Cesar Wong’s front was that of a wealthy businessman involved in various sectors of the economy, with a particular interest in retail and property. The reality, even though nobody had ever been able to prove it, was that he had a finger in some much less savoury pies, such as drugs and arms trafficking. He had laid the foundations of his huge fortune when he was still a young man with a lot of imagination and scarcely any scruples, thanks to the brilliant stratagem of laundering dirty money through the Chinese stores on Canal Street. That fortune had grown in the same confident way until he had reached a position of absolute, impregnable power. It was said that he had an untold number of senators on his payroll. All that, of course, was speculation. The one sure thing was that you wouldn’t want to step on his feet. And if anything happened to his son, the person responsible would pay dearly.
Burroni’s car pulled up in front of a three-storey building on West 14th Street, amid the fashionable boutiques and renovated buildings of the newly gentrified Meatpacking District. They were followed by the patrol car with Lukas Furst and Serena Hitchin in it, and another patrol car with two officers they had picked up in Williamsburg.
Maureen, Jordan and Burroni got quickly out of the car and walked to the front door of the building. It was a light structure in anodized aluminium and unbreakable glass. The small lobby they could see through the windows was almost completely occupied by elevator doors and a huge dragon tree.
On the wall by the front door was a line of bells equipped with a video entryphone. After a rapid glance, Jordan pressed the button marked with a J.
Nobody replied.
Jordan rang again – but again the entryphone remained blind and mute. He tried a third time, holding the button down for a long time. Finally they heard the crackle of the microphone, followed by a hostile voice.
‘Who’s that?’
Burroni moved his badge close to the camera and then placed himself so that he was framed as clearly as possible.
‘Police. I’m Detective Burroni. Are you Julius Wong?’
‘Yes. What the fuck do you want?’
‘If you let us in we’ll tell you.’
‘Do you have a warrant?’
‘No.’
‘Then fuck off.’
Burroni’s jaw hardened, but he forced himself to remain calm. ‘Mr Wong, we don’t need a warrant. We aren’t here to arrest you or search your home.’
‘Then I repeat the question, in case you’ve got wax in your ears. What the fuck do you want?’
Jordan gently moved Burroni aside and placed himself in front of the cold eye of the camera.
‘Mr Wong, we have serious reason to believe that someone is planning to kill you. Would you like us to come in and talk about it, or would you prefer us to leave you alone so you can ask your killer the same question when he shows up with a gun in his hand?’
There was a moment’s silence. Even though he didn’t think it likely, Jordan hoped Julius Wong was shitting in his pants right now like that poor wretch Alex Campbell.
Then finally the lock clicked and Burroni opened the door. Jordan put a hand on his arm.
‘James, it might be better if Maureen and I keep out of this.’
Burroni had not heard Christopher’s words, but immediately grasped the meaning of Jordan’s. ‘Yes, it might.’
He turned to the officers behind him and pointed at Lukas Furst and Serena Hitchin.
‘You two, come with me. You other two take a look around, and keep your eyes open.’
Furst and Hitchin followed Burroni inside and up the stairs. The other two separated to check the surroundings.
Jordan and Maureen were left alone outside the building. On the other side of the street, near the corner with Eleventh Avenue, grey-suited bouncers stood on the sidewalk outside High Noon, a famous disco frequented by models and other people in the fashion business.
Jordan looked at Maureen’s face and saw that she was tired, with rings under her eyes.
‘I don’t understand what’s happening,’ she told him. ‘Too many things in too little time. And to be honest, I’m scared. Damn scared.’
Jordan saw her bow her head, as if ashamed of that moment of weakness. He lifted her chin with his hand. ‘I’d be scared too, if I were in your place.’
‘But at least you know what your role is, in all this. I’m not sure of anything any more.’
Jordan smiled resignedly. ‘Believe me when I say, I’m not sure what my role is either. Now that you’re part of it too, I realize how difficult it must be for you to accept the reason why. But you’re a fantastic woman and I’m sure that you’ve been an excellent police officer, and will be again.’
Maureen looked into his incredible blue eyes but said nothing.
She had only known this man for a few hours but felt she could trust him. Somehow she sensed that he had been through similar experiences, and this would account for the instinctive rapport that had sprung up between them.
She stood up on tiptoe, a shimmer of tears reflected in her eyes, and Jordan felt the moist warmth of her lips on his cheek. Not even for a moment did he think there was the slightest sexual connotation to that kiss. It was only a silent way of saying you’ve understood me and I’ve understood you.
‘It’s going to be all right, Maureen,’ he said.
He put his arms around her slim body and let her lay her head against his chest, and they stood there, motionless, in the rectangle of light projected on the sidewalk through the glass door.
When Jordan looked up, he saw Lysa on the other side of the street, standing beside a big BMW sedan, looking at him.
Nobody with eyes like that . . .
Since their trip to Vassar and their conversation in the restaurant on the river, Jordan had moved with his few things to a hotel on 38th Street and they had not communicated or met. When Lysa realized that Jordan had seen her, she turned her head abruptly towards a group of people, men and women who had just come out of the disco and were joining her. They came level with her and, laughing, got into the BMWs and Porsche Cayennes parked along the kerb. Lysa took her seat in the big sedan, next to the driver.
The car set off and as it moved away she kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, leaving in Jordan’s mind the image of her silent profile.
He had no time to think because, almost simultaneously, the door of the elevator in the lobby of the building opened to reveal three figures.
One was Officer Lukas Furst.
The second was Burroni.
The third person was a man of about thirty, almost as tall as the detective, with a slim physique and smooth shiny hair, his regular features given an extra charm by his remote Asian origins. Only his mouth, thin and cruel, spoiled the perfection of that face.
He was wearing a white shirt and dark jeans, and his wrists were handcuffed in front of him.
Burroni put a hand on his elbow and pushed him out of the elevator. Julius Wong wriggled free as if the detective was unclean.
‘Don’t touch me, pig. I can do it myself.’
‘OK, go ahead.’
With Burroni’s eyes on him, Wong opened the glass door and followed the direction the detective indicated. Once outside, he looked defiantly at the world around him for a moment. In spite of his anger, his eyes were murky, bearing the mark of vice and depravity.
As Burroni and his prisoner walked to the car, Jordan noticed that Julius Wong had a very pronounced limp in his right leg.
CHAPTER 36
Lysa Guerrero took off the long T-shirt she had worn during the night and stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror. The silvery surface sent her back her own image, cut off at the waist by the cabinet with the white marble top. The reflection of the stone contrasted sensually with her olive Latin skin, but right now Lysa was in no mood to take pleasure in that. She raised her arms, mussed her long dark hair with a casual gesture and then let her hands descend until they were touching the brown nipples on her firm, high breasts, which were the perfect siz
e to be contained in the palm of a man’s hand. Her sigh created a small damp halo on the glass of the mirror. If she had been a dreamer, she might have imagined that Jordan Marsalis would open the door behind her at any moment, with his shirt red with blood and astonishment on his face at seeing her there.
And it would start all over again.
But that was and would remain only a fantasy.
It was a long time since Lysa Guerrero had been able to afford the luxury of dreams.
She moved closer to the mirror and looked deep into her own eyes. They were tired and red from the almost sleepless night she had just spent.
When she had got back the previous night, she had undressed, climbed into bed and turned out the light, hoping she could blot out the reality around her. She had lain there in the darkness, her eyes open, with only a thin sheet to protect her from her fear and bitterness. Through the open window, from the floor below, music had risen in slow wreaths as if to mock her, the usual song played by the unknown fan of Connor Slave.
There’s n grindstone known to man
Can crush this rock inside my heart.
Listening to the soft music and absorbing the meaning of the lyrics, she had continued to see Jordan embracing that woman, the two of them motionless in a shared moment. And by an irony of fate, right in front of the building where . . .
When she had left the disco with a group of people who didn’t mean anything to her, heading for another place that didn’t interest her, she had walked blithely towards the parked cars, trying to delude herself that the world was smiling at her, that everything around her was hers or could easily be hers.
Then she had seen them, that image of normality.
A man born a man embracing a woman born a woman.
She moved away from the mirror, stepped into the shower and opened the faucet. She let the water engulf her, without even waiting for it to become hot, anxious for it to wash away her tears.
This time it wasn’t the world that had rejected her, she had done it herself.
She had fallen in love with Jordan in a single second, maybe the very moment he had appeared at the bathroom door with his nose all bloody and his incredible blue eyes wide open with astonishment at the sight of her naked body.
She had offered Jordan the chance to continue living in her apartment. She had done it instinctively, wanting nothing but to stay close to him, knowing perfectly well that it was wrong. And she had done that other thing, hiding behind all the alibis she had managed to find for her decision, knowing all the same, deep inside, that this, too, was a wrong choice.
She remembered her determination when she had arrived in New York, that lunch of oysters and champagne during which she had been importuned by a stupid man named Harry and the way she had treated him – as she had decided to treat everyone from now on. When she had left, she had seen, stretched out in front of her, a land to be conquered in all its splendour, whereas now she had come to the desolate conclusion that in reality there was nothing here worth conquering.
All her life she had asked for nothing but to hide, to keep close to the walls, avoid the limelight. She had wanted that with all her heart, just as she had craved a kind person who would want her and accept her for what she was. She had simply wanted what everyone else had.
She had dreamed of it and tried to get it, but in vain.
Because of her physical appearance, all the men she met desired her, ran after her – but when they discovered who and what she was, they turned their backs on her. But then they’d phone her at two in the morning, their words blurred by alcohol, saying they happened to be in the vicinity and asking if they could come up for a while and have a drink, and promising that if she let them do what they wanted, she wouldn’t regret it.
That was how she had learned that the world, when it was able to escape the conventions, did want people like her, after all. On the sly, in secret, maybe, but it did want them. There was a whole host of enthusiasts – deviants, if you preferred to call them that – who asked nothing better than to spend a few hours with a girl like her, rewarding her generously, after which they would return to their normal life, with a woman as a wife and boys for sons and girls for daughters.
And so she had continued on her way, gritting her teeth and holding back the tears.
Then, one day she had received an envelope. And inside it was that crazy, perverse – but very lucrative – proposal . . .
She had surrendered, told herself that if that was what they wanted from her, that was what they would get. A hundred thousand dollars seemed a fair price to pay.
But before anything happened, Jordan had appeared. She had felt him getting ever closer to her day after day, attracted to her despite himself like a moth to a flame. Then, at the restaurant on the river, he had said those beautiful words.
As always, she had run away. She had dismissed him because she was scared that this was yet another illusion, her decision made even more painful by her feelings for the man, feelings that she had never experienced before with such intensity.
And now she was alone again, with shame as her only companion.
She turned off the water, stepped out of the shower, put on her robe, and started drying her hair. Once it was done, she walked into the bedroom, slipped into jeans and a T-shirt, and then took out her suitcase and threw it on the bed. Removing her clothes from the closet, she started packing – swiftly but with great precision.
Lysa was good at packing. It was something she had done many times.
Taking the remote from the night-table, she aimed it at the TV set. She hopped to NY1, to have company as she packed. On the screen, she saw a TV studio with two anchor-people, a man and a woman Lysa didn’t know, sitting behind a desk.
‘. . . we’re waiting for further information, which we’ll let you have if it comes in during the show. In the meantime, there appear to be important developments in the case of Gerald Marsalis, the Mayor’s painter son, better known as Jerry Ko. Let’s go over to Peter Luzdick at Police Plaza. Are you there, Peter?’
A reporter holding a microphone was shown in front of the unmistakable red abstract sculpture outside Police Headquarters.
‘Yes, Damon. I’m here and I can confirm that Julius Wong, who was taken in by police last night, has now been charged with the murder of Gerald Marsalis. I understand that there is also evidence linking him to the murder of Chandelle Stuart and to last night’s kidnapping of writer Alex Campbell, in the course of which, as we know, he died of a heart attack.’
Lysa felt a wave of cold hit her stomach and spread through her veins, turning her blood to ice. She gasped and sat down on the bed before her legs could give way, her face as pale as the marble in the bathroom.
On the screen, the reporter continued, ‘From what I understand, the investigators are waiting for the results of a DNA test, to determine the source of semen found in Chandelle Stuart’s body. Right now we have no other details. We expect there to be a press conference very soon.’
A coloured photograph appeared, with the speaker’s voice over it.
‘Julius Wong, the son of Cesar Wong, is no stranger to the police or the courts. Some years ago . . .’
Lysa turned off the volume but continued staring at the screen.
The image of Julius Wong stared back at her, cold and silent.
CHAPTER 37
Jordan raised his arms from the table and leaned back in his chair, to allow the dark-jacketed waiter to put the plate down in front of him. As the man walked discreetly away, Jordan looked at the dish with a puzzled air.
‘What the hell’s this?’
Maureen smiled across the table with its crystal glasses and elegant white linen tablecloth. She had the same colourful dish on her plate.
‘Breast of pigeon cooked in cocoa and grape sauce.’
Jordan moved his chair closer to the table and picked up his knife and fork. ‘If the food’s as impressive as its name, it should be good.’
‘My fathe
r always says that cooking is like literature. It has no limits except the imagination. He’s convinced that food should satisfy as many senses as possible. Taste, smell, sight.’
Jordan cut a small piece of the pigeon, lifted it to his mouth and started chewing it slowly. An ecstatic expression spread across his face. ‘Fantastic. I have to say, Martini’s deserves its reputation.’
Maureen laughed.
‘You did it!’ said Jordan.
‘What?’
‘You laughed. That’s the first time I’ve seen you laugh. You should spend more time here.’
‘Or more time with you.’
Maureen had invited him to dinner at her father’s restaurant, an elegant two-storey period building on 46th Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, not far from the lights of Times Square and the Broadway theatres. It was only when she had said that she was the daughter of one of the best-known restaurateurs in New York that the penny had finally dropped, and Jordan had accepted the invitation gladly.
On the face of it, they were celebrating the happy ending of an investigation in which neither of them had officially participated and in which neither of them had really wanted to participate. In fact, the real reason for being here together was the formless but solid thing that had connected them from the start, a thing to which neither of them could give a name.
Maureen continued watching Jordan as he ate. For the first time, she noticed that he had beautiful hands. There was something in him that reminded her of Connor, even though the two men were so different, both in personality and physical appearance.
Connor was creativity, a magician casting the spell of music. Jordan was strength and silence. Connor had beautiful long hands that quivered like the strings of a violin. Jordan had masculine hands which, it seemed to her, would never have held a gun if there wasn’t a need.