The Gods of Greenwich (40 page)

There were always visitors to the Bronx Zoo. Rachel worried about them. She had studied the grounds, walked every square inch around the polar bear compound. But all the surveillance, her dogged and unrelenting search for blind spots, could never eliminate the risk. Somebody might be watching from the distance. And these days, it seemed like everyone had a camcorder on hand. Or a cell phone with video camera.

Rachel relished the taste. Thrill—her heightened sense of risk—smacked of salt and sweaty endorphins after a killer workout. Her skin tingled. She heard everything, a dog barking, feet shuffling on the pavement, an engine backfiring in the distance. Faces became photos, which she stored in her memory. She saw every flash of movement, every turn of the head.

Hunting. Hunting. Hunting.

Rachel’s fingertips morphed into human sensors. She anticipated every change around her. Inside her head, she journeyed to the familiar zone. To the netherworld where she went from good to great. To her second life as a “cleaner.” To the place where no avatar was needed.

At the zoo entrance on Southern Boulevard, Rachel paid the cashier. She walked through the gates and checked her knapsack one last time. The 100-unit syringe was loaded and primed for action. So was the pink trophy from Henrietta Hedgecock’s purse. So were the hot dogs. All twelve of them.

“Where are you, Mrs. Cusack?” Rachel asked in a low whisper as she hiked toward the World of Reptiles.

*   *   *

Cusack poked his head inside Leeser’s office. He did not detect the noise, the rapid-fire sonar pings, not at first anyway. The walls caught—no, they snared his attention. They engulfed his internal musings like a fisherman’s net, wrapping round and round him, choking him until one question repeated over and over:

What happened to Cy’s paintings?

The walls were empty. Gone were the paintings and the drawings, the vast expanse of portraits and landscapes fighting for space with abstracts everywhere. Gone in the middle of the night. Even the Picasso was gone, the master’s sangria-soaked meanderings nowhere to be seen. Gone like yesterday. The picture hooks were the only items left. They lined the walls like tombstones, testaments to majesty that had once been.

“Bite me,” Cy snarled into his landline, and slammed down the receiver.

Behind him, the computer pinged like a submarine’s sonar every five seconds. The sound reminded Cusack of old World War II movies. He could almost see navy crews waiting in silence as Nazi destroyers dogged through the murky seas and dropped their lethal charges.

Ping. Ping. Ping.

Cy’s BlackBerry loomed uncomfortably on his desk. Like his computer, the smartphone also announced the arrival of angry e-mails with pings. Cy had selected the same sonarlike ringtone. Or perhaps he had never changed the factory settings. The BlackBerry pings rang crisp, and they rang sharp. They rang every five seconds—though always a second earlier, or a second later, than the pings from the computer.

Ping. Ping. Ping.

The pings came in waves. They filled the room: first the lead pings from the computer; and then the echo pings from the BlackBerry; or vice versa. Every angry e-mail announced its arrival twice, all with rambling variations of the same vitriolic message.

E-mail number 1,314:
What about your children, Asshole?

E-mail number 3,025:
Hey, butthead, don’t show your face in Venice Beach.

E-mail number 5,911:
Did you mail your check?

Cy’s landline rang yet again, and he snatched the receiver from its cradle. “What?” His brow furrowed as he listened. “Bianca said what?” He listened a few minutes more and slammed the receiver into its cradle.

He turned to Cusack and barked, “What do you want?”

Ping. Ping. Ping.

Leaning forward on his desk, distracted and preoccupied, Leeser did not wait for a response. “My wife just sabotaged me in a way you can’t imagine.”

“She took your paintings?” Cusack deliberated over what impressed him the most, the empty walls or all the pings.

“Worse,” he confirmed. “She jammed our communications. Our phone circuits are overloaded. Don’t work worth a shit. I must have twenty thousand e-mails by now. And my BlackBerry is fucking useless. I can’t hear myself think. There’s a goddam call-waiting signal every time I’m on the phone. Or a text message every time I fucking dial. So what do you want anyway?”

Cusack ignored the bad timing. Leeser’s distractions, he decided, might even help. “Our conversation from last Thursday. That videotape from the Foxy Lady. Okay to finish our discussion?”

Ping. Ping. Ping.

*   *   *

Inside the Bronx Zoo Rachel turned left at an intersection, instead of taking the right toward the World of Reptiles. It was an instinctive decision, the feral change of plans common to all predators—choices they make but cannot explain. Emily often started her days inside the long, meandering building named Madagascar, home to the Nile crocodiles.

The detour required only ten minutes, a quick jaunt through the shadows of Madagascar, a search-and-destroy mission among obscure carnivores such as the mongooselike fossa. It would not take long to find a pregnant woman inside the building. The crowds had yet to arrive, and Rachel could save herself the trouble of doubling back later. Dressed in her Goth garb, Rachel disappeared into Madagascar’s interior blackness. Just to be safe, she reached into her bag and pulled out a pair of black leather gloves.

As the corridors zigged and zagged, cool and foreboding, Emily was nowhere to be seen. Rachel checked the Nile crocodiles and their limestone caves. Not there. She checked around the tomato frog, so named for the astonishing red that belongs in every painter’s palette. Not there.

Rachel decided the building was empty until she found the hissing cockroaches,
Gromphadorhina portentosa.
The roaches were indigenous to Madagascar. No doubt they would thrive in Manhattan like a hundred million others, give or take.

There in the shadows, Rachel Whittier eyed a pregnant woman walking quickly in the opposite direction. “Gotcha.” She smirked.

*   *   *

Outside Leeser’s office, Victor paced back and forth. First to the left. Then to the right. Huffing at every turn. Every so often, he peered into his boss’s office to check if Leeser and Cusack were finished.

“Victor, why don’t I call you when they wrap up,” Nikki offered.

“How long, do you think?” He inspected her over the bridge of his horn-rimmed glasses.

“No idea.”

“I can’t wait that long.” Victor stormed into Leeser’s office, five foot six inches of unbridled fury, still smarting from that morning’s confrontation with his boss.

“We need to talk.” Lee plopped down on the guest chair next to Cusack.

“Not now,” rejoined Leeser. “No dwarves allowed.”

“The market’s dropping like a rock and you’re busy?” the head trader scoffed, ignoring the shot. “We’ll see nine thousand any minute.”

“Everybody ‘wants to talk,’” growled Leeser. “I’ve probably received a thousand calls from angry women. They want to talk. There are twenty thousand e-mails on my computer. People I don’t fucking know ‘want to talk.’ I can’t figure how to turn off all these goddam pings. And now there’s you, Victor, and you, Jimmy. You ‘want to talk.’ Who goes first?”

“I do,” demanded Victor. “If we don’t sell right now, not tomorrow, not an hour from now, but right now, Merrill will call their loan and puke out our positions. They don’t care if you sit on the board of Bentwing. Merrill will sell sloppy, and pretty soon everybody else will know and start puking out their own positions. Puke. Puke. Puke. You gotta do something.”

“Anything else?”

Ping. Ping. Ping.

“Yeah,” Victor declared. “We sell now, or I quit and go somewhere that understands talent.”

“And Jimmy,” Cy said, resting his left thumb on his right thumb, coiling his index finger around his lip, “what about you?”

“We should speak in private.”

Victor shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Come on, Jimmy,” taunted Cy. He was distracted. “There are no secrets among friends.”

Ping. Ping. Ping.

“Okay,” said Cusack. He stood up and reached his hand over Leeser’s desk. “Let’s buy out my father-in-law.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE
 …

“What are you talking about?” Leeser recoiled from shock, from expectations that Cusack was about to resign. The boss no longer had eyes. Stinger missiles had replaced the pupils, and they were taking aim.

“What’s wrong?” asked Cusack, confused by Leeser’s reaction. “You said, ‘I need a partner. Not an adversary.’ Let’s get started.”

No reply.

“Caleb’s a careful guy,” Cusack volunteered. “But I think he might sell his company.”

“Really?” said Leeser.

“Excuse me,” interrupted Victor Lee. “What about me?”

“Maybe you should leave,” Cy replied, quietly, not so much in control as in a state of confusion.

“Leave?” yelped Victor. “I’ve been here three years. And you’re making
him
a partner.”

“We can discuss it later,” replied Leeser.

“I’d rather discuss it now,” Victor squawked, his voice rising. “Cusack over me! What happened to loyalty?”

“You just threatened to quit.”

“I’m the head trader. I make the sacrifices. I think outside the box.” Lee shook with rage, with the yawing motion of a bobble-head doll.

“What sacrifices? What are you talking about?” demanded Cy. He was annoyed and perplexed. He was mashing the Off button on his BlackBerry. “These pings are driving me out of my fucking mind.”

Shannon appeared from nowhere. Large and menacing, LeeWell’s head of security heard the ruckus from down the hall. Walking into the office, he asked, “Is there a problem, boss?”

*   *   *

The woman scrambled, fast for being pregnant. Rachel remembered Emily as taller, not so round. But deep inside Madagascar, the inky lighting and shadows played tricks with silhouettes.

The pregnant woman turned one corner and then the next. Fast, with purpose. Her movements became frantic.

Rachel wondered if Emily recognized her. It was impossible. Rachel concealed her scar. The Goth look would fool anyone, especially someone with prosopagnosia.

Too soon to use the insulin syringe. The bear pens were too far a hike. People responded to the drug in different ways. Emi might collapse from the massive shot within seconds. That would blow everything. Or she might turn belligerent and aggressive, before succumbing to the drug.

“Bobby, where are you?” screamed the pregnant woman. She hustled around the corner and found her son inside the Spiny Forest. He was three, maybe four years old.

“What are those?” he exclaimed, pointing at the ring-tailed lemurs.

The mother, who looked nothing like Emi Cusack in the eerie glow from token lights, bent down and hugged her son. “Don’t run off on me like that,” she scolded. And she hugged Bobby some more.

“I saddled the wrong pony,” Rachel cursed to herself.

*   *   *

“We’re fine,” Cy advised Shannon.

“You sure, boss?”

“But do me a favor and ask Victor to join you.”

“Whatever,” the head trader sighed, rising to his feet. Juiced on 1.25 mg of Premarin twice a day, Victor tramped across the room. At the doorway, he called over his shoulder, “You make me feel like an old cow, and I don’t like it.”

“Close the door, Victor.”

Cusack sat back in his chair. The theatrics over, he focused on Cy. “I’m pumped. You too, right?”

“I don’t know what to say,” admitted Leeser, looking through Cusack.

“Emi’s on board,” Cusack added. “I had to work it out at home before saying yes here.”

“You got that right. Otherwise you get your paintings stolen and underwear scattered across the lawn.” Leeser’s words sounded bland and indifferent, preoccupied.

“Are you sure everything’s okay?”

“Yeah,” he grunted, his mind elsewhere. “It’s this thing with Bianca.”

“I hate to ask, but did she give you the video?”

“No,” he admitted, blinking. “Bianca still has my Mac.”

“Do you mind if I call her?”

“That might be best,” Cy replied, distracted. “Can I borrow your cell phone?”

“Is yours broken?”

“Sabotaged. I’ll return it in an hour.”

Cusack flipped his cell phone to Leeser, who grabbed it and walked out the door. Jimmy sat alone in Leeser’s mausoleum, surrounded by empty walls, and wondering what had just happened.

*   *   *

In the parking lot underneath Greenwich Plaza, Cy marched through the sea of four-wheeled imports. There was enough money in cars to rival the GDP of a small Caribbean nation. When Leeser found his Bentley, he gunned the engine and dialed Rachel’s cell phone. His wheels screeched as he pulled out of the lot.

One ring. Two rings.

The voice mail picked up, and Rachel’s trademark recording purred through the airwaves. “You missed me.” No invitation to leave a message. Nothing else. Just a beep.

“Call me now,” Cy thundered. “Now, Rachel.”

Leeser turned onto I-95 heading south toward the Bronx Zoo. He dialed again.

*   *   *

Rachel, her black sunglasses on high beam, trooped through the courtyard en route to the World of Reptiles. When her cell phone rang, she did not recognize the number. The caller went into voice mail. The issue could wait, whatever, whoever it was. She had a job to do.

The blinking message light piqued her curiosity, though. Made her wonder whether it was a new client, somebody other than Cy. He was grating on her last nerve.

Outside the Amazing Amphibians exhibit, the phone rang again. Same number. It rang as Rachel stalked past the Bronx Zoo store. More voice mail. Three messages now.

By the time Rachel reached the Dancing Crane Café, it was clear the caller would not stop dialing. This time Rachel answered. “Yes.”

“It’s about time you picked up,” snapped Leeser.