Park Avenue (Book Six in the Fifth Avenue Series) (22 page)

“What ideas?” Leana
said.
 
“Nothing’s changed.”

“Whatever.”
 
She found her phone and pulled it out.

Zack continued.
 
“Actually, Pepper, Leana came by to
offer me a job as general manager of The Park, which I’m now officially
accepting.
 
I asked you here because
I wanted to tell you the news to your face instead of being a coward and doing
it over the phone.
 
Or, worse, in an
email.
 
Beyond that, I also wanted
to let you know what I’ve come to think of you over the past few months, none
of which is good.
 
You’re
overbearing.
 
You’re rude.
 
You have an insufferable inferiority
complex that reveals itself in your bullying attitude.
 
And you’re also common.
 
Cheap.
 
When I first met you—before you
started talking too much and marching around as if you were a member of the
Gestapo—I thought you were well put together.
 
I was impressed that you graduated from
Wharton.
 
But my opinion of you has
changed.
 
You don’t care about this
hotel.
 
You don’t love the hotel
business, something I personally find offensive.
 
You’re only here to advance
yourself.
 
You’re reckless.
 
And you’re mean.
 
When it comes down to it, all you are is
lipstick on a pig and I’m here to tell you, Pepper, that Leana Redman and I are
going to boil your ham hocks come opening night.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR

After leaving together,
with Pepper hot on their tracks to see them out, Leana thanked Zack on the
sidewalk and offered to take him to the hotel to show him around.
 

“It’s a bit of a mess
right now, but it’s close to being finished.
 
It’ll give you a good enough idea to
start thinking about how we can go forward, especially with opening night.
 
I’m anxious to hear what you suggest and
what you think of the hotel in general.”

“How about tomorrow
morning?” he said.
 
“I need a shower
after that scene.”

“I feel the same.
 
She’s a piece of work.
 
I loved that you compared her to the
Gestapo.”

“I could have said
worse.”

“I think she got the
picture when you told her she was lipstick on a pig and that we’re going to
boil her ham hocks.”

“She’s probably in there
right now trying to pray my gay away.”

They smiled at each
other.
 
Behind them, cars rushed
down Fifth.
 
Horns blared.
 
Crowds of people brushed past them, all
moving with an urgency that was a product of life in the city.

“I can’t thank you enough
for the job, Leana.”

“You know,” she said,
“you said something in there that was so telling that I’m now more certain than
ever that I made the right decision in calling you.
 
You said that Pepper didn’t care about
the hotel.
 
You said she had no love
for the hotel business, which you found offensive.
 
That’s all I needed to hear.
 
For anyone to be successful, they have
to love what they do.
 
In your
voice, I heard your love and respect for the business.
 
You’re the real thing, Zack, which is
why I took the chance to see if you were interested.
 
I’m the one who is grateful.
 
I’m so sorry we got off to a rough
start.
 
I regret all of it.
 
I was in a different space then.
 
Completely insecure.
 
But maybe things happen for a
reason.
 
Here we are now.
 
I think we’re going to make one hell of
a team.”

“Who knew?” he said.

*
 
*
 
*

When Leana grabbed a cab
to go home, she checked her cell for messages and was surprised to find
dozens.
 
Most were from someone
called “Deadman1.”
 
When she read
through a few of them, her heart quickened as fear took hold.
 
Over and over, the same statement:
 
“We’re going to cut off your limbs,
shove them up your ass and murder you.”

She turned off the phone
and leaned toward the driver.
 
She
gave him the The Park’s address.

*
 
*
 
*

Inside the hotel, she
found Sean Scott, head of security, and showed him the messages.

“Can you find out who
sent them?” she asked.

“Maybe.
 
I have contacts at the FBI who might be
able to help.
 
Do me a favor first
and do it as soon as possible.
 
Get
another phone with a new number and transfer your contacts.
 
If the agency needs this phone, I might
have to give it to them so we can find out who’s sending you the messages.
 
It won’t be easy.
 
I’ll warn you upfront that tracking them
will take time.”

“It doesn’t appear from
those messages that I have much time.”

“That’s why you need
someone with you at all times.
 
It
can be me or one of my men.
 
I’m
recommending that you take my advice for your own protection.
 
This Deadman1 person is likely the one
who wrote on your tarp.
 
He or she
might also be responsible for the deaths on Mr. Fondaras’ ship.
 
Would you like me to start accompanying
you?”

The last thing she wanted
was a bodyguard.
 
“Let me talk to my
fiancé first.
 
I’ll have an answer
for you tomorrow.”

A look of concern crossed
his face.
 
“Tomorrow might be too
late, Miss Redman.”

“I understand that.
 
And I appreciate the heads up, but I
need to discuss this with him.
 
There’s one other thing,” she said.
 
“I’ve hired a general manager.
 
His name is Zack Anderson.
 
He’ll be here tomorrow.
 
He’s
of medium-height, in shape, silver hair, forties, dresses impeccably, and he
pays his toxes.”

“He pays his what?”

“He’s botoxed to the
hilt.
 
If it wasn’t for his hair,
you’d think he was thirty-five and prematurely gray.
 
Seriously.
 
You won’t be able to miss him.
 
Would you let your team know that he’s
coming?
 
Introduce him to the
group?
 
Make him feel welcomed?”

“Of course.
 
But I’ll need to ID him when he arrives
and run a background check.”

“Just make sure he
understands why you’re doing what you’re doing.
 
He’ll get it.
 
Be personable with him.
 
That’s important to me.
 
After the showdown that happened about
an hour ago, the details of which I won’t bore you with, this is one man I
can’t afford to lose.
 
He has the
talent, drive and love of the hotel industry that can make all the difference
when we open next month.”

*
 
*
 
*

When
Leana left the hotel to return home, a car parked across the street cut into
traffic and started to follow her.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

James Cullen said
good-bye to Spocatti, hung up the phone and walked across his office at
Manhattan Enterprises to look out at the late-afternoon skyline.
 
His bum leg slowed him down, but he was
used to that.
 
When he reached one
of the windows, he looked down at the traffic on Fifth.
 
As usual at this time of day, nothing
was moving, though presumably it was rush hour.
 
The irony wasn’t lost on him.

Spocatti had called to
ask him to contact Piggy French, who was one of the people Ryan wanted
eliminated.
 
Cullen had known Piggy
since they graduated from college—he from Yale, she from Vassar.
 
Piggy later married one of Cullen’s best
friends, Dick French.
 
But he left
her after sixteen years of marriage because she’d become an unseemly,
pill-popping drunk.
 

When Dick left her, he
did so at a swank dinner party thrown by Maisie Van Prout at her mansion on
Park.
 
James was in attendance with
his former wife, Flat.
 
So was a
sloshed Piggy whom Dick called a cunt before storming out of the room, leaving
her in shame in front of the famous Broadway actress, Eve Darling, who gasped
in the face of such language, and a popular sheik Maisie had come to adore, who
suppressed a smile when he heard the word delivered with such verve.
 
Dick French, who had his own money but
nothing that came close to Piggy’s inherited money, walked away with a divorce
settlement worth millions.

Not long thereafter, he
mysteriously was found dead as a result of a freak accident.

A year after Dick’s
death, Piggy married Peter Waxman, only to divorce him after six years when he
also called her a cunt, this time in private.
 
Though just hearing the word again stung
her enough to send her into a deep depression.
 

Their divorce was
finalized a year ago and Piggy, for the most part, had since dropped out of the
circuit.
 
Where Cullen used to see
her at dinner parties, she no longer was a fixture.
 
It was said that she was in and out of
facilities armed to assist her with her issues, which everyone knew was code
for what was really happening in Piggy’s life.
 
At the behest of her friends and family,
she was making an effort to sober up, but was failing spectacularly at it.

And now Spocatti needed
his help to bring her in.
 
Fair
enough.
 
These days, getting close
to Piggy was like getting close to Louis Ryan.
 
Spocatti gave him an idea.
 
Cullen thought it through, agreed that
it might work and walked over to his desk to call her.
 
As he dialed, he knew he was about to
set events into motion that would end her life, but he didn’t care because he
himself had seen over the years how Piggy had slighted Louis time and again.
 
She wasn’t a kind person.
 
There was a bit of evil about her that
came from her awareness of her social standing.

She answered on the
fourth ring.

“What is it?”

“Piggy?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s James Cullen,
Piggy.”

“James,” she sighed.
 
“James, James, James.
 
Out of the blue comes James.
 
Falling from the heavens comes
James.
 
James, James...like a
feather...falling...here comes James.”

“Piggy, are you all
right?”

“Peter left me, I
divorced him, then I got a disease.”

She was slurring her
words.
 
“Are you drinking?”

“Little bit.”

“Little bit of what?”

“Little bit of
everything.
 
It helps.
 
It numbs.
 
Sometimes, I pass out and I don’t have
to deal with any of it until I wake up, usually in the bathroom.
 
That’s between us.
 
It’s a vicious circle.
 
Cycle.
 
Whatever.
 
I just begin it again because being
passed out on my bathroom floor is a hell of a lot better than dealing with
this.”

“Dealing with what?”

He heard ice clinking
against the side of a glass.
 
She
giggled, but didn’t answer.

“You don’t sound
well.
 
And what’s this about a
disease?”

“Disease,” she said.
 
“Disease, disease, disease.”

“That’s right.
 
What’s that about?”

Unexpectedly, she moaned
in a grotesquely sensual manner.

“Piggy?”

“I got this thing,” she
said after a moment.
 
“It’s
hell.
 
I’ve got—what do they
call it?
 
PGAD.
 
That’s it.
 
I’ve got PGAD.”