“Rosemary wanted to call the police straightaway,” Martin said. “I had to tell her not to bother. I assume your friend is aware of why that is.”
“Are you boys done?” Cronin had been gazing out the window, imagining the route from the museum to the hotel. How hard could it have been to walk down Fifth Avenue? Now he spoke from the doorway of Michael’s room, his face half turned, as if a glare were coming off the brothers. “You tell the police, the hospitals, anyone who needs to know, that your cousins were visiting New York to see the World’s Fair. They’re staying at the Plaza—they’re your rich relatives—and one of them, a deaf-mute, went for a walk and didn’t come back. Give them the number here and your number in the Bronx if they find him.”
“Who are you to be giving orders?” Martin said. “And how do you know I live in the Bronx?”
Sloppy. Cronin was really losing his touch.
“He’s good at finding people,” Francis interjected.
“And you’re good at losing them. What a pair.” Martin looked askance at his brother. “And what are you going to do, Your Lordship?”
Now Cronin answered for him. “He’s going round to the taxicabs and the bus drivers. Museum guards, street sweepers.”
“Hotel staff, too,” Francis added. “Every porter, maid, and clerk knows him on sight. They should be able to smell the reward that’s coming to the first that finds him.”
Martin’s mind was racing. What were the odds of finding Michael twenty-four hours after he’d stepped off the edge of the earth? He was once again about to hit the streets in search of him while Francis went his own direction with this rough-cut stranger who was a little too comfortable giving orders and sending Martin on his way.
“For God’s sake, Francis, would you tell me what the hell is going on? You say that your top job is getting Michael fixed up and then you lose him in the middle of the city? And you’re so distracted by God knows what that you don’t even know he’s missing, and I’m only here looking for him because some mystery man told Rosemary that Michael—excuse me, Mr. MacFarquhar—needs minding. And now here you are with some partner in crime, and you’ve both been tending to some piece of business that’s far more important than the well-being of your own brother. Am I leaving anything out?”
Francis felt a burning behind his eyes, his throat stripped raw. Yes, Martin, there are things I am not telling you. Like how I’m trapped in some madman’s plot to put a bullet in the king. Like how this man with me is some kind of killer. Like how you and your family and Michael could all be dead in a day or two if I don’t do something terrible that you’ll condemn me for as long as you live—which I hope is a long time. It occurred to Francis that once he killed the king, and was likely killed as a result, this week would begin to make sense to his brother. Martin would see a strange logic at work that could explain all of this week’s oddities: the source of his brother’s bankroll, the aliases and the fancy hiding place, his strange companion, his evident preoccupation even in the face of Michael’s disappearance—all of it would be made to fit a pattern that frankly made more sense than the reality Francis had stumbled into. In the retelling of events, Francis would not be a hapless pornographer but an IRA assassin dispatched to America to kill a king. Michael’s injury was harder to square with this new narrative—maybe it had been an accident, just as Francis described—but the wounded Michael did provide his brother with a useful alibi. Francis was an angel of mercy, an instantly sympathetic figure to all he met. The plot was foremost, though, and when Francis needed to cast off Michael, then cast him off he did.
“I’m sorry,” Francis said. “I’ve made a mess of everything, and I’ll explain it all when I can, but for now, can we just find Michael?”
The clock in the suite faintly ticked, marking time. Francis wanted to collapse onto the couch and allow sleep to erase all of this bad business for a few hours, but he held his ground, waiting for Martin to punch him or press for answers that he could not give or simply storm out into the city.
Martin let out a long sigh. The sound of a man giving in to what life has handed him, for now. “What’s his name?”
“Whose?” Francis said.
“Our brother. My cousin. My rich relative in from Scotland to see the royals. What am I to call him, so the police don’t catch on that you came into the country illegally?”
“Malcolm.”
“And who are you again?”
“Angus.”
“Angus and Malcolm MacFarquhar? Jesus Christ, Franny. Can’t you even choose a proper alias?”
FRANCIS LET OUT a sigh of his own when the door closed on Martin. The past two days had left him shattered. When he had been on the run in Ireland, he’d felt maniacally alive. The pursuit, the need to find a safe place for Michael, the arrangements for the voyage, and the constant fear that around the next corner the IRA or the police were setting a snare—all of it kept him sharp. He was out on his own, with no one to rely on for aid or advice. But now he felt like a man caught between the gears of a badly built machine. All around him, springs snapped and cogs worked against cogs. The machine ground onward toward some grim conclusion, smoke billowing all the while from its poorly greased tracks. Friction threatened to tear the whole thing apart. He collapsed heavily onto the couch where only days earlier Michael had feasted on steak and baked Alaska.
Cronin stood impassively by the window again, regarding the expanse of park hemmed in on both sides by the gray faces of apartment buildings, hotels, private clubs, churches. The sky was clear and he could see all the way to the northern end of the park and to the buildings that marked the reemergence of concrete and asphalt. Beyond that was just more of the city, as far as the eye could see. There was no point in trying to look any farther.
“Where should we start?” Francis said.
“With what?” Cronin pulled himself away from the window.
“Looking for Michael.”
“That’s up to your brother,” Cronin said. “You have a job to do. And if you don’t do it, it’s not going to matter whether or not he ever finds Michael.”
“How could he just disappear?” Francis said, as much to himself as to the indifferent world. He had given up trying to elicit sympathy from Cronin. To him, Michael was merely the remainder to a problem he had been tasked with solving.
Cronin looked back and forth across the room. “Where’s the money?”
Francis, his thoughts still snagged on the barbed matter of his brother’s whereabouts, was baffled by the question.
“The money from Ireland,” Cronin said. “Where is it?”
“Your boss agreed I’d need it, for expenses. He didn’t say he wanted it back yet.”
Cronin didn’t want it, he told Francis. He just wanted to make sure Francis hadn’t put it somewhere stupid, like under his bed. “Word’ll get out that you’ve been found, and men will come looking for it.”