Plath knew the house, having spent many weeks there growing up. Not every summer, but most of them. And the occasional spring or fall jaunt to take advantage of a sunny weekend.
Vincent had a key, but some sense of decorum caused him to hand it to Plath. She opened the door.
“Do you know the security code?” Vincent asked her.
She punched it into the keypad.
All of this was of course observed by Keats and Wilkes.
“Now can we just call her Sadie?” Wilkes asked.
“No,” Vincent snapped. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like what all of this was doing to his carefully constructed secrecy. “Get inside. This is a safe house. We’ll be here until we figure out whether it’s okay to return to the city.”
“Lock up behind me. Two people awake at all times.” This was from Caligula, who didn’t sound as if he thought that was a mere suggestion. He went back out to the car and came back with a shotgun slung over each shoulder. He tossed one to Vincent. He handed the other to Wilkes.
“What about me?” Keats asked.
Caligula made a wry smile. “I only have two with me. And I know Vincent will pull a trigger.” He cast a sidelong look at Vincent and said, “Vincent is a regular Scipio. And I know this little bitch,” indicating Wilkes, “is nuts. You, sonny? We’ll see about you.”
Vincent pulled Caligula aside, actually grabbing his arm. A hush fell as something very dangerous, a soft, slow danger, like a purring tiger, passed between the two men. Vincent let go of Caligula’s arm.
“There’s a police report of an abduction at a club in Tribeca where Nijinsky goes sometimes,” Vincent said.
Caligula nodded. “Does he know this location?”
“No. This is on my list, not on his.”
“That’s good.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to bring the dot-head chick in. Nijinsky won’t be coming.”
“We’re not abandoning Jin.”
“Yes. We are,” Caligula said, and walked away.
“Fuck that!” Wilkes yelled after him. But the door closed and he was gone. She turned to Vincent. “We’re not leaving Jin to those people.”
“We’re doing what—”
“We’re not leaving Jin just because some killer in a goddamned velvet hat says to!”
Plath wondered whether now, finally, Vincent would lose his cool. No. “Do you know where they have him, Wilkes? Because I don’t. Maybe if I did? But I don’t.”
“Get hold of Lear, tell him—”
“He knows.” Vincent waited to hear anything else Wilkes might have to say. But she had apparently used up all her outrage. “Find rooms. Wilkes, you and I will take the first watch. Keats? There’s a small basement room. Take Dr. Violet down there. Lock the door. Bring me the key.”
Plath’s choice of room was easy: her own. Getting there was the hard part because she had to walk by the master suite, where her parents had been, back, back so long ago.
And Stone’s room was next door.
Plath did not allow herself to open the door to see and hear the emptiness of her parents’ bedroom. But she did open the door to Stone’s room and stood there, leaning in slightly without letting her feet cross the threshold.
It was professionally decorated with Montauk-appropriate themes of sailboats and dunes, sandals and kites. Only the faintest sense of Stone as an individual showed: a Frisbee on the desk, a huge stuffed white rabbit wearing a woot! T-shirt, a single framed picture of Stone and … and Sadie, definitely not Plath, when he was maybe ten and she was a sadly dorky-looking seven. The picture had been taken right here on the beach. On the wall was a framed replica of an old-style gold record: the Rolling Stones’ Beast of Burden. It was an inside joke between them, the idea that Stone as the heir apparent was the beast of burden.
“I don’t know what room to go to.” Keats, just a foot away. He’d come up unnoticed. How long had he been standing there? How long had she?
“My room,” she said. “I can’t sleep there alone.”
She crossed the hallway to her own room. She snapped on the light and did not see what she expected. Her room was just as she’d left it when she’d last been here. Was it two summers ago? No, not that long. And somehow, it was all unchanged. But if she had changed, how could her room still be the same?
Her bed was made. Her window shades were open to the sea. Posters of Against Me and the Methadones. Books, actual old-style, physical books, filled a couple of small shelves. Knickknacks. Beach kitsch, all displayed to achieve maximum ironic effect. A basket with half a dozen bathing suits, mix-and-match tops and bottoms. A framed, autographed picture of Christopher Hitchens hung next to a framed, autographed picture of Tim Armstrong. A Ramones beach towel. That made her smile.
Keats stepped in and looked carefully around, noting details, nodding to himself every now and then.
“Well?” she asked him.
“You used to be Wilkes,” he said.
The observation was so surprising her jaw actually dropped open. She looked around, saw it as he was seeing it, and laughed. “Huh. I was just thinking how alien it all feels.”
“Yeah. Well, things changed, didn’t they? All this craziness, it has a way of, I guess, pushing everything in a different direction. Maybe before all this started happening Wilkes was some little Catholic schoolgirl wearing a plaid frock with her hair in pigtails.”