The Agency (26 page)

Coffee in hand, I sat out on my terrace over the high street in the early afternoon, legs propped on the balcony. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny to match my mood. I thought about Darcy, and I couldn’t help wonder what his declaration meant for the two of us. We were in love. Scary thought. I live in the present, and I let the future take care of itself, which is one reason I have procrastinated for so many years about going out on my own. Darcy and I made an unspoken promise in the beginning never to look beyond our nights together. Now we’ve both broken that promise. So what comes next? I am not a marriage, white dress, fairy tale kind of girl. Darcy is not the kind of man who is ready to give up the lifestyle Cosima’s money affords him. People like us don’t change because Cupid shoots them in the arse.

Or do we?

Part of me wonders if I could tame my independence enough to really let a man in my life. There’s security in meaningless affairs, because you never put yourself at risk. I think of myself as strong, but here comes the real test. The agency. And Darcy.

Maybe I need to ask the wizard for some courage.

This would be easier, I admit, if it weren’t for Evan. Not that I’m in love with him. God, no. I just wonder why it was so easy to let him ravish me. I tell myself that he was a consolation prize, that I was hurt and angered by Darcy’s rejection. Screw love, give me a one-night stand. That was the old Tess, and the note from Darcy changed everything. Right? If Evan were here right now, I would not have sex with him. Not standing up. Not lying down. Absolutely not. No way.

Except there was a devil Tess at my shoulder who whispered, “You’re lying.”

I drank my coffee and watched the traffic on the street and smelled bread baking and realized that life is complicated. Messy.

I thought about Oliver next. I was relieved that he had backed
away from the precipice, although with Oliver, sanity is a temporary reprieve. He might face another crippling episode of depression at any time. In my gut, I knew that his thoughts of suicide had nothing to do with his books and everything to do with the nightmares from his past. I also knew that I could extend a hand to help him, but that he would have to do the hard work himself. I don’t like to think that way, because I’m a fixer, and my habit is to rush in, believing I can solve any problem. But not all problems have solutions.

Complicated. Messy.

Inside my flat, someone knocked on the door. That’s a rare event in a security building. I climbed out of the chair and padded across the carpet to the door, where I checked the eyehole. My father waved back at me. Naturally. He has made friends with the guards in my building, and you don’t say no to Terrence Paul Drake when he says he is going upstairs to visit his daughter. You just buzz him up.

“One minute, Dad.”

I made him wait, as I usually do. My Julien Macdonald was still on the dining room table, and I didn’t want to explain it to my father. I put the lid back on the box and tucked the box away in the back of my bedroom closet. Then I let him in.

We kissed.

“What are you hiding, Tessie?” he asked me, with a glance at his watch. “A buff young gentleman? Is he hiding under the bed?”

“I slept late. I wasn’t dressed.” A little white lie.

He eyed me in the way that fathers do when they know their daughter is keeping secrets, but he didn’t press me for the truth.

“I understand there’s a gala premiere tonight,” he said. “Are you going?”

“Yes, why not come with me?”

The big new musical from the
Les Miz
guys was opening at the Garrick. The play was adapted from a bestselling novel published by Random House, which was boasting of its success by sprinkling free tickets among industry insiders. The story involved a romantic triangle in the midst of a religious civil war, sort of
Dr. Zhivago
meets Khaled Hosseini. I’m not a big fan of musicals. I rarely break into song spontaneously. Even so, it’s a chance to see and be seen.

My father shook his head. “No, thank you, dear.”

“You could be my date.”

“A lovely offer, but I’m having dinner with someone from the Ministry of Defense tonight. That’s why I stayed in the city this weekend.”

He gave me another one of those looks when he said this. As if he knew that I might have had plans to borrow the flat in Mayfair again if he weren’t in it. Which was true.

He handed me an oversized white envelope. “Here. Ask and ye shall receive.”

“What’s this?”

“Dirt on David Milton.”

My eyebrows went up. “That was quick. How did you get this so fast?”

“Never ask a journalist his sources, darling, you know that. Anyway, my daughter rarely asks for my help, so when she does, I make it a priority. I have a good friend in New York who can pretty much assemble anyone’s life story in a few hours just by retrieving bits and bytes from cyberspace.”

I hope no one ever does that to me.

“Brilliant. Dad, you’re amazing.”

“There’s more to come, but I figured you’d want the first pass as soon as possible.”

“Absolutely. Did you look at it?”

“I did.”

I waved my father into the living room, where he sat uncomfortably on my modern pastel sofa. I usually put my feet up on the glass-and-metal table, but Dad never does. I went to the kitchen and got us both cups of coffee, then sat down in the recliner opposite him and extracted the sheaf of papers from the envelope.

“So what is all this?” I asked.

“Educational background. School records. Housing records. Legal actions in which he’s been involved. Where he shops. Where
he eats. What videos he rents. When his automobile warranty expires. What type of pornography he prefers. That sort of thing.”

“Jesus. Is this legal?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Never mind. I don’t want to know. Did you see anything that might help me?”

“Nothing jumped out at me, I’m afraid, but I’m not sure it would. This is your world, Tessie, not mine.”

I began skimming through the materials. “Does this include financial information? Bank records, that sort of thing?”

“No.”

“So we can’t figure out if he’s been making payoffs?”

“If you want that kind of detail, you’re going to need to sue him in a U.S. court and file a discovery motion. Which I imagine you don’t want to do.”

“It wouldn’t be my first choice,” I said.

“What exactly are you trying to find out?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Anything that would help me prove he’s a fraud. Some clue as to who he might have used to write the phony manuscript. It’s a long shot, but I really appreciate your getting this to me so quickly. You won’t wind up in jail over this, will you?”

“I trust you’d visit me.”

“Remember, I might be there, too,” I said. “That whole murder-the-boss thing.”

“I’m still making calls on that.”

“I’ll be fine, Dad.”

I continued reading about David Milton. His educational credentials matched the diplomas I saw on his wall from NYU and Columbia. He was an average student. You’d think that a lawyer would have all the money he needed without fleecing an old woman, but you’d be wrong. Law is a tough racket these days unless you’re a corporate partner billing at eight hundred dollars an hour. Personal injury attorneys, divorce lawyers, estate lawyers, they all scramble in the mud for clients. And a New York lifestyle isn’t cheap.

“Oh, interesting,” I murmured.

“What?”

“Milton got divorced recently.”

“Are you planning to add him to your list of available men?”

I looked up with annoyance to find my father smiling at me.

“It looks like his wife won everything but the clothes I saw him wearing,” I continued. “Apparently it’s not just online pornography that Mr. Milton enjoys patronizing. The divorce filing talks about hookers, too. Oh dear, and not female hookers, either. Naughty boy.”

“So he needs money,” my father concluded.

“Yes, he does. He mentioned that he was selling his house, proceeds of which go to the ex-wife, apparently. David Milton could use a large cash infusion.”

“Enter Dorothy and her pandas.”

“Exactly.”

I was feeling better. Not that I was any closer to proving that the manuscript was fake or to figuring out how an estate lawyer who got low grades in his NYU literature class had managed to write a credible forgery. However, you know what the crime shows always say: Motive, means, and opportunity are what you need to prove guilt. His father’s relationship with Dorothy gave David Milton the opportunity, and his wallet-sucking divorce sure gave him the motive. Now I needed to know the means.

At least I was more and more confident that Dorothy was a victim here and not a poodle-walking plagiarist. It was an awfully big coincidence to believe that David Milton had stumbled onto a twenty-year-old literary crime just as he was about to lose his shirt.

“You’ll need more than his divorce,” my father told me, reading my mind.

“I know.”

I was deep in thought, because I was staring at the list of social and professional activities in David Milton’s file. Something in there was triggering a memory, but it was just out of my reach. What was it?

“He served on the New York bar’s pro bono estate counsel committee after 9/11,” I said.

“Laudable.”

“Yes.”

“Is that meaningful somehow?” my father asked.

“I don’t know.”

But something about it rang an alarm bell in my head. Why? The more I tried to remember, the more it slipped away.

Maybe it didn’t mean anything. And yet.

“Tessie?” my father asked, watching my face.

“Hang on.”

And then I knew.

“One of the secretaries at the Robinson Foote agency lost her daughter and her son-in-law in the attacks,” I said. “I remember there was some weird testamentary problem. A big life insurance policy. The daughter was in the tower that went down first, but the son-in-law worked near the floor where the first plane hit. So there was a bizarre argument about who died first and where the money would go. The secretary, the mother, didn’t have the money for a lawyer. They were all talking about how to find someone to represent her.”

“How do you know all this?” my father asked.

“I know all this because Robinson Foote is where Saleema works,” I said. “It was her secretary.”

IF DAVID MILTON HAD REPRESENTED
Saleema’s secretary as part of his pro bono work after 9/11, the case wasn’t included in the materials about him. However, that didn’t mean anything. It could easily have been overlooked in a search of legal records. Or perhaps Milton and Saleema met during the legal process even though Milton was not the attorney on the case.

Or perhaps they never met at all.

Was I being oversuspicious? I didn’t think so. In a city of eight million people, what are the odds of an innocent connection between the man blackmailing Dorothy and the agent who has made it her life’s work to sink me? It wasn’t hard to imagine how a conspiracy could be born. Milton wants money. Saleema wants revenge. He’s got an innocent note written by Dorothy, and she’s got a farm team of frustrated writers looking for a break. Left hand, meet right hand.

I went through the rest of the materials my father had given me, but I didn’t find anything else that made a blip on my mental
radar. Not that I would. Saleema and Milton were both smart. It was a shot in the dark that I spotted something to tie them together, and if I really wanted to prove it, we’d need to do a lot of digging.

I’d like to say that this changed everything, but it didn’t change a thing. I was still between a rock and a hard place. More than anything, I wanted to show up for my Monday meeting with Cosima and tell her to shove the job and the agency up her arse. Bury me if you like, but I’m out of here. Give her a long list of the clients who were going with me. With Dorothy’s future hanging in the balance, though, I wasn’t sure I was ready to make my move.

I needed to be patient for a few more days. Maybe a few more weeks. The trouble is that I’m not exactly long on patience. I also didn’t want to see my opportunity slip through my fingers.

After my dad left, I caught up on my reading and wore out my thumbs sending e-mails to a few more clients. Basically, I told them I was in a holding pattern but that I hoped they would be with me when I made the move. No one wrote back. It was Saturday, and not everyone is as anal as I when it comes to e-mail.

Emma arrived around four o’clock, carrying a battered old box of papers from Dorothy’s first agent. Her strawberry hair was tied behind her head in a furry ponytail. She wore a sleeveless pink T-shirt, short shorts, and fluorescent white tennis shoes, looking annoyingly youthful and fit. For years, I was the young agent, the upstart, and somehow this whole generation of children sneaked up behind me and became adults. Where did they come from?

I flipped the lid off the box. It smelled musty and made me want to sneeze. The contents included bulging file folders of letters and contracts, old manuscripts, and advance reading copies of
The Bamboo Garden
. None of it was organized in any coherent fashion; it would take me hours to go through it.