The Lazarus Trap (8 page)

He lived alone, yet today he felt as though he were being observed by a thousand eyes. Terrance stripped off his jacket and tie, then opened the sliding doors leading to the pool. Steel girders supported a screened cathedral over the poolside veranda. A covered atrium contained an outdoor kitchen with built-in gas range and party-sized refrigerator. Ten imperial palms in giant wooden tubs marched down the pool's other side. A waterfall timed to come on at sunset poured musically into the Jacuzzi. Beyond the pool and the screen and his border of oleanders, a final trio of golfers raced the twilight.

As hoped, Terrance spotted lights gleaming in the guesthouse parlor. He crossed the mock Venetian bridge and knocked on the door. He heard a voice call from within and entered. “Mother?”

“Hello, darling. You're just in time.” She appeared in a sweeping flow of silk and jewelry. “The hook on this bracelet is just impossible.”

“Let me.”

“You're a dear. How was your day?”

He pushed the catch into place. “Actually, it was rather horrid.”

“Do I want to hear?”

“I'm not sure.”

She turned and walked back to the second bedroom, now serving as her dressing room. “I suppose you'd best tell me.”

Eleanor d'Arcy was a woman born to reign. She deserved castles and private jets and servants offering the bended knee. She should have hosted monarchs for tea. She seated herself at the Louis XIV dressing table and used the silver-backed brush to bring her hair to perfection. Terrance said, “You look lovely.”

“Don't vacillate, dear. The news won't improve with age.”

“No, perhaps not. You remember Val Haines?”

“That dreadful man. I had hoped never to hear his name again.”

“He's dead.”

“What?” She stared at him in the mirror. “How?”

“Rather odd, that. It appears he was blown up.”

“Don't joke.”

“That is the farthest thing from my mind, I assure you.” Swiftly he related the day's events.

“Do you mean to tell me he was in the bank when the terrorists attacked?”

“They don't know that it was terrorists. And his location has not yet been confirmed. All we can say with any certainty is that neither he nor his colleague have been heard from since.”

She mulled that over. “I can't say I'll be sorry to see the back of that man. No doubt you feel the same.”

Terrance was too aware of the thousand eyes to respond.

“Your sister was sweet on him, I suppose you know that.”

“Yes.” Which added a very special flavor to the moment.

She misunderstood the gleam to his eyes. “I would prefer that you maintain proper civility with your sister.”

“Of course.”

But she was not fooled. “Why do you despise her so?”

“I suppose there is too much of Father in her for my taste.”

His mother started to respond, then let it slide. “I am hosting a charity dinner tonight at the club.”

He accepted his dismissal and turned to go. His mother had been in Orlando for only seven years. Yet already she ruled the upper tiers of what passed for the social hierarchy. She was lithe and very fit and professionally slender. Her face and neck were miracles of modern surgery. Some people took pride in aging well. Eleanor d'Arcy had no intention of giving time's passage an inch.

Returning across the bridge, Terrance was halted by a sudden realization. He had mentioned his father. He never did that. Terrance could not remember the last time he had spoken about his father. Years. To bring him up now was a serious breach. To not even notice it at the time was far worse.

Despite the evening's closeness, a chill sweat pressed from his forehead. He could afford no such slipups. He must control everything. Right down to the smallest detail. Eyes would soon be holding them under constant scrutiny.

He entered the house via the kitchen and began warming up the meal prepared by his maid. He was not the least bit hungry. He had felt no craving for food since this critical phase of their plan had begun. He ate his meal standing at the granite-topped center console. He turned the pages of the
Journal
as he forked the food into his mouth. Nothing registered, neither the food nor the news. The television in the recessed alcove above the oven was tuned to MSNBC. Twice while he ate, the bank's charred image flashed on screen. The first time he used the remote to turn up the volume. The other time he left the image silent. The television was merely background activity for the theater he was shaping. The newscasters had nothing new to report.

He finished his meal and moved to the apartment he had fashioned from the house's far end. The first room opened both to the house and the apartment's private rooms. Terrance did not turn on any lights. The rooms were horribly bare. In the dim light that followed him from the living room, Terrance was able to reshape the rooms in his mind.

Terrance had always been alone. Even as a child, Terrance had known he inhabited a solitary universe. The tight core of seclusion never altered. Nothing could reach him. Terrance could stand in the middle of a dense pack of people and remain trapped within his interior void. Only one person had ever managed to pierce his shields and enter the hidden spaces. This room had been meant for her daughter. The next was a studio apartment for the nanny. After Terrance had secretly torn her former husband apart bit by mangled bit, Val's wife had finally agreed to enter Terrance's world. Then, at the last moment and without warning, she had fled to Miami. Terrance had gone wild with rage, smashing the handcrafted nursery furniture with a ball-peen hammer.

That night, after the fury had subsided, Terrance had confessed to his mother. How the core of his being was filled with a void. How he felt born to solitude.

Eleanor had patted his cheek, a rare show of affection. “My dear darling boy,” she said. “Has it taken you this long to realize?”

“Realize what?”

“Kings are not merely born to rule,” his mother told him gently. “They are born to eternal isolation. It is their destiny.”

Terrance made himself a drink, switched on the digital radio to a random channel, and pretended to read a book. Everything was merely theatrical moves for the hidden audience. Two hours later, his mother returned from the club. Eleanor tapped on the glass and waved him a goodnight. She did not ask if he was going to bed. Terrance had never needed much sleep.

When the guesthouse went dark, he turned off the downstairs lights and proceeded up the central stairs. He padded down the hall to his study. Across from his desk was a narrow cupboard for storing his personal tax records. The rear of the bottom shelf now contained a set of all-black running gear. He dressed in the dark. He hefted a waist kit containing a black knit cap, a penlight, a screwdriver, two keys in a manila envelope, and three sets of surgical gloves still in their sterile packs. Silently he went back downstairs and let himself out the back.

He left the house by the kitchen door. He stood by the property boundary and searched the night. When he was certain he was alone, he jogged across the golf course.

He exited the gated community by way of the golf course's maintenance entrance, which he knew from earlier reconnaissance was locked and empty after nine. The workmen's gate was easily scaled.

Don Winslow's Escalade was parked just down the highway. Don greeted him with, “Look at this traffic. You sit here long enough, the whole world goes by.” Don wore a black sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, black track pants, and black high-tops. A black headband held the graying hair out of his face. He looked like a killer ready for the night's rampage. As soon as Terrance shut his door, Don slapped the Escalade into gear. “Where are we headed?”

“Val's.” Terrance did not need to think that one through. “We hit Val's first.”

VAL LEFT THE INTERNET CAFÉ AND RETURNED TO THE HOTEL because he had nowhere else to go. He needed to retreat and work things out. But as he pushed through the outer doors and entered the lobby, memories buzzed about him like vultures over carrion. Retreating to his lonely room would only give them the chance to pick his bones.

The lobby was empty save for the dark-suited desk clerk. “If it ain't Mr. Smith. How we doing today?”

The lobby's only sofa was a brown as toneless as the clerk's gaze. The clock behind the clerk's head read a few minutes after midnight. Val could find no sense to the numbers. The hotel and the night had been divorced from life's natural cadence. Val took a seat and replied, “Not so good.”

“Yeah? Sorry to hear that.”

Val studied the ancient tiles at his feet. The hotel's name was inscribed in a mottled design almost lost to the years. The air smelled of cleanser and time distilled to a futile blend. Val sighed his way deeper into the sofa's lumpy embrace. What he needed was a way to shoot the mental vultures out of the sky before they could attack him again.

He realized the clerk was watching him and asked, “You mind if I sit here?”

“Do I mind?” The clerk showed genuine humor. “I been working this job, what, five years now. That's the first time a guest ever asked me permission.”

“You're the boss here.”

The clerk's reply was cut off by the ringing phone. He answered and began speaking in a low voice. But his gaze remained steady upon Val.

The Internet search had taken Val from the blue-flagged headline to an article in that morning's
Orlando Sentinel.
As soon as Val had seen the newspaper banner, he had known he was looking at his hometown. Not Des Moines. He lived in Orlando. The new memory and the newspaper article formed a heat pungent as steam rising from a lava bed. Val watched the clerk talk quietly into the phone and felt pummeled by the words he had read. According to the report, Valentine Haines and Marjorie Copeland, executives of a company called Insignia, had apparently been killed by a massive bomb blast. Terrorists were not believed to have been involved.

The blast had demolished the top two floors of a building within the Rockefeller Center complex. The floors were home to the Syntec Investment Bank. The only reason there had not been a bloodbath was that the blast had occurred at six forty-five in the morning. The bank's premises, however, had been completely destroyed.

The clerk set down the phone. His eyes remained upon Val's face, inspecting, gauging. “Looks like it's my turn to ask permission, Mr. Smith.”

“What for?”

“See, there's some guys, they want to do a little business. Maybe you'd be better off heading upstairs.”

The prospect of entering his solitary cell held no pleasure whatsoever. “Do I have to?”

The clerk's name tag read
Vince
. His eyes flickered through an instant's change, something that might have been humor. “There you go, asking me what I never heard before. Do you have to? That ain't the question. The question is, are you trouble?”

“Not for you. Definitely not.” Val waved in the direction of the stairs. “I just don't . . .”

A pair of young men pushed through the outer doors. They crowded the lobby with uptown swagger and noise. The atmosphere palpably condensed. One of the men was rail-thin, dressed in a vest and no shirt, with a thick gold chain bouncing on his chest as he walked. “Man, this is some place, right, Jamie?”

“Sure.” His partner was thicker in every possible dimension. He wore an off-white sweater and cotton boat pants. But his swagger was the same, as were the wraparound shades. “It's something, all right.”

The thin man stalked to the counter. “Hey, Vince, my man.”

“Long time, Arnold.”

The desk clerk's tone stopped the slender man just as he was reaching out to shake hands. Arnold kept his hand moving up and swept off his sunglasses. “Jamie, meet Vince. As in, the man you need to know.”

“Vince.”

The desk clerk nodded once. Val felt as if he had aged into one of the old men normally dressing up the lobby. Pretending that by watching somebody else live the moment he could lay claim to a life himself.