15th Affair

by James Patterson

  “I’ll be home by six. Or call me and I will relieve you as speedily as the law allows.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” she said.

  I kissed Julie, ruffled Martha’s ears, tossed her a tennis ball, and grabbed a bottle of tea from the fridge. Then I ran down the stairs.

  There was a fire-engine-red Camaro in front of my apartment building with gold hubcaps and matching chains around the plate guards. The envelope taped to the window had my name on it, and there was a set of keys inside, along with a note written in Brady’s block-letter handwriting.

  “Merry Christmas from the motor pool.”

  It was not Christmas, and this car’s previous owner had clearly been convicted of possession of narcotics with intent to sell. I hated the car on sight. But until Nationwide paid out for my deceased Explorer, it would have to do.

  My drive to the Mission would have been a laugh riot if I’d been in a laughing mood. I got suggestive gestures and horn toots and more than one offer to race, but on the positive side, the car went from zero to sixty in a heartbeat, handled beautifully around curves, and braked on a bottle cap. The motor pool had tooled this crass beast into a first-class cop car.

  When I got to the intersection of Mission and Cortland, Conklin was waiting outside a cheap variety store near the corner. He was not alone. Three squad cars were at the curb and a load of interested citizens stood behind the yellow tape. Broken glass glittered on the sidewalk.

  Conklin met me at the car and took me over to talk to the first officer, saying, “Officer Dow spoke with the lady a few minutes ago. Dow, tell the sergeant what you told me.”

  The uniformed cop was young and keyed up and clearly wanted to make his report.

  He said, “Girl in there says she’s had enough of her old man. She shot him and yelled out to me that she doesn’t trust men at all and won’t be taken alive.”

  “Father? Or husband?” I asked.

  “Husband.”

  “SWAT is on the way?”

  Dow said, “She says if she sees men in black, she’s just going to blow her brains out. But she’ll talk to you, Sergeant. She saw your picture on the news after the Chinatown bust.”

  I was back on the job, working a case that didn’t involve spies or orphaned children or multiple homicides. It wasn’t exactly blue skies with a side of roses, but it wasn’t bad. There was even a chance that I could do some good.

  My vest was in the back of my Explorer, which was still undergoing a forensic postmortem at the crime lab, but I was wearing my lucky socks.

  I asked Officer Dow, “What’s her name?”

  CHAPTER 99

  BY 2 P.M., I was home again with my shoes and cell phone off.

  Mrs. Rose was at her daughter’s bedside. The victim of the variety store shooting was in stable condition, and the young female shooter had a lawyer and was under suicide watch.

  Joe was with Alison Muller at some black site in DC or on foreign soil, and I didn’t know when he was coming back or if I would let him into my life again.

  I could make a good case for moving on.

  I thought of Alison Muller’s taunts about the closeness of her relationship with Joe, and although she was a five-star liar, he had an equal number of stars on his chest, maybe more, and they made a pretty good pair.

  Mrs. Rose liked to say, “When feeling pathetic, make tea.”

  I boiled water and took a look at the big pile of mail that had been accumulating for weeks on the kitchen counter. Joe had been paying the bills for a while, but I still knew how to balance a checkbook.

  I blew on my tea, switched the radio to Radio Alice, 97.3, for their adult contemporary sound, and put the mail and my computer on the coffee table. I tossed the flyers and catalogs to the floor, separating out the utilities and condo maintenance and the bank statement.

  I was going through the statement when I saw a charge for a safe-deposit box that I didn’t know we had. I’m not saying it was a secret. Only that I hadn’t noticed it before.

  The time was now 2:35. Our bank was at Ninth Avenue and Clement, five blocks away. If the baby would cooperate, I could get there before closing time.

  I went to the drawer in Joe’s office and removed the key I’d found days ago at the bottom of a stationery box. I put on my shoes, strapped Julie into the baby sling, and arrived at the bank five minutes before closing. I told the woman in charge of the vault that I wouldn’t take long. I just had to get into the box before the weekend. It was urgent.

  Was it urgent? I asked myself, even as she opened the doors. Was I setting myself up for one more hideous disappointment?

  “Please, Mrs. Molinari,” said the vault keeper. “I have an appointment with the coach at my son’s school. I promised.”

  Joe’s key had the number 26 engraved on the shaft. The vault lady put her key into one of the locks and I put my key into the corresponding lock. After the tumblers clicked into place, I slid the long metal box out of the cabinet and took it into the tiny viewing room next to the vault.

  I fumbled with the hasp and finally got the box open. I stared in at the contents. There were several unsealed envelopes inside. One of them held our condo lease. I found our marriage license, Julie’s birth certificate, and Joe’s father’s death certificate. Under those envelopes was a long flat candy box with gold edging and a stylized drawing of a bow on top.

  As I bridged the lid of the candy box with my fingers, preparing to open it, I reflected on the fact that I was snooping—again, but screw it. I was entitled to whatever truth I could find in this haystack of lies a.k.a. my marriage to Joe.

  If there were mementos of Joe’s secret life with Alison Muller, I absolutely needed to know.

  I removed the lid. Up came the smell of chocolate and cherries, but Alison Muller wasn’t inside the candy box.

  Julie was there. And so was I.

  On top, a sprig of Julie’s fine, dark baby hair tied with a slender pink ribbon. There was a photograph a stranger had taken of Joe and me on the ferry to Catalina, both of us grinning, the wake foaming behind us as we stood embracing at the rail. That was the first time we’d told each other, “I love you.”

  Under that photo was a copy of the marriage vows we’d exchanged in a gazebo lapped by the ocean in Half Moon Bay, and there was a candid snapshot of Joe and me and Cat and the little girls, all of us laughing and walking barefoot down the beach in our wedding clothes. And there was a printout of an e-mail from me to Joe telling him that I missed him so much, asking, “When are you coming home?”

  I was struck by the congruence of having similar thoughts now at this very different place and time in our lives.

  My musings were interrupted by the vault lady tapping on the glass, pointing to her watch.

  “I’m coming,” I said.

  I put everything back in the box and returned it to its sleeve in the cabinet behind the locked doors, and Julie and I left the bank.

  “What now?” I said to my precious little girl as we crossed Lake Street toward the Molinari family home.

  “What’s going to happen now?”

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER 100

  ALISON MULLER KNEW every inch of the cell where she’d been held for a month or more—she wasn’t sure how long. It was impossible to grasp even the difference between day and night in the artificial gray light of this underground box, which had been designed by a crazy person.

  The walls leaned in and the ceiling sloped and even the stones in the wall were different shapes, laid without pattern or sense.

  She was grateful for the crazy stones because each had a personality. Like the one shaped like a kidney next to her bed. And the one next to it, shaped like Ohio. Looking at the stones gave her a place to put her mind.

  There were no fellow prisoners, no exercise yard. She had a narrow bunk, a flush toilet, and a recessed shower head over the toilet that dispensed only cold water.

  Her one meal and a change of paper clothes were delivered
by her interrogator.

  He came to the chair outside her cell at regular intervals to question her. He was very formal. His clothes were neutral and boring, but pressed, and he always wore a tie. Alison didn’t know him and he wouldn’t tell her his name.

  “What do people call you?” she would ask. “Just say any name.”

  “My name is unimportant.”

  She had called him Unimportant for a while, but it was clumsy. So she tried other names: Bert, Voldemort, Condor. But the name that stuck was Secret Agent Man, or Sam.

  Sam was middle-aged, paunchy, and humorless but a fine interrogator. He never hurt her physically, but he knew how to get to her, how to worry her and make her desperate for news of her kids.

  He also brought incentives with him: a box of food and a clean, blue, one-piece flushable garment.

  These items remained under his chair while he tried to break her. Most of the time when he was ready to leave, he slid the parcels under the lowest bar of her cell. Sometimes he took the food and clothes away with him.

  Today, as usual, he’d said, “Hello, Ms. Muller. Are you comfortable?”

  “Fabulous accommodations, dahling,” she’d said. “If you could have fresh flowers delivered. And a change of linens.”

  The interrogator smiled, if you could call the thin stretch of his thin lips a smile. He asked the same questions every day. “Who gave the order to blow up the plane?”

  And every time, she said the same thing.

  “Like I told you, Secret Agent Man. What I heard is that they were rogue Chinese operatives. I didn’t know them. I don’t know who they were working for. I heard they’re all dead. Now. If you don’t mind telling me, who do I have to blow to get out of this joint?”

  “What information have you passed to the Chinese?”

  “None. None at all.”

  One time, after the questions were done, Secret Agent Man said, “I’ve seen Caroline.”

  He pulled his phone out of his shirt pocket and showed her a photo of her daughter coming out of her middle school building. He said, “She has a bruise on her left arm. See there. I think she may be getting into fights. Or maybe Khalid did this to her.”

  Then he’d asked her another of the everyday questions. “Who is your contact in China? Who were you going to meet when you got there?”

  “I didn’t have a contact. I was going to be met at the airport. That’s the truth. That’s the truth. It all happened very fast. Remember, please. I am still CIA. I was only going to work over there for us. Molinari knows this. Please. I’ve told you everything. What do I have to do to get out of here?”

  Today, after the usual bull, Secret Agent Man had said, “Your meal is a cheese and mushroom frittata. I had one. It’s very good. Bon appétit. I’ll see you soon, Ms. Muller.”

  And then he’d left.

  Alison had thought of killing herself. She had run headfirst at the wall, but she really couldn’t get any momentum going and had only given herself a headache. A hidden camera watched her. The one time she’d tried to hang herself on the bars, Sam had appeared and said, “No, Ms. Muller. Don’t do that unless you’d like us to take away your clothes. Keep you here in the nude.”

  She wasn’t yet desperate enough to drown herself in the toilet. But she was close.

  She was going to be here for life.

  She was going to die in this underground stone box.

  The sooner the better. There was no way out and nothing left to live for. She couldn’t even fantasize anymore. She just couldn’t fool herself into believing in happiness.

  She went to the cot, which was chained to the wall, and lay down. She pulled out strands of hair, one at a time, and she started the countdown to the one thing she had to look forward to.

  The next meeting with Sam.

  He was all she had.

  CHAPTER 101

  ALISON THOUGHT SHE’D finally gone insane.

  She heard men’s voices out of sight in the corridor beyond her cell. She knew both voices. One was Sam, her tormentor. She knew for sure she was crazy, because the other man—was Joe.

  First the muffled voices, then the shadows falling across the stone floor. And then they were both at the bars.

  Secret Agent Man said, “You have a visitor, Ms. Muller.”

  He put the box with her dinner and her one-piece outfit under the chair and then said to Joe, “Take your time. When you’re ready, you know where to find me.”

  Alison rushed to the bars and grabbed them.

  “Joseph. Have you come to get me out?”

  “I could only arrange a visit,” he said.

  He brushed her hand with his, then sat in the chair outside the cell. She sat on the floor right against the bars so that she could be close to him.

  “Why are you here, then?”

  “I wanted to see if you had charmed management into giving you silk sheets and an ocean view.”

  “Oh, yes, it’s just like the Ritz. And no one even asked me to put out.”

  She grinned but couldn’t hold the pose. Her smile crumpled. She put her hands into her ragged hair and pulled it away from her eyes. She looked up at Joe. His expression was cool. But still, she could read that he felt sorry for her. That he still cared.

  “I look terrible, I know. I never wanted you to see me like this. How are you, Joseph? What’s it like for you now?”

  “I’d like to say it’s like nothing ever happened, but there’s been fallout, of course. Professional and personal.”

  “You want to talk about it?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “I understand. But to the point of all this, Joseph,” she said, making a gesture with her hand that took in all twenty square feet of her cell. “I have to get out of here.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve answered all their questions. I’ve been tortured, Joe. I’m not holding anything back. They’re not giving me anything off for my time and service in the Agency. They just keep hammering me with the same questions, and I’ve told them I don’t know anything more.”

  “OK. Well, they’re not convinced, I guess.”

  “But you can help me. You can speak for me. You know what I’ve done and what I’ve sacrificed.”

  “I’m not considered a clean source on you, Ali.”

  “Joe, please, please. I’ve got kids. I have more to give to the Agency. I’m a valuable person. You can save me, Joe. I know you can save me.”

  “Is there anything you can tell me that I can pass on?”

  “I’ve given up everything.”

  “I was told we only had five minutes,” he said.

  “Will you be back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He patted her hands and left her.

  CHAPTER 102

  SECRET AGENT MAN was at the bars of her stone cage at what seemed to be his usual time. Alison noticed that he was dressed as was his style, in a khaki-colored jacket with a white shirt, a blue-striped tie, and a pair of dun-colored pants. His hair was neatly combed and he was clean-shaven. But he hadn’t brought her fresh paper jumpsuit and the boxed meal, her only food for the day.

  He said, “Ms. Muller. My name is Anderson.”

  “First or last?”

  “Just Anderson,” he said. “We have to clean your cell. And I thought maybe you’d like a hot shower before we bring you back.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  The idea of standing under hot water was just tremendous. “Not at all. I have a Taser,” he said. “Need I say any more?”

  “No. I’ll behave. Where would I go, anyway?”

  “Exactly,” said Anderson.

  Alison thought Joe had arranged this. At least he had done this much. Maybe this shower was incentive for her to be more cooperative. Maybe that would work.

  Anderson opened the cell door and stepped away, out of Alison’s reach. He patted the waistband of his pants under his jacket so that she could see the bulge of the Taser gun.

&nbs
p; “Straight ahead, Ms. Muller. You’ll see an opening on your left at the end of the corridor. There’s a short flight of stairs, and the staff bathroom is up there. There’s soap and shampoo and a clean towel on a hook. Your dinner is being prepared now. Pork loin and boiled new potatoes. Chocolate brownies.”

  “Wow,” Alison said, giving him a big grin. “Must be my birthday.”

  She had walked about ten paces down the hallway when Anderson fired a .44-caliber bullet into the back of her skull. He fired again into her back as she fell. He stooped next to her, flipped his tie over his shoulder, and felt for a pulse.

  There was none.

  He sighed. Then he walked around her body on his way to the office to make his report.

  CHAPTER 103

  I WAS HAVING a dinner party. This was the first time in maybe a year since I’d had people over, and I was up for it. Julie was in a sparkly party dress, and she had a new word.

  “Mommy.”

  It was the best word in every language all over the world.

  Mrs. Rose had spent the day helping me cook, and my buds were all in my house: Claire and her adorable husband, Edmund. Yuki and my boss and idol, Jackson Brady. Richie and Cindy, of course, and Jacobi had come with a date.

  Her name was Miranda and she played “Dora” on a daytime TV show I had never seen, but Mrs. Rose had almost fainted when Miranda walked in the door.

  We were all having cocktails. Mrs. Rose had refused the invitation to be my date. She had a new grandchild and was glad to get out of my house.

  I gave her a hug and a check and she patted my arm and said, “Have fun. I’ll be here in the morning.”

  Brady came into the open kitchen looking for the corkscrew. He opened a bottle of wine and said, “Whatever is cooking is making me slobber.”

  I laughed. “Ten more minutes. That’s all. Just ten.”

  Yuki followed Brady in, put her arms around his waist, and kissed his back. God, it had been a long time coming, but these two were just made for each other.