James Patterson - Lifeguard

This time Stratton didn’t make a sound. “I am looking for a piece by Henri Gaume. How do I know that what you claim to have is even the right one?”

“Oh, it’s the one. A washerwoman staring into a mirror over a sink. Wearing a simple white apron.” I knew anyone could have gotten ahold of the police report. That description wasn’t exactly proof. “It was in your bedroom hallway the night you had my friends killed.”

“The night they robbed me, Mr. Kelly. Describe the frame.”

“It’s gold,” I said. “Old. With filigree trim.”

“Turn it over. Is there anything written on the back?”

“I don’t have it in front of me,” I said. “Remember, I’m at Chuck and Harold’s?”

“Now that wasn’t very smart, Mr. Kelly,” Stratton said, “for the kind of discussion you have in mind.”

“There’s writing on it,” I said. I knew I was about to reveal something good. “To Liz. Love forever, Dennis. Very touching, Stratton. What a crock.”

“I wasn’t asking for your commentary, Mr. Kelly.”

“Why not? It comes with the piece. Same price.”

“Not a very savvy strategy, Mr. Kelly. To piss off the person you’re trying to sell to. Just to hear you out, what sort of price is it that you have in mind?”

“We’re talking five million dollars.”

“ Five million dollars? That piece wouldn’t sell for more than thirty thousand to Gaume’s own mother.”

“Five million dollars, Mr. Stratton. Or else I drop it off with the police. If I remember right, that was the sum you and Mickey had originally agreed to?”

Stratton went silent. Not the kind that suggested he was thinking. The kind where he wanted to wring my neck. “I’m not sure what it is you’re talking about, Mr. Kelly, but you’re in luck. I do have a reward out on that piece. But just to be completely sure, there’s something else on the back. In the right-hand corner of the frame.”

I closed my eyes for a second. I tried to remember everything I’d been told about this painting. He was right. There was something else on the frame. I was about to reveal something that made me feel dirty. As if I had betrayed people. People I loved.

“It’s a number,” I whispered into the phone. “Four-threesix-one-oh.”

There was a long pause. “Well done, Ned. You deserve that reward for how you’ve handled everybody. Including the police. I’ll be at a charity function tonight, at the Breakers. The Make-A-Wish Foundation. One of Liz’s favorite causes. I’ll take a suite there under my name. How about if I excuse myself from the party, say, around nine?”

“I’ll be there.”

I hung up the phone, a dull beat thudding in my chest. When I walked out of the restaurant, a black car was waiting at the curb. Ellie and two FBI agents were looking at me expectantly.

“We’re in business,” I said. “Nine o’ clock tonight.”

“We got some work to do before then,” one of the agents said.

“Maybe later,” I said, “there’s something I have to do first.”

A GUARD SEARCHED ME and led me back into the holding cells in the Palm Beach County Jail. “What is it with you Kellys?” he asked, shaking his head. “In the blood?”

My father was lying on a metal cot in a cell, staring off into space.

I stood watching for a while. In the dingy light, I could almost make out the faded facial lines of a younger man. A scene from my childhood flashed: Frank, arriving home with this grand entrance, carrying a big box. Mom was at the sink. JM and Dave and I were sitting around the kitchen table after school, eating snacks. I was maybe nine.

“Evelyn Kelly…” My father spun Mom around, and said like the game show announcer, “Come on down!”

He thrust out the box, and I’ll never forget the look on my mother’s face as she opened it. Out came this gorgeous fur coat. Frank draped it on her and twirled her around like a dancer. My mother had this flushed, shocked look on her face, something between elation and disbelief.

My father dipped her back like a ballroom dancer, winking to us. “Just wait till you see what’s behind door number three!” My father could charm the gun off a beat cop when he wanted to.

“Hey, Pop,” I said, standing there by his cell.

My father rolled onto his side. “Neddie,” he said, and blinked.

“I didn’t know what to bring, so I brought these…” I showed him a bag filled with Kit Kat chocolate bars and Luden’s wild cherry cough drops. My mother used to bring them every time we visited him in prison.

Frank sat up, grinning. “I always told your mom, I’d put a hacksaw to better use.”

“I tried. Those metal detectors make it a sonuvabitch, though.”

He smoothed down his hair. “Ah, these new times…”

I looked at him. He was thin and slightly yellow, but he seemed relaxed, calm.

“You need anything? I could probably get Sollie to fix you up with a lawyer.”

“Georgie’s got it covered,” he said, shaking his head. “I know you think I messed up again,” my father said, “but I had to do it, Ned. There’s a code, even among shits like me. Moretti broke it. He killed my flesh and blood. Some things, they don’t go unattended. You understand?”

“You wanted to do something for Dave, it was Dennis Stratton you should’ve shot. He ordered it done. What you did messed up our best chance to get him.”

“So how come I’m feeling like I finally did some good?” My father smiled. “Anyway, I’ve always been a small-picture guy. I’m glad you’re here, though, Ned. There’s some things I want to say.”

“Me, too,” I said, my palms resting on the bars.

Frank reached over and poured himself a glass of water. “I’ve never been very good at seeing you for who you are, have I, son? I never even gave you what you deserved after you got cleared on that prep school thing. Which was just to say, I’m sorry, Ned, for doubting you. You’re a good kid – a good man.”

“Listen, Pop. We don’t have to go over those things now…”

“Yes, we do,” my father said. He struggled to his feet. “After John Michael died, I think I couldn’t face up to the truth that it was me that got him killed. Some part of me wanted to say, See, my boys are the same, the same as me. It’s the Kelly way. When you got that job at Stroughton, the fact was, I was pretty goddamn proud.”

I nodded that I understood.

“That day, back home… that was the worst day of my life.” My father looked in my eyes.

“Burying Dave.” I nodded, then exhaled. “Me, too.”

“Yeah.” His eyes rounded with sadness. ”But I was talking about that day at Fenway. When I let you walk away and take the heat for what I’d done. That’s when I think I realized what a mess I’d made of my life. How big a man you were, and how small I’d become. Nah, how much of a punk I’d always been. I was always a two-bitter, Neddie. But you aren’t.”

Frank shuffled, weak-kneed, over to the bars. “This is long overdue, Ned, but I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry for the way I’ve let everybody down. ” He clasped his hand over mine. “I know it’s not enough to say that. I know it doesn’t make anything right. But it’s all I have.”

I felt tears burning at the back of my eyes. “If Dave’s up there watching,” I said, trying to laugh, “I bet he’s thinking, Man, I sure could’ve used that particular bit of wisdom a few days earlier.”

Frank grunted a laugh, too. “That was always the rap on me – big ideas, shit timing. But I’ve left things okay. For your mother. And you, too, Ned.”

“We’re going to get this guy, Pop.” I squeezed him back. Now I was crying.