Sailing to Capri (10 page)

Hardwick had leaned back in his oversized leather chair behind his impressive rosewood desk in his lofty Manhattan offices, looking expectantly at him. Secretaries bustled in and out with papers for him to sign, which he did with barely a glance. Various assistants came to warn of his imminent lunch meeting at Four Seasons and to say that his tailor was on his way up with the new suits to be fitted, and that a woman with an impressive society name wished to talk to him. He wafted them
away with his big hand like so many annoying flies. “I’ll be there when I get there” was all he said, and the assistants rolled their eyes as they went to try to placate those kept waiting. He looked like a wild man in his rumpled suit, his thick gray hair standing on end, his flinty blue eyes under his grizzly, scowling brows, his pink complexion hinting of high blood pressure. He was impressive in his stature and his ugliness.

Montana’s raised eyebrows must have expressed his disbelief that Hardwick was actually listening to what he had to say, what with all the interruptions.

“Don’t worry, lad, I’m listening.” Hardwick leaned across his desk, taking him in fully for the first time.

Montana presented him with the truth about the job applicants, and his misgivings about the one who on paper sounded the best.

“I’m going on my gut instinct but I’m advising you not to take him on.”

“I like a chap with gut instinct. I’ve made my way to the top on exactly the same thing. You like it then, what you do? Detecting and snooping, all that stuff?”

“There’s more to my job than just investigating backgrounds of potential employees, or finding what rival international companies are up to and what their problems are. We’re also a security company. We ensure the safety of our clients.”

“Men like me, you mean?” Hardwick looked interested.

“Men like you, sir. Billionaires, royalty, celebrities.”

“You mean Hollywood stars?”

“Among others, yes.”

Hardwick twiddled a pen between his fingers, looking down
at his desk, thinking. “And how would a man know he’s in danger—from a stalker, let’s say?”

“It’s best to employ someone like me before you get to that stage.”

Still twiddling the pen, Hardwick sighed. “I couldn’t stand that, though, being guarded, my every move tracked. What kind of life is that anyhow? No, I’m a man who values his freedom. And, oddly enough, a man who values his solitude.” He gave Montana a long searching look. “A man like you, I’d guess.”

Montana had to admit he was right.

Hardwick picked up the application he’d been considering. He scanned it, thinking about what Montana had just told him about his gut instinct. “Tell you what, why don’t I offer you the job instead? I’ll pay you twice what you’re earning now.” He was using the same bribe tactic he always used when he wanted something badly enough. “You’ve no experience but you’ll get the hang of things quick, I can tell that. And what you don’t know about takeovers and leverage and finance I’ll teach you myself. What do you say to that, Montana?”

“Why me?”

“I like you. Gut reaction. Right?”

“Right. And it’s a great offer but I’m sorry I can’t accept.”

Hardwick studied Montana carefully; then he said, “Of course I see now, a man like you couldn’t take to normal office hours, being tied to a schedule, repeating the same task day after day. You’re a free ranger, Montana. Besides, if you worked for me you’d have to get a different haircut and get rid of that damn bracelet.”

An assistant poked his head around the door. “Four Seasons, sir … lunch …,” he mouthed.

“Get out,” Hardwick said to the assistant. Montana was on his feet, ready to be dismissed. “And you sit down, Montana. You’re too interesting to let go just yet. How old are you anyhow? Thirty-four? Young and still malleable, right? I need young men like you around, men who don’t always say yes to me, men with integrity. Are you sure I can’t offer you a job? I’m upping the ante. I’ll offer three times what you earn now.”

Head thrust forward, Montana looked Hardwick straight in the eye. “Mr. Hardwick, I’m available any time you want in my capacity as investigator or for security purposes. I like my job and there’s no way I will ever change it.”

“Not even if you find a good woman, fall in love?”

“Not even then. She’ll have to take me as I am.”

“I tried that once, when I was young and poor and struggling. Didn’t work for me,” Hardwick added with a wry grin. “She loved me but she took off and left me. It wasn’t the money, or rather the lack of it then; it was my own bloody self-centered ambition. ‘Take me as I am,’ I said to her, and she turned me down. So there you have it, Montana. It’s risky with women. But I respect your feelings and I think you’re very good at your job.”

He got to his feet and so did Montana. They shook hands and Hardwick walked him to the door. “Any time you change your mind let me know,” he said.

Over the next ten years Hardwick had often called on Montana. They lunched many times at a diner on East Forty-ninth Street where Bob was partial to the burgers and shoe
string fries. They’d talk about Montana’s growing business; about the new offices he was thinking of opening in London; about Bob’s French wife who soon became his ex; about the temperamental Italian mistress who also became an ex; about how he never had time even to visit his villa in Capri and that he’d always dreamed of sailing around the island because in his opinion it would be even more beautiful seen from the water.

“It’s a dream of mine,” he confessed to Montana, “which is why I bought the place sight unseen. It belonged to Vassily Belkiss, a famous ballet dancer, and when he passed on it just sort of sat there for years. It’s the one thing I can thank the Italian for; she found it, persuaded me to buy it, told me it was a good investment. I’m not sure she was right about that but I fell in love with the photographs and the romance of it all. I guess one day I’ll find the time to visit; meantime, it’s a nice dream. Perhaps you’ll come and visit me there? What would you say to that, Montana?”

“Any time you say,” he’d replied, but it had gone no further than that because in the next breath Bob was telling him he had a small problem that was beginning to irritate him.

“It’s the damn e-mail,” he said. “The instant communicator that invades a man’s privacy any time day or night. I keep getting these threatening little notes, simple stuff, juvenile really, like ‘I know where you are right now. Remember I’m watching you.’ And ‘I know who you were with last night. My eyes are always on you.’” He shrugged. “Of course it’s too daft even to think anyone is really able to keep tabs on my every movement without my noticing.”

“I could,” Montana said.

Bob looked up at him, surprised. “As easy as that, is it?”

“No, but my men are good at their job.”

“And this nutcase—could he be that good?”

“Never assume anything. It might be a woman.”

“A jealous female, huh?”

Montana grinned. “Know any like that?” he asked, and Bob grinned back and said he knew a few.

Montana told him that he would have the e-mails monitored and that he would assign round-the-clock security immediately, but Bob refused point-blank.

“I told you earlier I couldn’t handle that,” he said. “It’s not in my nature—nor yours either, Harry Montana—to live like a trapped animal.” Then he handed Montana a list of six names and asked him to investigate them.

“They are all people who at some time or other were involved in my life, either personal or business. Each one of ’em has a flaw. And each one resents me, even though I did what I thought best for them. I want to know exactly where their lives are at now, what they are doing, and with whom. I want to know if they deserve my help.”

When Montana asked him why, Bob shrugged again and said, “Gut instinct. Any one of ’em might want to kill me.” But he laughed as he said it. “Just kidding,” he added.

Two days later he was dead.

Sir Robert Hardwick’s death had not been judged a murder; in fact, quite the opposite. It was an accident: he’d misjudged the
turn, and the car had gone off the road and burst into flames. By some miracle, Hardwick had been thrown clear.

A verdict of accidental death was given and Sir Robert Hardwick made his last flight home to Yorkshire. The local rescue services hauled the remains of the vehicle up the mountain and Montana was granted permission to have the scorched mass of metal towed to a garage he used in New Jersey. It remained there, crated up, awaiting his next move. But first he had to decide if Bob’s hunch that someone wanted to murder him was right. He was in for a sleepless night in the Red Room.

The next morning, pulling myself together, I wrote responses to some of the notes of sympathy from Bob’s contemporaries in the world of high finance, as well as to a couple of heads of state, and even one to a young Royal whom Bob had befriended at a polo match and with whom he’d kept up a correspondence, along with the occasional lunch.

An hour later when I emerged from the library Montana was waiting in the hall. He lounged against the fireplace, hands in the pockets of Bob’s old Barbour jacket. With the Jack Russell dog sprawled at his feet he looked almost like a country gentleman, though I doubted
gentleman
was a word that could properly be used to describe this hardheaded American P.I.

“Glad to see you’re on time,” he said with that little smile that narrowed his gray eyes and that I felt uncomfortably sure lent a double meaning to his words.

I hurried to the boot room to put on snow gear. Scruffy but
warmly dressed, I returned to the hall. Montana unfurled his long length from the fireplace where he’d been toasting his bones. “Come on, boy,” he said to Rats, who got to his feet and stood looking expectantly up at him. As though Montana was his new master, I thought bitterly.

Outside, I sniffed the icy air, thinking of spring and crocuses and snowdrops, to say nothing of the drifts of daffodils that should already have swathed the gentle slopes of the Hall’s grounds in optimistic yellow.

I felt Montana’s hand under my elbow, steadying me as we walked down the steps, but I moved quickly away from him on the narrow path carved through the snow in the driveway. The dog had perked up at the thought of a second walk so soon, and now he bounded ahead, making a right when he got to the gates as though he knew we were going to the Ram’s Head. Rats had spent a lot of time in the pub with Bob and everyone there always made a fuss of him. Bob would buy him an English banger, which he’d devour in two fast gulps then looked pleadingly up for more.

“We need to talk about Bob’s list,” Montana began before we were even out of the driveway. “I want you to tell me about the people on it, who they are, what you know about them.”

“Aren’t you supposed to know all that? After all, you’re the detective.”

“Detectives find things out by asking questions,” he said patiently, as though talking to a spoiled child.

“Okay, so what d’you want to know?” I said sullenly.

He threw me a wary glance that I caught out of the corner of my eye but I kept my focus determinedly on the snow
cleared path down the middle of the village street. I did not want to know about murder. I did not want to know about “suspects,” and I certainly didn’t want to go on a cruise with them. I wanted everything to be the way it had always been. How
could
Bob do this to me?

“Remember, this is for Bob,” Montana said, as though reading my mind. “Look upon it as your final job for him.”

“Of course,” I said, ashamed. “I’ll do anything to help.”

When we got to the pub Rats was already sitting by the door. He dived in ahead of us, tail wagging and I heard Ginny, behind the bar, say, “Eh, Rats luv, it’s grand to see you again. I’ll have your sausage ready in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

We followed the dog into the seventeenth-century inn and were immediately engulfed in the pleasant fug of heat blasting from the radiators, as well as from the huge wood fire in the walk-in-size stone grate. The scent of apple logs mingled with the cigarette smoke and the fruity aroma of draft beer, overlaid with a strong hint of gravy. I waved at Ginny, shrugging out of my coat as I walked through the low-ceilinged room with its battered wooden counter, blackened old beams and nicotine-colored plaster. There were wooden sconces with red shades on the walls and small red-shaded lamps on the broad wooden window ledges, and the diamond-paned windows were fogged with condensation from the heat inside and the bitter cold out. A few older men sat over their beers at little tables dotted with coasters advertising Tetley’s ale. The wooden settles they sat on were high-backed and hard, but they’d spent a lifetime on them and looked at home.

I stopped to say hello, introducing Montana as a friend of Sir Robert’s. Then Reg Blunt came out from behind the bar to shake hands. I told him we’d take a table in the snug, the small room to the side where it was quiet and we could discuss business.

“The shepherd’s pie’s good today,” Reg said. “Unless you fancy steak and chips, Mr. Montana?”

“He’s from Texas,” I warned.

“Better forget about that steak then. You’re better off with the shepherd’s pie, or bangers and mash. And o’ course there’s always a plowman’s or a pork pie.”