“That’s right,” Kitteridge said. “But he wasn’t fooling around. He was embezzling money from their own company. They sent him to jail on the dirt you dug up.”
“Yeah.”
“He died in prison, didn’t he?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Leonid burned the letters Lana had intended to incriminate him.
His work for Lana’s mother had driven the girl to murder and suicide. For a while he considered sending the photograph of Richard and his girlfriend to Lana’s mother. At least he could accomplish one thing that she intended to do. But he decided against it. Why hurt Nora when he was just as guilty?
He kept the picture, though, in the top drawer of his desk.
The shot of Richard with his hand up under the receptionist’s red dress, out on Park Avenue after a spicy Brazilian feast. Next to that he had placed an item from the New York Post. It was a thumbnail article about a prisoner on Ryker’s Island named Joe Haller. He’d been arrested for robbery. While waiting to stand trial he hung himself in his cell.
DEAR PENTHOUSE FORUM (A FIRST DRAFT) by LAURA LIPPMAN
You won’t believe this, but this really did happen to me just last fall, and all because I was five minutes late, which seemed like a tragedy at the time. “It’s only five minutes,” that’s what I kept telling the woman behind the counter, who couldn’t be bothered to raise her gaze from her computer screen and make eye contact with me. Which is too bad, because I don’t need much to be charming, but I need something to work with. Why did they make so many keystrokes, anyway, these ticket clerks? What’s in the computer that makes them frown so? I had the printout for my E-ticket, and I kept shoving it across the counter, and she kept pushing it back to me with the tip of a pen, the way I used to do with my roommate Bruce’s dirty underwear, when we were in college. I’d round it up with a hockey stick and stash it in the corner, just to make a pathway through our dorm room. Bruce was a Goddamn slob. “I’m sorry,” she said, stabbing that one key over and over. “There’s just nothing I can do for you tonight.”
“But I had a reservation. Andrew Sickert. Don’t you have it?”
“Yes,” she said, hissing the “s” in a wet, whistling way, like a middle-school girl with new braces. God, how did older men do it? I just can’t see it, especially if it really is harder to get it up as you get older, not that I can see that either. But if it does get more difficult, wouldn’t you need a better visual?
“I bought that ticket three weeks ago.” Actually, it was two, but I was seeking any advantage, desperate to get on that plane.
“It says on your printout that it’s not guaranteed if you’re not at the gate thirty minutes ahead of departure.” Her voice was oh-so-bored, the tone of a person who’s just loving your pain. “We had an overbooked flight earlier in the evening and a dozen people were on the standby list. When you didn’t check in by 9:25, we gave your seat away.”
“But it’s only 9:40 now and I don’t have luggage. I could make it, if the security line isn’t too long. Even if it’s the last gate, I’d make it. I just have to get on that flight. I have… I have…” I could almost feel my imagination trying to stretch itself, jumping around inside my head, looking for something this woman would find worthy. “I have a wedding.”
“You’re getting married?”
“No!” She frowned at the reflexive shrillness in my voice. “I mean, no, of course not. If it were my wedding, I’d be there, like, a week ago. It’s my, uh, brother’s. I’m the best man.”
The “uh” was unfortunate. “Is the wedding in Providence?”
“ Boston, but it’s easier to fly into Providence than Logan.”
“And it’s tomorrow, Friday?”
Shit, no one got married on Friday night. Even I knew that. “No, but there’s the rehearsal dinner, and, you know, all that stuff.”
More clicks. “I can get you on the 7:00 a.m. flight if you promise to check in ninety minutes ahead of time. You’ll be in Providence by 8:30. I have to think that’s plenty of time. For the rehearsal and stuff. By the way, that flight is thirty-five dollars more.”
“Okay,” I said, pulling out a Visa card that was dangerously close to being maxed out, but I was reluctant to give up my cash, which I would need in abundance Friday night. “I guess that’s enough time.”
And now I had nothing but time to spend in the dullest airport, Baltimore-Washington International, in the dullest suburb, Linthicum, on the whole Eastern Seaboard. Going home was not an option. Light Rail had stopped running, and I couldn’t afford the thirty-dollar cab fare back to North Baltimore. Besides, I had to be in line at 5:30 a.m. to guarantee my seat, and that meant getting up at four. If I stayed here, at least I couldn’t miss my flight.
I wandered through the ticketing area, but it was dead, the counters all on the verge of closing down. I nursed a beer, but last call was 11:00 p.m., and I couldn’t get to the stores and restaurants on the other side of the metal detectors because I didn’t have a boarding pass. I stood by the stairs for a while, watching the people emerge from the terminals, their faces exhausted but happy because their journeys were over. It was almost as if there were two airports-”Departures,” this ghost town where I was trapped, and “Arrivals,” with people streaming out of the gates and onto the escalators, fighting for their baggage and then throwing themselves into the gridlocked lanes on the lower level, heading home, heading out. I should be doing the same thing myself, four-hundred-some miles away. My plane would be touching down by now, the guys would be looking for me, ready to go. I tried to call them, but my cell was dead. That was the kind of night I was having.
I stretched out on one of the padded benches opposite my ticket counter and essayed a little catnap, but some old guy was pushing a vacuum cleaner right next to my head, which seemed a little hostile. Still, I closed my eyes and tried not to think of what I was missing in Boston. The guys would probably be at a bar by now, kicking back some beers. At least I’d make it to the major festivities the next night. It hadn’t been a complete lie, the wedding thing. I was going to a friend’s bachelor party, even though I wasn’t invited to the wedding proper, but that’s just because there’s bad blood between the bride and me. She tells Bruce I’m a moron, but the truth is we had a little thing, when they were sorta broken up junior year, and she’s terrified I’m going to tell him. And, also, I think, because she liked it, enjoyed ol’ Andy, who brought a lot more to the enterprise than Bruce ever could. I’m not slagging my friend, but I lived with the guy for four years. I know the hand he was dealt, physiologically.
Behind my closed eyes, I thought about that week two years ago, how she had come to my room when she knew Bruce was at work, and locked the door behind her, and, without any preamble, just got down on her knees, and-
“Are you stranded?”
I sat up with a start, feeling as if I had been caught at something, but luckily I wasn’t too disarranged down there. There was a woman standing over me, older, somewhere between thirty and forty, in one of those no-nonsense suits and smoothed-back hairdos, toting a small rolling suitcase. From my low vantage point, I couldn’t help noticing she had nice legs, at least from ankle to knee. But the overall effect was prim, preternaturally old-ladyish.
“Yeah. They overbooked my flight, and I can’t get another one until morning, but home’s too far.”
“No one should have to sleep on a bench. A single night could throw your back out of alignment for life. Do you need money? You probably could get a room in one of the airport motels for as little as fifty dollars. The Sleep-Inn is cheap.”