“Oh yes. I’ve been thinking of how lucky I’ve been. To be loved, to have my health, and to be able to make mistakes and not lose everything.”
“You sound like it’s all over.”
“What is?”
“Life. Like you been beaten or something.”
“No. It’s just that I spent so long blaming you, Leonid. Blaming you and never questioning myself. And I can see now that I came so close to keeping Dimitri from becoming a man. He is a man, you know.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“When will you be coming home?”
“Don’t know yet. I want to make sure that we’re all safe.”
“Thank you, Leonid.”
“For what?”
“For guarding over me,” she said, “for saving me from myself when I didn’t deserve it.”
I was disturbed after the talk with Katrina. She’d rarely exhibited such friendliness and certainly not any appreciable degree of self-awareness. She was the kind of woman who men loved for their inaccessibility. For her myriad lovers she was a trophy like the head of a saber-toothed tiger mounted on a wall that no one else knew existed. For me she had always been the woman who could never be satisfied.
I didn’t even consider the next call before I made it.
“Hello?” Aura Ullman answered.
“Want to meet me for breakfast at the new restaurant?”
“They don’t serve breakfast.”
“Not for you?”
After a brief pause she said, “I’ll call Maurice and see if anyone’s up there. Take elevator eleven all the way up.”
The mustache was on the ninety-seventh floor of the Tesla Building, just below the Observation Deck. It was a French restaurant that served lunch and dinner, but the cooks came in early, and the owner, Maurice Denouve, owed a lot to Aura for getting him in. There was a huge bidding war over the space, but Aura liked the Frenchman and paved the way for him receiving preferential treatment by the owners.
By the time I got there they were just serving our fruit-filled crepes and French roast coffee.
Aura was wearing a peach-colored summer dress and a shell-shaped white hat on the side of her head.
“Never seen you wearing a hat before,” I said, taking the seat across from her.
I took her hand and kissed it.
“You look kind of beat-up, Leonid,” she replied.
“You should see the other guy.”
“We have found some bacon, mademoiselle,” a skinny black-haired, white-shirted waiter said. He wasn’t wearing a jacket; a silent complaint at the fact of being forced to work before the place was open to the public.
“No thank you,” Aura said.
“Mais lardons pour moi, monsieur,” I said in my subpar version of his lingo.
He frowned and went away.
“You speak French?” Aura asked.
“There’s some things I have to tell you,” I said.
“In French?”
“In the language of fools but not love.”
Her smile made me happy in spite of the exhaustion and feelings of inadequacy.
“What is it, Leonid?”
“I know I asked you to wait three days, Aura, but I don’t want you to think that I’ve changed or anything. I mean, I want to be with you in the worst way. I want you in my life, every day. But, but things aren’t getting any easier...”
I told her about Zella and alluded to how I had framed and then freed her. I explained that the men coming to kill me were probably there because of my actions with Zella. I laid the whole thing out there in front of her.
Before she could answer the bacon came and then my phone sounded.
I looked at the little panel and said, “I have to take this.”
She nodded.
“What you got for me, Ms. Lowry?” I said into the phone.
“The man who broke into the Quicks’ house has been taken into federal custody,” she began. “He’ll probably be deported, seeing that there’s no proof that he intended to kill anyone. He’ll be questioned but I don’t think that he knows anyone connected to the crimes from this end. He had a pay-as-you-go cell phone and never met with anyone here in the States.”
“That doesn’t do much. What about Claudia?”
“She filled out an application for her job two weeks after she was put on the payroll. All earlier contact has been either altered or eradicated. I’ll have to talk to her myself if you want any more information.”
“That’s not gonna happen.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“I just ordered my breakfast,” I said, “in French.”
I disconnected that call and turned back to the woman I loved.
“Don’t worry about it, Leonid,” she said.
“About what?”
“Theda’s going away to college this year,” she said. “Brown. With her out of the house I won’t have to worry about anyone’s safety but my own.”
“But what kind of asshole would I be to put you in danger like that?” I asked. I meant it. “I’ve done some terrible things, Aura. There’s no getting away from that. And even when I try to make it right I only bring on more trouble.”
She took a mouthful of strawberry crepe and chewed it lightly. The window behind her looked up Central Park all the way to Harlem, almost to Yonkers.
“I joined an executive Internet dating site about nine months ago,” she said.
“Really?”
“Every other week I go out with some lawyer, banker, or entrepreneur.”
“Nice guys?”
“Most of them work out but not like you do. As a rule they have money and success. I’ve met at least three men who are tough-minded and equal to me in every way.”
“I see.”
“Twill and Theda had lunch yesterday,” she said. It seemed as if she was intent on keeping me off balance.
“Yeah?”
“He told her how you killed the men who broke into your house. He said that you wanted Katrina to go into hiding but she refused.”
I threw half a strip of the thick maple-infused bacon into my mouth and chewed.
“So?”
“Don’t you see, Leonid?” Aura asked.
“That Katrina’s gone off the deep end?”
“That you did not try to force her. That’s the difference between you and the men I’ve met.”
“What’s that?”
“They’ve all become rich and powerful because they’re afraid of the world; they need to feel like they’re conquering everything and everyone in order to feel safe. You just face the problems and stand strong. Ever since I met you I’ve known that you are what I want in a man.” She paused a few seconds and then added, “In my life.”
52
Aura and I talked for quite a while in that empty restaurant. The temporary wall that we’d thrown up over the past few years fell down and we were lovers again.
She talked about problems with some tenants and I told her that Twill had taken unwanted initiative on the first job I’d given him.
“He’s just like you,” she said of my son.
“We aren’t even related.”
“Neither are we,” she said, “but you’re my man just like he’s your blood.”
For a change I was in the office before Mardi and Twill. I sat behind her ash desk, flipping through the notes she wrote in light purple ink.
She kept detailed handwritten records of every case I’d had since she’d been with me. She also had some more sketchy coverage gleaned from audiotapes I kept from previous jobs.
Mardi had a deeper understanding of human nature than did I. I could see, often, what people were trying to hide. But Mardi saw what was hidden beyond vain attempts.
Her take on a job I’d done three months before was especially enlightening.
A woman had come to me worried about what was going to happen with her ex-husband. He had been sending her threatening e-mails and leaving certain disturbing items at her doorstep. A thug named Lassiter had appeared at various places she frequented; her job, the supermarket, and sometimes he drove by her on the highway and would ring her cell.