The Sirena Quest (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-nine

Gordie was out of the question. Unless Harold had been in a trance for the past several days, he would know in an instant that he had never before seen this short, burly, balding, bearded guy who was claiming to be one of the inn's guests.

Billy disqualified himself, knowing he'd be way too jittery to pull it off.

Which left Lou. Though his hair and his eyes were darker than Frank's, the two were roughly the same height and build. By no means a perfect match, but way closer than the others.

Which is why, at twenty minutes past six on the evening of June 14, 1994, it was Lou Solomon who climbed out of the minivan at the edge of the commons in the center of Hawthorn, Massachusetts. He heard the minivan pull away as he walked across the commons, across the freshly mown grass, past the wood bandstand and the granite Civil War monument, toward the Hawthorn Inn, which faced the commons on the other side.

The plan was for Gordie and Billy to park in back, come in through the rear entrance, and meet him upstairs at Room 209. They'd confirmed that the room was empty. Five minutes ago, Gordie had called the inn from a pay phone and asked for Reggie. There was no answer in his room.

Small comfort
, Lou said to himself as he placed his hand on the entrance door, took a deep breath, and stepped into the lobby.

He faltered a moment, overcome not by nerves but the rush of memory. Straight ahead was an enormous stone fireplace with three long logs stacked inside. Couches and upholstered chairs were arranged in a cozy semicircle in front of the fireplace. An enclosed library was off to the right, and the front desk was to the left. On an antique table near the front desk was a big pewter bowl filled with shiny red apples.

The lobby of the Hawthorn Inn was almost identical to the lobby of the Woodstock Inn in Woodstock, Vermont.

There was no fire in the fireplace. Too late in the spring for that.

It had been winter in Vermont. A snowy afternoon. He'd been out for a hike through town while Andi stayed back at the inn. She'd been spotting again and feeling nauseous. The snowflakes—big fluffy Vermont ones, the kind you could actually catch on your tongue—had been floating down out of the gray sky for hours. He'd paused at the front door of the inn to stamp his feet on the mat. There'd been a fire in the big fireplace. Andi was curled on the couch in front of the fire, an apple in her hand as she read an old hardback edition of
Winesburg, Ohio
that she'd found in the inn's library.

As she told him later that day, she'd just finished “Adventure”—the story of a prim spinster who is suddenly overwhelmed by yearning during a violent thunderstorm one night. She disrobes and runs naked into the rain, seeking something—passion? salvation?—but returns wet and ashamed and alone. The story closes with her staring at the bedroom wall and struggling “to face bravely the fact that many people must live and die alone, even in Winesburg.”

Andi had just read the final line when Lou returned. He'd remembered that she'd looked up with tears in her eyes, her lips quivering slightly. She'd been wearing faded Levi's and a wheat-colored crewneck sweater over a green turtleneck. As he'd gazed at her—at those almond-shaped green eyes and full lips and strong nose and dark curly hair—he'd realized again that his wife was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and that marrying her had been the one truly significant accomplishment in his life.

Both facts were still true, Lou thought as he forced himself back to the present and the task at hand. He looked toward the front desk. There was an elderly man shuffling through papers. Harold?

As Lou approached, the man looked up from his papers.

“Yes?” he said, peering over his reading glasses in a friendly way.

Lou gave him a sheepish grin. “If I keep losing my key, Harold, you're going to add a special locksmith charge to the room.”

Harold slipped off his reading glasses and placed them in his front shirt pocket. “Lost your key, eh?”

Lou nodded, chagrined. “Second time. First was yesterday afternoon. I accidentally left it in my room when I went to lunch. I must have done it again.” He leaned forward with a conspiratorial smile. “Please don't tell Mrs. Brandon you had to give me another one. She'll think I'm bonkers.”

After a moment's hesitation, Harold grinned and joined the conspiracy. “Mum's the word, Mr.—?”

“Burke,” Lou said, forging ahead. “Room 209.”

“Our secret, sir.”

Harold chuckled and turned toward the room slots. He found the slot labeled 209, reached in, removed a spare key. He turned but then paused with a frown. He studied Lou, pressing the key against his cheek. “Burke, you say?”

Lou tensed. “Yes?”

“Virginia left me a note regarding you. Something about a package?”

Lou smiled. “You mean that Airborne Express delivery?”

“Yes, that is exactly it.”

“I happened to be out front when the delivery guy pulled up in his truck. I had him give me the package. Is there a problem?”

Harold seemed relieved. “Oh, not all. Not one bit. Virginia received a call from the courier service today. Apparently, they wanted to confirm that you had received the delivery, sir.”

“You can tell her I did.”

“I will do that. But—” he winked as he handed Lou the room key “—I will say nothing about this minor mishap, sir.”

As Lou took the key with his right hand, he reached into his pocket with his left hand and removed the five-dollar bill he'd placed there. He pressed the bill into Harold's hand and said, “Thank you.”

“Oh, my. Thank
you
, Mr. Burke. Thank you very much.”

Lou took the stairway up to the second floor. Gordie and Billy were waiting outside Room 209. Gordie had the two-wheel dolly and Billy had the rope.

“Any noises in there?” Lou asked in a whisper.

They shook their heads.

Lou knocked on the door and glanced up and down the hall. Empty. After a full minute had elapsed, he inserted the key and opened the door.

***

Thirty minutes later, they were back in the van.

Gordie banged his fist on the dashboard. “Damn!”

Lou frowned. “They're not taking any chances.”

They'd found nothing in the room but clothes, toiletries, and reunion materials.

“They probably did what Ray said we were going to do,” Billy said. “Put her in a bank vault or a storage locker.”

Gordie shook his head with frustration. “How the hell are we supposed to find her? Storage companies won't tell us a thing. Neither will the banks. And I'm sure as hell not in the mood to play Bonnie and Clyde.”

“Tomorrow's the fifteenth,” Billy said.

“And two days later is D-Day,” Gordie said. “Dammit. We're out of time.”

Lou started the engine and pulled the van out of the parking lot behind the Hawthorn Inn. They drove in silence back to Barrett.

Chapter Forty

An hour later, Lou poured the last of the second pitcher of beer into Gordie's mug. They were in a booth at the Rusty Scupper. Back in college the Rusty Scupper was
the
place to take a special date or to have your parents take you when they came to visit. But school was out, and the crowd tonight had that smarmy young professional look. Up at the bar were two twentysomething guys in Brooks Brothers suits chatting up a pair of women. The guys puffed on cigars and sipped what appeared to be martinis.

Lou surveyed the rest of the restaurant. With the exception of a foursome of blue-haired ladies two tables away, and what looked like a husband and wife in a booth along the side wall, Lou, Gordie, and Billy were the oldest patrons that night.

Lou's gaze held on the couple in the booth. The man looked about his age. The woman—well, she was around the age Andi would have been. They were leaning toward each other across the table and holding hands as they talked.

“Where would we even start?” Gordie said.

The question snapped Lou out of his reverie.

“Inside their heads,” he said.

“What the hell does that mean?” Gordie said.

“Think about them,” Lou said. “Here are two guys with a big investment in that statue. Lots of time and lots of emotion and lots of money. Especially money, right? Think of what they had to pay for that helicopter hijacking alone.”

“But what does all that mean?” Billy asked.

“Here's what it
might
mean,” Lou said. “They're just a day and a half away from their moment of glory. You know they're going to want to make sure that moment is truly glorious, right? They want the scene of her return to be unforgettable. Agreed?”

Gordie and Billy nodded.

Lou said, “So that means they're probably planning to do something a little more dramatic than driving onto Remington Field with Sirena sitting in the bed of a Ford pickup.”

“You're right,” Gordie said. “Especially now that they know that
People
magazine will be there. They'll have something flamboyant planned. Something with a flair. That's Reggie's style.”

“Maybe another helicopter,” Billy said.

“Or an armored car,” Gordie said.

Billy scratched his chin. “A stretch limo could be dramatic.”

“Not bad,” Gordie said. “Do it up fancy. Have a chauffeur in gray livery get out, come around to the back door, open it slowly, and—
voilà
—there she is.”

“That'd be good,” Billy said.

Gordie tilted his head back and frowned at the ceiling. After a moment, he said, “Or they could drop her out of a plane.

“Drop her?” Billy said. “She'd break.”

“Not just shove her out, Bronco.” Gordie shook his head with exasperation. “With a parachute. On a pallet. Like one of those military drops.” He leaned back, trying to picture the scene. “Can't you just see her? Descending out of the clouds?”

Lou shook his head. “No way. Sirena weighs nearly two hundred pounds. If she blows off course and lands in the stands, she could wipe out a whole row of alumni.”

The three of them pondered the matter in silence.

“Damn,” Gordie said. “There's just not enough time. We'd have to call every stretch limo service, helicopter rental outfit, and armored car company in Massachusetts, and maybe in Connecticut and Vermont and New Hampshire as well. And even if we got incredibly lucky and stumbled onto the right company, why would they tell us anything? Hell, if I were Frank and Reggie, the first thing I'd want to make sure is that whoever I hired would keep it strictly confidential.”

Billy turned to Lou and shook his head. “Gordie's right.”

“Probably,” Lou said. “But you'd have to admit that our chances would improve if we knew who they hired.”

Gordie snorted. “Yeah, and my chances of playing professional baseball would improve if I were six feet tall.”

“I'm serious.”

“What are you getting at?” Billy asked.

Lou turned to Billy. “We'd be a lot closer to Sirena if we knew that they'd hired, say, Joe's Limo Service.”

“Okay, Einstein,” Gordie said. “And how are we supposed to narrow it to Joe's Limo Service?”

“We call Ray,” Lou said.

“All of a sudden he's the Oracle of Delphi?” Gordie said.

Lou smiled. “No, he's the Oracle of Credit Cards.”

Gordie frowned. “You think?”

“Possibly. Especially if there's a deposit involved. Let's assume they're planning to transport Sirena to the college in a stretch limo. Or on a helicopter. If you want to reserve one of those, you probably have to put down a deposit, right? If they used a credit card for the deposit, Ray's people should be able to find it.”

Lou looked from Billy to Gordie. “Right?”

Gordie's scowl faded as he turned toward Billy.

Billy nodded. “Lou might be right.”

Gordie looked back at Lou. After a moment he smiled. “You just might be.”

Chapter Forty-one

As the justification for America's involvement in Vietnam, the Domino Theory has been discredited. As the explanation for air traffic delays across America, the Domino Theory is reaffirmed every time rain, sleet, or snow hits the runways ten miles northwest of the City of Chicago. As frustrated air travelers have long since learned, as goes O'Hare, so goes the nation.

The O'Hare problem that afternoon was hovering above the runways in the form of fog. But haze over O'Hare still meant that all planes heading toward Bradley International Airport—including, for some mysterious reason, those with flight paths nowhere near Chicago—were running late. Lou had no inkling of that problem as he drove south on I-91 under clear blue skies. It was only after he got into the airport terminal that he learned that TWA Flight 342 from St. Louis and US Air Flight 1447 from Pittsburgh were both showing ETAs roughly one hour later than the originally scheduled arrival times.

With an hour to kill, he wandered through the airport. Business had brought him through Bradley several times since college, but as a business traveler he'd always hurried past the gates and through the terminal the same way he always hurried past the gates and through the terminal of every other airport—quickly glancing at the advertising posters along the walls as he passed by, scanning for signs for Ground Transportation and Car Rental and Telephones.

But today he had time. As he strolled through the terminal, he realized that the place had been completely transformed since his student days. Back then, Bradley had been the dreary final stop on the Allegheny Airlines puddle-jumper from St. Louis. Today, it was shiny and modern and largely indistinguishable from its counterparts around the nation.

But not completely indistinguishable. His wanderings brought him to a row of tall enclosed phone booths—the retro type with wooden sides and folding glass doors. Something about them, something more than just their quaintness, caught his attention. As he stared at the hinged doors, searching for the connection, an image—a long forgotten image—bobbed to the surface of his memory:

Andi.

Standing in one of those phone booths.

Talking with her mother.

And Lou waiting. Standing in just about the same place he was standing now.

The rest came back, like color bleeding into a black-and-white still. Ten years ago. June of 1984. His tenth reunion. They'd flown to Hartford. Just the two of them. No gathering of the James Gang for that reunion. Billy still in Nicaragua, Ray still in the drug trade, Gordie off at some film festival pitching scripts to distracted producers. Katie just a toddler—fourteen months old. Staying with Andi's parents for the weekend. It was the first time Andi had been away from her baby overnight. That call home would be the first of many calls home that weekend.

Reunion headquarters in 1984 had been one of the houses on fraternity hill. Their tiny room was at the top of a creaking staircase on the fourth floor overlooking the back veranda. They'd come back from a coed tennis tournament on the second afternoon to find a cocktail party in full swing on the veranda. He went to fetch two cups of beer from the tap. Returned to find Andi trapped near the French doors by Bryce Wharton, their goofy class secretary, in full flirtation mode, his shrill guffaws sounding like donkey's brays. Andi's face flushed from tennis. A sheen of perspiration on her forehead and upper lip. He'd paused to watch—to admire his beautiful wife and her cheerleader legs in that short tennis skirt.

Bryce Wharton finally excused himself, headed over to the crowd to trawl for tidbits for his Class Notes column in the alumni magazine. Lou approached with the beers. Andi's gaze met his. She raised her eyebrows, nodded toward the stairway beyond the French doors. He grinned. Set the two beers on the ledge. Hurried up the stairs behind her, entranced by the view. Inside the room, they quickly undressed, staring at each other. The walls were thin. Two women in earnest conversation in the next room. Andi naked, tanned, beautiful, put a finger to her lips as she leaned back on the bed. She was sweaty and musky and honeyed and exquisite. They made love on the narrow bed, silent, fierce—with laughter and loud voices wafting up from the veranda below.

Nine months later—to the day—Kenny was born.

***

Lou turned from the phone booths and checked his watch. Still forty-five minutes before the kids' plane arrived.

He picked up a copy of
Sports Illustrated
at the newsstand—the one with heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson and his wife Robin Givens on the cover—got a cup of coffee at the Starbucks booth, and settled down in an empty seat near the gate where the flight from St. Louis was slated to arrive.

After they got back from dinner at the Rusty Scupper last night, he'd called Ray to explain his deposit theory for locating Sirena. Ray told him he'd place a trace on all charges by Frank or Reggie over the past several days.

That was last night. He still hadn't heard back when he left for the airport.

Lou's chair faced the main corridor. He started reading an article by Peter Gammons on the drop in the number of home runs that season. Across the way was another gate. Through the large windows he could see an American Airlines 767 pulling into position as the jetway swung out to meet it. A crowd was milling around the gate, waiting to greet the arriving passengers.

Lou looked up from the
Sports Illustrated
when the airline agent opened the door. A moment later the first passengers began emerging. He watched with mild interest. Odds were that this flight included one or two Barrett alumni returning for the reunion weekend. One of them might be from the Class of '74.

He recognized her immediately.

Donna Crawford was wearing an oversized blue turtleneck, a stonewashed denim skirt cut just above the knees, and leather sandals. As she adjusted the shoulder strap on her carry-on bag, she turned to hold out her hands to two young girls, both blonde, each with a stuffed backpack slung on her back. He guessed the older one was about eleven and the younger one maybe seven. They wore bright shorts and patterned T-shirts and white tennis shoes. The older one had on a Dodgers baseball cap turned backward, and the younger one was carrying a stuffed white rabbit. As Donna moved toward the corridor, holding each daughter by a hand, she looked up at the signs for directions to the baggage claim area.

Lou stood. “Donna?”

She turned toward the voice and then smiled with recognition. “Lou, what a nice surprise.”

He came over and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Did you just get in, too?” she asked.

“I'm here to pick up my kids.” He kneeled in front of her two girls. “And who are these cuties?”

Both girls turned their heads away bashfully.

Donna placed her hand on the older one's head. “This is Leah. And this is Sara. Girls, this is Mr. Solomon. He was a friend of Daddy's.”

“Hi, Leah,” Lou said. “Hi, Sara.”

“Hello, Mr. Solomon,” Leah said, her expression solemn.

Sara put her thumb in her mouth. Lou touched her gently on the cheek, and she smiled at him around her thumb.

As Lou stood, he suddenly felt uncomfortable, as if he'd barged in on this family uninvited—which, he realized, was exactly what he'd done.

“Here,” he said, reaching for her bag, “let me carry that.”

“Oh, Lou.” Donna gave an embarrassed laugh. “It's not that heavy.”

“All I have is this.” He held up his magazine. “And you have two girls to worry about.”

“Okay.” She handed him the bag and turned to her daughters. “Come on, girls.”

They started down the corridor toward the baggage area.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“Better.” She glanced at him and sighed. “One day at a time.”

He nodded, trying to think of something appropriate to say.

Bruce Crawford had been the third member of Lou's class to die. Rob Sonderman had been the first, succumbing to brain cancer just four years after graduation. Then came Toby Henderson, dead of AIDS six years ago. All three were to be honored in a special memorial service during the reunion weekend.

They continued down the corridor in silence, looking back every few steps to check on the little girls, who were trailing right behind.

“Lou?”

He turned. She was staring at him.

“Your letter meant a lot to me.”

Lou shrugged. “I remembered the card you sent me.”

“I saved your letter,” she said. “I read it again two nights ago, as I was getting ready to come out here.”

He nodded.

When Lou first met her—at a mixer during the fall of his freshman year—she was Donna Hendricks of Hampton College. She met Bruce Crawford later that evening, and before the night was over Donna and Bruce had fallen utterly in love. Bruce lived on the same dorm floor as Lou. He was a big, brawny, good-natured blond from Minnesota who played lacrosse for Barrett and majored in geology (aka, rocks for jocks).

Bruce and Donna became BruceandDonna. Even senior year, after four years together, you'd find them in the student union, seated alone at a table and holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes, silent for what seemed to others an eternity. The mushy stuff was way over the top for Lou—and for everyone else, too. Gordie claimed it was only a matter of time before they'd burst into song. Ray prayed they would burst into flames.

He glanced over at Donna. Back in college she had been a classically pretty girl, with ash blond hair and pug nose and blue eyes. Now there were streaks of gray near the temples, lines around the eyes, a hint of sag in her neck. But to Lou she looked just as lovely as she did when they used to share a cup of hot cocoa along the sidelines at the freshman lacrosse games and cheered on Bruce. The important word was “pals.” At first glance, Donna didn't look like the type of woman a guy could be pals with. She seemed decidedly “ladylike”—existing in a gossamer world of powder puffs and perfumes and soft music and nail polish and bath oils. But Lou soon learned that you can no more judge a woman than a book by its cover. Donna had played halfback on her high school varsity field hockey team and bore the leg scars to prove it. And there was nothing demure about the way she played touch football with them. Twenty years later, Lou could still remember how she looked going out for a pass in her turtleneck sweater and grass-stained jeans and long blonde hair stuffed under a Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap—sexy enough to make you regret that she was in love with your friend.

“Where are you staying?” Lou asked.

They were waiting for her luggage at the carousel.

“At one of the Hampton dorms. Bryant Hall, I think. How 'bout you?”

“Barrett Best Western. I've been sharing a room there for the last couple days with Billy McCormick and Gordie Cohen. I'm switching over to another room with the kids tonight.”

“Gordie.” She smiled fondly. “Bruce and I had dinner with him…oh, it must have been ten years ago. Right after we moved out there. Is he still in Hollywood?”

“He moved back to Chicago. He's in advertising now.”

“What about that crazy friend of yours?” She giggled. “Your dishwasher partner?”

“Ray Gorman.”

“Right. Is Ray coming back for the reunion?”

“He's landing here this afternoon. I'm picking him up, too. If you don't mind waiting, I'd be happy to give you and the girls a ride to Barrett.”

She shook her head. “Thanks, but I have a car rented. This is my first time back. I want to take the girls over to Hampton. Show them where Mommy went to school. After the reunion—” she paused, eyes bright “—I'm thinking about going to the Berkshires.”

“Really?”

“It's so beautiful this time of year. Bruce and I—” She paused, her spirits fading a little. “We spent our first anniversary up there.”

“Where will you stay?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea. I didn't decide to go there until the plane ride out. Spur of the moment. The girls and I are just going to hop in the car, drive out there and find a place for a couple of nights. It shouldn't be hard this early in the season.”

“That's a great idea.”

Lou had been so focused on Sirena and June seventeenth that he'd given no thought to life on June eighteenth.

Donna studied him. “You and your kids are welcome to join the caravan. I'm sure there'll be plenty of vacancies in June.”

The prospect of a couple of days unwinding in the Berkshire Mountains with his children was tempting.

His thoughts were jumbled.

She was staring down at the luggage carousel. After a moment she looked up at him. “You haven't remarried?”

He shook his head. “No.”

She nodded, eyes distant.

“It's hard,” she said quietly—more to herself than him.

“There it is, Mommy,” Leah shouted. She was pointing at the suitcase sliding down the shoot to the carousel.

Lou walked with them to the car rental booth and then out to the curb beneath the rental car sign. As the Hertz bus pulled up, Donna turned to him and held out her hand.

“Thanks, Lou. It's wonderful to see you again.”

He shook her hand.

“Listen,” he said, clumsy again, “maybe we could get together for dinner. With our kids. Maybe, oh, tomorrow night?”

She gazed at him a moment and then nodded. “That would be nice.”

After the Hertz bus pulled away, he walked back through the terminal, trying to make sense of these new feelings. It had been years since anything had stirred in that corner of his heart.

He thought back to the last time he'd seen Donna. And Bruce. It was at their wedding, which had been a week after graduation in Philadelphia. The newlyweds settled in Philadelphia, where she got a job as a legal secretary to help put Bruce through the Wharton School of Business. After that, they moved to New York City and Bruce joined Drexel Burnham's bond department, where he became one of Michael Milken's boys. He was transferred to Drexel's Los Angeles office. They bought a house in Beverly Hills. Life seemed good until the Milken scandal erupted. Two years ago, Bruce died of a massive overdose of sleeping pills in a hotel room in New York City, where'd he gone on a bond deal. In a rambling suicide note to Donna, he apologized for his weakness. A few weeks later, the Justice Department revealed that Bruce had been the principal target of an insider-trading investigation.