Hide & Seek - James Patterson [27]
The water rose in gentle bends and bows. O'Malley's face shone like a child's on Christmas Day. “Damn but that's fine,” he said aloud in the deserted garden.
But the spray had to go higher still, he considered as he studied the fountain. He turned the knob. The water remained at its level. It would never catch the afternoon sunlight, he thought. It was like the ejaculation of a ninety-year-old man.
That bastard Sullivan. All systems go my ass! I'll fix it so he never ejaculates again.
Already, Patrick O'Malley had made his first mental note for the next day.
He passed under the lobby clock again, then stopped and checked his own watch. Eight-sixteen! The lobby clock was three minutes fast!
He felt murder in his chest. “Slow down, Pat,” he imagined Nellie's voice telling him. “Careful, careful.” He didn't give a good, flying fuck about “careful.” With incompetent kiss-asses all around him—and with Nellie gone—what good was living anyway?
CHAPTER 27
WHEN JENNIE WAS thirteen and it was almost time for her to go to high school, I bought a beautiful house on Greenbriar Road in Bedford, New York. It was time for both of us to have a real home. More important, I wanted Jennie settled into a good school.
I wanted stability, and peaceful surroundings, both for Jennie and myself. We picked out the house together. Both of us loved it, the sprawling grounds, and the town of Bedford. We finally had a home again.
I was already infamous for being extremely selective about playing concerts and being on the road. I think I had my priorities straight, and my head screwed on as well. I'd never wanted to think of myself as a star, or live like one either. I vowed not to bring up Jennie that way.
The years with Phillip had made me afraid of hoping for too much more than peacefulness and contentment in my life. It wasn't so bad, I kept telling myself.
There was a wonderful school for Jennie in Bedford; we were less than an hour's drive from the city; I could have complete privacy when I needed it, and socialize if I felt like it. It seemed a perfect town for us, peaceful and enduring, the right place to erase the last vestiges of a still painful history.
Jennie dubbed our house Shangri-la, la, la. Not to be spoken—to be sung. She had a good voice, and an even better sense of humor.
Most nights were blissfully peaceful at our house. The noises were the singing of birds, the occasional yapping of a dog, sometimes the sound of a radio as teenagers drove by. The “cruising” cars reminded me of growing up in Newburgh, which was only thirty miles to the north.
I was startled one evening in April to hear a pounding on the front door. I was expecting no one. As far as I knew, I was not in trouble with the police. Jennie was in her room doing her homework, and I hoped she was too young for a jilted boyfriend.
I had been careful to keep my whereabouts unpublicized, so the intruder was almost surely neither a fan nor a rival. Someone knocking on the wrong door? Probably.
Curious, and a little nervous, I went to the door. Through the peephole, I could see a man, his body distorted by the glass. He was in a rumpled suit but well dressed, his tie askew, his hair uncombed, his face apoplectic. I sensed he was harmless enough, and opened the door.
“Mrs. Bradford?” he said, somehow managing to sound exasperated.
“Yes. Can I help you? How did you know my name?”
“There's a BRADFORD on your mailbox. A deduction.”
“There's a bell on the door. Why not use that instead of pounding?”
“There is?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “I guess I was so angry I didn't notice. Sorry about that.”
His anger had evidently evaporated. There was definitely no danger in him. I invited him in. “What's this about?”
He followed me down the foyer to the living room. “If I built hotels the way GM builds cars, I'd be crucified. Yet those shitkickers—”
Ah. That was the explanation. “It's your car, then?”
“A brand-new Mercedes convertible. Not a thousand miles on the useless rattletrap. And