Presidents' Day Page 3

  The simple greeting seemed to upset Lightstone, who broke pace for a moment, glanced nervously at him, and then continued his sprint to the jet. Billy had met many politicians in his day, back when he was a volunteer operative for a string of left-wing candidates. He knew the automatic response of career politicians to unsolicited greetings: first, the instant scan to determine if it was someone he knew, or should know; then, if it was nobody, the cordial brushoff—“Nice to see ya,” or “Same to you, fella.” Lightstone had executed the familiarity scan with practiced efficiency, but he’d failed at superficial pleasantness, which a politician of his experience and tenure would never do unless something were seriously bothering him. Well, finding yourself a tongue’s length from a cock when you’d been expecting something very different had to be a mind blower, and learning, as he no doubt had earlier that morning, that your encounter had been immortalized on video might put even a polished pro like Lightstone off his game.

  Billy had the car service drop him off on Market Street near the Civic Center. He paid the fare in cash and headed off on foot for the Castro. The day was warm and sunny, and as he walked he found himself enjoying the passing show, the more so as he neared the Castro and the show became increasingly flamboyant. He didn’t give a thought to the task before him. He was good at that, focusing on the moment, to the exclusion of all else. He’d first recognized this talent shortly after Becca was diagnosed. He’d learned that he could effectively forget all about his daughter. It had scared him, at first, this ability to compartmentalize, as the self-helpers called it. But he soon saw it for what it was: a survival mechanism. Julie had no such talent, perhaps mothers never did; Becca’s diagnosis had eaten away at her mother, slowly but inexorably, until her only recourse was to flee, leaving Billy to make the tough decisions. But perhaps his strength was really only that ability to forget things when he had to, things like principles and ethics and consequences both legal and moral. It frightened him, sometimes, what he was capable of, but then he’d put that fear aside, in its own sealed-off compartment, next to the one that held his grief and guilt over Becca, and move on to the next task.

  It was a weekday morning and the Castro was quiet. Not that you’d mistake the neighborhood for anywhere else in the world. Billy walked briskly along Market Street and turned right onto Castro. Many of the neighborhood’s bars and stores were still closed, but numerous coffee shops, most of them doing a brisk business, lent a sense of idle relaxation to the neighborhood. The beautifully restored Victorian homes lining the side streets looked especially handsome in the crisp morning light, defiantly proud of their excessive ornamentation, much like the neighborhood itself and many of its inhabitants.

  Danielle lived on Church Street, which ran perpendicular to Castro. He didn’t need a map, having been there two weeks earlier when he’d engaged her services. Finding the senator’s fatal flaw had taken some doing. In Boston, while the senator was attending a dinner, Billy had used a pick set to get into his hotel room, where he opened the senator’s laptop and inserted a USB drive, with which he rebooted the device and reset the administrative login password. Less than three minutes and he was in. So much for government cybersecurity.

  He’d clicked on the little arrow to the right of the address bar and a pull-down window appeared, listing all the sites the senator had visited in recent days. Very helpful. In addition to the expected places—wsj.com, CNN.com, and several sites devoted to Lightstone himself—there were visits to such sites as Amazons.com (not to be confused with the online store) and toweringfemales.com. Billy followed the links to these and a half dozen similar sites, all devoted to the obsessive worship of tall women. Very, very tall women.

  He walked up a short path to the front door of Danielle’s house, a dilapidated Victorian painted yellow and maroon that had been carved up into small flats. He rang her bell several times before being buzzed in, then climbed a slanting wooden staircase to the third floor.

  Danielle had on a floor-length blue silk robe with a fluffy feather collar, the kind of getup Mae West might have worn if Mae West had been six two and less demure. “You woke me up.”

  “I could come back,” he said.

  “Yeah, right.” She pressed her lean body against the door frame to let him pass. The apartment was as he remembered it: one room, one window, a total disaster. Clothes tossed everywhere, piles of magazines and books forming low, makeshift tables, several of them supporting empty takeout containers. A scrawny gray cat on the windowsill looked up at him with huge, embarrassed eyes.

  “I don’t know why you couldn’t just send the money,” Danielle said. She sat on the king-size bed that dominated the room and served as its only seating area other than two black folding chairs next to a small dining table covered with dirty plates. She patted the bed. “Come, sit.”

  He’d rather saw off a limb with a dull kitchen knife.

  “I have a plane to catch.”

  Danielle slowly crossed her thighs. “You know, you’re very good-looking. You keep yourself in shape, I can see that. I’m guessing you’re thirty, maybe thirty-five? A lot of guys go to seed long before that, but not you. And you’ve got all your hair. You ever think about hooking up with a girl like me?”

  While she talked, Billy steeled himself for the task at hand—not the ultimate task, just the part that involved sitting next to her, touching. By the time he joined her on the bed he felt almost fine with what was happening, just short of relaxed. Because he wasn’t there any longer, not on the bed, not in the room, not even in San Francisco. Only his hands and arms were there, and they knew what they had to do. Billy Sandifer was gone.

  Danielle ran a hand along his right arm. “Wow, you really are in shape…I forget, what’s your name?”

  “Dan.”

  After a beat she broke into a deep, throaty laugh. “Dan and Danielle. I like that.” As she began to unbutton his shirt, he took off his belt. “It’s kind of bright in here,” he said. “Could you lower the shade?”

  He watched Danielle make her way through the piles of junk to the window, where she jerked down the shade, forcing the cat off the sill. There was an efficient athleticism to Danielle’s long stride, to the way she yanked down the shade in one smooth movement. He would have to be careful.

  “Perhaps we should do a little business first? You know, I almost had a coronary, making sure I intercepted your guy halfway up Nob Hill.”

  He handed her the rubber-banded wad of twenties.

  “And another two hundred for this morning’s amusement.”

  “I thought I was getting lucky.”

  “You are, Danny-boy. But a girl’s gotta make a living.”

  He took out his wallet and handed her two hundred-dollar bills, which she placed in the drawer of a bedside table, along with the thousand. She mounted the bed in one effortless motion, straddling him. From beneath, she looked colossal, an Egyptian deity carved in sandstone. Her robe fell open, revealing a perfectly formed woman on top, a generously endowed man on bottom. He patted the bed. She looked surprised.

  “Most of my gentleman callers prefer me on top.”

  “This one wants you on your back.”

  Danielle let the robe drop to the bed, then lowered herself onto her back. He felt nothing, saw nothing—because he wasn’t there—as he climbed on top of her.

  “It’s nice to bottom for a change, especially this early in the day. Usually I work so hard.” She sighed and closed her eyes, pursing her lips. He reached for his belt, quickly slid it under her head, then tightened it around her throat. Her eyes blinked opened as he maneuvered his knees on top of her upper arms, pinning her.

  “Honey, this isn’t my thing at—”

  Her last words, an expression of sexual preference. Her legs flailed, her body bucked under him like a wrestler trying to push out of a pin. Billy wondered if there was a twelve o’clock flight out of SFO. As she squirmed he calculated his arrival time in New York, remembering to add three hours. Her head whips
awed back and forth. He’d try for a Newark flight, which would put him that much nearer to Becca’s residence. He’d rent a car and charge it to Julian Mellow, who never seemed to care what he spent. Her head movement slowed, then stopped, and a second later her jaw went slack and her eyes relaxed to something like a horrified stare. He squeezed a few moments longer, for good measure. He’d call the airline from the cab and book the first flight to Newark Liberty. He released the belt and checked his watch. With luck he’d be with Becca before closing time.

  Billy retrieved the $1,200 from the bedside table, put on his belt, and did a quick scan of the room to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind. The cat jumped onto the bed, from which Danielle’s giant legs dangled a good ten inches.

  Out front, he walked briskly down Church Street, relieved that no one had seen him leave Danielle’s building. The neighborhood was quiet, but as he approached Market he passed a man of about forty-five who did a double take. He picked up his pace. A moment later he thought he heard his name but he kept walking, concentrating on not breaking stride. He was probably imagining it. The man hadn’t looked familiar to him, and no one recognized him anymore, the once-famous radical who’d aged two decades during eight years in jail. He didn’t recognize himself.

  He waited until he was safely out of the Castro before flagging a passing cab.

  Chapter 6

  Zach Springer clocked record time back to the West Side, showered quickly, and changed into his post-Wall Street uniform—a Paul Stuart oxford shirt, left over from his Mellow Partners days and showing its age around the collar and elbows, along with jeans and running shoes. His three-year-old BMW, another relic from Wall Street, was parked a few blocks away. It had aged badly since he’d taken to parking it on the street; practically every time he saw it a new ding or dent had appeared, but he always felt a twinge of relief that at least it was still where he’d left it.

  He made it to Teterboro Airport in an unusually quick thirty-five minutes. Way back when, he’d passed through Teterboro many times as he crisscrossed the country on Julian’s Gulfstream, meeting with executives of companies they were considering buying. He parked and headed into Meridian Terminal, the one used by Julian. He recognized the friendly attendant who acted as a kind of concierge for the private jet set.

  “Hey, Katrina.”

  “Long time no see.” She gave his wrinkled shirt and jeans a quick once-over.

  “Has Mr. Mellow’s jet landed yet?” he asked casually. That sort of information was not given freely.

  She hesitated a moment before shaking her head. “Any minute. Are you getting on?”

  “Meeting someone.” He waved at her and walked through the double glass doors to the tarmac. Off to the left a Delta jet ascended into the overcast sky, then circled lazily to the north. Could be the Newark to Boston flight. When the Gulfstream was otherwise engaged, he’d flown that route often for due diligence at one of the tech companies out on Route 128. Invariably he’d come back with negative reports that emphasized the company’s lack of earnings or even prospects for earnings, the inexperience of its management teams, the perilously low barriers to entry that made it vulnerable to competitors. Julian had grumbled and scowled in frustration as he read the reports, and sometimes he’d call Zach into his office and berate him in a voice that could be heard in every corner of the sixtieth floor of 14 West 57th Street. But he’d never sunk a penny into any of the tech companies he’d sent Zach to investigate, most of which had later either gone out of business or teetered on life support. Zach had never received a word of thanks for saving his boss what might have amounted to a billion or more dollars, and then he’d been forced to resign in disgrace. His only mementos from those days were a rapidly dwindling bank account, a drawer of Paul Stuart Egyptian cotton shirts, a closet of useless Brioni suits, the BMW, and a court decree barring him from the securities industry for life.

  The crescendoing din of an approaching jet pulled him back to the present, and a few moments later the Gulfstream was on the runway. It was not the jet he remembered but a gleaming new model. Mellow liked to upgrade every few years. The jet taxied closer to the terminal building and a moment later the stairs were lowered and Harry Lightstone appeared in the doorway. At the same time, a figure to his right darted across the tarmac. Miguel DeLeon, Mellow’s driver. Zach stepped into the shaded area under an overhang. DeLeon took the senator’s carry-on bag and led him back to the terminal. Zach entered the building before them, walked quickly through it, and exited near the parking lot. He was in his car with the engine running a half minute before Mellow’s black Mercedes S600, DeLeon at the wheel, Lightstone alone in the back, pulled away from the curb.

  Zach followed the car over the George Washington Bridge, down the West Side Highway, and onto West 59th Street. The Mercedes turned right on Fifth Avenue, then right again onto West 57th Street, where it stopped in front of number 14, a glass tower on whose sixtieth floor Julian Mellow pulled a good number of the strings that controlled corporate America. Zach doubled-parked several yards back. A moment later, Julian Mellow exited the building and got into the back seat of the Mercedes. The tinted windows obscured all three men from the outside.

  • • •

  “The car just turned onto 57th Street, Mr. Mellow.”

  Stacy Young, Julian Mellow’s longtime assistant, stood in the doorway of his office, separated from his desk by an antique Laver Kirman that had, until ten years ago, covered the floor of the drawing room in the Villa Buonconvento outside Rome. Julian had bought the rug at auction at Sotheby’s. Caroline, who had little interest in interior design, had outsourced the decoration of the apartment and the house in Southampton to a small platoon of architects, decorators, and art consultants. But the office was Julian’s preserve. Against a panoramic view of Central Park, the large, sparely furnished room projected an understated refinement that Caroline’s decorators would have disapproved of, assuming they ever bothered to drop by his office, the source of the vast river of money that financed their unstinting creative efforts. His desk was a Josef Hoffmann dining table, a starkly geometric piece that, in the six years he’d owned it, continued to buoy his spirits each morning. Along one wall was a sleek walnut credenza, also by Hoffmann. Above it hung a portrait of a woman by Egon Schiele, her garish face distended in an expression of what Julian thought of, approvingly, as amused horror.

  “I’ll meet the car in front,” he told Stacy, who left him to relay the information to Miguel DeLeon, his driver.

  He straightened the stack of papers he’d been reading, squaring their edges, and placed them next to a small pile of prospectuses, adjusting the position until both stacks were perfectly aligned. He crossed the office to an open door that led to a long, dimly lit, windowless room. Before closing the self-locking door, he glanced slowly around, as if checking up on a room of sleeping children. These were not children, however, but eleven pictures: two portraits of unknown men by Hans Holbein the Younger; an Albrecht Dürer woodcut; a Madonna and child by Hans Memling; two preparatory sketches of Habsburg royalty by Velázquez; a portrait of a young man by Jan van Eyck; two small preparatory drawings by Raphael for his great Betrothal of the Virgin; and the jewel of his collection, Woman at a Spinet by Vermeer, a painting believed to have been lost in an eighteenth-century fire at Hampshire Castle in Hertfordshire. Julian had purchased all of the pictures, including the Vermeer, from a network of private dealers renowned as much for their discretion as their taste. His name appeared nowhere on any bill of sale, and the pictures had been seen by no one other than himself since their purchase.

  One of the richest ironies of his life was that the more wealth he acquired, the more privacy he lost. All friendships seemed suspect when viewed through the prism of vast wealth. Sometimes it felt like a giant, disfiguring boil on his face; no one could help focusing on it, no matter how resolutely they attempted to look away. But the subjects of the paintings in his private gallery wanted nothing from him other than to be
remembered.

  He closed the door, which could be opened only with the permission of a retinal scanning device mounted at eye level to the right of the door.

  The black Mercedes pulled up to the curb just as he left the building. He was momentarily tempted to keep the senator waiting, because he could. But he had little tolerance for game playing, least of all from himself. Lightstone practically assaulted him when he joined him in the back seat of the car.

  “What the hell are you doing? How dare you even think that—”

  “Shut up,” Julian said.

  The senator groaned as if he’d been gut-punched. Julian watched as the senator registered what was happening, a sudden and complete transfer of power. From the leather pocket on the back of the front passenger seat Julian took out a set of headphones and handed them to Miguel, who put them on. Twenty years of high-profile buyouts had taught Julian that no one was to be trusted and no place, not his office or home or car, was secure, not with the sums of money he dealt in. Meetings in the back of his car were something of a Julian Mellow trademark, remarked upon in articles about him. Headphones for his driver were also mentioned, often as evidence of his paranoia.

  “What the hell are you up to?” Lightstone said. His voice sounded thin, as if he couldn’t quite get enough air. “How the hell—”

  Julian checked his watch. “I have a conference call in fifteen minutes.”

  Lightstone observed him with slack-jawed horror. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

  “Senior senator from Pennsylvania. Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Of course I know who you are, as did Danielle last night.”

  He’d called the senator at four o’clock a.m. Pacific Standard Time, waking him. Julian had been characteristically succinct, ignoring Lightstone’s groggy interruptions. It’s Julian Mellow. I have video of you from last night. You should understand that I’m not referring to your address to the Society of American Manufacturers at the Saint Francis. My plane will bring you back to New York. It departs at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time, Signature Airport, a private terminal near San Francisco International. If you’re not on the plane I will share the video with the media.