Remember Me, Irene

by Jan Burke

  Frank murmured something unintelligible as I got out of bed, but he fell right back to sleep. Cody followed me into the living room. I picked up the phone and dialed long-distance information for area code 909.

  “City and listing?” a voice said.

  “Riverside. Last name Monroe.”

  “First name or initial?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, there are a large number of listings under the last name Monroe. I’ll have to have a first name.”

  “Try Lucas.”

  I heard the clacking of computer keys, then, “Sorry, no listing.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, Frank escaped the house only after I badgered him into promising me that he’d find out if the family had been contacted. He called me at work to say that it would take a little time, since Lucas hadn’t given the shelter any information on his relatives.

  That’s why, throughout the rest of the morning, whenever John wasn’t cruising by my desk in the newsroom, I was pulling a Riverside phone directory out of my desk drawer and hiding it on my lap.

  After Frank’s call, I had skulked over and snatched the directory from the bookcase near Stuart Angert’s desk. It wasn’t Stuart’s bookcase; the items in it were for the use of the entire newsroom. But given John’s warnings and a lack of brotherly love among some of my coworkers, I didn’t especially want anyone keeping track of what I was doing. Bad enough that Stuart had returned to his desk, seen the gap in the directories, and glanced around the newsroom. His glance settled on me, picking me out the way Sister Mary Joseph used to be able to pick me out of a crowd of identically dressed Catholic girls whenever someone had pulled a prank on a nun. I smiled, he smiled back, and I knew that if he had indeed guessed what I was up to, he was one of the few people who wouldn’t rat on me.

  On my twenty-third call to a Riverside Monroe, a woman answered the phone, and there was just enough of a pause before she said, “Nobody here by that name,” to make me call back after she hung up in my ear. I got an answering machine this time.

  “This is Irene Kelly of the Las Piernas NewsExpress. I knew Lucas in college. I need to talk to you about him. Please. It’s very important. Call me at the paper, or later at home. Call collect. But please call me.” I left the 800 number for the paper and my home number.

  I hung up, then stared at the phone for a few moments, willing it to ring. Nothing.

  In between absolutely fruitless calls to my city hall contacts about the resignation of Allan Moffett, I also made twenty-six additional calls to other Monroes in Riverside. Either they weren’t home or they didn’t know a Lucas. I chatted with a couple of the more lonely Monroes, left messages for others.

  Still, the only one I made a note of was number twenty-three: J. Monroe, no address.

  The day had turned the corner past noon, the hours were galloping toward deadline, and I didn’t have a thing written up. I could have blamed all the Monroes in Riverside or the people in city hall for my frustration, but I knew what was really irritating me. I wasn’t working on the story I wanted to work on—at least, not from the right angle.

  I reached into one of my desk drawers and pulled out a pile of loose scraps of paper bound with a couple of rubber bands. It was a treasure I inherited when the contents of the desk were returned to the Express by the police, who had held them while trying to solve the murder of the desk’s previous owner, my friend O’Connor. In the bundle I found a scrap with a 619 area code number on it, and written beneath the number, in O’Connor’s personal shorthand, symbols that meant “Dage’s Little Rancho.” I dialed the number.

  “Keene? It’s Irene.”

  “Oh, for Chrissakes—”

  “Hold on, Keene. Just slow down and think for a minute. You have a chance to distance yourself from all of this, so you might as well take it. The pressure is on. You think all of your dinner companions are going to keep their mouths shut forever?”

  “Assuming there was anything to talk about, you’d have to admit they’ve kept them shut this long. I’m not going to be the first to blab anything.”

  I stayed silent. “You don’t know what you’re after, do you?” Keene said at last.

  “You’re forgetting that Lucas Monroe and I go way back.”

  “You give Lucas Monroe the same advice I’m giving you: just forget it. Go on with your lives. No good is served by this.”

  So Keene didn’t know Lucas was dead. Or was pretending he didn’t know. I postponed what had started to be a sense of relief.

  “Have you seen Lucas lately?” I asked.

  “No, apparently Mr. Monroe doesn’t know how to get in touch with me. So I guess he can’t threaten me the way he did some of the others.”

  “How did he threaten them?”

  “Shit. I should have known you were on a fishing expedition. You don’t know squat, do you?”

  “Fishing expedition? Like the kind you used to take on Ben’s boat?”

  Silence.

  “You received a photocopy, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Shit,” he said again. There was a long pause before he said, “Leave me in peace, Irene.”

  “Are you at peace, Keene?”

  There was a sigh. “I’m an old man.”

  “O’Connor used to say there was no accomplishment in being young.”

  He laughed. “Seems I’ve heard that somewhere before.”

  “Entirely likely. He never claimed to have made up all of that stuff.”

  “Look,” he said. “I don’t think your friend Lucas Monroe knows how to get in touch with me and I don’t want him to learn. Don’t give him this number.”

  “He mailed the photocopy to your office?” I said.

  “Yeah. And I’m not in there much anymore. My kids run the business now. They bundle my personal mail together and send it off to me every few days. We do everything else by phone and fax.”

  I thought for a moment. “You have a fax at home, then?”

  “Sure.”

  “Fax the photocopy to me, Keene.”

  “Christ! You haven’t even seen it, have you?”

  “Fax the photocopy to me, Keene.”

  “No. I am sure as hell not faxing something to a goddamned newspaper.”

  “I’ll stand by the machine.”

  “You’ll stand there a long time. Wait a minute—what’s going on here? Why doesn’t your friend just give you a copy of it? He had enough of them made.”

  Decision time. Could I trust him? After a moment, I said, “There’s a good reason why he hasn’t given me the photocopy. I’ll tell you that reason, if you swear to me that you will not discuss this with your cronies or anyone else.”

  “They are not my cronies. Not all of them, anyway.”

  “Swear it, Keene. And swear it on something that means something to you.”

  “I swear it on my wife’s memory,” he said, and there was nothing casual in the offering.

  “Lucas Monroe is dead.”

  “What?! Oh God, tell me you’re shitting me again.”

  “You know I’m not.”

  “You see how dangerous this is? You see?”

  “You’re talking as if you don’t believe my friend died of natural causes, Keene.”

  “Did he?” There was a plea for hope in the question.

  “No, I don’t think he did. Coroner is still working on it, but nothing he comes up with will make me believe that Lucas just happened to die at such a convenient time. And I can promise you this: I won’t let this one rest.”

  He groaned. I waited.

  “I don’t really know anything,” he said again, but without much heat.

  “Keene, if you don’t know anything, you have nothing to worry about. And if you don’t, why are you afraid to send me that photocopy?”

  There was another long silence.

  “Too dangerous. Find somebody else. Maybe Tyler will give you his copy,” he said. “Talk to Tyler. Call him at his office.”

 
; “I haven’t been able to get past his first line of defense.”

  He paused, then said, “I’ll give you his direct line. But you better swear an oath of your own to me—you swear on O’Connor’s memory—that you won’t tell Tyler who gave you the number.”

  Oaths and numbers exchanged, I promised him I’d keep in touch.

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” he said, and hung up.

  “HELLO,” the low voice said on the other end of the line.

  “Corbin Tyler?”

  “No one who has permission to call this number needs to ask,” the voice calmly replied. “Who is this?”

  “Irene Kelly of the Las Piernas NewsExpress. Before you hang up—”

  “Forgive me for interrupting, but I have no intention of hanging up, Ms. Kelly. That would be rude. Not as rude as divulging a private number to a newspaper reporter, but I imagine my chances of learning who did so are very slim.”

  “Nonexistent, Mr. Tyler.”

  “I understand. Perhaps this is for the best. My secretary has felt quite annoyed for the past few days.”

  “So have I. Why didn’t you just tell her to put the call through?”

  “If you called again on that line, Ms. Kelly, I would refuse your call. But for the moment, you have my attention.”

  “I’m calling about a color photocopy. Do you need me to spend time telling you which one?”

  “No.”

  “I’d like to see it, to talk to you about it—and about a few other things.”

  I heard him sigh. “We will compromise, Ms. Kelly. Give me one hour. At the end of that hour, come to my office.” He gave me directions. “Park in the underground lot, near the north elevators. Use the one marked ‘private’ and enter this code on the keypad.” He read off a short list of numbers. “I’ll be waiting for you. Good-bye until then.”

  He hung up.

  AT THE TOP FLOOR of the building that houses Tyler Associates, the elevator doors open directly onto the reception area of Corbin Tyler’s offices. There was no one sitting at the big marble-topped desk that stood facing me as I stepped out. I heard the faintest kiss of rubber as the elevator doors closed behind me. I listened, but heard no other sounds. In fact, the place seemed deserted.

  Highly polished marble, glass, and brass surfaces were made less forbidding by soft, wintry light from skylights overhead and plush carpet below. A model of some new project stood off to one side in a glass case. Several doors led off the large room; all but one was closed. I walked toward the desk, my footsteps nearly soundless on the carpet. I stood there for a moment, then called a tentative “Hello?”

  No one answered. On the large phone on the desk, none of the buttons for the multiple phone lines was lit. I studied the room for a moment and spotted two security cameras. I murmured a little prayer of gratitude—I hadn’t done any scratching or adjusting.

  The open door led to a long hallway; along the passage, as in the reception area, all but one of the doors appeared to be closed. I couldn’t be certain, though; the hallway itself was almost completely dark. In contrast, the light filling the one open doorway was bright; so bright, I couldn’t see who or what was in the room.

  I stepped into the hallway. The bright light beckoned at the end of the corridor, but once I was within the passage, I could barely make out anything right in front of me. I reached out and found a wall, and kept walking with my hand gliding along the cool surface.

  Each step away from the elevators made me more uneasy. I didn’t know this place, or who Corbin Tyler might have contacted in the hour that had passed since we had spoken. In my eagerness to avoid John Walters, I had left the office without telling anyone where I was going. Only Keene would even know that I might have made contact with Tyler. “Hello?” I called again. “Mr. Tyler?”

  There was no answer. I kept walking. My own heartbeat, my breathing, sounded loud to me. I kept my eyes on what I now thought of as the light at the end of the tunnel.

  A voice behind me said, “Ms. Kelly.”

  I shrieked.

  I whirled around to face him, clutching my hand to my chest, embarrassed but too startled to say so. The afterimage of the bright light floated between me and a person who said, “I frightened you.”

  “Yes.”

  “My apologies. Continue down the hallway, please.”

  I didn’t like the way things were starting out. Rachel had taught me a few self-defense moves. I was going over them in my head, considering my options as I walked to the open door. Hoping to quickly evaluate the situation before committing myself any further, I slowed down and listened. I could hear Corbin Tyler slowing as I slowed. Think! I told myself. I could turn and run now. One man, I might be able to get past. If there were more… I peered into the room.

  The sight which greeted me took my breath away.

  There are probably better views in downtown Las Piernas, perhaps from some of the taller buildings, but I haven’t seen them yet. Directly ahead of me, a wall of windows faced the water, where I could see ships, the bridges over the harbor, the breakwater and marinas. The windows curved with the room, so that to my left, they faced slightly inland, overlooking a section of downtown Las Piernas. I finally noticed Corbin Tyler.

  He had entered the room while I stood gawking. He was standing at the farthest curve of the windows, silhouetted by the afternoon light. He seemed to be staring at a building. I quickly realized that his attention was on the Haimler Building, a tall, graceful structure crowned by a complex glass design. The Haimler was one of Tyler’s award-winning creations.

  “This isn’t the best time of day to see it,” he said without turning around. “A little later, it captures the light in an entirely different way.” His voice, as before, was calm, low, even. It unnerved me in a way that Booter Hodges’s self-involved rambling never would.

  “Where is everybody?” I asked, looking back over my shoulder to make sure the door remained open.

  “I sent them home. Right after you called. I don’t want anyone to know you were here today.”

  “But the cameras—”

  “Are off,” he said, finally turning around.

  “Oh.” I felt a chill go down my back as he silently assessed me.

  Corbin Tyler’s eyes and hair were raven black, which was all the drama on the playbill of his features. He was a slender man of average height. His face was pale and thin, his mouth soft and unsmiling. There was a look of cool determination in his eyes. Everything about him said he was serious.

  “There is an envelope for you on the desk, Ms. Kelly. Take it and go.”

  “I appreciate this more than I can say, Mr. Tyler. But I also have a few questions—”

  “I will not discuss it further with you.”

  “Why not? It’s not as if—”

  He held up his hand like a traffic cop. I fell silent.

  “Don’t push your luck,” he said. He folded his arms. Something in his manner told me that I should be grateful for the photocopy and go, but as Popeye might say, I am what I am.

  “Do you know why Allan Moffett resigned?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I waited.

  “Thank you for asking. Now, if anyone has seen you arrive and asks why I met with a reporter from the Express, I will tell him that you came up here to ask about Mr. Moffett. Take the envelope and go, Ms. Kelly.”

  I walked over to his desk, picked up the 9 x 12 clasp envelope on it, and paused, my eyes drawn to the only other objects on its surface—two framed portraits. One was a wedding photo, of a bride with a round, merry face; the other a graduation photo, of a young woman who had inherited the best of her parents’ features.

  “My wife and daughter,” he said from behind me, then added, “My late wife.”

  I turned to look at him. He hadn’t moved from the windows, but his face had changed. I thought it had changed, anyway, at least for a moment. He still looked serious.

  “Your daughter is beautiful,” I said.

&nbs
p; He turned his back to me. “She’s all I have now, of course. Over the years, I’ve learned that I will do almost anything to protect her. Now, please go.”

  I reached the door and looked back at him. He hadn’t moved.

  “Why are you letting me have this?”

  “You speak as if I have given you a gift, Ms. Kelly. You’re wrong.”

  I DIDN’T ACTUALLY RUN to the elevator, but I thought about it. About halfway down the dark hall, I began to ask myself if this all hadn’t been too easy. As I passed the receptionist’s desk, I glanced at the phone and saw that one of the lines was lit. I paused and listened. I heard the low murmur of Tyler’s voice but couldn’t make out anything he was saying. The light on the phone went off. He had called someone. Who?

  My instincts told me to get the hell out of there. I hurried to the elevator and pressed the call button several times, as if the elevator would somehow recognize my sense of urgency if I kept signaling it. Tucking the envelope under one arm, I searched through my purse, looking for something that could be used as a weapon. My keys were all that was handy.

  I heard noises from the hallway, someone moving about, closing a door. The elevator car arrived. I stepped in, pushed the button for the garage, and watched Tyler emerge from the hallway just as the shiny brass doors closed in front of me, leaving me with nothing but a funhouse reflection of a tense woman’s face. Mine.

  I clutched the unopened envelope as the car began its rapid descent, seeming to pick up speed at each floor. My mind raced with it. Corbin Tyler had easily handed over something which might damn him, and then made a phone call. Did he hand it over because he knew it wouldn’t leave the building? Would someone be waiting for me when the doors to the elevator opened?

  The car suddenly slowed, a roller coaster dropping motion that was echoed in the lurching of my stomach. This wasn’t the garage. The elevator was stopping at the second floor. I moved away from the doors, leaned my back against the bank of buttons, my hand ready to press the alarm bell. I held my breath.