Authors: Michael Palmer
During the tense questioning that followed the discovery, Kevin learned a bit about Gawaine, the last member admitted to the group before he was. From the very beginning, Kevin had found the man’s button-down composure and varsity club accent threatening. Gawaine seemed to fit right in with the others, while Kevin’s hardscrabble Newark upbringing made him an instant outsider. Now Kevin knew that he and Gawaine had at least one thing in common: both were contented family men who had never wanted or received more than a massage and some conversation from their escorts.
Apparently, however, Lancelot had been given the green light to start up again with a new service. Kevin was about to tell the guy that no more women were to be sent to his room. But he remembered one of Burt Dreiser’s warnings about The Roundtable.
“So much is at stake,” Dreiser had said, “that nobody trusts anybody. The best thing you can do is not to stand out in any way. Look and act like everyone else, arid you’ll do fine.”
Kevin had drawn the conformity line at screwing the women Lancelot brought in. But he had never mentioned that to anyone. In fact, if he and Gawaine hadn’t been asked during Galahad’s investigation whether or not they were actually having sex with Desiree, no one in the group would have known.
“Listen, Lance,” he said now. “Don’t take it personally.
Kelly’s beautiful. I’m very pleased with her. I was just making sure there weren’t any problems. That’s all.”
He set the receiver down and returned to the bedroom. Kelly, slowly stroking her thick mane of ebony hair, smiled up at him from the bed.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
The sight of her sitting there, her right leg exposed to the hip, sent an uncontrollable surge of blood to Kevin’s groin.
“Everything’s fine,” he said. “Listen. How about calling room service and ordering dinner. Get anything you want for yourself. I’ll have a filet. Medium rare. And then maybe a massage. Are you good at that?”
“I am very good at that,” she said.
* * *
Harry had lived in Manhattan for much of his adult life, but until today he had never been in Tiffany’s. With Mary Tobin’s help, he had freed up the last hour and a half to make earlier-than - usual rounds at the hospital and head home. The idea of doing something special for Evie had been his. The suggestion to do it at Tiffany’s had been Mary’s.
Now, silently humming Joe Kincaid’s rendition of “Moon River,” Harry tried for George Peppard’s
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
nonchalance as a saleswoman laid one prohibitively expensive gem after another on the black velvet display cloth.
“This tennis bracelet is quite charming,” she said. “It has alternating beautifully matched rubies and diamonds, each an eighth of a carat.”
“My wife doesn’t play tennis too often.… Um … how much is it, though?”
“Thirty-six hundred, sir.”
Well, then, perhaps I could see something in a Ping-Pong bracelet?
Eventually, he settled on a half-carat diamond pendant flanked by two small rubies. Evie loved precious stones.
With the help, Harry suspected, of her ex-husband and ex-suitors, she had amassed a sizable collection by the time he started dating her.
“I want to sell every piece I have,” she said, soon after they were married, “so we can buy a camper and drive across the country.”
Harry knew that Evie had never been camping in her life and suspected that she would not be too enamored of black flies and blackened burgers. The declaration was part of her commitment to moving her life out of the fast lane and into whatever lane she perceived him to be traveling. Eventually, though, she stopped talking about the simple life and put her jewels into a safe-deposit box. They never did go camping.
There’s nothing to worry about.… I hope this will mark a new beginning for us.… Everything’s going to be all right … Believe it or not, there are places I want to take you where you can actually wear this.…
Harry considered then rejected any number of messages for the card, before writing simply “I love you.”
I need to talk to you
.… With Evie’s words playing over and over in his mind, he took a cab to the co-op they had owned since shortly after the wedding. The sixth-floor apartment, five decent-sized rooms and a tiny study, was in a well-maintained building on the Upper West Side, a block from Central Park. Over Evie’s eight-plus years there, the flat had changed, in her words, from “exquisite” to “adequate” to “small,” and, most recently, to “depressing.”
I need to talk to you.…
Health? Money? The marriage? Her job? Could she possibly be pregnant? It had been so long since she had
needed
to speak with him about anything. Maybe she finally wanted to clear the air and start over again.
There were two apartments on the sixth floor. The narrow hallway between them always seemed imbued with Evie—possibly some combination of her perfume, shampoo, and makeup. As usual the scent evoked powerful impressions of her. But this evening Harry was too distracted
to pay much attention. He knocked once and then used his key.
“Harry?” she called out from the bedroom.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be right out.”
From her tone, he knew she was on the phone.
Harry set the Tiffany’s box on the dining-room table and paced idly. The apartment was immaculate, brightened by several vases of fresh-cut flowers—Evie’s trademark. An Eric Clapton album was playing on the CD player. Clapton was one of Harry’s favorites. He wondered if Evie’s playing it now was significant.
“You want a drink?” he asked.
“I have a vodka and tonic on the kitchen counter. Just add a little ice for me.…”
She must be off the phone.
“… I’ll be out in a minute. I made reservations at the SeaGrill if that’s okay.”
“Fine.”
Harry tried unsuccessfully to read something—anything—into her voice.
She emerged from the bedroom wearing black slacks and a red silk blouse. The colors looked smashing on her. Then again, most colors did. She kissed him on the cheek—nearly an air kiss.
“Was it hard getting away from the office?” she asked, retrieving her drink.
“Not really. Mary cleared my schedule and canceled me out with the band. She can do anything she sets her mind to.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Mary?”
“Yes.”
Harry couldn’t remember when Evie had last asked about his office staff—or, for that matter, the guys in the band or his co-workers.
“The arthritis in her hips is pretty bad. But in general she’s doing fine. Are
you
okay?”
“As well as can be expected, I guess.”
She sipped her drink. Harry gave up trying to see behind the small talk and instead handed her the necklace. She seemed genuinely charmed and impressed by the gift and immediately replaced the gold chain she was wearing with it.
“This is really very sweet of you,” she said, glancing again at the card.
“I just wanted to be sure you know that everything’s going to be okay.”
Her smile was enigmatic, but there was unmistakable sadness in her eyes.
“You always tell me that things have a habit of working out the way they’re supposed to.”
“That’s me. Harry Corbett, mild-mannered GP by day, impenetrable philosopher by night.”
“Well, I think this time you’ve got it right, impenetrable one. Things do have a way of working out.”
She gazed out the window, absently fingering the pendant. The early evening light glowed against her pale skin and highlighted her flawless profile. She was, if anything, even more strikingly lovely than she had been when they first met.
“You … um … said you needed to speak with me.”
Even as he heard his voice saying the words, Harry cursed himself for not having more restraint. If she felt ready to say something, she would have said it.
She glanced at him and then turned back to the window. “I—I just wanted to spend some time talking together tonight,” she said. “After all, medical science may have broken through the envelope, but brain surgery is still brain surgery.”
“I understand,” Harry said. But in truth, he was not at all certain that he did. “So … are—are you hungry?”
“I will be by the time we get there.”
“Want to walk?” The question was almost rhetorical. Evie was invariably in too great a rush to get wherever she was going to walk.
“Let’s do that,” she said suddenly. “Let’s walk. Harry, this is a beautiful necklace. I’m really very touched.”
Harry searched for the cynicism he had grown used to from her but found none. His fantasies about a return to the life they had once had began to simmer. Evie had already turned and started toward the bedroom when he realized the phone was ringing.
“I’ll get it,” she called out, hurrying down the hall. “I want to get my purse anyhow.”
Harry shrugged and, still feeling uneasy, went to the kitchen and set his glass in the sink. Through the eight Bose speakers mounted throughout the apartment, Eric Clapton was reminding him that nobody knows you when you’re down and out.
Down the hall in the bedroom, her hand cupped over the mouthpiece of the phone, Evie was holding a brief, hushed conversation.
“No … no, I haven’t told him about us yet,” she said. “But I’m going to.”
She set the receiver down and held the diamond pendant up where she could see it.
“At least I
think
I’m going to,” she murmured.
Galahad … Gawaine … Merlin … Tristram … they arrived at the nineteenth-floor conference room at prescribed times, in prescribed order, and by prescribed routes. Galahad had chosen the hotel and meeting room and set up the protocol. He had also checked the room for listening devices and cameras.
Although the women from the escort service were hired to stay the night, Kevin Loomis—Sir Tristram—had sent Kelly away an hour or so before he left his room. He loved his wife and was satisfied with their sex life. But every man had his limits. Nancy did not like giving backrubs as much as she liked receiving them. Five minutes of uninspired kneading was about the best effort she could muster. But Kelly was tireless, and the sweet-smelling oils she produced from her bag would have pleased a potentate. Spending an entire night with her would have stretched his willpower beyond the breaking point.
Now, reasonably relaxed from the perks of power,
Kevin checked the time, dialed Merlin’s room, and allowed the phone to ring six times. Certain that Merlin had left, he took the elevator to the second floor, then a different elevator up to the eighteenth. The security measures seemed excessive to him, but they did heighten the sense of always being on the edge of danger and discovery, and from games of highway chicken in high school to several dozen jumps in his thirties with a skydiving club, Kevin had always been drawn to that feeling.
He took the stairs to the final story, checked the corridor, and slipped inside room 1902, the Stuyvesant Suite. Three other knights were already there, seated at places marked with their Roundtable names on small gold plaques. They greeted him with businesslike smiles and nods. Percivale, Lancelot, and Kay arrived next, exactly three minutes apart.
Except for Galahad’s having taken absolute control over security, there was no leader of the knights. They took turns chairing the meetings, which began at seven-thirty and continued until there was no more business to transact. In Tristram’s four months with the group, two sessions had already gone well past midnight. Both of them had focused on the security breach by the reporter calling herself Desiree. For an exhausting three hours, the knights had grilled Kevin and Gawaine, dissecting their recollected conversations with the woman word by word.
Did she ask you about what your business was?… What did you say?… Did you mention any of our names?… What did she seem the most interested in?… Did she ask your last name?… Did you tell her?… Did you make love with her?… Get undressed with her?… Fall asleep while she was with you?… Did you leave her alone in the room with your wallet?… Your clothes?… How about your briefcase?… Is there any way she could have drugged you?
…
Throughout the questioning, Galahad, as prime inquisitor, had never been antagonistic. But there was a coldness about him, a professionalism, that Kevin found unnerving. Even more disconcerting was Kevin’s feeling
that the interrogation focused much more on him than on Gawaine, who radiated self-assuredness, entitlement, and breeding. Kevin had kept himself on red alert during the session and felt indescribable relief when it was over! Tonight, at some point, Galahad would bring them up to date on his investigation of the woman. Kevin hoped it would be the last he ever heard of the matter.
He surveyed the group as the men settled in and readied their notes. At thirty-seven, he was probably the youngest, with Gawaine a close second. Lancelot, Pat Harper, was probably the oldest—mid-to-late fifties, he guessed. Every one of the men was accustomed to power and status. Less than half a year ago, Kevin was nothing mote than the employee of a Roundtable member. Now he was their comrade in arms. And he felt certain that in time, as they came to know his resourcefulness and commitment, they would come to accept him as their equal.
“Okay, campers,” Merlin said. “Let’s get started.”
Merlin, who was leading the August meetings, was in his forties and prosperously endomorphic. He was intelligent and insightful, but his flippant sense of humor seemed to Kevin to be out of place given the seriousness of the business of The Roundtable. If anything went haywire, each of them risked disgrace, unemployment, fines, even prison. And while the CEOs of their companies certainly knew of the existence of their small society, there was no proof whatsoever of that connection.
“Any comments, anecdotes, new jokes, or bawdy stories before we begin?” Merlin continued. “Okay, then. Finances first. Lancelot?”
Lancelot put aside the unlit panatela he was chewing, cleared his throat, and distributed computer printouts around the table from the top of a small stack. Such printouts were the foundation on which The Roundtable was built.
“Our private account currently stands at Just under two hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars,” he began. “That means we’re going to need fifty thousand dollars per member company to bring us back over the six-hundred-thousand-dollar
operating capital we have agreed on. Everyone’s stayed pretty much within his budget except Percivale. You’ll have a report on that, yes?”