‘Don’t forget Nick,’ I said.
She stopped halfway down the corridor to our rooms, frowning. ‘If any of them called Klerke and told him what’s going on, it would probably be a nice payday for them. Not Majarian or Mr Piglielli, and Bucky wouldn’t ever, but what about the Blatner woman?’
‘She won’t, either,’ I said. ‘Basically, they’ve all had enough of him.’
‘You hope.’
‘I know,’ I said, and hoped I did. In any case I was going in, and it looked more and more like Alice would be going in with me.
*
We stayed in New Jersey on the night of November 2. The following night we checked into the Riverhead Hyatt, fifty miles from Montauk Point. Giorgio had indeed made reservations from his fat farm prison in South America. Because he knew I had no Steven Byrne ID, I was reserved under the Dalton Smith name. And because this place was quite a bit more fancy-shmancy than the motels where we’d previously stayed, Alice had to show her new Elizabeth Anderson ID. Giorgio, maybe thinner but as sharp as ever, had also reserved a double room, prepaid, for Steven Byrne and Rosalie Forester. Klerke wouldn’t check, such chores were beneath him, but Petersen might. If the clerk told Petersen that Byrne and Forester hadn’t checked in yet, Petersen wouldn’t be too concerned. Pimps weren’t known for keeping regular schedules.
Before leaving the desk, I asked if there was a package for me. Turned out there was, from Fun & Games Novelties in Las Vegas. A nonexistent company, no doubt. Giorgio had ordered it at my request. I opened it in my room with Alice looking on. Inside was a small unmarked aerosol cannister about the size of a roll-on deodorant tube. No oven spray this time.
‘What is it?’
‘Carfentanil. In 2002, the Russians pumped a version of this into a theater where forty or fifty Chechen rebels were holding seven hundred people hostage. The idea was to put everyone to sleep and end the siege. It worked, but the gas was too strong. A hundred of the hostages didn’t just go to sleep, they died. I doubt if Putin gave a shit. This stuff is supposedly half-strength. It’s Klerke we’re after. I don’t want to kill Petersen if I don’t have to.’
‘What if it doesn’t work?’
‘Then I’ll do whatever I need to.’
‘We,’ Alice said.
*
November 4 was a long day. Days of waiting always are. Alice brought out her tank suit and swam in the pool. Later on we took a walk and ate a pickup lunch at a hotdog wagon. Alice said she wanted a nap. I tried to take one and couldn’t. Later, while she was re-styling the wig again to match the photo, she admitted she hadn’t been able to, either.
‘And I didn’t sleep much last night. I’ll sleep when this is over. Then I’ll sleep a lot.’
‘Fuck it,’ I said. ‘Stay here. Let me do this.’
Alice cracked a small smile. ‘And what would you say to Petersen when you showed up without the eight-thousand-dollar girl?’
‘I’ll think of something.’
‘You might not even get in. If you did, you’d have to kill Petersen. You don’t want to do that, and I don’t want you to do it. I’m going.’
So that was that.
*
We left at six. Alice had a picture of the estate from Google Earth and directions on how to get there on the GPS. This late in the season the traffic was light. I asked her if she wanted to stop at one of the fast food places on the outskirts of Riverhead and she gave a brittle laugh. ‘If I ate anything, I’d throw up all over my nice new dress.’
It was the boatneck, purple with tiny white flowers. She was wearing her new parka but not zipped, so the place where her cleavage began would show. There wasn’t much else up front because she was wearing a mid-length binder underneath instead of a bra. Her handbag was on her lap. The Sig was inside. I was wearing my new bomber jacket. The Glock was in one of the inside pockets. The aerosol can was in the other.
‘Montauk Highway makes a loop,’ she said. I knew that, I’d studied the layout on my laptop that afternoon when I couldn’t nap, but I let her talk. She was working on her nerves, trying to sand them down. ‘You go past the Lighthouse Museum and take your first left. Eos isn’t a seafront estate, he traded that for the view, I guess. I doubt if he water-skis or bodysurfs at his age, anyway. Are you scared?’
‘No.’ Not for myself, at least.
‘Then I’ll be scared for both of us. If you don’t mind.’ She consulted the map on her phone again. ‘It looks like number 775 is about a mile in, right after the Montauk Farm Store. That must be handy. For fresh veggies and all. You look good, Billy, Irish as all getout, and can you stop somewhere? I have to pee so bad.’
I stopped at a place called the BreezeWay Diner, about halfway between Riverhead and Montauk. Alice dashed inside and I thought about driving on without her. Everything Bucky had told me not to do with her – to her – I was doing. Soon she would be an accessory to the murder of a rich and famous man, and that would only be if things went right. If they didn’t, she might wind up dead. But I stayed. Because I needed her to get in, yes, but also because she had a right to decide.
She came out smiling. ‘That is so much better.’ And as I pulled back onto the highway: ‘I thought you might leave me.’
‘Never crossed my mind,’ I said. From the look she gave me I thought she knew better.
She straightened in her seat and tugged the hem of her dress to her knees. She looked like a prim and proper high school girl, the kind they don’t seem to make anymore. ‘Let’s do this.’
*
We passed the Lighthouse Museum and the left turn came up less than a hundred yards further on. It was full dark now. Somewhere off to the right was the sound of the ocean. A crescent moon flicked through the trees. Alice leaned over, fussed briefly with my wig, then sat back. We didn’t talk.
The numbers on Montauk Highway started at 600, for reasons probably only known to town planners who had long since gone to their final rewards. I was surprised that the houses, although well-kept, were mundane. Most were ranches and Cape Cods that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Evergreen Street. There was even a trailer park. A nice one with carriage lamps and gravel lanes, granted, but a trailer park is a trailer park.
The Montauk Farm Store, really just a jumped-up produce stand, was dark and shuttered. There were a few lonely pumpkins in a pyramid by the door and a few more in the back of an old stakebed truck with 4-SALE soaped on one side of the windshield and RUNS GOOD on the other.
Alice pointed at a mailbox beyond the store. ‘That’s it.’
I slowed. ‘Last chance. Are you sure? If you’re not we can turn around.’
‘I’m sure.’ She was sitting ramrod straight, knees together and hands clasped on the strap of her purse. Eyes straight ahead.
I turned onto a piece-of-shit dirt track marked with a sign reading PRIVATE WAY. It became clear almost at once that the dirt track was camouflage to deke curious tourists. Over the first hill it became a tar road wide enough for cars to pass each other comfortably. I crept along using my high beams, thinking that this was my second trip to the estate of a bad man. I hoped this one would be quicker and more efficient.
We rounded a curve. Ahead of us, a slatted wooden gate six or seven feet high blocked the road. There was a talk-box on a concrete pillar, lit by a metal-shaded light. I pulled up to it, rolled down my window, and thumbed the button. ‘Hello?’
I thought (Alice and Bucky concurred) that trying for an Irish lilt might be disastrous. And there was no reason why Byrne had to have one, not if he’d lived his whole life in New York.
Meanwhile, the box on the post wasn’t talking back to me.
‘Hello? This is Steve Byrne. Darren’s cousin, yo? I got something for Mr K.’
More silence, giving me – Alice too, from the look of her – reason to think something had gone wrong and we weren’t going to get in. Not this way, anyhow.