Never Enough (12 page)

ROB COULDN’T DRIVE, BUT HE RODE TO MAINE IN A LIMOUSINE
to pick up Isabel from summer camp. Then the two of them flew back to Hong Kong. He e-mailed Frank Shea on Tuesday, August 26, saying his recovery was progressing more slowly than expected. He added: “The other parts of the equation don’t help.”

That evening, as was his custom when he was home, Rob poured himself a few ounces of single-malt scotch from a crystal decanter kept on a living room sideboard. He thought it tasted slightly peculiar. When he stood up, he felt so dizzy he almost fell. He was suddenly overwhelmingly sleepy. He assumed he was having a reaction to jet lag combined with the painkillers he was taking for his back.

The next day, he paid another visit to the offices of Hampton, Winter and Glynn, this time speaking to a partner named Robin Egerton. In addition to telling him that his wife was suffering from depression, he acknowledged that she was “committing adultery.” He said she’d been “unfazed” when he’d confronted her about it. He also said he didn’t want to divorce her but was considering separation. Egerton told him to keep a close eye on the children’s passports, lest Nancy try to go back to the United States and take them with her. Rob claimed he wasn’t worried about that. He said she “enjoyed the expatriate life” too much to leave it behind. Egerton also suggested that he change his will. Rob told him that was a good idea and he’d get around to it soon.

He made it a point not to take any painkillers during the day. But halfway through his evening scotch he felt the waves of wooziness coming on. This time, he didn’t finish the drink. Instead, he went to his home office and booted up eBlaster and Spector Pro to check Nancy’s e-mails and to see what Web sites she’d been visiting. He saw the search terms: “sleeping pills,” “drug overdose,” and “medication causing heart attack.”

While Rob was at work the next day, Nancy drove into Central for an appointment with a psychiatrist named Desmond Fung, whose offices were in New Henry House on Ice House Street.

She told Dr. Fung that her husband was abusing her both verbally and physically. She said they’d have terrible fights and that she was so fearful for her safety when she went to bed that she was unable to sleep. He wrote her a prescription for Stilnox, the brand name under which zolpidem was sold in Hong Kong. In the United States, zolpidem was sold as Ambien.

Over the next two nights, Rob felt even woozier from his scotch. On Sunday, August 31, he got up early so he could look through Nancy’s pocketbook while she slept. He found the bottle of Stilnox. At that point, he called Frank Shea in New York, where it was Saturday night. He described how he’d been feeling after having a drink and what he’d discovered about Nancy’s Internet searches and what he’d found in her handbag. “I don’t want to overreact,” he said, “but do you think it’s possible that she’s drugging my drinks?”

“Of course it’s possible.”

“But why would she do that?”

“Maybe she wants to knock you out so she can sneak out of the apartment and meet lover boy.”

“You don’t think he’s in Hong Kong, do you?”

“Want me to find out?”

“Can you?”

“One phone call, Rob. I can have somebody check his trailer tomorrow. It will be Sunday, so he ought to be home. Call me back in the morning, which will be Sunday night for you.”

When Rob called back, Frank confirmed that Del Priore was in New Hampshire.

“Well, that’s something to be thankful for.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“If she’s trying to put you out of commission because she’s got him stashed at the hotel there, that’s understandable. But he’s not there, so that’s not it.”

“And so?”

“I don’t know, Rob. But if I were you, I’d stop drinking that single malt.”

As it happened, Frank had business in Hong Kong during the second week of September. He and his wife, Denise, would be there for several days, staying at the Harbour Plaza, a four-star hotel on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbour. Although Rob was no longer a client, Frank remained concerned about him. He also enjoyed his company. When he e-mailed Rob to ask about getting together, Rob replied with an invitation for dinner at the China Club on Tuesday, September 9.

The China Club was private; it would not do for an investment banker as successful as Rob to invite guests to a restaurant that was open to the public. But even among Hong Kong’s private dining venues, the China Club was considered unique. David Tang, Hong Kong’s highest-profile and most eclectic entrepreneur, had opened it in 1991.

The place became a genuine social phenomenon that brought together political and business leaders of the East and West and encouraged them to mingle in an atmosphere of privilege, leavened with touches of quirky humor. Nowhere else in the world could one have found Princess Diana and the artist Deng Lin, daughter of Deng Xiaoping, sipping cocktails together at the Long March Bar.

In addition to its restaurant—perhaps
the
best in a city acclaimed for its ability to fuse the finest elements of Eastern and Western cuisine—the club contained an art gallery, library, smoking room, and recital hall, where Tang presented lectures, poetry readings, and chamber music concerts. But it was the club’s 350 works of art that garnered the most attention. Ranging from Maoist propaganda prototypes to the avant-garde, apolitical abstractions of the newest wave of Chinese iconoclasts, Tang’s collection, in the words of the author Orville Schell, “makes the China Club more than just a clever replication of old Shanghai for young, culturally defoliated businessmen in search of ersatz atmosphere” and transforms it into “the beating heart of Hong Kong for this new up-and-coming generation of entrepreneurs.”

Many a deal had been broached, many a multimillion-dollar commitment had been secured, many a birthday and anniversary had been celebrated, many a banquet for mainland Chinese dignitaries had been held, many a promise had been made, and many a confidence betrayed at the China Club since its opening twelve years earlier, but it is entirely possible that not until Rob Kissel dined there with Frank Shea and his wife on the night of September 9, 2003, had it been the venue in which a man was told that his wife might be planning to kill him.

Rob was still in pain, walking gingerly and relying heavily on his cane. Nonetheless, throughout the meal he played the role of gracious host. Afterward, he took the Sheas on a tour of the club. When Frank’s wife tactfully said she’d like to linger a bit with the artwork, Rob and Frank went to the smoking room, where Rob lit a large Cuban cigar. It should have been a moment of contentment. It was not.

“They’re writing to each other,” Rob said. “He’s sending his letters to the school. I found some in her handbag last week. I was wondering why she was doing so much more volunteer work this year. Now I know.”

“These are love letters?” Frank asked. “Not just letters between friends?”

Rob unfolded a piece of paper and read:
“Another day down. Another day closer to seeing you. I am going crazy thinking about you. Whenever a customer comes in the store I want to say, ‘Don’t bother me. I am thinking about Nancy.’ I miss holding you, hearing your voice. I love it when you call my name. It makes me melt.”

“He ain’t Shakespeare,” Frank said. “But ‘another day closer’ is not good. Anything funny with your drinks?”

“I took your advice. No scotch at night. But now the coffee in the morning is doing a job. I practically fall asleep at the wheel on my way to the office, and as soon as I get there all I want to do is lie down on my couch and take a nap.”

“How much life insurance do you have?”

“About ten million.”

“And she’s the beneficiary?”

“That’s right.”

There was a pause. Frank looked deep in concentration. Rob took a long draw on his cigar.

“You might want to change the beneficiary and make sure she knows that you’ve done it.”

“I don’t know, Frank. I think that would raise her suspicions.”

“
Her
suspicions? About what? That you know the affair is still going on? I think it might be a wake-up call.”

“Do you really think I need to worry?”

“Let’s review the bidding, Rob. She gets ten million dollars if you die. She’s still secretly in touch with her lover. She brings home a bottle of sleeping pills from a doctor you didn’t even know she was going to see. And she’s on the Web looking for drugs that can kill somebody without leaving a trace. Analyze
that.
”

“When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound good.”

From New York the following week, Frank e-mailed Rob asking him to send hair and urine samples for laboratory analysis. “We will need sample of liquid in glass or rubber vial. Hair closely shaved from underarm or head, 2” long and pencil thick in group. I am getting another opinion on amount tomorrow from another lab we use for hair samples.”

Rob replied: “Strange development at home. Nancy has made a 180 degree turn and wants to stay together. A bit of a roller coaster, I have to say. I am going to send the stuff anyway…”

When nothing had arrived three days later, Frank got back in touch: “Just following up on my last e-mail about getting the test and forwarding a sample of the liquid.”

Rob replied: “I got it. Thanks! Been crazy busy. I am going to send it out today. Kind of in denial, too.”

At this point, had this been a movie, the audience would have been shouting to Rob: “Send the samples!” But it wasn’t a movie. There wasn’t any audience, and Rob never sent the samples. Instead, to take his mind off his troubles, he went out and bought a new Porsche. On September 25, he e-mailed Bryna O’Shea:

He followed the e-mail with a phone call to Bryna in which he said that he and Nancy had gone to a counseling session on Monday, September 15, and that it had deteriorated when Nancy had jumped up and said, “I want a divorce!” and then had sat down again and had refused to speak further.

But she came to his office the next day, he said—the first time in all the years they’d been in Hong Kong that she’d ever come to his office—and cleared a space on his desk and sat on it and leaned forward and said, “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean what I said in therapy. I don’t want a divorce. I really love you.”

“So maybe the worst is over,” Rob said to Bryna.

“Do you believe that?”

“I don’t know. I think she’s confused. I don’t think she knows what she wants. At least she’s with me and not with him. On the other hand, she might be trying to kill me.”

“What?”

He told her how he’d had to stop drinking his own scotch and had stopped drinking the coffee Nancy made for him, and about how Frank Shea wanted him to have a lab analyze blood, urine, and hair samples, as well as samples of any drink he thought she’d doctored. He also told her about the Internet searches and the sites to which the results had led Nancy.

“They’re dark, creepy, all about drugs and death. Do
you
think she’s trying to kill me?”

“Oh,
please,
” she said. She knew Nancy well enough to be able to laugh that one off. “Hey, Rob. If you think she is, make sure you remember me in your will.”

Rob didn’t laugh. Instead, he said, “Promise me that if anything happens you’ll make sure my kids are okay.”

By the end of September, Rob and Nancy were like intelligence agents operating under deep cover on behalf of warring superpowers. Neither admitted to having a hidden agenda, but each was trying to unearth the other’s most closely guarded secrets.

Nancy rifled through the summer’s Hong Kong phone bills and found that in June and July Rob had made repeated calls to three different numbers on Long Island. She called Del Priore on her secret cell phone and told him to check the numbers. He called back to say that one of them belonged to an investigation agency named Alpha Group.

“I told you!” she said. “I told you he hired a private detective. I told you he was having me followed, didn’t I? Didn’t I say he’d stop at nothing? God knows what he’s doing now—tapping the phones, bugging my car so he can hear everything I say while I’m driving…Michael, he’s probably tapping your phone, too. He’s probably listening to us talking right now! That fucking son of a bitch. Do you see what I mean? Do you see how he’s always in my face? We can’t trust him, Michael. There’s no telling what he might do.”

Meanwhile, Rob was searching obsessively through all of Nancy’s drawers and closets, her handbag and her wallet and the pockets of her clothes. He was looking for pills, for love letters, for mysterious receipts. He found nothing. So Rob thought that September had passed without Nancy having spoken to Del Priore. He didn’t know that she’d called him forty-eight times.