“Natty, I have something I need to take care of, and it absolutely cannot wait.” I turned to Daisy. “Would you happen to have my machete?”
Daisy Gogol did not choose to answer my question. Instead, she looked from me to my sister. “I feel awful, Anya. I shouldn’t have let you go to church without me. I thought you’d be fine. It is church after all.”
“It’s fine, Daisy.”
“I understand if you need to fire me,” Daisy Gogol said.
I didn’t want to fire her, but I did want to know if she had my weapon.
“I do, Anya,” she said. “But I can’t give it to you.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said.
“I’m sorry. My job is to protect you, not facilitate you.” Daisy Gogol lifted me off the ground, as if I weighed nothing—and trust me, I did weigh something; I may have been small, but I was also dense (yes, occasionally in the other sense of the word, too)—and carried me back to the desk. “This girl has had a head trauma, and she’s gotten out of her room,” Daisy Gogol said to the nurse.
The nurse looked insufferably bored with us, as if giant women toting around smaller women was a regular occurrence. She instructed Daisy to carry me back to the room, where a doctor would be in to see me shortly. As we were traveling down the hallway, I weighed my options. I could not overpower Daisy Gogol, but I was fairly confident that I could outrun her.
She placed me on the bed gently, like I was a beloved doll. “I am sorry, Anya.”
“I understand.”
“But I do know a thing or two about head traumas, and you need to be monitored for the next day at least. Whatever has happened can surely wait until you’re thinking more clear—”
I sat upright and pushed her as far as I could. I didn’t make much of an impact, but she was stunned enough that I had time to run out of the room. “Take Natty home!” I called as I fled.
Since I didn’t have my machete, the first place I went was Fats’s speakeasy. I’d need backup before going to deal with Mickey and Sophia. “Annie, what brings you?” Fats asked.
I had run from the hospital and I was scant of breath. “You were right. Sophia Bitter planned the hits. And I think she was responsible for the poisonings,” I said.
Fats poured himself a shot of espresso. “Yes, that makes sense. Do you think Mickey was in on it?”
“I’m not sure. Sophia says he was the one who killed Leo in retaliation for what Leo did to Yuri. The truth is, she might have just been lying to get the heat off her for Leo’s death.”
“And the easiest way to do that is to point the finger at her husband.” He paused to look at me. “Jesus, kid, what happened to your forehead?”
“I got between a sinner and her Bible,” I explained. “I want to go confront Mickey, and I need you with me.”
Fats nodded. “I’ll get my gun.”
When we got to Mickey’s brownstone, a servant answered the door. “Mr. and Mrs. Balanchine just left. They said they were going to visit her relatives.”
I said to Fats that we should go to the airport, but he shook his head. “We don’t even know which one. Maybe the best thing that could possibly happen is the two of them leaving town. Think of it, Anya—if the two of them stayed, we’d have an internecine war on our hands. With them out of the picture, it’s back to business as usual and that’s a very good thing.”
“But I want to know for sure if Mickey killed my brother!”
“I understand that, Annie. But what would knowing really matter? Sophia said he did. And Mickey is gone. You drove them out of town, so you got to take some comfort in that because that is all the truth you’re going to get for now.”
This seemed incredibly naïve to me. Just because they had left town didn’t mean they’d be gone forever. “We need to go see Simon Green,” I told him.
“The lawyer? Why?” Fats demanded.
I told him that Sophia had said that he was involved in the poisoning. “Fats, have you ever heard a rumor that Simon Green might somehow be related to us?”
Fats cocked his head and screwed his mouth into a skeptical ball. “Annie, there’s always rumors about us. And most of them you don’t got to bother paying no mind to.”
But I wouldn’t be deterred.
At Simon’s building, we walked up the six flights of stairs. My head was starting to pound and I was wishing I’d had the foresight to ask someone at the hospital for an aspirin before I’d run out.
We found that the door was open, and Mr. Kipling was standing in the center of the room. He must not have been there too long, because he was still out of breath from the stairs. “He’s gone,” Mr. Kipling said. “Simon Green’s gone.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
Mr. Kipling nodded to Fats, then held out a slip of paper to me:
Dear Mr. Kipling,
I am about to be accused of a crime, and I must now leave in order that I may clear my good name.
You have been like a father to me.
Please forgive the short notice.
Please also forgive me.
Simon Green, Esq.
“Do you have any idea what this is about?” Mr. Kipling asked me. “Anya, what happened to your head?”
I answered him with a question of my own. “Mr. Kipling, why are you here?”
“Simon Green told me to come, and I did. I should ask the same question of you, I suppose.”
I told him what Sophia Balanchine had said about the poisoning and Simon Green hating my father and his children.
Mr. Kipling looked at Fats. “Would you mind giving us a moment alone?”
Fats nodded. “I’ll be in the hall if you want me.”
Mr. Kipling shook his head. “No, Anya. She’s wrong. Simon Green loves you. And I love Simon.”
I reminded him of the day of his heart attack. “Did you ever wonder if it was a setup?”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t watch what I ate and I didn’t take care of myself.”
“You should have heard Simon Green in court that day. What if he was being incompetent on purpose? What if he wanted to get me sent to Liberty?”
Mr. Kipling said that I sounded paranoid, insane.
“He knew the most intimate details of my business. He knew where all of us were. He knew everything, Mr. Kipling! If he was in partnership with Sophia Bitter the whole time…!”
“No! He would never have partnered with Sophia Bitter.”
“Why?” I asked.
“He would never have partnered with her because of who he is.”
“Who is he, then?” I demanded. “Mr. Kipling, who is Simon Green?”
“My ward,” Mr. Kipling replied.
“Who was Simon Green to my father?”
“Before he was my ward, he was your father’s ward.”
“Why was he my father’s ward?”
“Anya, I promised,” Mr. Kipling said.
“Is he my…” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t bring myself to say it. “Is he my half brother?”
“It’s so long ago. What difference can dredging up any of this make?” Mr. Kipling said.
“Tell the truth!” I shrieked.
“I … You see, Anya, there’s a very good reason Simon Green could never have been involved in anything that would harm you.” Mr. Kipling took his mini-slate out of his wallet. He turned on the slate and showed me the screen. On it was a picture of my father standing next to a little boy. The boy was Simon Green. I recognized the eyes. Light blue like Leo’s and Daddy’s. “Your father … Well, you could say he adopted Simon. He took him under his wing.”
“I don’t understand what ‘you could say’ means. He either adopted him or he didn’t. Why would he have adopted him and never told any of us about it?”