The Deal (53 page)

As my feet continued on down the exceptionally wide, retail-laden hallway, I hooked myself up to my cell phone’s wireless earpiece and dialed a number.

“I was wondering when I’d hear from you.”

Andreu’s voice was well constructed but bitter.

“You mean you were wondering if you’d hear from me.”

“Your face looks good on the big screen.”

“That’s the small screen, comrade.”

“Where’s the money, Jonah?”

I just smiled.

“Jonah, listen to me. When you—”

“It’s you who needs to listen, Andreu. Not to your mother, to me.”

The sun poured into the long hallway all around me through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside I could see shiny airplanes of all colors. An assortment of odd-shaped airport vehicles zipped about in every direction.

“Jonah—”

“I want to hate you, Andreu. I deserve to hate you. Sadly, you’re just the pathetic messenger. You don’t believe that, go have a look at my father’s wall.”

“None of that matters right now, Jonah! I need that egg! You holding my shareholders’ money hostage won’t keep me from coming after it.”

“I’m not holding the money hostage, Andreu. You are.”

Nothing.

“How are you going to explain that to your shareholders, Mr. Chairman?”

“You have no idea who you’re fucking with, Jonah. I need that egg. And I’ll do whatever I must to get it.”

“Like what? You going to pump a few rounds into me, like the ones that shredded your real father’s face?”

“My real father was Alexander Zhamovsky, not some American snake. Stan deserves what he got. Maybe if he hadn’t—”

“Fucked some Russian whore?”

“Don’t you dare disrespect her!”

“Because when I do, you have to question everything. Isn’t that right?”

“I need that egg.”

“Well, you can’t have it.”

Again, silence.

“Our father was Danish Jubilee Egg’s rightful owner. I’m the sole beneficiary of his will which means even though she’ll soon be back on display at the U.S. Mission to the UN, then the U.S. Capital, officially she’s mine. Ironically, it also means I’m a pretty serious shareholder myself in Prevkos and all its subsidiaries. Didn’t Mommy Dearest tell you any of that?”

“That’s impossible.”

“What that is, Andreu, is just the beginning. Stan bought Danish Jubilee Egg in 1979 after Galina had already got ahold of Empire Nephrite Egg. Let me guess—she also forgot to mention she already has that one.”

“My mother would never lie to me like that, Jonah.”

“The game’s over, Andreu. I won. Don’t be surprised when Derbyshev doesn’t take your calls. We had an interesting talk. He wasn’t too happy about the prospect of spending the rest of his days in prison while you ran off with his family’s treasures.”

I could hear him slam the phone against a hard surface. He put it back to his ear and took a deep breath.

“Jonah, listen to me. We can both come out whole here.”

“You took everything from me, Andreu. Everything. I won’t forget it.”

“I’ll find you.”

“Sweet dreams to you and Galina. Like I said, the game’s over. But my quest for the truth has just begun.”

I closed my cell, pulled out the battery and threw the rest of the phone in the next trash can I passed. I spotted the, well, let’s just say the equivalent of the Continental Presidents Club but for a different airline. I opened the door and stepped inside.

Two middle-aged women were sitting behind the counter.

“Good morning,” said the one with an entire makeup counter on her face. “Are we flying this morning?”

“We are,” I said. “But I’m on my way to the gate right now and I just needed to drop something off.”

I opened my briefcase and pulled out a FedEx envelope. I handed it to the woman. She went to take it from me. Suddenly I wouldn’t let go.

“Sir?”

“You know,” I said, “I think I’ll just use the restroom for a second.”

I snatched the envelope back and started into the elite club.

“Uh, sir?”

I turned back to her.

“Your name and flight number?”

Fuck. I had no problem giving her my name, Roy Gordon, only chances were he probably wasn’t a premier member of this airline’s exclusive club.

“I’m only going to be a second. I really just need to—”

“I understand that, sir. But unfortunately I can’t just let you into the club. If you’ll just—”

One of the perks of being a rich man in America, one of the perks I always enjoyed, had just become my pain in the ass. All of the clubs.

“My flight number,” I said to myself, pretending I was actually looking for it and not just buying time to grab my wallet. “My flight number—”

And who ever said membership doesn’t have its privileges? I pulled out my American Express Centurion Card, covering my name of course, and flashed it. Like I said earlier, the Centurion Card makes the Platinum card look like Sears plastic. People simply don’t fuck with it.

“Of course,” she said after a quick look at the little black card. “Go right ahead.”

The men’s room I entered was one of three individual washrooms. I closed the wooden door behind me and locked the perfectly polished door lock. I placed Neo’s case as well as my briefcase on the floor. Holding the FedEx envelope I positioned myself in front of the mirror, staring at myself. Then staring, in the reflection, at the envelope.

My eyes dropped. I focused them on the envelope not in the mirror but in my hand, my reality, my control. I pulled the zip tab of the envelope, opened it and looked inside. The sight of what I had originally placed inside inflated a lump in my throat. I could feel all of the right as well as all of the wrong of the last three weeks rushing through my veins from opposite ends, looking, hoping to collide with one another. Head on, like two rams locking horns, each looking to dole out a lesson.

The thin, white cardboard folder, the contents of which embodied so much of what I had become capable of, slid from my grasp onto the floor. I had finally accepted who I was. Now it was time to see if I could accept what I was.

Or if, more importantly, I could reject it and finally find my path.

I slammed my fists on the marble countertop. I shook my head. The energy became so strong it felt like it was about to blast through every nerve ending in my entire body. I lost it. I started to have an all-out brawl with the air. I started punching, looking to absolutely kill someone who wasn’t even standing there. Conscious of the fact that I was in a somewhat public place, I knew I couldn’t yell. But my mouth was wide opened nonetheless as I forced out this fierce, noiseless scream. I was cursing everyone and everything, only quietly. Little pieces of saliva along with reluctant tears were sprinkling the air all around me. I couldn’t stop punching the air. I still don’t know exactly who it was I was looking to knock down. Everyone who had dared step in my path, my father or the guy staring back at me in the reflection.

Eventually I stopped both punching and crying. I sat down on the toilet to catch my breath. I grabbed the FedEx envelope and stood back up. I removed the contents and placed the two items from inside on the countertop.

The first was a small, plastic bag containing the MAC lipstick with Krissy’s fingerprints all over it. The second was a handwritten note to Detective Morante that read:

I was dating a girl named Krissy Lockhart. Real nut-job. Her mother died in a car accident in the Hamptons a couple years ago and it scrambled her mind. I tried ending things, but she wouldn’t accept it. She knew my father and I were close so she used to threaten that if I didn’t give her a second chance she’d kill him. She said “Then I’d get to see what it is she has to go through every day.”

I found this in front of the townhouse the morning my father was murdered and let’s just say it’s her brand. I know I should have told you right away and maybe if you hadn’t started to question me from the instant we met, I might have. I also know this probably doesn’t look good in light of certain recent events that point to me. I promise you two things. Number one, I didn’t give you this up front because I know how it looks and I didn’t want to further implicate myself in something I had absolutely nothing to do with. Number two, nothing is truly as it seems.

      
      
Jonah.

I stood there more ashamed of myself than I had ever been. Yes, the girl was a complete psycho. Yes, I was at the point where I was willing to do whatever it took to get her off my back. But this? At a time when I wasn’t ever going to have to worry about seeing her again? Something was wrong with this. It wasn’t about Krissy anymore. It was about me. And it sickened me. God knows, the last shit I needed on top of my life over these weeks was the bullshit lunacy that came with Krissy Lockhart. But the truth of the matter is she was a sick girl. A girl who, like me, was willing to do whatever it took to get what she thought she needed. Not the kind of girl who deserved to be investigated for a murder she had no part in.

This was my low point. I was so afraid of having laid so much on the line, and walking away with nothing to show for any of it, that fucking with Angie, the pretty, bubbly girl from the Hamptons, almost became my back-up plan. She became my very own subconscious disgraceful excuse for a contingency plan that would have somehow given me an ounce, a single shred of satisfaction in my suddenly new satisfaction-
less world.

I ripped up the note and flushed it down the toilet. Then I rinsed the lipstick off under the water to remove all of the fingerprints and threw it, along with the FedEx envelope, in the trash can.

I grabbed Neo’s carry-on bag and my briefcase, exited the washroom, and left the club. Hat pulled low, I headed for my gate. Until telling you this story it was the last time I thought of Krissy/Angie, again. At least, that is, while awake.

But I continue to see her in my dreams.

Angie’s deceiving beauty.

Krissy’s vacant eyes.

Time to board my flight. I handed the attendant my boarding pass. As I headed down the jetway I heard the jumbo jet’s engines roar to life. I stepped onto the aircraft, and could literally see the fresh oxygen pouring out of the vents lining the cabin. I turned left toward first class. I was one of the first passengers on board.

“Can I bring you anything?” I heard as I settled in.

I turned to the dark-haired, forty-something woman in the face paint, as I thought, Absolutely. Double Sapphire. No tonic, no olives.

Then I gently looked around.

“Nothing for now. Thanks.”

First class never filled up, so Neo’s case was strapped into the window seat next to me, 2A. I took the aisle. I couldn’t bear to watch New York City disappear beneath me.

Six hours after take-off, having fallen into a deep sleep, I woke up to dark, quiet surroundings. As my eyes adjusted and I remembered where I was, I focused on the calm humming of the aircraft. I reached past Neo and lifted the window’s flimsy shade. Outside it was pitch black. I looked at my wrist. 4:38
p.m.
, eastern standard time.

I peeked inside my little partner’s case. He was sleeping soundly. I peered back over my seat. Some people were out cold. Those up used the reading lights from above so they could see whatever it was they were tending to.

My eyes gravitated back to the black sky beyond the window. In an instant all that had happened, everyone I had left behind, came back to me. I relaxed back into my seat and closed my eyes. I clung to this peaceful moment, knowing it wouldn’t last long.

Chapter 55

Like I said, I can’t tell you where I am. The reasons are now obvious. They are the same reasons why I haven’t told you what I look like. There is an enormous bounty on my head and charges that I didn’t even know exist awaiting me should I return. This way, even if you find me you won’t know because you won’t have a clue who you’re looking for. All you think of when you see me is a designer suit moving at a hundred miles per hour through the intense maze known as Midtown. I want to keep it this way. I can’t afford not to.

I didn’t ask for any of this. The chaos. The mayhem. I chose none of it. It chose me. Before I knew it, I couldn’t tell whether I was coming or going as I went speeding down life’s highway. All I knew was that I was speeding out of control.

I remember sitting in Jack Merrill’s conference room not too long ago. It was just after we met, while we were talking shop, when he said to me:

“You’ve been taught well.”

I absorbed his comment and arrogantly stuffed it away like someone who was bored of hearing it. I should have stopped and listened. I should have stopped and dissected the words.

Had I, in fact, been taught well?

Outside of real estate, had I really been taught anything of value at all?

I could never have imagined what I just laid out being the sequence of events that would force me to judge myself. But it was. And for that I’m surprisingly grateful. I was programmed to go after, simply amass life, by a man who showed me it was important to crave extravagant, expensive watches when all I really ever wanted was to tell time. Just pile it up. Money, women, drugs, everything. Three weeks ago I hadn’t yet had that one life-changing, mind-shaping experience to help make me finally ask what any of it was for. And to examine why I was letting it all clutter up the closet that is my mind. I have always been driven. I have always had the energy, desire to get what I want. That was the problem. Everything I have learned about my family, my faith, and my instincts has helped me see that. Without love, truth, and respect held above all, nothing will ever truly make sense.

It can’t.

Many have said “life is funny.” Life is far from funny. Life is flagrant, vicious, seductive, and cold. At other times it can be blatantly elevating, near perfect. Life chips at your soul yet toughens your skin. Life is our emotions, our abilities being pushed, tested at a constant clip. Life is obscene yet dazzling, dangerous yet divine.

Life is beyond tricky.

I now know this. I understand this.

Andreu, Detective Morante—no one will find me. At the end of the day, as I look out at the sheet of moonlight lying on top of the rippling water and I retrace all of my footsteps, my reality remains the same. The search party is already out. My body has traveled far away from what happened in New York. My mind has not. I feel guarded, but at the same time I feel exposed. Like the cop wearing the bullet-proof vest who gets shot in the face.