Chapter 56: Doors
Robert's smile didn't reach his eyes. It never had, Andrew was realizing — the warmth was real in the sense that it was practiced enough to be automatic, but it operated independently of whatever was actually happening behind it.
"I think there's been some miscommunication," Robert said. His voice was exactly what it had been at the restaurant — measured, pleasant, the voice of a man who had never needed to raise it. "Someone suggested I leave New York. I thought it might be worth asking why."
"I don't know anything about that," Andrew said.
"No?" Robert tilted his head slightly. Not aggressive. Just cataloging.
The door across the hall opened. His neighbor — mid-forties, the kind of tired that accumulated from long shifts rather than late nights — came out with his gym bag, glanced at them both with the mild non-curiosity of someone who had learned not to be interested in other people's business, and headed for the stairs.
The hallway had a witness in it, briefly, and something in Robert's posture registered this and filed it.
"I think you should leave, Mr. Durst," Andrew said. Flat. No heat in it.
Robert looked at him for a moment. The smile wound down like a mechanism reaching the end of its spring. What replaced it wasn't anger — it was more like assessment, a final calibration, a man making a decision about a variable he hadn't fully resolved.
He nodded once. Then he left.
Andrew went inside, locked the door, and stood in the entryway for a moment doing nothing.
Christie was at the kitchen table with her textbook open, a half-eaten bowl of cereal pushed to the side. She looked up.
"You're back early."
"Change of plans." He hung his coat. "How's the prep going?"
She made a face that meant adequate but not satisfying. "The math section is fine. The reading comprehension is—" She waggled her hand.
"Work on the reading comprehension."
"I am working on it."
"Work on it more."
She glared at him with the specific expression she'd developed for moments when he was right and she didn't want to acknowledge it, then looked back at her book.
The school was Hartwell Academy — an all-girls institution on the Upper East Side that operated under the umbrella of a major financial institution and had a scholarship structure that was, if you understood it properly, one of the more extraordinary deals available to a kid in New York City.
Andrew had done the research carefully when he'd first arrived in Christie's life and started thinking about what her options actually were.
Hartwell ran entrance exams every January. The scoring was tiered: top fifty scorers received full tuition plus a living stipend.
Next hundred received seventy percent. Below that, sliding scale. The school also maintained specialized tracks for students with demonstrated aptitude in specific areas — music, mathematics, languages — which meant academic weaknesses elsewhere didn't automatically close the door.
More significantly: students who graduated in the top quarter of their class were eligible for a sponsored pipeline. The institution covered undergraduate and graduate education, in full, in exchange for a priority hiring agreement afterward. Not an indentured contract — a right of first refusal, essentially. You could decline the job offer. You just had to consider it first.
For a girl with Christie's history — bounced between relatives, inconsistent schooling, a mother whose choices had made stability impossible — this was not a good option. It was the option. The one path that led somewhere definitively better than where she'd started, and that didn't require luck, just work.
Christie knew this. She was sixteen and had learned earlier than most people do that hope was a door that didn't stay open.
Andrew watched her bent over her textbook from across the kitchen and felt the particular feeling that came from watching someone apply themselves correctly to the right problem. Not pride, exactly. More like relief on her behalf.
He'd told her, once, early on, that he wouldn't manage her future for her. He'd give her the information, the resources, the stable ground. What she did with it was hers. He'd meant it. But watching her work, he found he wanted her to make it in the way you wanted things for people you'd decided to be responsible for.
He went to shower and let himself think.
The hot water helped.
Robert had found his apartment. That meant he'd done research — Andrew's name, his building, his address. The question was how much further that research extended. His food truck license had cleared through City Hall two days ago, public record. His lease was under his name. None of that was hard to find if you had resources and motivation.
What he didn't know was what Robert thought Andrew knew.
That was the actual variable.
At the restaurant, Andrew had watched Robert with a quality of attention that Robert had clocked as non-standard. Not the attention of a curious diner watching a scene. Something more deliberate. And then Corleone had, apparently, made some kind of approach — he'll be dealt with — which Robert had traced back, or guessed back, to Andrew.
So from Robert's perspective: a stranger had been watching him with unusual attention, and shortly afterward someone connected to organized crime had suggested he leave the city.
That would make anyone curious. That would make Robert Durst specifically want to understand what Andrew knew and how he knew it.
Andrew worked through the history of it while the water ran.
Susan Berman and Robert had been close since their UCLA days. She was the daughter of Davie Berman, a founding figure in the Las Vegas Sands operation — mob money, legitimized over decades, but the connections remained. She was also a crime writer, which was either ironic or perfectly logical depending on how you looked at it.
The theory that had circulated most widely before Andrew had crossed over: Kathie Durst hadn't taken that train in January 1982. She'd already been dead. The woman witnesses saw at the train station, the woman who'd called in her own absence to the medical program she was enrolled in — that had been Susan, covering. Providing an alibi that had held for over a decade.
A friend who knew that much about you wasn't just a friend anymore. She was a liability, or a partner, depending on the day. And partners with that kind of leverage had a way of becoming expensive over time.
The checks Robert had sent Susan — cashed over years, starting in the early nineties — weren't friendship. They were maintenance. The cost of continued silence.
And Susan, apparently, had found additional leverage somewhere. Which was why she'd been at Corleone's door.
Mob connections plus documented knowledge of a covered murder plus a wealthy, unstable man with a history of making problems disappear: that was an equation with a predictable answer. The only question was timing.
Andrew turned off the water.
She's still alive right now. Susan Berman was in Los Angeles, writing, cashing checks, navigating a situation she thought she had under control. She had six more years.
He dried off and checked the panel.
[Boxing (Proficient): 92/100][Martial Arts (Proficient): 83/100][Observation (Proficient): 58/100][Cooking (Proficient): 81/100]
Boxing was almost there. One threshold below Mastery — he could feel it in the way the training had started to feel like language rather than vocabulary, the combinations coming from somewhere more fluid than thought. Bolton had started working him against the club's competitive fighters on Thursday afternoons, which was its own kind of data.
He thought about the hallway. The neighbor coming out at the right moment. Robert's hand at his waist — that had registered at the time and was registering more clearly now, in retrospect. The slight loosening when the witness appeared.
Confined space. Limited sightlines. Robert was larger but not a fighter — his methods, historically, had relied on proximity and surprise, not confrontation. In a hallway with a door already open behind him, Andrew would have had significant advantages.
He wasn't glad the neighbor had appeared. He was glad he hadn't needed to find out.
He got dressed and went back to the kitchen.
Christie had moved from the textbook to a practice exam, pencil moving with the focused efficiency of someone who'd decided not to waste the evening. She didn't look up.
"Reading comprehension," Andrew said.
"I know," she said.
He made coffee and sat at the other end of the table and thought about what to do about Robert Durst, who now knew where he lived, and who was the kind of problem that didn't resolve itself.
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