The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [84]
“What should I do?” she asked him after a long and tense period of quiet.
“You’re doing it,” Reggie said. “Cooperate when they ask. And if you think of something later that might be helpful to them, call me.”
“Call you or the police?”
“Call me.”
“I don’t want to bother you, Valli.”
Without a change of expression, he said, “You were the estranged wife of a murdered man. I don’t care if his killer has been dead for ten years. You never speak about Solomon’s death to a reporter or a cop or a prosecutor or anyone in government higher than the cashier at the DMV without me present.”
Since police had zeroed in quickly on Michael Liu, Elizabeth Gold had never been a serious person of interest in Solomon’s murder. Whatever they wanted now was no doubt related to the Marlena Falcone investigation. But as long as they were asking, Reggie wanted to be there, and not just for Elizabeth’s sake. He wanted to know everything about this inquiry. As long as no one raised the question of whether Reggie Vallentine might have killed Solomon Gold, no one could ever contemplate the answer.
Which was why he had to take seriously Derek Liu’s threat about talking to the cops. Once he raised the possibility, the possibility would exist.
He counted the things that would dissolve in that mixture of indictment and innuendo. His reputation, his marriage, his way of life, his freedom—everything he possessed would be gone. Everyone he knew—his wife, his son, his friends, his partners, Bobby Kloska, his brother and sister—all betrayed.
Reggie even considered, privately and with uncharacteristic immodesty, that he’d be forced to hire a lawyer who wouldn’t be as good as he was.
And although it was the least of his many worries, Reggie wondered how the widow Gold would react if she knew his secret. Would she despise him or quietly and huskily thank him for the favor?
The chandelier lights were dimmed, but to Reggie’s mind, they couldn’t be dim enough. As the subject changed and his wife and Elizabeth began to debrief each other about Gold Coast gossip, he wished they could eat in total darkness.
The Vallentine residence occupied half of the fifty-third floor of the Clarion Building, a solid blue monolith seventy-five stories high, which was a highlight of the architectural boat tour that motored up and down the Chicago River each summer between the lake and the Michigan Avenue Bridge. Its subtle curve along the water reflected a generous sample of adjacent skyline. In other cities, it would be the kind of building populated by celebrities—film actors and network anchormen and media moguls. In Chicago, a city that raised healthy crops of celebrities for export but rarely for domestic consumption, the residents of such buildings had acquired their wealth more stealthily.
Most of them anyhow.
Below their condo were thirty more luxury condos and below that was a boutique hotel and below that was an upscale shopping mall with thousand-dollar sunglasses and baby strollers that cost more than Reggie’s parents ever paid for a car. You had to own at least a quarter of a floor if you wanted a key card to the gym and the pool on sixty, which, in the odd hours that Reggie worked out, had always been empty.
The phone rang. Stephanie looked to Reggie to see if he was going to answer it. After a pause, he stood and walked to the phone in the kitchen.
“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Vallentine,” said Thomas, the doorman to whom Reggie gave a bottle of cask-proof scotch every Christmas. “It’s a police detective named Bobby Kloska. He says he knows you and that he has to see you right away.”
“Yeah, Thomas. I know him.”
Reggie returned to the table and excused himself without explanation, and his son, Louis, took the opportunity to do the same, retreating immediately to his room, leaving Steph and Elizabeth to trade freely in other people