Джозеф Файндер - House on Fire

“I assume — I thought it was to get a copy of Dad’s updated will. Isn’t that what you told me?”

“That’s only part of it. I think Megan is trying to unseat your father.”

“You do?”

“Hear me out. I found notes from what I think is a conversation Maggie had with Megan. Presumably when Megan hired her. Yes, Megan wanted to get the will, but it seems her main focus was on your father’s guilt. Crimes he’s committing. Using company funds for personal purposes. Why else would she be looking into crimes her father has committed?”

Sukie looked directly at me. She didn’t look surprised. “Because she’s tired of waiting for him to die. She wants to force him out.”

“She wants the iron throne.”

She nodded, stood up. Walked to the door to the hallway and closed it. “She doesn’t care about the truth coming out. But I thought you were stopping. I asked you to stop.”

“I’m not charging you a cent. As for me stopping, that’s up to me, and I don’t want to. Not until I find out who killed Maggie.”

She looked pensive. “You keep digging, you’re going to get yourself killed.”

I shrugged. I didn’t believe that.

“Did you know Kimball Pharma has been losing money in the last few years?” she said.

“I didn’t.”

“I get regular debriefings from a guy in the family office. It seems my dad has been investing crazy amounts of money in research and development. He’s founded subsidiary companies in South America and South Asia and Eastern Europe — labs working on developing new products.”

“Do you have a say in this kind of stuff, or do you stay out of it?”

“I have a vote in the family trust, which owns Kimball Pharma. But we can all be outvoted by Dad. So, yeah, I stay out of it. I just think it’s interesting that we’re losing money because he’s spending so much on research. I know Megan really hates what’s going on.”

“So maybe that’s the reason, or maybe it’s just plain old ambition, but I think Megan is trying to remove your father.”

“This makes sense,” she said. “It makes sense of a lot of things.”

“Like?”

“We have an apartment in Paris. On the rue de Rivoli. Spectacular place. Legally it belongs to the company, it’s for business use only, all that. But I lived there for a few years after I graduated from Oberlin. It was my apartment, and believe me, I did no business there.” She smiled. “I know Dad has had mistresses, and he’s always kept them in love nests around the world that the company paid for. Anyway, Megan and I had drinks a few weeks ago, and she was asking me for all the specifics of when I used the Paris apartment or the London town house. Like she was doing research. Now I get it. And I remember when Dad—”

There was a sudden explosion, a shattering of glass, and Sukie tumbled to the floor. Quick reflexes. A roar of shouts and screams outside. I leaped around the desk and saw that the left side of her face and her neck was bloody. Nearby on the floor were shards of glass and a brick that someone had thrown through her office window.

“You okay?” I said.

“Ow. I’m okay, I’m just... cut. The brick just missed my ear. Scraped me.”

Once I saw that she was all right, I raced to the French doors, flung them open, and ran into the yard. Right away I saw the guy who’d thrown the brick. A large, fat man. He was trying to light a rag that had been jammed into a Coke can. Probably filled with gasoline. His intended follow-up to the brick.

He shouted, “Burn in hell, you goddamned bitch!”

I put on a burst of speed and caught up with him and slammed him to the ground. He squawked, “Fuck you, man!”

I had him in a half nelson, pinning him down with my knees. I kicked away the Coke can, could smell the gas. His lighter skittered away on the stone path.

He had tattoos on his neck and his arms. Probably on his obese belly too. “All right, asshole, shout all you want, but when you start hurting people, you’re gonna get arrested.” The man apparently had broken away from the organized protest and found a way into the communal garden.

With my left hand I fished out my phone, and as I was about to pull my right hand off the fat man to dial, I heard Sukie shouting, “Nick, no! Let him go!”

I turned, saw her standing in the middle of her small yard, a hand to the wound on her neck.

I said, “He could have burned down your house, Sukie.”

“Let him go.”

“Let me go, man!” the fat man bellowed. He flailed his arms and legs like an overturned cockroach.

“He’s just going to come back after you.”

She shook her head. “I mean it, Nick. Let him go.”

Reluctantly, I eased up on the man, and he awkwardly got to his feet and stumbled away.

“You’ve got to hold these people responsible or they’ll keep throwing bricks, they’ll keep throwing Molotov cocktails,” I said, approaching her. It was rapidly getting dark. I put an arm around her and walked her back into the house. “You’ve got to press charges.”

“That’s not me,” she said. “I’m not that person.”

“Well, maybe you should be.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “These people — they’re on the right side. They’ve all suffered because of my family. All of them, there’s a reason they’re protesting. There’s a reason they’re throwing rocks and bricks. And bombs or whatever. Because they’re in pain.”

“Are you in pain?”

“It looks worse than it is,” she said. “I just need to put some peroxide on it and a bandage.”

She opened the interior office door. Her assistant, the young woman in the tortoiseshell glasses who’d let me in, was standing right there. “Oh, my God!” she said frantically. “What happened?”

“They’re throwing bricks now,” Sukie said.

“Your door was closed, so I didn’t dare— Oh, my God, what can I do to help?”

“Get me a bag of frozen peas from the refrigerator upstairs, could you?” Sukie said. “And some peroxide and a couple of Band-Aids? And can you call Jeff to ask him to come over and board up the window?”

The young woman turned and ran down the hall toward the front room. Her editor, the rumpled guy, had stuck his head out of the editing room. “Was that a gun?” he said.

“A brick,” Sukie said. “Glanced off me. I’m totally fine.”

“You shouldn’t stay here tonight,” I said. “I should get you to a hotel.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to go to a hotel.”

“I don’t want you staying here tonight.”

“Where are you staying?” she said.

Sukie quickly went upstairs and packed a bag. I could hear scattered shouts of the protesters outside. A couple of organized chants: “Blood money! Blood money!”

She had a brief chat with her editor, who was staying there and working into the night. I grabbed her bag, and we went back out to the yard. I’d decided it was unsafe or at least unwise for her to leave via the front door. That was where the protesters were waiting for her. She said there was a way out through the back — probably the way the brick-throwing fat man had gotten in in the first place.

We crossed the community garden and went through a side gate on to Bleecker Street and flagged down a cab.

My friend’s pied-à-terre was a one-bedroom on Central Park South, a high floor in a tower building. It had an amazing view of Central Park, spread out before you like a diorama, like a perfect little toy model. A big dark rectangle bordered by the lights of Fifth Avenue on the right and Central Park West on the left. A breathtaking sight.

When I emerged from the bathroom, I found Sukie sitting on the couch by the view of the park, weeping. She looked small and vulnerable curled up that way.