“I don’t know what I can tell you that I haven’t already told the police,” Helen Swisher said as she led them through a palladium arch into the living room, a formidable expanse overlooking Park Avenue. Will stiffened at the decor and furnishings-all this fineness, a lifetime’s salary shoveled into one room, decorators-gone-wild heirloom furniture, chandeliers and rugs, each the price of a good car.
“Nice place,” Will said, his eyebrows arched.
“Thank you,” she replied coolly. “David liked to read the Sunday paper in here. I’ve just put it on the market.”
They sat and she immediately began fiddling with the band of her wristwatch, a signal they were on the clock. Will sized her up quickly, a miniprofile. She was attractive in a horsey kind of way, her looks enhanced by perfect hair and a designer suit. Swisher was Jewish, she wasn’t, probably a Wasp from old money, a banker and a lawyer who met, not through social circles, but on a deal. This gal wasn’t a cold fish, she was frozen. Her lack of visible grief didn’t mean she wasn’t attached to her husband-she probably liked him fine-it was simply a reflection of her ice-in-the-veins nature. If he ever had to sue someone, someone he really hated, this was the woman he’d want.
She made eye contact exclusively with him. Nancy might as well have been invisible. Subordinates, such as the law associates at Helen’s white-shoe firm, were implements, background features. It was only when Nancy opened her notebook that Helen acknowledged her presence with a dimpling scowl.
Will thought it was pointless to start with manufactured sympathy. He wasn’t selling and she wasn’t buying. Right out of the box he asked, “Do you know any Hispanic men who drive a blue car?”
“Goodness!” she replied. “Has your investigation become that narrowed?”
He ignored the question. “Do you?”
“The only Hispanic gentleman I know is our former dog walker, Ricardo. I have no idea if he owns a car.”
“Why former?”
“I gave David’s dog away. Funnily enough, one of the EMTs that morning from Lenox Hill Hospital took a shine to him.”
“Can I get Ricardo’s contact information?” Nancy asked.
“Of course,” she sniffed.
Will asked, “If you had a dog walker, why was your husband walking it the morning he was killed?”
“Ricardo only came in the afternoon, while we were at work. David walked him otherwise.”
“Same time every morning?”
“Yes. About five A.M.”
“Who knew his routine?”
“The night doorman, I suppose.”
“Did your husband have any enemies? The kind who might want him dead?”
“Absolutely not! I mean, anyone in the banking business has adversaries, that’s normal, but David was involved in standard, generally amiable transactions. He was a mild person,” she said, as if mildness was not a virtue.
“Did you receive the e-mail of the updated victims’ list?”
“Yes, I looked at it.”
“And?”
Her face contorted. “Well, of course neither David or I knew anyone on that list!”
There he had it, an explanation for her lack of cooperation. Apart from the inconvenience of losing a reliable spouse, she loathed the association with the Doomsday case. It was high-profile but low-rent. Most of the victims were anonymously underclass. David’s murder was bad for her image, bad for her career, her Waspy partners whispering about her while they peed in their urinals and putted on their greens. On some level she was probably angry at David for getting his neck slashed.
“Las Vegas,” he said suddenly.
“Las Vegas,” she countered suspiciously.
“Who did David know from Las Vegas?”
“He asked the same question when he saw the postmark, the night before he was killed. He couldn’t recall anyone offhand and neither can I.”
“We’ve been trying to get his client list from his bank without success,” Nancy said.
She addressed Will. “With whom have you been dealing?”
“The general council’s office,” he said.
“I know Steve Gartner very well. I’ll call him if you like.”
“That would be helpful.”
Will’s phone started to play its inappropriate tune and he unapologetically answered it, listened for a few seconds then rose for privacy and moved toward a cluster of chairs and sofas in a far corner, leaving the two women uncomfortably alone.
Nancy self-consciously flipped through her notebook, trying to look importantly occupied, but it was clear she felt like a warthog next to this lioness. Helen simply stared at the face of her watch as if doing so would magically make these people disappear.
Will clicked off and strode back. “Thank you. We’ve got to go.”
That was it. Quick handshakes and out. Cold stares and no love lost.
In the elevator, Will said, “She’s a sweetheart.”
Nancy agreed. “She’s a bitch.”
“We’re going to City Island.”
“Why?”
“Victim number nine.”
She almost pulled a muscle snapping her neck to look up at him.
The door opened at the lobby.
“The game’s changed, partner. It doesn’t look like there’s going to be a victim number ten. The police are holding a suspect, Luis Camacho, a thirty-two-year-old Hispanic male, five-foot-eight, 160 pounds.”
“Really!”
“Apparently he’s a flight attendant. Guess what route he flies?”
“Las Vegas?”
“Las Vegas.”
6 JULIUS 777
Confluence.
The word had been rattling around his mind, and when he was alone it would occasionally roll off his lips and make him tremble.
He had been preoccupied by the confluence, as had his brethren, but he was convinced he was more affected than the others, a wholly imagined position since one did not openly discuss such matters.
Of course, there had long been an awareness that this seventh day would come, but the feelings of portent had dramatically escalated when in the month of Maius a comet appeared, and now, two months later, its fiery tail persisted in the night sky.
Prior Josephus was awake before the bell rang for Lauds. He threw off his rough coverlet, stood and relieved himself in his chamber pot, then splashed his face with a handful of cool water from a basin. One chair, one table, and a cot with a straw pallet on a hard earthen floor. This was his windowless cell; his white tunic of undyed wool and his leather sandals were his only earthly possessions.
And he was happy.
In his forty-fourth year he was already balding and a little fat, owing to his affection for the strong ale that poured from the barrels of the abbey brewery. The baldness on his dome made it easier to maintain his tonsure, and Ignatius, the barber surgeon, made fast work of him every month, sending him on his way with a pat to his raw pate and a brotherly wink.
He had entered the monastery at age fifteen, and as an oblate was restricted to the remotest parts of the monastery until his initiation was complete and he advanced to full membership. Once inside, he knew he would live here forever and die within its walls. His feelings of love for God and his brotherly bond with the members of his community-his famulus Christi-were so strong he often wept with joy, tempered only by the guilt of knowing how fortunate he was compared to the many wretched souls on the isle.
He knelt by his bed and, following the tradition that St. Benedict himself had begun, began his spiritual day with the Lord’s Prayer in order that, as Benedict had written, “the thorns of scandal that are wont to arise” would be cleansed from the community.