Three Harlan Coben Novels (25 page)

D
rew Van Dyne sat in Big Jake Wolf’s family room and tried to plan his next move.

Jake had given him a Corona Light. Drew frowned. A real Corona, okay, but light Mexican beer? Why not just pass out piss water? Drew sipped it anyway.

This room reeked of Big Jake. There was a deer head hanging above the fireplace. Golf and tennis trophies lined the mantel. The rug was some sort of bear skin. The TV was huge, at least seventy inches. There were tiny expensive speakers everywhere. Something classical drifted out from the digital player. A carnival popcorn machine with flashing lights sat in the corner. There were ugly gold statues and ferns. Everything had been selected not based on fashion or function, but by what would appear most ostentatious and overpriced.

On the side table was a picture of Jake Wolf’s hot wife. Drew picked it up and shook his head. In the photograph, Lorraine Wolf wore a bikini. Another of Jake’s trophies, he guessed. A picture of your own wife in a bikini on a side table in the family room—who the hell does that?

“I spoke to Harry Davis,” Wolf said. He had a Corona Light too. There was a wedge of lime jammed into the top. Van Dyne rule of alcohol consumption: If a beer needs a fruit topping, choose another beer. “He’s not going to talk.”

Drew said nothing.

“You don’t believe it?”

Drew shrugged, drank his beer.

“He has the most to lose here.”

“You think?”

“You don’t?”

“I reminded Harry of that. You know what he said?”

Jake shrugged.

“He told me that maybe Aimee Biel had the most to lose.” Drew put down his beer, intentionally missing the coaster. “What do you think?”

Big Jake pointed his beefy finger at Drew. “Who the hell’s fault would that be?”

Silence.

Jake walked over to the window. He gestured with his chin at the house next door. “You see that place over there?”

“What about it?”

“It’s a friggin’ castle.”

“You’re not doing too badly here, Jake.”

A small smile played on his lip. “Not like that.”

Drew would point out that it’s all relative, that he, Drew Van Dyne, lived alone in a crap-hole that was smaller than Wolf’s garage, but why bother? Drew could also point out that he didn’t have a tennis court or three cars or gold statues or a theater room or even really a wife since the separation, much less one with a hot enough body to model in bikinis.

“He’s a big-time lawyer,” Jake droned on. “Went to Yale and never lets anyone forget it. He has a Yale decal on his car window. He wears Yale T-shirts when he takes his daily jog. He hosts Yale parties. He interviews Yale applicants in his big castle. His son is a dope, but guess what school still accepted him?”

Drew Van Dyne shifted in the chair.

“The world is not a level playing field, Drew. You need an in. Or you have to make one. You, for example, wanted to be a big rock star. The guys who make it—who sell a zillion CDs and fill up outdoor arenas—do you think they’re more talented than you? No. The big difference, maybe the only difference, is that they were willing to take advantage of some situation. They exploited something. And you didn’t. Do you know what the world’s greatest truism is?”

Drew could see that there was no stopping him. But that was okay. The man was talking. He was revealing things in his own way. Drew
was getting the picture now. He had a pretty good idea of where this was heading. “No, what?”

“Behind every great fortune is a great crime.”

Jake stopped and let that sink in. Drew felt his breathing go a little funny.

“You see someone with beaucoup bucks,” Jake Wolf went on, “a Rockefeller or Carnegie or someone. Do you want to know the difference between them and us? One of their great-grandpas cheated or stole or killed. He had balls, sure. But he understood that the playing field is never level. You want a break, you make it yourself. Then you peddle that hard-work, nose-to-the-grindstone fiction to the masses.”

Drew Van Dyne remembered the warning call:
Don’t do anything stupid. It’s under control.

“This Bolitar guy,” Drew said. “You already had your cop friends lay into him. He didn’t budge.”

“Don’t worry about him.”

“That’s not much of a comfort, Jake.”

“Well,” Jake said, “let’s just remember whose fault this is.”

“Your son’s.”

“Hey!” Again Jake pointed with the beefy finger. “Keep Randy out of it.”

Drew Van Dyne shrugged. “You’re the one who wanted to place blame.”

“He’s going to Dartmouth. That’s a done deal. No one, especially not some dumb slut, is going to ruin that.”

Drew took a long deep breath. “Still. The question is, if Bolitar keeps digging, what is he going to find?”

Jake Wolf looked at him. “Nothing,” he said.

Drew Van Dyne felt a twinge start in the base of his spine.

“How can you be so sure?”

Wolf said nothing.

“Jake?”

“Don’t worry about it. Like I said, my son is on his way to college. He’s done with all this.”

“You also said that behind every great fortune is a great crime.”

“So?”

“She means nothing to you, does she, Jake?”

“It’s not about her. It’s about Randy. It’s about his future.”

Jake Wolf turned back to the window, to his Ivy League neighbor’s castle. Drew gathered his thoughts, reined in his emotions. He looked at this man. He thought about what he had said, what it all meant. He thought again about the warning call.

“Jake?”

“What?”

“Did you know that Aimee Biel was pregnant?”

The room went quiet. The background music was between songs now. When it started up again, the beat had picked up a step, an old ditty from Supertramp. Jake Wolf slowly turned his head and looked back over his shoulder. Drew Van Dyne could see that the news was a surprise.

“That doesn’t change anything,” Jake said.

“I think maybe it does.”

“How?”

Drew Van Dyne reached into his shoulder holster. He removed the gun and aimed it at Jake Wolf. “Take a wild guess.”

T
he storefront was a nail salon called Nail-R-Us in a not-yet-redeveloped section of Queens. The building had that decrepit thing going on, as if leaning against it would cause a wall to collapse. The rust on the fire escape was so thick that tetanus seemed a far greater threat than smoke inhalation. Every window was blocked by either a heavy shade or a plank of wood. The structure was four levels and ran almost the entire length of the block.

Myron said to Win, “The
R
on the sign is crossed out.”

“That’s intentional.”

“Why?”

Win looked at him, waited. Myron did it in his head. Nail-R-Us had become Nail Us.

“Oh,” Myron said. “Cute.”

“They have two armed guards stationed at windows,” Win said.

“They must do a mean manicure.”

Win frowned. “Moreover, the two guards didn’t take up position until your Ms. Rochester and her beau returned.”

“They’re worried about her father,” Myron said.

“That would be a logical deduction.”

“You know anything about the place?”

“The clientele is below my level of expertise.” Win nodded behind Myron. “But not hers.”

Myron turned. The setting sun was blocked now as though by an eclipse. Big Cyndi was ambling toward them. She was dressed entirely in white spandex. Very tight white spandex. No undergarments. Tragically, you could tell. On a seventeen-year-old runway model, the spandex jumpsuit would be a fashion risk. On a woman of forty who
weighed more than three hundred pounds . . . well, it took guts, lots of them, all of which were on full display, thank you very much. Everything jiggled as she trundled toward them; various body parts seemed to have lives of their own, moving of their own accord, as if dozens of animals were trapped in a white balloon and trying to squirm their way out.

Big Cyndi kissed Win on the cheek. Then she turned and said, “Hello, Mr. Bolitar.” She hugged him, wrapping her arms around him, a feeling not unlike being wrapped in wet attic insulation.

“Hey, Big Cyndi,” Myron said when she put him down. “Thanks for getting down here so quick.”

“When you call, Mr. Bolitar, I run.”

Her face remained placid. Myron never knew if Big Cyndi was putting him on or not.

“Do you know this place?” he asked.

“Oh yes.”

She sighed. Elk within a forty-mile radius began to mate. Big Cyndi wore white lipstick like something out of an Elvis documentary. Her makeup had sparkles. Her fingernails were in a color she’d once told him was called Pinot Noir. Back in the day, Big Cyndi had been the bad-guy professional wrestler. She fit the bill. For those who have never watched professional wrestling, it is merely a morality play with good pitted against evil. For years, Big Cyndi had been the evil “warlordess” named Human Volcano. Then one night, after a particularly grueling match where Big Cyndi had “injured” the lovely and lithe Esperanza “Little Pocahontas” Diaz with a chair—“injured” her so badly that the fake ambulance came in and strapped on the neck brace and all that—an angry mob of fans waited outside the venue.

When Big Cyndi left for the night, the mob attacked.

They might have killed her. The crowd was drunk and fired up and not really into the reality-versus-fiction equation at work here. Big Cyndi tried to run, but there was no escape. She fought hard and well, but there were dozens wanting her blood. Someone hit her with a camera, a cane, a boot. They moved in. Big Cyndi went down. People started stomping her.

Seeing the mayhem, Esperanza tried to intervene. The crowd would
have none of it. Even their favorite wrestler could not halt their blood-lust. And then Esperanza did something truly inspired.

She jumped on a car and “revealed” that Big Cyndi had only been pretending to be a bad guy to gather information. The crowd almost paused. Furthermore, Esperanza announced, Big Cyndi was really Little Pocahontas’s long lost sister, Big Chief Mama, a rather lame moniker but hey, she was making this stuff up on the fly. Little Pocahontas and her sister were now reuniting and would become tag-team partners.

The crowd cheered. Then they helped Big Cyndi to her feet.

Big Chief Mama and Little Pocahontas quickly became wrestling’s most popular team. The same scenario played out weekly: Esperanza would start every match winning on skill, their opponents would do something illegal like throw sand in her eye or use the dreaded foreign object, the two baddies would team up on poor, helpless Pocahontas while someone distracted Big Chief Mama, they’d beat the sensuous beauty until the strap on Pocahontas’s suede bikini ripped, and then Big Chief Mama would give out a war cry and ride in to the rescue.

Massively entertaining.

When she left the ring, Big Cyndi became a bouncer and sometimes stage performer for several lowlife sex clubs. She knew the seedier side of the streets. And that was what they were counting on now.

“So what is this place?” Myron asked.

Big Cyndi put on her totem-pole frown. “They do a lot of things, Mr. Bolitar. Some drugs, some Internet scamming, but mostly, these are sex clubs.”

“Clubs,” Myron repeated. “As in the plural?”

Big Cyndi nodded. “Six or seven different ones probably. Remember a few years ago when Forty-second Street was loaded with sleaze?”

“Yes.”

“Well, when they forced them all out, where do you think the sleaze went?”

Myron looked at the nail salon. “Here?”

“Here, there, everywhere. You don’t kill sleaze, Mr. Bolitar. It just moves to a new host.”

“And this is the new host?”

“One of them. Here, in this very building, they offer specialty clubs catering to an international variety of tastes.”

“When you say ‘specialty clubs’—?”

“Let’s see. If you care for flaxen-haired women, you go to On Golden Blonde. That’s on the second floor, far right. If you’re into African-American men, you head up to the third floor and visit a place called—you might like this, Mr. Bolitar—Malcolm Sex.”

Myron looked at Win. Win shrugged.

Big Cyndi continued in her tour guide voice: “Those with an Asian fetish will enjoy the Joy Suck Club—”

“Yeah,” Myron said, “I think I get the picture. So how do I get in and find Katie Rochester?”

Big Cyndi thought about that for a moment. “I can pose as a job applicant.”

“Excuse me?”

Big Cyndi put her enormous fists on her hips. This meant that they were about two yards apart. “Not all men, Mr. Bolitar, have petite fetishes.”

Myron closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Right, okay, maybe. Any other thoughts?”

Win waited patiently. Myron had always thought that Win would be intolerant of Big Cyndi, but years ago, Win surprised him by pointing out what should have been obvious: “One of our worst and most accepted prejudices is against large women. We never, ever, see past it.” And it was true. Myron had been deeply ashamed when Win pointed that out. So he started treating Big Cyndi as he should—like everyone else. That pissed Big Cyndi off. Once, when Myron smiled at her, she hit him hard on the shoulder—so hard he couldn’t lift his arm for two days—and shouted, “Cut that out!”

“Perhaps you should try a more direct route,” Win said. “I will stay out here. Keep your cell phone on. You and Big Cyndi try and talk your way in.”

Big Cyndi nodded. “We can pretend we’re a couple looking to try a threesome.”

Myron was about to say something when Big Cyndi said, “Kidding.”

“I knew that.”

She arched a shiny eyebrow and leaned toward him. The mountain coming to Muhammad. “But now that I planted that most erotic seed, Mr. Bolitar, you may find performing with a petite difficult.”

“I’ll muddle through. Come on.”

Myron stepped through the door first. A black man at the door sporting designer sunglasses told him to halt. He wore an earplug like someone in the Secret Service. He patted Myron down.

“Man,” Myron said, “all this for a manicure?”

The man took away Myron’s cell phone. “We don’t allow pictures,” he said.

“It’s not a camera phone.”

The black man grinned. “You’ll get it back on the way out.”

He held the grin until Big Cyndi filled the doorway. Then the grin fled, replaced with something akin to terror. Big Cyndi ducked inside like a giant entering a kid’s clubhouse. She stood upright, stretched her arms over her head, and spread her legs apart. The white spandex cried out in agony. Big Cyndi winked at the black man.

“Frisk me, big boy,” she said. “I’m packing.”

The outfit was tight enough to double as skin. If Big Cyndi was indeed packing, the man didn’t want to know where.

“You’re okay, miss. Step through.”

Myron thought again about what Win had said, about accepted prejudice. There was something personal in the words, but when Myron had tried to follow up, Win closed down on the subject. Still, about four years ago, Esperanza had wanted Big Cyndi to take on some clients. Outside of Myron and Esperanza, she had been with MB Reps the longest. It sort of made sense. But Myron knew it would be a disaster. And it was. No one felt comfortable with Big Cyndi repping them. They blamed her outlandish clothes, her makeup, her manner of speech (she liked to growl), but even if she got rid of all that, would it have changed anything?

The black man cupped his ear. Someone was talking to him through the earpiece. He suddenly put an arm on Myron’s shoulder.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

Myron decided to stick with the direct route. “I’m looking for a woman named Katie Rochester.”

“There’s no one here by that name.”

“No, she’s here,” Myron said. “She walked in that very door twenty minutes ago.”

The black man took a step closer to Myron. “Are you calling me a liar?”

Myron was tempted to snap his knee into the man’s groin, but that wouldn’t help. “Look, we can go through all the macho posturing, but really, what’s the point? I know she came in. I know why she’s hiding. I mean her no harm. We can play this one of two ways. One, she can talk to me quickly and that’s the end of it. I say nothing about her whereabouts. Two, well, I have several men positioned outside. You throw me out the door and I call her father. He brings several more. It all gets ugly. None of us need that. I just want to talk.”

The black man kept still.

“Another thing,” Myron said. “If she’s afraid I work for her father, ask her this: If her father knew she was here, would he be this subtle?”

More hesitation.

Myron spread his arms. “I’m in your place. I’m unarmed. What damage could I do?”

The man waited another second. Then he said, “You finished?”

“We might also be interested in a threesome,” Big Cyndi said.

Myron hushed her with a look. She shrugged and kept quiet.

“Wait here.”

The man headed to a steel door. It buzzed. The man opened it and went inside. It took about five minutes. A bald guy with spectacles entered the room. He was nervous. Big Cyndi started giving him the eye. She licked her lips. She cupped what might have been her breasts. Myron shook his head, afraid she’d drop to her knees and pantomime lord-knew-what when the door mercifully opened. The man with the sunglasses poked his head out.

“Come with me,” he said, pointing to Myron. He turned toward Big Cyndi. “Alone.”

Big Cyndi didn’t like it. Myron calmed her with a look and stepped
into the other room. The steel door closed behind him. Myron looked around and said, “Uh-oh.”

There were four of them. Various sizes. Lots of tattoos. Some grinned. Some grimaced. All wore jeans and black T-shirts. None were clean-shaven. Myron tried to figure out who the leader was. In a group fight, most people mistakenly believe you look for the weakest link. Always the wrong move. Besides, if the guys were any good, it didn’t matter what you did.

Four against one in a tight space. You were done.

Myron found a man who stood a little in front of the others. He had dark hair and more or less fit the description of Katie Rochester’s beau given to him by both Win and Edna Skylar. Myron met his eye and held it.

Then Myron said, “Are you stupid?”

The dark-haired man frowned, surprised and insulted. “You talking to me?”

“If I say, ‘Yeah, I’m talking to you,’ will that be the end of it or will you come back with ‘You talking to me’ again or ‘You better not be talking to me’? Because, really, neither one of us has the time.”

The dark-haired man smiled. “You left one option off when you talked to my friend here.”

“What’s that?”

“Option three.” He held up three fingers in case Myron didn’t know what the word
three
meant. “We make sure you
can’t
tell her father.”

He grinned. The other men grinned.

Myron spread his arms and said, “How?”

That made the man frown again. “Huh?”

“How are you going to make sure of that?” Myron looked around. “You guys are going to jump me—that’s the plan? So then what? The only way to shut me up would be to kill me. You willing to go that far? And what about my lovely associate out in the front room? Are you going to kill her too? And what about my other associates”—might as well exaggerate with the plural—“who are outside? Are you going to kill them too? Or is your plan, what, to beat me up and teach me a lesson? If so, one, I’m not a good learner. Not that way at least. And two,
I’m looking at all of you and memorizing your faces, and if you do attack me, you better make sure I’m dead because if not, I’ll come after you, at night, when you’re sleeping, and I’ll tie you down and pour kerosene on your crotch and set it on fire.”

Myron Bolitar, Master of Melodrama. But he kept his eyes steady and looked at their faces carefully, one at a time.

“So,” Myron said, “is that your option-three plan?”

One of the men shuffled his feet. A good sign. Another sneaked a glance at the third. The dark-haired man had something close to a smile on his face. Someone knocked on the door on the far side of the room. The dark-haired man opened it a crack, talked to someone, closed it, turned back to Myron.

“You’re good,” he said to Myron.

Myron kept his mouth shut.

“Come this way.”