The Architect (15 page)

“I don’t know if Billy will cooperate,” Clevenger told McCormick. “I feel like I don’t know him at all anymore.”

“The DEA sent a press release to the
Globe
and
Herald”
she said. “With Billy’s public profile—the adoption and everything, all the press around that— you know they’re gonna focus on him.”

“No way around that.”

“He really needs a lawyer now. And he really needs you.”

“We’ll see what he wants.”

“I wish there was something I could do. I feel awful.”

She sounded like she meant it. “I’m glad I know what’s happening,” he said. “And I’m glad I heard it from you.”

“Do you want me to fly in tonight?”

“I thought you were seeing someone.”

“You shouldn’t have to go through this alone.”

That didn’t exactly answer the question. And, for some reason, Clevenger didn’t like the idea of Whitney offering to visit the minute it looked like Billy would be visiting a federal penitentiary. “I need a little while to get my head around this,” he said.

“No problem,” she said, tightly.

“It’s just...”

“I totally understand. Honestly. It isn’t my place. It’s not like I’m his mother or anything.”

He felt like he was out of words.

“Call me with anything, any time, okay? Whether it’s the case, or Billy, or whatever.”

“I will.” It struck him again that he hadn’t told her a thing about West Crosse or the other architects or that he was headed to see Laine Jones.

“Take care,” she said.

“You, too.” He hung up.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Laine Jones was a
tall, imperially slim man about fifty, with curly hair the color of graphite, hazel eyes flecked with gold, and a broad forehead that promised high intelligence. He had a habit of looking at you longer than you expected after he spoke, as if to catch your true reaction to what he had said. And yet his gaze was not unsettling. To the contrary, it gave you the sense he valued authenticity, and that you could trust him.

He wore khakis, a white shirt, and worn Docksiders, no socks. He didn’t need to dress for success. He was already the architect of choice for a client list that read like
Who’s Who in America
.

“I’m satisfied you are who you say you are,” he said, after looking at Clevenger’s medical license and forensic examiner’s badge. His voice was precise, yet gentle. He motioned for the waiter. “Tell me why you’re so interested in West Crosse.”

“He was tapped for Skull and Bones at Yale,” Clev-enger said. “We think the killings may relate to that order.”

Jones’s eyes never left him. “Is he a suspect?”

“No,” Clevenger said quickly. “He’s one of many people we’re trying to exclude as suspects.”

“Semantics,” Jones said, with a smile.

The waiter arrived. “What might I get you?” he asked.

“A glass of merlot, please,” Jones said. ‘The ninety-seven Three Nuns.”

“Coffee, please,” Clevenger said. “The two-thousand-and-five, black.”

Jones laughed.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” the waiter said, and left.

“So, what can you tell me about Crosse?” Clevenger asked Jones.

“A genius,” Jones said. “He came to work with us shortly after he graduated architecture school and stayed until about five years ago. He was the best I’ve ever seen, or expect to see.”

“Present company excepted, of course.”

“No. He was better than I was.”

“What made him so good?” Clevenger asked.

“He knew how to use space to create life. Very few people do.”

“Meaning?”

Jones laid his hands on the table. “What is this?”

“A table.”

“Keep going.”

“Wooden,” Clevenger said. “Rectangular. About two feet by three, about three inches thick.”

“It is wood,” Jones said. “It is of those dimensions. But, of course, there’s much more to it than that.”

“Okay...” Clevenger said.

“It helps us be human.”

“Human ... How do you figure?”

“For starters, it separates us enough to feel comfortable, but doesn’t keep us too far apart. Am I right?”

“I think I can buy that.”

“Well, that didn’t just happen. Someone had to decide that. Shorter might work for romance, but certainly not for business. Longer and wider would help if we had a stack of documents to review, but this isn’t a place designed to encourage that kind of work. It encourages conversation.” He ran his fingertips over the wood. “The dark stain implies a certain gravitas. It says this is a space for serious discussion, totally in keeping with a landmark hotel.”

“Quite a table,” Clevenger said.

Jones held up a finger. “But there’s more. The way it sits in the room—far enough away from others to let us talk, but not so far that we feel isolated.” He nodded toward the main aisle through the restaurant. “There’s plenty of room to walk up to us, should someone care to, but a flow to the space that allows strangers to pass without feeling compelled to acknowledge us at all. Someone we knew could even pretend not to see us, and get away with it. And those were someone’s decisions, too.” He looked up. “The ceiling—marvelously high, but also densely illustrated. It draws the eye skyward. We can think lofty thoughts, but the deep colors and domed shape hold us, ground us. We feel elevated, but steady.” He stopped, looked at Clevenger. “You’ll note I haven’t felt the need to shout or to whisper. I have no fear of you missing my words, nor that they will be overheard. The acoustics work. And I mean that
in the most active sense of the word. They do real
work
. They encourage dialogue, rather than silence. And someone—”

“Decided that, too. I’m with you.”

Jones nodded. “Good. Then you understand a little of what architecture can achieve and what West Crosse had already mastered on a much grander scale— making space come alive and nourish the life within it.”

“You must have been very disappointed when he left the firm,” Clevenger said.

“No,” Jones said. “I wasn’t disappointed at all. I fired him.”

“Why?”

The waiter delivered Jones’s wine and Clevenger’s coffee.

They thanked him.

“You don’t drink?” Jones asked.

“Not today,” Clevenger said.

“Ah. You’re sober.”

“Not very long, but, yes.”

“Congratulations.” He touched the rim of his wineglass. “I’m sorry I ordered this.”

“It’s fine. One thing about alcoholics: We’re very self-centered people. We never worry about what other people are drinking, only what we can. And I can’t—at all. Period.”

Jones sipped his wine. He pursed his lips, shook his head.

“Not good?” Clevenger asked.

“Fantastic.” He motioned the waiter. “But I don’t want it.”

“I told you...”

“I don’t buy that line of bullshit for one second. If this stuff is poison to you, it has no place at our table. Period.”

The waiter came by.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Jones told him. “If you could take this away, I’m going to switch to coffee, too. Milk on the side, for me.”

“Very good,” the waiter said. He took the wine away.

Now Clevenger was the one quietly studying Jones, looking for a hint of insincerity, finding none.

“Where were we?” Jones asked.

“Crosse. You fired him.”

“Right. You asked why. I’ll tell you straight out: I fired him because he was an artist.”

“Now, you’ve lost me,” Clevenger said.

The waiter dropped off Jones’s coffee.

He sipped it. “An artist or a poet can be uncompromising. They own the canvas or the page. But an architect is always a co-author. The needs of the client have to be honored. That includes their fears, quirks, frugality, all of it.”

“He pushed them too hard?”

“He wrestled them to the ground. He wasn’t satisfied to create anything less than pristine space with the potential to revolutionize the way they lived or worked. He was so sure his designs could transform their very existence that he believed they should spend whatever it took to build them. The universe would repay them that much, and more. He drove some into bankruptcy, others to divorce. One eccentric client of ours who wanted a retreat ended up embezzling money to complete a stone fortress West designed out in Rye, complete
with a moat. He ended up in jail. There was a couple who actually put their infant twin sons up for adoption after West designed a home in which they could be passionate with one another again. It was a one-bedroom loft.” He took another sip of coffee. “You can play the tortured artist in this business—the purist—to a point. When you start torturing clients, you’re going too far.”

Clevenger pictured the magnificent homes he had visited, with magical, beckoning entryways, libraries that invited reflection, glass ceilings and transoms that let the mind travel like light, soaring views. And he recalled, too, the lack of sorrow shown by those whose lives had been rearranged—redesigned—by murder. “Was he right, though?” he asked Jones.

“Right? About what?”

“His plans,” Clevenger said. “Did he come to know his clients so well that what he designed for them actually did have the power to free them, even if they sometimes couldn’t see it?”

“For some.” He nodded, thinking to himself. “I might say all of them—if not for one thing.”

“What?”

“They were human.”

Clevenger kept listening.

“You can completely rehab a building or perfect an architectural drawing,” Jones continued. “At least you can come close. But people are a lot tougher to redesign. You have to understand where they’re coming from—their histories and hopes and fears—not just where they should end up. Sometimes they can get there, sometimes it’s asking too much, or maybe not
the right time to ask at all. I’m sure you understand all that, as a psychiatrist.”

Glevenger thought of Billy. “I know it as a psychiatrist and I know it as a...” He almost said “father,” but he wasn’t sure he could claim that mantle, anymore, not with the way Billy had looked at him on Suffolk Street, not with him looking at decades in federal prison. “As a human being.”

“West couldn’t accept it,” Jones said. “He couldn’t accept it at home.”

“At home?”

“It’s not a pretty picture.” He paused. “He left his wife—Lauren—after she got sick. About seven years ago.”

“Sick?”

“Breast cancer.”

“Did she survive?”

“Oh, yes. She went through hell, but she made it. She’s a very brave woman.”

“When did he leave her?”

‘That’s the most interesting part. He stood by her during the mastectomy, the chemo, all that. What he couldn’t stand was the physical imperfection the disease left in its wake. He was fairly open to me about it. Lauren had reconstructive surgery—three times—but he was never satisfied with the result. He obsessed over it.”

“Did they have children?”

“No. She was quite young when he left—twenty-eight. She’s still a model, with a degree in philosophy from Yale, to boot.”

“Did she remarry?”

Jones nodded. “Shortly after he left the firm.”

“And did he?”

“Never to my knowledge. I haven’t seen him or heard from him, but I doubt he’d risk it again.”

“He took it hard—her remarrying?”

“No.” Jones smiled. “That’s not what I meant at all. I don’t think he’d risk being blindsided again by nature or biology or whatever. He married a model with perfect breasts, then found out she needed one removed, and that no surgeon alive could completely restore what God intended. He needed more control over events than that. A lot more.”

“Do you know where I can find Lauren?”

“I certainly do.” He winked.

Clevenger looked at him askance. “What?”

“Meet me at nine at my apartment. Five-sixty-two Park. We should be done with dinner. Kids should be asleep.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m the one who married her, Frank. Four-and-a-half years, two kids, never a regret.” He paused, looked Clevenger in the eyes. “You asked whether West knew his clients so well that his designs really could change them for the better, even if they didn’t see it at first.”

“Right.”

“In a strange way, I think he knew Lauren and I would end up together. I wonder whether a lot of what he told me about her—her bravery during her illness, her intelligence—was designed to intrigue me. The way he described sex with her, how intuitive she was, how close to perfect her body was, even after the surgeries ...
I’ve questioned whether my firing him was really my idea, or his—whether he was ready to disappear and wanted all the loose ends tied.”

“You think he was that good an architect?” Clev-enger said wryly.

“He was
the
architect. If that had been enough for him, if he wasn’t looking to be God, he could have been one of the greatest of all time.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

With all the ugliness
swirling around him, Clevenger found it difficult not to stare at Lauren Jones. She was an oasis of beauty, five-foot-nine, a dancer’s lithe body, straight blond hair, bright blue eyes, flawless skin, high cheekbones, full lips. She was barefoot, in jeans worn through at one knee and a black leotard that showed ample cleavage. But all that was just the beginning. The gentleness in her gaze, her graceful neck, the way she held her head slightly to one side as she listened, conveyed a level of curiosity, intelligence, and kindness that was disarming. Even her voice was special— self-assured, yet slightly plaintive, with a hint of seduction, as though she might need a shoulder to cry on now and then, and that there was at least a chance she would be looking for
your
shoulder.

She, her husband, and Clevenger were seated in the study of the Joneses” five-thousand-square-foot apartment on Park Avenue, a dramatic space with high-gloss, deep red walls, a gold and red carpet, and works of art by Matisse, Picasso, and big-name newcomers
like Julian Schnabel and Brian Farrell. The floor was darkly stained oak planks, six inches wide, with a border of inlaid bronze stars.

Lauren had just described her ex-husband West Crosse’s crusade to restore her anatomy after her mastectomy, taking her to top plastic surgeons in Manhattan, then Paris, then Milan. “I felt lucky enough to be alive,” she said. “I couldn’t have cared less whether I looked exactly the way I did before. But I knew West. He wasn’t going to be able to accept any memory of what we had been through together—certainly not any physical reminder of it. And I wanted to help him get past it, the way he helped me when I was sick.”