Blake Crouch - Confidence Girl - The Letty Dobesh Chronicles

Letty went quietly up the staircase, taking the steps two at a time.

Near the top, she caught a view down into the kitchen. It was James and some other black-suited man with long hair who she hadn’t seen before. They stood at the counter, dipping crackers into the foie gras.

She came to the second floor. A long hallway, empty and dark, branched off from either side of the spiral staircase. The blueprints indicated that this level housed four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a study. Letty kept climbing, using the iron railing as a guide. The noise of the men in the kitchen fell farther and farther away. By the time she reached the final step, she couldn’t even hear them.

Letty stepped into the cupola of the house.

Because three of the walls consisted entirely of windows, the moon poured inside like a floodlight.

Letty ripped off the wig. She ran her hands carefully through her hair until her fingers found the razor blade.

Padding over to the desk, she turned on a lamp.

Her watch read a quarter ‘til eight.

She stared up at the wall above the desk.

What the hell?

She’d been expecting to see the Van Gogh—a skeleton smoking a cigarette. What hung on the wall instead was an acrylic of a horse. Maudlin colors. Proportions all wrong. She was no art critic, but she felt certain this painting was very badly done.

Leaning in close, she read the artist’s signature in the bottom, right-hand corner of the canvas.

Margaret Fitch

Letty sat down in the leather chair behind the desk. Her head dizzy and untethered. Had Javier told her the wrong place to look? Had she somehow misunderstood him? No, this was Fitch’s office. In fact, there should be a plastic tube taped beneath the desktop. She reached under, groping in the darkness. All she felt was the underside of the middle drawer.

Assumptions.

Somewhere, she’d made a false one.

The blueprints had identified the cupola as an office, but maybe Fitch’s was actually down on the second floor.

That had to be it.

She spun the swivel chair around and started to rise.

Took in a hard, fast breath instead.

A shadow stood at the top of the spiral staircase, watching her.

11

For a long minute, Letty couldn’t move.

Her heart banged in her chest like a mental patient in a rubber room.

“Dear old Mom did that one,” Fitch said, “God rest her soul.” He pointed to the painting of the horse behind his desk. “She gave it to me for Christmas fifteen years ago. I hated it at the time, and with good reason. Let’s be honest. It’s hideous. So I kept it in a closet, except for when she visited. Then I’d have to swap out my Van Gogh for that monstrosity. Make sure she noticed it proudly displayed in my office.”

“Johnny...”

“And then she died, and I got sentimental. I sold Skull with a Burning Cigarette and put My Horse, Bella on that wall permanently. It’s been there for five years, and every time I look at it, I think of my mother. I’ve even come to appreciate certain aspects of it.”

Fitch took a step forward into the splay of light emanating from the desk lamp. He looked clear-eyed. He held a large-caliber revolver in his right hand. His glass of Macallan in the other.”There are similarities between you and Van Gogh, Letisha. Both fiery red heads, with a nasty predilection for self-injury. Suffering from what the psychoanalysts would best describe as ‘daddy issues.’ And perhaps most pityingly, both masters of a trade you would never be appreciated for. At least, not in life.

“You look confused, Letty.” Fitch smiled. “Yes, I know your real name. I like it more than your alias if you want to know the truth. Although I did prefer you as a redhead.”

He sipped his scotch.

“Did you call the police?” she asked.

He laughed. “I’m going to see my fair share of law enforcement for the rest of my life, don’t you think? The notion, that you’d try to steal from me? Come onto my island and steal from me, you brazen girl.”

“Johnny.” Letty thought she might be just drunk enough to scare up some real emotion. She had disarmed her fair share of men in the past with a few tears.

“Oh, don’t cry, Letty.”

“I’m sorry, Johnny. I tried to take advantage of you, and—”

“No, no, no. I should be the one apologizing to you.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. Something in the tone of his voice suggesting a piece of knowledge she wasn’t privy to.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, starting to get up.

“No, you just stay right there, please.”

She settled back into the chair.

“My life,” Fitch said, “has been so rich. So...fragrant. I went to Yale undergrad. Harvard business. I was a Rhodes scholar. Earned a PhD in economics from Stanford. I lived in Europe. The Middle East. Argentina. I rose as fast through the ranks of PowerTech as anyone in the history of the company.”

Fitch edged closer, his hair trembling in the breeze stirred up by a pair of ceiling fans.

“By thirty-five, I was the youngest CEO of any global energy company in the world. I had a family I loved. Mistresses on six continents. I was responsible for twenty-four thousand employees. I brokered multi-billion dollar deals. Destroyed both domestic and foreign competitors. I’ve fucked in the Lincoln bedroom under three separate presidencies. I’ve been adored. Demonized. Admired. Copied. I’ve played hard. Made men and ruined men. Had the finest of everything. More money than God. More sex than Sinatra. Trust me when I say I go to federal prison for the rest of my life a happy man. If the masses knew how much pure fun it is to have this kind of power and wealth, they’d kill me or themselves.”

He walked to one of the windows and stared out across the moonlit sea.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Letty Dobesh. In another life...who knows? But I didn’t allow you to come into my home for sex. I’ve had plenty of that.” He held up his tumbler. “And I don’t really even care about this forty-thousand dollar bottle of single malt. On the last night of a man’s life...before he reports to prison for a twenty-six year stint that will likely kill him...he has to ask himself, ‘what do I do with these last precious moments?’ Do I revisit the things in life that most made me happy? Or use this last gasp of freedom to have a truly new experience?”

Letty eyed the staircase.

If she hadn’t been drunk, she could’ve probably reached the steps before Fitch turned and fired. But he was holding a beast of a gun. A .44 Magnum or worse. Taking a bullet from something of that caliber would finish her.

“What does this have to do with me?” she asked.

Fitch turned and faced her.

“Sugar, there’s one thing I’ve never done. I was too old for the draft in nineteen-sixty-nine. I’ve never been to war, which means I’ve never had the experience of taking a life.”

“He’ll kill you,” she said. “Even in prison, he can get to you.”

“Are you talking about Mr. Estrada?”

She nodded.

“You don’t see it yet, do you?”

“See what?”

“It was Javier who put this whole thing together, Letty. There was never any painting. No drug in your mouthwash spray. I told him about this last experience I wanted to have before I went away, and for a very significant price, he brought you to me.”

Letty felt a surge of hot bile lurch out of her stomach—anger and fear.

She fought it back down.

“Johnny...”

“What? You going to beg me not to do this? Try to test the limits of my conscience? Good luck with that.”

“It won’t be how you think. It’s not some great rush.”

“See, you don’t understand me. I have no expectations of feeling one way or another. I just want to have done it. What’s a richly-lived life that has never caused death? You ever killed someone, Letty?”