The Lacey Confession (21 page)

The Mercure de Draak, in Bergen op Zoom, overlooks the Grote Market square. It is the oldest hotel in the Netherlands. The first guest slept there—in which of the three fourteenth-century buildings was long forgotten—in 1397. By the time Harry Levine arrived, more than 600 years later, the place had been renovated. They kept the original façades, but the ancient houses, once only attached to each other, had been combined, their interiors long ago joined together. The entire hotel, in its newest transformation, was furnished in a seventeenth-century motif. Antiques, stylized wallpapers, luxuriously displayed flower arrangements, all highlighted by meticulously selected period furniture, decorated the rooms as well as the common areas. It was still a small hotel, with only 50 rooms, a cozy bar and a small restaurant. The traditional Dutch breakfast of coffee, cheese, ham and breads was served downstairs each morning. Somewhere along the way—no one could say in exactly which century—hard-boiled eggs and orange juice joined the menu.

Bergen op Zoom had not only a wonderful name, one that rolled off the tongue like Dutch chocolate melting in your mouth, it had something else for Harry Levine. It was Roswell, Georgia's sister city. The alliance between the two small towns, a continent and an ocean apart, had been but a curiosity to him before. Sister city associations were purely symbolic. The suburb of Atlanta had nothing meaningful in common with its Dutch sister. But after escaping Tucker Poesy, Harry needed to go somewhere. He wanted nothing as much as he wanted to go home, to Roswell. That was, of course, out of the question. The flight was too long. He was certain to be discovered before he landed. He needed to go straight to the airport and fly somewhere, quickly. So he did the first thing he could think of. He flew to Amsterdam, took a train about an hour and a half south, beyond Rotterdam, to Bergen op Zoom. He checked into a hotel, and following a good seven-hour sleep and a hot shower, he called his aunt.

“Tia Chita, estoy tan alegre hablar con usted.”

“¿Donde está usted?” she said. “Soy así que preocupado. ¿Está usted bien?” Conchita Crystal looked around the suite. Harry had called her cell phone and she was not alone. After a night with Devereaux, she traveled on to New York. One of her agents, the one she used to negotiate advertising endorsements, was in the living room of her Plaza Hotel accommodations. He brought three of his assistants with him. She had a week of meetings scheduled with a series of different people and since she hated going out, dodging crowds and press, especially in New York, she had taken a large suite and told everyone to come to her. She had the living room, where she could handle her business affairs quite comfortably, a formal dining room that could easily host dinner for twelve, a full kitchen and two bedrooms, across from each other, down a hall. One was for her and the other was left empty. She was told, when she made the reservation herself, using the name Linda Morales, if she wanted the big suite overlooking Central Park, she had to take one with two bedrooms. The one-bedroom suites were simply too small. When Harry called, she excused herself, walked down the hallway and into her bedroom closing two sets of doors behind her.

“Are you there, Harry?” she said, this time in English.

“I'm still here,” he said.

“Where?” she asked.

“I shouldn't tell you. It may be dangerous for you to know.”

“Let me worry about that. Where are you?”

“It's better you don't know,” said Harry.

“Are you still in London, Harry?”

“No, I'm not. I just wanted you to know I'm all right. Tell aunt Sadie. She worries, you know.”

“I'll let her know,” said his Aunt Chita. “Wherever you are, are you safe there?”

“I think so. I hope so. This whole thing is crazy. Even people who are supposed to help me seem like they're not. I can't figure out why this is happening.”

“You have something,” she said, “something important. Something a lot of people don't want revealed.”

“Yes, I know,” he said. “I've been reading it. I can't tell you . . . it's not safe for you to know anything. People have been murdered, Tia Chita. Is it worth killing for?”

“Apparently so, Harry. Don't worry about me. My concern is your safety. I want you to listen to me carefully. Do you understand? ¿Comprende?”

“Sí.”

“Bueno.” His aunt told Harry she had contacted somebody who would help him, someone who would take him to a place where he would be absolutely safe. “Su nombre es Walter Sherman. Confielo en. ¡Confielo en solamente!”

“Chita, don't try to help me. Not now. I'll be just fine. I know what I'm doing.” Harry's aunt didn't know he was under orders from the President of the United States. He thought better about telling her that. “Don't send someone after me. He won't find me.”

“Yes he will,” she answered, sounding very much like his mother. “And when he does, trust in him. Trust only in him. Do you hear me, Harry?”

“I will,” said Harry. “I will trust him and only him. I promise.” Then he added, with a tremble in his voice that brought tears of joy to his aunt's eyes, “I love you, Aunt Chita.”

“El dios esté con usted, mi Harry querido.”

When the gentle winds come rolling in off the sea, early in the morning, a sweet breeze blows through Billy's. Helen brought Walter the usual, a plate of scrambled eggs and toast. Of course, he drank a Diet Coke.
The New York Times
was waiting for him. When the paper arrived on St. John, brought over on the early ferry from St. Thomas, the first place they took it was across the square to Billy's. It's a small island. Everyone knows everyone else and everyone knows Walter Sherman liked to read
The New York Times
with his breakfast.

Helen was playing with the CDs. Billy needed to hear music. He was the kind of man who turns on a radio when he enters a bathroom, and when he walks into the kitchen first thing in the morning. He hadn't been in a car without music playing since he was a teenager. He had the place wired for sound. In the back, in a small office behind the kitchen, he had a whole bookcase stacked with CDs. Usually, he brought a dozen or so out to the bar. He'd play them, one after another, until he went through them all. Then he would get a new batch. Neither Walter nor Ike ever intruded on Billy's selection. His taste covered all kinds of music and they rather liked the element of surprise. Who knew what Billy would play next? Van Morrison, Rosemary Clooney, Monk or Miles Davis. These days Helen shared this part of Billy's life as well. It was just as likely what you heard was her choice as his. Walter watched her tinker with the machinery. When she finished and walked away, the plaintive cry of James Brown,
The Godfather of Soul, The Hardest Working Man in Show Business,
called out to him, demanding and receiving Walter's complete and willing agreement.
Isn't that the truth
, he thought.

“It's a man's world. It's a man's world.

But it wouldn't be nothing. Nothing

Without a woman or a girl.”

“You ever drink coffee?” Helen asked him.

“I used to,” Walter said. “Sometimes I still do, as a sort of dessert with dinner. But hardly ever in the morning. Not anymore.” She shook her head and made her way back to the kitchen. Billy was already back there, busy checking the fresh fish—red snapper, grouper, tuna—that had come in less than fifteen minutes before.

No one was at the bar. Ike had yet to show up. Walter's cell phone rang. He reached into his shirt pocket, flipped it open and said, “Yes.”

“He called me, Walter. I just spoke to him. I gave him your name, but he wouldn't tell me where he is. He's not in London anymore. He said that. But where he is, I don't know. Go, find him, please! Where can he be?”

“Chita, calm down now. I think I know where he may be. Don't worry. I'll find him.” Walter found it very strange and unsettling saying this to a client, even Conchita Crystal. Reassurance was not part of the deal. Sympathy and concern were not included with his services. Personal involvement was the worst of all sins. Caring for either the target or the client frightened Walter. Detachment was essential to his success, or so he believed for forty years. Nevertheless, he said, “I'm going to go get him. It'll be all right. I promise you.”

“When will you leave?” she asked.

“Soon,” he said. “Soon as possible. I have to start earning my twenty-five dollars a day, don't I?” He thought he heard a small sob on the other end of the phone.

“What twenty-five . . . ?” she said, clearing her throat and sniffling. She was crying, thought Walter.

“I rented it. We can do that, even here, in the middle of . . .”

“Nowhere?”

“Middle of nowhere, that's right.
The Big Sleep.
I'm taller than Bogart, you know. Have a better tan too. And you don't look a thing like Lauren Bacall.”

“Oh, now you hurt my feelings, Walter.” He knew it couldn't be done, but he was thrilled to hear her say so.

“You're more beautiful than she was,” he blurted out, instantly feeling a flush on the back of his neck, a heat rash that ran at breakneck speed all across his face.
Was I out of line?
he worried.

“Muchos gracias, señor.”

“De nada.”

“You still talking with that Chita Crystal,” said Ike. Walter looked up to see the old man sitting at his regular table. Grandson Johnson had dropped him off at the curb. It wasn't a question Ike asked, even though it may have sounded like one. And Ike pronounced her last name like it was just another piece of glass. His grandson Johnson—called Sonny by just about everyone who knew him—helped Ike make the short walk from Sonny's jeep to the table in Billy's that was as much the old man's home as the house he slept in. When Ike was settled in, Sonny kissed him on the top of his bald head, smiled and saluted in Walter's direction, then took off. “Nice boy,” Ike said. “Real nice boy.”

“You are correct, old man. On both counts. Sonny's a good boy, and that was the woman herself on the phone.”

“Too bad you ain't thirty years younger.”

“Thirty years? How old do you think she is? She's in her forties, Ike.”

“Forties, huh? Well then, it's too bad I ain't thirty years younger.” With that pronouncement, he pulled a baseball cap out of the small bag he always carried. This one was a wrinkled, yellow hat, one Walter did not remember seeing before. On the front was a faded logo, a multicolored cartoon drawing Walter quickly recognized as a depiction of the Jackson Five—the Jackson Five when Michael was still Michael.

“Nice hat,” he said.

“1984, Jacksonville, Florida. Victory Tour,” said Ike, adjusting the hat to keep the morning sun out of his eyes.

“Florida? Who's victory?” asked Billy bursting into the bar from his kitchen, through the swinging door next to the large fan a few feet from where Walter sat on the second to last barstool. Billy carried a large bowl of hard-boiled eggs in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. The eggs were for customers. The coffee was his. “What about it?” he asked.

“1984,” Ike said. “A good year. A good year, maybe not the best, but a good one. No, not the best.”

“So,” said Billy. “What was the best?”

“1937,” said Ike, without hesitation, lighting up another cigarette with a long wooden match, giving up a little cough, not much of one this time, more like clearing your throat when you've swallowed the wrong way than anything serious. “That was the year I noticed Sissy,” he said. “Really noticed her, you know. Of course, we knew each other since we was kids, but 1937—that's when I first looked at her, saw how beautiful she was. She'd come into a room, a room like this one—of course we didn't go to no bars or restaurants back then when we were in our teens still—but she'd walk in, wherever it was, and the whole place would light up. It was like the sun broke through the clouds after a hard rain. Like the sky opened up. You know what I'm saying? All bright and clean and good. Sixteen years old. 1937.” He said it one more time. “1937.”

“Well,” Billy spoke up. “I think the best year is this one—right now. You're damned right that's what I think. Right now.”

“Here's to you, Billy,” said Ike. “It's a lucky man who thinks right now is his best time.” He dragged on his cigarette and it appeared he made no effort to blow the smoke anywhere. It just sort of slithered out of his mouth and nose. As if moved by an unseen hand, the smoke was carried on the wind in the direction where Billy stood behind the bar. It floated to him in big, slow, hazy blue ripples.

“Don't blow that shit in here!” Billy yelled. Then he looked down the bar to Walter. “Walter. Stop eating. Put down that paper and tell us what year was your best year. Come on.” Ike looked at Walter too. Both he and Billy waited.

“Next year,” Walter said, without putting down either his fork or his newspaper.

“Bullshit!” cried Billy.

“That's what you hope,” said Ike. “That's what we all hope. But that don't count for the purposes of this conversation. We're talking about a year gone by, and we ain't quitting till you say one.”

“I can't . . .”

“Come on, Walter!” demanded Billy.

“You got to have one,” said Ike, although from the sound of Walter's voice he certainly sensed there might be no response from his friend. Not on this one.

Walter said, “I can't do it. I can't.”

“Leave the man alone,” Helen ordered. She had been standing there all along, unnoticed. “Let him be.”

Billy grumbled and Ike may have said something too, under his breath, but whatever it was Walter couldn't make it out.

“I'm writing it up. I don't give a shit,” Billy proclaimed. He looked to Ike for approval or encouragement or something. The old man, his upper body now completely covered in smoke that drifted with the changing breeze in a new direction, off into the square, nodded affirmatively. That was all Billy needed. He grabbed the chunk of blue chalk next to the register and scribbled on the blackboard: 1937/Right Now/None.

“
None
,” he scoffed.

“I vote for
‘Right Now,'
” said Helen, giving Billy a pat on his ass as she made her way back to the kitchen, singing,
“It's a man's world . . .”