by Thomas Perry
“Why do you? What made you get into a line of work like this in the first place? Is the money that good?”
She shook her head and let out a little chuckle. “I did it once, I did it again. It never occurred to me to accept pay. Somebody pressed the point, and I said, ‘So send me a present.’ The jobs got more dangerous, and the presents got bigger.”
“But why the first time?”
“Anybody who knows how to swim will jump in and pull out the one who’s drowning. I knew how to swim.”
“But—”
“Enough,” she said. “Things were going to happen, and I made decisions about which ones I could live with, just as anybody does. The choices aren’t always limitless. In case you haven’t noticed, I was feeling sorry for myself tonight without this conversation.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “If you want to be alone for a few hours, I could manage that much.”
“Of course not,” said Jane. “I didn’t mean it that way.” She felt ashamed. He was scared to death, and he was volunteering to go out and cower somewhere while she had a fit of the vapors or something. “You’re a good guy, Pete. We’re going to have to spend a lot of time together for a while. I’ll let you know now that I enjoy your company, so you don’t have to wonder or apologize for being here. We’re going to pull you through this little bumpy stretch and get you started on a new life. Then I’ll float off like the good fairy and go to work getting my own life straightened out. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Pete. His smile was almost a laugh. He looked strong and comfortable. The muscles in his shoulders and legs elongated as he slouched in his chair. He had that unself-conscious, almost comical look that she had seen on fathers taking little children to the park. “I guess knowing how to shoot people doesn’t do much for your social life.”
She was surprised at her sudden need to keep him from thinking she wasn’t desirable. She drew in a breath to respond, then looked down at her watch. “It’s late, and I’d like to get an early start tomorrow morning.”
He looked at the bed. “I can sleep on the floor.”
“Sorry, that’s mine,” she said. She took a pillow and the bedspread off the bed. “What I’m worried about is not you, by the way. Tonight I’m going to keep my eyes open for visitors.” She busied herself with the bedspread while he got into the bed and turned off the lamp beside it. Then she went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and came back out. He was lying in the dim light with his eyes closed. She turned out the other light and lay on the folded quilt in the dark.
“Jane?”
“What?”
“Thanks again.”
“Think nothing of it.”
She lay in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling and testing the sensation of not being able to detect the difference between having her eyes open or closed. She closed them and thought about Carey. She knew that at this hour he was fast asleep in the big bed at home. She tried to reach out with her thought and place a blessing on him while he slept, but the mere knowledge that he was sleeping cut her off from him. He was dreaming, not thinking about her, like a receiver tuned to a different station. She opened her eyes again and she was back in the motel room in Montana.
As she lay there feeling the floor pressing harder on her spine, she contemplated the absurdity of pretending to stay alert for intruders so she could lie here on the floor when there was plenty of room on a perfectly good bed a few feet away. She knew that she would have the thought again and again, each time she awoke in the darkness waiting for the night to end. It was her penance for lying to Carey about the sleeping arrangements. She couldn’t take back the lie, but she could suffer a little discomfort to make the lie almost true.
She dozed off for a few seconds and began to slip into a dream. The vague image of a man appeared and began to resolve and clarify—bare legs, arms, then the features of the face began to establish themselves. She was startled and her body jerked and woke her, pulling her out of it in time to keep the man from being recognizable. But it was too late to keep her from knowing that the sight her mind had been preparing for her had not been Carey.
19
Linda Thompson spent all of her time studying Dr. Carey McKinnon. He was attractive, with a lean body and gangling walk and big hands that made her wonder if he had made his way through college playing basketball. He always looked as though he was late, ducking out of the driver’s seat of the BMW, unfolding those long legs, then taking two steps toward the hospital building before the door that he had flicked with his hand slammed shut. Then he would step along toward the entrance without looking to either side or slowing down as visitors did to be sure the automatic door would open in time, and then disappear inside.
When his shift ended, he would come out alone at the same speed, slip into the BMW, and drive off. She watched him travel the same route each time, back to his big old house in Amherst. After a few minutes she would see him moving around in the kitchen. Later there would be the glowing bluish light in a room on the upper floor from a television set. When it went off, he would sleep.
It took Linda two days to grow accustomed to his hours. He was at the hospital for surgery by seven and usually walked across the street to the medical building where he had his office at around one. Some time in the late afternoon he would walk back to the hospital and stalk the hallways, talking to patients in their rooms until at least seven, and sometimes nine.
After she became used to his movements and had adjusted her internal clock to his, she had long stretches of time when she could let him out of her sight. The mornings were good, because she knew that he wasn’t going to leave in the middle of an operation. She spent some mornings with realtors. His neighborhood was wrong for her purposes. The houses were all big and expensive, sitting well back on vast lots. The nearest one that was for sale was two long blocks away, and the view of his house was obscured by a row of old maple trees along the sidewalk. The zoning apparently didn’t permit apartment buildings, because there was not one on any of the surrounding streets.
She considered getting a job in the hospital, but only for a moment. Hospitals checked credentials to avoid lawsuits, and she could never create any that would get her a job that placed her in his path frequently enough. At best she would find herself emptying bedpans three floors away from him, with no excuse to leave and follow him.
Linda had an expert eye for bodies and could tell he was in reasonably good condition. He didn’t jog or work out at home, so it was possible that he belonged to some local club. She looked up all of the ones in the telephone book, made some calls, and learned nothing.
His entry in the A.M.A. directory told her he had gone to Cornell and then to the University of Chicago Medical School. She opened an account at the bank listed on his credit report and shopped at the supermarkets closest to his house, but never saw him.
She visited the main library in downtown Buffalo and read old issues of the Cornell alumni magazine until she found the right obituary. A woman named Susan Preston had died six years ago in a plane crash. Susan Preston would have been five years younger than McKinnon, so they weren’t in school together. She had been survived by various Prestons in San Francisco, so it was unlikely that McKinnon had known her family. Linda took the catalog off the shelf and studied the maps and photographs of the Cornell University campus, then memorized the names of professors and courses. If the university was going to be an entree to anything, she might need to be able to talk about it.
Linda called her house and reached Lenny. She told him to punch the name Susan Preston Haynes onto some blank credit cards, make her a California driver’s license, and send them by overnight mail. It was a gamble to use a real name, but it would put her on the right lists, and adding a husband’s surname gave her the option of being Haynes any time Preston seemed too risky.
After six days of stalking Carey McKinnon, Linda found an article in the Buffalo News about a benefit dinner to be held by the auxiliary of Buffalo Memorial H
ospital. She called the number in the article and bought a ticket for a hundred dollars. Carey McKinnon seemed to do nothing but work and sleep, but maybe he would consider a benefit for the hospital a part of his work. She had just taken out the good dress she had brought from California in case she needed it in Las Vegas and begun her preparations when the telephone rang.
“Yes?” she said into it.
“It’s me.” Earl sounded angry.
“Hi,” she said. “Have you got anything yet?”
“Zero,” he said. “I’ve watched his goddamn car for a week. If he’s in Billings at all anymore, he doesn’t drive anywhere. He’s also not visible in any hotel, motel, or park bench in the city. If you don’t have anything for me soon, I think we might want to begin considering our alternatives.”
“What alternatives?”
“Make some fake ID with Hatcher’s picture on it that won’t fool even a Montana cop, rent an apartment in that name. We salt the apartment with the ID and the mail we found in Las Vegas, and anything from the car that has Hatcher’s prints on it.”
“Then what?” She knew he wasn’t serious. He was saying it because it sounded desperate and risky, and the thought that he was contemplating such a fraud would affect her.
“Pop some guy Hatcher’s size and shape, put him in the car, and torch it. Once the police run the prints we leave in the apartment and identify the photograph on the fake ID, they won’t have any reason to strain themselves with a lot of tests, and Seaver won’t be able to. If anybody’s real curious they might go to the Denver apartment the car’s registered to and find more of Hatcher’s prints there. We collect the rest of the money from Seaver. End of story.”
“What happens if Pete Hatcher shows up later?” She sounded as worried as she would have been if she believed Earl would give up. Earl didn’t need safety as much as he needed to win.
“Honey, if I can’t find the bastard, you think anybody else is going to?”
“Of course not. Nobody’s better than you, Earl. I’m just talking.”
“If we wait too long, we might have to do it in reverse.”
“What do you mean?” asked Linda.
“Cut and run before Seaver’s bosses send somebody for us. Find a man and woman and make it look like this specialist Hatcher hired set a trap and killed us first.”
“Please don’t do anything yet, Earl,” she said. “I won’t disappoint you, I promise.” Her own voice, sounding breathy and submissive, gave her an erotic shiver. She experimented with making her voice break, not quite a sob. “I’ve been trying really hard.” The effect was good. “I’ll have something for you in a few days.”
“I sure hope so,” he said. “I’ve got nothing. I’ve been running computer checks on the two names he used so far, her name, car rentals, everything. None of it leads anywhere in particular. So I’m beginning to think she picked him up and they were long gone before I got here.”
“I know it’s up to me,” she said. “I won’t forget it for a second.”
Carey McKinnon stood in front of the mirror in the bedroom and studied the man who stared back at him. He had been aware long before tonight that he looked foolish in a tuxedo, but he had consoled himself by renting a tuxedo to look foolish in instead of owning one, and by picking out the plainest model that Benjy’s Midnight Tux had to offer, with black cummerbund and white plastic studs and cuff links. Probably the last time this one had been out of Benjy’s, it had been taken to a prom. The shoes were his, but only because Benjy’s selection of shoes for big feet had the sturdy spit-shined look of military footwear.
With resignation, he brushed his hair into place one last time. The warring cowlicks would reassert themselves in the car. Then he turned off the light, walked downstairs, and stopped. He looked at the telephone before he opened the door. He had been looking at telephones all over the house for two hours, each time remembering that the way they looked had nothing to do with ringing.
It was two hours earlier in Montana, so it was still about five o’clock there. His mind warned him that thinking about time was the first step into treacherous territory. The second was to ask himself what she could possibly be doing that made a telephone call to her husband such a hard thing to accomplish at any hour of the day or night. That brought a hundred contradictory answers into his mind together, elbowing past one another to the front to be acknowledged.
He left the lamp by the door burning and hurried out to his car. As soon as he had started the engine, he noticed the fuel gauge again and cursed himself for forgetting. He hated to stop at the full-serve side of the gas station and wait by the pump helplessly until the attendant happened to glance out the window and notice him, then get so lonely and bored that helping a customer was all he could think of to do. But Carey was determined not to pump gas in a tuxedo. The unwritten laws of physics meant that the pump nozzle would backwash or the hose would leak.
He backed out of the long driveway quickly, drove up the street, and stopped at the light. He hoped the needle of the fuel gauge was still just working its way upward to its correct reading. The light changed, and he turned left to drive the familiar route back to the hospital.
When he reached his reserved parking space he found a big black Mercedes had been backed into it. He paused for a moment with his foot on the brake, then drove on into the visitors’ parking lot, took a parking ticket, and found a space. As he walked toward the building, the argument the muscles of his mouth and tongue were rehearsing was that taking a surgeon’s space in a hospital parking lot could cost the driver’s child the five minutes that might have saved his life some time. He clamped the argument to the roof of his mouth with his tongue. He wasn’t going to say it. He wasn’t going inside to save anybody’s life. He was going in there to kiss that Mercedes owner’s rich ass with enthusiasm and sincerity, and hope it bought the hospital a new children’s wing.
It was probably somebody he had met before. Around Buffalo, most big money was old money, handed down from the days of the Erie Canal, or at least the days of Civil War profiteering, enhanced by practices like buying up the tax liens on family farms in the surrounding countryside during the Depression and turning them into suburbs.
He walked into the foyer and glanced into the garden. He could see a few fat penguins and their bejeweled consorts loitering out there, flicking cigarette ashes into the shrubbery and sipping drinks where their cardiologists couldn’t catch them at it.
He caught a glimpse of Lily Bortoni, the wife of his friend Leo, an orthopedic surgeon. She looked as serene and elegant as she always did at these affairs, every shining chestnut hair in place and with just enough makeup so her skin looked like the smooth surface of a sculpture. She was staring unperturbed through a cloud of cigar smoke at a potential donor as though he were saying something important, so Carey couldn’t catch her eye.
As he walked on, a series of conflicting thoughts flashed through his mind. The sight of Lily made him miss Jane and feel annoyed with her at the same time. He felt sorry for himself for having to show up here alone, felt guilty that Leo’s wife, Lily, had to work the crowd while Jane escaped it, dreaded having to explain ten times in the next hour why Jane wasn’t here. Then he remembered that she could be running for her life right now. He forced the idea out of his mind: she was out finding a new address for some moron. It was unfair to Carey and inconvenient for her, but the danger was over. She was doing what she felt she had to do, and he would just have to cover for her until it was over.
He stepped into the cafeteria, and a hand patted his arm. He turned to look down at Marian Fleming. She had managed to confine herself in a beige evening gown with metallic filigree on the front that looked as though its purpose was to protect her from body blows. Her blond hair was sprayed and sculpted into a spun-sugar helmet, and her ice-blue eyes fixed him with a stare that told him he was not about to be offered any choices. “There’s somebody you’ve got to meet,” she said.
Carey understood the words
“got to,” so he waited.
“Where’s Jane?” Her eyes flicked around behind him.
“She’s out of town,” he answered. “I’m on my own tonight.”
He did not miss the tiny twitch above her eye as Marian’s mind punched Jane’s card. She was already pivoting to push him along toward someone, still talking. “Here’s the doctor I told you about.”
“You did?” asked Carey.
“Susan Haynes, this is Carey McKinnon. He went to Cornell too.” She gave Carey a perfectly benign empty look. “So did his wife, but she’s not with us tonight, so he’ll have to do.”
Carey looked at the woman and smiled. Her blond hair beside Marian’s was the difference between polished gold and yellow paint. Her eyes were big, a bright green with flecks in them like malachite, and her lips were full, with a natural upturn at the corners. She gave a reserved smile, as though she were bestowing tiny portions of a powerful spice.
“Hello, Dr. McKinnon,” said Linda.
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Haynes. I have a feeling you must have shown up in Ithaca after my time. I would have remembered.”
She looked as though she was not surprised by anything men said to her, just mildly disappointed. “I was Sue Preston then.”
“It doesn’t help,” he said. “I’ve been out about ten years, and you’re only twenty …” He squinted at her. “Eight.”
The big green eyes widened. “How did you know that?”
“I’m a specialist in looking at people as bundles of cells. Yours are twenty-eight.”
She looked around her, but nobody was nearby bursting to explain it. “This is some kind of trick.”
He shook his head. “Nope. You weigh one hundred and twenty-two pounds, right?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t weigh myself every day.” She lowered her head and conceded from behind her eyelashes, “That’s close, though.”
He leaned closer, and she turned her ear to listen. “Those guys at carnivals who guess your age and weight?”