"And we're the mother's week."
"Right."
"Sounds like it's going to be a bucket of kicks and giggles. What is she, a wicked witch?" Taylor asked.
"All I'll say is she's more powerful than his father."
"What does he do?"
"Dad? What he does is he's rich. He's a senior partner at Ludlum Morgan, the investment bank."
"Bosk." She laughed. "I feel like I want to give him a Milk-Bone when I call him that. What firm does he work at?"
As he'd done the other night, though, he grew reluctant to give much away about Bosk professionally.
"Little shop in Midtown." Sebastian busied himself opening a Budweiser, handed it to her. Popped another.
"The mother?"
"Ada travels, entertains, does what any fifty-five-year-old sorority sister does: manages her portfolio. It's about a hundred million." Sebastian sipped the beer and let his hand stray--accidentally on purpose--to her knee. "Ho, boy, Taylor. This's gonna be primo. Good food, good drink, good people."
She lifted his pudgy fingers off her skirt. "And good behavior."
Sebastian moaned, then sat back in silence, and they gazed out the dim windows as dusk enveloped the flat, sandy landscape.
The Ottington Smith family manse was a three-story Gothic Victorian house, white with dark blue trim, about a hundred miles east of New York on the South Shore of Long Island. Two towers rose to widow's walks, which overlooked a huge yard and three connected outbuildings. The house itself was covered with skeletons of vines and wisteria. A spiked, wrought-iron fence surrounded a labyrinth of grounds. Much of the property had been reclaimed by tangles of forsythia, which sported sparse tags of brown and yellow leaves.
"Addams Family," Taylor said.
The circular driveway was full of cars. The limo paused and they got out. "God, more German cars than in Brazil," Sebastian said.
"Porches. I love porches," Taylor said. She sat on a wooden swing and rocked back and forth. "Wish it were thirty degrees warmer."
He rang the bell. A woman in her mid-fifties came to the door. Her dry, blond hair swept sideways Jackie Kennedy-style and was sprayed firmly into place. She wore a lime-green silk dress woven with pink and black triangles that pointed feverishly in all directions. Taylor bird-spotted Chanel.
The woman's face was long and glossy, the high bones holding the skin like a taut sail. Her jewelry was large. A blue topaz on her tanned, wrinkled finger was easily fifty carats.
"Thomas." They pressed cheeks and Taylor was introduced to Ada Smith--introduced, then promptly examined: the dynamics of the eyes, the contour of skin. The mouth especially. The review was mixed and Taylor believed she understood why: Bosk's little girlfriends--age twenty-three or twenty-four--could be forgiven their youth. Taylor had broken the three-oh barrier and yet had hardly a crow's foot or defining jowl.
She hates me, Taylor thought.
Yet Ada's smile and charm didn't waver; she'd been brought up right. "Call me Ada, please. I don't know where Bradford is. The others are in the den. Bradford's the cocktail and cigar director. I'm in charge of dinner. That will be at eight."
Then she was gone.
From the back hallway, a bellowing voice: "Sea Bass, Sea Bass!"
Sebastian ran toward him and grunted. "Bosk-meister! Yo!"
They slapped fists, reminding Taylor of bull rams smacking horns.
Their host was in chinos, Top-Siders and a green Harvard sweatshirt. His hands and face were red, his eyes watering from the cold. "We've been chopping wood for the fire."
A girl giggled at the apparent lie.
"Well," Bosk said, "carting it in. Same as chopping it. Just as much work."
Bosk leaned forward, his arm on Sebastian's shoulders. He whispered, "Jennie's here and she brought Billy-boy, you can believe it."
"No way! Is she totally fucked, or what?" Sebastian looked around uneasily. "And how 'bout Brittany?"
"Couldn't make it."
The lawyer's eyes were immeasurably relieved and Taylor remembered something from the club about unreturned phone calls.
Then Bosk's eyes danced to Taylor. " 'Lo. You're ...?"
"Taylor Lockwood."
"Right, you're the one who won't marry me."
"True, but you're in good company." She nodded at Sebastian. "I won't marry him either. You have a nice place here."
"Thanks. I'll show you around later. Come on inside. We've got a fire going."
After she'd washed up she joined the crowd in the den. They were mostly in their twenties. Names went past--Rob and Mindy and Gay-Gay and Trevor and Windham and MacKenzie (the latter both female), clusters of contemporary syllables more distinct than the faces of the handsome men and pretty women they identified.
Taylor smiled and waved and forgot the names instantly. They were friendly but reserved and Taylor wondered what they were thinking of her--a woman with more wop and mick in her than Brit, with a mass of kinky black hair, not a pert ponytail, and wearing a long paisley skirt and a black blouse, not a J. Crew stitch upon her body.
Suspicion ... That was the message from the women. From the men there was something very different. Something between casual flirtation and a knee-jerk invitation to hump. Taylor supposed that soon there'd be a lot of female fingers twining possessively through the belt loops of their men.
Bosk made martinis for the crowd but Taylor stuck with beer.
"Are you a lawyer?" one blonde asked.
"A paralegal."
"Oh," the woman said, blinking. "That's interesting."
"We need you folks," one handsome young man said as he tinkered nervously with his Rolex. "You save our butts every day." It seemed he wasn't being condescending; he was simply embarrassed for her and trying to salvage her pride.
"Where're you from? Boston, right? I detect Bostonian."
"Born on the North Shore."
"Oh, Locust Valley?" a pretty blond woman asked. The residence of the creme de la creme. J. P. Morgan's home.
"No, Glen Cove." A pleasant but strip-malled city. "But we moved to Maryland when I was twelve."
"Is your father or mother in the business?"
"Which business would that be?" Taylor asked innocently.
"Law, banking?" As if no other businesses existed.
"He manages a convenience store," she replied.
Sebastian, who'd already commented about her father and his renowned law practice, glanced at her with a cryptic look.
"Well, retail," one girl finally said, nodding with robust approval. "Good margins in retail lately."
"Very good," somebody else added.
And to her relief, Taylor Lockwood ceased to be a human being as far as they were concerned and their own conversation--the real and important conversation--resumed.
Dinner was Ada's jurisdiction.
She presided with the quiet authority of someone for whom social propriety is statutory. Somewhere, in a three-decades-old volume of Emily Post, this very layout of Waterford and Wedgwood was represented. Though the clothing was supposed to be casual, Ada's appearance in a rustling silk dress, black-velvet headband and necklace gripping a lemon-colored stone the size of a fat thumb made it clear that, whatever happened in the frat dining halls or eating clubs these youngsters were accustomed to, dinner in this particular house would be governed by a respectable modicum of formality.
Taylor tried a vain end run around the seating ("Oh, I'm sorry, was I supposed to sit there?"); Ada smilingly steered her away from Bosk's girlfriend (a potential source of information about the "project"), scolding, "Boy, girl, boy, girl ..."
Lobster bisque, a pear-and-Camembert salad, tiny veal chops surrounded by a yin-yang swirl of pureed peas and carrots, a green salad. A real butler served the meal.
Between polite words with the young man on her right Taylor tried to overhear the conversation between Bosk and Sebastian but Ada's voice was too loud--she was a lock-jawed caricature of Long Island money. She touched the men's
arms with her dark, bony fingers and flirted fiercely. Yet their hostess knew this game as well as she knew the proper wording for bread-and-butter notes. She had no intention of seducing these boys; the only organ at play here was her ego--though sex was a strong undercurrent of the meal and crude jokes, some of them really disgusting, flew back and forth. (The upper class, Taylor remembered, had by and large not been Puritans.)
Halfway through the profiteroles and espresso with anisette, the doorbell rang. Bosk rose and a few minutes later returned with a man of about forty-five. He was introduced as Dennis Callaghan.
Taylor disliked him at once.
She wasn't sure why. What she might in fairness have read as groomed, discerning and charming she believed was vain (spun, sprayed hair combed forward, a close-fitting suit with shot cuffs, gold bracelet), pompous (a disdaining look at the children around him) and dishonest (a broad smile he could not have felt).
He was also insulting: He ignored Taylor while he studied the bloused or sweatered breasts of every woman younger than herself at the table before turning a flattering smile on Ada with the respect due a matriarch.
Taylor then noticed that the climate at the table had changed considerably. Sebastian's expression was one of anger. He shot a dark, mystified glance at Bosk, who shrugged with a look that meant, It wasn't my fault. When she saw that, Taylor's interest immediately perked up. Perhaps Callaghan had some connection with the "project."
The visitor, whose beach house was apparently nearby, announced that he'd played hooky from Wall Street today to hold a couple of meetings out here and happened to notice the cars as he was driving back to the city. He thought he'd stop in and see Bosk and Sebastian.
The man glanced at Sebastian, and Taylor saw another finger wag, just like the other night. Callaghan nodded subtly.
And so the conversation remained social. As he sat down at the table and took a glass of wine--he'd eaten already--they talked about problems in finding grounds-keepers and the advantages and risks of helicoptering into Manhattan. Sebastian remained nervous as hell and when Taylor asked Callaghan what he did for a living the young lawyer answered for the businessman, offering quickly, "Wall Street, darling. Everybody out here's on Wall Street. Well, you've got an artist or two from time to time--Taylor's a musician, by the way."
"Really?"
The conversation turned back to her momentarily and before she could ask anything more about Callaghan, dinner was over and Sebastian had quickly shepherded Bosk and the businessman downstairs, explaining that they were going to check out Bosk's cigar cellar.
No one else was invited but the herd of preppies didn't take any offense. Ada nodded toward the port, sherry and liqueur and, armed with yet more alcohol, this contingent ambled into the panoramic living room for more gossip.
It was then that Taylor recalled: She hadn't told Sebastian that she was a musician.
Soon several people lit up cigarettes, Ada among them.
The smoke gave Taylor an excuse to drain her Grand Marnier and say she was going to step outside to get some air. Whether anyone thought this was rude, or suspicious, didn't matter; they all seemed relieved that the 7-Eleven heiress was leaving and they could spend some time dishing in earnest.
She took her leather jacket from the closet and walked out the front door, then strolled around the house until she spotted a four-foot-deep window well. She climbed down into it. A piece of glass was loose and she worked it free. She could not see the three men downstairs but their words, carried on the warm air, streamed up to her with the awkward-sounding hesitancies of conversations overheard but not witnessed.
"Got to be more careful," Sebastian said. "Jesus, I shit when I saw you here."
Callaghan said, "We've still got some details to work out. And you're impossible to get ahold of, Thom."
"Well, we can't just fucking waltz into each other's office and take a meeting now, can we? We've got to be careful about it, set it up ahead of time, keep everything secret."
Callaghan sighed. "I've been doing this sort of thing a lot longer than you have, Thom. We're going to get away with it. Stop worrying so much."
"I'm thinking about the phones," Bosk said. "You really think they're bugged?"
Sebastian said, "Of course they're fucking bugged. Jesus, don't be so naive.
Bosk: "Well, I can't run downstairs to make a call from a pay phone every time I want to talk to you. Somebody sees me doing that a couple of times and what're they going to think?"
Sebastian: "Well, that's what you're going to have to do. You can pick up cell phone transmissions even easier than landlines."
Callaghan: "What we could do--I've done this before--what we could do is get an answering service. You call and leave messages. I'll call on a separate line and pick them up. We'll have a second answering service going the other way."
Clever, Taylor Lockwood thought, though being truly clever, Thom, would have meant wearing gloves when you check out the file cabinet you're about to break into so you don't leave fingerprints.
Suddenly she felt a curious thrill. What was it? The excitement of the pursuit, she supposed, getting closer to her quarry. What Reece felt in the courtroom yesterday. What her father undoubtedly felt--in court, on the golf course, with his beloved shotgun out in the fields.
When she was young her father would take her with him when he'd go hunting on Saturday mornings in the fall. She'd hated those times, wanted to be back home in bed, watching cartoons or playing on her upright piano, shopping with her mother. But Samuel Lockwood, eyes keen and hungry for a kill, had insisted she come along. He'd carried the tiny, still-warm corpses of the birds back to the car, where came the moment she dreaded: To make her understand that the dead birds couldn't hurt her, he had her touch each one with her index finger.
There, that wasn't so bad, was it? Didn't hurt. They can't bite when they're dead, Taylie, remember that.
Dennis Callaghan now said, "Look, yeah, we have to be careful but we can't let this paralyze us."
"We're fucking thieves," Sebastian said. "Am I the only one taking this seriously?"
Bosk's laugh was flinty. "Well, whatta you want, Thom? You want to get walkie-talkies and scramblers? Disguises?"
"I'm just a little paranoid, okay? There was a weird fuckup."
"What?"
"Well, last Saturday night, when I was in the firm?"
"Right," Callaghan offered.
"I made sure nobody knew I was there--on Friday I taped the back door latch down so I could get in without leaving any record I was in. But what happens is this old asshole, a partner, cops my key and uses it to get in early Sunday morning. So now I'm in the system."
Gotcha, thought Taylor Lockwood. John Silbert Hemming, her tall private eye, would be proud of her.
"Shit," Bosk said. "Why'd he do it?"
"How the fuck do I know? Alzheimer's."
Callaghan said, "Not the end of the world. They don't know what you were doing there, right?"
"I don't think so."
"Well, relax. You've covered up everything real well, Thom.... Oh, here. Got a present."
"Ah, nectar of the gods," Sebastian said.
"Sure," Bosk said. A long pause.
Then a sniff. Another.
The magic powder boosted Sebastian's spirits considerably. When he spoke next he said with a laugh, "I like this--fucking the firm that fucked me and getting rich in the process."
"You want a Lamborghini?" Callaghan asked.
Bosk said seriously, "I don't like the ride. Rough, you know."
Sebastian: "I live in Manhattan. What'm I gonna do, alternate-side-of-the-street parking with a two-hundred-thousand-dollar car?"
"Keep it out at your summer house, Thom, like we all do."
"I don't have a summer house. And I don't want one."
The wind was dicing her face and ears. She closed her eyes against the cold. Her legs and thighs, the last stronghold of heat, were going numb. She touched the glass that separ
ated her from a room that was fifty degrees warmer, where she heard the sounds of two chubby, spoiled boys sniffing the residue of cocaine into their nostrils.
Bosk said, "So what's with this Taylor cunt? She put out?"
"Fuck you," Sebastian said unemotionally.
"No, does she fuck you? That's what I'm asking."
Callaghan sniffed his white powder then said, "You've got gonads for brains, Bosk. Is that all you think about? Sex?"
"Money, too. I think a lot about money but mostly I think about sex. Tell me about Taylor."
"I don't want to talk about her," Sebastian said menacingly.
"Does she have big tits? I couldn't tell.... Hey chill, will you, man? That's a fucking scary look. I was just curious."
There was a pause. And with an ominous tone in his voice Sebastian said, "Well, don't get too interested in her. You hear me?"
Taylor felt a ping of fear at that.
"I'm just--"
"You hear what I'm saying?"
"Hey, chill.... I hear you, Sea Bass, I hear you."
Then the conversation turned to sports and, stinging with cold, Taylor left them to their banter. She walked inside and rejoined the crowd in front of the fireplace, observing how the conversation grew sedate when she entered the room. She nudged herself into the center of the group and sat on the hearth with her back to the fire until the pain from the cold became a fierce itch and then finally died away.
Around 10 P.M. the drapery man walked through Greenwich Village under huge trapezoids of bruise-purple clouds, lit from the perpetual glow of the city.
He was concentrating on the buildings and finally arrived at the address he sought.
At the service entrance, which smelled of sour garbage, he inserted his lock gun and flicked the trigger a dozen times until the teeth of the tumblers were aligned. The door opened easily. He climbed to the fourth floor and picked another set of locks--on the door of the particular apartment he sought.
Inside, he slipped his ice-pick weapon into his belt, handle up, ready to grab it if he had to, and began to search. He found a bag of needlepoint (one a Christmas scene that sure wouldn't be finished in time for the holiday), a box of Weight Watchers apple snacks, a garter belt in its original gift box, apparently never worn, cartons of musty sheet music. An elaborate, expensive-looking reel-to-reel tape recorder. Dozens of tape cassettes with the same title: The Heat of Midnight. Songs by Taylor Lockwood.