From Manhattan with Revenge (The Fourth Book in the Fifth Avenue Series) (18 page)

“OK.”

 
“And as long as I’m still here, which
could end at any point, as in minutes—seconds!—I’m available if you
need to talk.”

“OK.”

“Thanks, Piggy. I hate to call you when
you’re so down, but I need some information.”

“OK.”

“You know I’m discrete.”

“It’s why I love you. And why I confide in
you. Everyone confides in you. Some still think you’re still a practicing
shrink.”

He hated the word
shrink
, but he
went with it because she was in no condition to be corrected. “Sometimes, I
think I still am. But I’m not, though my ethics have remained when it comes to
honoring that profession. My lips are as tight as a priest’s, which isn’t
saying much these days. Let’s just say they’re tighter.”

“You’ve got a filthy mind and I love you
for it. What do you want to know, Jamesie?”

He hated it when she called him
Jamesie
,
but now was not the time to ask her to call him
James
or even
Gelling
.
He needed information from her, so he just went with it. “You and I both know
that you had Dick Weatherbee dealt with. You told me so yourself in one of our
many unplanned sessions.”

There was a silence. “I don’t, uh,
remember that. Was I drunk when I told you?”

“Sloshed. You were on the floor of your
room at the Ritz Carlton in Paris and called me about an hour after it
happened. You said you had crackers, good vodka, and cheap potato chips all
around you. You said you were on a binge.”

“Jesus.”

She said it like, “Hey-Zeus,” which
surprised him. “Piggy, are you part-Hispanic?”

“No, no. I just love the Romance
languages. I use them often.”

“Anyway, your secret has and always will
be safe with me. But I seem to remember that you mentioned a woman’s name in
connection with the whole thing. It was Greek. Do you remember her name?”

Piggy said nothing.

“Now’s not the time to go all quiet,
Piggy.”

“OK.”

“If I read you the list of names I have in
front of me, would you recall the name you used to off Dick?”

“What’s this about, Jamesie?”

“It has nothing to do with you. I promise
you that. I’m investigating a syndicate, which you mentioned to me that night
when you were drunk and eating cheap potato chips at the Ritz. You said they
were instrumental in bringing down Dick. I just need her name because I’m being
threatened by her through them and I need to have her handled, if she’s who I
think she is.”

“Why are you being threatened? You’re an
angel.”

She said “angel” like “an-hell.”

“Piggy, drop the Romance.”

“OK. But you
are
an angel.”

“Apparently, someone feels otherwise.”

“Who do you think it is?”

“I have it narrowed down to three names. I
know she belongs to that syndicate. Does the syndicate ring a bell?”

“Right now, bells are clanging all around
me, Jamesie. Let’s just cut to the chase and quit the guessing games. I want to
help. This list of yours. I’m assuming Hera Hallas’s name is on it? The Greek
shipping heiress? The one I went to for...uh, you know...assistance?”

“She is.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences, Jamesie.
Why are you in trouble?”

“I have no idea, but now I can find out. I
can threaten her with exposure. I owe you one, Piggy.”

“If it gets bad, this thing with me and
Peter, who left me with that cruel look on his face and that hateful barb I
refuse to repeat because it’s beneath me, I might need to call you a few times.
Talk things through. Clear my head. Is that OK?”

“Did he also call you a cunt?”

“He said it four times. Is that what I am,
Jamesie? Am I really that? Two men have called me that now. Two men! And then
guess what he said? He said that word wasn’t even low enough to describe the
monster I am.”

“You’re no monster,” he said. “And, yes,
call me. Just not when I’m sleeping. At my age, I might be having my final
rest, which I’d rather like to enjoy. Call late mornings or afternoons. We’ll
see if I’m still around. At my age, it could be lights out at any point, Piggy.
I could drop dead after this phone call.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true.”

“I can’t bear it.”

“You’ve got to face it sometime.”

“Not that.”

“And Piggy,” he said.

“
Oui
?”

“
Ne prenez pas les comprimés
.”

“What?”

“Don’t take the pills.”

CHAPTER TWEN
TY-THREE

“Frank,” Gelling said. “Would you help me
find another number? Yes? Sims Cliveden. This will be the last one. No time for
others. Sims will know what I need to know because I happen to know he didn’t
kill his mistress himself, all those years ago, on that awful night in
Sagaponack, when it happened by a hand that wasn’t his. He’s a coward. He hired
it out. Guilt brought him here one evening and he told me all about it in such
a gushing, blubbering rush, I think he thought I could offer him atonement. All
I could do was listen and not judge, which is what I do best. But what I
remembered earlier today while thinking about this syndicate angle I’m pursuing
was being confused at the time of Sims’s breakdown because it was the first
time I heard mention of the syndicate, which he talked about. Sims used them.
He must have. And it has to be the syndicate we’re after. I mean, how many
syndicates
are
there?”

He looked at Frank as the man raised an
eyebrow and then he held up his frail hand as far as he could lift it, which
wasn’t far, given the arthritis that had consumed it. “Don’t answer. You’re a
former Marine chock-full of intelligence and it might ruin this for me. Here’s
the book. You’ll find his number in there.”

“Would you like me to dial again for you,
sir?”

“That would be great, Frank. You know I
can’t see shit. And I’ve got pretzels for fingers. Sometimes I’m surprised when
I whiz around this joint in my wheelchair that I don’t crash into things.”

“Sometimes, I worry about that, sir.”

“Don’t. I know every nook. Every cranny.
It’s my racing track and it’s my escape.”

“Here’s the number.”

“Perfect. You know, Frank, once this is
finished, I’ll have all of the names of those who comprise the syndicate. Or at
least a good deal of those names. There’s likely more, but this is a good start
and if Carmen uses the list correctly, which she will, it will rattle the
cages. And then we’ll see what Illarion Katzev does then. Time is of the
essence. Beyond helping her, I think this Katzev person will piss in his kilt
when he finds out about the list because he’ll know that when it’s in Carmen’s
hands, it’s a game-changer.”

He saw the confused look that crossed
Frank’s usually stoic face and explained. “Katzev was born Iver Kester on a
second-rate Aberdeen sheep farm before he turned Ruskie, hooked a flight to the
States, and started watching too many American mafia movies, the lot of which
informed who he is today. He’s a Scot through and through, but he’d deny it in
a minute. An old acquaintance once told me that he spent years with a personal
tutor, who taught him how to speak perfect, fluent Russian, and also how to
speak English as if his native language was Russian. Who
thinks
like
that? If I was younger and still publishing for the journals, I’d write a case
study on him in a second.”

He looked up at Frank’s bum eye, checked
the time on the sapphire-colored watch that gleamed there, then switched to the
other eye to be polite.

“This has been invigorating. All this
sleuthing. Thank heavens I once treated so many wealthy, murdering swells. It’s
exciting. You realize, this might have even bought me another year. I can feel
my heart beating like a young man’s again. Can you read my handwriting here?”

He showed Frank the piece of paper with
the list of names, addresses, and other information.

“Yes, I can.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

“Perfect. OK, dial Sims or me. I’ll remind
him what I know about him and his mistress. He’ll talk. Like Piggy French, Sims
Cliveden always talks. The good news is that you just don’t need him to be
drunk or on pills to do so.”

* * *

Later, Sims Cliveden of the Pittsburgh
Clivedens, told Gelling the name of the person he used to knock off his
mistress, Jacqueline, nine years ago, before she came through with her threat
of causing trouble between Sims and his wife of twenty-three years, Florette.

Gelling knew the story because at the time
of Jacqueline’s death, Sims was his client and, guilt-ridden Catholic that he
was, he blushed when he told him everything during one of their sessions.

Gelling went to his files and found his
old notes. The man Sims used was named Conrad Bates. For some reason, the name
sounded familiar to Gelling—he sensed there was a Northeast
connection—though he didn’t know why and it certainly didn’t matter now.

What mattered was that he had compiled
eight names, and while he doubted that covered all who belonged to the
syndicate, it was plenty to arm Carmen with the information she needed to
disarm Katzev now.

He read the list over again and, with
pride, he placed it back on the desk. In a moment, he’d call Carmen with the
information and have her come pick it up. This was her trump card against
Katzev and the syndicate. And he’d made it happen.

Even at my age
, he
thought with a thrill.

In a whirring rush, he backed away from
his desk in his electric wheelchair and looked around the room for Frank, who
must have left either to use the bathroom or to grab himself something to eat.

Leave him alone
, he
thought to himself, a whiff of an idea already forming.
Opportunity knocks.

Five months after his ninety-sixth
birthday, James Gelling was told by doctors that he’d never walk again. His
hips, replaced twenty years earlier, had worn out, as had his replaced knees,
which now locked whenever he went up or down stairs.

He wanted to undergo surgery to replace
his hips and his knees, but due to his age, his doctor warned him against it.
“It’s unlikely that you’ll make it,” the woman said. “It’s too risky.”

“Why?” Gelling asked.

“You know why.”

“The gas?” he said.

“That’s right,” she said. “The gas. And
also your age. You’re not young anymore, James. The surgery will be too much
for your body to handle, especially given the length of it. It will kill you.
You know that. Unless I’m misreading you, I don’t think you want that to
happen.”

“You don’t know what I want.” He paused as
a sense of defeat overcame him. He wanted a normal life. He wanted to continue
his practice, but she also asked him to end it because he needed his rest. The
idea infuriated him. She was taking away everything that mattered to him. “Are
you suggesting I spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair until death carries
me out of it?” he asked.

“What I’m giving you is my best advice,”
she said. “And, no, that’s not what I’m suggesting. With assistance, you still
can have a meaningful life. What you need to figure out is what that life will
be in your current situation.”

He remembered looking out a window and
losing himself in the rainy gray gloom of the Manhattan skyline.

“I’ve started to shit my pants,” he said
in a distance voice. “I haven’t told you about that. I wear a diaper now, which
I can’t change myself, so there’s the added humiliation that someone has to
change it for me and wipe my ass because I’ve become incontinent. The man who
does it is Frank. He’s a gem. A great guy, former Marine, taller than is
genetically possible, though he has only one eye and I’m dying to see what’s
beneath the patch. He won’t show me. Probably humiliated. Obviously,
embarrassed. I know that feeling. What I love about him is that he’s an
eccentric. He has a watch stitched into the front of his patch. Can you
imagine? I think he does it to put people off—they don’t know where to
look when they address him. I know I’m lucky to have him, but I want to walk
again. I don’t want to be in a fucking wheelchair.”

“Who does?”

“But that’s where you’re putting me. What
am I going to do in a wheelchair? Seriously?”

“Something different. Something that
matches skills you don’t even know you have. You need to come to terms with
this. You’ve had a good life, James. And with the exception of your legs and
your knees and your deformed fingers, you’re also in excellent health, which
many people half your age can’t claim.”