Exact Revenge Page 19

  My mouth is dry and my throat tight, but Frank’s pale blue eyes relax.

  “You got that right,” he says with a slight nod. “Best thing I’ve got going. Plays quarterback for Syracuse. Did he tell you? I guess you know about the game. Buying the Jets, right? My casinos make a mint off the NFL.”

  “It’s an investment,” I say, “but I know every team likes to draft hometown players when they get the chance.”

  “Good,” Frank says with a chuckle, then he slaps Allen hard on the back and grabs him by the upper arm to give him a little shake. “But you’ll have to negotiate with me if you want this guy.”

  “You’re an agent?” I ask.

  “I am,” he says.

  Allen’s face is flushed and he looks at the floor where the toe of his shoe follows a bloodline in the stone.

  “Cool under pressure,” Frank says, mussing his hair like he’s ten. “Just like his old man… All right, gotta go. We’ll have to get together.”

  Allen watches his father leave, then he turns to me and shrugs.

  “I’m sorry he’s so busy,” he says.

  “No,” I say, “don’t apologize. A guy like your dad has important things going on. Believe me.”

  Allen studies my face and I stare flatly back at him.

  “I know you’re in a hurry too,” he says after a blink. “Come on. I’ll let you go, but I promised I’d introduce you to my mom.”

  Allen leads me through a great room with deep-cushioned couches and chairs and a marble fireplace I could almost stand up in. The walls are hung with oil paintings-copies, but good ones-and heavy velvet drapes. Over the mantel is a full-length portrait of Lexis standing on a cliff overlooking whitecapped water.

  Her figure is straight and streamlined, draped in a deep blue dress that matches her eyes. Her dark hair is being blown back. The sky is roiling with sunbeams and charcoal clouds. Her lips are pressed together, unsmiling, and she stares off.

  Allen sees me looking and says, “That’s her. My dad surprised her with that painting. It’s a John Currin. She hates it.”

  “Very pretty,” I say.

  “She’s quiet,” he says, “but she’s great.”

  We leave the big room and walk down a long wide hallway.

  “She doesn’t usually let anyone in her studio,” he says. “But when I told her about you and asked if it was okay, she said yes.”

  He stops in front of a heavy wood-paneled door, gently raps his knuckles, and then swings it open.

  41

  LIKE THE REST OF THE APARTMENT, the ceilings in the studio are twenty feet high. The walls are crowded with framed canvases, reminding me of the Vatican Museum. It must be everything she’s ever painted. I see one work that I recognize from my past life. It’s finished.

  Tall arching windows face Park Avenue on the opposite side of the room. At the far end, Lexis stands just out of the sunlight at an easel. Her back is to us, hair up with the wisps of gray. She’s dressed in tan capri slacks, flat shoes, and a man’s dress shirt rolled up at the sleeves.

  Next to her easel a small table is cluttered with tubes of paint and a wineglass, nearly empty and smudged. She stares at the blank canvas in front of her. In one hand is a brush without any paint. Her other hand hangs limp at her side, and when Allen calls softly to her, she makes no indication that she’s heard him.

  We cross the room and she is startled by his touch. Allen introduces us. She smiles, but when she takes my hand, the color leaves her cheeks. Her fingers are bony and chilled. Her eyes work their way around my face before she looks into mine.

  She drops my hand and says, “Allen says you’re new to the city.”

  “I found a place on Fifth Avenue, not too far from the Met,” I say, handing her a card with my home phone number on it. “I’d like to have you and Frank over for dinner sometime. Why don’t you let me know when you’re free?”

  “Of course,” she says, clutching the card in her hand and bending it.

  She squints her eyes at me and angles her head. Her mouth opens as if she’s going to say something. I look away to study her empty canvas.

  “Well,” I say, holding out my wrist to look at my watch. “It was a pleasure, Mrs. Steffano.”

  “Just Lexis,” she says in a small voice.

  “Lexis. Okay.”

  I touch the skin on my face and feel the smooth texture where surgery has built it up and pulled it taut. Allen sees me out. On the street, he thanks me.

  “She appreciates what you did,” he says. “I told you she’s just quiet.”

  “Allen,” I say with a dismissive wave, “we’re friends, right? She’s very nice.”

  “She is,” he says with a broad smile that reminds me more of the Lexis I knew than the one I just saw. “See you tonight.”

  I turn and concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. It’s as if my legs are asleep and I can barely feel the concrete beneath my feet. She is still beautiful. Older. Sad. But the color of her eyes is the same. Those high cheekbones. And as much as I hate her for what she’s become, the urge to just hold her felt so heavy in my chest that I thought I was going to fall over.

  I shake my head and breathe deep. There is a Starbucks around the corner and I go inside and sit down. It takes a few minutes before I get back to myself. But I think of my father and Lester and also of Helena and everything is soon clear again.

  I march up Park Avenue through the bustle to the NFL offices. It takes hours of signing papers, but Woody Johnson seems relieved to be free from his football team. Even as a non-sports fan I know that the pressure on the owner of a sports franchise in New York is unique.

  The home I bought is one of the original Fifth Avenue uptown mansions, built in the late 1800s by the robber barons of the time, like Frick, Morgan, and Vanderbilt. After an interview about the team with Ira Berkow from the New York Times, I have dinner by myself in the second-floor dining room. Three stone-faced servants hurry in and out. Helena is already at the Garden.

  Outside the French doors, I can see the sun as it drops down behind the trees of Central Park. It grows cool enough outside so that moisture beads up on the edges of the glass. I chew mechanically and swallow my lumps of meat without any real pleasure. After a mouthful of wine, I set down my napkin and step out onto the balcony. The smell of fresh tree bark reminds me of another life, when I would turkey hunt as a boy, sitting motionless in the sea of new green leaves, straining my ears and scanning the gray dawn between the silver and black trunks of the trees for a flicker of movement.

  I take a cigar from my pocket, and Bert appears like a genie with a wooden match that he strikes up with his thumbnail.

  “Thanks,” I say. I can see the ghost of my breath and I put my cigar to the flame.

  “My grandmother used to say that winter always breathes its one last breath in June,” he says before the match goes out and his face is lost in the shadow of a tall potted arborvitae. “You want a coat?”

  I look away from Bert and across Fifth Avenue. Beneath their crown of new leaves the tree branches are an inky web. It’s impossible to know where one tree ends and the next one begins.

  “I don’t get cold,” I say.

  “You don’t get hot either,” he says. “Like the water snake.”

  I exhale a plume of blue smoke with a slow nod.

  “My grandmother always said to me that every man has the spirit of an animal,” Bert says after a pause. “That when our spirits travel from one life to the next, they remember where they were in the last life.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, inhaling so that the end of my cigar glows. “I remember my last life pretty well and I wasn’t cold-blooded.”

  “What, a running deer?” he asks. “Like your totem?”

  “No,” I say, “a white man.”

  A cab jams on its brakes and the driver lays on his horn before he roars off down the street, swerving after a black Town Car. After that, I can hear the rattle of Bert’s breathing above
the splash of the fountain out front. Then the lights change and the next wave of traffic sweeps past. The clouds are heavy and low, their gray bellies lit by the city’s amber glow.

  “She’s an amazing woman,” Bert says.

  “Who?”

  “Are there two?”

  “Helena?”

  “I mean more than just because she’s on those posters all over the bus stops,” Bert says.

  “I know that,” I say.

  “Then who’s the other one?” he asks.

  “I saw Allen’s mother today,” I say after a pause. “I knew her in that past life.”

  “You knew all of these people.”

  “Yes and no,” I say. “Now I really know them.”

  I turn to look at Bert, but he’s gone, and for a moment I wonder if he was there at all.

  I go up to my bedroom on the third floor and change into slacks and a thin cable-knit black sweater, then take my limousine to the Garden. The boys are in the box and full of themselves. Helena is magnificent. After the show, we worm our way through the concrete tunnels into the vaulted green room, where I introduce them-wide-eyed-to Helena and the five dancers that accompany the show. After turning over my limousine to Allen and Martin and the dancers for the night, I get inside the long black car waiting for Helena and we go back to the Fifth Avenue mansion.

  Helena showers and I strip off my clothes and wait in the dark for her on the bed. When she comes back, her long hair is wet and she’s wearing a red slip. I gently pull it up over her head and run my hands the length of her lean muscular torso.

  “Why do you like to stand up?” she says in an amused whisper.

  “So I can get three-dimensional,” I say. “I don’t want to miss anything.”

  “Front and back,” she says. Her teeth gleam in the dim light spilling out from the bathroom.

  She turns away from me, arches her back, and pulls me close, reaching behind her and snaking a naked arm around my neck. She twists her head around and our mouths find each other.

  After, when we’re slick with sweat, I lay breathing heavy with her cheek on my stomach. When I ask her if she’s tired, the only response is a soft snore. I stroke her hair, still damp from the shower but full now and slippery smooth.

  I ease out from under her, cross the thick oriental rug to my closet, and pull on a pair of jeans. Wearing a dark T-shirt and driving shoes, I step softly down the sweeping spiral stairs, running my hand along the smooth marble banister. A small table lamp outside the library dimly lights the hall on the first floor. The weight of the bronze door handle is cool and it clanks when I turn it to let myself out into the night.

  Past the fountain and the white lights mounted on the stone gateposts, the park across the avenue is like ink. I smell the cigar before I see the orange dot of its glow. The image takes me back to the night I delivered Roger Williamson’s letter. My heart skips a beat and the hair rises on the back of my neck. I walk toward whoever is standing there looking at my home.

  As I cross the street, I can begin to make out the enormous shape of the smoker standing in front of the low stone wall that marks the edge of the park. When the cigar glows orange again, my foot is on the curb and I see the round cheeks and narrowed eyes of my friend.

  I exhale and say, “You’re up late.”

  “There’s lots of things going on in there, you know,” he says, swinging his chin over his shoulder at the murky park. “Bad things. Good things too. I like to walk in there, but not on the path.”

  “I bet you scare the hell out of people.”

  “They don’t see me,” he says, drawing on his cigar. “I’m an Indian. You’re the one who should be sleeping.”

  “Come on,” I say, and turn to walk up the sidewalk toward the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “When you’ve been where I was, you don’t like to waste time sleeping.”

  “Did you get done what you had to tonight?” he asks, stepping along beside me.

  “Allen and his friend were impressed,” I say. “Especially when they saw Helena.”

  “She’s impressive,” he says. “I’m surprised you let her run around all over the place the way she does.”

  “She’s a star, Bert. That’s what they do. Go on tour.”

  “You ever see the way she looks at you whenever she gets ready to leave?” he asks.

  “I see her.”

  “Like she’s waiting for you to stop her.”

  “Why would I do that?” I say.

  He glances at me, then jams his hands into the pockets of his coat. The cigar ember glows, then he exhales.

  “Isn’t just walking like this wasting time?” he asks.

  “This is living,” I say. “Especially if you’ve got another one of those Cubans. You hear that wind in the trees?”

  “Here,” he says, digging into the front pocket of his jean jacket.

  We stop under a wrought iron streetlamp and he lights me up. I draw in the rich smoke and let it linger in the back of my throat before exhaling and watching it hurry away.

  We smoke while we walk, not saying a word until we reach the steps of the massive museum. Bright lights shine down on the towering columns and the colorful banners above, each the size of a tractor-trailer. One announces the contents of an Egyptian tomb, another the czar’s Fabergé eggs, and the third a Rembrandt exhibit.

  “Can you imagine trying to break into this place to steal a painting?” I say.

  Bert looks the building over from end to end, then up and down with a wrinkled brow. The ember of his cigar flares and he exhales a plume of smoke.

  “You’d have to think big,” he says finally.

  I nod and say, “I knew a guy who thought big.”

  “What happened to him?”

  I shake my head and say, “In the end it killed him.”

  I start back toward the mansion and we walk for a while before Bert says, “Is it gonna kill you?”

  “No,” I say, taking the cigar out of my mouth. “I’m not the one you have to worry about. But there are some people out there who’ll think just getting killed is a pretty good deal.”

  42

  “I’M GOING FOR A JOG,” Lexis said to her maid. She was dressed in a velour sweatsuit and sneakers with her hair tied into a ponytail.

  The girl nodded without looking up from her work. Instead of taking the elevator, Lexis quietly opened the door to the stairs, looked behind her, then started down. She let herself out through the maintenance door in the back and jogged down the alley. When she came to the street, she looked before turning right and heading toward the stench of the Third Avenue subway station.

  On the platform, she watched the stairs. When the number five train came, she waited until the last second before getting on, the doors nearly closing on her foot. She stood swaying in the car, scanning the faces until she got off on 77th Street. Traffic was heavy. The last remnants of rush hour. Even the sidewalks were crowded with people, and it was a slow-going jog until she reached the park. She snaked her way south, staying off the main paths, looking over her shoulder from time to time.

  Tree leaves rustled overhead in a sweet breeze. A duck quacked on the Pond, taking off into the dusk, and its sound echoed off the stone face of the wall bordering 59th Street. Lexis looked behind her at the shadows that had grown thick. She knew Frank liked to keep an eye on the people who were close to him. When she swung her head back around, a jogger coming the other way startled her.

  The Plaza Hotel showed its white face through the trees, illuminated by lights that made its green roof practically glow. Lexis smelled the horses and thought of the times she’d taken Allen for long carriage rides through the park. They’d take one every birthday until he turned fifteen and brought a girl of his own. A tradition between the two of them. She thought of others. Reading before bed at night. Museum exhibits on Saturday afternoons. Early breakfasts at E.J.’s while Frank slept in.

  A young carriage driver wearing a stovepipe hat looked down from his white ca
rriage and rattled his leather reins.

  Cornell Ricks’s long stooped back jumped out at her. He sat at the Oak Room bar, bent over a martini, stirring it absently with a straw, and glancing to his right and left. In front of him on the dark wood was a bowl of mixed nuts. Like most of the people, he was dressed for business. His suit was gray and the thick burgundy and blue stripes of his tie were punctuated with a Harvard pin.

  “Thank you for coming,” Lexis said, when she was directly behind him.

  His pale cheeks flushed and she felt her stomach knot up.

  “I’m sorry for the secrecy,” she said.

  “Not at all. Please,” he said, sliding his stool over her way. “Sit.”

  Lexis looked around at the crowd and said, “Do you think we could get a booth?”

  “Of course,” he said. He made his way to the hostess and bent over, speaking into her ear for a moment. She nodded and took two menus, pushing through the crowd and seating them in a leather booth right away. What light there was seemed to be absorbed by the dark wood panel that surrounded them.

  “I bring the governor here when he’s in town,” Cornell said to Lexis with a toothy smile as they slid into the booth. “So I’m good for business.”

  Lexis forced a smile, but it quickly faded. Cornell leaned over the dark wood table and she could smell the gin.

  “So, what can I do?” he asked in a throaty voice.

  “I know Frank is a very big contributor,” she said, looking down at her hands and nodding to herself.

  He nodded right back and said, “And that’s why I’m here.”

  “Can you help me, though?” she said, looking up and lowering her voice. “Without saying anything?”

  “Like… a favor that Frank doesn’t know about?” Cornell said.

  “Yes.”

  He leaned back and, smiling, said, “In politics, when someone wants you to have a cup of coffee it’s because they want to ask you something easy. A drink lots of times will mean something shaky. But then you’re not in politics, so I wasn’t sure.”