Sweet Liar (17 page)

“Sam?”

She moved her head against his chest. A few minutes ago she had been fighting for her life and now she'd never felt so safe.

“Did the man say anything to you? Did he call you by name or say anything to you?”

She shook her head no. Vaguely, she remembered the man saying something, but she didn't want to remember what it was. Right now she wanted to forget everything that had happened.

Her answer seemed to please him because she could feel Mike relax against her when she told him no. When he put his hands on the side of her face and looked at her, she smiled at him and he smiled back.

“I wouldn't like for anything to happen to you, Sammy-girl,” he said, kissing her on the forehead as he put her head back down on his chest.

A moment later the doorbell rang, and Mike gently laid her back against the pillows as he ran down the stairs. Soon a pretty young woman carrying a medical bag came into the room, then professionally, expertly, she examined Samantha's throat. As she did so, she talked to Mike who stood behind her, wearing only his very small cotton underwear, seemingly unconcerned at being nearly nude before two women.

“What happened?” Blair asked as she ran her fingers along the back of Samantha's neck.

“Some creep came in through the window,” Mike answered. “Maybe Sam woke up and caught him rifling her jewelry box, I don't know.”

Samantha shook her head. “I was…asleep,” she said, frowning because it hurt to talk.

Mike didn't like to hear that, but maybe Samantha had moved or turned over, something to give the creep a reason to try to kill her. He didn't want to think that the man was a new serial killer. The Town House Murderer, maybe. Looking at the windows, he thought of what type of grills he'd order for them, but then he saw Sam's suitcase on the floor and knew that there was no reason for grills: She was going to leave in the morning.

Blair finished her examination. “I think you'll be fine. Just rest and don't talk. I'll give you a sedative so you can sleep tonight.”

Nodding, Samantha took the pills the doctor gave her and drank from the cup that Mike held to her lips. Then her eyes widened as Mike scooped her up, blankets and all, and started down the hall with her.

“You spend tonight downstairs where I can watch over you,” he said, and Samantha gave him no argument. She doubted that any sedative in the world would make her sleep comfortably tonight, knowing she'd lie awake imagining every shadow to be a man or men who wanted to kill her.

Downstairs, Mike put her in his bed, tucking her in as though she were a child, then went off with his pretty cousin and Samantha could hear them talking softly. Sam closed her eyes, feeling drowsy.

“How is she?” Mike asked his cousin.

“Fine,” Blair answered. “She's strong and healthy, and there was no real damage done. She'll be fine in a day or two, a sore throat but nothing else.” Snapping her medical bag closed, she looked up at him. “Mike, it's none of my business, but—”

“Are you going to start asking me what she is to me? That sort of thing? I can honestly say that I don't know.”

“I had no intention of asking you anything about your personal life,” she snapped, making Mike grin. “Doesn't it seem odd to you that Samantha isn't crying? If someone had tried to kill me, I'd be bawling buckets full. You don't think she's in shock, do you?”

Mike didn't know what to say, but now that he thought of it, maybe it was a little odd that she wasn't crying. His sisters seemed to cry over everything in the world. “I don't know. Maybe she cries in private.”

“Maybe,” Blair said. “But keep an eye on her. If she doesn't react to this tomorrow, call me. You may want to get her to see someone.”

“A shrink?”

“Yes,” Blair answered. Then, as Mike thanked her for coming over in the middle of the night, she said, “Let me look at your head. I'll take the stitches out next week.” As she looked at his wound in the bright hall light, she said, “You seem to have had a great many accidents in the last few days. First someone creams you with a rock, and now someone tries to kill the young lady who lives in your house. You don't think the two are related, do you?”

“No, of course not,” Mike said. But even Blair heard the false note in his voice.

“Mmmmm,” she said as she kissed his cheek, then left the town house.

The frown left Mike's face when he went back to his bedroom and saw Sam curled in his bedclothes. Dreamily, she looked up at him, and he went to sit on the edge of the bed and picked up her hand. She was still wearing the engagement ring he had put on her finger.

“The man…”

“Ssssh, don't talk.”

She smiled when Mike kissed the palm of her hand. “He said, ‘Where is Half Hand's money?' ”

It was a good thing her eyes were closed or she would have seen the terror on Mike's face; she would have seen the fear that came into his eyes.

“G
ood morning,” Mike said brightly as he put the white wicker tray across Samantha's lap.

Sleepily, with the dull-brained feeling one has after taking sleeping pills the night before, she sat up in bed, wincing when she tried to swallow.

“I have vanilla yogurt, crushed strawberries, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. There are croissants too if your throat is up to it.”

She frowned at him. He seemed awfully cheerful this morning after someone had tried to kill her last night.

She lifted a spoonful of yogurt to her lips and then frowned more at the pain in her throat when she tried to swallow, but Mike didn't seem to notice. He sat down on the edge of the bed—the way they often seemed to share meals—and ate a couple of strawberries.

“You know, Sam, I was thinking.”

She opened her mouth to make a wisecrack, but it hurt too much to talk.

“I was thinking that you're right, that I've not taken into consideration what you want and what you've been through. Your father died recently, and a divorce must be an awful thing. On top of all that your father writes that will that makes you have to move to a city you hate and do something you don't want to do. It must have been terrible for you.”

Samantha was watching him, and every cynical thought she'd ever had came into her mind. In her experience, when a man started projecting himself into a woman's feelings, he wanted something. She gave Mike an encouraging smile that she hoped looked full of self-pity.

“Yes, well, I was thinking that you need a vacation, a real vacation. Somewhere cool, away from the heat of New York. Somewhere by the ocean maybe. So, last night I talked to Raine—you remember him, don't you? My cousin you seemed so taken with? Anyway, Raine is going up to Warbrooke, that's a town in Maine. It's on the end of a peninsula and absolutely beautiful. Raine will be there with his whole family, and they have a guesthouse that's a wonderful place. You can rest and read and go out on boats and catch things out of the water and do whatever you want. You can spend the whole summer there if you want. I was so sure that you'd like this idea that Raine is coming by this afternoon to pick you up to drive you to Warbrooke. Doesn't this all sound great?”

While he was talking, Samantha was looking at him. His eyes were red-rimmed, as though he hadn't slept all night and, too, there was something in his eyes that she hadn't seen before. Why was he so intent on getting her out of the city? Why was he sending her away with a man who a few days ago he had been jealous of?

He was sending her to a tiny remote town on the edge of a peninsula, a place where his relatives could look out for her and could take over the care of her. She didn't for a minute believe that Mike was sending her away because he believed she needed a rest. A few days ago he seemed to think that what she needed was the opposite of rest.

Thinking about last night, she tried to remember everything she could about what had happened. Mike kept talking, telling her about a town he had previously described as nothing but a lot of water. Now he was telling her it was paradise, and that his Montgomery relatives were the kindest, sweetest people on earth. It was his repeated use of the phrase “they'll take
care
of you” that made her suspicious.

She reached across the tray to the bedside table to the notepad and pencil there.

Who is Half Hand?
she wrote.

Tearing off the note, she handed it to Mike. When she saw him turn white, she knew that in this question was the answer to a great deal.

“You have very nice handwriting, you know that? Nice round a's and o's. I tend to close mine.”

Who is Half Hand?
she wrote again and handed him the note.

Mike looked like a trapped man. He lay back on the bed, his eyes scrunched closed, as though in great agony. “Samantha,” he said tiredly, and she was beginning to realize that he called her Samantha only when he was annoyed with her. “Samantha, this is not a parlor game. This is real and it's dangerous. I didn't have any idea that it was dangerous or I wouldn't have involved you, but now all I can do is get you out of here and into a safe place.”

If you don't tell me who Half Hand is, I will call my grandfather and ask him,
she wrote.

Mike's face lost its look of agony; now she saw real fear in his eyes. “You don't know what you're saying,” he said softly in that tone a person uses when they're trying not to explode with rage. “You have to swear to me that you won't call that bastard.”

Samantha frowned.
He is my grandfather!!!
she wrote.

Getting off the bed, Mike paced the room for a few minutes. “Sam, I made a mistake, a big one. I told you from the beginning that I thought your father's will was rotten and I should have done what I knew was right: I should have released your money without taking you to meet Barrett. But I was greedy; I wanted to meet him. No one's seen him in years and I—”

Breaking off, he wiped his hand over his eyes. “I don't know if Barrett is your grandfather or not, but I know what kind of man he is. I haven't told you much about him—I purposely didn't tell you because I was afraid you'd refuse to meet him if I told you the truth. And now I'm paying for it.”

Removing the tray from across her lap, he sat back down on the bed, then took her hand in his. “You keep telling me that I lie to you. Maybe I have, but I thought I had a good reason.”

He touched the bruises on her neck. “You could have been killed last night, and it would have been my fault,” he said softly. “I should have told you everything from the first and I should have given you your money immediately after your father died. I shouldn't even have allowed you to come to New York.”

Putting her hand out, she took his, for he was genuinely upset about what had almost happened to her. When he looked at her, she smiled at him, but he didn't smile back.

“If I tell you what I know, will you leave the city? Will you go with my cousin and stay under his family's protection until I can solve this thing?”

How could she promise something like that? She didn't yet know what he was talking about. She thought a burglar had tried to kill her, but now she was beginning to understand that the man had wanted her specifically. Why? What did he think she knew that she should be killed for it?

Seeing her reluctance, Mike understood it. Maybe he didn't deserve her trust since he'd used her to get to see an old man. Mike swallowed. No book in the world was worth nearly causing the death of another human being.

“First I want to tell you about Barrett,” he said softly. “I want to make you understand what kind of man he is. Sam, I don't want you to glorify this man. Just because he may or may not be your relative is no reason to endow him with godlike characteristics.”

His lips tightened at the look on her face and at the way she scribbled furiously on the pad of paper.

He may have done some bad things in the past, but—
she wrote.

He grabbed her hands before she could finish the sentence and held her wrists tightly for a second, but he released them, then calmed himself. “You've heard him called Doc, haven't you? Do you have any idea
why
he's called Doc? No, don't answer me. You'll probably say that he was given an honorary Ph.D. somewhere.”

Pausing, Mike looked at her hard. “He's called Doc because it's a nickname for his real nickname. He's called the Surgeon.”

She turned her head away from him, but Mike cupped her chin and turned her back to look at him.

“I don't care whether you want to hear or not, because I'm going to tell you anyway. When Barrett was nine years old, his prostitute mother abandoned him. I doubt if anyone ever knew who his father was. But whatever his mother was, Barrett seems to have been devoted to her, so maybe it unhinged him when she just walked out. For years the skinny little kid did what he could to survive. For the first year he nearly starved, but then he stole a cooking knife from a restaurant kitchen and learned to use it. There was a story that I couldn't verify that said he chopped off the fingers of another kid who tried to take food from the garbage can that Doc considered his.”

“No,” Samantha whispered, putting her hand to her throat in pain.

Mike continued. “When Barrett was fourteen, he was so malnourished he looked as though he were ten and he was sick of living hand to mouth every day. Scalpini was the crime boss of that day so Barrett decided to work for him. Barrett had a hell of a time getting through Scalpini's bodyguards, but he did one night just as Scalpini was sitting down to dinner at his favorite Italian restaurant. The bodyguards tried to kick Barrett out, but Scalpini said he wanted to hear what the kid had to say. Barrett said he wanted to work for Scalpini, that he would do
anything
for him, anything at all. All of them, including Scalpini, laughed at this kid who looked to be a child, but Scalpini, still laughing, said, ‘Bring me Guzzo's heart, kid, and you got a job.' ”

Again, Samantha looked away from him. She wasn't sure where he was going with his story, but she knew that she didn't want to hear it. Mike didn't say a word until she looked back at him.

“The next day, when Scalpini sat down to dinner, this scrawny, dirty kid tried to get through the bodyguards. Scalpini, probably liking the kid's perseverance and hero worship, waved him through. Barrett took a bloody ball of newspaper out of his jacket pocket and tossed it onto Scalpini's plate. Scalpini opened it and inside was a human heart.”

Samantha didn't say a word for a while, just sat there looking at him, feeling the blood draining from her face. “How?” she whispered.

“Five days a week at four o'clock Guzzo visited his mistress for exactly one and a half hours. He liked to pretend he was making love to her for all of that time, but everyone knew the truth. He hardly ever touched the woman; his snores could be heard two blocks away. Barrett was so scrawny he slipped down the chimney into the bedroom, slit the man's throat while he slept, then cut out his heart. A few minutes later his mistress came into the room, saw her lover with a cut throat and a gaping, bloody hole in his chest, and started screaming. In the ensuing confusion, Barrett walked out the front door, stopping only long enough to wash some of the soot off his face and hands before he made his delivery to Scalpini. One of the bodyguards said the heart looked like it had been removed by a surgeon, and that's how Barrett got his nickname. Over the years the name's been dignified to Doc.”

Mike stretched out on the bed, waiting, giving her time to digest what he'd just told her. “With what little I've been able to find out about Doc, I know that most of that story he told you yesterday was a lie. Or, maybe not a lie, just a stretching of the truth.

“First of all, Doc was trying to get your sympathy with all that about its being the Great Depression: 1928 was
before
the stock market crashed. Secondly, on that night when Scalpini shot up the speakeasy, it wasn't because Doc's receipts for that day had been especially good. It was because Doc had raided every safe, every till Scalpini had. The take was in the neighborhood of three million dollars.”

When Mike turned to look at her, he saw that Samantha was listening, wide-eyed, to his story. “The man who picked up all the money from Scalpini was Doc's friend, the man Doc told you was the only man he had ever trusted: Joe, better known as Half Hand Joe.”

Mike gave a little grin. “Want to know how Joe got
his
nickname?”

Samantha shook her head no, but that didn't stop Mike from telling her.

“Half Hand was older than Doc and as slow-witted as Doc was fast. No one knows whether Joe was born slow or came to be that way, because his father's hobby was hitting Joe on the head with whatever was handy. Joe met Doc when Joe was seventeen and Doc was ten, and Joe attached himself to Doc like a faithful old dog. When Doc started working for Scalpini, so did Joe. They went everywhere together, did everything together. When some rival hoods fired on Doc with machine guns, Joe pushed his little buddy aside. Joe took four bullets in the outside of his left hand and blew it away.”

Mike held up his left hand to demonstrate, showing how Half Hand was left with two fingers and a thumb. “He was called Half Hand after that night, and he was even more dedicated to Doc than ever. It's my guess that Half Hand realized that his future depended on Doc's safety, so he began sleeping outside Doc's door at night.”

Mike took a breath. “Then came that night in 1928 and everything changed. Doc wanted to be the head of all the illegal businesses going on in New York, and in order to do that he had to get rid of Scalpini. Doc spent months planning the robbery and the killings it entailed. Everything went off on schedule except that Scalpini didn't wait to find out who had robbed him, he just took some of his boys and went to the speakeasy and opened fire. But they didn't get Doc. But they did kill Joe—Joe who was the only one who knew where the three million dollars was hidden.”