Richard Hawke - Cold Day in Hell

THE CONDITIONS ON the Long Island Expressway degenerated the farther east Alan Ross traveled. By the time he was approaching Melville, they were near whiteout. Tractor trailers were pulled over and parked along the sides of the highway, as were dozens of passenger cars and SUVs. Every few miles, a vehicle had run off into the median strip and remained there, the taillights blinking an anemic pink. From the swirling white haze in Ross’s rearview mirror, the occasional snowplow materialized. Pellets of salt rattled against the side of his car as the plows overtook and passed him.

Ross was perspiring like a man in the desert. His head was aching from the strain of squinting into the white wall in front of him. What he wanted was silence, some time to think. But this wasn’t likely, not with the hyperactive actress seated next to him. You’d have thought the woman had invented Paris. She wouldn’t shut up about it. Ross couldn’t count how many times he had been to Paris. Dozens? By the time this ride was finished, Tracy Jacobs might well have managed to ruin the city for him forever.

Ross was maintaining an achingly slow speed. He was not going to run the risk of either being pulled over by the police or sliding off the road like the half-dozen or so cars he had already passed. If there was one thing to be said for doing all this in a snowstorm, it was that the snow rendered Ross’s car virtually invisible. That part’s good, he thought. In a way, you really couldn’t ask for better. Not only here on the damnable LIE, but later, once they’d arrived at their destination, invisibility would be a wonderful advantage. Ross smiled to himself. It spoke to his sense of perfection. All he wanted at this point, his single goal, was to make all his problems and headaches disappear. Like a polar bear in a snowstorm. It’s there and it’s not there all at the same time. Now you see it, now you don’t.

He glanced over at Tracy Jacobs. She was in the middle of telling him everything he didn’t need to hear about the Musée d’Orsay, but noticing him looking at her, she came up for air. Would wonders never cease?

“You look happy all of a sudden. What are you smiling about?”

“I love hearing your stories,” Ross said suavely. “It’s nice to see a girl who can get all excited like that. It’s so nice you’re not jaded.”

Tracy flashed her huge smile. “Do you know what I thought when I was looking at the Mona Lisa ? I mean the Mona Lisa .”

“Tell me.”

“I was thinking, and I’m serious about this, I said to myself, ‘Alan Ross is the man responsible for this.’”

Ross demurred. “Don’t you mean Leonardo da Vinci?”

Tracy laughed. God, that laugh. Try as they might, the vocal coaches for Century City hadn’t made a whole lot of progress on that horrific laugh.

“Alan, you know what I mean. Not just Paris. The whole thing. Everything. It’s true. I owe you my entire life.”

Alan Ross turned his attention back to the slick roadway. Yes, you do, dear, he thought. That’s exactly right.

MEGAN GOT THE CALL from Fritz as she was clearing the snow off her windshield.

“They’re heading out onto the Island. I remember Robin telling me that Ross and his wife have a place out in the Hamptons somewhere. That’s my guess.”

“The Hamptons ? In this weather?”

Megan looked up and saw Brian McKinney coming out of the precinct house. She turned her back on him. The interrogation of Bruce Spicer had been a fiasco. If Spicer bellowed “Whore!” at Megan once, he’d bellowed it a dozen times. McKinney and a few of the others had found the whole Bruce Spicer show vastly amusing, crowding around the one-way window outside the box to watch Spicer heap his verbal abuses on Megan. The interrogation had gone nowhere, except round and round. Megan knew she might have handled Spicer better, but her mind had been elsewhere.

Malone was asking her a question, but the connection was breaking up.

“Say it again, Fritz. I couldn’t hear you.”

“…get the address…Hamptons. That way…follow him.”

“What?”

“Ross’s address.”

“You want me to get Ross’s address? The Hamptons?” Malone’s answer was unintelligible. “What do you think he’s doing out there?”

The connection crackled again. Megan repeated her question. Malone’s voice came on abruptly. Loudly.

“…DEFINITELY NO GOOD.”

Megan jerked open the driver’s-side door and tossed the snow scraper onto the seat, then slid in behind the wheel. In the side-view mirror, she saw McKinney getting into his car. “I’m coming out,” she barked into the phone. “I’ll get back to you with the address. Just stay with him. Corner the bastard. Shove him all the way out to Montauk if you have to. I’m coming out there.”

“The roads are a mess. You don’t need to-”

She threw the phone onto the seat and fired up the engine. McKinney had pulled up next to her. He signaled for Megan to roll down her window. She hit the gas and jerked the wheel, fishtailing sluggishly from the curb.

TOO MANY QUESTIONS. Ross was getting sick of stringing stupid lies together. He’d told Tracy when he met her at the airport that he was taking her to a surprise birthday party for Gloria out at the Hamptons place. Anyone else would have asked the obvious question right up front (“In a blizzard ?”), but in tossing out a bogus list of who was allegedly coming to the nonexistent party, Ross had ignited Tracy’s expectations and she’d spent nearly the first forty minutes of the drive gushing over the fanciful gathering. Only as they crawled past the Central Islip exit did Tracy begin asking why the party wasn’t being held at Ross’s place in Westchester. And wasn’t Gloria’s birthday in March?

Where was jet lag when you needed it? Ross wished she would just clam up. His temples were pounding, and he fantasized about snatching hold of the gabby woman’s neck with his right hand while still piloting carefully with his left, pressing his thumb into her windpipe as hard as he could. His heart quickened with the thought. He just wanted everything over . Enough was enough was enough.

He glanced over at Tracy. She was sitting upright in a sexy something she’d told him she got on the Champs-Élysées. Okay, Ross conceded, a little fame and a lot of money hadn’t hurt the girl in the least, he’d give her that. Compared to the shrill, awkward young woman who had sat in his office the previous spring, going on and on about how violent and dangerous she thought Marshall Fox was, this Tracy was a vast improvement. The new hairstyle, the fix-up on the nose. Some eyebrow work. It wasn’t a face with much of a repertoire of expressions-especially for a so-called actress-but it was sunny and fresh and eager, and sure, he’d have considered getting into this one’s pants if he’d had anything remotely close to the urge, which he didn’t. How easy. Slide the car over to the side of the road. Work a quick number on her. Remind her who the hell got her where she was today and who had the power to take it all away. Easy. Ross was 90 percent loyal to his wife. Hell, in their industry, that practically made him a prince. And since the whole debacle with Cynthia, Ross hadn’t strayed at all. Not once.

But that wasn’t the plan. Maybe by the time they got out to the house, he’d consider it. Who knows? Maybe in a perverse way, it would make what he had in mind easier. She’s already gotten further in life than she had any right to. I’ve already given her that, Ross thought. Maybe one final dizzy moment before it all ends.

He’d think about it.

Tracy ran her palms across the flat plane her skirt made of her lap. “Would it be all right if I talk to you about the show?”