“You want to head back to the Rum House?” she asked.
Walt nodded. “Sure. Sounds good.”
They stepped into the elevator and Avery pressed the button for the lobby. As the doors closed, Walt again saw his reflection in the clear metal. It was then that he realized he’d left the thin metal box, and the listening devices it held, on the edge of the coffee table.
CHAPTER 49
Manhattan, NY Sunday, July 4, 2021
A TWO-MAN BAND—PIANIST AND VIOLINIST—PLAYED IN THE CORNER of the bar. After they ordered drinks Avery headed over to put in a request. Walt sat alone at the bar sipping a Worthy Park single estate reserve and contemplating the predicament he’d found himself in. It felt like weeks, not days, since he’d sat in this tavern and met Avery Mason for the first time. Back then he was anxious to get back in the saddle of an operation, get his mind off the wallowing thoughts of Meghan Cobb’s betrayal, and work his way out of the funk of self-pity and anger he was in. When he sat in this bar on Tuesday night, Walt was excited to have been tapped by the Bureau to play such an important role in a case that had stumped them. That Jim Oliver had gone to such lengths to find and recruit him had given Walt a sense of purpose. A sense of being needed. It was a feeling that had been absent from the past three years of his life. Now, he couldn’t help but make the comparison to when he was a twenty-eight-year-old kid tapped to run a high-profile homicide investigation. The thought crossed his mind that he was being manipulated today in much the same way he had been twenty years earlier. He’d fallen for the romanticism of it all—a delicate case, a top target, and the glory that would come from a successful operation. That he’d have to put his ethics aside and quell any moral objections that arose was simply part of the job, Jim Oliver had convinced him. And now Walt had gone and made a goddamn mess of things. He was sleeping with the woman who was under his surveillance. Worse than that, he was feeling something for her.
The crushing burden of guilt had sat heavy on his shoulders on the walk over from Avery’s hotel. Walt worked hard to convince himself that he had not slept with Avery out of any hell-bent effort to obtain information from her. It was spontaneous and unplanned. It had happened in the heat of the moment. But that was then and this is now, he thought. The way the rest of tonight had to play out put him in knots. He’d left the listening devices on the coffee table in her hotel room, and had no choice but to return there to retrieve them. Once there, the inevitable would likely follow. It would be then that Walt Jenkins, in his own mind, would have crossed the line.
On top of his guilt was a combination of curiosity and confusion about how his relationship with Avery could end in anything other than disaster. He was on an operation sprung by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and choreographed to intentionally set his life on a collision course with Avery Mason, aka Claire Montgomery, the express purpose of which was to deceive her into believing he was interested in her story about Victoria Ford. All the while, his true goal would be to burrow his way far enough into her personal life so that he might find a scrap of evidence that would shed light on the whereabouts of her father. The entire scenario begged the question of whether Walt was any better than Meghan Cobb.
“Now there’s a man lost in his thoughts.”
Avery’s voice snapped him back from his trance.
Walt smiled at her. “Just zoning out.”
Avery opened her eyes excitedly and placed a finger to her ear as the two-man band began to play “The Weight,” by The Band.
“I just requested this.”
“Great song,” Walt said, turning to look over his shoulder at the musicians. “I’ve never heard it played with a violin. Sounds good.”
Avery took the stool next to him. “What were you thinking about?”
A loaded question, Walt thought. He spun his glass a few more times before answering.
“The strange road of life,” he finally said. “I was thinking about how we each came to this place in our lives. Sitting with each other here in this empty city.”
Avery took a sip of vodka. “Strange is one word for that road. Really . . . screwed up would be a better descriptor, though.”
“Your road is that bad?”
“Not bad, just complicated,” Avery said. “I was supposed to be a lawyer for my father’s firm. Being on television was never part of my five-year plan.”
“Really? How did the American Events thing happen?”
“By accident.”
Walt noticed her pause, as if she were about to say something before thinking better of it. He felt a sudden urge to tell Avery everything he knew about her, everything he had learned from the dossier Jim Oliver had delivered to him. He wanted to tell her that he knew all about the Montgomery family. That he knew her mother and brother were dead, and that her father had disappeared while under federal indictment. That he knew everything about her past, and that she didn’t need to go through the painful process of sharing it with him or figuring out what not to tell him. That he wasn’t the person she believed him to be, but something worse. Before any of his thoughts formed to words, Avery spoke again.
“Your story about Meghan the other night got me thinking that you and I have a lot in common.”
“How so?”
“We both ran away. You just did a better job of hiding than I did.”
Walt said nothing, just waited for her to continue.
“You’ve been in New York for what? A week now? Have you called her? Does Meghan know you’re in town?”
This conversation had taken a sudden turn Walt hadn’t expected.
He shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not ready to call her.”
“What are you running from?”
“What are you running from?” Being pressed on his relationship with Meghan had brought an edge to his voice. He was about to apologize when Avery spoke.
“Ever heard of Garth Montgomery?”
Walt had never been a strong poker player, and bluffing was not his forte. He was sure the shocked look on his face when Avery mentioned her father’s name had not gone unnoticed. Still, he did his best to recover.
“The Thief of Manhattan?”
“Shit,” she said with a laugh. “I forgot about that nickname. But, yeah, that’s him.”
“What about him?”
“He’s my father.”
Walt blinked a few times but couldn’t think of a reasonable question to ask.
“Claire Montgomery is my actual name. Claire Avery Montgomery. When I moved to LA to write for the Times, I used Avery Mason in my byline. It stuck.”
Walt shook his head. “Start from the beginning.”
“After my father was arrested and indicted, I had to get out of New York. On top of stealing billions of dollars from innocent people, my father also had a second life with another woman. I don’t know what I hate him more for. To think the man who used to call me The Claire-Voyant One—the nickname he gave me for my supposed ability to see through his bullshit—had a secret life away from his wife and kids was a betrayal worse than anything he could have stolen.”
Walt’s mind flashed to the shredded postcard patched together with Scotch tape he had found in Avery’s room. The message on it had been addressed to the one-and-only Claire-Voyant.