It’s a comfortable silence that ensures for the first time that I can truly appreciate the peace and quiet. Of course it won’t last. But maybe that’s what makes it so enjoyable—how fleeting it is. Like life itself.
It figures, what happens next. I can’t help it. I start thinking about Stuart’s death on this very boat. The complications of our marriage, the mistakes we both made. Turns out I’m not alone.
“You want to hear something crazy?” asks Jake.
“Crazier than the day we’ve had?”
“Yes, if you can believe it.” He pauses to refill our glasses. “About a half hour ago, when I was alone in the engine room, I thought I heard someone laughing. It was a guy’s voice, very familiar. I assumed it was Mark, maybe even Ernie. But when I poked my head up through the hatch to listen for them, I couldn’t hear anything. Then suddenly there it was again.”
I’m confused. “So it was one of the boys after all?”
“No. The laugh was coming from inside the engine room, and I realized why it sounded so familiar. It was Stuart. It was his laugh. And when I turned around to get back to fixing the cooling hose, I —”
He stops, not wanting to finish the sentence.
I press him. “What? What happened?”
“For a brief second,” says Jake, “I could swear I saw him. I know I didn’t, but I felt like I did. It was scary, Kat, especially because it seemed so real. As if he was really with us.”
Chapter 20
I’M NOT SURE how to respond to this. Is Jake wigging out on me? Did he smoke some of the pot he confiscated from Mark? Maybe he hit his head earlier?
“I told you it was crazy,” he says.
“No, it’s not so crazy,” I try to assure him. “There are times when I’m out at a restaurant or walking down the street back in New York and I think I see Stuart.”
“You’re talking about seeing people who look like him. I’m talking about seeing . . .”
Again he can’t finish the sentence. So I do it for him.
“A ghost?”
I’m no psychiatrist, but I can’t help strapping on the shoes of my best friend, Mona. If Jake were telling her this while sitting in her Manhattan office, what would Mona say? Honestly, I’m not sure. I guess it would be something better than the obvious “There are no such things as ghosts, Jake.”
That’s when it occurs to me. The two of us have never really talked about it.
“Do you think it’s the guilt?” I ask.
He looks at me as if I just pulled back a giant curtain on his innermost thoughts.
“I was Stuart’s brother.”
“Yes, and I was his wife. I was going through a really rough time in our marriage, and you were there for me. Neither of us expected it to happen. It wasn’t the right thing to do, and after a while we both realized that.”
“You sooner than me.”
“I had to think about the kids, Jake. And Stuart, even though he was no angel.”
He nods ruefully. “I know you did. You were right.”
“The thing is, we’ll never be able to change what happened. And honestly, I wouldn’t want to.”
“No. Neither would I.” He reaches over and touches my hand, then takes his away.
Jake forces a smile, and the subject is dropped for now. We finish off the wine and even manage a few laughs about our first day at sea, unmitigated disaster that it was.
But as I say goodnight and settle into bed, my conversation with Jake begins to echo in my mind. I know all too well about the guilt our affair caused. It wreaked havoc on my conscience and still does to this very day.
Especially because even Jake doesn’t know the whole truth.
If there’s any silver lining, though, it’s this: I learned my lesson. I’ve been given a second chance at love and he’s waiting for me back in Manhattan.
No matter what, I could never cheat on Peter. I love him more than life itself.
Chapter 21
BAILEY TODD SLOWLY, teasingly opened the door to her one-bedroom Greenwich Village apartment. She was wearing a devilish smile and not too much else. Only a black bra and panties, to be precise.
Exactly what Peter Carlyle was hoping she might pick out for tonight.
Sometimes Bailey wore fire red, other times it was lily white. But nothing got Peter’s blood pumping to all the right places more than black. Jet black was dirty, and Peter liked that the best.
“Hello, handsome,” she purred, putting it on a little, but not too much, he hoped.
Peter remained in the hallway for a few moments, eyeing Bailey up and down as he would a spectacular and very expensive work of art. The thick auburn hair, the smoky eyes, the twenty-five-year-old killer body, still tight as a drum. And the sweet face, the look of an angel, what made her the masterpiece that she was. There was a rule about women, and a very good one: half your age plus seven. Bailey was close enough.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you all day,” he gushed, and that wasn’t far from the truth.
Bailey tilted her head. “Even when you were kissing your wife goodbye on her sailing trip?”
“Especially then,” answered Peter without any hesitation. Bailey at twenty-five, Katherine at forty-five. There was no contest in his mind; it wasn’t even close—although Kat did look pretty good for her age. Which just happened to be his age as well.
He stepped inside the apartment, blindly closing the door behind him with his heel.
Bailey edged up against him, whispering in his ear. “I want to fuck you so bad. I want to suck, then fuck you.”
The feeling was way beyond mutual. Peter was so unbelievably turned on he was nearly dizzy. He leaned in to kiss her, her thick lips only inches away. Before he could reach them, Bailey stepped back with a giggle. She motioned with her index finger. “Follow me. This is my house.”
She led him to the bedroom but not to the bed. Instead she sat him down in a brown leather chair by a window that looked out on her quaint, attractive neighborhood.
What was she up to? he wondered. So many dirty, hedonistic, illegal-in-seventeen-states kinds of thoughts crossed through Peter’s mind. Then came another idea, this one comical. God bless NYU Law School!
That was where Peter had met Bailey only a few short and deliriously thrilling months ago, when he was a guest speaker at a class symposium on the role of Miranda rights in the criminal justice system. Bailey approached him afterward and tentatively, most respectfully, asked if she could pick his brain for a paper she was writing.
Maybe she was hitting on him, maybe she wasn’t. All Peter knew for sure was that she was double drop-dead gorgeous. Within a week the two of them were between the sheets.
And in the backseat of his limo.
And in the men’s room of the Guggenheim.
And in the elevator of the Crowne Plaza overlooking Times Square.
But as the third-year law student lit a few candles on her dresser and slowly closed the curtains on the downtown world, Bailey Todd was beginning to make a strong case for there being no place like home.
Chapter 22
“DO YOU LIKE the Supreme Beings of Leisure?” asked Bailey, pressing Play on her iPod Nano. “Do you even know who or what they are, old man?”
Peter assumed that was the group whose music was beginning to fill the room from her small Bose speakers. True, he’d never heard of them, but they sounded decent enough. Hypnotic. As for their name, well, what could be more perfect?
“They’re my new favorite band,” announced Peter. “And don’t call me old man, little girl.”
Bailey smiled, showing off her perfect teeth.
Then she danced, just for fun.
To the sultry beat of the Supreme Beings of Leisure, she began to gently sway her hips and arms, her smooth skin glistening in the low candlelight.
Peter gripped the arms of the leather chair, his eyes refusing to blink. He didn’t want to miss even a millisecond of this performance.
“You danc
e beautifully,” he finally said.
“For a lawyer, I guess.”
And she was just warming up to the music.
Slowly she lifted her index finger to her lips, slid it in her mouth, and sucked on it.
What Peter wouldn’t give to be that finger.
Soon enough, soon enough!
Then out it came.
Bailey removed her finger and began to work it south. She traced a line down her neck. She lingered on the curve of her breasts jutting up perfectly from her bra.
Down across her ribs, counting them, it seemed to Peter.
Her navel.
The line of her panties, over a tiny bow on the left side.
Until the finger disappeared behind the black lace as she spread her long legs very, very wide.
Bailey closed her eyes and threw her head back, her hand working up and down as she moaned softly. A Supreme Being of Leisure indeed, thought Peter.
What he wanted most in the world at that moment, more than anything, was to jump up from the chair and throw Bailey onto the bed. Or take her right there on the hardwood floor.
But as he leaned forward, ready to pounce, Bailey raised her other hand, motioning for him to stay right where he was. He’d have to wait a little while longer.
Peter edged back into his seat and grinned. Oh, how cruel! She was just perfect, wasn’t she? Bailey was like the master who trains the dog to sit with a treat perched on its nose. The longer he couldn’t have her, the more he absolutely had to. And that was the whole point of her little show now, wasn’t it?
Clever girl, thought Peter.
And one very lucky dog, he had to admit.
Chapter 23
A MERE TWENTY BLOCKS south of Greenwich Village, the Magician, Gerard Devoux, stood at the wet bar in his SoHo penthouse loft pouring two knuckles of 1964 Glenlivet. The rare single malt, which sold for over $2,000—assuming you could find a bottle for sale—was a gift from a former client. A very satisfied client.
Just as all the others had been.
Glass in hand, Devoux strolled over to a built-in bookcase along an interior wall that separated the living room from his bedroom. On every shelf was a signed first-edition novel. In total, the collection numbered over three hundred and included Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. There was also a leather-bound For Whom the Bell Tolls, although the signature on it suggested that Papa Hemingway had indulged in a fair share of good scotch himself before picking up the pen to inscribe the book.
But as valuable as these first editions were, what was behind them was even more so. With his right hand, Devoux reached for the spine of E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View. Instead of pulling it out, though, he gave the valuable book a push—all the way back, until it seemed to disappear into the wall behind it. Like magic.
Patiently Devoux waited for the sound, that soft hydraulic hiss of the pressure seal being released. Then, slowly, the bookcase slid four feet to the left. As in a James Bond film, perhaps, but this was very real.
His office was now open for business.
The room itself was only ten by ten, but it was spaghetti-wired with enough sophisticated computer and surveillance equipment to tap into almost any cell phone conversation, hack almost any secure website, or jam trading on the New York, NASDAQ, Nikkei, and Hong Kong stock exchanges.
All in a day’s work for a highly disgruntled former CIA man, an “asset” who had once been at the top of his craft.
Tonight, however, there was only one thing on the agenda: to chart the progress of a certain sailboat out at sea.
How was your first day, my dysfunctional family and friends? Anything interesting happen? Perhaps a ruptured cooling hose?
Devoux made a few keystrokes, chuckling as he pictured poor Uncle Jake going to the rescue.
There’s no way you turned back to shore for repairs—not you, sailor boy. Not your style. You cut a piece from the fuel line to fix it, didn’t you? Of course you did.
After a few more keystrokes, Devoux’s monitor glowed brightly with the exact coordinates of The Family Dunne. The homing beacon he’d planted on the boat the night before was working nicely.
Like magic.
Part Two
Mayday
Chapter 24
RICARDO SANZ alias Hector Ensuego alias any number of false or stolen identities sat alone watching a Spanish-dubbed rerun of Friends on the huge plasma TV in the presidential suite of the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. The sun had just set. He hadn’t slept for two days and was working on the third. That’s what you get for sampling your own product.
Suddenly there was a knock on the door.
Sanz reached for his gun. He wasn’t expecting anybody. Even if he had been, he’d still be reaching for his gun.
Occupational hazard.
“Who is it?” he called out, rising quickly from the couch. He was dressed in the official outfit of drug traffickers, made famous by Alfred Molina in the movie Boogie Nights— skintight skivvies, an open robe, lots of jangling gold.
“Housekeeping,” came the faint voice of a woman behind the door.
He edged closer. “What do you want? I don’t need nothing in here.”
“Turn-down service,” she answered.
He peeked through the peephole. Hotel staff uniform? Check. A maid’s cart loaded with towels and toiletries? Check.
Still. He didn’t need no turn-down service.
Then again, he really did like those little chocolates that had been on his bed when he checked in. They were shaped like seashells and were laced with some kind of liquor. Rum, maybe? All he knew for sure was that they were addictive.
He peeked again through the door. Hmmm. Maybe she would give him a box of chocolates. He could probably work out something with her.
This hotel maid was actually cute. Young, too. If she ditched that ugly gray uniform and let her hair down, she’d probably be quite the hot little number.
“One second,” he told her.
Sanz tucked the gun down the back of his skivvies and tied up his terrycloth hotel robe. He opened the door and let the pretty maid come in.
In walked Agent Ellen Pierce of the DEA.
“I brought you some extra towels, too,” she said.
Chapter 25
THE FLOOR PLAN of the suite’s layout fresh in her mind and her arms piled high with fluffy white towels, Ellen made an immediate left turn and headed straight for the master bedroom. The real chambermaid would know exactly where she was going, right?
It was details like that—or rather, overlooking such details—that could blow an agent’s cover. Worse, get an agent shot, especially when a scummy dealer like Ricardo Sanz was involved.
Not Ellen, though. She’d been on this case far too long to let a stupid mistake bring it all crashing down. Not today, and not ever. And she knew how dangerous Sanz could be.
Sanz called after her, “Hey, lady, you got those chocolates you put on the bed, right?”
“Yes, they’re on my cart,” answered Ellen over her shoulder.
Satisfied, the drug dealer returned to the television show. It was the Friends episode in which Phoebe sings the “Smelly Cat” song. Only in Spanish it was “Un gato que huele mal.”
He stood watching it for a bit before sitting down again. At the last second he remembered the gun tucked above his backside. Pulling it out, he gently placed it in the right front pocket of his robe. Hey, is that a gun, or are you just glad to see me?
Meanwhile, in the master bedroom, Ellen was getting down to work.
She and her team had been charting Sanz and all his aliases for the better part of a year. They almost had him back in New York, where he had operated out of Spanish Harlem. It was assumed he felt the heat, because one day he just disappeared.
Now he was back—in Las Vegas—with two black Samsonite suitcases filled with what they suspected was uncut Colombian cocaine. The street value was $4 million, which the agency would probably announc
e to the press as $10 million. Ellen hated the bullshit lying and the politics, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it right now.
But before the DEA could bust down any doors, they had to be sure. Enter Agent Ellen Pierce, who had a reputation for doing her own dirty work.
She placed the towels on the edge of the bed and began her search with the closets. Damn it. Nothing except a couple of tacky silk shirts and a pair of puke-gold trousers. Next she checked the lower drawers of the armoire that housed another large plasma television. Nothing worthwhile there either. No coke.
Where was Diablo when you needed him? He was the agency’s best drug-sniffing German shepherd. Unfortunately, letting him tag along with her would’ve been just a tad obvious.
That’s when Ellen caught a faint reflection from under the bed.
It turned out to be the metal handle of a suitcase. A black Samsonite suitcase.
She immediately dropped to her knees and dragged it out. Please don’t be locked.
It wasn’t. As silently as she could, Agent Pierce popped open the case. The first click was nearly silent. So was the second.
But as she opened the case and found it stuffed with bag after bag of snow-white powder, the third click scared the living shit out of her.
That click was Sanz cocking his gun.
Ellen quickly straightened up.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Sanz demanded, standing in the doorway. His gun was aimed squarely at Ellen’s head.
“I need more towels,” she said.
“You what?”
The answer made no sense to Sanz, but to the DEA guys stationed in the hallway, the message was loud and clear. Ellen was wired, and she needed help.
Mayday! Mayday!
Within seconds the front door to the room burst open and a horde of agents stormed in. As Sanz turned to fire at them, Ellen reached between the towels she’d placed on the bed. She grabbed her .-40-caliber Glock and pumped two rounds into Sanz. He collapsed to the floor with a heavy thud.
Ellen stared for a moment, frozen, as the drug dealer’s robe soaked up his bright red blood. She was known for her droll sense of humor, but there were no quips to be made as her fellow agents spilled into the bedroom. No one-liners right now. This wasn’t the movies or some bullshit TV cop show.