‘As bad as that?’
‘Yes.’
Only then did Burroni seem to remember that they were standing in the middle of the sidewalk. ‘Want to come in for a drink?’
Without waiting for a reply from Jordan, he turned and led him into the house. Once inside, Jordan took a look around. It was a normal American house, redolent of friendly neighbours, inflatable swimming pools in the back garden, barbecues, cans of beer on Sundays.
On a low cabinet next to the door was a photograph of Burroni with his son. The boy was waving a baseball bat at the camera.
Bye, champ . . .
Burroni noticed what he was looking at. ‘My son’s crazy about baseball,’ he said, with a slight crack in his voice.
‘The Yankees?’
‘Who else?’ Burroni pointed to a couch. ‘Take a seat. What would you like to drink?’
‘A Coke would be fine.’
‘OK.’
Burroni walked off and came back soon afterwards with a tray containing two cans of Diet Coke and two glasses. He placed it on the little table in front of Jordan and sat down on a slightly worn but comfortable-looking leather armchair to his left.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Any news?’
Burroni shook his head as he opened his can. ‘None at all. We’ve questioned everyone who ever knew your nephew without turning up a single useful thing. The post-mortem results you already know. And there’s still nothing from the Crime Scene team. You know how it is. Too many clues, too few leads.’
‘Well,’ Jordan said, ‘I’ve been thinking over and over about the Peanuts connection, trying to figure out what link there could possibly be between my nephew and Linus, and the person we think may turn out to be Lucy. But I don’t seem to have gotten anywhere. And I’m wondering how long we can keep the journalists away from all the things we’ve managed to keep secret so far. Including my involvement.’
‘What does your brother say?’
‘He can’t say anything, because he was the one who wanted me in on this thing, however unofficially. But I think he’s under a lot of pressure. Apart from personal feelings, his position isn’t very good. You can understand what people are thinking: how can he protect our children if he can’t protect his own? Politics is a nasty business.’
Jordan took a sip of his drink, searching for the words to express what he had to say.
‘I want to tell you something, James. Whatever the outcome of this case, I’ll make sure the promises that were made to you will be kept.’
Burroni said nothing for a moment, staring down at his can. ‘Those things I said the other evening in the diner across from your apartment, I—’
‘Don’t worry. I made a meal of it, too. It happens. We all say things we regret.’
Burroni’s gaze shifted for a fraction of a second to the photograph showing him with his son, ready to receive a ball that would never arrive.
Bye, champ . . .
‘You know, life sometimes isn’t as easy as it seems,’ he said.
‘I told you it’s fine. You don’t need to explain.’
They looked at each other.
‘It must have been hard for you too, Jordan.’
Jordan shrugged. ‘It’s hard for everyone.’
He picked up his helmet and got to his feet. Burroni did the same. He was shorter than Jordan but sturdier. All the same, without his perennial black hat on his head, he seemed strangely exposed and fragile.
‘So long, James.’
A few minutes later, as he got on his bike and looked through his visor at the figure of James Burroni standing in the doorway of his house, Jordan told himself that coming here had been the right thing to do.
What he had said was true.
It had been hard. It was hard for everyone. For Burroni, for Christopher, for him.
But if they didn’t work fast, it would be even harder for a woman they didn’t know but who was out there somewhere, a target for a man who thought of her as Lucy.
CHAPTER 15
Chandelle Stuart leaped to her feet, her face distorted with anger, her smooth black hair moving to partly hide it. The elegant dark Versace dress she was wearing rode up her long, thin legs, showing the two men sitting on the couch a strip of bare skin above her stockings.
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
The tone of voice held all the arrogance of one accustomed to command without having earned the right. She stood facing the two men for a moment, then turned and snatched up a pack of cigarettes from a shelf behind her, lighting one as if she was hoping to set fire to the world. She then marched to the large window that led to a balcony overlooking Central Park and stood there with her back to them, puffing greedily at her cigarette.
In the sky above the city, summer stormclouds were massing.
Jason McIvory turned to Robert Orlik, the other 50 per cent of McIvory, Orlik & Partners, a law firm specializing in managing estates, based in an elegant building downtown. The two men exchanged a knowing glance. For too long, they had been exposed to this woman’s whims, not to mention her coarse language.
And they were tired of putting up with it.
But for the moment they simply made themselves more comfortable on the couch and waited for this umpteenth fit of rage to subside.
McIvory crossed his legs. If Chandelle Stuart had turned at that moment, she would have caught a slight smile on his face with its slicked-back white hair and well-tended moustache. When he considered he had given the woman enough time to recover, he continued the speech this hysterical attack had interrupted.
‘I think you know precisely what we’re talking about, Miss Stuart. You don’t have any money left. Or hardly any.’
Again Chandelle turned like a fury, and again her black hair whipped around her head like a pirate flag in the wind. ‘How’s that even possible, you dickheads?’
McIvory pointed to the leather briefcase on the floor by his feet, propped against a low glass table that had cost several hundred dollars an inch. ‘The accounts are all here. All the papers were signed by you. In some cases, if you remember, we even requested a waiver of responsibility for certain investments of yours that weren’t – how shall I put this? – entirely orthodox from a financial point of view.’
Chandelle Stuart extinguished her cigarette in the ashtray with a ferocity she would have happily applied to the faces of the two men. ‘How do I know you two haven’t been cheating me all these years?’ she hissed.
Robert Orlik, who had been silent so far, now spoke up. His voice was strangely similar to his partner’s, as if all those years of working together had made them one and the same.
‘Miss Stuart, out of respect for your late father, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. For years I’ve been willing to tolerate your behaviour, not to mention your colourful language, but I’m not – or rather, we are not – willing to tolerate any aspersion on our honesty and professionalism. Having said that, in order to make sure we understand each other perfectly, I’d like to take a step back and summarize the facts. When your father, Avedon Lee Stuart, died seven years ago, he left you a personal fortune, in property, stocks and shares, and cash, amounting in total to about five billion dollars.’
‘We had tens of billions,’ she cut in, ‘and that son of a bitch frittered it away on all kinds of crap.’
‘I’m afraid that’s where I must contradict you. There was only five billion and that money wasn’t “frittered away”, as you put it. Your father bequeathed most of the family fortune to a series of charitable foundations, so that the Stuart name should leave a lasting legacy.’
‘And you two just happened to be appointed trustees of that fortune.’
Orlik looked at her coldly, like an experienced gambler seeing a novice approach his table. ‘Our role as trustees is neither here nor there,’ he said. ‘Nor is the reason your father left you only part of the inheritance, which is linked to matters of which we are unaware and are unable to judge.?
??
‘All that crap about charity and the Stuart name is just that: crap. That megalomaniac only did it because he hated me. The bastard always hated me.’
How right he was! I’m only surprised he didn’t strangle you at birth, you stupid bitch!
Robert Orlik’s face revealed nothing of this thought. Her last comment had been all too typical of her character, and in particular her relations with their firm. Managing both the dead man’s estate and Chandelle Stuart’s personal activities represented a great many hours, all fully invoiced, which counted for a great deal in the annual balance sheet of McIvory, Orlik & Partners. Now that her stock had been wiped out, their willingness to support her had sharply decreased.
‘If leaving a daughter five hundred million dollars means hating her, I wish my father had felt the same way about me.’
He leaned forward and took a fairly bulky file from the briefcase. He placed it delicately on the table-top as if the weight of what it contained had the power to smash the glass.
‘Anyway, here’s the detailed account of all your activities over the years and the consequences of some of your choices.’
‘It’s all your fault. You should have advised me.’
‘We did, but you didn’t listen to us. Your activities as a film and theatre producer, for example . . .’
Now that the white heat of her anger had abated, the grim reality facing Chandelle Stuart had given a grey tinge to the usual pallor of her face. Her skin was like an old woman’s. Not that this lessened her arrogance and disdain.
‘I studied directing – I know about the cinema. What’s wrong with producing movies?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with investing in film production. But there’s one thing you have to remember. If the films make a reasonable profit, it becomes a job. If they don’t, it remains a very expensive hobby. In your case, too expensive, I’d say.’
‘Where do you get off, talking about things like that? What do you know about art?’
‘Not much, I admit. But I do know about figures.’
He took the file from the low table, placed it on his knees and started leafing through it. When he found the page he was looking for, he took a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles from the breast pocket of his jacket and arranged them on his nose.
‘Here we are. Let’s take the novel by that man Levine. You paid four million dollars just to snatch the rights from Universal. It was all a trick on the part of the author’s agent, who made you pay a fortune for something you could have had for two hundred thousand dollars. If you recall, we advised you to sit tight and wait. Instead of which, you plunged straight in.’
‘It was a terrific novel. I couldn’t let it get away.’
‘And indeed it didn’t. Except that for that price you could have bought Scott Levine’s entire output for the rest of his life. And then there was the film you made of the book. Shall we talk about that?’
‘It was a great movie. The premiere in Los Angeles was packed.’
‘But then it died a death at the box office. You spent a hundred and fifty million dollars on a film that barely made back eighteen, if I’m not mistaken. And shall we talk about Clowns, the musical that was supposed to be the new Cats? A production costing tens of millions that didn’t even have one performance. Written and directed by you with music by a lounge bar pianist you met on a cruise ship.’
‘The man was a genius!’
Orlik made a dismissive gesture. ‘If he is, you’re the only one who thinks so. The rest of the world seems happy to leave him on his ship.’ He closed the file and put it back on the low table. ‘I don’t see any point in continuing. There are plenty of other examples. All too many, in fact. It’s all here in black and white. If you want a second opinion, any other lawyer you choose can take a look at it.’
For a moment, Chandelle seemed disoriented, which briefly gave her the semblance of a human being. Her shoulders drooped and she looked defeated, humiliated, aware of the consequences of her decisions.
‘How much do I have left?’
McIvory now took up the reins again. ‘We have to settle your tax arrears and the last debts to the banks. If all the works of art here are sold, you might be able to keep hold of this apartment and . . . let’s say . . . two hundred thousand dollars. Though personally, I think you should let the apartment go.’
Chandelle Stuart’s nerves finally snapped. ‘This is my home!’ she screamed, her face purple with rage. ‘This is the Stuart Building, my family’s building! I can’t leave it! I’ll never go, do you understand? Never!’
McIvory feared for a moment that her vocal cords would crack. Her hysterical screaming became so shrill as to verge on the supersonic. To avoid sustaining the gaze of those bloodshot eyes, he raised his arm and looked at the time on his elegant Rolex Stelline.
‘Unfortunately we do have to go. I think you need to be alone for a while, to think about what we’ve told you. Good evening, Miss Stuart.’
The two lawyers stood up. For years they had harboured the desire to give this conceited girl a good slapping, but now that it had happened, it had a bitter aftertaste. They didn’t feel responsible for their client’s financial ruin – by ignoring their advice, she had brought it all on herself – but they did feel dismayed by the total vacuity of her response, even now that it was staring her in the face that her life, as she had always lived it, was over for good.
Jason McIvory and Robert Orlik turned and walked towards the elevator, which opened directly onto the living room. Seeing them going, Chandelle felt lost. For the first time in her life, she was no longer in control of her own destiny.
She quickly ran and placed herself between the lawyers and the elevator, grabbing Orlik by the arm to stop him. The two men had never thought they would hear Chandelle Stuart address them in such imploring tones.
‘Wait. Maybe we can talk. I’ll come to your office tomorrow and I think we can manage to sort things out. If we sell the house in Aspen and maybe the ranch . . .’
Despite the habit of indifference that years of work had given him, Robert Orlik was tempted for a moment to feel a touch of compassion for this spoiled child, who had had the luck to be born in an earthly paradise and the stupidity to destroy it with her own hands.
‘Miss Stuart, you don’t have a house in Aspen, or a ranch. They were both sold, on your instructions, to finance a film or some other scatterbrained enterprise. I don’t know any other way to put this, Chandelle. You don’t have anything left.’
The anger returned, like a storm after a brief lull. ‘It’s all your fault, you fucking thieves. I’ll make you pay for this, cocksuckers. You and all the faggots in your fucking practice. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’ll have you disbarred. You’ll all end up in jail.’
This new outburst of anger put paid to any lingering compassion the two lawyers might have felt. The door of the elevator finally slid open in front of them. As Orlik entered, McIvory lingered for a moment on the threshold and turned to confront Chandelle, who was watching them with her face distorted by impotent rage.
‘There’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you for years. You’re not a little girl any more and so you’ll allow me, for a moment, to adopt your language.’
His smile was polite and professional, his tone almost gentle.
‘We hate your ass, Miss Stuart. And if I have to be honest, it isn’t even a nice ass.’
Chandelle Stuart was speechless for a moment. Her mouth formed a perfect O of surprise and her eyes opened wide as if in search of the words her voice could not find.
From inside the elevator, the last thing Jason McIvory and Robert Orlik saw, before the doors slid shut, was the figure of a woman rushing like a harpy towards the grand piano behind her, in a desperate search for something to hurl at them.
As they started their descent, the two men were silent, although both were wondering how much the Chinese vase they had just heard smashing against the walnut doors of the elevator might be w
orth.
CHAPTER 16
Chandelle Stuart found herself alone with her rage.
With her Prada shoes, she kicked at the fragments of the Chinese vase, unaware of its value, just as she had been unaware of the value of the life she had so systematically thrown away.
The anger seemed to have increased her strength. Frantic and blind in her fury, she literally tore off her dress and flung the shreds at the wall.
She was now wearing only a bra and a pair of black lace panties, as well as the stockings. Young as she was, her thin, unnaturally pale body had the slightly sagging skin of someone who has lived too long in the fast lane.
She started walking through the apartment, wringing her hands.
All she could think of, the one image she had branded on her eyes, was the fossilized expressions of those two so-called lawyers.
She started mumbling to herself, almost without moving her lips, which were reduced to a purplish-blue slash by the expensive lipstick, murmuring a rosary – not of prayer but of curses.
Jason McIvory and Robert Orlik, two motherfucking bastards. She had always hated them, ever since she had first seen them at the reading of her father’s will. She had loathed their unctuous smiles when she had learned from the attorney that she had been practically disinherited. Black and funereal, like two vultures, they perched on their chairs, waiting to pick clean with hooked beaks the still-warm carcass of that other bastard, her father.
She could still see him, with his money and his pathetic pretensions to be a father figure, and all the shrinks with their Freud and their Jung and their fake-soothing voices that she had been forced to endure for years, while he fucked all the whores within range.
May he rot in hell.
Chandelle looked up at the ceiling, as if he hovered there, and began a shouted dialogue with the air – a piece of acting which, if it had been in a play or a film, would have been the best performance of her life.
‘Are you listening to me, Avedon Lee Stuart? I hope you can hear me even from the hell where I sent you. I also hope you realize it was me – me – who let you die! I want that so much, I feel like killing myself just to come and tell you in person. But you won’t get that satisfaction from me. Do you understand? Burn happily in hell while you can, you cunt, because when I get there it’ll seem like paradise.’