Which didn’t mean he was right about Mallory Norton and Scott Theriault being intimates, but it was another loose end, like the injury to Scott’s leg and his decision to head away from civilization, not toward it, when he broke out of Spero.Bingham lay southeast of the school, and if Scott and Mallory had been an item, it might have made sense for him to contact her when he fled, but by then Mallory Norton had been missing for days.Could she have been so unhappy at home, and so smitten withScott, that she’d agreed to rendezvous with him deep in the woods if after he managed to escape?If so, why hadn’t she returned to Bingham when he didn’t show?Or maybe he did show, and what then?But that didn’t square with what Ward Vose claimed: that a girl had missed her date with Scott, and without explanation.Unless, of course, Scott Theriault was lying to his father and knew exactly what had happened to Mallory Norton.
I thought about my current case load.It wasn’t heavy, and neither was it very interesting: a trio of insurance investigations and some trial prep for Moxie, none of it urgent.Also, with Sam in college, I couldn’t afford to turn down work, or not without resorting to passing off Cheez Whiz on crackers as dinner for two with Macy, and then it wouldn’t be too long before I was sleeping alone again.
“I told Vose I’d give it a couple of days,” I said.“If I hit a wall, I’ll put together a report and step away.”
“I’ll pay you in advance for a week’s work,” said Alcock.“Expenses extra, to be receipted—not because I don’t trust you, but no sense in giving the IRS more than it’s owed.If you decide you’re done before the money runs out, you can keep it.Those are my client’s instructions, by the way.He has a rainy day fund, and not a lot to spend it on.”
Not even his boywent unspoken.Alcock stubbed out the cigarette, considered flicking the butt, and instead unlocked his car and dropped it in the ashtray.
“If I quit, you’ll get a refund,” I said.“That’s how I prefer it.”
“You don’t strike me as the quitting kind.”He handed me a business card.“Call anytime, day or night.I’m divorced, so the only person you’ll be waking is me.”
“You still wear a wedding band,” I said.
“Force of habit.It’s recent.”
“Suppose you get lucky in the meantime?”
“The last time I got lucky, she married me,” said Alcock.“After that, my luck ran right out.”
Chapter 24
Louis spent that evening, as he had the previous one, at the apartment he and Angel owned on the Upper West Side.The building was also theirs, even if the title was hidden behind layers of accountants, lawyers, and dormant companies.Their sole tenant, the elderly Mrs Bondarchuk, acknowledged Louis’s return from her post by the window, a pair of Pomeranians asleep in her lap.The Pomeranians were the grandpups, or even great-grandpups, of Mrs Bondarchuk’s original dogs, Teffi and Anton, respectively named for a Russian emigrée humorist and a famous White Army general who fought the Communists in the civil war that followed the October Revolution in 1917.Louis was tempted to ask Mrs Bondarchuk how she felt about large images of Lenin towering over Lower East Side brownstones, but that would have meant waking the Pomeranians, whose bark was worse than their bite only in the sense that their bite was fleeting while their bark seemed to go on forever.
Over wine, Louis slowly read through the entirety of Kade’s file on Sturgis, making notes as he went.The file was incomplete, which wasn’t the fault of Kade’s contacts.Sturgis lived off his inheritance in a suburb of Boston, made the newspapers only in connection with charitable donations, had never married, and had no children.For a few years, he served on the board of the Colonial Club, acting as its spokesman when a reporter came asking about minority representation among its membership.Sturgis gave the reporter the party line: All were welcome, and the application process was the same for everyone, i.e., challenging, even with money, but he declined to confirm how many of its members weren’t WASPs, which pretty much answered the reporter’s question.
Louis set aside his pen, made a cup of coffee for himself and a hot chocolate for Mrs Bondarchuk, and went downstairs, steeling himself for the inevitable barking.Over rugelach from Zabar’s, he gave her a heavily sanitized account of his meeting with Kade.Mrs Bondarchuk clapped her hands in delight.
“Will he come visit?”she asked.
Louis replied that he was not sure, a polite way of saying no.
“But tell me, has he made something of himself?”Mrs Bondarchuk persisted.
“He’s been annoying Putin,” said Louis.
“Good.”Mrs Bondarchuk raised her hot chocolate in a toast to Kade.“I knew the boy would do us proud someday.”
Chapter 25
As I drove away from the prison, I wondered whether Angel had yet tired of the Farnsworth, before deciding that he almost certainly had not.There was now a quietude to Angel that had not been present before his illness.According to Louis, Angel could sometimes spend hours just staring at the sea, or watching the boats and ferries crisscrossing Casco Bay.To Louis, who loved him more than anyone, Angel had never been more unknowable.But it might have represented a kind of peace, in which case the Farnsworth could only have been good for his spirit.
“The fuck time do you call this?”said Angel, as he climbed into the car and slammed the door with more force than was necessary.“I nearly died of boredom in there.”
“I thought you might have liked some extra time to feed your soul.”
“I can feed my soul for an hour tops, and that includes restroom breaks and a turn around the gift shop.After that, my soul gets indigestion.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t leave a message.”
I’d checked my phone as soon as it was returned to me at MSP, and seen nothing from Angel.
“I would have, and it might have been a communication for the ages, except I left my phone back at the apartment.”
“Well,” I said, “let that be a lesson to you.”
So that he wouldn’t sulk all the way home, I offered to pay for an early dinner at Rustica on Main Street; if I couldn’t successfully feed Angel’s soul, I could do my best for his belly.Over pasta rossa and pan-seared bistro steak, I shared the substance of my encounter with Ward Vose.Angel listenedwithout comment until the end, when he concluded that I was a soft touch, and someday I’d return home minus a cow but clutching a bag of magic beans.I told him that was questionable, since I didn’t own a cow.Because dinner was on me, Angel decided to try both the boca negra and the tiramisu for dessert.I didn’t object, so he might have been right about that soft touch business.Only over coffee did he return to what we had spoken of in the car on the way up to Rockland.
