The Doll Brokers Read online

  “Not if it involves standing or walking.”

  He hesitated only a heartbeat. “I agree. First thing in the morning, then?”

  “Okay.” She let her breath out as though they had just reached a momentous decision. Then she realized she was hungry. Famished, actually. For the first time in a long time, her stomach didn’t burn. Ann sat up. “Are you hungry, Jon?”

  “You betcha, ma’am.”

  “Pasta.” She stood off the bed and stretched. “Could I have pasta?” She paused. “But first I’m going to take a shower.”

  Jonathan watched her make her way to the bathroom. He wondered how he could possibly have any want left. But there it was, pushing at him.

  Food first.

  He spoke to room service, then called the desk to have them make two copies of the fax and send it up with their meal.

  Ann returned from the shower and put on one of his T-shirts. Their food came and she studied her copy of the list while she ate. “Okay, here’s what I think we should do,” she said finally, putting it down beside her plate.

  “Go back to bed?”

  She gave him just a glimmer of a smile. “You’re insatiable.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  Ann finally grinned fully. She picked up the list and waved it at him. “Charles Ling?” she reminded him.

  Jonathan reached for his burger. “Yeah. Him. You were saying?”

  “There are twenty-one names here. I think we should divide the list in half. You take some, I’ll take some. Calling them won’t work for obvious reasons. It’ll be difficult enough to make ourselves understood in person. By splitting up, we’ll be able to see all of these people in half the time it would take us to do it together.”

  Jonathan picked up his beer and thought about her suggestion. “The idea of you running around this city by yourself makes me nervous.”

  She gave him a level look. “I’ve run around this city by myself for quite a few years.”

  Maybe that was one of the first things that intrigued him about her, Jonathan thought. She definitely didn’t cling. She wasn’t needy. “I’ll bet this city has some nasty areas.”

  “And I know where they are. But Hong Kong is safer than most other places in the world.”

  “Says you. Look—I need you to humor me on this.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “No.”

  “Are we fighting again, Ann? After such a swell afternoon?”

  “We’re not fighting. I just hate the idea of wasting time.” She hesitated. “Jonathan, I want to finish up here and go home.”

  Felicia. He saw it in her eyes, a certain fear moving there. “Did she sound that bad?”

  “Yes.”

  “I should have talked to her.”

  “I’m not sure I could have kept her on the phone any longer.”

  “Damn it.” He threw his napkin down and stood.

  Ann watched him restlessly move around the room. He’d pulled on a pair of boxers but that was as dressed as he’d gotten. He had an incredible body, and she’d managed to discover a great deal of it over the last several hours. She wanted more. How could she possibly want more? A moment ago, she had felt completely drained.

  Jonathan stopped moving and looked back at her. “If we can find Ling we could be on a plane by tomorrow night.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.” Ann wondered if this new part of their relationship would continue at home. There would have to be some kind of shift, she decided. Things would change by necessity when they were back in the real world.

  He returned to the table and plucked a French fry from his plate. “Okay, here’s the only way I’ll go for your idea.” He picked up his copy of the list and studied it. “We’ll figure out which half of these are closest to our hotel and you’ll take those. I’ll do the rest.”

  She could have argued with him—but she knew by the set of his jaw that she wouldn’t win.

  “And no matter what,” he continued, “we’ll set a pre-appointed hour to meet back here in the hot tub room.”

  “The hot tub room?” Ann laughed.

  “Or the location of your choice.”

  “I’m fine with that. We’ll do the hot tub again.” The thought almost made her feverish.

  He grinned fast. “Good. Anyway, as I was saying, we’ll set a pre-appointed time to meet back here. Whether we’re done by then or not, we’ll come back and check in with each other. Got it?”

  “And if we’re not done with our respective lists?”

  “Then we’ll go back out together and finish it off.”

  It was the best she could hope for. Ann twisted her fork into more fettuccini. “Sounds like a plan.”

  “But for now, let’s finish eating and go back to bed. What do you say?”

  She blushed despite herself. “Okay.”

  Ann managed three-quarters of her meal before yawning. Jonathan stood and held a hand out to her. She got to her feet and reached for him, permitting him to twine his fingers with hers.

  He tugged her back toward the bed. When they landed there, he only tucked her head against his shoulder and reached for the TV remote. “Let’s rest a little while,” he said.

  Taking over, Ann thought. Again. Deciding for her. This would have to stop. It made her nervous. But she also liked it.

  She had every intention of going back to her own room tonight. She could not—would not—sleep with him. Sleep was different from sex. It was … taboo. It was too close. It was something she just didn’t do.

  It was the last thought she had before dropping off into a deep, dark sleep. And for once, she didn’t dream…

  CHAPTER 45

  Patrick walked his way through small lifetimes before he came upon a town that had pretty much rolled its sidewalks up for the night. His feet were in agony. The cold had gripped his bones with a unique pain all its own.

  Then he saw a bar. For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating. The neon beer sign in the window winked at him like a dear old friend. He made a hoarse sound in his throat and stumbled forward, down a winter-dead street so silent he wondered again if he was dreaming. But when he came up against the planked door, it was real. He closed his hand over the knob; found it to be ice cold.

  He twisted open the door and stepped into blessed warmth. The place was a dive, with black vinyl stools and a chipped green linoleum floor. He practically staggered to the bar.

  Two men and a woman sat there. They all had the kind of bleary, dull eyes that said they had nothing to go home to. Not one of them seemed to notice that his feet were bare.

  “Get you something?” the bartender asked. He was a small, skinny guy with greasy brown hair. A crop of acne dotted his chin.

  Patrick thirsted for a taste of cognac. But first things first. “I need a phone.”

  The guy stuck a thumb over his shoulder. “Back by the toilets.”

  Pay phones, Patrick thought. “No, I—” He broke off. He would have to come up with a good lie to explain his predicament. The last thing he needed was for the bartender to become suspicious.

  “I just … I had a fight.” Patrick said. “With my wife.”

  The bartender chuckled. “She toss you out, buddy?”

  “She … threw some of my clothes onto the lawn. But nothing else. I don’t have any change on me for a phone call.”

  The guy shrugged. “So reverse the charges.”

  Patrick hadn’t thought of that. He had not used a pay phone in years. He wondered if Verna would accept the call.

  He went to the back of the bar, wincing with each step. He found the phone and dialed. Verna’s line rang and rang. Voice mail did not pick up. Where was she in the middle of the night, Patrick wondered. He briefly entertained the thought that she might be seeing someone other than him.

  He slammed the phone down and went back to the bar, trying to look pathetic. “No answer,” he said to the bartender. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?” He sat and pu
t his head in his hands. Then he looked up, feigning a brilliant new idea. “How would you like to earn an easy hundred dollars?”

  The guy backed off and gave him a suspicious look. “You just said you don’t have any money.”

  “I don’t. Not on me. But if you take me to where I need to go, I’ll give you a hundred when we get there.”

  “Where?”

  “Queens.”

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding.” The kid shook his head. “You want me to drive you to the other side of New York?”

  Well, Pat thought, he was definitely in Jersey. “Two hundred?”

  “To drive you to Queens?” he wanted clarified.

  “And for a shot of cognac while I wait for you to finish up here.”

  “Now you’re pushing your luck.”

  “What’s the cognac going to cost you?”

  “Not much. We don’t got any.”

  “Brandy, then,” Pat said.

  The kid paused to think about it. “Two hundred dollars?” He went for the brandy bottle and poured him a shot. Patrick almost wept with gratitude.

  He’d meant to savor it, the sweet thickness of it on his tongue. Instead, he knocked it back and shuddered. Oh, God, he thought, oh, yes, that was good.

  “What time do you get off?” he asked the bartender.

  “Half an hour. But then I got to clean up.”

  “Two hundred fifty for one more shot.”

  “You’re crazy, man.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  By the time the guy finished, Patrick was into him for three hundred dollars and he had a decent buzz on. He felt the tension in him—all that gnarly, nasty fear that had gripped him for days—melting away. He could finally think again.

  If his house was locked, if Irene really was gone—and he’d called her three times from the clinic without getting an answer—then there was always the extra key in the potting shed out back. If she’d taken that, too, then he’d break through one of the rear windows. He kept a little cash taped to the lid of the toilet tank in his bathroom for just such an emergency. He thought there was probably about five hundred dollars there.

  By the time they got into the kid’s car—an ancient Ford with a muffler problem—Patrick spotted the time on the dashboard clock—twenty past four in the morning. How long had he wandered through those woods? Now that they were warm again, his feet were giving in to a stinging burst of pain that was beginning to radiate up his ankles.

  “So where exactly are we going anyway?”

  “My … brother’s home,” he lied. The bastard who was fucking Ann Lesage. Pat was sure of that now. They’d been too chummy at the court house. Comrades-in-arms. Bowling him over, punishing him, tucking him away like a common criminal.

  The sky was going gray by the time they reached Patrick’s home. He went to the front door and tried the knob. Locked. He rang the bell. Nothing. He pounded his fist on the door.

  No response. Irene—the ungrateful bitch—was really gone.

  He returned to the car. “Hold on a second,” he said to the guy. “I’m going to go around out back.”

  “Oh, man, if you got me all the way out here with nothing to show for it, I’ve got a fist for you.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Patrick said. There was still a drop of brandy in his blood, and the prospect of more right behind those den windows. He’d get into the house somehow. “Just sit tight.”

  He went to the rear of the property, limping. He let himself into the potting shed and ran his hand over the upper shelf just inside the door. His fingers closed over the small piece of metal. Relief hit him with a jolt.

  He went to the back door, turned the key in the lock and let himself in. The house smelled empty and stale. She’d probably been gone since the night he’d run from the cops, Pat thought. Irene had abandoned him in his worst hour of need.

  He went upstairs to his bathroom and found the money. He hurried back to the front door and minced his way to the driveway on tender feet, screaming with pain. “Here you go,” he said to the guy. “Three hundred dollars.”

  The bartender reached out and grabbed it. “No shit,” he said. “I thought you’d stiff me for sure.”

  “You saved my life,” Patrick told him, and meant it.

  The guy half-saluted, got into his dented Ford, and was off.

  Patrick went back inside his house. To the den. To his Courvoisier—only to find that Irene had poured every last drop of it down the drain. Four empty bottles stood sentinel in the bar cupboard. Spite, Patrick thought, nothing but spite. Why hadn’t he seen how nasty she was before he married her?

  He was angry enough to want to throw one of the empty bottles against the wall. The sound of smashing, tinkling glass would be satisfying. But Patrick had no time for recriminations. He had to get a grip on himself. Come up with a plan. The bar was still stocked with vodka, Scotch, rum, and wine. Any one of those would do as well.

  He made himself a strong rum and Coke and went upstairs to his bathroom, getting into the shower to wash the stink of the clinic off his skin. He had two more drinks while he dressed, then he took a straight shot, undiluted and right to his gullet, to get him through the pain of easing his battered feet into shoes.

  The sun was up by the time he let himself out of the house to greet the waiting cab. He had business to see to. He had to get to the bank and get some money—if Irene hadn’t cleaned their account out, too. He needed money to wheedle back into Verna’s good graces. He was going to need her help, her support, in the days to come. He hoped it wasn’t too late, He prayed she’d give him a chance, now that Irene was out of the picture.

  The cab took him to the train station and Patrick rode into the city. It was after seven by the time he arrived at Verna’s apartment. The door was ajar, which immediately struck him as odd.

  “Verna? It’s Patrick. Hello?”

  Silence. Some … twitching thing, deep beneath the liquor, told him this was not good.

  Patrick leaned on the door a little. It gave way. And there she was, her body twisted on the wood floor in the entrance to the apartment. Blood everywhere. Even fortified by the booze, it was too much for Patrick to handle. He began to scream. Screamed until he grew hoarse. Screamed again and again, without being able to stop.

  CHAPTER 46

  They made love in the morning, slowly, methodically, without the crazed rush of the day before. Ann found it sweet, something to savor. After they showered and dressed, and with breakfast completed, they prepared to go their separate ways in search of Charles Ling.

  Jonathan turned to Ann and took a moment to study her. “Take it down,” he said.

  She paused and looked at him, confused. “What?”

  “Your hair. Why do you always put it up like that?”

  “I don’t know. I look … it’s more … professional.”

  “I like it down. Pushed up like that it’s too severe. Not feminine.”

  “Well, when I’m doing business, I don’t want to be feminine.”

  He reached behind her head and pulled out the clip, just as her cell phone rang.

  Ann quickly reached for it.

  Frank Ketch uttered a single word to her hello. “Trouble.” Felicia, she thought. Oh, dear God, not Felicia. But if something had happened to her, then Cal or Lacey would have called them, not Ketch.

  Patrick, then. It had to be Patrick.

  “What did he do now?” Her voice ended in a squeak of despair.

  “He strolled out of the rehab clinic last night.”

  “Strolled?” Her voice rose another notch as she looked to Jonathan. “Your brother,” she mouthed.

  First there was confusion on his face. Then anger. Then tired acceptance. “He checked himself out?” Jonathan asked.

  “He checked himself out?” Ann repeated to Ketch. “That wasn’t supposed to be possible!”

  “It’s not. He just walked out the door. No one is sure how.”

 
“Where is he now?”

  “Back in jail.”

  Ann thought distractedly that by now she ought to be accustomed to this sensation in her legs—the emptying of emotion from her heels. The noodle effect. “Why?” she asked, not really wanting to know.

  “His secretary is in the hospital, beaten to a pulp. She’s in critical condition, currently comatose, hanging on by a thread.”

  “His secretary?”

  “Patrick turned up at her apartment first thing this morning and says he found her like that, then he called 9-1-1. The paramedics arrived with her half-dead and Mr. Morhardt sitting beside her in a puddle of various body fluids, intoxicated. Yesterday I was in front of the judge going through the motions of dismissing the cocaine charge. Now this.”

  “Are you telling me you’re quitting?”

  “No, no. But I’ll need more of a retainer.”

  She laughed a little crazily. Ann removed the phone from her ear and shoved it at Jonathan. “Here. You talk to him.”

  She turned away and took a seat on the unmade bed, afraid she might throw up everything she had just eaten. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, willing her stomach to settle. Mind over matter, she told herself. When she could take air in again without everything rolling inside her, she straightened and looked back at Jonathan. He was off the phone. He stood in the middle of the room, looking empty.

  Ann approached him on unsteady legs. “I’m sorry.” She gripped his arm. His muscles were tense, hard as a rock beneath her fingertips.

  “How the hell did he come to this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What a legacy. And … Matt … Mattie was … such a good kid.”

  “Mattie had wings.” He’d been an angel, Ann thought. In her darkest moments, she’d been sure that God had only loaned him to the Morthardts. She let go of Jonathan’s arm. “I loved him. But he really was too good for me, Jon. I knew that from the start.”

  He turned to her, took her chin in his hand to make sure she couldn’t look away. “What about me?”

  Where was her voice? “You’re tough as beef jerky.”

  “Not always. This takes the wind out of me.”

  Was he talking about Patrick’s latest mess? Or what was happening between them? “I think … I hope … you’re strong enough … for the likes of me.”