talked you might make a call or two.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I did talk to a guy at LaGuardia.”

“And?”

“Renny Chevalley took off at two-fifty that afternoon.”

“Thank you.”

Ed Hawley had seen the plane at three-thirty. Forty minutes to Newbury, nonstop. Thank you very, very much.

We ate a sumptuous lunch—écrevisses, ris de veau, and crème brûlée—saved Rita some money on a Muscadet with the entrée, then blew it all on an '85 Chambertin with the main course.

I pumped him a little about the detective business and learned a lot. Rose was increasingly mystified as to why I had invited him, but he was an ebullient talker once he got wound up. By dessert, he'd packed my brain with the latest P.I. basics, from sweet-talking data out of credit-rating companies to infinity bugs that transmitted conversations on telephonic request.

“There are no secrets,” he assured me with childlike glee. He was, however, no fool, and both wine bottles were removed containing plenty to cheer the kitchen. He had noticed people watching us while we ate, and when I had paid the check, he said, “You used me for cover, didn't you?”

I denied it, of course.

He noticed me moving stiffly as we left the restaurant.

“Whudaya still sore from the accident?”

“Somebody bent a shotgun on my stomach.”

Rose laughed and slapped me on the back, reminding me of another sore spot. “Welcome to the P.I. business, fella. Who'd you piss off?”

“An innocent bystander.”

“That'll teach you to mind your own business.” He laughed again.

“How'd you happen to tell Jack Long that Ron had been shot before the troopers called him?”

“I keep telling you, Ben: You got to make your connections, man. I pay the security company. I write the checks. They owe me. They know damned well that if I don't hear everything to do with Mr. Long's house, I hire a new alarm company.”

“How'd they find out? There was no alarm.”

Rose stopped laughing, and his cockeyed wink hardened into an unpleasant squint. “They got a radio scanner. They monitor the state police channels. You ought to buy one, Ben. Keep in touch.”

***

My next stop was the midtown offices of Harkin & Locke. Buddy Locke, my second protégé. I had phoned ahead for an appointment and been told that Ms. Harkin's schedule was booked for a month. I had told her secretary I was coming anyway. It was a heavy-security building on Fifty-seventh between Fifth and Sixth, but, as I assumed, the lobby guards had orders to let me up.

Harkin & Locke's reception room had three features: a stunningly beautiful blonde greeter, a heart-stopping view of Central Park, and a single article of Japanese sculpture that, if I knew its owners, had probably been looted from a Kyoto monastery.

“Oh, Mr. Abbott. Ms. Harkin has just gone into a meeting.”

“That's okay. I brought a book.”

I sat across from a guy who was reading the
Wall Street Journal
with desperate nonchalance. He assessed me over the top of his newspaper. I wanted to tell him I was not job-hunting competition, but if he was any good he would scope that out for himself.

I
had
brought a book, and I opened pleasurably to the first page of the new Patrick O'Brian novel. When the receptionist interrupted me an hour later to tell me Ms. Harkin was still in the meeting, I expressed my gratitude. It was approaching five o'clock when she interrupted me again. I asked if I might have a cup of coffee. It arrived in Limoges, which pleased me, because among the many things I had taught the two pirates behind the door was to go first class. Buddy Locke's instincts leaned to canned soda, while Leslie quailed at the thought of giving anything away for free.

“Mr. Abbott?”

“Yes?” I marked my place in the book.

“Ms. Harkin is expected at the Downtown Athletic Club at six, but she can squeeze you in for a moment right now.”

“Terrific. Hang on one paragraph.” I finished the chapter, laid the novel reverentially into my briefcase, and followed the blonde into Leslie's office. She was on the telephone, of course, her back to me, looking out the window.

“She'll be with you in a minute,” whispered the receptionist.

“Who's that?” I whispered back, indicating a beefy guy in a tight suit who occupied a straightback chair in the corner.

“I think he's with security.”

Leslie spun her chair and hung up the phone. “Thank you, Doreen.”

Doreen went out the door, fast. The security guy emitted a cop stare, which was wasted on me. Leslie Harkin had my full attention.

I hadn't seen her in the five years since the trial. To say that she strongly resembled Rita Long would be to say that all raven-haired, beautiful women looked the same. Both women radiated their personality, but what shone through their beauty was quite different. Need a guide across a foreign city, ask for Rita Long. Need an escort through a hostile one—or brain surgery in a hurry—hire Leslie Harkin.

Physically, Leslie was slimmer, leaner in the face and in the body. She was a few years older than Rita and definitely looked it, her narrow brow and cheeks aging early from overwork, too much jet travel, and too many nights of shorting sleep.

All the same, she was a vigorous woman, and I had the impression that if she could stay in bed for a month she would wake up gorgeous again. Her most compelling feature was her strange violet eyes. She had a trick of widening them suddenly, and I had yet to see a guy in a meeting stay aboard his train of thought when she zapped him.

I thought I had developed partial immunity to the Leslie Look after she plea-bargained my ass into the U.S. Attorney's lap. But my heartbeat, which had revved at the sight of her familiar silhouette, redlined when she faced me. I had been nuts for her in bed and awed by her ferocious intelligence. If that wasn't love, she still stirred my soul, and I knew in an instant why I hadn't had much success in trying to hate her.

“What do you want, Ben?”

I still didn't hate her, but I very much wanted to beat her at her own game.

“Is the bodyguard for me?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you have a guilty conscience.”

“Are you accusing me?”

“I'm chasing some information. Everybody says you're the one to ask.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Nothing I want King Kong to hear.” King Kong stirred. I said to Leslie, “Tell him I won't hurt him if he behaves himself.” I said it with a smile aimed at her, a smile that asked, What is this crap? Leslie looked at her watch, and I knew I had won. “Thank you,” she said to the guard. “That's all.”

“You sure you're okay?”

“
Get out of my office
.”

He blinked and left.

“Leslie, why would you fear me?”

“Ben, I'm busy. Ask your question.”

Before I could, the telephone buzzed. She answered it without apologizing, and talked machine-gun style for five minutes. She hung up, looked at me, and it rang again. Another five minutes, this time in Japanese. When she hung up, I said, “I'm impressed. When'd you learn Japanese?”

“What do you want to know?”

As I opened my mouth, she looked at her watch—for real, this time. “Christ, I gotta get downtown. Come on, we'll talk in the car.” She left, firing orders at secretaries and assistants, trailed by a vice-president who held papers for her to sign, and me.

Her car was a Rolls-Royce limo, which, last I had heard, was running two hundred and seventy-five thousand. “You're doing well.”

“You know the Japanese. They love their brand names.”

“What does Buddy drive?”

“Dodge Viper.”

“I'm jealous.”

We settled into the car, and the cell phone tweeted. She picked up, again without an apology, and sing-songed in Japanese. At Houston Street, she hung up with a hearty “
Banzai
!”

“Ask,” she said to me, writing a note in her datebook.

I said, “What do you know about—” and the phone rang. That conversation was still going when the car stopped dead in heavy traffic at Canal Street. A homeless guy approached, rapping the window with a battered paper cup. I lowered the glass.

“What are you doing?” asked Leslie. I took her phone, gave it to the guy with the cup, and closed the window.

“What? That's a two-thousand-dollar telephone!”

“I'll give you mine. Now will you answer my goddamned question?”

“
You gave him my phone
.”

“I'll give him your datebook next. Will you shut up and tell me what's going on with LTS?”

She said, “I hear you're trying to put LTS into play.”

I must admit enormous satisfaction in manipulating my former love and protégée. Only a killer pro on the scene, who specialized in electronics, could confirm Jack Long's financial strength. But it had occurred to me over the weekend that Leslie wouldn't give me the time of day if I came on as an amateur detective and simply asked whether Jack Long was riding as high as he claimed. Whereas a deal in the works would make my questions potentially valuable, especially if it sounded like a deal she could move in on.

It had been a safe bet that some sort of rumor would get around after last week's Rolodex party. I had engineered today's conspicuous lunch with a mysterious stranger at Le Cirque to give the two-hundred-phone-call-a-day crowd plenty of I-told-you-so ammunition.

“Well,” I said, “don't believe everything you hear.”

The phone was forgotten. Her eyes gleamed like tropic dawns. “What do
you
hear?”

“You first.”

“Okay. Get this, Ben: Jack Long goes to Ingersoll at Salomon, like maybe he's interested in floating a high-yield bond.”

I said, “I gather you're not involved.”

“What do you mean?”

“That's not exactly news.”

“Oh yeah? How about the fact that he's sucking up to the Flying Dutchmen?”

“Come on,” I winged it again. “He's been in bed with Holland Brothers since God knows when.” Interesting. It sounded like Jack Long was looking to borrow hard money. Be it junk bonds or a private loan from the usurious Holland Brothers, he'd pay the high interest businessmen paid only when no one else would lend at normal rates. With rates low and money going begging, maybe—just maybe—LTS was suffering.

So far this was like shooting fish in a barrel. Not because I was any smarter than Leslie Harkin—nobody was—but in some dark crevice of her psyche Leslie would always be
my
protégée,
my
employee, and therefore could not imagine herself any more clever than the day we met. Also, she was still hungry, while I didn't care. It gave me a longer perspective and a decided advantage. Could I use it now to get her to spill again? I debated appealing to her vanity, and chose, wisely, greed.

“I'll hop out here. I'm meeting a guy.” Her car was creeping past Trinity Church at the foot of Wall Street.

“Wait. What are you doing, Ben? I didn't even know you were back. Did they lift your ban?”

“Nice talking to you. Say hello to Buddy. Tell him I want a ride real soon in that Viper.”

“Ben, what in the hell are you up to?”

“Just getting along. Driver, stop here.”

“No. Ride down with me. I'll have him drop you back. It's just a couple of minutes. Please, Ben. We should talk.”

I shot my cuff and looked at my Piaget. She looked surprised I hadn't hocked it. “Okay. I'll ride along. He'll wait.”

“So what are you doing?”

“It's just exploratory. No big deal.”

“You want money?”

“I don't even know how much I need at this point.”

“Ben, you name it, we'll raise it.”

“This might be a little steep for conservative Japanese these days.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

I said nothing. Leslie said, “Think about it.” I said I would.

“What set you off?” she asked. “Long's Hong Kong deal?”

She was watching my reaction intently now. I assumed she meant Ron Pearlman's factory. But I didn't know the electronics field like she did, didn't know what other big deals Jack Long was juggling, didn't know diddley.

“The Hong Kong deal sounded expensive,” I ventured. “Made me wonder how badly it exposed him.”

“Big question,” Leslie fished back. “What's his payment schedule? Right?”