“What are you going to do when you’re in?”
“Wake him up, make him turn off the alarm, and let you in.”
“Good. Warn him what happens if he pushes a call-the-cops code.” He leaned close and kissed her cheek. “I love you, baby.”
Paul put on his thin kidskin gloves while Sylvie did the same. Paul lifted the clear plastic flap away from the dog door, held it up and whispered, “Good luck, baby.”
“Thanks.” Sylvie slipped her arms through the opening, shrugged to get her head and shoulders in, turned to the side to get her hips in, then turned the rest of the way to sit and pull her legs and feet in.
The kitchen was dark and quiet. She listened to the sounds of the building while her eyes accustomed themselves to the dark. Then she got up, took out her gun, and began to explore.
She found a dining room with a crystal chandelier and a long formal table and antique sideboards that didn’t seem contemporary enough for a music executive. The living room was divided into two carpeted areas with two separate sets of white furniture, with a clear space of marble floor down the center, which told her that Scott Schelling passed through the room only on his way to and from the front door. She followed a corridor off the living room and found a large den, a media room with thick leather theater seats, a huge flat-screen television set, smaller monitors, and lots of speakers and control boxes for various interlocking sound systems. She made her way back down the long corridor past the living room and into a small gym. It had many of the machines and pieces of equipment that Sylvie’s first husband, Darren, had bought her, but the set of weights was bigger and heavier than hers.
She had reached the private areas of the house, so she knew she must be coming closer to the bedrooms. The gym had a door that led to a shower room, and on the far end of it was a door to a conventional bathroom, and then another door to a large walk-in closet and dressing room. She could see built-in dressers and cabinets and rows of men’s suits on hangers, rows of shoes on shelves.
Sylvie edged close to the next door, her gun ready, and stepped out suddenly, the gun aimed at the bed. But the bed was still made, the covers perfectly smooth. There was a desk to her right near the wall, so she came close. There was nothing on its surface—no papers, no wallet or keys, no sunglasses or coins he might have left there when he went to bed. She looked at her watch. It was very late—after two. He should be home, if he was coming.
Maybe he slept in another bedroom. She made her way out the door and down the hall, looking in each bedroom. When she had seen them all, she walked back toward the kitchen. On the far side of it was a separate corridor she had missed the first time; it led to a suite for a maid. She opened the door carefully and explored it. The closet had a woman’s clothes in it, and there were Spanish novellas on the bookshelves, but the bed had not been slept in. In the maid’s bathroom, Sylvie studied the louvered window above the shower for a moment, then returned to the kitchen and knelt by the dog door. “Paul.”
“What did you find?”
“Not him. He’s not here. There’s nobody in the house. The maid seems to get the weekend off. I’ve been in every room. Time for you to come in.”
“How? I’ll never fit.”
“Come around to the end of the house by the garage. I’ll show you.”
Paul went around the house to the far end, and when he arrived, Sylvie was already taking the strips of glass out of the louvered window. He pushed the last three out, handed them in to Sylvie, and climbed through the empty window frame into the shower. They replaced the glass and stepped out of the shower.
“Where should we start?” he said.
“The kitchen’s right down here.” She led him down a short corridor into the kitchen.
He shone his flashlight on the long granite counters, the copper pots hanging on the walls, the giant sinks and stove. “Nice.”
“Let’s find the money,” she said.
The kitchen was rich in places for hiding things: the refrigerator, inside pots and pans, in the removable backs of electronic devices, in cabinets and drawers. They found nothing, and moved to the next room. Paul stood on the dining-room table to see if anything could be hidden in the chandelier. They looked underneath tables and sideboards. In the living room, they pulled back runners and moved paintings to search for secret compartments, took out drawers. They checked inside the piano, then moved on.
It was nearly dawn before they finished. They had found seven thousand dollars in cash, a few thousand dollars’ worth of watches and other jewelry, two loaded pistols, and a short-barreled pump shotgun. They had not found the million dollars that Scott Schelling had promised them.
“What do you think?” Sylvie asked. “Do we give up and go?”
“He’s not going to get Wendy Harper for free. He made an arrangement, and he’s going to pay us.”
41
WHILE THEY HAD a drink in Scott Schelling’s suite, Jill Klein introduced Scott to a whole set of grievances against her husband. Fifteen years ago, Jill had been a young, extremely pretty woman who worked for a subsidiary called Carbondale Industries in Chicago. Ray Klein told her he had come to the moment in his life when he wanted only to step back from running the conglomerate and enjoy life with a woman like her. He told her he would always cherish her and be faithful to her. Every one of his statements had been a deliberate lie.
“Now he’s got another new girl—about the hundredth one—but this one is much worse. He’s promoted her to vice president and travels with her, like a corporate wife. It’s the most public humiliation yet. I hate him.” Then it was as though she remembered something she had forgotten to do. She put down her drink, stood up, and began to take off her clothes.
When they were in bed, he saw that what she was doing was avenging her humiliation. Anger made her passionate and eager. She wanted to be more excited, more enthralled by Scott than she had ever been with Ray Klein because that was part of her revenge: to show some impartial, invisible universal arbiter that Ray was not as good at making love as the first man she picked out at a party. And there was another comparison at work in her mind, too. Her sex had to be wilder, more erotic than the illicit sex that Ray had with Martha Rodall. And Scott could tell there were other feelings, too, ones that Scott did not have enough experience or enough empathy to interpret.
Scott had been afraid of Ray Klein, terrified of the power that Ray Klein had over him. But tonight Scott was in a hotel room having sex with Ray Klein’s beautiful wife. It was the antidote to the cowardice and the shame and resentment, and it was intoxicating. He and Jill had become complicit in deceiving Ray Klein—not just in fooling him, but in dishonoring him, mocking Ray Klein’s brute power over them. What could Ray Klein ever do to Scott that compared with this? While they were in bed, Scott already knew that the next time he was forced to defer to Ray Klein, to tolerate his dominance, Scott would be thinking, I fucked your wife. And he knew that Jill was looking forward to having thoughts on the same topic.
While Jill dressed, he said, “Am I going to see you again?”
“You must know I’ll see you again.” Her tone was peculiar. It was not affectionate, not even warm. There was an edge to it, and his ear caught the tone.
“When?”
“When I can.”
“I want it to be soon.” He could hardly believe he had said that, but he meant it. He wanted not just to have one night with Jill Klein. He wanted to be able to repeat this night as often as possible. He wanted her to belong to him.
She touched his face, leaned close and looked at him, but did not kiss him. “If I have a chance to do this again, believe me, I will.”
“Let me give you a phone number.” He took a piece of hotel stationery and wrote while he talked. “This is the cell I carry. It’s a number almost nobody has because I use it only for emergencies. Call when you think you might be able to see me.”
She took it, folded it and put it in her purse. “Fine. Now I’ve got to get out of here.”
