He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t disappointed. He was tired and numb.
“No questions, just a comment,” he said. “I hope Victoria and Elizabeth come home one day.”
5
Four years later
When Marcus opened his apartment door with his shopping, he pretty much knew what he would find. Still, the mess in the kitchen, the remains of last night’s dinner on the coffee table, and the clothes and towels strewn in the bedroom and bathroom, set him off big-time. At least Sarah had removed herself—he had no idea where and had little interest. It was Saturday, so she probably went on a lunch date with one of her girlfriends he refused to meet. Couldn’t she at least have spent half an hour lifting a finger?
This relationship of all of six weeks was already in decline. When it looked like he and Sarah might be heading toward cohabitation, he warned her not to give up the lease on her own apartment in haste. He hoped that when the time came, she would thank him for his sage advice.
They met, unsurprisingly, in a casino bar in Atlantic City. After he was shown the door at Andreason, he’d had to decide where to live. He had no affinity to Chicago, didn’t have the slightest interest in returning to Europe, and the Washington, DC area, where he had lived the longest, came with unpleasant flashbacks. Moving to New York City seemed like a good enough idea. He wasn’t a suburbia guy, a country guy, a small-town guy, and most definitely not a California or Florida guy. If he got bored in New York, it was going to be his own damn fault. It was far and away the costliest option, but with his pension, he was able to manage a small one-bedroom apartment in a less-than-desirable building.
Sarah was a legal secretary, almost twenty years his junior. She looked a lot older than thirty-five and the first time she spent the night, he snuck a look at her driver’s license. She was telling the truth. He chalked up his misperception to the woman’s fondness for vodka tonics and Marlboro Lights. Why, he had wondered, was she interested in a man his age who didn’t have much money?
“Because, look at you,” she had said waving a cigarette and two nicotine-stained fingers in his direction. “You’re a very sexy man. Your butt’s tighter than my boyfriend’s in high school. And wait till I tell my friends you used to be a spy. They’re going to go apeshit.”
He had just finished cleaning up the place when his mobile rang. It was from a blocked number, so he ignored it. A minute later, there was a similar call and he let that one go too.
The third time, he answered with a “Stop calling me.”
“Hello? Marcus?”
There was some distortion on the line, but he recognized the voice immediately. He wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“It’s Mickey Andreason. Am I catching you at a bad time?”
He thought about saying something like, Any day I hear from the likes of you, is, by definition, a bad time, but he only said, “What can I do for you?”
“I’m on my jet. We just took off from Chicago. I wanted to see if I could pick you up in New York.”
“Oh yeah, why’s that?”
The conversation lasted under a minute.
When he hung up, he placed a call to a locksmith to change his locks and left a note for Sarah telling her that all good things must come to an end.
*
This was the one place to which Marcus had been certain he would never return.
Yet, here he was, driving through the gates of Villa Shibui, seated beside the one man he was certain he would never see again.
Mickey had caught up to his age. He looked sallow and puffy and thicker around the middle, every inch a man pushing eighty. Marcus had Googled him from time to time. He learned that following her stroke, his wife, Freja, had lingered in a rehab hospital for a year before she died. Mickey had soured on retirement and stepped back into the CEO job on a permanent basis. The company was still a significant player in the defense sector, but its growth had faltered. The view on Wall Street was that Mickey had lost his mojo, and it was only a matter of time before he dropped dead in the saddle or sold out.
When they pulled up to the house, Marcus said, “There’re only two cars here.”
“I told Leonora and Armando to keep their mouths shut—no police—and not to let the housekeepers leave. We need to keep a lid on this until we know what the hell we’re dealing with.”
The Cutrìs were standing in the hall, ashen. The Pennestrìs were sitting at the kitchen table, too drained to rise to greet them.
“Mickey,” Leonora said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Where are they?” Mickey asked, hardly making eye contact.
Armando pointed. “Upstairs.”
“You didn’t talk to anyone right?” Mickey asked.
The lawyer said, “Not a soul. What would we say?”
Marcus didn’t wait for Mickey. He didn’t work for him anymore. He didn’t care about being deferential. He took the stairs two at a time and rushed down the hall where he paused at the closed door. He could hear Mickey taking the stairs slowly and deliberately, but he didn’t hold back. He pressed the handle and pushed the door
