“Did you try to find out after the fact?”
“No, never. Same reason. I didn’t want to put anyone in danger.”
“You must have been curious.”
“More like guilty,” she says. “Ry was getting worse—and my answer was to abandon him. His hold on me had loosened, but…God, you can’t imagine what it was like. I thought the sun rose and fell on Ry Strauss. I would literally have died for him.”
Which raises the question, which I decide not to ask right now: Would you have killed for him too?
“You told the FBI he drowned in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.”
“I made that up.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think? I owed him, didn’t I?”
“It was a distraction?”
“Yes, of course. Get the cops off his back. I also had to explain why I chose now to turn myself in. I couldn’t say it was because the great Ry Strauss was ranting at himself in a basement bar on the Upper West Side. Now we would diagnose him as bipolar or OCD or something. But back then? Ry used to go up to the bar at night, after it closed, and line up the liquor bottles so they were equidistant from one another with the labels facing the same way. It would take him hours.”
I think about the tower room at the Beresford. “Did he have any money?”
“Ry?”
“You said you were hiding in a basement below a dive bar.”
“Yes.”
“Did he have the money for nicer quarters?”
“No.”
“Did he have an interest in art?”
“Art?”
“Painting, sculpture, art.”
“I don’t…Why would you ask that?”
“Did you ever commit robberies with him?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“So you just relied on the kindness of strangers?”
“I don’t—”
“You know other radicals held up banks, don’t you? The Symbionese Liberation Army. The Brink’s robbery. Did you and Strauss ever do anything like that? I don’t care about prosecuting you. My guess is, the statute of limitations would be up anyway. But I need to know.”
A teenage boy walks by us with three dogs on leashes. Lake Davies smiles at him and nods. He nods back. “I wanted to turn myself in right at the start. He wouldn’t let me.”
“Wouldn’t let you?”
“Part of all worship is abuse. That’s what I’ve learned. Those who love God the most also fear God the most too. ‘God-fearing,’ right? The most devout who won’t shut up about God’s love are always the ones raving about fire and brimstone and eternal damnation. So was I in love with Ry or was I scared of him? I don’t know how thick that line is.”
I’m not here to get mired down in a philosophical discussion, so I shift gears.
“Did you see on the news about a stolen Vermeer being found?”
“Yesterday, right?” It slowly hits her. “Wait. Wasn’t someone found dead with the painting?”
I nod. “That was Ry Strauss.”
I give her a moment to take that in.
“He’d become a hoarder and a hermit.” I explain about the Beresford, the tower, the clutter, the mess, the painting on the wall. I choose not to go into my cousin’s predicament quite yet. There is a bench up ahead. Lake Davies collapses onto it as if her knees have given way. I stay standing.
“So Ry was murdered.”
“Yes.”
“After all these years.” Lake Davies shakes her head, her eyes glassy. “I still don’t see why you’re here.”
“My family owned the Vermeer.”
“So you’re, what, here to find the other painting?”
I do not reply.
“I don’t have it. When were the paintings stolen?”
I tell her the date.
“That was way after I turned myself in.”
“Did you ever see any of the other Jane Street Six after the murders?”
She winces at the word “murders.” I used it intentionally. “The underground divided us up. You can’t have six people traveling together.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Just one.”
When she stops talking, I put my hand to my ear. “I’m listening.”
“We stayed two nights with Arlo.”
“Arlo Sugarman?”
She nods. “In Tulsa. He was posing as a student at Oral Roberts University, which I thought was pretty ironic.”
“Why’s that?”
“Arlo was raised Jewish but prided himself on his atheism.”
I remember something I saw in the file. “Sugarman claimed he wasn’t there that night—”
“We all did, so what?”
Fair enough. “Wasn’t he a fine arts major at Columbia?”
“Yeah, maybe. Wait, you think Arlo and Ry…?”
“Do you?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know for sure, but…”
I think now about Cousin Patricia and the horror of what she went through. “You mentioned Ry Strauss hurting you.”
She swallows. “What about it?”
“You changed your entire identity. You pretty much went off the grid.”
“Yet you found me.”
I try to look modest. Then I ask, “Were you afraid Ry would try to find you?”
“Not just Ry.”
“Who?”
She shakes me off, and I can see she is starting to close down.
“There is a chance,” I say, “that Ry Strauss was involved in something more sinister than stolen art.”
“How much more sinister?”
I see no reason to sugarcoat it. “Abducting, raping, and eventually murdering young women.”
Her face loses all color.
“Perhaps with a partner,” I add. Then I ask, “Do you think Ry could have been involved in something like that?”
“No,” she says softly. “And I really think you should leave now.”
CHAPTER 9
Back on the plane, I start reading through the FBI file. I call it a file, but in fact it is a three-inches-thick binder with photocopied pages. I take out my Montblanc and jot down the names of the Jane Street Six:
Ry Strauss
Arlo Sugarman
Lake Davies (Jane Dorchester)
Billy Rowan
Edie Parker
Lionel Underwood.
I stare at the names for a moment. When I do, when I think of these six and the fact that only one (now two, if you include Ry Strauss) has been seen or heard from in forty years, it becomes apparent that PT is probably right about their fate.
Odds are strong that at least some of them, if not all, are dead.
Then again, perhaps not. Hadn’t Ry Strauss managed to survive all these years before he was brutally murdered? If Strauss could hide in the center of the largest city in the country, why couldn’t the others stay underground?
Oddly enough, I am not buying my own rationale.
One could stay hidden. Two perhaps. But four?
Unlikely.
I start with the timeline and write down the following question:
Who has been seen since the night of the Molotov cocktails?