Before I Say Goodbye Read online

  “Yes, it is. A new client came to me for a consultation yesterday. I was able to communicate with her mother on the other side, and I think I helped her to accept her mother’s death. But then, just as her mother told me she was tired and had to leave us, I felt that there was someone else who was trying to reach me.”

  Gert put down her cup.

  “My client left, and I sat quietly for a little while, waiting to see if I was supposed to receive a message. Then I heard it—a man’s voice. But it was so soft that at first I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I waited and could feel his effort, his struggle to get through to me, and then I realized he was saying a name over and over: ‘Nell. Nell. Nell.’ ”

  “Was it. . . ?” Gert’s voice trailed off.

  Bonnie’s eyes had widened, become almost luminous. The dark gray iris had deepened to jet black. She nodded. “I asked him to give me his name. His energy was almost gone, so he was barely able to communicate with me. But just before he left me, he said, ‘Adam. I am Adam.’ ”

  twenty-seven

  WHEN THE LUNCHEON ENDED, Nell had insisted on walking home alone from the Plaza Athenée. She knew the ten-block walk back to her apartment would do her good, and she wanted the time to herself, just to think.

  “Mac, I’m fine,” she had said to her grandfather, reassuring him. “Please stop worrying about me.”

  She finally slipped away while he was still holding court with the last of the luncheon guests, old friends who also happened to be movers and shakers in the party. Several of them had barely finished offering their condolences before they started talking bluntly with her about politics.

  Mike Powers, for example, had confided, “Nell, to say it straight, Bob Gorman hasn’t accomplished diddley-squat in the two years he’s had Mac’s seat. We’re glad he’s going to go work for one of those dot-com Internet outfits. Good riddance to him, I say. With you on the ticket, we can win.”

  Can I win? Nell wondered as she walked up Madison Avenue. Will you still feel that way when you find out Adam’s former employers are trying to throw the blame for their own bid rigging and bribery on Adam and Winifred?

  It’s so easy to blame two people who aren’t around to defend themselves, she thought angrily. And so convenient.

  Still, Nell realized that a persistent thought had been rattling around in her subconscious: Was it possible that Adam and Winifred were dead because they knew too much about the bribery scandal that the district attorney was investigating?

  If Adam was in any way involved, even minimally, she could lose the seat for the party, assuming it came out after she announced her candidacy.

  And what was that scene at the church this morning? Why did Lisa Ryan panic when she saw the detectives who were investigating the explosion of the boat? Was it possible her husband was responsible for the explosion? Or could he perhaps have been the target? According to the newspapers, he had been out of work for quite some time, and his wife had said it was because he had complained about substandard material being used on a job. Was there something else he knew that made him dangerous?

  As she walked, Nell became aware of the sun on her face. Finally lifting her head enough to look around, she realized it was a picture-perfect June afternoon. Adam and I used to walk along Madison Avenue all the time, she thought sadly. They both liked to look in the shop windows, though only rarely did either of them buy anything. Occasionally they would treat themselves to a meal at one of the restaurants there; more often they would stop for coffee at one of the cafés.

  She never failed to marvel that so many restaurants managed to survive in New York. She passed two of the smallest, both with tiny wrought-iron tables and chairs on the sidewalk.

  As she watched, two women settled at one table, dropping their packages beside them. “Sidewalk cafés make me feel as though I’m in Paris,” one of them said.

  Adam and I spent our honeymoon in Paris, Nell remembered. It was his first time there. I loved showing him around.

  Mac had been upset that she and Adam had known each other such a brief time before they were married. “Give it a year,” he had counseled. “Then I’ll throw you a wedding that will be the talk of the town. Good publicity too.”

  He couldn’t understand why she had never wanted a big wedding, but to her it was obvious. Big weddings were for people who had lots of family. She would have needed cousins to be bridesmaids; grandmothers to give sentimental presents; nieces to be flower girls and steal the show.

  She and Adam had talked about that. All the friends in the world don’t quite make up for having your own immediate family around at one of those big bashes, and since that was something that neither of them had, except for Mac and Gert, of course, they had agreed to keep it very simple.

  “Let’s have a really small, private wedding,” Adam had said. “We don’t need a lot of reporters popping flashbulbs in our faces. And if I start asking my friends, there’s no drawing the line.”

  Where were those friends today? Nell wondered.

  Mac had exploded when she told him she and Adam had set the date.

  “Who the hell is this guy? Nell. You hardly know him. Okay, so he’s an architect from North Dakota who came to New York with a lousy starter job. What else do you know about him?”

  Mac—being Mac—had him checked out. “That college he attended is a cockamamie factory, Nell. Trust me, this guy is no Stanford White. And the places he’s worked at are mom-and-pop operations, small-time builders of shopping centers, senior-citizen housing. That kind of stuff.”

  But Mac—being Mac—was all bark and no bite where I was concerned—as always, Nell thought. Once he accepted the fact that she had made up her mind, he introduced Adam to his friends Robert Walters and Len Arsdale, and they gave him a job.

  She arrived at the door of her own building. Eleven years ago when she bought her co-op, she had been fresh out of college. Mac couldn’t understand why she just didn’t continue to live with him in his brownstone.

  “You’re going to run the New York office for me and go to law school at night. Save your money,” he said.

  “It’s time, Mac,” she had insisted.

  Carlo, the doorman, had been new to the building then. She remembered that he had helped her unload the car, carrying the few things she brought from Mac’s house. Today he wore an expression of concern as he opened the door for her. “Pretty rough day for you, Ms. MacDermott,” he said, sympathy showing in his eyes.

  “I’d say so, Carlo.” Nell felt oddly comforted by the concern in the man’s voice.

  “Hope you can just take it easy for the rest of the day.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  “You know, I was thinking about that lady who worked for Mr. Cauliff,” Carlo said.

  “You mean Winifred Johnson?”

  “Yeah, that one. She was here last week, the day of the accident.”

  “That’s right.”

  “She was always so nervous when she was here; I mean she seemed so timid.”

  “That’s right,” Nell said again.

  “Last week, just when I was letting her out, her cell phone rang. She stopped to answer it. I couldn’t help but overhear. It was her mother. I guess she’s in a nursing home?”

  “Yes, she’s in Old Woods Manor up in White Plains. The father of a friend of mine was there. It’s about as nice as those places get.”

  “I could tell Ms. Johnson’s mother was complaining that she felt depressed,” Carlo said. “I hope the old lady has someone to visit her now that Ms. Johnson is dead.”

  AN HOUR LATER, showered and changed into a denim jacket and slacks, Nell took the elevator down to the garage level and got into her car. She felt ashamed that it had not occurred to her all week to contact Winifred’s mother, at least to offer sympathy, and to see if there was anything she could do for her.

  But as Nell drove up the always-crowded FDR Drive, she acknowledged to herself that there was a second rea
son for this sudden visit to Old Woods Manor. The friend whose father had been a resident there had told her it was a very expensive facility. As she thought about it, Nell had begun to wonder how long Mrs. Rhoda Johnson had been living at the manor, and how had Winifred managed to pay for it?

  She remembered that Adam had remarked that there was nothing Winifred didn’t know about the ins and outs of deal making in the construction business. And Mac had suggested that Winifred might not be as much a mouse as everyone thought.

  Now Nell wondered if the needs of an ailing mother might not have given Winifred the impetus she needed to cash in on her knowledge of under-the-table deal making. Maybe she did know something about the bribes Walters and Arsdale mentioned to Mac. And maybe she was the reason the boat had exploded—and Adam had been killed.

  twenty-eight

  PETER LANG had fully intended to attend the memorial Mass held for Adam Cauliff, but at the last minute he received a call from Curtis Little, an officer of Overland Bank, one of the potential investment partners in the Vandermeer Tower project. Little wanted him to give his associate John Hilmer an update on the status of the negotiations. The only available time for the meeting conflicted with the Mass.

  They met in the boardroom of Peter’s spacious offices on Forty-ninth Street and Avenue of the Americas.

  “My father never stopped complaining when they changed the name of Sixth Avenue to Avenue of the Americas,” Peter said to Hilmer as they took their places at the conference table. “These were his offices originally, and to the day he retired he always told people he worked on Sixth Avenue. He was a very down-to-earth man.”

  Hilmer smiled slightly. It was his first meeting with the legendary Peter Lang, and it was apparent that there was nothing particularly “down-to-earth” about him. Even with the cuts and bruises from his accident still showing, Lang was a handsome man who exuded self-confidence and wore his expensive clothes with casual grace.

  The slightly bantering tone disappeared as Lang pointed to a cloth-covered structure on the table. “Curt, in a few minutes you and John are going to see a model of an apartment-office-shopping complex that was designed by Ian Maxwell. As you may know, Maxwell just completed an award-winning, fifty-five story residential and business building on Lake Michigan. It’s considered by many to be one of the most imaginative and beautiful structures constructed in Chicago in the last twenty years.”

  He paused, and the others saw an expression of pain come over his face.

  With an apologetic smile Lang reached for a pill and washed it down with a quick sip of water.

  “I know I look as though I’ve been mugged, but my real problem is the cracked rib,” he explained.

  Curtis Little, fiftyish, silver-haired, and exuding nervous energy, said dryly, “I’m sure under the circumstances you’re happy to settle for the bruises and the cracked rib, Peter. I know I would be.” Restlessly his fingers tapped the tabletop. “Which brings us to the point of this meeting. Where do we stand with Adam Cauliff’s estate?”

  “Curt, you’ve been in on this from the start,” Peter said, “but let me fill you in, John. As you know, the blocks between Twenty-third and Thirty-first Streets on the West Side are the next area in Manhattan ripe for renovation. As a point of fact, the renovation is already well under way. I had been trying for some time to get the Vandermeer mansion removed from designated landmark status. We all agree that it is an outrage that vital Manhattan property is being held hostage because of sentimental attachments to useless, broken-down structures that should have been razed many years ago. The Vandermeer place was a particularly egregious example of bureaucracy run amuck—not only had it become an eyesore, but it hadn’t been a particularly interesting building in the first place.”

  Lang leaned back in his chair, trying to find a more comfortable position. “Despite my conviction that the building was undeserving of landmark status, I confess that I didn’t actually think I’d ever be successful in having the Board of Estimate remove the mansion from its list of protected structures. That’s why I never did go after the Kaplan property adjacent to it. I kept pressuring the board, though, and finally I succeeded. The irony, of course, is that the mansion burned down—with that unfortunate woman in it—only hours after the Board of Estimate voted to declassify it.” He flashed a quick, sad smile.

  Lang reached again for the water glass. He let the water linger on his swollen lip before he continued. “As you know, while I was working to free up the Vandermeer place, Adam Cauliff bought the Kaplan property. I offered him twice what he paid for it, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He proposed instead that he be the architect of the complex we planned to build, and he wanted to involve Sam Krause in the construction.”

  Curtis Little stirred restlessly. “Peter, we are not prepared to provide funding for the building Adam Cauliff proposed to erect. It is imitative, pedantic, unexciting and a hodgepodge of architectural styles.”

  “I happen to agree,” Lang said promptly. “Adam thought he could tie the sale of the property in to a contract for himself as architect. He thought we’d do anything to get our hands on the Kaplan parcel. He was mistaken. Which is what brings me to Ian Maxwell’s design. Several of my associates have worked with Ian in the past. At their suggestion, I called him.”

  Peter leaned forward and pulled the cloth off the structure on the table, revealing a scale model of a building with a postmodern, art deco façade.

  “Ian was in town two weeks ago. I took him to the site and explained the problem. This is a tentative idea of how he believes he can erect the kind of tower complex we want without using the Kaplan property Adam Cauliff owned. I conveyed to Adam last week the fact that we had developed an alternative plan.”

  “Cauliff knew we weren’t going along with his proposal?” Little asked.

  “Yes, he did. He’d opened his own office on the expectation that we couldn’t do without him, but he was wrong. I saw his wife—or widow, I should say—yesterday. I told her it was important that I see her on a business matter next week. At that time I’ll explain that we don’t need her parcel—let’s call it the Kaplan parcel for clarity—but that we’ll pay fair market value for it if she is willing to sell.”

  “Then if she goes along . . .” Curtis Little began.

  “If she goes along with us, Ian Maxwell will design our building with the tower to the side as we’d originally hoped to have it. Otherwise, as I explained to Adam, the tower will be in the rear of the structure, which will work perfectly well, if not as well.”

  “Would Adam Cauliff have gone along with fair market value for the Kaplan property?” John Hilmer asked.

  Peter Lang smiled. “Of course he would have. Adam had an inflated ego and an unrealistic opinion of his own potential, both as an architect and as a businessman, but he wasn’t stupid. That’s not to say that he was particularly happy that I offered to take the Kaplan site off his hands for a modest profit. But I suggested to him that if he didn’t accept our proposal to sell, the best use of the property would be to donate it to the city for a pocket park.” He gave a thin, grim smile at his own joke.

  Curtis Little was studying the scale model. “Peter, you could put the tower at the back of the structure, but you’d lose most of the aesthetic value of the building and a hell of a lot of rentable footage. I’m not at all sure that we’d be putting our money into it if that were the case.”

  Peter Lang smiled. “Of course you wouldn’t. But Adam Cauliff didn’t know that. He was just a small-town guy playing in a league in which he didn’t belong. Trust me, he would have sold us the property—and at our price.”

  John Hilmer, newly appointed as vice president in charge of venture capital and investment for Overland Bank, had himself come up the hard way. As he studied Peter Lang across the table, and thought about how he had been handed everything in life, he felt a growing distaste for the man.

  A minor traffic accident had kept Lang from being killed in the fatal explosion of
Cauliff’s boat. But not once in talking about the poor guy had Lang expressed even the slightest suggestion of regret that Adam Cauliff and three other people had lost their lives on that boat.

  Lang is still furious that Adam Cauliff was shrewd enough to beat him to snapping up the Kaplan property, Hilmer thought. He had found a way to make Cauliff believe he could get his funding for the building without that parcel, and now that the guy is dead, he’s licking his chops because he’s sure he’ll get the Kaplan property at his price. Not a nice guy, even in a hardball business.

  As Hilmer got up to leave, another thought hit him. His son, a defensive tackle on his college football team, often came out of a game looking a heck of a lot worse than Peter Lang, who had tangled with a trailer truck.

  twenty-nine

  CARRYING HOT PASTRAMI SANDWICHES and containers of steaming coffee, Jack Sclafani and George Brennan went back to Jack’s office after the memorial Mass. They ate quietly, both men deep in thought.

  Then, in sync, they stuffed the aluminum foil, napkins and uneaten garlic pickles into the plastic lunch bags and tossed them in the wastebasket. As they sipped the last of the coffee, they looked at each other.

  “What’s your take on the Widow Ryan?” Jack Brennan asked.

  “Scared. Worried like crazy about something. She ran like a rabbit caught in Farmer McGregor’s cabbage patch when she saw us.”

  “What’s she got to be afraid of?”

  “Whatever it is, she wants to get it off her chest.”

  Brennan smiled. “Catholic guilt? The need to confess?”

  Both men were practicing Catholics, and they had long ago agreed that anyone raised Catholic had been bred to confess sins and ask forgiveness. They joked that sometimes it made their job easier.

  Outside the church after the Mass, Jack Sclafani had been closer to Lisa Ryan than his partner when she looked past Nell MacDermott and saw him approaching. She was panicky, he thought. That was fear I saw in her eyes. I’d give a lot to know what she was saying—or, more likely, would have said—to the MacDermott woman if she hadn’t spotted us first. “I think we should pay her a visit,” he said slowly. “She knows something that scares her, and she doesn’t know what to do about it.”