The Accident (38 page)

Jessica emerges from her bedroom, pulling her hair out of the sweater, but doesn’t see the detective, and falls into a split-second of panic before she realizes that it’s entirely justified, because a wire has been pulled around her neck.

T
he ATV bumps along the rutted path alongside the vineyard, row after row of pinot noir, with clusters of pink roses trained to the stakes at the end of each, which Stan remembers are not purely for aesthetics, but serve some agricultural reason that may or may not involve fungus, or mold, or something disgusting that he didn’t expect to be associated with a vineyard, which in the end is perhaps the most surprising pain in the ass in his life, as well as a financial nightmare of epic proportions. Fucking vineyard.

Stan hasn’t turned on the headlights—lights would give away his location—and despite the strong moonlight he’s having trouble navigating this vehicle in the dark.

At the far end of the vineyard he turns onto the even cruder path that leads up the mountain, into wilderness. There are coyotes up there; he hears them every night. Bears too, sometimes. Wildlife is part of the appeal of this property, this area. Wildlife scares the shit out of Stan.

The engine strains against the ascent, a high-pitched whine. Stan can’t remember buying this vehicle, or okaying its purchase. He has no idea how much it may have cost. He doesn’t know whether it’s a high-end performance machine of some sort, or a barely functioning insipid toy.

The left side of the vehicle rises along a ridge in the path and then thuds into a boulder and then he can feel it tipping over, to the right, it’s on just two wheels for a half-second before the balance shifts and it’s going over, and Stan is falling out, hitting the hard-pack violently on his thigh and arm, and the ATV comes crashing down on his other side,
and he’s pinned there, on a dark mountainside, with what feels like a broken leg and a broken elbow and a dislocated shoulder and a gash in his temple, while the big fat rubber wheels continue to spin and whir, a mockery of movement.

He almost can’t believe how bad this is, and then of course it gets worse.

CHAPTER 48

T
he author freezes, standing in the entrance to Vanessa’s apartment, the door still wide open to the dim, quiet corridor. This building feels like a business hotel, wall-to-wall charcoal carpets and nickelfinish sconces and uninspired nonrepresentational prints in black metal frames. And he feels like a burglar. Which, come to think of it, he is.

He glances from the pair of men’s shoes to the closed bathroom door. He thinks he can hear the shower running from within.

He turns around, looks behind him into the hall. Maybe he should just leave, wait for this man, this alternate recipient of Vanessa’s ministrations, to leave. The guy is showering, will probably be gone in ten minutes.

But maybe he can’t spare ten minutes. Armed enemies could be flooding the
Bahnhof
with personnel right this minute, not just guns-for-hire but also local
Polizei
, or perhaps Interpol agents, or for all he knows goddamned Green Berets, swarming the airport, erecting roadblocks …

His eyes dart around the apartment, flitting over surfaces, shelves, rugs, until his attention lands in the living room. He crosses the space quickly, his feet gliding across the parquet, to the credenza dominated by the flat-screen television next to the dancing green lights of a little black router. He picks up a tall glass candlestick, and yanks out the white taper,
and lays the candle silently on the glossy veneer. He hefts the heavy stick in his palm. It’ll do.

The blinds are still drawn in the dark bedroom, the linens strewn around, clothing discarded at the foot of the bed. He picks up the suit jacket, a nice soft pinstriped wool, and glances at the label, size 52.

The shower still seems to be running. He hastily pulls on this other man’s pants, wrinkled white shirt, jacket. The pants are a bit short, but within an acceptable margin of error.

He and Vanessa had never had any conversation about an exclusive relationship; it wasn’t something he felt entitled to request, considering the essential dishonesty of everything about him. But he never realized just how non-exclusive it was.

He pushes down on the brushed-metal lever, releases the catch, opens the bathroom door. The shower is running in the tub behind the opaque curtain, one of those handheld models, the spray hitting the fabric briefly, billowing out, before being aimed somewhere else, more carefully.

He puts down the toilet seat and hops up on it. He reaches to the top of the medicine cabinet, fully extending the arm that’s not holding the candlestick, feeling under the lip of the front of the steel structure, until he finds it, the small screwdriver. He turns to face the wall, still standing on the toilet, and reaches the screwdriver up to the grate that covers the ventilation fan, the air duct. He removes one screw, spinning the tool quickly in his palm, pulling out the little steel cylinder, which slips out of his fingertips, and falls to the floor with a tiny little clank.

Shit. He freezes, staring over his shoulder at the shower curtain, the water still running, no change.

He returns his attention to the second screw, has trouble finding the groove, his nerves catching up with him as the head of the screwdriver slips out once, and again, and a shiver runs down his spine, and he spins around.

“Merde.”

The spigot is still running, a full stream aimed at the tiled wall,
splattering. The naked man has pulled aside the curtain, standing there dripping, glaring, trying to figure out what action he should take, how serious this situation is. Sometimes people know when they’re about to die; sometimes they don’t.

“T
his was a
kid
” Dave said. “Practically a baby.”

Charlie nodded sympathetically. “And I couldn’t agree more that it was very,
very
unfortunate. I’m heartbroken too.”

“No. Not like me you’re not.”

“Maybe. But that’s understandable, isn’t it?”

Dave didn’t respond.

“Nevertheless,” Charlie continued, “it’s not like we
made
that happen.”

“
We?
There’s no
we
in this situation. And you
did
make it happen, Charlie.”

For a few seconds neither man said anything.

“What do you have in mind, Dave? What is it you think we ought to do? What do you
want
from me?”

“How long has this been going on?”

“What?”

“This … this setting people up.”

Charlie rolled his eyes, like a petulant teenager. “How do you think we’ve managed to get all those scoops, Dave? The exclusives? With a staff that’s a bunch of amateur stringers? But somehow
—some
how—we’ve been beating the wire agencies and cable-news networks, the biggest newspapers, for fifteen years? How do you think that has happened? Luck? Skill? Are you out of your
fucking
mind?”

Charlie held out his hands, inviting answers to his rhetorical questions. “You pretend you don’t know anything about the ugly business, Dave. But you do. I know you do. You just choose to ignore it. And you always have. But pretending to not know is not the same as doing something about it. And it’s not the same as not knowing. So get off your high horse, you sanctimonious bastard.”

“I quit.”

“Quit?” Charlie laughed. “You can’t
quit
. You think you’re a fucking cashier at a 7-Eleven? You’re the goddamned COO of a publicly traded company. You signed an ironclad contract.”

“So?”

“Not to mention a shitload of nondisclosure agreements. Plus you’ve been depositing an
awful
lot of money into your bank accounts. For a long,
long
time.”

The previous year had been the final year that Preston Wolfe had cut Dave a forty-thousand-dollar check, as agreed in the Ithaca hotel room twenty-five years earlier, in the middle of a long desperate night. It had once seemed like a lot of money. It had once seemed worth it, a million dollars, to stay silent.

“I
own
you, Dave. I’ve owned you for your whole life, and I will own you forever. And you better fucking remember it.”

Neither of them had taken a seat, staring at each other across the clean, uncluttered desk of a man who as a rule didn’t handle paper.

“And let’s remember, Dave, that
you
were the one who came after
me
.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Freshman year? You glommed on to me in the dorm. You rushed the same frat as me. You asked me to room with you.” He chuckled, a brief ugly noise. Charlie had been subjugating his haughty temper for decades, but sometimes it proved too potent, and bubbled up from below, setting fire to everything in its path. “You were even the one who suggested the dance club, that night. Am I right?”

Dave steeled his jaw.

“And I get that, Dave, I do. Poor Jewish kid from Brooklyn. A guy like me, I must’ve looked pretty damn appealing. To a guy like you.”

Dave struggled to not rise to this bait, staying silent, steaming.

Charlie took a deep breath. “At this moment, Dave, I need you—Wolfe Media needs you—to handle this Asia deal. For us.” The tirade seemed to be over. He would now, as ever, back off. But not all the way. “After that, if you still want to, we can figure out a way for you to, ah, extricate
yourself.” Trying to defuse the bomb that he himself had constructed, then lit the fuse.

Dave had always been smarter than Charlie; they both knew this, had always known it. Plus Dave was the one who understood the logistics and finances in a way that Charlie had never bothered to learn. Charlie needed Dave, more than he’d ever admit.

“Next spring, Dave. Summer, at the latest.”

This was not a winnable argument. Neither man could persuade the other he was more right. Only more strong.

So Dave didn’t say anything. There was no betrayal quite like finding out that a lifelong friendship hadn’t been genuine.

H
e flexes both arms, the candlestick and the screwdriver, menacing, glowering, trying to look tough, trying to avoid violence. The naked Frenchman seems to consider lunging, but looks dissuaded by the fact that he’s penned into a tall bathtub, plus he’s naked, and weaponless.

“Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?”

What do I want? That’s a good question. The author shakes his head.
“Rien.”
He gestures vaguely with the candlestick, encouraging this guy to stay put.
“Restez là.”

But for how long can he expect this naked Frenchman to do nothing? The guy will call the police as soon as the author walks out the door. Sirens wailing, tires screeching …

“Parlez-vous anglais?”

“A leetle.”

“I don’t want anything from you.
Comprenez?
”

“Oui.”

“But I need to tie you up.”

The man doesn’t understand this.

“
Il faut que
 …
”
He trails off; he doesn’t know how to say this in French. He pantomimes, putting his hands in front of him, wrists together as if bound.

Recognition crosses the Frenchman’s face, then something else, a decision, a resolve.

The author is already running through the apartment again in his mind, the spots where he has left fingerprints this morning, last week, whenever.

“Alons-y
,
”
he says, gesturing for the naked man to remove himself from the tub. The author will bind the guy up with the necktie, sitting there on the messy floor of the dark bedroom, surrounded by the evidence of last night’s sex. Or this morning’s. Vanessa is partial to wake-me-ups.

The water is still running, and the Frenchman takes one tall step out of the tub, then another.

“À la chambre
,
”
the author says.

“Oui.”

Wet footsteps slapping on the tile, then silent on the carpet of the hall, turning into the bedroom, the author following with the candlestick in one hand and the screwdriver in the other.

Then the naked man spins around, his right fist flying, coming into flush contact with the author’s left cheek, an explosion of searing pain, seeing stars, nearly blinded, reacting instinctively by swinging the candlestick with maximum velocity, the heavy glass slapping wet naked skin on the upper arm, rearing back to swing again but the Frenchman has dropped to the floor, is scissoring a leg and knocks out the author’s footing, falling on his ass but somehow managing to hold on to both the candlestick and the small screwdriver, which he uses, as the man lunges, to stab him in the stomach, a deep puncture that freezes the man in place, his mouth a perfect O of surprise and pain, and he staggers backward one slow unsteady step, and another, clutching his gut with both hands.

The author stares up in horror. And the worst of the horror is knowing that this isn’t the worst of it, not yet, not by a long shot.

The author leaps to his feet, still holding both improvised weapons, one of which is now bloody. He has never in his life had a fistfight, never
took judo or karate or boxing classes, never since childhood hit another person in anger. Never discharged a firearm of any sort, never wielded a nonculinary knife, never until this moment burnished any weapon at any living creature, other than insects.

He once set a mousetrap, which the very first night successfully caught and killed a mouse, tiny and gray, Stuart Little–like. He used kitchen tongs to move the trap, dead mouse and all, into the bag in his garbage can, which he immediately removed and double-bagged and toted down to a basement bin, shutting the lid tightly and retreating to the elevator quickly.

The next time there was a mouse in the apartment, he decided that the two of them, man and mouse, could coexist peacefully together, cohabitate. It’s not as if the mouse was doing him any harm.