kinds of disciplinary problems, difficulties like that?”
The old woman coughed, hard, her whole body shaking as the rumble echoed through her chest. She cleared her lungs after a few hard coughs, then settled back on the sofa and panted a few times.
“No,” she said. “Never. My Michael was never in any trouble at all. He was a good boy.”
Kelly leaned back in the chair and studied her for a moment. “Mrs. Schiftmann, if you don’t mind my saying so, it seems like you and Michael had a lot of obstacles to overcome. A tough time … But my question, I guess, is how did Michael go from being apparently a lonely but bright kid to being a famous, wealthy writer? I mean, this guy’s on magazine covers now. How did that happen?”
When Michael Schiftmann’s mother finally looked back up at Kelly, he could see a shiny film of tears in her eyes.
Her hands shook as she raised a finger and pointed at him.
“Because Michael was willing to do what it takes to get what he wants. Once he wanted something, nobody in heaven or hell could stop him.”
Kelly made a couple of notes on his legal pad and looked at the form. There were a few other questions he could ask, but they probably didn’t apply here. He could tell Mrs.
Schiftmann was starting to get upset. So, on impulse, he closed his notebook and stuck his pen in his pocket.
“Thank you, Mrs. Schiftmann. I think I’ve got just about everything I need. If there’s anything else, I’ll give you a call. And while there’s certainly no legal requirement for you to do so, we always ask that you keep this just between us. If you don’t mind, there’s no need to say anything to Michael about this.”
Kelly stood and reached for his coat. The old lady looked up at him, her eyes filling even more. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We haven’t spoken in years.”
Kelly looked around at the tattered living room, the peel-ing wallpaper, the general sense of decay, deterioration.
He almost said something about that explaining why, even though her son was rich and famous, she still lived this way, but then he held his tongue. He stood, threw his overcoat over his arm, and closed his notebook.
Mrs. Schiftmann struggled to pull herself up off the couch.
“Please, don’t bother,” Kelly said. “I can find my way out.”
He took two steps toward the door, then stopped. He turned, faced the old woman as she sat there staring at him.
“Mrs. Schiftmann, this really isn’t part of the check, but I’m curious. If you don’t mind my asking, how did you and your son become estranged?”
She stared at him through rheumy, bloodshot eyes for a few moments without answering. The silence continued, and Kelly realized he wasn’t going to get an answer. He turned and walked toward the door.
Outside, the sky had abruptly clouded over in the short few minutes he’d been in the Schiftmann home. He walked to the sidewalk, pulling his coat around him as the wind picked up. The air felt heavy, as if snow were imminent. After a few years around the Great Lakes, one learned to feel the weather as much as observe it.
He stopped on the sidewalk, thinking. The interview with Michael Schiftmann’s mother had been frustrating. He didn’t know if she was withholding or if she was just unable to focus. He wondered if he should knock on a few doors, but his supervisor in the Cleveland Field Office had told him not to take any more time than he had to. There were other things on his plate.
Kelly stood there for a few moments, appearing to be almost in a kind of trance. Behind him, at the end of the block, a car drove past with a bad muffler. A siren wailed in the distance. He was about to turn and head back to his car when the front door of the house next door to Mrs. Schiftmann’s opened.
An elderly, thin man, gaunt and balding, wearing a pair of dirty khakis and a large sweatshirt, stepped out onto his porch. Kelly looked up and noticed the man’s right sleeve was empty, folded in the middle and pinned at the shoulder.
His left hand held a cane that looked carved from a thick tree limb.
“Can I help you?” the man said suspiciously. Well-dressed strangers standing on the sidewalk were not common in this part of town.
Kelly looked at the man, then decided to take a chance.
He strode over to the sidewalk and smiled at the man. “Yes sir, maybe you can. Have you lived here a long time?”
The man looked at him for a moment before answering.
“About thirty years,” he said.
“So you’ve known the Schiftmanns for a while.”
The man scowled. “Who are you?”
Kelly smiled. “I’m sorry. Forgot my manners.” He pulled out his badge case and ID and held it out to the man. “I’m Special Agent Kelly, FBI. I’m doing a routine background check and I’m trying to get some information on a Michael Schiftmann. Could I ask you a few questions?”
The old man nodded toward the Schiftmann house. “She help you?”
Kelly smiled. “Little. Not much.”
The man snorted. “I’m not surprised. She’s as crazy as he is.”
“Crazy?” Kelly asked.
“Kid was the craziest little psycho bastard I ever seen.
Good thing he moved away. I’d have probably had to shoot him, one way or another.”
Kelly smiled even more broadly. “Would it be okay if I came in and we talked a bit?”
The old man shrugged, then pivoted on one foot and turned for the door, leaning heavily on the cane with his one good arm.
“Sure,” he said. “C’mon in.”
CHAPTER 19
The flight from Bonaire to JFK was so uneventful as to be tedious. The sky was gray, overcast, threatening a late winter snow as Taylor and Michael emerged from the plane and walked down the Jetway in a kind of shock. Six hours earlier they’d been in paradise; now they were back in the city.
That said it all.
The two were quiet during the long taxi ride to Taylor’s loft on Grande Street. They dragged their suitcases and mesh bags full of scuba equipment upstairs, began unpacking, and then found themselves once more in bed. They made love yet again, perhaps a bit more subdued now that they were out of paradise and a bit more tired, then fell into a deep, silent sleep that went on for hours.
Taylor felt herself coming to and rolled over. The glowing orange numerals of the alarm clock read 8:47. She moaned, unable to believe that they’d been asleep nearly four hours.
She shook herself awake and sat up on the side of the bed.
Next to her, Michael was breathing deeply and rhythmically, still sound asleep.
She picked up her underwear off the floor and slipped into it, then quietly lifted her sweatshirt from the chair next to her bed. She crept out of the bedroom into the hallway and down the stairs to the main floor of her loft. The cavernous room, as high as two stories, was cold and drafty this time of year. Taylor shivered as she pulled the sweatshirt on, the rough material scraping her nipples. She crossed her arms across her chest, rubbing herself, as she walked into the kitchen.
She hadn’t bothered to look at the stack of mail she’d brought up after digging it out of her jammed mailbox. And she noticed the message light on her answering machine was blinking madly. Not completely awake yet, she pushed the mail stack aside and opened the refrigerator. She pulled out a container of orange juice and poured a glass, then casually hit the button on the answering machine.
The computerized voice came on and announced that she had sixteen messages. Taylor shook her head
