The Murder of an Angel Read online

  That evening, we had takeout from Curry in a Hurry. Everyone seemed preoccupied and moody, but at least we were together. After tidying up, I went to my room, shut off the lights, and covered myself with blankets to my chin. I needed sleep, badly.

  But I hardly got any.

  I was ripped out of sleep by a shocking, agonizing pain in my abdomen. My eyelids flashed open, and I instantly got my bearings. I was in my bed, for sure.

  But I was very over-the-top sick to my stomach.

  I balled up my pillows, held them tight against my belly, and curled around them, but that didn’t help. It was just past midnight. Jacob would still be awake.

  Groaning, almost doubled over, I hobbled along the hall to Jacob’s door and fell against it. I knocked weakly and called him. He appeared almost instantly in his doorway, wearing shorts and a T-shirt and a fearful, almost angry look on his face.

  I’m sure he was thinking, What the hell is it now? Honestly, I don’t know how he can stand me.

  “What’s wrong, Tandy?”

  “I’m very sick, Jacob. The pain is—oh my God—excruciating. I think I’ve been poisoned.”

  My knees buckled, and I collapsed at his feet, rolled into a fetal curl. He stooped down and put his hand on my forehead. Right after that, I heard him calling for help, waking up my brothers. I felt like a jerk, but I couldn’t do anything to help myself. I couldn’t even sit up.

  Jacob and Harry wrestled me into a pullover and a pair of corduroy pants right over my pajamas. Hugo worked on getting socks and boots on my feet.

  And that was when I lost it. I heaved, and a wastebasket somehow appeared under my chin. I used it, but instead of feeling relief, I felt worse, and now a rubber hammer had begun banging inside my head.

  I must have blacked out, because the next thing I remember is a pair of EMTs lifting me onto a stretcher. There was a long trip through the lobby, radios crackling in my ears and my twin’s reassuring voice saying, “We’re with you, Tandy. We’re right here.”

  The temperature outside was twenty degrees, but I was sweating like it was high noon in the Amazon rain forest. Jacob sat with me in the ambulance while I writhed and twisted and moaned.

  He said, “We’re almost there, Tandy. Hang on.”

  I grunted and managed to say, “I saw Peter today.”

  “Really?” Jacob said. He didn’t believe me, but I needed to confess.

  “I waved the white flag, Jacob. Total surrender. Owwwwww!” I yelped, grabbing my belly. “My God, this really hurts.”

  I fought through the pain and kept talking.

  “I told Peter I wouldn’t bother him anymore. Just to leave us alone. He didn’t go for it. I’m sorry, Jacob.”

  “Don’t be sorry. You’ll feel better as soon as the doctors see you.”

  “I’ve doubted you, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve questioned you because too many bad things have happened since you came to live with us. I’ve been thinking you—Oh, this hurts so much.”

  Jacob took my hand.

  “Rest, Tandy, please just rest,” he said.

  “No, I have to say this. Please forgive me, Jacob. I thought you could be working with Peter. His inside man.”

  “That’s the pain talking,” Jacob said. “You’re really sick, Tandy. I don’t know for how long, but you’ve been suffering from one thing or another since I met you.”

  “Do you think I’m crazy?” I asked him.

  Tears leaked out of the corners of my eyes.

  “Define crazy,” he said.

  I laughed one short ha. For a second or two, I felt good. Jacob wasn’t mad at me, but the memory of all my suspicions about him came back with the pain.

  The emergency room was packed with the sick and sicker. When someone got to me, my stomach was pumped, my blood was pulled, and I was sponge-bathed by a nurse with a very rough hand.

  After checking my chart, the emergency doctor said, “Looks like you had food poisoning. Did you eat something in the last few hours that the other members of your family didn’t eat?”

  I thought about dinner. I pictured the table and the dishes we had ordered. And I remembered.

  “We had Indian takeout. I had the tandoori prawns,” I said. “Everyone else had curry. Lamb. Beef.”

  “Yep, seafood will do it. You feel a little better now?”

  “When can I go home?”

  “I want you to spend the night here. Let’s see how you’re feeling in the morning,” said the doctor. “The nurse will give you something to help you rest.”

  I took the pills without protest and collapsed into a deep, troubled sleep.

  Dr. Robosson was highly concerned. “Tell me what’s hurting you,” she said.

  “Physically?”

  “Emotionally.”

  “I don’t know where to start. And please don’t tell me to start at the beginning. I don’t think I know what the beginning is.”

  “Tandy, start wherever you want to.”

  “I think I could die soon, Dr. Robosson.”

  “Are you suicidal?”

  “Not in the least,” I said. “I’m fighting off every attack. You know that.”

  “Then you’re not going to die.”

  “I thought you wanted me to talk.”

  “I do. I’m sorry. Go ahead,” said my shrink, leaning back in her brown velvet recliner.

  I took some long breaths in and out. I spoke to myself inside my head about how I really liked Dr. Robosson but thought there was a good chance she wasn’t enough shrink for me. I was too odd a case. Too smart, too damaged—physically, mentally, and psychologically. And I was a target. I had to tell her all of this.

  Confession time.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said. “I’m sick on too many fronts for one doctor to handle, even you. The damage was done long before I met you. And when I say I could die, I’m not being dramatic. Many attempts have been made on my life.”

  “Go on,” she said.

  “My uncle Peter wants me dead. He is crafty and rich and doesn’t want to get actual blood on his hands. But I believe he has paid some people I count as friends to watch me and to report back to him. I believe that he has hit men at his disposal.”

  “Your uncle wants to kill you.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, please indulge me, sweetheart. Do you think he caused that airplane to go down?”

  “There’s a very strong possibility. It would have saved him a lot of trouble if my brothers and I had all died at the same time.”

  “And the drive-by shooting?”

  “I would say a definite yes to hired gun.”

  “And the sleepwalking?”

  “I looked up sleepwalking. It’s caused by ‘uninhibited REM’ or ‘sleep behavior disorder.’ Stress contributes to that.”

  “Correct,” said Dr. Robosson.

  “Now, did Peter stress me out? Absolutely. Did he give me food poisoning? I don’t know. Let’s say he didn’t do that. But there are too many other things that I can point to, Dr. Robosson—kidnapping and gunmen and fires—that just cannot be accidents.”

  She didn’t protest. I saw love and concern in her face.

  I said, “I need someone I can trust to know that if I die, it’s murder, so that my uncle won’t get away with it.”

  “Do you trust me, Tandy?”

  I had to think about it. “Yes.”

  “Then here’s what I need you to do.”

  I went directly from Dr. Robosson’s cream-colored office to the high-tech lab on the floor above it. My blood was drawn for the second time in two days—six big vials of it this time—and I also had a CT scan of my brain.

  After all that, I was taken to a pleasant white room with a big electric clock on the wall and a clean pine desk upon which were a stack of paper and a lot of pens. I started working on a battery of psychological and neurological tests, similar to ones I had taken before.

  Usually
, a person takes these tests over four nonsequential days.

  I did them all in six hours.

  After setting down my pen, I was escorted back to Dr. Robosson’s office, and I took my seat opposite her in her big brown recliner. I could see through the window behind her. Wet snow fell and stuck to the leafless branches.

  “Tandy. How are you feeling right now?”

  “Do you have the test results?” I asked her.

  “I do.”

  “I’m ready.”

  She had a couple of papers on a clipboard on her lap, but she didn’t look at them.

  She said, “Your cortisol is through the roof. That’s a result of stress. Otherwise, your blood work is normal. Your CT scan is the same as when you came here for the first time. You have no tumors, no aneurysms, no brain damage.

  “Intellectually, you are off the charts,” she said. “High genius, as you know. Very high. Psychologically, you have severe trust issues and fears of many things. Given your history, I don’t find these fears psychotic.”

  “So I tested normal, right?”

  “Well, normal for someone who has seen active duty in a war zone.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m prescribing antianxiety medication and something for your uninhibited REM sleep disorder. We have to monitor your reactions to these meds and perhaps make adjustments.”

  “You know how I feel about ‘medication,’” I said, making air quotes around the last word.

  “I understand,” said Dr. Robosson. “The meds are not permanent, but you need help now in order to go back to school and function in daily life. They can give you some relief from stress until your life normalizes, and it will. And you definitely need to sleep.”

  “Thanks, Mom. Please don’t forget what I’ve told you.”

  “I won’t,” she said.

  Dr. Robosson wrote out the scrips, set up another appointment for us later in the week, and gave me a big hug.

  The snowstorm had turned the sky dark, and everything else was pretty much a whiteout.

  Leo drove slowly and carefully to a twenty-four-hour pharmacy, where I picked up my thirty-day supply of pills, and then he took me home.

  We had a late dinner of comfort foods: mac and cheese, creamed spinach, chocolate pudding with whipped cream. Nothing hard, crunchy, chewy, or spicy. It was a pretty tame family dinner—for us.

  The first chance I got, my friend, I flushed the drugs down the toilet.

  Can’t sleep. My mind is racing.

  I’m thinking of the Angel pills, and how I would’ve solved this case by now if I was still taking them. Just one little Lazr, and my focus would be unmatched. Uncle Peter would be behind bars by now.

  Would it be worth it, just to see that happen?

  Just this one time?

  The next morning, Leo parked our car outside Matty’s apartment in Tribeca. He started to get out, but I stopped him, saying, “Wait here, Leo. I’ll go.”

  “The snow is deep and slippery,” Leo said.

  “Not a problem. Really.”

  I opened my door and stepped knee-deep into the slush at the curb. Icy water spilled in over the tops of my boots, but I didn’t flinch.

  I crossed to Matty’s building, rang his bell, and entered at the buzz. There was an arrhythmic thump and drag of his footsteps inside his apartment, and then my brother flung open the door.

  “I want to talk to you privately,” I said.

  “Good morning to you, too, Tandoo.”

  He cracked a big smile.

  He was wearing jeans, one leg of them cut off at the thigh to accommodate his broken leg; he also had on a beautiful white shirt, a silk tie, and a nice blue jacket. He looked great.

  “Don’t say anything personal in front of Leo,” I said. “I just don’t trust him, okay? Where’s your coat?”

  I helped Matty on with his overcoat and filled him in briefly on the drive-by shooting as well as my sleepwalking and food poisoning incidents.

  “Christ, Tandy. You need an exorcism,” he said.

  “Ha. Exorcism for an Angel. Perfect.”

  Leo helped Matty into the backseat of the car, then drove us uptown to an office building on Third Avenue where Gram Hilda’s estate lawyers had rented a conference room for the sole purpose of meeting with Matty.

  I think we both knew what was coming: a strong admonition, a heartfelt apology from Matty, and then a check.

  I entered the room with my arm around Matty’s waist. Monsieur Delavergne greeted me with a smile, but he was once again in his professional role. He reintroduced us to the four lawyers accompanying him, but clearly, as before in Paris, it was Monsieur Delavergne’s meeting.

  When we were seated, Monsieur Delavergne addressed Matthew.

  “Mr. Angel,” he said in his accented English, “I understand the gravity and the impact of our decision on you, and that is why we have made this trip.”

  Matty nodded his big head and said, “Thanks for giving me a chance to speak for myself.”

  “Eh, actually, that won’t be necessary,” said the head lawyer. “The committee has met to discuss the terms of your inheritance and unanimously agreed that you violated the one condition of your trust fund. I am referring to the drunk-driving incident involving property damage and underage female passengers. This disgraceful occurrence reflects badly on the family name. But you know this.

  “I’m very sorry, but you left us no choice but to terminate your inheritance.”

  “What do you mean unanimously?” Matty asked. I felt his body tense up. “You met with my uncle Jacob. I’m sure he voted against this decision.”

  “As I said, the decision was unanimous,” said Monsieur Delavergne. “We are sorry, but we have to follow the dictates of the trust. We all wish you well.”

  “Like hell you do,” Matty roared. “I have bills. I can’t play football. People are suing me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Monsieur Delavergne said again.

  “Not sorry enough,” my brother bellowed, rising to his full six-foot-two-inch height. Even with one of his legs encased in plaster, Matthew Angel had strength and balance to spare.

  I watched in shock as Matty picked up his chair, raised it over his head, and threw it toward the windows. After the chair bounced off the reinforced glass, it knocked over a gigantic coffee urn, and china cups flew off the credenza.

  Before the crashing subsided, Matty pushed me aside with one arm, then flipped the conference table. The lawyers scrambled to their feet and just barely got out of the way as the table upended.

  Matthew was out of control, and it was worse than scary. What would he do next? What did the pills make him capable of doing?

  Matthew looked at each of the lawyers in turn with his laserlike blue-eyed stare. I’d seen him steamroll professional football players many times. He’d broken ribs and shattered femurs. What else could he do?

  Was he capable now of murder?

  I was yelling his name, telling him to calm down.

  He said, “I am calm, Tandy.”

  Then he blew out of the conference room like a hurricane on a crutch. The meeting about Matty’s inheritance was officially over.

  Matthew was done.

  I left a devastated Matty in Charlie’s Tap Room on Mott Street and arrived home at three that afternoon. I was in a black and violent mood, and for that I blamed Uncle Jake.

  My poor brother.

  How could Jacob have gone against Matty, siding with Gram Hilda’s callous board when Matty was so down and so out?

  I dropped my bag in the foyer and went looking for my uncle. I found him at his desk in his bedroom, talking on the phone.

  I said, and not too nicely, “We have to talk.”

  He held up his index finger, the universal signal for I’ll be with you in a minute.

  “We need to talk right now,” I said.

  “Hold on, Peter,” he said into the phone. “Tandy, please leave and close my door as you make your dramatic exit.”
r />   This was my Israeli former commando uncle speaking: a killer with lethal, registered hands. When he gave an order, you had to obey.

  But you didn’t have to like it.

  I shot him one of my filthiest looks and left his room, slamming the door, then put my ear to the wood. I heard Jacob throw the lock, then continue conversing with Peter, pausing for Peter to speak and then speaking again himself.

  I could only make out one word. Tandy.

  Then I heard Jacob say, “Okay. Later.”

  I stood at the door like a freaking sentry outside Buckingham Palace. I waited. I heard drawers open and close. And finally, when I was about to kick the door down, it opened.

  Jacob jumped back.

  “For God’s sake, Tandy.”

  “What you did to Matthew was really dirty, Jacob.”

  “You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No? While we were in court facing off with Peter, while we were flying in a sabotaged airplane, you were supposedly in Paris fighting for Matty to retain his inheritance.”

  “I was in Paris,” Jacob said. “I went to the meeting. My input was requested and then, after listening to the others, I voted with the board.”

  “You were supposed to fight.”

  “I’m on the board, Tandy. It’s a responsibility. Matty violated the terms of the trust. I didn’t call for punitive action, but I don’t disagree with the decision to withhold his inheritance.

  “If I start blindly throwing my vote to you kids, then I’ll have no credibility and maybe no seat at the table, either. And I can almost guarantee that in the next forty years, you will want me at the table,” Jacob said.

  “Matty’s broke.”

  “Matty was making ten million dollars a year. What happened to it all? Tandy, listen, he brought this trouble on himself, and now he needs to get his life back. By himself. All of you need to work on getting a life. You can’t rely on Peter forever.”

  What had Jacob just said?

  I think time actually stopped. It felt as if a gigantic sinkhole opened between Jacob and me and swallowed up all my belief in him, and my understanding of the world as I knew it.