"You weren"t the only one who told me that. And I knew Kitty on my own. I didn"t base my opinion on what you told me anyway. She was a mess, right?"
"So was I."
"But you weren"t manipulating my brother. You weren"t leading him on and then sleeping around with a bunch of other guys."
"But I was all too ready to tell you about that, wasn"t I?" Suzze nestled her head in closer to his chest. "You know what I didn"t tell you?"
"What?"
"Kitty also loved your brother. Truly and deeply. When they were broken up, her play suffered. Her heart wasn"t in it. I pushed her into partying more. I keep telling her that Brad wasn"t for her, that she should play the field."
Myron thought back to the happy photographs of Kitty, Brad, and Mickey on her Facebook and wondered what could have been. He tried to let his mind settle on those blissful images, but the mind goes where it wants. Right now the mind was veering back to the video of Kitty and Ponytail in that private room at Three Downing. "Kitty made her own mistakes," he said, hearing the bitterness in his tone. "What you said or didn"t say made no difference. She lied to Brad about everything. She lied about her drug use. She lied to him about my role in their little drama. She even lied about being on the pill."
But as he said that last part, something in his own words didn"t mesh. Here Kitty was, on the verge of being the next Martina, Chrissie, Steffi, Serena, Venus-and she ends up getting pregnant. Maybe it was, as she claimed, an accident. Anyone who took middle school health cla.s.s knows that the pill doesn"t work 100 percent of the time. But Myron had never given that excuse an iota of plausibility.
"Does Lex know all this?" he asked.
"All?" She smiled. "No."
"He told me that was the big issue. People have secrets and those secrets fester and then destroy trust. You can"t have a good relationship without total transparency. You need to know all your spouse"s secrets."
"Lex said that?"
"Yes."
"That"s sweet," she said. "But he"s wrong again."
"How"s that?"
"No relationship survives total transparency." Suzze lifted her face off his chest. Myron saw the tears on her cheeks, felt the wetness on his shirt. "We all keep secrets, Myron. You know that as well as anyone."
By the time Myron made it back to the Dakota, it was three in the morning. He checked to see whether Kitty had replied to his "Please forgive me" message. She hadn"t. On the off chance that Lex had told him the truth-and that Kitty had told Lex the truth-he sent Esperanza an e-mail to see if they could check pa.s.senger manifests for Kitty"s name on flights out of Newark or JFK heading to South America. He signed on to the computer to see if Terese was around. She wasn"t.
He thought about Terese. He thought about Jessica Culver, the ex-love Lex had mentioned. After claiming for years that marriage was not for her-the years she was with Myron-Jessica had recently wed a man named Stone Norman. Stone, for crying out loud. What kind of name was that? His friends probably called him "The Stoner" or "Stone Man." Thinking about old lovers, especially ones you wanted to marry, was never a productive endeavor, so Myron made himself stop.
Half an hour later, Win came home. He was accompanied by his latest girlfriend, a tall modelesque Asian named Mee. There was a third person too, another attractive Asian woman Myron had never seen before.
Myron looked over at Win. Win wiggled his eyebrows.
Mee said, "Hi, Myron."
"Hi, Mee."
"This is my friend, Yu."
Myron held back the sigh and said h.e.l.lo. Yu nodded. When the two women left the room, Win grinned at Myron. Myron just shook his head. "Yu?"
"Yep."
When Win had first started up with Mee, he loved to share jokes using her name. "Mee so h.o.r.n.y . . . It"s Mee time . . . Sometimes I just want to make love to Mee." "Mee so h.o.r.n.y . . . It"s Mee time . . . Sometimes I just want to make love to Mee."
"Yu and Mee?" Myron said.
Win nodded. "Wonderful, don"t you think?"
"No. Where have you been all night?"
Win leaned in conspiratorially. "Between Yu and Mee . . ."
"Yes?"
Win just smiled.
"Oh." Myron sighed. "I get it. Good one."
"Be happy. It used to be all about Mee. But then I realized something. It"s about Yu too."
"Or, uh, in this case, Yu and Mee together."
"Now you"re in the spirit," Win said. "How was your sojourn to Adiona Island?"
"You want to hear this now?"
"Yu and Mee can wait."
"By that, you mean the girls, not us, right?"
"It does get confusing, doesn"t it?"
"Not to mention perverse."
"Don"t worry. When I"m not around, Yu can keep Mee occupied." Win sat, steepled his fingers. "Tell me what you learned."
Myron did. When he finished, Win said, "Methinks Lex doth protest too much."
"You got that too?"
"When a man does that much philosophizing, he"s covering."
"Plus that last line about her going back to Chile or Peru in the morning?"
"Throwing you off the track. He wants you to stay away from Kitty."
"Do you think he knows where she is?"
"It wouldn"t surprise me."
Myron thought about what Suzze said, about transparency and everyone having secrets. "Oh, one more thing." Myron fumbled for his BlackBerry. "Gabriel Wire had a guard working the gate. He looked familiar to me, but I can"t place him."
He handed Win the BlackBerry, the photograph on the home screen. Win studied it for a moment.
"This," Win said, "is also not good."
"You recognize him?"
"I haven"t heard his name in years." Win handed the BlackBerry back. "But it looks like Evan Crisp. Big-time pro. One of the best."
"Who"d he work for?"
"Crisp was always freelance. The Ache brothers used to bring him in when there was serious trouble."
The Ache brothers, Herman and Frank, had been two leading Old-World mobsters. RICO had finally moved in and closed them down. Like many of his elder brethren, Frank Ache was serving time in a maximum security federal penitentiary, mostly forgotten. Herman, who had to be seventy by now, had managed to slither out of his indictment and used his ill-gotten booty to feign legitimacy.
"A hit man?"
"To some degree," Win said. "Crisp was brought in when your muscle needed a little finesse. If you wanted someone to make a lot of noise or shoot up a place, Crisp wasn"t your man. If you wanted someone to die or vanish without raising suspicion, you called Crisp."
"And now Crisp works as a rent-a-cop for Gabriel Wire?"
"That would be a no," Win said. "It"s a small island. Crisp got tipped off the moment you arrived and then awaited your imminent arrival. My theory is, he knew you"d take the photograph and that we would figure out his ident.i.ty."
"To scare us away," Myron said.
"Yes."
"Except we don"t scare easily."
"Yes," Win said with only a small eye roll. "We are so very macho."
"Okay, so first we have this weird post on Suzze"s board, probably put there by Kitty. Then we have Lex meeting up with Kitty. We have Crisp working for Wire. Plus Lex hiding out at Gabriel Wire"s place and probably lying to us."
"And when you add those together, what do you come up with?"
"Bubkes," Myron said.
"No wonder you"re our leader." Win rose, poured himself a cognac, tossed Myron a Yoo-hoo. Myron did not shake or open it. He just held the cold can in his hand. "Of course, just because Lex may be lying, that doesn"t mean his basic message to you is wrong."
"What message is that?"
"You interfere with the best intentions. But you interfere nonetheless. Whatever your brother and Kitty are going through, perhaps it isn"t your place. You haven"t been part of their lives for a very long time."
Myron thought about that. "That may be my fault."
"Oh, please," Win said.
"What?"
"Your fault. So when Kitty, for example, told Brad that you hit on her, was she telling the truth?"
"No."
Win spread his hands. "So?"
"So maybe she was just striking back. I said some horrible things about her. I accused her of trapping Brad, manipulating him. I didn"t believe the baby was his. Maybe she was using the lie to defend herself."
"Boo"-Win started playing air violin-"hoo."
"I"m not defending what she did. But maybe I messed up too."
"And, pray tell, how would you have messed up?"
Myron said nothing.
"Go ahead," Win said. "I"m waiting."
"You want me to say, "by interfering." "
"Bingo."
"So perhaps this is my chance to make amends."
Win shook his head.
"What?"
"How did you mess up in the first place? By interfering. How do you intend to make up for it? By interfering."
"So I should just forget what I saw on that surveillance camera?"
"I would." Win took a deep long sip. "But, alas, I know you can"t."
"So what do we do?"
"What we always do. At least in the morning. Tonight I have plans."
"And those would again be between Yu and Mee?"
"I would say bingo again, but I so hate repeating myself."
"You know," Myron said, choosing his words carefully, "and I don"t mean to moralize here or judge."
Win crossed his legs. When he did it, the crease remained perfect. "Oh, this is going to be rich."
"And I recognize that Mee has been a part of your life for longer than any woman I remember, and I"m glad that you seem to have at least curtailed your appet.i.te for hookers."