“Absolutely.”
“What about your family’s land?” Mitch asked her, pointing down to the eight-hundred-acre chunk of prime river frontage that sat smack-dab in the center of Bruce Leanse’s holdings. “What will happen to it?”
“Father’s not stupid. And neither is Greta. She’ll convince him to sell. He’ll have to sell. It’s inevitable.”
“I kind of got the impression he thought Bruce Leanse was Satan.”
“He’s not Satan,” Takai argued. “And nothing is that black or white. You’re a smart man. You should know that.”
“Moose certainly didn’t want to sell.”
“No one wants to sell, Mitch. God, I sure don’t. I wish Dorset could stay exactly the way it is. But it can’t. It’s a living organism. If it doesn’t grow it will die. Look, just talk to Bruce, will you? If you don’t come away convinced, then I’ve misjudged both of you. And I almost never misjudge men…” Now Takai tilted her head at him coquettishly, wetting her pillowy lips. “That wasn’t what I was hoping you’d say. When I asked you if there was anything I could do for you… Tell me, just how tight are you and that trooper?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I was wondering if you could be pried apart.”
“Not even by the Jaws of Life,” he informed her. “You must be very upset or you wouldn’t say something like that.”
“No, I would, Mitch,” she confessed with a regretful sigh. “I’m a consummate bitch-whenever I see a man who someone else has I immediately want him for myself. Especially if the woman’s pretty, which I suppose Trooper Mitry is, in her way.” Takai went and fetched her bag, complete with loaded handgun, and slung it over her shoulder. “I’ve taken up enough of your time. You must have better things to do than play host to a hysterical female.”
“Can I ask you one more thing before you go? And if it’s none of my business just say so.”
“We shared a good, honest cry together. You can ask me anything.”
“Who was Moose’s boyfriend?”
“I have no idea. She never told me.”
“Weren’t you the least bit curious?”
“Not at all. And this will sound horrible, but it’s the truth-I didn’t care who he was because I knew I wouldn’t be the least bit interested in him. We always had different tastes in men, she and I. Except for one time. Just once…” Takai trailed off, a fond, faraway look crossing her lovely face. “But that was a long, long time ago, Mitch. And I was much younger then. We were all much younger then.”
Bruce Leanse ran his Dorset operation out of The Brat, an antique wood-hulled cabin cruiser that he kept tied up at Dunn’s Cove Marina, a deepwater mooring in the Eight Mile River that had access to the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound. The marina was off Route 156 at the end of an unmarked dirt road less than a mile south of the crossroads where Moose Frye had been killed.
It was a small, shabbily exclusive boatyard that catered to the gentlemen farmers who owned the nearby country estates. Here, the boys kept their toys. Yachts, as a rule. Big ones, though none as big as The Brat, which looked like something FDR might have toodled around in. The boatyard was deserted on this weekday afternoon in late October. There was only one car in the gravel parking lot, Bruce Leanse’s shiny black Toyota Land Cruiser.
The developer heard Mitch pull in and came bounding out on deck to greet him, his handshake hard and dry. He had not sounded surprised when Mitch phoned him for an interview. Clearly, he’d already been alerted by Takai. He was dressed in a canary-yellow Patagonia fleece vest over a denim shirt, corduroy trousers and Topsiders. Mitch had seen photographs of Bruce Leanse in the New York tabloids many times over the years, but the pictures did not convey just how robust and self-assured the man was-or how short. Mitch was shocked to discover he towered over him.
“She’s a one-of-a-kind, Mitch,” he responded proudly when Mitch asked him about the boat. “She was built in 1931 for the Connecticut state shellfish commissioner. She’s got a sixty-eight-foot hull made of long-leaf yellow pine on white oak frames. I’ve had her for three years,” he added, Mitch thinking that there was something faintly self- conscious about his dogged used of the nautically correct she.
There was an enclosed wheelhouse. A circular staircase wound its way down to the main saloon, which had interior cupboards of polished Philippine mahogany and banquettes of burgundy leather. A good deal of natural light came from the portholes on either side of the saloon. A built-in teak table served as Bruce’s desk. He had a Power Book, laser printer and fax machine set up there. Papers were heaped everywhere. A fine old Van Morrison recording, Astral Weeks, played softly on his built-in sound system, which Mitch resented. He did not want Bruce Leanse to have good taste in music. He wanted him to be listening to Mariah Carey.
There were three staterooms aft, crew quarters forward. Steam heat, stall showers, all the creature comforts. The galley had a four-burner gas stove, a full oven and refrigerator.
“She runs on a pair of Fairbanks-Morris diesel engines,” Bruce explained, showing Mitch around. “There’s a three-hundred-gallon main tank, a seventy-five-gallon day tank. I can take her to Maine, the Cape, anywhere, except that Babette and Ben both get seasick on her-they can’t stand the diesel fumes. So she’s mostly my floating office. I’m going to hate pulling her for the winter. I always like having a place where I can kick back with my business associates.”
Business associates like Takai Frye, observed Mitch, who could not help but notice her beautiful shearling jacket wrapped around a chair in the main stateroom.
“Can I offer you a beer, Mitch? Or how about some Juniors cheesecake? I had it sent out from the city this morning.”
Mitch’s stomach immediately started rumbling. “You might talk me into that.”
Bruce disappeared into the galley while Mitch poked around in the saloon, the big cruiser rocking gently under his feet. One entire mahogany wall was lined with photos of Bruce Leanse testing life’s limits. There were shots of him rocketing down Alpine ski slopes, scaling remote Tibetan mountaintops, kayaking white-water rapids, shooting big game in Africa.
There were no pictures anywhere on the wall of his wife or son.
He returned now with a slab of cheesecake for Mitch and a frosty Sam Adams for himself. He cleared space for them on the teak table. They sat across from each other.
Mitch dug into the cheesecake, which was excellent. “Do you mind if I tape our conversation?”
“Not at all. I’m going to do the same thing myself.” Bruce flicked off the music and set his own microcassette recorder right next to Mitch’s. “I’ve had some trouble with journalists in the past, Mitch. They decide from the get- go that I’m a rich asshole and then they just go ahead and make up the quotes to prove their point.” He took a sip of his beer, studying Mitch from across the table. “I hope you’re coming to this with an open mind. Because as far as I’m concerned there’s absolutely no reason for us to be adversaries. You and I really have a lot in common, when you stop and think about it.”
Mitch did stop and think about it. Bruce Leanse’s grandfather had been a reviled Lower East Side slumlord, his father a Park Avenue real estate baron who’d spent most of his career and his political capital trying to eliminate rent-stabilized housing in New York City. Mitch was one of those grubby little people who had been raised in a a rent-stabilized apartment. For thirty-six grueling years, his father taught algebra to ghetto kids at Boys and Girls High in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. His mother was school librarian at the predominately Latino Eleanor Roosevelt Middle School in Washington Heights. A lot in common? Not a chance.
In fact, it didn’t even bear thinking about.
“Why do you think reporters have such a negative opinion of you?” he asked Bruce Leanse.
“Because I’m a happy person,” Bruce spoke up boldly. “The press only likes rich, famous people who are in drug rehab or divorce court or jail. But if you have a wonderful wife and family, work that you love, friends whose company you enjoy, then they go after you. Human nature, I guess. They absolutely cannot accept the fact that someone who has it all enjoys having it all.”
Mitch had himself another bite of cheesecake, wondering if the kids at school ever stole Bruce’s lunch money or threw him in the shower with his clothes on. He doubted it. Bruce Leanse was still very much the Brat-a spoiled prince who’d always gotten his way.
Right now, Bruce was reaching for a set of blueprints and unrolling them on the polished teak table, pinning down the corners with leather-bound paperweights. “I am thrilled to have this opportunity to talk to you about my plans for Dorset, Mitch. What we’re doing here is just incredibly exciting. Let’s have a peek, shall we…?”
