Visitors to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the federal jail in lower Manhattan, got their hands stamped in blue. (Not that I had become totally self-involved, but I noted the tone was just a little lighter than my eyes.) After the visit, you stuck your hand under a scanner and were free to leave.
I must have appeared slightly edgy or about to pass out as we got off the elevator to go into the Visitors’ Center, because Ruiz said, “The stamp doesn’t fade. It’ll take a couple of days to wash off totally. You’ll get out of here.” For a guy who had the sleek-haired, square-chinned gravitas of a cable news anchor, he didn’t act at all like a smooth dude. I had a becoming-my-mother moment and suppressed the urge to tell him how intuitive he was. Sweet, too, for a guy with too much starch in his white shirts.
“I know,” I told him. “There were some weeks I wound up coming over here almost every day.”
“Of course. I forgot.”
“But thanks for saying something, because I think I have a slight anticonfinement PTSD thing going.”
Okay, not so slight. I couldn’t close the door completely when I went to the bathroom, and my first night home from the hospital, Josh turned over and caught me wide awake with the lamp on, bookless. He held me but also suggested a night-light. The next day I bought one, scallop shaped and wide, like the shell Venus stands on in the Botticelli painting. The illumination it gave off was tawdry pink, which comforted me with its fuck-you flamboyance. Still, I was waking up four or five times during the night, panicked for a few seconds until I recognized that the pink light meant I was not in the attic.
Ruiz and I walked through the long, narrow reception, which had a guard desk, a couple of vending machines, and chairs for inmates. One of the guards recognized me and said, “Hey, how you been?” as though I’d only been away on vacation for a couple of weeks.
“Great,” I said. “Good seeing you!” I smiled at him, though by the end of the smile I’d spotted Pete Delaney in the room directly behind him.
It was easy because each of the individual visitors’ rooms arrayed behind the guard desk had a glass door. Pete’s lawyer, a woman in a light gray suit—jacket and skirt—sat beside him so they both were behind a table, facing the door. He was in a wheelchair, she on one of those ugly Bureau of Prisons chairs with curved metal backs and dark-red, fake-leather seats: the cheapest kind of fake that split and exuded blobs of rubbery padding. She was soundlessly reading something on her iPad. One of those white Apple pencils was gripped between her teeth, making her mouth look like a grimace.
Seeing Pete was not at all a surprise since inmates were never allowed to have their backs toward the door. Still, it was heartening that when he spotted Ruiz and me heading toward the room, he quickly put down the paper coffee cup he was drinking from and set his manacled hands on his lap. His smashed-up knee was in some kind of black cast resting on a board that rose from the wheelchair. His good leg was zip-tied at the ankle to a rod just above the chair’s footrest.
Ruiz shook hands with his lawyer. “Amanda Gates,” she told us. Her hair was gray and black, and so spiked with gel that she could have been wearing a porcupine on her head, though it coordinated nicely with her gray suit. “Can I assume you’re Corie Geller?”
“Yes,” I said as I took my seat. I nodded politely but didn’t offer to shake her hand, though I caught her examining the lacerations around my wrists and arms. Fortunately, they still looked repulsive enough after a week and a half that I’d picked out a short-sleeve cotton sweater for the meeting to show them off. Ruiz and I had already arranged that he’d be across from Pete. Still, there we were, Pete and me, two Long Islanders (each with an escort) across a table from each other, though admittedly it wasn’t a Wednesday and the MCC didn’t offer the occasional salade aveyronnaise as a special.
“Our position remains the same,” Gates said. “Whatever Ms. Geller did or did not suspect Mr. Delaney of, the fact remains that she lured him up to Westchester, promising sexual favors.” She paused for an instant, maybe in the hope that I would go the “You’ve got to be kidding” route, but I said nothing, so she kept going.
“And then she suddenly and brutally attacked him. My client sustained severe injuries. I repeat, severe. We maintain that—”
Other than wearing an inmate’s uniform rather than his usual bland shirt and loose pants, Pete didn’t look any different from the man who’d attended Wednesday lunch group meetings. His hair was comb marked and precisely parted, his thin line of lips was pale enough to match his complexion, and he calmly looked from his lawyer to Ruiz to me, giving each of us a few seconds of his remote gaze.
“So you’ve said several times,” Ruiz told her. “But solely in the matter of Ms. Geller, who at the time of the kidnapping and assault was employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a contract worker, Delaney is facing federal charges. Many, many counts, but we can save the details. Just as a matter of interest, we have one vehicle he rented along with the keys to the other one. They go nicely with surveillance footage of him”—he made air quotes—“‘in costume’ at each of the car rental dealers. In one of the bedrooms of the house we found a wig and a baseball cap like the ones in the footage. His fingerprints and DNA were all over them. We also found Mr. Delaney’s right thumb and index finger prints on the undercarriage of the car he burned in the Bronx.” Gates opened her mouth, but Ruiz kept talking. “Maybe he ran through the last of his disposable gloves and thought, ‘What the hell.’ You’ll see it all in the discovery material. But right now the plan is not to charge him federally. As of today, the powers that be want to send him to Galveston County, Texas, where he can be charged for murder one under state law.”
“As of today, that seems little more than wishful thinking,” Gates said. Though her suit was severe, she was wearing an incredibly frilly white shirt with its own ruffled scarf, as if she dreamed of becoming Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“Again, on the Texas homicide, we have considerable physical evidence along with an eyewitness who identified Delaney not only from photographs but also in a lineup.” I noticed Ruiz never looked once at Pete, as if Pete were already well on his way to being a dead man. I’d seen that technique, naturally, but I’d never watched it played out so artfully. “We also have testimony from the man whom he negotiated the hit with. Oh, and information on the bank that transferred money to Delaney’s offshore account. All of which pretty much boils down to lethal injection.”
“You’re FBI,” the lawyer said. “While I certainly mean no disrespect, we can wait to discuss these matters with the US attorney.”
“Like he’s a stranger to us?” Ruiz said. “He wants what we want.”
“Justice,” Pete said suddenly, with the short huh of a cynical chuckle. The three of us looked at him. “Right, Corie?” he asked me.
At first I said nothing, but after that silence I knew what my lines were. I’d run them with Ruiz and an assistant US attorney several times the day before. We had no idea whether having me in the room would upset Pete or not touch him at all: his psyche was beyond us. But my take on it was that while my presence could rile him up (since few men like to recollect getting punched in the nuts and then beaten up by a woman) it could also be—comforting wasn’t quite the word. Familiar. I was a little slice of his safe life, part of the Wednesday group. We’d heard that his wife had visited him only twice since he’d been transferred to the MCC from Bellevue, the first time for twenty minutes, the second for ten.
“If you’d rather not go to Texas, enjoy prison comforts there for a year or two, and then go out with that”—Ruiz mimicked pushing down the plunger of a syringe—“you may want to think about the possibility of life in a federal penitentiary.”
Gates slammed both hands on the desk in protest of the syringe business, but Pete spoke first. “What kind of deal would I have to make to get some kind of federal sentence?” he asked
“Let me handle this, Mr. Delaney,” Amanda Gates warned her client. I didn’t like her. She was tough, pissy, but ineffective.
“Pete,” I said. “I know how meticulous you are. Of course we will want any records you have, a list of all the people you’ve killed, disappeared, maimed, whatever—”
“I suggest you shut up,” Gates told me. She reached up and straightened a couple of the spikes of her hair.
“And of course the names of the people who hired you to commit the murders. You will have to testify at every single case that we or the locals bring to trial. You’ll also have to provide bank and financial records of the money they paid you as well as any recordings you made.”
Pete drew back as if I’d accused him of taking three pats out of the butter dish at La Cuisine Délicieuse and leaving none for me. “Do you honestly believe I would record anything of that sort … if I was involved in that kind of thing?” he demanded.
Gates turned to him and boomed, “If you want me to continue representing you, I strongly suggest you shut your mouth now.”
Before she could boom even louder in my direction, I said to Pete: “Yeah, you’d make recordings. For insurance. And what if you got arthritis in your trigger finger? Packaging design and blackmail. Not as stimulating as doing hits, but still, if you feel you need a second career …”
As we had prearranged, Ruiz put his left hand on the table. That meant my part had been played.
* * *
I sat in my office, my feet, in socks, propped on the desk, and read the same sentence from a Tunisian police procedural over and over. My mind set up a roadblock to the words I was trying to read. I was distracted, too, which didn’t help: the branches of the nearest tree—an oak, I was almost sure—were scratching at the window, just irregularly enough to make my muscles tense as I waited for the next scratch. I half expected it would be louder, wild and harsh, like animal claws. I glanced up and gasped at a figure at the door. I exhaled audibly as Josh moved into the light of an overwrought brass floor lamp.
“Please, don’t do that to me,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t think I’m done with being unglued.”
“I’m sorry,” he replied. “I should have been more careful.” He took the novel off my lap and sat on the edge of the desk, fiddling mindlessly with the book’s jacket. “How is work going?”
I plopped my feet onto the floor and rubbed my eyes. “It’s not going at all, really. I can’t focus. The only reason I’m sitting near the computer is that I couldn’t take the recliner anymore. I have no idea what I’m going to do.”
“You’ll get back into the swing.” His voice was filled with confidence, but then, when was he ever in doubt? He flipped through the pages without really looking at them, which was just as well. He couldn’t read Arabic.
“I wish I could be sure I’ll be swinging again.” Josh looked as if he was about to say something, so I waited a bit. He still seemed to hesitate. Finally, I asked, “What’s up?”
“I called Roger,” he said, and I could tell I was supposed to know who Roger was.
“Roger?”
“Roger Ackler. You met him. Remember the night we went out to that Greek fish place on Forty-Eighth Street with those judges from Utah?”
I nodded, though my only memory was of being surprised at how much the judge seated next to me had to say about trout, and did I know sea trout was a freshwater fish. “Not ocean fish, like we’re eating here.” He chuckled mightily at his observation, as did I, several rounds of ha-ha-ha-ha, though I had no idea what was funny. The guy was still on cut-throat trout when the waiter asked if we wanted dessert.
“Roger was the one you sat next to.”
“Right. The trout man.”
“He’s the one who was behind the offer to hear the case in New Orleans.” Josh looked up at me, hitting me with the full brilliance of those jade eyes. We hadn’t talked about New Orleans since I escaped Pete.
“Okay?” I said, inviting him to say more.
“I turned him down. You need me here.”
“Yes,” I said. I almost added: I’m a little afraid to be alone. But I held back. I didn’t know if I wanted to hide that much dependence on him or if by admitting to having that fear, I’d repulse him. He liked my alleged bravery, so he’d wind up buying me a rottweiler, escaping to New Orleans, and then returning with a jumbo jar of seafood boil spice and a three-carat sapphire ring.
“I didn’t turn it down because you’re still a little shaky.” He gave me the trademarked Joshua Geller crooked smile. “I want to do this, be here for you. I’m still young—at least as far as federal judges go. The court of appeals isn’t going anywhere.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“When am I not?” he said, smiling. “Actually? After I called him, I felt relieved.”
I took the book, put it on the desk, then took his hand, weaving our fingers together. “Thank you,” I murmured. “And Josh, while we’re at it?”
“Hmmm?” Oh God, I thought. He thinks I’m going to say I want three children and four fur coats or vice versa, and it would make him so happy.
“It’s all right with you if I redecorate this room? Even if I get rid of the wallpaper and some of the things that belonged to Dawn?” I’d taken the stand she used for free weights as a bookshelf and couldn’t wait to put a rug on her shiny maple gym floor. I gestured widely around the office. “I was thinking. I’d really like to go to work in a place that’s more me. I feel funny even saying that, because until you, I lived in apartments where my main concern was whether I could fit an extra chair in my bedroom, not whether my office would fit into some grand aesthetic plan.”
“You shouldn’t feel funny. It always surprised me you didn’t want to make more changes.” Like move, I was tempted to say, but of course didn’t. How can you say that to a guy who just gave up a huge gig in New Orleans? Josh paused, looking around the room. “It’s funny,” he said. “When I go through the house, I don’t even think, ‘Oh, Dawn chose this or that.’ It’s all of a piece. I don’t notice anything.”
“That’s sort of what I was feeling. But these last couple of weeks … I want to come in here, see a room that’s mine, to notice and value everything that’s in it. I don’t want to walk around the house not seeing it.” I wasn’t sure if I was making sense but at least Josh nodded. “Wynne will be ecstatic,” he added.
“Until I say, ‘I love those blue-and-white Dutch tiles.’ And then she’ll try not to look sad for me and my congenital lack of taste. Trust me, it will wind up in a major brawl.”
“But you’re used to that,” he said, glancing at my still-bandaged leg.
“What did John Paul Jones say?” Josh knew and seemed ready with the quote. Possibly he was smarter, but he wasn’t faster. I told him: “‘I have not yet begun to fight!’”
What had it been, three weeks since I’d been to a Wednesday lunch? Four, tops. Still, when I got to La Cuisine Délicieuse, it seemed both familiar and strange to me, like some restaurant I’d gone to with my parents when I was a kid but hadn’t seen since.
Four bistro tables were set outside for summer, two on either side of the door, though I’d seen that for at least two years. Patrons sat there and sipped café crème or apéritifs and watched life go by on Main Street with the same detached curiosity as they would had it been Boulevard Saint-Michel.
Inside looked different, too, and I asked Darby Penn, the photo retoucher, if they’d changed anything. “They repainted the ceiling,” he said. “There was a huge leak, but instead of the old sky color with the white cloud blobs …” He looked up and so did I. The ceiling was now darkish green, and he said that the only name he could come up for the color was French Bistro Ceiling Green. “Never saw that particular shade anyplace else except in bistros,” he said.
“You say that like a guy who’s been to a lot of bistros,” I said. He nodded and seemed pleased with my observation.
“Do you speak any French?” he asked.
“I’ve picked up just enough to manage if I exist only in the present tense.”
John Grillo, the landscape drainage expert, was next to the last to come in, followed by Lucy Winters, the data miner. Once the waiter took our drink orders—Diet Cokes, Perrier, and iced tea—Iris Kubel pulled her chair an inch closer to the table.
“I know you’ve been away,” she said to me. Her hair was shorter and she was wearing tortoiseshell combs on either side. It gave her the look of a late 1940s starlet, the wholesome girl.
“Right. Cairo for genre fiction symposium. Mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, some romance. I was kind of dreading the whole thing, but it turned out great. And I figured since I was in the neighborhood, I went to Israel for a week. And then I visited the girl, woman, whose family I stayed with in Jordan one summer during college. Fabulous trip!” Then I added, in case Iris had come to the backyard to replenish the herbs in my pots and spotted me: “I was home last week, but I didn’t come because I was so jet-lagged. Beyond incoherent.”
None of that was true. Other than going to Shakespeare in the Park with Josh and having dinner out a few times—once with Wynne, once with my parents—I did nothing beyond visit an FBI-approved shrink twice a week, a guy who specialized in post-traumatic stress disorder. Naturally his office was so far west in Manhattan that it practically hung on the New Jersey Palisades, but the bureau wanted its employees and contractors going only to psychologists and psychiatrists who had security clearance.
I asked the doctor how bad I was, since to me a few nightmares here and there, plus losing my appetite when I saw food even though I was hungry, seemed understandable, not a disorder. Admittedly, I hadn’t told him about the door business, including bathrooms.
He said I didn’t seem that bad. “But aren’t you seeing some barriers you’d like to kick out of the way?” I liked that phrase better than “issues you need to deal with,” though Ruiz might have noted my interest in martial arts on whatever form he sent in. The shrink was turning out to be helpful, though I had trouble looking at him because he had a voluminous toothbrush mustache. It seemed to move independently of his upper lip, and I was disturbed at not being able to comprehend the mechanics of it.
“How was Cairo?” Marcalynn Schechter the speechwriter asked. Unlike Iris’s, her hair had gotten longer and wasn’t as sprayed. She was looking less like Alice in Wonderland and more like a star of Republican adult movies.
“Cairoish,” I said. “Beautiful, dirty, crowded, exciting. And an oppressive military presence.” It was a description anyone who watched PBS might have given.
“I guess you might have heard about—” Iris began.
Phoebe, the eBay queen, cut her off: “Pete Delaney! Did you? Hear about it? He’s what they call a contract killer!”
“Hit man,” Lucy said.
“I heard,” I told them. We all shook our heads in disbelief. Pete was going to plead guilty to federal charges and go off to a maximum security prison in Pennsylvania. Along with Ruiz and my New York supervisor on the task force, I decided not to disclose my role either with the bureau or in Pete’s capture. That way, my years in counterterrorism could remain secret. Also, if I kept my name out of the Pete Delaney matter, no neighbor had to worry that I might punch him in the nuts at the drop of a hat.
“My wife knew his wife fairly well,” John Grillo was saying. “And liked her. The thing of it was, Pete and I might not have been friends, but we were on good terms. I mean, I’m not Mr. Congeniality, but I can get along with almost everyone. Except there was something about Pete that made me keep my distance. It’s like he had no real interest in other people.” Across the table, Phoebe leaned forward. Her lips were pursed so forcefully that her normal age lines deepened so they looked like spokes on a wheel. It was taking big-time mouth muscles for her to stay silent. “My wife basically told me she suspected from the way Jenny seemed scared of him that he could be abusive to her,” John explained. “But neither of us ever got the idea that he was into something like murder for money. A hit man?. I didn’t even know he went hunting.”
“Maybe because being a New Yorker, he’d think you might have some qualms about it or something?” Iris asked.
“No,” John said. “Because I go hunting every fall. I was thinking back and I’m almost sure I talked about it in front of him. But not one word. Not a clue.”
“Do you think his wife had any sense about what he was doing?”
John chewed half his bottom lip for a moment, then shook his head. “You know, Peggy and I talked about it when we heard. Well, once we got over the shock. She said, ‘If you put Pete and crime in the same sentence, you’d think tax evasion—at worst.’ Even if he was terrible to his wife, she was a good person. She would have gone to the police. I don’t see her knowing her husband was a killer.”
“I’ve got to admit, I never picked up on anything about him,” Darby said. “He was more quiet than not, but not abnormal. He was a guy with a lot of talent. Thoughtful, too. We have an old crabapple tree that was starting to go on tilt. I thought I’d have to pay a tree company to stake it. Anyway, one day Pete brings over his two brothers-in-law and we staked the tree ourselves. I kind of took him aside and asked if I could, you know, offer them something and he said, ‘No way. Wouldn’t you do it for me?’ That was such a nice way to handle it. And I wasn’t even friendly with him. I basically just knew him from lunch on Wednesdays.”
I asked them if they knew if his wife and children were still around town. Iris said no, that she’d called and offered to visit, but they were moving. When I asked where, the consensus seemed to be somewhere near the South Shore of Nassau County—Rockville Centre, Oceanside.
“I’ve got to admit I was never a fan. He was kind of odd, but even now I can’t tell you what exactly it was. But anyway, his next-door neighbor goes to my church,” Iris chimed in. “She said they once had what turned out to be a raccoon family living in their attic. Could not get her husband to go up there and look. Can you imagine the mess? The noise?”
The word “attic” had never been a favorite, but it was at least among sixty or seventy thousand on my neutral list. Now, however, it was loaded. Swallowing? Didn’t work. I decided not to order quiche. Fruit and cheese and pass on the cheese. Maybe move the fruit around on a plate.
“Anyway,” Iris continued, “I think they did know that Pete went hunting sometimes because they said something about did he know anyone who would be willing to shoot the raccoons because trapping them, like with an exterminator, was close to a thousand dollars! They were hoping that he would offer to do it but felt funny asking him directly. And Pete said, ‘Sorry. It’s against the law to kill raccoons. I’ll be glad to set a have-a-heart trap and take it away once the critters are in there. No problem. I’ll check it for you so you don’t have to go all the way up there.’ Does that not sound like Mr. Nice Guy?” Phoebe was now shaking her head, but it was a private act. Was it what the lunch people were saying, or what was being left unsaid?
“And the soup kitchen,” I added.
“That’s right,” John said. “And he wasn’t even a Lutheran.”
“There was something a little weird about him,” Phoebe finally said. “A lot weird, as a matter of fact. I saw something in Great Neck that I’ll never forget!” Darby raised his eyes Godward, as if praying for a lightning bolt, and Lucy stretched toward the breadbasket seeking sustenance. “I was just walking toward Jildor—the shoe place—and I see a Jeep about to park, but …!” She placed her right hand over her heart and raised her left to signal, Let me get my breath. “A Tesla snuck in and took his space. Sooo aggressive. Right? But then the Jeep guy got out of his car, and it was Pete Delaney! Well, the next thing I knew, he’s getting out of his car. He goes over to hers and calls out: ‘You’re a C-word!’ Loud like you wouldn’t believe!”
Phoebe definitely had their attention. “But that’s just the beginning.” Interestingly, no one appeared discouraged. She glanced at me and I gave her a nod that told her she was doing the right thing by telling her story to the group. “And he gouged a deep line from the back of the car all the way to the front. THE ENTIRE SIDE! He must have pressed so hard because it looked like he dented the metal.”
“What guy our age would do something like that?” John demanded. “It’s so adolescent.”
“It’s so insane,” Marcalynn corrected him.
Phoebe went on. “Wait. I’m not finished. Then he put the key in his other hand and he very casually turned around and did it again, lower down on the door!”
“Jesus!” Darby said, shaking his head.
“Call me crazy, call me dumb,” Phoebe said. Everyone kept a straight face. “But it was like he pasted on a personality of a neighborly guy, but it really wasn’t him.”
“What did you think was underneath?” I asked. I noticed I was rubbing my right wrist and reached for my iced tea. I forgot I couldn’t swallow and took a few sips.
“That’s the thing. I didn’t think he was a terrible person who killed people for God knows how much money. And not somebody who’s like broiling inside and could blow up any second. When he keyed the car, he didn’t seem angry. Like he was doing something—a necessary job. What struck me is that whatever he was underneath, it wasn’t anything.”
Everyone seemed to be waiting for Phoebe to continue, but I understood she had finished her analysis. So did Iris, who was nodding. “I think Phoebe’s onto something. When I think back, the one thing I really never felt with him was comfortable.” She glanced at me, and when I didn’t speak, she added: “More like he never cared, even when we were talking together, whether I was there or not. If I’d have disappeared in the middle of a sentence, I doubt if he would’ve even scratched his head. And maybe that was true with everyone he dealt with.” She waved one of her beautifully manicured fingers at the waiter, then hesitated. “It is okay if we order?” she asked the group.
We all said sure, and I wound up asking for mushroom quiche. Then I said: “I had that same feeling as Iris. Not as specific, but just that something wasn’t right. Little things like wanting the same chair all the time. Not because he was a creature of habit, which I can understand, but because he seemed fixated on his car. Okay, that’s one thing. But there was always a different phone. Always cash, never a credit card. Lots of little nothings can add up. Zero plus zero plus zero equals a big zero. Or it can be one big something.”
“He didn’t always murder people by shooting,” Lucy said. “You should read BuzzFeed. They say that in Atlanta, someone wanted her husband—”
Darby put his hands into a T, the time-out sign, and put them right in front of Lucy’s face. “Lucy, at the risk of being rude, what you’re going to say doesn’t go with poached salmon.”
“Oh. Sorry. I’ll tell the rest of you later.” Phoebe and Iris shook their heads. “Well, if anyone wants to know, I’m going to get Gorilla Glue after lunch at the hardware store, so you can keep me company. Meanwhile …”
“Meanwhile,” Iris told the Wednesday group, “let’s all of us get back to normal.”
“Absolutely,” I agreed. “All of us.”
Except maybe me.