Харлан Кобен - Win

“Come in,” he says.

I do. He closes the door behind me. There are four other hipsters in the room, all offering up tough hipster glares behind hipster glasses.

“I’ll need your weapons,” says the big hipster who opened the door.

“I left them in the car.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

“How about that razor you got tucked up your sleeve?”

Big Hipster grins at me. I grin back.

“All of them,” I repeat.

The big hipster asks for my phone. I make sure the passcode is locked and hand it over. He then nods toward another hipster. This second hipster produces a handheld metal detector and starts to run it over my body until a voice says, “Let it go. If he does something stupid, all of you shoot him, okay?”

I recognize Leo Staunch from his hospital visit. He waves for me to join him, and I enter an office that if I read up more about the subjects, I would probably describe as “Zen” or “feng shui.” It’s white with orbs and a huge window with a view of a fountain in a courtyard. There are also, I note, handicap railings and a wheelchair ramp.

When the door closes, I can no longer hear the sounds from the brewery. It is as though we’ve entered another realm. He asks me to sit. I do. He goes around a see-through Plexiglas desk and takes the chair across from me. His chair is a few inches higher than mine, and I want to roll my eyes at the weak attempt at intimidation, except for one thing:

Leo Staunch was right about one thing when he visited me. I am not bulletproof. I am also not suicidal, and while I have taken way too many chances with my personal safety, I like to think that I do so with a modicum of discretion.

In short, I need to be careful here.

“So,” Leo Staunch begins, “you know where Arlo Sugarman is?”

“Not yet.”

Leo Staunch frowns. “But on the phone—”

“Yes, I lied. Alas, I’m not the only one.”

He takes his time with that. “Tread carefully, Mr. Lockwood.”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Come now, you don’t hit me as the type who wants things sugarcoated, so let me state this plainly. When you visited me at the hospital, you assured me that you had nothing to do with Ry Strauss’s death.”

I don’t know what reaction I’m expecting from Leo Staunch. Denial perhaps. Faux surprise possibly. But instead he waits me out.

I add, “That wasn’t true, was it?”

“What makes you say that?”

“I’ve come across some new information.”

“I see,” Staunch says, spreading his hands. “Let’s hear it.”

“Did you kill Ry Strauss?”

“That’s a question,” he says, “not new information.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Did you know Ry Strauss lived in the Beresford before his death?”

“Again no.” He runs his hand through his hair to slick it back down. Leo Staunch has that kind of waxy skin that suggests something in the cosmetic/Botox family. “What is your new information, Mr. Lockwood?”

“Not long before the murder,” I say, “you were told that Ry Strauss lived in the Beresford.”

He crosses his legs and starts tapping his chin with his index finger. “Is that a fact?”

I wait.

“Tell me how you know this.”

“The how is irrelevant.”

“Not to me.” Leo Staunch tries to give me the hard eyes now, but the spark won’t flame. “You come into my place of work under false pretenses. You call me a liar. I think I’m owed an explanation, don’t you?”

I do not wish to get Steve in trouble, but here we are. “There was a bank robbery,” I say.

His expression is unreadable, cold stone. I spend the next minute or two explaining about the bank robbery and the safe deposit box belonging to Ry Strauss. I keep names out of it, but really, how difficult would it be for a man like Leo Staunch to find out who my source is?

“So your contact,” Leo Staunch says when I finish. “He claims that he sold the information on Ry Strauss to me.”

“Or gave.”

“Or gave.” Staunch nods as though this suddenly makes sense to him. “So what do you want from me?”

The question throws me. “I want to know whether you killed Ry Strauss.”

“Why?”

“Pardon?”

“What difference does it make?” Staunch continues, but I can feel a shift in the air. “Let’s pretend your source is telling you the truth. Suppose he gave us this information. Suppose, hypothetically, I decided to use it to avenge my sister. So what? Are you going to arrest me?”

I thought the question was rhetorical, so I wait. He does the same. After a few seconds pass, I finally say, “No.”

“Are you going to tell the cops on me?”

My turn again: “No.”

“So you and I, we need to focus on what’s important here.”

“And what might that be?” I ask.

“Finding Arlo Sugarman.” His voice is odd now, faraway. Something in the room has definitely changed, but I am not sure what to make of it. Staunch suddenly spins his chair, so his back is to me. Then, in a low voice, he adds, “What difference does it make if I killed Ry Strauss?”

I find this disconcerting. I am not sure how to proceed. I decide to heed his earlier warning and thus tread carefully. “There is more to this.”

“More to Ry Strauss’s death?”

“Yes.”

“You mean, like the art heist?”

“For one.”

“What else?”

Do I want to get into Cousin Patricia and the Hut of Horrors with him? No, I do not.

“It would help me,” I say with as much care as I can muster, “to know the full truth. You went to avenge your sister. I understand that.”

I hear a chuckle. “You don’t understand at all.”

There is a heaviness in his tone, a profound and unexpected sadness. Leo Staunch stands now, still not facing me, and moves to the floor-to-ceiling window. “You think that I want you to find Arlo Sugarman so I can kill him.”

It was not a question, so I choose not to answer.

“That’s not the case at all.”

His back is still to me. I wait and stay silent.

“I’m going to tell you something now that will never leave this room,” he says. He finally turns around and faces me. “Do I have your word?”

So many promises made today. Two of our biggest delusions are that “loyalty” and “keeping promises” are admirable qualities. They are not. They are oft an excuse to do the wrong thing and to protect the wrong person because you are supposed to be “a man of your word” or have a bond with or allegiance to someone who deserves neither. Loyalty is too often used as a replacement for morality or ethics, and yes, I know how strange it may sound to hear me lecture you thusly, but there you go.

“Of course,” I say, lying with ease (but not immorally). And then, because words are so very, very cheap, I thicken it with, “You have my word.”

Leo Staunch is facing the window. “Where to begin?”

I do not say, “At the beginning,” because that would (a) be a cliché and (b) really, I would rather he just get to it quickly.

“I was sixteen years old when Sophia was killed.”

Sigh. So much for getting to it quickly.

“She was twenty-four. It was just the two of us — me and Soph. After my mother had her, the doctors told my mom that she couldn’t have any more kids, but eight years later, surprise, there I was.” I see him smile via the reflection in the window. “You can’t believe how much they all spoiled me.” Leo Staunch shakes his head. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

I see no reason to interject here, so I stay quiet.

“You know who we are, right?”

Curious question. “You mean, your family?”

“Exactly. The Staunch family. Let me give you some quick background. Uncle Nero and my dad were brothers. They were super close. With these kinds of, shall we say, enterprises, you need one leader. Uncle Nero was older and nastier, and my dad, who everyone tells me was a gentle soul, was happy to stay behind the scenes. Still that didn’t save him. When my dad got whacked back in 1967, well, maybe you know about the outcome.”