It wasn’t a good night for Helene.
“Mrs. Zaharis, we meet again.” It was the photographer, Gerald.
Maybe Helene’s buzz was wearing off in the wake of the administrative assistant revelation she’d just experienced, but suddenly Gerald looked a lot less handsome and a lot more feral.
“We do,” she answered him, accustomed to answering at these events in as charming a manner as she could muster.
At the moment, that consisted of we do.
“I was sorry we were interrupted earlier.”
She was entering a cynical mode. Something about this guy, his persistence, and the fact that he seemed to be everywhere she looked tonight, disconcerted her. “Why is that?”
“Because we weren’t through talking.”
“We weren’t?”
He looked at her coolly. “No, I was going to tell you about one of the more interesting photo sessions I’ve had lately. In fact, it was just yesterday.” He hesitated a moment longer than a kind person would have. “Did you do anything interesting yesterday?”
Apart from getting caught shoplifting? “Not that I can recall.” Her alcohol haze was burning off.
“That’s funny,” Gerald said. “Because you figured prominently in the more interesting part of my day.”
Helene looked at him. “Me?” She had a bad, bad feeling that she was going to get an answer she didn’t like.
Gerald nodded. “I was at Ormond’s department store yesterday. It’s their semiannual sale, you know.”
“Is it?”
They both knew she was bluffing.
He nodded, playing the game. “I took a few shots there.”
“Photos, you mean.” She arched an eyebrow. “Or were you drinking tequila in the men’s room?”
He chuckled. “Good thing I wasn’t, or I would have missed a damn good story.”
“You don’t look like the sort of guy who’d find anything of interest in Ormond’s.” She grazed an eye over his Super-Mart–quality suit. “Were you just passing through on the way to the parking lot?”
“As a matter of fact, I was. I’d gone to get a battery for my camera at one of those fancy jewelry stores. It always drove me crazy that I had to get a fussy little battery like that instead of a regular double A, but it turns out to have been one of the luckier things that’s happened to me.”
“Is that so?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “I was walking through Ormond’s on my way to my car, and I was fidgeting with the camera to make sure the battery did the trick, when I stumbled upon an incredible scene. I didn’t have any idea I was going to stumble across an actual story, but I did.” He pulled an envelope from his pocket. “Take a look. It’s good stuff.”
He’d been planning to find and corner her tonight.
“I’m not very interested in your work, Mr. Parks.” She didn’t want to see what was in the envelope.
“Go on, take a look.” He shook it at her, like a lion tamer shaking a steak in order to get his subject’s attention. “I think you’ll find it really interesting.”
She glared at him wordlessly.
“Better that you see it from me, now, than on the news tomorrow.”
Helene took the envelope reluctantly. At this point she was playing her role in the game she had no choice but to play.
Taking what felt like hours, she opened the envelope and pulled out the neat stack of five-by-seven black-and-white prints within.
The first was of her, from a distance, talking with Luis in the shoe department of Ormond’s.
The second showed Luis returning with her credit card extended toward her.
The third showed Luis returning with her credit card extended toward her again.
The fourth was a really excellent close-up of the anguish on her face as she spoke to the credit card company on her cell phone.
The fifth…well, more of the same.
The sixth—that was the worst one. It showed her looking to the left in a way that clearly illustrated seeing if the coast was clear.
The seventh showed her putting one of the new shoes on her right foot, her old shoes clearly visible in the box at her feet.
The eighth was a great shot of the conflict in her face as she pushed the box containing her old shoes under the chair she was sitting on.
Nine, ten, and eleven showed her striding toward the exit with a gait that seemed confident and an expression that looked doubtful.
Twelve was opening the door.
Thirteen—this was a prize—was the security guard, with his super-serious Maryland trooper face on, hurrying after her.
And fourteen…was history. Along with fifteen through twenty-five. They were just moment-to-moment documentations of Helene’s apprehension and arrest.
She looked the pictures over, then arranged them into a neat pile—as they’d been presented to her—and handed them back to Gerald Parks. “I’m not sure I understand why these would be of interest to anyone,” she said, but her voice wavered just enough to assure the observant person that yes, she was sure.
She was painfully sure.
“Oh, because they are a sequence of photos showing you—frankly, I almost can’t believe the luck—stealing a pair of shoes from a store and then getting caught and actually arrested for it.” He explained it in a voice so friendly that he might have been a local forest ranger telling elementary school kids about the time he found a harmless black snake in his bathtub.
And took pictures of it.
It was America’s Funniest Embarrassing Private Moments Caught on Film, and Gerald Parks had just won the grand prize.
“It was a misunderstanding,” Helene said coolly.
“Meaning you weren’t shoplifting?” He shook his head. “Not according to my source.”
“And who is your source?” She wanted to stay calm, but it was obvious, just from looking at the pictures, that she was guilty as sin—and no one looking at them would believe the story she’d told Jim.
“Now, Mrs. Zaharis, if I told you that, I might endanger that person. And, more important, the story.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I think newspapers would pay a lot of money for this, I really do.”
“Newspapers aren’t interested in me.”
“Don’t be so modest.” God, how could he sound so nice, so cordial, while delivering such a menacing threat? “You’re married to what many people are saying is a future president of the United States. Your picture has been splashed around the ‘Style’ section of the Post and Washingtonian. You are, to purloin a criminal justice phrase, a person of interest.”
When he finished, Helene looked at him in silence, astonished—and almost even impressed—by his incredible capacity for blasé evil. A person who didn’t speak the language would have deduced from his tone that he was a respectful man expressing great appreciation for Helene’s beauty and accomplishments.
“I see I’ve surprised you,” Gerald said. “I apologize for that. Believe it or not, I gave this some thought in advance, and there’s just no graceful way to sneak up on a subject like this. You have to just bam!—”
Helene flinched, startled.
“—get right to the point.”
Again, his tone was so warm and casual that she couldn’t figure out what he was getting at. Was he going to sell the pictures? Or was it possible that he was just warning her to stay on the straight and narrow because there were unsavory people out there who might not be so kind as he.
Helene had been around the block enough times to seriously doubt it was the latter, so she asked him straight up. “What do you plan to do with these pictures and your contentions of theft, Mr. Zaharis?”
His small dark eyes lit, like a teacher who was proud his student came up with a particularly astute question. “That’s up to you.”
“Up to me.” If it were truly up to her, the man would dry right up and blow away.
He nodded. “I’m a working man, Mrs. Zaharis. I need to make a liv
ing, just like everyone else.” He paused, and a telltale expression of disdain flickered across his eyes. “Well, like most people, anyway.”
It was tempting to tell him that she damn well knew what it was to struggle to make a living, but she wasn’t going to form any sort of camaraderie with him, even a vague one like that.
Besides, it was none of his business.
And he already knew too much about her.
So instead, Helene said, “Most people strive to make their livings honestly.”
“Absolutely,” he agreed. “That’s exactly how I like to live. And you can rest assured that I have no intention whatsoever about lying to anyone about you.” He nodded toward the pile of photos she still held. “Those pictures tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth by themselves. No embellishment from me is necessary.”
Helene shook her head. “What’s the bottom line, Mr. Parks? I don’t have the time, or the interest, to stand around and try to figure out your riddles.”
He pointed a finger gun at her. “You’re a sharp lady, Mrs. Zaharis. I like you. The bottom line is this: You pay me a lump sum of twenty-five thousand dollars right up front.”
She gasped, then glanced around, hoping she hadn’t drawn anyone’s attention. “Twenty-five thousand?” she whispered harshly. “You must be joking.”
“Oh, no. Not at all. See, I gave this a lot of thought. We don’t want large withdrawals from the bank to call attention to you. You could easily explain a twenty-five-thousand-dollar withdrawal as a political or charitable donation, but more than that and your hubby might start asking for receipts and so on.”
He had no idea. “My husband keeps a very close eye on his finances,” she said.
“His finances? That’s quaint. They’re your finances, too. And you and I both know that, where you come from, ten thousand bucks and a stipend of, say, a couple thousand bucks a month is nothing.”
A couple thousand bucks a month? And now, of all times, when Gerald had pulled the reins in on her spending. “Where I come from,” she said in an icy tone, “people wouldn’t think of blackmailing as a legitimate way to get money.”
“I don’t like that term, blackmail.”
“It’s accurate.”
“Yes, it is. But still I prefer to look at this as safeguarding you from your own truth.” He chuckled. “In a way, I’m your own private Secret Service detail. Anyway, I’d like that twenty-five grand in the form of a cashier’s check, no names or addresses. Get it and have it ready. I’ll catch up with you later in the week.”
“Where? When?”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll find you.”
Anger surged in Helene’s breast. She’d worked too long and too hard for this life to let some sniveling little jerk like this take it all away from her, yet she didn’t seem to have a choice. Here he was, proposing that she pay him twenty-five thousand dollars, probably again and again, according to his financial need.
Unless of course he wanted a raise for his hard work.
This could just go on and on, eroding her life in dollar-size fractions, until she finally crumbled.
She wasn’t going to do it.
“I’m not giving you one flat dime. You have no idea what happened that day, or what you took pictures of.” The flash. She remembered it suddenly. Outside, when the alarm was wailing, she thought it had lights, too. But it didn’t have lights; that was just the pop of Gerald Parks’s camera flash.
She should have figured that out a long time ago. She should have prepared for this moment, braced herself. Maybe even spoken with her lawyer in advance.
Except she couldn’t speak with her lawyer without Jim finding out, and she did not want Jim to find out that, on top of everything else, now she was being threatened with blackmail.
Gerald Parks had her at a bigger disadvantage than he could have imagined.
It didn’t matter. He knew enough. Even if she just wanted to keep the press from finding out, he had her.
And he knew it.
“You’ll pay,” he said, with utter confidence. “Have it ready. You’ll be seeing me soon.”
Chapter
6
It was Steve again.
Funny how he always seemed to call Sandra around three-thirty on her four o’clock days. She could almost count on it.
She kept an eye on the clock.
They were talking about his need for social activity again. And again it was raking in the big bucks for Sandra, while costing Steve a lot more than he should have had to pay for a friend.
“Didn’t we talk about joining some sort of support group or something last time?” Sandra asked him, assuming her Professional Therapist Voice.
He wasn’t the only caller who liked that voice. In fact, he probably needed it less than some of the others, but that was a different matter altogether.
“Yes,” Steve said to her. “And I tried. It just didn’t work out.”
“What did you do?”
“For one thing, I looked on Gregslist to find a group or something I could possibly take part in.”
“And?…”
“And the D.C. transsexual support group is full.”
Sandra didn’t know what to say.
“Kidding,” Steve said, allowing for one of the first notes of levity she’d ever heard from him. “I called a cooking club and a gardening club, but apparently you have to bring something to the table, so to speak. You can’t just join them to learn.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yeah, then I called this Parents without Partners number, but it’s not enough to just want kids—you have to be a single parent.”
Sandra waited for him to say he was kidding again, but this time he didn’t and she found herself unexpectedly touched by the idea that this poor lonely man wanted kids.
“So then I came across this advertisement for people who like shoes. I figured, yeah, I like shoes.” He snorted a laugh. “I like them a lot more than going barefoot.”
Sandra was puzzled. “A meeting for people who like shoes?” He must have misunderstood.
“Forget it. It’s really specific. You have to be a woman, for one thing, or at least—get this—a drag queen with narrow-to-regular feet. No wide sizes.”
“What? Steve, seriously, what are you talking about? A group for people who like shoes but you can’t have wide feet or be a drag queen?” And why did everything keep coming back to transsexuality with him? She wasn’t going to ask, but she sure wondered.
“Okay, it’s this.” She heard him clicking on his computer. “Shoe Addicts Anonymous—”
Sandra straightened in her seat.
Was this for real? Because this was exactly the sort of get-out-of-the-apartment dream she often had. Having waited and waited for a nudge from God or Whoever, it would finally come true in a really specific form. And now that she was feeling more capable of getting out…
“—it meets in Bethesda every Tuesday night—”
See now, this was getting weirder and weirder. Sandra was free Tuesday nights.
Of course, she was free every night. Strike that from the “weird” column.
“And they trade shoes, I guess. It says something about trading Maglis—”
He pronounced it mag-lies instead of mollies, but she knew what he meant. There was a pair lying on the floor in front of the sofa right now.
“Oh! And you have to be a size seven and a half. Women’s seven and a half. No eights. No fives. If you’re a man with a size seven shoe, forget about it.” He made a noise of disgust. “Talk about getting slapped in the face by an exclusionist group right when you’re trying to get out and feel like you belong. Jerks.”
Sandra, meanwhile, felt like she might be hearing about the first club in the history of the world that she could ever have been totally included in. So much so that it was suspicious.
Had he somehow found out where she lived, had come into her apartment, gone through her closet and ascertained her
preferred shoe brand and her size?
“And you saw this on Gregslist,” she said doubtfully, wondering if she should be getting her cell phone to call the police and have them trace Steve’s call, or if she should turn on her computer and find this group before it disappeared into the world of fairy tales.
“Yeah,” Steve said, so guilelessly that she couldn’t believe her paranoia could be justified.
There was no way Steve could have found her. The company made really sure that calls were routed through several transfer hubs before ending up with the operators.
“So that wasn’t the group for you,” she said, still on guard but feeling quite a bit better than she had a couple of minutes earlier.
“Yeah. That’s what you get for going on a free online bulletin board to find validation. Maybe what I need is a real psychologist.”
Psychologist! Shit! She looked at the time.
Five minutes to four.
“You might consider that, Steve,” she said, using a wrapping it up voice she rarely needed when she was being paid by the minute. “At least it would get you out and get you used to socializing with someone face-to-face. It might be a great first step for you.”
“You really think so?”
She nodded, even though he couldn’t see her. “Yes, I do.”
“Well, what about medications? Psychologists can’t prescribe, and maybe I need medicine—”
“A psychologist should be able to tell you whether you need to see a psychiatrist for psychotropic drugs.”
“What?”
“Antidepressants.”
“Oh.” He paused again. It probably cost him a buck. “You really think so?”
“I really do. In fact—” She looked at the clock and saw she had two minutes until her four o’clock appointment. “—I think you should call someone right now. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with you, Steve,” she hastened to add. “But I think there is help out there for someone sensitive like you who has a hard time getting out into this crazy world. Do it now before you lose your fire.” Fire may have been overstating it a bit, but in Sandra’s experience, men preferred overstatement.
“You may be right,” he said, sounding hopeful for the first time she could remember. “I think I’ll make some calls.”
Shoe Addicts Anonymous Page 7