A uniformed attendant appears. He looks me over, obviously skeptical, then turns to Mr. Zacharov. “Would you care for a drink?”
“I will take Laphroaig with a single cube of ice to begin, and Mr. Sharpe will have—”
“A club soda,” I say lamely.
“Very good,” says the attendant.
“After that you will bring us three ounces of the Iranian osetra with blinis, chopped egg, and plenty of onion. We will both take a little Imperia vodka with that, very cold. Then a turbot with some of the chef’s excellent mustard sauce. And finally two of your pains d’amandes. Any objections, Cassel? Anything you don’t care for?”
I have never eaten most of the things he named, but I am unwilling to admit it. I shake my head. “Sounds great.”
The attendant nods, not even looking at me now, and walks off.
“You are uncomfortable,” Zacharov says, which is true but seems like an uncharitable observation. “I thought Wallingford prepared you to take your place in society.”
“I don’t think they expect my place to be anywhere near this place,” I say, which makes him smile.
“But it could be, Cassel. Your gift is like this club—it makes you uncomfortable. It’s a bit too much, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“A man may daydream of how he would spend a million dollars, but playing the same game with a billion dollars sours the fantasy. There are too many possibilities. The house he once wished for with all his heart is suddenly too small. The travel, too cheap. He wanted to visit an island. Now he contemplates buying one. I remember you, Cassel. With all your heart you wanted to be one of us. Now you’re the best of us.”
I look into the fire, turning back only when I hear the clink of our drinks being set down on the table.
Zacharov picks up his Scotch and swirls the glass, making the amber liquor dance. He pauses another moment. “Do you recall being thrown out of Lila’s birthday party because you had a fight with some kid from her school?” He laughs suddenly, a short bark of sound. “You really cracked his head on that sink. Blood everywhere.”
I touch my ear self-consciously and force a grin. I stopped wearing an earring when I enrolled at Wallingford, and the hole has almost closed up, but I still have the memory of her with the ice and the needle that same night, her hot breath against my neck. I shift in the chair.
“Back then I should have seen you were worth watching,” he says, which is flattering but pretty obviously not true. “You know I’d like you to come work for me. I know you have some reservations. Let me answer them.”
The attendant returns with our first course. The tiny gray pearls of caviar pop on my tongue, leaving behind the briny taste of the sea.
Zacharov seems like a benevolent gentleman, loading his blini with chopped egg and crème fraiche. Just a distinguished guy in a perfectly tailored suit with a bulge under one arm where his gun rests. I’m thinking he’s not the best person in whom to confide my moral quandaries. Still, I’ve got to say something. “What was it like for my grandfather? Did you know him when he was younger?”
Zacharov smiles. “Your grandad’s from a different time. His parents’ generation still thought of themselves as good people, thought of their powers as gifts. He was part of that first generation to be born criminals. Desi Singer came into the world—what?—not ten years after the ban was passed. He never had a chance.”
“Dab hands,” I say, thinking of Mrs. Wasserman’s version of this story.
He nods. “Yes, that’s what we used to be called, before the ban. Did you know that your grandfather was conceived in a worker camp? He grew up tough, like my father did. They had to. Their whole country had turned on them. My grandfather, Viktor, was in charge of the kitchens; it was his job to make sure everybody got fed. He did whatever he had to do to make the meager rations go around—made deals with the guards, made his own still and distilled his own booze to trade for supplies. That’s how the families started. My grandfather used to say that it was our calling to protect one another. No matter how much money we had or how much power, we should never forget where we came from.”
He stops speaking as the attendant returns, setting the fish down before us. Zacharov calls for a glass of 2005 Pierre Morey Meursault, and it comes a moment later, lemon pale, the base of the glass cloudy with condensation.
“When I was a young man of twenty, I was in my second year at Columbia. It was the late seventies, and I thought the world had changed. The first Superman movie was on the big screen, Donna Summer was on the radio, and I was tired of my father being so old-fashioned. I met a girl in class. Her name was Jenny Talbot. She wasn’t a worker, and I didn’t care.”
The fish is cooling in front of us as Zacharov strips off one of his gloves. His bare hand is striped with scars. They’re a ruddy brown and pulled like taffy.
“Three boys cornered me at a party in the Village and pressed my hand against one of the burners on an electric coil stove. Seared through my glove, fused the cloth into my flesh. It felt like someone was flaying me to the bone. They said I should stay away from Jenny, that the thought of someone like me touching her made them sick.”
He takes a long swallow of wine and pokes his fork into the turbot, one hand still bare.
“Desi came to the hospital after my father and mother left. He wanted my sister Eva to wait in the hall. When he asked me what happened, I was ashamed, but I told him. I knew he was loyal to my father. After I’d finished the story, he asked me what I wanted done to those boys.”
“He killed them, didn’t he?” I ask.
“I wanted him to,” says Zacharov, taking a bite of the fish and pausing to swallow. “Every time the nurse changed the dressing on my hand, every time they dug tweezers into blistered skin to pull out cloth, I imagined those boys dead. I told him so. Then your grandfather asked me about the girl.”
“The girl?” I echo.
“That’s exactly what I said, in that exact incredulous tone. He laughed and said that someone put those boys up to what they did. Someone told them something to rile them up. Maybe she liked to have boys fighting over her. But he was willing to bet that that girl of mine wanted to end our relationship and had decided to throw me out like garbage. It was easier, after all, if she seemed like a victim rather than the kind of girl who liked messing around with workers.
“Your grandfather was right. She never came to the hospital to see me. When Desi finally paid a visit to the boys, he found Jenny in one of their beds.”
Zacharov pauses to eat a few bites. I eat too. The fish is amazing, flaky and redolent of lemon and dill. But I don’t know what to make of the story he’s telling.
“What happened to her?” I ask.
He pauses, fork in hand. “What do you think?”
“Ah,” I say. “Right.”
He smiles. “When my grandfather said we had to protect one another, I thought he was a sentimental old man. It wasn’t until your grandfather said it that I understood what it meant. They hate us. They might give us a smile. They might even let us into their beds, but they still hate us.”
The door opens. Two attendants have arrived with coffee and pastries.
“They’d hate you most of all,” says Zacharov. The room’s warm, but I feel very cold.
It’s late when Stanley drops me back at the house. I’ve only got maybe twenty minutes to get my stuff and get back to Wallingford before room check.
“Stay out of trouble,” Stanley says as I hop out of the back of the Cadillac.
I unlock the door and head for the back room, gather up my books and backpack. Then I look for my keys, which I thought were right with my bag but aren’t. I stick my hands beneath the cushions of the couch. Then I kneel down to see if they fell underneath. I finally find them on the dining room table, hidden by some envelopes.
I start to head out when I remember that my car is still busted. I’m not even sure I brought the battery and fuses home from Sam’s house. In a panic, I run upstairs to my bedroom. No battery. No fuses. I retrace what my drunken steps must have been, all the way back to the kitchen. I discover that the coat closet is slightly ajar and, amazingly, the auto parts bag is inside of it, resting alongside an empty beer can. A coat is wadded up in the back, like maybe I knocked it off its hanger. I lift it, intending on putting it back where it goes, when I hear a metallic thunk.
A gun rests on the linoleum. It’s silver and black with the Smith & Wesson stamp on the side. I stare at it, and stare, like I’m seeing it wrong. Like it’s going to turn out to be a toy. After a moment I hold up the wide-collared coat. Black. Big. Like the one on the video.
Which makes that gun the one that killed my brother.
I put both the coat and the gun back, carefully, thrusting the evidence as far into the closet as it will go.
I wonder when she decided to shoot Philip. It must have been after she came back from Atlantic City. I can’t believe that she knew about his deal with the Feds before then. Maybe she went to Philip’s house and saw some of the papers—but, no, he wouldn’t be that stupid. Maybe she spotted Agent Jones or Hunt talking to Philip. It would take only a single look at either one of them to know they were law enforcement.
But even that doesn’t seem like enough. I don’t know why she did it.
I only know that this is my mother’s house, and my mother’s closet, making that my mother’s coat.
Making that my mother’s gun.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AT SCHOOL MONDAY morning I catch up with Lila on my way to French class. I touch her shoulder, and she spins around, her smile tinged with longing. I hate having so much power over her, but there is a sinister creeping pleasure in knowing I am so much in her thoughts. A pleasure I have to guard against.
“Did you go to Philip’s house?” I ask.
She opens her mouth uncertainly.
“I found one of your cigarettes,” I say before she can lie.
“Where?” she asks. Her arms wrap around her chest protectively. She grips her shoulder tightly with one gloved hand.
“Where do you think? In his ashtray.” I see her expression darken, and I abruptly change my mind about what’s going to make her talk. She looks utterly closed to me, a house locked against burglars, even ones she likes. “Tell me it wasn’t yours and I’ll believe you.”
I don’t mean that for a second, though. I know the cigarette was hers. I just also know the best way to get into a locked house is to be let in the front door.
“I have to go to class,” she says. “I’ll meet you outside at lunch.”
I lope on to French. We translate a passage from Balzac: La puissance ne consiste pas a frapper fort ou souvent, mais a frapper juste.
Power does not consist in striking hard or often, but in striking true.
She’s waiting for me by the side of the cafeteria. Her short blond hair looks white in the sunlight, like a halo around her face. She’s got on white stockings that stop at her thighs, so that when she swishes her rolled-up skirt, I can almost see skin.
“Hey,” I say, determined not to look.
“Hey yourself.” She smiles that crazy, hungry smile she has. She’s had time to pull her act together, and it shows. She’s decided what to tell and what to hide.
“So . . . ,” I say, gloved hands in my pockets. “I didn’t know you still smoked.”
“So, let’s take a walk.” She pushes off the wall, and we start down the path toward the library. “I started again this summer. Smoking. I didn’t really mean to, but everyone around my father smokes. And besides, it was something to do with my hands.”
“Okay,” I say.
“It’s hard to quit. Even here at Wallingford, I take a paper towel tube, stuff it with fabric softener sheets, and exhale into that. Then I brush my teeth a million times.”
“Rots your lungs,” I say.
“I only do it when I’m really nervous,” she says.
“Like when you’re in a dead man’s apartment?”
She nods quickly, gloves rubbing against her skirt. “Like that. Philip had something that I wanted to make sure no one found.” Her gaze darts to my face. “One of the bodies.”
“Bodies?” I echo.
“One of the people that you . . . changed. I’ve heard there’s ways to tell if an amulet is real and, well, maybe someone—the cops or the Feds—could use that to tell if an object has been worked. I was worried for you.”
“So why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.
She turns to me, eyes blazing. “I want you to love me, you idiot. I thought that if I did something for you, something huge, then you would. I wanted to save you, Cassel, so that you’d have to love me. Get it now? It’s horrible.”
For a moment I don’t know why she’s so angry. Then I realize that it’s because she’s embarrassed. “Gratitude isn’t love,” I say finally.
“I should know that,” she says. “I’m grateful to you and I hate it.”
“You didn’t do me any other favors you haven’t mentioned, right?” I ask, not relenting. “Like murdering my brother?”
“No,” she says sharply.
“You had every reason to want him dead,” I say, thinking of Sam and Daneca’s accusations in the kitchen of Daneca’s fancy house.
“Just because I’m glad he’s dead doesn’t mean I killed him,” she says. “I didn’t order him killed either, if that’s what you’re going to ask next. Is that what those agents wanted? To tell you I murdered your brother?”