The Palace Page 5

  “Hello,” she said.

  The man stood a few feet from her table, sizing her up.

  “Looking for someone?” she asked.

  “I think I’ve found her.”

  Maybe too “wolfish.” Alarm bells sounded. “Pardon me?”

  “I’ll bet we could have some fun. I’m a generous guy. I’m in town for a few days. What do you say?”

  French. Of course.

  With a sly smile, London beckoned him closer. He placed a hand on her arm. “Oui?”

  She dug the pointed heel of her shoe onto the man’s toe and ground it as hard as she could. The man’s eyes watered. His cheeks flushed. “Please. I’m sorry. I thought…”

  “Va t’en foutre, con.” No translation necessary.

  She lifted her foot and the man limped away.

  London checked her attire. Cream-colored blouse, black slacks, low heels. She wore no makeup except for eyeliner. Her hair hung to her shoulders, parted on the right and combed to one side. She was wearing her horn-rimmed glasses. How dare he think she was a hooker!

  The fact was, her looks had always been a problem. Born in London (of course) to a Swedish mother and a Chinese father, she was the perfect mix of both. Hair the color of teak streaked with caramel. Eyes more Western than Asian, green in one light, hazel in the other. Sharp cheekbones and lips that were a little too suggestive. God had made a mistake. She was a serious person stuck with a seductive face.

  The pianist arrived and started with Debussy. “Clair de lune.” He wasn’t bad. A little forced. Too much pedal.

  There but for the grace of God go I, she thought, looking at the young Asian man at the piano. For the first sixteen years of her life, London’s only goal had been to be a classical pianist. The next Hélène Grimaud. Maybe even Martha Argerich. She was gifted. Very good. Almost something more. With work, maybe. Ten hours a day. Six days a week. Practice, practice, practice.

  And then, life…

  Leaving a recital, an accident. She had reached her hand into the car for a score as the valet slammed the door. Four fingers broken. Twelve pins. Multiple surgeries. Months in a cast. And after, the inevitable. Arthritis. Fifteen years later, she couldn’t entirely close her left hand. It was hard to pick up a plate; napkins were impossible.

  She would never play the Salle Pleyel.

  But a person like London required attention, and if not adulation, then at least appreciation. Recognition. She had always been a reader. A fan of nonfiction. True crime. She liked to write. She was driven, not especially friendly, congenitally cynical. Journalism was a perfect fit. Her professor had said she was a born muckraker. But where to look these days? The same place as always. Business. The bigger, the better. Behind every great fortune lies a great crime. It was true in Balzac’s time. It was true today.

  By now the time had gotten to 7:30. The seat across from her remained empty. London was a realist. R was not coming. She ordered a cold sake and a plate of dim sum, then dug her laptop out of her shoulder bag and opened R’s email. She reread the letter and examined the attached spreadsheets. Was such a brazen act of larceny possible? Who would have the audacity to think of such a plan, let alone to execute it? And how had it gone unnoticed all this time?

  She stared at the open seat, seized by a surge of rage at R, whoever he or she was. How dare he whet her appetite and not show up? If half the information he’d sent was true—and he would have to provide verification—he had an obligation to meet with her. Not to London, but to the wronged parties—in this case, millions of men and women. An entire country.

  London took a sip of her drink.

  Fence or ladder.

  She smiled wistfully. One of daddy’s sayings. Daddy, who’d abandoned them for another woman when London was just ten. How terribly un-Chinese. And then, even worse, had the audacity to go and die at the age of forty, leaving them utterly broke.

  Maybe she wasn’t congenitally cynical. Maybe life had made her that way. But really, what did it matter one way or the other?

  Fence or ladder.

  A problem, a disappointment, a failure, could be either a help or a hindrance. It could stop you cold or carry you over an insurmountable obstacle. Up to you to decide.

  Without corroboration, the information R had sent her was worthless. No different than a note received from an anonymous party saying they’d seen who shot President Kennedy and it was Fidel Castro. The FT did not print innuendo. London needed hard proof to write an article. Without R’s help there was no point in going on.

  Fence.

  Or…

  The material was true, all of it. It was a beacon pointing her in the direction of the biggest story she’d come across in her career. She didn’t need R to go on. She’d been a reporter for ten years. She had all the skills necessary. If the material was true—and her every instinct told her it was—there would be a great many people upset to see it revealed. More than upset. R could be in danger. Or worse.

  A chill rattled her spine.

  London stood, throwing her laptop into her bag. Forget the drink. Forget the food. She dropped fifty dollars on the table and stormed from the lounge. She wasn’t afraid. She was inspired. It was her story now.

  Ladder.

  Chapter 7

  London

  Simon slammed his foot on the brake pedal as he passed the entrance to his shop. Parked out front was a silver Rolls-Royce Phantom: no two alike, three hundred fifty thousand pounds apiece if you could get one. Vanity plates. He knew who the car belonged to. Everyone in London did. They called him the “Sultan of Stratford,” and he’d recently purchased one of the city’s football clubs, returning it to English ownership after a decade of Middle Eastern control. Simon knew him for a different, less celebratory reason.

  He drove around the block, turning into the alley that led to a fenced-in security lot at the rear of the shop. A sign above the work entrance read, EUROPEAN AUTOMOTIVE REPAIR AND RESTORATION. Inside, he crossed the shop floor as if on a mission, not slowing to inspect any of the dozen Ferraris currently being restored.

  “He’s in your office,” said Harry Mason, standing in the reception, looking awestruck. Harry was pushing seventy, Irish, too feisty for his own good, and ran the shop’s day-to-day operations. He loved football the way a wino loves his red. The Sultan of Stratford was the closest thing to English royalty he’d ever see. “He said he knew you, that you two went way back. Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Don’t ever let anyone into my office again unless I say so.” Simon spoke the words with more venom than he would have liked.

  “But it’s the Sultan—”

  “Ever!”

  Harry promised and withdrew, though not before muttering what he thought of his employer.

  Simon drew a breath to gather himself, seized by an instinct to stand taller, puff out his chest, hating himself for it. He opened the door with authority. “Make yourself at home, Dickie,” he said, striding into his office. “Or is it Sir Dickie? Or Sir Richard? I suppose congratulations are in order.”

  “Piss off, Riske. Just a bloody ribbon with a slug of lead on one end.”

  “I hope you didn’t say that to the queen.”

  “Course not,” said Sir Richard Blackmon. “Asked her if she knew the one about the three priests who walked into a pub—Anglican, Lutheran, and Protestant.”

  Neither man made a motion to shake the other’s hand.

  Richard “Dickie” Blackmon was a towering presence all the way around: size, personality, and influence. He stood six feet two inches tall, two hundred fifty pounds easy, muscle gone to fat long ago. He wore a navy-blue pin-striped suit, white shirt, and pink silk necktie with a Windsor knot as big as Simon’s fist. He was not a handsome man. Watery blue eyes, a bloodhound’s jowls, a nose that stuck out like a thumb and was decorated by a road map of broken blood vessels. He wore his thinning reddish hair swept off his forehead and long in the back. Several prominent rings made his enormous hands appear even b
igger, great sparkling mitts that swung through the air to underscore his words. When Dickie Blackmon entered a room, people took notice. He liked it that way.

  “Why the long face?” asked Dickie when Simon failed to smile. “You could give aspirin a headache.”

  “Probably the sight of your Roller out front. We service real automobiles here. Not half-million-pound monuments to your ego.”

  “I didn’t know a man could bear a grudge for ten years. I’m impressed.”

  “Not easy,” said Simon. “I’ll grant you that. But against a real bastard, it can be done.”

  “Present and accounted for,” said Dickie Blackmon, expansively. Then with an earnest aside: “The Simon Riske I knew would never have uttered an expletive.”

  That Simon Riske had been a private banker employed by one of the City’s most prestigious institutions. Back then, Dickie Blackmon had been among his biggest clients. In a sense, Simon knew him better than most, certainly better than Blackmon would like others to. Dickie Blackmon had earned his money in commodities—silver, gold, unobtainium—and, later, real estate and property development. His code of conduct lay somewhere between the gilded side of crime and the tarnished side of business.

  “What do you want, Dickie? You’ve got your CBE and your soccer team. I can’t imagine what brings you to my neck of the woods. Don’t you turn to stone if you get too far from Belgravia?”

  “How about a drink to start?”

  “Look around you. This is an auto shop, not Claridge’s.”

  “You’re telling me. I know a good cleaning service. Have this place sorted out in a day. Happy to foot the bill.”

  “I like it the way it is,” said Simon. “If you want a drink, I’m sure there’s one in your car. Doesn’t your Roller run on single malt instead of gasoline?”

  “I’m a gin man, as you know. Boodles, if you’d like to make a note for my next visit.”

  “I’d forgotten, Dickie. You can bet that I didn’t forget everything else.”

  “May I sit?”

  Simon took a seat behind his desk and motioned his unannounced guest toward the couch. With distaste, Dickie Blackmon moved the files and magazines and bric-a-brac until he had space to sit. The two men looked at each other. It was a duel. The weaker man spoke first. Finally, Dickie Blackmon cleared his throat. “I’ve heard around town that you’re some kind of problem solver. Find people. Find money. Root out a crook here, a thief there. Bottom line: you’re a man who gets things done. And discreetly. Quiet as a church mouse.”

  Simon tapped his armrest, noticing that his knuckles were bloodied. So much for discretion. “I’m sure you know plenty of people like me,” he said, taking care to keep his hand out of sight.

  “Like you, yes, but not you. You’re family. Well, almost.”

  Simon couldn’t help but smile. Dickie Blackmon must be up some kind of creek to suggest he was family. Not after all he’d done to prevent Simon from being just that.

  “Spill, Dickie. I’m as wet and ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “I see the time away from the bank has done wonders for your social skills.”

  “Just you wait.”

  Dickie leaned forward, his blue eyes like lasers. “Listen here, Riske. Serious business. It’s about my daughter, Delphine.”

  Ten years after the fact, the mention of her name made Simon forget about everything else. “Is she in trouble?”

  “In a manner of speaking. It’s her husband.”

  “Rafa?”

  “Señor Rafael Andrés Henrique de Bourbon. One and the same. Seems my son-in-law has been arrested by the Thai police and thrown into the klink on charges of blackmail, extortion, and theft, with assault and attempted injury to a police officer thrown in for good measure.”

  Dickie Blackmon went on to explain about Rafa’s latest venture, a boutique hotel on Ko Phi Phi that was slated to open this weekend. The Villa Delphine, and yes, Dickie had put a few dollars into the thing himself. After a string of failures, Rafa looked like he’d managed to turn things around. The hotel was booked for six months. It had received a glorious write-up in the international press. All he had to do was open the doors for business. Then the police arrived. “They’re talking a twenty-year sentence.”

  “Blackmail and extortion? Against who? Why?”

  “Details are sealed in the complaint. Seems it has to do with his old shop in Switzerland. Geneva, I think. PetroSaud. Know it?”

  Simon shook his head. He’d lost touch with Rafa when he’d left the bank, though, of course, that wasn’t the real reason. “Blackmail? The Rafa I knew didn’t have a dishonest bone in his body.”

  “People change,” said Blackmon. “Look at you.”

  Was that a compliment? Simon didn’t think so. “And Delphine?”

  “She’s beside herself. I have her tucked away at the Oriental in Bangkok. The police dragged Rafael to the most notorious jail in the city.”

  Simon set his elbows on his desk, fingers steepled. Dickie Blackmon hadn’t driven all the way from his home north of the river to give him news about a woman Simon hadn’t spoken to in ten years and the man who’d once been his closest friend, no matter what kind of trouble they were in.

  “So how can I help?”

  “Can’t put one past you, can I?” Blackmon stood, rolling his shoulders. “I’m working a deal to get him out. If I can secure his release—and believe me, that’s a big ‘if’—I need you there…on site…to be my eyes and ears.”

  “A deal?”

  “Just a question of getting to the right man. It’s Thailand. Rule of law written in pencil, not ink. Short of murder, everything’s negotiable. Maybe that too.”

  “I’ve never been to the Far East. I don’t know anything about Thailand.”

  “I don’t need you to do the talking. Already have a lawyer to do that. I want you there as my proxy and to bring him home.”

  Simon weighed all he’d heard. Something was missing. He wasn’t interested in finding out what. “Bad timing,” he said with a pained smile. “I’d like to help, but I can’t. There’s someone here I need to look after. I’m sure you can find another person better suited to the task. Someone who speaks the language, to begin with.”

  “Kidding me? Everyone speaks English over there.”

  “A former government official. Someone the Thais respect. I fix cars for a living. I’m sorry, Dickie.”

  Shaking his head, Dickie Blackmon approached the desk, staring down at Simon with all his fury. Hammurabi standing tall to deliver his code. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Get what, Dickie?”

  “‘Sir Richard’ to you, pip-squeak. You think it’s me wants you to go? I made my opinion of you known loud and clear ten years ago. You’re a guttersnipe. A pissant. Sure, you clean up nicely, but you and I both know what you really are. A thug. One more punk from the wrong side of the tracks trying to put one over on the rest of us. A convict, no less. Did you really think I’d sit still and let you marry my daughter…after all that I’d found out about you?”

  Simon remembered the day, one of his worst. The threat from Dickie, still a long way from being knighted but one of London’s wealthiest businessmen. Stop seeing his daughter or he’d go to the bank and give them everything he’d dug up: the truth about a felon named Simon Ledoux who’d done four years’ hard time in a French penitentiary for armed robbery and attempted murder. At Les Baumettes, no less, home to the worst of the worst.

  Simon rocketed to his feet. “Time to go, Dickie.”

  “Not quite yet.” Sir Richard Blackmon drew a fat envelope from his jacket and dropped it on the desk. “Travel documents. Flights. Hotel. Even a map of the city. I’m old school. Prefer things printed out. Don’t trust all that digital mumbo jumbo.”

  Simon looked at the envelope. “I told you, no.”

  “You did indeed. But, you see, I’m not the one asking. It’s your friend Rafa. He isn’t cooperating. He says no deal until he speaks with you.�
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  “He asked for me?”

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Dickie chuckled, a connoisseur of humiliation. “I thought so too.”

  “Well?”

  “He told me to give you a message. Something about needing the monsignor if he was going to get out of this.”

  Simon kept his eyes locked on Dickie, hoping his surprise didn’t show. “‘The monsignor.’ He said that?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Do I have to read it to you verbatim?” Dickie Blackmon shoved a hand into his pants pocket and, after a pained search, pulled out a rumpled paper. He made a face as he read the words aloud: “‘Tell Simon Riske that only the monsignor can get me out of this. I need his blessing.’ There, happy? Mean anything to you?”

  Simon nodded. Only those closest to him knew about the monsignor: who he was, where Simon had met him, and how he’d saved Simon’s life.

  It was a call for help. The only words Rafa knew that would impress upon Simon the gravity of his situation. There was more, though it remained unsaid. A debt in the Spaniard’s favor, but Rafa was too much the gentleman to bring it up even under the direst of circumstances. “The monsignor” was enough.

  Dickie Blackmon tossed the paper onto Simon’s desk. “He said that you would understand. Old times, best friends. The usual horseshit. Oh, and, of course, that he was sorry about everything.”

  Simon stared through Dickie, past the fleshy cheeks, the watery blue eyes, the too-white teeth. He was looking into the past, seeing himself as a newly minted banker, barely a year on the job, and seeing Rafael de Bourbon, too, his fellow trainee. It had been the beginning of an important friendship, kindred souls, latching on to each other for the difficult ride ahead. Brothers, really.

  Until…

  “So?” barked Dickie.

  Simon slid the envelope toward himself. “When do I leave?”

  Chapter 8

  London

  You, sir, are a liar.”

  Dickie Blackmon was gone. Simon sat alone in his office, the words echoing in his ears as if Rafa had just spoken them. In fact, it had been eleven years earlier. Half past six on a Friday night. The Blackfriar pub at the foot of Blackfriars Bridge. As was their custom, they’d met after work at the bank to trade war stories of the week past and to get the weekend started on the right foot. A minimum of three pints was obligatory to achieve what Rafa called “the proper perspective.” Guinness for Simon and Stella for Rafa.