HardScape (29 page)

“Well, you take care. Get into bed or something. You still screwing the politician?”

“Just friends.”

“Hey, thanks for coming out to see me.…Screwed up lonely as hell out here some nights. You got no idea how crazy it gets.”

I said I did and drove home, counting for the hundredth time the hours it took to travel from Washington, D.C., to Newbury, Connecticut, roundtrip.

Chapter 28

One o'clock shuttle hits LaGuardia Airport before two. Fifty minutes to find Renny and take off in his rented plane. Three-thirty, land on Al Bell's field. Shoot Renny. You are now the only person in the world who knows you are in Newbury.

Rev up the plane and run it slow into a tree. Scatter a plastic bag of cocaine, indicting a kid from the wrong side of town for drug smuggling. Drive down Morris Mountain in Renny's Camaro. Park behind the barn I parked behind and sneak into your own house. Take your wife's gun, wait for her boyfriend, shoot him in the back. Put back the gun and get Renny's car before Rita gets home at four-thirty. Drive two hours to LaGuardia Airport, where you catch the seven o'clock shuttle to Washington—paying cash again—and arrive in Washington in time to shower and change in your hotel and return to the White House for TV dinners with the President's men.

I stopped at Renny's garage and dialed the pay phone by the light of the Chevalley Enterprises sign. Alex Rose probably slipped in here with the forty thousand in cash to finish the job Long had started on Renny's reputation. Boss didn't tell him why, just told him, Do it, and he did it.

The Plainfield state police barracks duty officer told me Trooper Boyce had gone home. I found her card in my wallet and called her there. The little boy answered.

“This is Mr. Abbott. May I speak with your mother?”

He dropped the phone on something hard and yelled, “Mommy!”

Before I could say, “I know how Long killed Ron Pearlman,” she said, “I can't talk to you, Ben. I've been cited for fraternizing with a convicted felon.”

“You're investigating a murder.”

“It's political. It's bull. But until I go through a hearing it's a blot on my record. My lawyer says I can't talk to you.”

“Wait. What rooms did you find wiretaps in, in Long's house?”

“Goodbye, Ben. Sergeant Bender's handling the case.”

“Tell him he'll find Renny's car at LaGuardia Airport.”

She had already hung up on me.

I considered calling Bender but decided not to. He was probably the one who had filed the complaint. Fine. I didn't really want their help anyway.

I continued driving home, and when I was high enough up Church Hill, I called a number I had entered somewhat optimistically in the car phone's memory.

Rita answered sleepily. I said, “Go to the guest room where you made love with Ron. I'll call you right back.”

“Why?”

I hung up, gave her a moment to walk to the guest room, and dialed again.

“Why?” she started to ask, and I cut her off.

“Jack killed Ron.”

“Can you can prove it?”

“I'm waiting on one more piece. Day after tomorrow I can tell the cops.”

***

Jack Long called me nine o'clock the next morning.

“Ben? Jack Long. Hope this isn't too early.”

“At my desk, paying bills.” Barefaced lie: I'd been staring at the telephone since seven, praying that Alex Rose still checked the bugs he had installed for the Rita-Ron gaieties. “Say, how'd you make out with Harkin and Locke?”

“No sweat.…Listen, this might sound a little strange, Ben.”

“Try me.”

“Rita and I don't think we can go on living in that house—because of everything that happened there. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“Sounds like you're putting it on the market.”

“We are. We'd like to give you an exclusive but we feel obligated to Fred Gleason.”

“Understood.”

“We'd like you to share an exclusive.”

“Let me think about that. I'll have to talk to Fred.”

“You do that. In the meantime, we're going to need a place to live. Alex Rose told me about an old estate you showed him.”

“The Richardson place.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“Jack, it's a nice house, but it's not a thirty-seven-room stone mansion on a hundred acres.”

“Rita and I want to downscale a little. Maybe we need a simpler life. The kind of place we could manage alone.”

“The Richardson place needs gardeners.”

“Gardeners are fine. I just don't want a house full of live-in help, if you know what I mean.”

“Would you like to see it?”

“How about this afternoon? Around three?”

“The light's real pretty around three.”

***

He arrived at my office at ten after. To my surprise, he had brought Alex Rose. Rose was back in his shooting costume. Long wore a windbreaker and a baseball cap that almost made him look local. Both men looked nervous.

“Sorry I'm late. Damned pickup truck almost ran us off the road.”

“Where's Rita?”

“I wanted to look myself first.”

I glanced at Alex Rose, and Long said, “We had stuff to discuss, so we drove up together. You want to wait here, Al?”

“I don't care.”

“You can grab a beer at the Drover,” I said. “Or ride along. Maybe we can find you a house too.”

“Yeah, right, me in the country. What the hell, I'll come along. If it's okay with you, Mr. Long?”

Long replied, “Suit yourself,” as if he couldn't have cared less.

We got into my car, Rose scrunched up in the back seat, Long in front beside me. Alison Mealy careened into the drive on her bike. “Ben!”

“Catch you later.”

“They're giving a special computer course at school. Can I take it?”

“Sure. If it's okay with your mom.”

“It's seventy bucks.”

“We'll talk. Later.”

“Hey kid?” It was Rose, lowering his window. “Check this out.” He passed her his electronic notebook.

“Oh, wow!” She sank cross-legged on the lawn, instantly immersed. Rose grinned until he saw Long shoot him a dark look. Rose reached out the window. “Sorry, kid. I better take it back now. I got stuff on it.”

Alison's face fell.

“Hey, I'll mail you one. One you can keep.”

She handed it back, with a wary look.

“Don't worry, I'll Fed Ex it. It'll get here the day after tomorrow.”

“Let's go,” said Long, and I began to wonder whether the two men might have different agendas. As I pulled onto Main Street, they checked the traffic.

“You guys okay?”

“Yeah,” said Long. “I swear that damn truck was following us. Gone now, looks like.”

“I'll watch for him,” said Rose.

There were no pickup trucks on my agenda. I figured they'd annoyed a drunk who'd taken a dislike to Rose's Mercedes. The road was clear at the edge of town. I hit the gas and ran it up to ninety. “Consider him lost.”

“You're going to get another ticket.” Rose chuckled.

“Not today,” I said, belatedly draping the radar detector from the rearview mirror. In a few short minutes we reached Academy, headed down it a little more sedately, and onto Richardson Street. It hadn't rained for a week, and we churned up a huge dust cloud. The maples had turned a soft amber gold. If I didn't haul some firewood out of here soon, I'd be chainsawing in the snow.

“This used to all be Richardson land, but it's been sold off. The house has six acres, with another fourteen available.”

“Think I could buy what's been sold off?” Jack asked. “I don't want some son of a bitch building in my front yard—Jesus, look at that tree. What is that, Ben?”

“Shagbark hickory.”

“I want that.”

“Comes with the hayfield.”

He gazed around appreciatively. “The views aren't as good as ours, but damn, this is a nice piece of land.”

“Some people say buy the horizon, some say build your own view.”

“Yeah, I could move my barns out here. Hey Al, isn't this great?”

Al Rose was peering out the back window, trying to see through the dust cloud. I'd been watching too, but I had not seen any pickups.

“Here we go.”

“Oh wow! This is great. Look at that house!”

“Adlai Stevenson used to visit his mistress here.”

“Adlai Stevenson had a mistress?”

“So they say. Her estate was out there, through the sycamores.”

“How close?”

“Quite a ways. We're all alone here.”

We got out of the car. I pulled out my keys.

“There's a beautiful brick keeping room that overlooks the skating pond. I swear on a winter day you can still smell the hot cocoa.”

“Ben, we gotta talk.”

Long was watching me intently. Rose had wandered back toward the road, still watching for the phantom pickup truck.

“You're not going to make a bid without seeing the inside, are you?”

Jack called, “Al, why don't you wait in the car? Ben's going to show me the back of the house.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, wait here. Come on, Ben, show me the skating pond.”

We walked up the overgrown brick front walk. Laid in a herring-bone pattern, barely detectable through the grass in the cracks, it split at the front steps and continued around both sides of the house. I forged ahead to the left-hand path and led Jack Long between the sunroom and the overgrown rose gardens. “Tell Rita there's probably old varieties growing here you couldn't buy today. But you see what I mean about a gardener.”

“Sure.”

We continued around behind the house and stopped on a slate terrace between the keeping room and the silted-up skating pond.

“That used to be the tennis court.” I indicated to the right. “With the cherry tree in it.”

“Ben, let's talk.”

“All right, Jack, we'll talk. I gotta be frank.”

“I agree. Cut the bull.”

“I represent the estate.”

“What? What estate?”

“Ellie Richardson's estate. Her heirs have no interest in this land. They just want some money. So I'm really representing you, as the buyer, in that I have a chance to sell you property at a very reasonable price, recession or no recession.”

“Don't fuck with me, kid! And don't try your head games on me. We gotta talk. And you know damned well what we gotta talk about.”

I turned away from him and walked closer to the house. He caught up and took my arm. “You know, Ben, you do a lot of deals, you never know which one's going to bring you down. You don't even think about it. You can't operate if you think that way, right? You know what I'm talking about, you've been there.”

“Where?”

“Taking chances.”

“Yeah, I've been there.”

“All those balls in the air—one falls, so what? You toss another. Then one day—no different than any other day—you reach for another and it's not there.…I still cannot believe that of all the deals I cut, Ron Pearlman's factory would bring me down. If you told me that two years ago, I'd have laughed in your face. You know what I mean?”

“I know one thing, Jack. When businessmen spout philosophy, they're through. You drop the ball, you pay the penalty.”

“You do what you have to do,” Jack shot back. “Assholes pay the penalty. Let's talk.”

“About what? Shooting your partner in the back?”

“He was fucking my wife.”

“Bull.
I
would have shot him for that. Or maybe I would have just waited for her to get tired of him in hopes she'd come home. But that's not why
you
killed him.”

“Oh yeah? Why'd I kill him?”

“The payout. Like you just said, the deal was bringing you down. You didn't have the money you owed him.”

“So what do you care? I did what I had to do.”

“You left your wife holding the bag.”

“She'll get off. That'll be the end of it. Rita's tough. She can handle a trial. So, what do you want?”

“We don't have anything to talk about. You killed my cousin to cover your tracks.”

“For crissake, I didn't know he was your cousin. I didn't know you. He was just a pilot, for crissake. Dime a dozen. Hey, I'm not saying things didn't get out of hand. They got out of hand. That's why I'm explaining to you. I'll make sure his family's taken care of. Scholarships for the children, you name it. Set up trusts. You'll be the executor. And it goes without saying, name your own price too.…I assume you're the only one who's put this together, right?”

“Rita has a fair idea of what you did.”

“I'll deal with Rita.”

I looked at him. He looked me straight in the eye. “Last chance, Ben. What do you want me to do?”

All I wanted him to do was say out loud that he had murdered Ron Pearlman and Renny Chevalley, and he had pretty much done that.

“Hey, I'm not a monster. I just told you, things got out of hand. One crazy step led to another.”

“The hell it did. You planned every step.”

“You do what you have to do.”

“Renny Chevalley was a good man.”

Long reached into his windbreaker and came up with a gun. Surprise, surprise. Then around the house there came a real surprise—Alex Rose running flat out. “Hey, you said you were going to pay him off. What are you doing with a gun?”

I said, “He can't pay me off.”

“Think that through, Ben. The man's holding a gun. Hear him out. Mr. Long, this is getting out of hand.”

“Wait in the car.”

A red haze had been working up and down in front of my eyes since yesterday. It rose now at Rose's “out-of-hand” remark, blindingly. The gardens, the house, Rose and Long, all but disappeared. I actually considered trying to take the gun from him. Long tucked it closer to his body.

“Come on, Ben. You're a player. You're one of us. Isn't there any way we can work this out?”

“Stick the gun in your mouth, pull the trigger, I'll consider us even.”

“Go wait in the car,” Long said to Rose.

“Mr. Long, you're making a mistake.”