by Pat Young
Then there was larceny. Okay, maybe she hadn’t deliberately stolen Charlotte’s bag. But in the eyes of the law, she might as well have mugged the woman. After all, she’d made no attempt to hand the bag over to the police, either on 9/11, or since.
And there could be no denying that she’d stolen Charlotte’s identity. Her internet attorney was black-and-white clear on that one: A person is guilty of identity theft in the third degree when he or she knowingly and with intent to defraud assumes the identity of another person by presenting himself or herself as that other person, or by acting as that other person or by using personal identifying information of that other person, and thereby obtains goods, money, property or services.
The description applied perfectly. Charlotte continued to pay for the food and flowers that were delivered to the apartment. Food Lucie ate. Whether or not stealing a few yogurts and drinking a glass or two of wine made her guilty of identity theft in the third degree was a moot point. But she had been spending Charlotte’s cash. Money she knew wasn’t hers. Guilty as charged.
When she reached the part that said: Identity theft is punishable as a Class A misdemeanour in its most basic form and a court will impose sentences of up to one year, Lucie felt sick. She could almost hear a court judge intoning the terms of her punishment.
Her hands trembled on the keypad. She was in deep trouble.
When there was a possibility she’d done something awful to Curtis, she’d been scared. But that was more like a dark dread, an anxiety. Even in her darkest days she’d been able to hang on to the hope that she’d get off with it, plead self-defence or whatever. This was different. She had no defence against these charges. She was scared and this time her fear was so gut-clenching it made her bowels want to empty.
She imagined how it would sound to anyone who didn’t know the circumstances.
The accused, Lucie Jardine, practically a derelict, finds a woman lying in the street. The suspect believes the woman may be dead, but instead of getting medical help, she leaves the woman lying there, unaided, and takes her bag. She goes through the bag and finds the woman’s address. She goes to the woman’s home and deceives the doorman into granting her access. She wears the woman’s clothes, eats her food, drinks her wine, sleeps in her bed, spends her cash. She answers to the woman’s name and gives that name to a stranger who asks what she’s called. Basically, she becomes that woman. The charge: Identity theft. The verdict: Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
Lucie leaned her elbows on Charlotte’s laptop and put her head in her hands. She ran her fingers through her hair and tugged on two handfuls till the roots hurt.
She’d been so naïve.
This morning her biggest concern was whether or not she could risk sneaking into her own house to look for her passport. She’d been scared of being arrested and charged with attacking her husband.
This afternoon she’d learned that Curtis was alive. She’d thought she had nothing to worry about. She was in the clear.
Now she knew she was a criminal, a felon, a fraud. A woman who could be charged with, and found guilty of, several serious offences.
And without her passport, she’d no way out.
43
Dylan had stopped by the nurses' station with a box of doughnuts, since this would be his last visit. Nurse Abigail, whose size implied she was partial to a doughnut or three, was laughing at something Dylan had said. It was nothing to do with Curtis, but he must have heard Dylan’s voice, for he appeared in the corridor, and he did not look happy.
‘Hey, Dylan! You here to see me or the nurses?’
‘Oh boy,’ muttered Abigail. ‘Rather you than me, mood he’s in today.’
Dylan shrugged, resigned to one last tirade from Curtis. After today, it wouldn’t be an issue any more. ‘Better go, ladies,’ he said, with a rueful smile.
As he followed Curtis towards the day room, the wheelchair suddenly performed a neat three-sixty-degree turn and stopped to face Dylan. Curtis’s skill in handling the chair was improving daily.
‘You’ll be doing wheelies in that soon,’ Dylan had remarked one day. The compliment hadn’t gone down well with Curtis. Judging by the look on his face right now, he wasn’t in the mood to be told his U-turns were looking good.
‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I don’t appreciate you making fun of me with the nurses.’
‘Loosen up, Curtis.’
‘Don’t you come waltzing in here and tell me to loosen up.’
‘First of all, we weren’t talking about you, as it happens. And second of all, if I want to goof around with the nurses, I will. Where’s the harm?’
Curtis pointed to his legs. Muscle wastage made them look smaller and weaker every time Dylan visited. They were starting to look like a kid’s legs tacked on to a man’s body.
‘This is the harm,’ said Curtis, jabbing at his thighs. ‘Did you forget that, when you were having your little joke on the way in?’
‘We didn’t mean any offence, Curtis. Come on, man. Lighten up.’
Curtis didn’t come back at him this time for having the audacity to suggest he lighten up. Dylan was surprised. Maybe he should have been more assertive years ago. ‘What’s on your mind?’ he asked, keen to move on.
‘I wanna know how you got on. Was she there?’
‘Was who there?’ Dylan was playing for time. He knew that, but all the lines he’d rehearsed on the subway seemed to have deserted him. An angry Curtis had always had that effect on him.
Curtis snorted. ‘The queen of England! Who the fuck do you think? Lucie, you shmuck!’
‘No. She wasn’t.’
‘Dammit! I was sure she’d be back by now.’
Dylan said nothing. Discretion was always the better part of valour when dealing with Curtis. He’d learned that a long time ago.
‘Did you speak to anyone?’
Dylan shook his head. It wasn’t a real lie, if he didn’t say anything.
‘Hell you mean, no? That’s the reason you went. To find out if anyone had seen her sneaking around. Or noticed lights on. You seriously telling me – wait a minute, you didn’t go, did you?’
‘I went, Curtis. Lucie wasn’t there. And I didn’t see any of your neighbours. Let’s face it, they’re not really the type to pop round with a freshly baked pie and an enquiry about your health.’
‘Okay, okay. No need to be a smart-ass all the time. Did you check the place like I told you? Looking for signs she’d been there?’
‘What kind of signs?’
‘Come on, man. Work it out for yourself. Clues. Did you look for clues?’
‘Like what?’
‘I dunno. Was there fresh milk in the fridge? Was there trash in the bin? The toilet tissue. Is the roll smaller since the last time you were there?’
‘Are you serious? You really expect me to check the toilet paper?’
Curtis laughed, breaking the tension. ‘Well, maybe not. But the coffee maker. Has it been used recently? The stove? The skillet.’ He stopped. Went quiet, as if something had just occurred to him.
‘You okay, Curtis?’
Curtis scratched his head. ‘Yeah, I think so. Just got a weird, what ya call it? Day-ja something or other.’
‘Déjà-vu. Yeah, I get that sometimes. Everyone does. They say it means nothing.’
‘Sure feels funny though, doesn’t it?’
Dylan nodded, wondering how he could change the subject. ‘Say, some of those nurses are cute. Have you noticed?’
‘Hard to miss them when they get up close and personal.’
Dylan’s surprise must have shown on his face for Curtis laughed a second time.
‘Yeah, close enough to wash your face and wipe your ass.’ He laughed again, but this time the bitterness was back. Dylan’s change of subject had misfired badly. Had served only to remind Curtis that he’d be depending on nurses for the rest of his life. And that it was all Lucie’s fault. And that Dylan still hadn’t found her.
‘Anyway, sorry.
I looked pretty much everywhere. I don’t think Lucie’s been back. I brought you those shirts and socks you wanted.’ Dylan tossed a plastic bag into Curtis’s lap.
‘Did you find her passport?’
Dylan’s hand went to the pocket of his jeans. Touched the material, feeling for the reassuring shape of the passport. ‘No, I didn’t,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Did you look where I told you? Under the bathtub?’
‘I practically tore the bathroom apart. It wasn’t there.’
‘And you say nothing else in the house has been touched?’
‘Not that I could see.’
Curtis slammed a fist into his thigh, a new habit. It looked painful but Curtis continued to punch, feeling nothing. ‘How can you stand there and tell me she hasn’t been back when her passport’s gone? Of course she’s been back. And now she’s got her passport, she’s free. I’ll bet she’s gone already.’
‘Where would she go?’
‘Hell would I know? Mexico? Canada? Bonnie Scotland?’
‘Did she have any money?’
‘Bitch has been stealing from me for years, it turns out. Keeping me on short rations for months now. Whining at me, ‘There’s no food, Curtis.’
‘Come on, Curtis. That’s not fair. Lucie didn’t whine like that.’
Curtis ignored him. ‘All the time she’s siphoning off money from the housekeeping to buy fancy duds so she can go for an interview. In Manhattan? She’s made an ass of me.’
He went quiet for a moment, thinking. ‘You bastard!’ he shouted. ‘Were you in on this? Did you help her to get away from me? Are the two of you planning to jet off together?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, man.’
‘What’s ridiculous? You’ve wanted Lucie all along. Don’t think I didn’t notice. But you couldn’t compete with me. Till now.’ Curtis clapped his hands, starting quiet and slow. ‘Congratulations. She’s all yours,’ he said, increasing the speed and the volume.
Curtis was still raving when Dylan left and closed the door behind him.
44
He’d searched the obits and death notices in all the city papers for days. Looking for an explanation. That young woman he’d met at the hospital. He could only assume she was the same one he’d mistaken for Charlotte in the street that day. Not Charlotte, of course, but certainly a close relative. A cousin, perhaps, possibly even a sister.
It didn’t make sense. Charlotte had no siblings. No living relatives, she’d said. At least none that she knew of. Why would she keep a mother and a sister secret? And if that was their mother who just died in the hospital, why wasn’t Charlotte there too? And what about that Scottish accent?
An obit would give information about relatives of the deceased. And if the funeral were to be held locally, the girl and Charlotte would turn up. He was planning to be there too, in the background. But no death had been intimated for anyone called Gillespie. He couldn’t understand it.
There was more to Charlotte than met the eye.
He’d begun to wonder what else she’d kept from him.
Could she have been playing him? Using him to her own ends while allowing him to believe it was he who was calling all the shots?
When the insurance companies paid out for the losses incurred on 9/11, Charlotte would become extremely rich. Add that payout to the profits from the put options alone and Charlotte would be phenomenally wealthy. ‘Beyond the dreams of avarice’ was the phrase she always used.
What if she’d been working to her own plan all along? Was she biding her time, waiting to go to the authorities with her story?
And yet why would she do that? It was in both their interests to keep quiet about the information he’d fed her before 9/11. And how he’d come by it. She’d nothing to gain and a whole lot to lose by going anywhere with her knowledge.
Maybe it was time to do what Charlotte wanted and leave Diane? He wouldn’t be the first in their circle to trade his wife for a younger model and, once the initial shock wore off, everybody would get over it. Except maybe Diane.
God, he was going round in circles, driving himself mad and getting nowhere in the process. He needed to give up trying to second-guess this young woman, whoever she was, and concentrate on finding her. Her mother’s funeral would be the ideal place. If only he could find the damn funeral.
Maybe he’d already missed it? It might have taken place the day he and Diane met with the families of his employees at the Pierre. Admittedly, he’d taken his eye off the Charlotte ball while that meeting was being organised.
He rechecked the papers. Beginning with the day he’d been too busy meeting the families. When he drew another blank, it dawned on him. The Gillespie girl had said her mother had just flown in from Scotland. The body must have been repatriated for burial. He’d never met a Scot who wasn’t sentimental about Bonnie Scotland. Of course Mrs Gillespie would have been flown back home.
He was about to close the Times when a short article way towards the back caught his eye. It identified the driver of the crash that had closed the Lincoln Tunnel and caused traffic mayhem. She was Margaret McBride, thought to be a tourist on vacation from Scotland. It went on to say that Mrs McBride had died as a result of injuries sustained in the accident.
McBride? This had to be the same woman. Yet the girl had said her name was Gillespie and her mother had just died. Following a road accident. And a flight from Scotland. It could be a second marriage, of course. He had to work out the connection between the girl crying in the hospital and Charlotte.
He was going to have to track down Charlotte and this sister of hers. Or whoever she was. The only way he could do that was to engineer another meeting and hope the coincidence didn’t cause too much suspicion.
With the towers gone and his business headquarters with them, he was finding it difficult to get the time to do anything. He had entire mountains of paperwork to deal with. Even if ‘dealing with’ only meant adding a signature to myriad documents, it still meant he had to turn up at one office or another, or work from home.
His intention had been to take a vacation with Diane towards the end of September and he’d been looking forward to escaping from the city for a while. He loved the city, but it could be an exhausting place. He’d had his eye on the Seychelles, or the Maldives, where he and Diane had found it easy to relax in the past. At the moment relaxation was an impossibility. From the minute he opened his eyes, he was wired. If he wasn’t worrying about WTC, he was fretting about whether his insurances would pay out, if he might get some of the rebuild contracts and whether his investments would come good when the stock markets opened again. This delay had not been part of the plan. The shares should have been bought or sold by now and the profit made and banked overseas. Every day that passed made him more vulnerable.
But the problem weighing heaviest on his mind was Charlotte, and with good reason. She was the loose end that should have been tied up, trimmed off and forgotten. Instead she was still out there, not just a loose end, but a loose cannon. On a hair trigger.
His best bet, he reckoned, was to catch the girl when she went out for a jog. He imagined runners to be creatures of habit, inclined to run at roughly the same time on roughly the same routes. All he had to do was be patient. There was no other option. He wouldn’t rest until he worked out what was going on and solved the problem. His need to tie up loose ends was compulsive and this one was so dangerously loose, his whole life was in danger of unravelling like a poorly knitted sweater.
Thinking it wise to avoid the same coffee shop as before, he found another, not quite as close to Charlotte’s apartment building. He struck up a conversation with the barista and led him to believe he was a lonely widower who was desperate to get out of his apartment and into the world. He was welcome, according to Alfonso the barista, to sit and chill over a couple of coffees and the newspapers for as long as he liked.
It looked as if his vigil would prove fruitless. He’d sat here most of the morning. He was abou
t to give up and head back to the office when saw the girl jogging along the opposite side of the street. He slapped a few dollars of a tip on the table, much more than was justified. ‘See you, Alfonso.’
Although she wasn’t running fast, trying to chase her would be pointless, for all sorts of reasons. A better strategy would be to find a place where he could ambush her on her way back to the apartment.
He followed her for as long as he could keep her in his sight. Suddenly she made a left and disappeared. He could only hope she’d come back the same way. With his fingers tightly crossed he turned the corner too, on the lookout for a doorway or lobby he could step into without looking suspicious.
Then he saw it, a church, its beautiful broad steps spread out like a welcome. The answer to his prayers. The thought made him smile and an elderly priest on the top step smiled back, encouragingly.
A church – what better place to wait, hiding in plain sight, the best subterfuge of all. He nodded to the priest on his way by and looked inside. The church was busy but unlike many others in the neighbourhood that had become centres for rescue activities, this building seemed to have remained a place of worship and a sanctuary from the mad world outside. Most of the pews had at least one occupant, many sitting with heads bowed. Quiet organ music played soothingly in the background, a requiem, Mozart if he wasn’t mistaken. The smell of incense took him back to his childhood.
He felt a light touch on his elbow.
‘Why don’t you go on inside, my son?’ asked the priest.
‘Um, I don’t really have time right now, Father.’
‘That’s all right. Now you know we’re here, perhaps you’ll look in on us again? When you’ve a bit more time?’
‘I will,’ he said, putting his hand in his pocket. He produced a twenty-dollar bill. ‘Take this in the meantime, will you, Father?’
He slipped the cash into the priest’s hand and left through the huge wooden door. There were several people sitting on the steps. He wouldn’t look out of place if he joined them. He found a spot with a good view of the street and sat down to wait.