Eric Lustbader

For many years, Eric Lustbader was identified on his dust jackets as Eric Van Lustbader, and the books were martial arts adventures that regularly found their way onto the best-seller lists. Having seen a Bruce Lee movie once, and years later a Chuck Norris movie, I viewed these martial arts productions as analogous to the wit they offered viewers-it was halfway there. However much ‘martial’ there was on display, there was precious little ‘art’.
Because I found no pleasure in the movies, I expected to find equally little to enchant me in books devoted to descriptions of the scenes I found so improbable on the screen.
Then I read a book by Marc Olden, which I liked. The author later recommended Eric Van Lustbader to me, and I learned that I’d been missing something after all. As time passed, however, Lustbader dropped the Van and his novels became more mainstream crime novels set against a big canvas, much of it in the Far East, and they are a thrill a minute. Now, of course, I’m baffled that these thrilling adventure novels aren’t made into movies. Preferably starring Steven Seagal or Sylvester Stallone or Bruce Willis or another of those bulked-up guys who can perform remarkable physical feats.
The following story is nothing at all like those novels, it should be noted. Nor like the movies.

Dead Cat Bounce

The night of my daughter’s wedding, my husband, William VanDam, broke one of his inviolable rules.
“Persis,” he said to me, “I’ve made a terrible mistake.” He had never before admitted such a thing. To do so in his securities business would have meant immeasurable loss of reputation.
The best way to deal with this revelation, I decided, was to do nothing. Nothing spins so well as on its own momentum, I once heard him tell a junior partner. “Dear, why don’t you take off your tux?” I said. I was sitting in my champagne silk charmeuse slip, at the dressing table in the truly hot hotel suite we had rented for the week. By hot I mean designer hot.
Observing Willie in the mirror, I could not help also seeing myself: black hair framing the pale oval face of a Madonna. “It’s what, almost three-thirty in the morning?” I had removed my makeup as expertly as I had applied it hours ago, and was now massaging one of those botanical creams into the skin of my hands.
Because I was a concert pianist, I took extraordinary care of my hands. I confess my one abiding fear was that I would develop arthritis. I never went outside without donning butter-soft doeskin gloves, of which I had pairs in a virtual rainbow of colours. “You must be exhausted. I know I am. It was a truly glorious wedding, wasn’t it?”
The air smelled of evening primrose as I stared at him in the mirror: a big man with a rough-hewn, handsome face. When we had first met, I had felt utterly transported by his commanding presence. He had given me shivers all over.
“I’m not in the least bit tired;”
I could smell his sweat like a halo of rage. He never perspired like this in his office, not even during the excruciatingly complicated corporate mergers his securities firm brokered. It was the details that could kill you, as he had drummed into me time and again. Which was why people came to him: they knew he’d sew up every detail without reaching for the Zantac. He didn’t miss one.
But he looked like he’d missed this one and now he was ready to tear his hair out.
“I may never sleep again. It’s like ants crawling over my skin.”
I swivelled around to face him. I heard the tone in his voice and was instantly warned. He had this wild streak-a volatile temper that had taken me quite some time to figure out. Often enough, he’d cruelly thrown back at me the fact that I was an orphan. “Shape up or I’ll abandon you as quickly as your mother did,” he used to tell me when I disobeyed. He could always make me cry with that, even now.
I knew I needed to be calm. I rose, slipped off his black Armani tuxedo jacket, and hung it over a chair back. Then, leaning in so that my breasts pressed against his chest, I kissed him hard on the lips, the way he liked. “Come to bed now. Whatever’s troubling you, can’t it wait until morning?”
He leaned forward and slipped his left arm around my slender waist. But instead of embracing me fully, he slashed out with his right arm in a vicious arc, smashing my bottles of cream and lotion and nail polish to smithereens. Smears of colours ran down the mirror like blood.
“Does that answer your question?” His voice was acid; the fist he made trembled as nails dug into skin. My smooth surface had inflamed him all the more.
“Willie, for God’s sake, calm down.”
“If you’ve nothing else to contribute to the conversation, kindly keep quiet.” He dropped his arm from around my waist. “Christ, what do you really know about the real world, Perse?” He was always lecturing about the real world, a place I apparently knew nothing about. “I took you out of the mess you had made of your life. I’ve kept you protected, safe from all the evil you were getting yourself into.” He was quite correct in that. My parents had left me in a hospital, and seventeen years later, it was a hospital in which Willie had found me. If I looked at the insides of my wrists in the proper light I could still see the scars, straight as the razor blade that had caused them. By that time, I’d had it with evil. Every form of lowlife imaginable had gotten his claws into me. They were outsiders, and you might think so was I. But you’d be wrong. I wasn’t even that. I was a parasite on the naked butt of an outsider. I have to admit, he had cause to despise what I’d been.
“Caroline is just like you, ignorant of life,” he went on. “You can’t expect me to do less for her.”
“Is it Caro who’s somehow upset you so?”
“In a manner of speaking. She just married that sonuvabitch Eddie.”
My eyes opened wide.
“Oh, I know that look, Perse. You don’t want to hear anything bad about him.”
“He’s Caroline’s husband. Our son-in-law. Eddie’s family now.”
Now he seemed disgusted, impatient to turn away. But I held him to me with my sure and comforting artist’s touch. “They love each other, Willie. I’ve rarely seen two people so crazy in love.
Think of how they danced while I played ‘Rhapsody in Blue.’” I smiled, trying, in my way, to make him mimic me.
“That was Caroline’s request,” he said tightly. “Gershwin always moved her to tears. But what did he want?”
“The same, I’m sure. The look in their eyes while they danced-“
“He was looking at me, Perse. Because he knew.”
I cocked my small, elegant head. I had been told many times that I looked like a ballet dancer, not a concert pianist. But ballet, what could I know of ballet in the filth of my former life? But music, oh, music was my sole escape. “Knew what?” The silence my husband generated was like a sound-damped engine. What remained unheard I felt. I gripped his powerful arms. “Willie, what could he know?”
“It started when Yates found Eddie had a license to carry a gun.” Ross Yates was Willie’s private investigator, one of Willie’s major secrets from the outside world. Even Caroline didn’t know of his existence, but I did. Of course, Willie had had Eddie investigated. “I asked him if he carried and he lied, said he didn’t. And when I confronted him with Yates’s report that showed the receipt for the nine-millimetre pistol he’d bought, he gave me another bullshit story that it had been stolen and he’d never replaced it.”
“Was it bullshit?” I asked. “He seemed sincere.”
“Sincere my ass. I’m the actor, here, Perse. How d’you think I make so much money? I know how to play a part. Just like our dear little Eddie-boy.” Willie’s mocking tone set my teeth on edge. “Yates showed up at the reception an hour ago to give me this.” He broke away from me, slipped a set of folded papers out of the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket.
“Let me see that.” I reached for the papers, but Willie kept them out of my reach.
“No, Perse. I’ll tell you as much as you need to know.”
It was always this way with us. How can I be expected to learn about the real world if Willie keeps it out of sight?
For a moment I stared at the report, blue-white and ugly in the lamplight of the gilt-and-cream-coloured hotel suite. Then I turned and walked away from him.
I put on one of my favourite CDs: Eugene Ormandy’s orchestral transcription of Bach’s majestic Toccata and Fugue in D minor. I turned up the volume so he couldn’t be heard over it. The chords burst in quiet thunder, filling the suite as if with purified air. Bach’s great gift, it seemed to me, was bringing order out of chaos. Whenever I heard his music the emotions that had been tied in knots began to untangle.
Outside, it had begun to rain. Staring out the window at the spiked Manhattan skyline, I thought of the last few moments alone I’d had with Caro before we’d entered the chapel this evening.
“Are you sure this is what you want, darling?”
“Absolutely. God, I love him! Give me some credit, Mother. I’m as sure of Eddie as I am of anything.” Caro, radiant in white, veiled like a vestal virgin, so like my younger self, so beautiful her heart-shaped face made me want to cry. “I just want you and Daddy to be okay with this. I know you disapprove of Eddie.”
“Things will work themselves out, in time.”
“Mom?”
“Um-hum.” I was fiddling with her hair.
“I do love him so!”
Caro had tossed her head like a horse who’s impatient for the race, and I thought, Slow down, my darling, you have your whole life to live. But of course things are so much clearer when you’ve a few years under your belt, and I was so determined that she shouldn’t make the same mistakes I once did. That’s a natural instinct in all mothers, isn’t it?
The Bach toccata and fugue died in mid-melody, and the silence of the present crashed in upon me. “Must we have this squalling late at night as well?” Willie said. He’d turned off the stereo. The artist’s passion was something for which he had no understanding. Consequently, it was a threat to him, and his innate fear took the form of impatience. I recognised that and, for years, had forgiven him.
It seemed we must talk again. “How clearly I can recall the boys Caro brought home, one after the other,” I said. I put my forehead against the thin pane of glass as if trying to melt through. “Abusive alcoholics, slack-jawed drug users with their greasy hair and their groping hands, grimy thrill-seekers with their tattooed scalps and their motorcycles.” I felt so close to the rain, to being washed clean as a newborn kitten. “You know, it got to the point where I was sure she was doing it to torture us.”
“Rubbing my face in the vileness of the world,” Willie said.
“It was just as bad for me.”
“Really?” He lifted an eyebrow. “But, Persis, my dear, you already had intimate knowledge of these vermin.”
I smiled thinly at him. What else was there to do? Serenity was my watchword tonight.
“They made my skin crawl just looking at them,” he went on, just as if he hadn’t hurt me. “That junkie-“
“Yes. You were quite out of control that night.”
“Whatever beating I gave him he deserved,” he said. “Bringing drugs into my house.”
“If the police hadn’t come... You nearly killed him, Willie.”
“And if I had, the world would have been a better place.”
He believes it, I thought as I watched him make himself a drink. He always made himself a drink when he was working himself up to a difficult moment, either at home with me, or at the office with clients.
I continued to speak of Caro. “I doubt you know it, but I kept track of all her men friends. Because in some way each one was a reflection of her-or, at least, of what she was trying to do.”
“And what was that?” Willie’s tone was that of a professor who must put himself through the tedious task of listening to his students’ fatuous theories before getting on with the real meat of the course.
How well I knew that tone of voice! He’d used it time and again since I’d been seventeen, when he’d begun to train me. And how I had needed training! Apart from breaking into the local high school at night to play the piano in the auditorium, I had no happy memories of my early years. Not surprising. Falling in with evil, I had no identity, no self. I had felt lost, a traveller in the midst of Grand Central Terminal with neither direction nor destination. That seemed long enough ago to be another lifetime.
“Caro had got the scissors out and was busy cutting the umbilical between child and parents,” I said.
“You’re wrong,” Willie said angrily, as if all along he knew I would be. “She’s saved that particular horror for tonight.”
I stood without moving until Willie had to acknowledge my presence. It was a trick. “The way to most effectively put the spotlight on yourself,” he had drummed into me, “is through understatement. In this case, stand perfectly still.” The first time I’d attempted it, at a party he’d taken me to, I’d seen how right he was.
When I had his attention, I took his old-fashioned glass away from him. “Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, Willie.” I kissed him several times, lightly as an arpeggio. “Face it. Eddie is different. He’s the first real man her age she’s cared about.”
“Don’t misunderstand me. I have no doubts about the depth of her feelings.”
“Then take it from a woman,” I said. “Eddie loves her.”
“You’ve deduced this from what? Talking to Caroline, I suppose.”
“And simple observation.”
“Oh, yes. To be sure. He drives a Mercedes 500SL and wears made-for-measure clothes. The perfect man for our only child, isn’t that what you think?” Willie had the impression that I coveted success as others prized diamonds or love. He was absolutely certain of this judgment because he had made me this way. It was his own image, but like most powerful men he didn’t recognise it. Why had he done it? An enigma wrapped in a conundrum. Until you understood the man. What seemed on the surface perverse, was simply the basic instinct for self-preservation. He knew if he allowed me to fully surrender to my music he would come in a poor second. Willie had never come in second in his life, and he wasn’t about to start with me.
“But you and Caroline are seeing what Eddie wants you to see.” He slapped the papers of Yates’s report so hard against his thigh that I jumped. “He’s a monster. A fucking evil wind.”
What did he want me to say? I knew, so I said just the opposite. “Willie, let her go. I promise she will not love you the less for loving Eddie. You’re her daddy. My God, you make damn sure she still calls you that. You’ll always be her daddy.”
“You stupid cow, you still don’t get it!” he shouted. Seeing the reaction in my white face, he forced his voice down. “This isn’t about me. And, except in a minor way, it isn’t even about her.” He shook his fist. “If she stays married to him it’ll end in tragedy, and Caroline will be irrevocably damaged. Maybe worse. She could wind up dead.” Into the shocking silence, he said, “I should’ve seen it, but I didn’t.”
I looked down at the sheets of folded paper he still held out, and my eyes fluttered closed. “All right, go ahead,” I whispered. “Tell me.”
“This is the report of Yates’s second investigation,” Willie said.
Yates came only to the house, never to Willie’s office. He arrived mostly late at night, at a ghostly hour, and always when Caroline had been out. But every once in a while he’d show up early in the morning, when the sky was still a pearlescent gray, yearning for the sun. At those times, I could hear his deep, raspy baritone as he reported to Willie in the study. Afterward, I would serve him coffee while Willie was upstairs getting ready to helicopter into Manhattan.
“First of all,” Willie went on now, “Eddie’s a goddamned fake. His last name’s not Bennett. It’s Bendarenski.”
“So what? Many people shorten their names. I suppose he isn’t an art dealer either.”
“Oh, he imports artwork from all over and sells it here, just the way it seems,” Willie said, as if he couldn’t care less. “Only, some of the crates he gets contain more than paintings and sculpture.”
I stared at him. “Like what?”
“Like drugs.”
“Drugs?”
“Kilos of it,” he said. “Cocaine, heroin, you name it, he sells-“
“Stop it!”
Willie seemed momentarily astonished by the force of my voice.
“This just isn’t true. A mistake has been made. I know it!”
“Believe me, Ross Yates doesn’t make mistakes.”
I shook my head violently. “But we’ve met some of his clients. You know who they are-fabulously rich, famous-everyone knows them.”
“Apparently, they don’t know enough about them.”
“Dear God!”
With a sob, I collapsed to my knees. My tears fell onto the strewn papers.
“I’m afraid there’s more.”
“No!” I cried. “I know more than I want to now!”
Willie knelt beside me, put his arm across my shoulders. “All right,” he whispered. “How small you are, Perse. And how very female.” It was this quality that had attracted him so powerfully when we had first met. “You need to be protected,” he had once told me long ago, “from everyone who’ll want a piece of you because of your talent.” He’d sucker-punched me, in an emotional manner of speaking. Because what he had meant was “I can make you into anything I want.” And in the beginning he had been right. He could see that I was all too delighted to let him make the hard choices. Being an orphan had drained me, and falling into evil on the street had taken whatever had been left. It was as if he had lifted an insupportable weight off me. What had resulted was a folie á deux.
“Why?” I whispered. “Why didn’t we know all this before the wedding?”
“It took all this time for Yates to get the goods.” Willie kissed my temple. “It wasn’t easy. Initially, he hit a stone wall; Eddie’s clever, I’ll give him that. But Ross is smart. That’s why I hired him. It’s Eddie’s clients who made it so difficult for Yates to find out what he is. It’s his clients who are protecting him. If he goes down, they’ll follow. They can’t afford to let that happen.”
I turned to him. “What-what d’you mean?”
“I can’t go to the police with this. Ross hasn’t given me any proof that’ll stand up with the DA.”
“Meaning?” I knew a weak spot when I saw one. Willie had made certain of that.
He shrugged. “You don’t know Ross. He sometimes uses methods that are... well, let’s just say not open to the cops.” There was that tone again, putting me in my proper place, protecting me from the world. “But it doesn’t matter. Even if he had, he’s assured me no one would listen. It’s been hushed up.”
“Oh, Willie-“
He picked me up tenderly and carried me across the threshold into the bedroom. He kissed my cheeks and damp forehead as he placed me into bed. How he adored me when I was utterly helpless. I could see him melt like ice cream in the sun.
“What about Caro?” I whispered up into his face. “What’ll happen now?”
“Don’t worry.” He held my hand while he peered into my eyes. “I’ll go talk to Eddie. He’s venal. I’ll make him an offer.” A grim smile shone down on me. “The boy will recognise what’s best for his own interests.” He patted me. “Now go to sleep, Perse. I’ll take care of everything. I promise. I’ve always been right, haven’t I?”
I nodded. I watched him as he went into the bathroom, unfastening his silk braces. I heard him turn on the taps, then unzip his cosmetics kit bag. When he came out, my eyes were closed and I made sure my breathing was slow and steady.

As soon as Willie left the suite, I jumped out of bed.
In the bathroom, I turned on the light and rummaged through his kit bag. It was oversized, custom made for him from stiff belting leather. I pushed aside shave cream, styptic pencil, dental floss. My fingertips found the hidden tab and I pulled. The zipper went right around the circumference of the bottom, revealing the pouch in which he kept his gun. Ever since he’d gotten the E-mail death threats a year ago, he’d obtained a permit and carried the .25-caliber Glock with him at all times.
I checked twice to make sure. The gun was gone. I hurried back into the bedroom.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls... I thought.
In the living room, one lamp was on. Within the halo of light it threw on the carpet, I could see the blue-white papers of Ross Yates’s fateful report. I carefully gathered them up, placing the last page on top.
Ross Yates was nothing if not thorough. He’d discovered more than Willie had seen fit to tell me. Eddie had been previously married-to a woman both rich and young. She had died in a sailing incident. In heavy weather, the boom had caught her on the side of the head and she’d been pitched overboard. The Coast Guard had found no evidence of foul play, but the girl’s sister had tried to keep Eddie from inheriting. It was her contention that he’d murdered his wife. Her efforts, it seemed, had come to nothing.
Now Eddie was married to Caroline.
I stared at the typewritten words. I could imagine what had gone through Willie’s mind when he’d read this. All of his innate distrust of Eddie must have centered around this report. And God had hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
I hurried back into the bedroom, pulled on leggings and a clingy jersey top, slipped my feet into suede flats. I found that these simple acts left me breathless. I tried to calm myself with a mantra given to me by my yoga teacher, without success. I opened up a box in the closet, grabbed the black suede clutch bag that lay within, then, without a sound, I ran very quickly out of the hotel room.

Willie and I had secured for the newlyweds the presidential suite, a truly vast set of rooms that took up an entire corner of the hotel’s penthouse floor. It was just for the wedding night. Late this afternoon, Caroline and Eddie would fly to Tortola, where he had a sailboat ready to take them through the Caribbean for two weeks.
I took the stairs. That made good sense, since I had insisted that Willie book the suite directly below.
The hallway carpeting was even thicker here on the top floor of the hotel. I went quickly and silently to the impressive double doors of the presidential suite. Glancing behind me down the empty corridor, I put my ear against the wooden door. I found that I was trembling.
Almost of its own accord, my slender shoulder pushed against the door. Unlocked and unlatched, it opened inward.
On the threshold, I paused. The slice of semidarkness beyond the door spilled over my feet, as if a grasping hand was pulling me inward. I felt as if I stood on the brink of another world, one that, even now when I confronted it, seemed inconceivable. I was reminded of Ross Yates’s description of scuba diving. “The ocean is the great unknown,” he had told me one morning over coffee. “It’s dark and it’s cold and there are things down there-creatures we can’t even imagine. But I can because I’ve seen them. That’s why I get off on it.”
Holding my breath, I slipped my body sideways through the opening and plunged into the unknown. I stood absolutely still. I listened while the suite breathed. It was like the sound of a sick person on life support.
What came to me at length was a sob. It was a sound so stifled I swear I felt my heart constrict.
“Caro?”
With my musician’s ear, tone was something I could identify in a heartbeat. I had recognised my daughter’s voice.
“Caro!”
My daughter’s voice was muffled by the bathroom door. “Caro, darling.” A swhimpering wrenched at my heart. “What are you doing in there, sweetheart? Please come out.” That’s when I saw the pale outline of the desk chair wedged under the doorknob.
“Get the hell away from there!”
I whirled, saw Willie standing in the open doorway to the master bedroom of the suite.
“I locked her in.”
I moved to pull the chair away, but he grabbed my wrist.
“For her own protection, Perse. She would have tried to save him.”
That was when I saw the gun in his hand. “What the hell have you done?”
“What had to be done.” How can I say this right? He was trembling from head to foot. Not with fear, but with elation. “I’ve freed her.” He meant Caro, of course. He was not wrong there.
“For God’s sake, Perse. I have it all worked out. Why did you come up here? I told you I’d take care of everything. You were meant to sleep through it all.”
I pulled away from him, and went into the bedroom. At first I saw very little. Willie or perhaps Caro had pulled the heavy drapes back so that the city’s lights spangled the raindrops on the windowpanes, sending golden fingers into the darkness. I saw the huge bed with its rucked sheets. I walked slowly around the foot as if drawn by a magnet toward the far side. But then, death is the most powerful kind of magnet, isn’t it?
“Perse, get out of there!” Willie had followed me into the bedroom. “Dammit, you’ll fuck it all up!”
“Stay away from me.” I was staring at the lumped shape twisted up in the bedding.
“Caroline didn’t recognise me.” Willie switched tactics, knowing he needed to placate me to get me the hell out of there now. “It’s so dark in there, as far as she knows, a burglar broke into the room. I bundled her off to the bathroom before she saw my face.” He raised a fist filled with Caro’s jewellery and Eddie’s Rolex watch and rings. “Shit, the less you know the better. What’s done is done, but you being here-you’re going to make it more difficult than it needs to be. Jesus, Perse, you know you’re not strong enough to stand up to the cops. There’ll be a thousand questions I’ll have to answer.”
The thing about the space around the lumped shape, I saw, was that it was dark as the blackest night. And shiny as an oil slick. The sickly-sweet smell of fresh blood stuck in my nostrils like tar. What I couldn’t figure out was how he’d gotten the best of Eddie.
“Perse, have you been listening to me?” The urgency in Willie’s voice had risen to fever pitch. “Time to-be careful! For Christ’s sake, don’t touch anything!”
But it was too late. I’d pulled back the bedcovers, and gasped. There was Eddie, lying on his back with the biggest hard-on I’d ever seen, or it would have been minutes ago when his heart was still pumping. So this is how Willie did it, I thought. For a moment, I felt sorry for Eddie. It must be damn hard to defend yourself when your brain’s dulled by sex.
“What’s happened here is already ancient history. Put it out of your head. Caroline can start her life over now. We’ll get your fingerprints off the sheet and get the hell out of here.”
He still doesn’t get it, I thought. But he will. This stupid cow will make sure of that.
I reached into my purse and drew on a pair of gloves. Then I carefully unwrapped the heavy object from the butcher’s paper. It smelled of machine oil, and a curious masculine scent almost as compelling as musk. My forefinger curled around the trigger. It felt oddly natural, like the ivory of keys beneath my fingertips. I turned and exhaled a long, slow breath. Then I squeezed the trigger of the 9mm gun.
The sound startled me, but Willie’s body slamming back against the far wall did not. I watched him incuriously, sitting spread legged on the floor like an idiot child. Blood pumped out of his chest, and there was a stunned expression on his face that gave me a good measure of satisfaction. And why not? While it was true that for years I had forgiven him his fear of what made me happy and complete, this forgiveness had, without my knowing, turned to pity. As anyone who has lived a long life will tell you, it’s a short step from pity to contempt. And, then, to hatred as pure as middle C. Still standing across the room, I carefully aimed at his head and squeezed off another shot. Bone and brains fountainhead outward with a great gout of blood. Like something on a movie screen, nothing more, I told myself.
Except for the stench.
I closed my mind to everything except what needed to be done. No need to hurry. This suite did not abut any others, and directly downstairs was my own suite. Nobody outside these rooms could have heard a thing.
I carefully rubbed the spot on the sheet I had touched with my bare fingers. Then I leaned over and placed the gun into Eddie’s left hand. He was left handed, and this was his 9mm. I inserted his forefinger into the trigger guard and, pointing the 9mm toward Willie, I fired the gun so the paraffin test they’d be sure to do on Eddie would be positive.
Perfect.
To leave the bedroom I was required to step over the exsanguinating body of my husband. I was careful to avoid splotches of blood and gore soaking into the expensive carpet. I took the chair away from the bathroom door and opened it. Caro was huddled on the tiles, clearly in shock. What had Willie done to her? I wondered. Dark blotches had broken out on her forehead and left cheek, and had begun to swell. He had struck her to make the break-in seem more authentic. Of course Willie had had no intention of cutting a deal with Eddie. He’d gone up to the presidential suite to kill him. But then, I had known he would. It was only the eventual outcome that had been in doubt. Men and their dangerously addictive toys, I thought as I gently touched my daughter’s shoulder.
Caro’s eyes opened wide when she recognised me. She could hardly believe it.
“My darling...” I gathered my daughter to me, gently supported her against the sink as we embraced.
“Mom, what happened?” Caro’s voice was that of a sleepwalker, high and thin with unnatural tension. “Someone broke in. I think-“
“Never you mind. That’s a nightmare best forgotten.” I filled a glass with water. From my bag I shook out a Vallium and placed it on Caro’s tongue. “Your mother’s here now.” I thought of what it was like to be orphaned, alone, in need of a sympathetic breast on which to rest one’s weary head. “Swallow, precious. I’ll take care of you.”
Caro obediently washed the Valium down with water, and within five minutes I was able to walk her out of the suite, down the stairs, to the floor below. By the time I had tucked her into my own bed I was bathed in sweat.
I returned to the living room, and called the police. Then I placed Ross Yates’s report on Eddie Bendarenski on the coffee table. It would be the first thing I’d show the police. That was key-the motive for the bad blood between Willie and Eddie.
Back in the bedroom, quiet as a mouse, I stripped off my gloves, inspected them for oil stains. I washed them, anyway, with leather cleaner, then folded them in half and placed them in the drawer with all the others. Already the spectre of my husband, under whose thumb I had existed for so many years, was fading. He had led me out of the darkness into the light, without a thought that I might at some point examine the quality of that light. How could he possibly understand that the creature he had so painstakingly created had yearned only to be free? To do that he would have had to believe that I was an independent entity, who had grown far beyond the parameters he’d set for me. Sometime when he hadn’t been looking, I had become a whole person, yearning to be a part of the real world. Willie could not conceive of such a thing.
How is that possible? He was living with me, after all. He saw me each day. But therein lies the answer. He saw what he wanted to see, and crushed beneath his heel any inkling that there might be more than what he himself had fashioned. He’d never had any intention of allowing me my freedom. My ignorance of the real world, as he put it, was what gave him his hold over me. And if I had been foolish enough to confess that I could not survive the prison of our marriage another moment, surely he would have laughed at my naiveté. And deliberately denied me what I wanted most-and now by my own hands had achieved.
I fixed myself a stiff drink. Slowly sipping it, I went to the stereo and put on the Bach, softly this time, because there was no longer any reason to turn up the volume.

Dawn brought the inevitable barrage of questions from the police. I was ready for them. I felt light as the air I breathed, and my elation made me want to shout. But of course I did not. It was Willie who had taught me how to act. I had fooled him, and I’d do the same with the police. No sweat.
I presented my frailness as an offering they might come upon of their own momentum. As ever, understatement. Tears came easily to me. Why not? I needed only to imagine the years of my indenture, or Caro in drugged sleep in the next room. I showed the handsome detective Caro’s battered face, and assured him he could speak with her as soon as the doctor pronounced her recovered from shock. The potbellied detective was understanding and sympathetic even while he was double- and triple-checking my story. I admit I liked being treated with kid gloves which, I believed, was my due. He had heard me play Scriabin last year at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Centre. He was somewhat awed, but he did his job nonetheless. I was almost as impressed with him as he was with me.
During a break in my statement, while he was bringing me coffee, I watched light as thin as a veil come into the early morning sky, and thought of something Ross Yates had told me about his work: “Some people who don’t know any better think I’m a piece of shit, rooting through the garbage. But you know what? They’re just scared of me, because everyone’s got secrets and I know how to get to them all. In this world, secrets are more valuable than gold.”

Eventually, it all blew over, like an evil wind. That was how Willie had described Eddie, but it also could be said of him. I had done everything perfectly. It was the considered opinion of the police that the two men had quarrelled. The quarrel had escalated, and since both men were armed, the altercation had ended most tragically. Another example for the antigun lobby to use.
In the aftermath, I was reminded of something Willie had told me years ago. He’d come home in a particularly exultant mood, and I’d asked him why. “Dead cat bounce,” he had said, laughing. “Don’t look so appalled, Perse. It’s a Wall Street term. You target a company that looks dead on its feet. The stock’s hovering, say, between one and two because almost everyone’s given up on it. Then somebody like me comes in and starts buying heavily. Word gets around, and the price moves a little, until the greedy people get wind of the price change. There must be a turnaround, they think. The company’s going to be profitable again. So they buy-and others buy-in great quantity. Now the price shoots up to five, six, eight. That’s when I sell, because this company’s as dead as it was the day I bought the stock. The price collapses completely. That blip upward is called a dead cat bounce: the illusion of life.”
That’s what my life had been up until the moment I killed Willie, I thought: an illusion.
My pride at outwitting the police was something Willie would have understood, even applauded. My elation at being free gave vent to rehearsals that left me breathless, swimming in another world. Willie had for so long denied me full entry to this world that I felt drunk after almost every practice session. In fact, I left the piano only to take care of Caro.
How she missed Eddie. How little she understood herself! But there’d be so much time now for self-revelation. For her, nights were the worst. She had terrible bouts of depression, despair, and uncontrollable weeping. At those times, she withdrew completely, and I was once again momentarily reminded of my younger self. I did not pity her, because I knew what hell Eddie would have made of her life. If he’d allowed her to live. But there could be no doubt that the house was stifling her and, itching to get back to performing, I took her to Venice as soon after the investigations were concluded as I dared.
Venice was my favourite city, a place that pierced me clear to my soul. My God, on this trip the sky was so blue! Caro complained of the smell, but to me the air was pungent with new life!
I played three nights at the Teatro della Fenice, the small but magnificent concert and opera house. Throughout my career, critics, while praising my impeccable technique, had now and again carped that my playing lacked true passion. These Venetian concerts were markedly different. For the first time, I lost myself completely in the music. Much to my astonishment, I made many in the audience weep. At the end, the packed house would not let me leave the stage, urging me back for encore upon encore. For these, I very shrewdly chose the nocturnes of Chopin, that most emotional of composers, and now the entire audience wept.
And it was here that Caroline, witness to the flowering of my soul, at last began to return to life. It was as if the complex mathematical patterns of Bach’s music infused her with the innate orderliness of life, banishing the memory of the chaos that had so mercilessly overtaken her. It was as if the florid passion of Chopin had reawakened her heart so that she was reminded what it meant to love and be loved in return.
This metamorphosis, clearly apparent after the first concert, thrilled me to the tips of my fingers. I clutched her to me and kissed her repeatedly. And fell in love as if for the first time with the music of Bach and Chopin, with the people of Venice who fêted me in the cafés that lined the piazza outside the Fenice until dawn-light strayed like a striped cat through the cobbled streets.
The day after the last of the concerts dawned bright and clear. The sky was the colour of the sea, and in between lay all of Venice, sun washed, ancient as time. Riding an unceasing wave of bliss, I hired a motoscafo-a private motor launch-which took us first to Burano, the island of fishermen, whose small row houses painted in lovely pastels looked like the set for La Traviata.
After a leisurely stroll along the narrow, crooked streets, we took the motoscafo farther into the great lagoon to the island of Torcello, where, centuries before, the original Venetians had made their home. I had booked a table for lunch in the flower-strewn garden at the Locanda Cipriani. There, we looked out over a thirteenth-century church whose cracked burnt-sienna facade oozed an aura that seemed barely Christian.
White, puffy clouds dotted the sky like the sailing vessels on the lagoon, and where the Venetian sunlight struck the trellises and vines, the flowers sang a rich and vibrant oratorio. When Caro excused herself to go inside, the man at the next table turned to me and asked in a deep, raspy baritone whether he could buy “the lady and her sister” a drink.
I couldn’t help smiling. “Caroline’s my daughter. We’d be delighted to accept the offer of a fellow American, but only if you join us for lunch. Are you alone?”
“As it happens, I am. Thank you,” he said, as he came and sat opposite Caro’s chair, at my left elbow.
“Are you here on business?” I asked.
“No, pleasure. You know, sightseeing, the usual.” Under his breath, he said, “Right on time.”
“What’s the matter, Ross?” I said in the same hushed tone. “Didn’t you think I’d make it?”
“After the way you put VanDam to sleep, I had no doubt,” Ross Yates whispered. “But last night I dreamt you didn’t come. Christ Almighty, this was the toughest month of my life. The longer I stayed away from you, the more I wanted you.”
He was tall and rangy, like a cowboy, with windblown hair the colour of flax. His face reminded me of a soldier’s: tough, vigilant, competent. Seemingly not the kind of man to make such an admission. I very much liked that he had. That bastard Willie never would have opened up like that.
“You certainly know how to make a woman’s head spin.”
He laughed. “That isn’t all I can make spin.” His gray eyes appeared screwed into the bone of their sockets. They sparked with licentious memory. When I say I’ll do something, they seemed to say, it’s as good as done. “Those early mornings when VanDam was upstairs...” He chuckled. “I bet your kitchen table never saw that kind of action before or since. VanDam may have been a genius at business, but he sure was short on imagination. No way he ever made you sing like I do.”
God, how right he was! And he laughed, seeing it in my eyes.
“It was my lucky day when I showed you the report on Eddie.”
“And even luckier for both of us I made you sit on it until the wedding reception.”
“You really do have a deliciously evil mind.”
“Hush,” I whispered. “Caro’s coming back.” I was flushed and excited and terrified all at once.
As he turned his most brilliant smile on Caroline, Ross said to me out of the corner of his mouth, “What a quick study you were, practicing with the gun you had me steal from Eddie. I told you everything would come out fine as long as you didn’t jerk the trigger. You did just like I taught you: exhale and slowly squeeze it.”
I was so pleased I put my hand on his thigh underneath the table.
Lunch at the Locanda was just as I had imagined it would be. Ross was gentle and funny with Caro, and she seemed to take an instant liking to him almost from the moment I introduced them. Good thing. He was going to be in our lives for a long time to come.
Still, Caro insisted on going out alone in the small hours of the night. I asked Ross to watch over her from a distance when she went, and prayed that time would heal her wounds.
Gradually, she grew calmer. Truth to tell, Ross was a good and comforting companion to us both.
“All my life,” he told me one day in Venice, “I’ve settled for things. I was an Army brat, so I had to settle for making new friends almost every year. I didn’t really want to be a PI, but I could never get my detective’s shield in the NYPD; written tests were never my thing. The girl I fell in love with didn’t love me, so I settled for someone I liked but didn’t love. That lasted a half-dozen miserable years. Then, my luck changed.” He smiled at me and my heart lifted. “I was hired by VanDam.”
By the time we arrived in London it appeared that Caroline had returned to her old, sunny self. I was desperate to renew the sexual part of my affair with Ross, but with Caro around there never seemed to be a good time. Besides, as Ross pointed out, we’d be far better off in the long run if we waited awhile longer. He was right, but being discreet was playing havoc with my hormones. Killing Willie, being set free, had made me as randy as a rabbit.
My agent had booked a two-night engagement at the Royal Albert Hall. I was to play with the Royal Philharmonic, so there was a full week of rehearsals at the hall, more than was necessary for a solo recital. Also, there were egos other than mine to contend with. The conductor, a man whom I had always admired but had never before met, turned out to be a prima donna of the worst sort. Temper tantrums were not uncommon, and my own temper grew increasingly short. I’d work all day and then have difficulty sleeping at night. Ross was wonderful during this time. He sat in the dark, deserted theatre with Caro until the tightness of my expression forced him to mount the stage and calm me down. He did this so many times that the musicians, generally a jealous lot, soon grew used to his presence on their exalted pulpit.
“Careful,” he mouthed to me during a break late in the gruelling rehearsals. “This man is a maximum boor, but he has the power to ruin you.” Ross, a quick study if ever there was one, had already seen just how small and incestuous the world of classical music was. I appreciated his candour-and his concern, which was about 180 degrees from what Willie’s reaction would have been. My late husband no doubt would have belted the maestro in the face, if he’d bothered to show up at all.
“I’ll remember to love him as if he were my own brother.” I looked up at the tiers of seats. “They don’t look like holes, do they?” I drank from a bottle of Evian water Ross handed me. “The first time I came here, I couldn’t help thinking of the Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life.’ I wonder if Lennon was tripping when he wrote the lyrics.”
“’I’d love to turn you ooon,’” Ross sang softly in a surprisingly good tenor voice.
I laughed and, draining the water, kissed him warmly on the cheek. “I’m so glad you’re in my life.”
I watched him climb down from the high stage and disappear into the darkness of the theatre, where he took his seat beside Caro. The rehearsal carried on. But, gradually, I found that I was playing by memory alone. My mind seemed to be oddly detached from my body, elastic as gum, as distorted as if I was in a house of mirrors. Tripping like Lennon in the seventies.
My stomach turned abruptly queasy, and I stopped playing. My hands, arched and ready, hung suspended above the keyboard. They looked like spiders spinning a web, and I wanted to scream. I missed my cue and, feeling like I was about to vomit, I lurched drunkenly to my feet.
The bench upended behind me with a great clatter, and the orchestra ceased to play.
“I... I ...”
Somehow I became aware of Ross running down the centre aisle toward me while everyone on the stage was transfixed, unable or unwilling to make a move or sound.
“I ... I ...”
Ross mounted the steep steps three at a time, and I tottered toward him on legs I could no longer feel. He seemed to be standing at the edge, waiting for me. I was almost to his strong, welcoming arms when I lost all control of my body. I knew I was going over the edge, and my arms began to flail. I made a desperate lunge for Ross’s powerful shoulder, but it was too late. My fingers grasped only air.
I fell, past all the thousand holes in Albert Hall.
I saw a quick flash of the maestro’s face, distorted by shock. Then I struck the floor with a numbing blow. A great roaring filled my ears, drowning out even the thunder of the screams and shouts of those all around me. It was the first chord of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. It was the rush of my own blood.
I remembered that toccata came from the feminine past participle of the Italian toccare, which meant “to touch.” Bach’s majestic chord touched me in the stunned release of my own breath.
In an instant, even that was gone.

“Welcome back.” Ross, smiling faintly, stood over my hospital bed. “We thought we’d lost you.”
“Mom!” On his left I could see Caro, her face a sea of worry. “You’re tougher than anyone believed. You came through.”
I had a sudden urge to grab her and hold her tight, but I couldn’t move.
“You’re paralyzed, Perse.” Ross took a deep breath. “You broke your neck and your spine in four places.”
Terror gripped me and, looking into Caro’s sorrowful face, I was overcome by a desire to tell her how much I loved her. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.
“I’m afraid your speech was affected too,” Ross said. “Temporarily or permanently, the doctors don’t know.”
Ross must have seen all the blood drain from my face, because he asked Caro to fetch a doctor. Properly terrified, she fled. Then he did something really weird. He leaned over the bed, but instead of kissing me, he put his lips against my ear.
“You know what I thought about on those night-time walks with Caroline?” he whispered. “Why settle for the mother when I can have it all? That’s what I want. And, for once in my life, I’m going to get it. The way I see it, you’re yesterday’s news, someone else’s history. VanDam made you over. Now I’ll do the same with Caro. Face it, Perse. You’re dangerous. I mean, you pulled the trigger on your own husband. How many women could do that, hmm? Not many, I imagine. It takes a cold, calculating mind; a certain cruelty. Lying next to you, who could sleep? I figure if you did it to him, one day, you could do it to me.”
Why did his words fill me with so much dread? Because they expressed precisely the same pity and contempt I had harboured for Willie.
“By the way, if you haven’t guessed by now, that was acid in your Evian.” He meant LSD, of course. One of the drugs of my lost youth. “I thought maybe you’d kill yourself in the fall, but, no, like Caro said, you’re too damn tough. So here you are.” He pulled away for a moment to check my horrified expression. Then, to my dismay, he put his lips back against my ear and continued his horrific whispering.
“So I seduced her, and, hey, what d’you know, she was ripe for it. Like mother, like daughter.” A little laugh, evil as sin. Sick with shock, I tried to turn my head away, but his hand held me fast. The smell of him, which only yesterday was intoxicating, now made me want to gag. “My God, what a juicy morsel she is!”
The doctor burst into the room and Ross stepped quickly back. The doctor, working on me, had his hands full. He couldn’t see what I saw, and if he had, it would hardly mean a thing to him: Ross taking Caro’s hand as she came back through the door. Ross kissing her shining hair, her red, curving lips, making me shiver so hard that the doctor became concerned all over again.
“I think you’d better leave now,” he told them curtly. “She needs to rest.”
No! I screamed in my mind. Caro, don’t leave me! But, of course, what I meant was: Don’t leave with him’. Don’t believe his lies! But it was too late. And now I realised that it had always been too late.
Tears in my eyes, I looked for Caro and Ross. But they were gone.