ONDINE LONG’S APARTMENT TOWER was one of the tallest buildings in Belltown. From the roof I had an unobstructed view across a quarter of a mile, to the black waters of the sound.
It was three o’clock in the morning and almost pitch-dark on the roof. The wind moaned low and loud through the glass-and-steel canyon below. Every few moments a fresh dash of light rain slapped my back.
I looked over the edge. Fifteen feet down I could just make out the flagstone paving on Ondine’s balcony. Her penthouse apartment was set back from the main exterior of the building, creating a private terrace. The terrace was about the same size as a volleyball court. A stone dropped from the wrought-iron railing of the terrace would fall twenty stories before cracking the asphalt on Battery Street.
I swung my legs over the roof edge. The wind whipped at my hair and tried to knock me sideways as I hung by my hands above the terrace. I let go and dropped the last seven feet.
No lights came on. I couldn’t see anything inside the apartment through the reflective glass of the windows. I waited in the shadows.
Another minute passed. I tried the sliding glass door, lockpicks ready in my other hand, and was surprised to find it unlocked.
But not too surprised.
Ondine had been making a lot of bad mistakes lately.
I slipped inside and closed the glass door behind me. The sound of the wind was softer with the door closed.
Ondine’s apartment had an open floor plan. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see a broad expanse of living area, with low-slung furniture arranged to take advantage of the view. A dining room was on my right. Artwork on the walls and abstract statuary dividing the spaces in between. Everything was leached of color in the gloom.
At the very back, I could see a short entrance foyer and the front door. To the left of the living area was a hallway. Probably leading to the bedrooms.
I wanted to go that way. Get down to it. Instead I did the smart thing and moved across the room to check my exit route. The dead bolt on the front door was a top-of-the-line Schlage, with steel-reinforced plates. This one, unlike the back door, someone had remembered to lock.
“Alec? Are you home?” Ondine’s voice, coming down the hall on the left. In a moment she appeared at the edge of the room, a ghostly blur in an ivory robe.
I turned on a reading lamp. Its silk shade was embroidered with dragonflies, and the outline of pale blue wings fell across Ondine’s unnaturally smooth face.
“Have a seat,” I said.
Her eyes flickered to the .32 in my hand.
“I’m expecting Alec back shortly,” she said.
“Good.”
Ondine gave a tight smile. Her lipstick was perfect. Maybe she really was expecting Alec.
“All business, like before,” she said, crossing the room to perch on a chaise. I moved back toward the far wall, where I had a clear line of sight on the front door and the hallway. Just in case there was another entrance to the apartment.
She nodded at the gun. “That’s hardly necessary.”
“Tell me about Cristiana Liotti,” I said.
Ondine removed a cigarette from a red lacquered box on a side table. She lit it with a match and took a small, unhurried draw.
“We’ve compared notes already,” she said.
“You told me what happened after. The parts you thought I needed to know. I want the other half.”
She brushed a hand through the long fall of her black hair. “How it started is common knowledge now. Cristiana Liotti learned of the diamond shipment while working at Talos.”
“So she told the one person who might be able to help her profit from it.”
“Dono.”
“Not Dono. She brought it to you. Cristiana was a member of Emerald Crown.”
Ondine raised an eyebrow.
“I’m guessing Cristiana had heard rumors about you,” I continued, “and she had nothing to lose. Did she drop hints or come right out and ask if you could help her profit somehow?”
She exhaled a wisp of smoke. “The little secretary crept up to me at the New Year’s banquet. Very, very nervous.”
“And you could trust Dono to get what information he needed from her and not leave a trail back to either of you.”
“Time was short.”
“Who brought in the McGanns?”
“McGanns,” Ondine said, stressing the plural. “You’re positively bursting with new information tonight. I arranged for the personnel.”
“When you say ‘I,’ you mean Alec.”
“We’d used Sal Orren before. But yes, it was Alec who recruited the McGann brothers.”
“Who were fuckups from the start,” I said.
“Which is why I instructed Alec to make things right. He could handle Boone McGann.”
“But he didn’t.”
Ondine tapped her cigarette ash into an oyster shell on the table. “Boone went into hiding after Dono. He’ll surface eventually.”
“Sure he will. Whose idea was it for Alec to go after Boone? Yours or his?”
Ondine opened her mouth to reply. Closed it again. We stared at each other.
“What is Alec to you?” I said.
“That’s not at all relevant.”
“Okay. What are you to him? The girl of his dreams? Or just a cash machine with benefits?”
Ondine’s face flushed. “Get out of here.”
“Dono made only one mistake, but it was a very big one. Taking the job and trusting that you could still hack it.”
I tapped the unlocked glass door to the terrace with the barrel of the .32. “You’re old, Ondine. And sloppy. Making a deal with Cristiana, who was way too close to home. Hiring psychos like the McGanns. Not to mention letting your piece of ass make a fool out of you.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“Dono’s dead.”
Ondine sat up rigid, like she’d leaned back against a needle hidden in the upholstery. She looked blankly at me.
“Dead?” she said.
“Earlier tonight. He came out of the coma for a minute or so. That was all.”
She turned away. Her back hunched. Outside, the wind changed pitch as it gusted, like the inhale and exhale of the entire city. I listened, forcing my own breath to slow.
Ondine stood and walked over to a huge ebony sideboard, her silk robe whispering and swirling. Decanters were set in a precise row. She picked one with an amber liquid and poured it into a crystal tumbler, took the glass and drank.
When she spoke, her voice was approaching steady. “You’re here to kill Alec.”
“Where is he?”
“Why are you so certain he’s helping Boone?” she said.
“Because Dono wouldn’t have told Burt McGann a damn thing he didn’t need to know. There was no way for Brother Boone to track down Cristiana if she had just been Dono’s source. Somebody else knew who she was. And only someone with your connections would know how to find a specialist to bug Dono’s house.”
I crossed the room to stand in front of her. She took a fractional step back, pressing up against the heavy sideboard.
“Somebody fed Cristiana to Boone McGann,” I said. “It had to be you. Or someone very close to you.”
We stood there for a moment, looking at each other.
“His eyes,” said Ondine. She raised the glass but didn’t drink, just inhaled the fumes of it. I was close enough to smell it, too. Pear brandy, thick and cloying.
“Alec was working with the McGanns all along, wasn’t he?” she said. “If Boone had been part of the robbery—”
“Then the McGanns would have killed Dono at the hangar, along with Sal Orren. I think Burt tried to stick to the original plan and take both of them out on his own. But Sal was quicker than he expected. He took Burt with him.” I shook my head. “You got lucky, Ondine. If it had gone down that way, Alec couldn’t just skip town and leave you alive to figure it out. He would have killed you once they had the diamonds.”
“Let me,” Ondine said. Her hand gripped the carved edge of the sideboard. “Let me kill him.”
Kill. Not “deal with” or “handle” or another euphemism.
“Just like that?” I said.
“I’ve loved two men,” she said. “I lost the second tonight.”
“So prove it,” I said. “Alec and Boone want the diamonds. Which means they want me. No more bugs or tailing me around town. They’ll have to grab me and torture me, like they did with Cristiana.”
I pointed at the cordless phone on the wall. “I’ll hold Dono’s wake on Sunday morning. At the Morgen.”
Ondine ran a fingernail along the edge of her glass. Then she set the glass down and picked up the phone. She tapped a button on speed dial.
“Darling?” she said into the phone. Her voice was faster and lighter. Almost happy. “I’ve just heard. Dono Shaw has died.”
She listened for a moment. “I agree. The hospital is a dead end—Boone won’t go there. And the police are still hunting for Dono’s grandson. I think Dono’s house is too risky for Boone to stake out, if he’s determined to find Van.”
I leaned in to catch Alec’s next words through the receiver. “—to find him down in Stockton?”
“No,” said Ondine. “I think your instincts were correct. Boone is still in Seattle. And Van Shaw will almost certainly appear at Dono’s wake. The day after tomorrow, at his bar on Lenora Street.”
Alec grunted. “If the police are hunting for Shaw, wouldn’t he steer clear?”
“I know these people,” Ondine said. “They are sentimental, even when that leads to making foolish decisions. Maybe especially then.”
I glanced up in time to see one tear balance on the eye of her lower eyelash before she swiped it away, as deft as a magician.
“I’ll find McGann,” said Alec.
“Not tonight. Come home soon. I miss you,” said Ondine.
“Yeah, you, too,” he said, and hung up.
Ondine put the phone back on its hook. I put the .32 back into the pocket of my coat and picked up the same decanter Ondine had used. I poured a shot into a tumbler.
She walked back over to the chaise to sit down. She looked tired. And no longer fortyish. “I didn’t think Dono would say yes to the robbery,” Ondine said. “It truly surprised me.”
“So why did you ask?”
“Six million in diamonds does not come along every day,” she said. “And Dono had told me to call him if I saw an opportunity. He’d wanted to set some money aside, he said.”
“For a rainy day.”
“A hoard,” Ondine said. “That was the word Dono used when he told me he’d decided to keep the diamonds instead of selling them.”
“Hoard? Like treasure?” The word struck a note, high and far off in my memory. I was sure I’d heard it before.
Ondine smiled softly. “Later generations will marvel at it, he said. Your grandfather was exaggerating. I never understood half his humor.”
Because it hadn’t been a joke. The diamonds were for the future. Mine.
I downed the ounce of brandy in one swallow. It seared my throat and kept me from talking.
“You were right,” I finally said to Ondine. “Love leads to bad decisions.”
“Yes. Alec was a blind spot.” She hugged her silk robe around her, like there was a chill in the wide room. “But I would never have taken his side. Not against Dono.”
I looked out the glass door, at the terrace and the retreating storm clouds farther out over the sound.
“If I thought that you had, we’d be done talking by now,” I said. “I’d have dangled you over that railing out there until you told me where Alec was hiding. Then I’d have dropped you anyway, just for your part in Dono’s death.”
Ondine was an ice sculpture. I set the empty glass back on the sideboard.
“Just so you know it crossed my mind,” I said.