Sacred (Kenzie & Gennaro 3)

“Huh?” Angie said.

He opened his eyes. “For Tampa. Could you be ready first thing in the morning?”

“We’d have to make flight arrangements,” I said.

He scowled. “Flight arrangements are unnecessary. Julian can pick you up first thing in the morning and take you to my plane.”

“Your plane,” Angie said.

“Find my daughter or Mr. Becker or Mr. Price.”

“Mr. Stone,” Angie said. “It’s a long shot.”

“Fine.” He coughed into his fist, closed his eyes again for a moment. “If she’s alive, I want her found. If she’s dead, I need to know. And if this Mr. Price is behind her death, will you do something for me?”

“What?” I said.

“Would you be so kind as to kill him?”

The air in his room suddenly felt like ice.

“No,” I said.

“You’ve killed people before,” he said.

“Never again,” I said as he turned his head toward the window. “Mr. Stone.”

He turned his head back, looked at me.

“Never again,” I repeated. “Is that understood?”

He closed his eyes, lay his head back against the headrest in his wheelchair, and waved us from the room.

“You see a man who is closer to dust than flesh,” Julian said as he held Angie’s coat in the marble foyer.

Angie reached for her coat and he motioned for her to turn her back to him. She grimaced, but did so, and Julian slid her coat up her arms and over her back.

“I see a man,” he said as he reached into the closet for my jacket, “who towered over other men, who towered over industry and finance and every world he chose to place his foot upon. A man whose footfalls caused trembling. And respect. Utmost respect.”

He held out my jacket and I stepped into it, smelled the clean, cool scent of his cologne. It wasn’t a brand I recognized, but somehow I knew it was out of my price range anyway.

“How long have you been with him, Julian?”

“Thirty-five years, Mr. Kenzie.”

“And the Weeble?” Angie said.

Julian gave her a thin smile. “That would be Mr. Clifton?”

“Yes.”

“He has been with us for twenty years. He was Mrs. Stone’s valet and personal secretary. Now he helps me with property upkeep and maintenance, attending to Mr. Stone’s business interests when Mr. Stone himself is too tired.”

I turned to face him. “What do you think happened to Desiree?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir. I only hope it’s nothing irreparable. She’s a divine child.”

“And Mr. Becker?” Angie said.

“How do you mean, Miss?”

“The night he disappeared he was en route to this house. We checked with the police, Mr. Archerson. There were no reports of any disturbances or strange incidents along Route One-A that night. No car accidents or abandoned vehicles. No cab companies which drove a fare to or toward this address at the time in question. No rental cars rented to a Jay Becker that day, and his own car is still parked in his condo parking lot.”

“And this leads you to assume?” Julian said.

“We have no assumptions,” I said. “Just feelings, Julian.”

“Ah.” He opened the door for us and the air that flowed into the foyer was arctic. “And those feelings tell you what?”

“They tell us someone’s lying,” Angie said. “Maybe a lot of someones.”

“Food for thought. Yes.” Julian tipped his head. “Good evening, Mr. Kenzie, Miss Gennaro. Do drive carefully.”

“Up is down,” Angie said as we drove over the Tobin Bridge and the lights of the city skyline spread before us.

“What?” I said.

“Up is down. Black is white. North is south.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Do you want to pull over and let me drive?”

She shot me a look. “This case,” she said. “I’m starting to get the feeling everyone’s lying and everyone has something to hide.”

“Well, what do you want to do about it?”

“I want to stop taking anything at face value. I want to question everything and trust no one.”

“Okay.”

“And I want to break into Jay Becker’s place.”

“Now?” I said.

“Right now,” she said.

Jay Becker lived in Whittier Place, a high-rise overlooking the Charles River or the Fleet Center depending on the placement of your condo.

Whittier Place is part of the Charles River Apartments, a horrific complex of modern luxury housing built in the seventies along with City Hall, the Hurley and Lindemann Center buildings, and the JFK Building to replace the old West End neighborhood, which several genius city planners decided had to be razed so Boston in the 1970s would look like London in A Clockwork Orange.

The West End had looked a lot like the North End, if a bit dustier and dingier in places due to its proximity to the red-light districts of Scollay Square and North Station. The red-light districts are gone now, as is the West End, as are most pedestrians after five o’clock. In the place of a neighborhood, city planners erected a cement complex of squat sprawling erector-set municipal buildings, no function and all form, and the form hideous too, and tall cinder-block apartment complexes that look like nothing so much as an arid, characterless hell.

“If You Lived Here,” the clever signs told us as we looped around Storrow Drive toward the entrance to Whittier Place, “You’d Be Home Now.”

“If I lived in this car,” Angie said, “wouldn’t I be home, too?”

“Or under that bridge.”

“Or in the Charles.”

“Or in that Dumpster.”

We ran with that until we found a parking space, another place we’d call home had we lived there.

“You really hate modern, don’t you?” she said as we walked toward Whittier Place and I looked up at it with a scowl on my face.

I shrugged. “I like modern music. Some TV shows are better than they’ve ever been. That’s about it, though.”

“There’s not a single modern piece of architecture you like?”

“I don’t instantaneously want to nuke Hancock Towers or the Heritage when I see them. But Frank Lloyd Wrong and I. M. Pei have never designed a house or building which could compete with even the most basic Victorian.”

“You’re definitely a Boston boy, Patrick. Through and through.”