Twelve Rooms With A View Part 25

24.

IN MY ENORMOUS FRONT ROOM UNDER A MOONLESS SKY, ON A BED of horrible mustard-colored s.h.a.g carpet, Frank slept the sleep of the hopelessly drunk while I considered the master keys he had handed me earlier. It was a relatively innocuous-looking set, five in all, two of them larger than the others. Those two clearly had some outdoor use; I was less interested in them. But I was quite interested in the three smaller keys, which presumably would let you into any apartment in the building.

Those keys were mine for as long as it might take Frank to sleep it off. Unfortunately, all three were stamped with the words DO NOT DUPLICATE, so I was relatively quick to conclude that any hardware store that didn't take bribes would refuse to duplicate them. So all I had was three or four hours before Frank woke up and wanted his keys back. I didn't waste a lot of time thinking about my options. Abducting that ancient plant might give me some leverage with Len, which I definitely needed. Jennifer's account of his lies, along with my own glimpse of his snarling rage, was unnerving, and while I didn't know what he was up to, I did know I had to get him to back down. I pulled out my throwaway cell and dialed.

"I have a way to get us into Len's apartment," I told her. "How fast can you get over here?"

There was a pause. "Twenty minutes," she said.

"Okay, do you know where the service entrance is?"

"I lived in the Edge for seven years," she said. "Of course I know where the service entrance is."

"Well, then can you tell me?" I asked. "I think it would be better if I met you there and we snuck up the back."

Twenty-five minutes later we were on the landing in front of Len's door. Charlie didn't ask a lot of questions about how I had gotten my hands on the master keys; she was blessedly uncurious about anything other than getting through the door of her father's apartment and making off with her plant. She stood silently behind me as I lay down on the floor of the landing and peeked through the crack at the bottom of the door to see if any lights were on inside. I hoped that Len was still downstairs with the rest of that hysterical co-op board, but I needed to be sure. After five minutes of utter silence it seemed safe to a.s.sume we were alone.

So within half an hour, I found myself standing in Len's silent greenhouse next to his tall, elflike daughter, wondering what we were looking for. The last time I had seen the plant, it was small, and in a little white plastic cup.

"Do you know what it looks like?" I whispered. A quiet breeze blew through the lush foliage of the deciduous room, but that was the only answer I got. Charlie glided ahead into the night, and before I could find my bearings and follow her, she was gone.

"s.h.i.t," I said, to myself mostly. "Charlie?" There was no answer, and the place was pitch black. I felt a wave of panic; this wasn't the plan, that she would just go off and leave me standing like a dope by the front door. Or maybe that was the plan. I realized that we hadn't actually made a plan, and Charlie did know the layout of the greenhouse since she had lived there for seven years. So I waited by the door for an exceptionally long time, and then I started to wonder if I shouldn't just leave.

That is doubtless what I should have done, but it didn't feel right. For a sick moment I realized that once again I had put all my trust in a person I barely knew, and maybe since Len had surprised me with his many unexplained betrayals, I shouldn't expect his only daughter to behave all that much better. What was she doing back there? Why was this taking so long? "Hey, Charlie," I whispered, taking a step forward into the darkness. "Come on. Charlie?" I waited for another moment, listening for any signs of non-plant-based life. I heard nothing but water and the strange omnipresent sense of things growing. Charlie had completely disappeared. I took another step forward.

Len had rigged up a series of night-lights, which cast spooky little glows in obscure corners of the greenhouse, but they were next to useless under the weight of that moonless sky. The foliage was dense, and lights from the street below were too far away to do any good; the few leaves I could make out were black against black, and only my fingers could really discern the subtle differences as I moved deeper into their jungle pathways. My eyes couldn't seem to get used to the darkness, so I finally closed them to keep from straining for sense, and slowly the logic of the conservatory, room after room, bloomed in my head. The kid had said the seeds were from Africa, and the Latin notes on the woodcut print mentioned Malaysia, so there were only a few places in the greenhouse it might be.

And then, past the orchid room, right on the edge of the poisonous plants room, on a small platform lit with a bank of dull purple neon lights, was a small shrub with thick, short stems and fierce shiny dark green leaves. The tiniest of bulbs was forming on one branch.

"Holy s.h.i.t," I said.

It wasn't very big-nowhere near as big as the picture in the mossery indicated it might be. But even though it hadn't flowered yet, it was clearly the plant in the medieval print on my wall. There was something peculiar about how specifically it matched, almost as if it were a carefully manufactured bonsai version of something much larger but equally specific that had appeared on the earth two thousand years ago. It was the perfect example of the botanist's art; every sc.r.a.p of knowledge that humanity had attained over centuries of cultivation had been showered on this strange growing thing, and it virtually quivered with its own perfection. That may have been the effect of the three separate humidifiers that surrounded its perch under the neon lights and breathed a hissing steam upon the leaves and branches; in any event, there was no question that this was the piece of greenery I was looking for. I reached out to touch it.

"How many times do I have to remind you, Tina," Len whispered, right in my ear. "It's called a poisonous plant for a reason."

I just about jumped out of my skin. "Man, Len, what the f.u.c.k!" I threw the words at him fast, a.s.suming friendly aggression was the only path available in these dicey circ.u.mstances. "You're like a f.u.c.king snake hiding in the gra.s.s. How long have you been here?"

"Since I'm not the one who's been caught breaking and entering, I don't actually have to answer that," he said, unseen. "And as I recall, the snake encouraged Eve to pick the apple, even though it went against her best interests. I'm suggesting quite the opposite."

"I came up to talk to you," I said, tap-dancing wildly. "I've been calling about the moss, and you don't even pick up the phone."

"You broke into my apartment in the middle of the night so that you could talk about moss? I don't know that I'd take that approach with the police, Tina, it does not sound very likely. Especially since I can honestly testify that I found you sneaking around my apartment, looking to steal a rare plant that is very valuable to me."

"You know, Len, it's not right that you took that kid's plant. Charlie told me you just took it and now you're hiding up here, and you won't call her back. She's the one who should be calling the police." I looked around, hoping that Charlie would take this cue to reveal herself. She did not.

"She's deluded," the voice in the darkness observed.

"You stole it, Len," I said. He hadn't called the cops yet, and I was starting to hope that maybe he wouldn't. "Charlie said the kid needs the money. You just said yourself it's valuable, and you took it from him."

"Spare me the moral outrage, Tina; you've been doing nothing but taking things that don't belong to you for months, and there's always a good reason, isn't there," he noted, an amused sneer curling around the edge of his words. "You've got a criminal heart vastly more experienced than my own."

"There's nothing illegal about it. My mom-"

"You might also spare me the drivel about your mother, who by all accounts, including your own, you completely abandoned when she needed you most. Oh, by the way. I thought you looked terrific at that press conference over at Sotheby's. Wasn't that Sophie's dress you were wearing? And her pearls, another lovely touch. Does it make you feel more at home, since you've already stolen her apartment and her history, to be wearing her things as well?"

"They threw them away," I said, trying to sound c.o.c.ky, but my criminal heart was abruptly less sure of its footing. "They threw her away too."

"And what do you think you know about that?" he asked, his voice hardening.

"What I don't know, I'm learning fast," I tossed back, hoping I sounded more secure than I felt. "Charlie brought that plant to you because she trusted you. She's your own kid. You stole from your own kid."

Len sighed in the dark. "Of course families betray each other, what would be the fun otherwise? Betraying someone you hardly know, it's not even worth it really."

"Was it fun betraying me?"

There was a kind of gleeful silence at this. "You are fun, actually," he told me. "You're so completely unmoored in the universe. And now you think you've found a home, only it's someone else's home, someone else's apartment, someone else's clothes, someone else's life. You could just as easily try to understand your own lost mother or even your lost sisters, but that doesn't attract you. You're too busy coveting ... us."

"Is that why you're trying to get rid of me now? Because I don't belong? Because a place like this only belongs to the people who had it in the past? You're as bad as everybody else in this stupid building, they just want things to stay the same because they own everything and they think that sharing is for losers. Well, you know what? You don't own the Edgewood. Alison and Lucy and I are here fair and square."

"Well, you're not here fair and square, Tina, I caught you breaking and entering and trying to rob me. And while I find your philosophical musings about property and ident.i.ty amusing, I suspect the authorities will not be in the least interested."

"They'll be interested in hearing what I have to say about that plant."

"That will be interesting. How many times have you been arrested? I couldn't really tell from what you said at that press conference. Does your record endear you to the police, make them trust you more? When you explain things to them, do they actually take your word for it?"

I didn't even bother to answer that one. By this point my heart wasn't pounding as hard; it wasn't pounding at all, in fact. Len was having fun; there was no sense of urgency to any of this at all.

"What do you want, Len?" I asked him. "What's the deal going to be?" For a moment one of the shadows shifted, and the barest reflection of the cl.u.s.tered purple lights picked up a hollow glint in his eyes, then slid back into the dark. His hand reached out and hovered over the Madrigalis like he was blessing it.

"If she could have made those seeds grow, don't you think she would have?" he asked, musing. "She didn't have the skill. That's what she's angry about. She brought me a boy, she brought me a seed, that's all she brought. A seed is nothing but potential. The rest is mine."

"She's your daughter."

"Don't come back here, Tina," he said simply. "That goes for Charlie too. My world is off-limits. You make her understand that. And maybe you'll be allowed to stay."

"Tell her yourself," I said. "She's right behind you."

The purple glint, which was all I could see of him, shifted to one side, startled, and none too soon, as something long and sharp sliced through the s.p.a.ce where Len had stood a fraction of a second before.

"Holy s.h.i.t," I said. "What the f.u.c.k!"

"Hi, Dad," said Charlie, raising her weapon again. "Nice to see you."

"Put that thing down. Jesus!" I said, really scared that she was going to give it another go. "What the f.u.c.k is that thing?"

"It's a pruning saw," Charlie informed me. "I'm going to murder my father with it." And then she brought it down again, barely missing him a second time. Len leapt back, falling into a black ma.s.s of something fernlike and dense but not completely losing his balance. From what little I could see in the shadows of the obscured foliage, he stumbled to one side, caught himself, and moved down one of the black paths that converged on this corner of the greenhouse.

"Your aim is not what it might be, dear," Len called back to her. "There aren't many who would have missed that chance."

"Maybe I'm hoping to drag this out," she countered. "It might be worth it to me to scare you a few times before I finish you off, you motherf.u.c.ker." I couldn't see much of anything, but she was moving after him fast down that pathway, holding the pruning saw over her head as she aimed for her third try.

"Stop it, Charlie-man, come on, I'm a witness here!" I yelled.

"Don't kid yourself, Tina, you're an accessory!" she yelled back. I heard the blade swish through the night air again and make contact with something plantlike.

"Not even close," Len hissed, and now he sounded as if he were on another path in a different direction. "Your mother will be so disappointed in you," he observed with real pleasure. Charlie reappeared at my side, still swinging. I had to duck to stay clear of her.

"Mother will delight in every detail of this story," Charlie reported back. She swung the pruning saw blindly now, cutting another swath through the unseen foliage in front of her. "Oh, sorry, Dad, I think I just took out your Heliotropus syncathia. How long did it take you to root that? Oh well, you can spend another three years nurturing that one instead of me. Ooops. You don't have another three years, do you?" She swung the blade again, and I realized she wasn't blindly slashing at all; she knew where every single plant was in that place, and she was aiming. "Oh dear. There go the Asiatic lilies. Too bad, they are so pretty."

"Stop. Stop." This time Len's voice came from directly behind me. I didn't know where either of them was, but they did.

"I'm not going to stop, you f.u.c.kface!" she yelled, lunging yet again. And then, under her breath, to me, "Take it. Take it now. Get it out of here."

I didn't need to be told twice. While Charlie continued to destroy her father's greenhouse, I grabbed the Madrigalis and stumbled back the way I had come. Behind me, the sound of the falling blade continued, cutting down the forest with glee.

Twenty minutes later, Frank was still pa.s.sed out on the floor when Charlie showed up at my door. "Thanks," she said abruptly. She had a cut on her forehead, her hands were covered in dirt, and those spooky blue eyes were unreadable. She slipped by me and Frank and headed for the kitchen, knowing that was where I had stashed it.

"Look," I said, p.i.s.sed, following her. "I said I'd help you get your plant back. I didn't say you should kill him."

"Trust me, if I'd wanted to kill him, I wouldn't have missed," she informed me. She flipped on the lights and looked at the Madrigalis, which I had placed directly underneath its picture. "My G.o.d," she sighed, "it really is beautiful." She put her arms around the plain terracotta pot and lifted it carefully over to the sink. Then she took one of the leaves between her fingers and held it delicately toward the light, so she could get a better view of the one tiny bud hidden there.

"He got it to bud," she said. "He really is ... amazing."

"You have to get that thing out of here right now," I told her. "I'm serious. I can't be seen as an accomplice to this."

"Well, but you are very much an accomplice," she noted, barely glancing my way. "I mean, I didn't call you and say let's go break into my dad's greenhouse."

"Did you tell him that? Did you tell him that I called you?"

"He doesn't care. All he knows is that you crossed him."

"He crossed me first," I said, sounding like an eight-year-old. "Seriously, he was out there trying to get me kicked out of the building before I did anything. All I ever did was help him and he-he-"

"Don't tell me about my own father," Charlie said as she examined the leaves and stalks with care. "He probably wanted something out of you, and he got it, and then he wanted something else. He wanted the Madrigalis. And you saw me bring it to him. So he had to get rid of you, because you knew he had it, and he saw that as threatening somehow. And he was right," she said, finally smiling at me. "You were a threat. You knew what he had, and you knew me, and you helped me take it back. He was right to want to get rid of you." She turned back to the sink and grabbed a small cup, filling it with water.

"So what's he going to do now?" I asked.

"Nothing right away," she said. She took Len's gardening gloves that he had left there and slipped them on deliberately. "Tomorrow or the next day, I don't know."

"What did you do to him?" I asked, a little worried.

"It's not what I did to him," she responded. "It's what I did to his plants. You can do a lot of damage with a pruning saw if you're not careful. And I wasn't." She pulled the leaves off one of the tiny branches carefully, and then squeezed the stalk between her fingers. A sticky white sap appeared. She studied it for a moment, then dipped the stalk into the water and let it soak.

"Oh, you know, that's not-you know, I was trying to help you," I said.

"Well, you did," said Charlie. "You helped me a lot." She rummaged around in the stack of miniature gardening implements on the shelf above the sink and carefully selected one of the fertilizing needles.

"Look," I said, finally sick of her and her cool disinterest in the mess she had made for me. "I did this thing, for you and that kid. I was trying to be nice, and you just, you-you're as bad as he is."

"You have no idea how bad he is," she stated. "I do." She placed the fertilizing needle in the water.

"Then why did you even bring him that plant?" I said. "Why did you ask him for help in the first place? Why did you trust him?"

She looked over at me, unimpressed. "I know a lot of talented botanists, but he is the only one who could have gotten those seeds to grow," she said, finishing her task with the needle. She touched the slender, glistening leaves of the Madrigalis and smiled with a cloudless and perverse delight. "He's right, I never could have done it." She picked up the plant and headed out the door. "Don't touch those things without gloves on," she called back to me. "That sap is really quite toxic."

I didn't know what she was talking about until the next morning, when I glanced into the kitchen and understood what she had been doing while we talked. She had fed her quickly improvised solution from the sap of the Madrigalis into the irrigation system. Every tray of moss was dead.

25.

IT WAS KIND OF NICE TO SEE OLD STUART LONG. I HADN'T LAID EYES on the guy since the day we buried Mom, and there he was, sitting patiently in Ira Grossman's glamorous waiting room, looking like a friendly egg. He was reading a magazine, something financial and boring.

"Hey, Mr. Long," I said.

"h.e.l.lo, Tina," he said, smiling with real pleasure. "It's been a while."

"Yes, a lot has happened," I agreed, sitting next to him. "What are you doing here, do you have business with Ira?"

"I'm giving a deposition," he informed me.

"Oh, so am I."

"Yes, I presumed so."

"Lucy and Alison are doing theirs tomorrow. They kind of didn't want me anywhere near the whole deposition thing in general? So we had to sign all these docs saying Lucy was the administratrix. That's the word, right?"

"I think it's a fine word."

"Anyway, they all decided that she should be in charge because I'm kind of a loose cannon, but now I have to give a deposition anyway."

"Sometimes it happens that way."

"I can't really follow it all that well. I pretty much just show up whenever they tell me to and do what I'm told."

"Very wise."

"It might be if I really pulled it off. Frankly, I understand why they'd rather keep me under wraps. I keep trying, over at the Edge, to be, you know, a good representative of the family, but it's not going as well as it might."

"Really?"