Harlan Coben

by Play Dead

  Laura opened the door and stepped out into cold night air. She had no way of knowing that she would never see them together again.

  THE wind swirled its blades of cold through the Boston night. T.C. wrapped his arms around himself in a futile attempt to keep warm. This was not an evening to be outside. This was an evening to curl up in bed, throw an extra comforter or two over you, and just watch something mindless on TV.

  He blew air into his fists and then dug his hands into his pockets. Like a true idiot, he had left his gloves at home. His hands and feet were beginning to feel numb. And damn, he needed a cigar, but those too were sitting at home with his gloves, all warm and cozy.

  Damn. Damn it all to hell.

  T.C. continued to stroll along the Charles River. He quickened his pace now, the cold really starting to get to him. A minute later, he found what he was looking for: Mark.

  T.C. shook his head. The wind-chill factor had already dropped the temperature well into the minus range, and Mark still chose to stand alone along the river’s frozen edge. There were no other people in the park. The young couples who normally strolled here had opted for cozy indoor fireplaces—even the homeless had decided that the shelters were less of a risk than this arctic cold.

  “Mark?” T.C. cried out, the wind grabbing his words and spreading them aimlessly.

  Mark slowly turned toward T.C. He waved to acknowledge that he had heard him and then turned back around toward the water.

  “What the hell are you doing down here?” T.C. shouted.

  Raising his hand and cupping his ear, Mark signaled that he could not understand what T.C. was saying. T.C. jogged down alongside his friend. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Just taking a walk.”

  “Kind of a cold night for it.”

  Mark shrugged but said nothing.

  T.C. hesitated. “Look, Mark, I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt Laura.”

  Mark nodded slowly. “I know.”

  “I guess I have a tendency to go too far,” T.C. continued. “I lose perspective, become tunnel-visioned. I was just trying to protect her.”

  “Forget it.”

  A blast of freezing cold air sliced through T.C.’s skin until it reached the bone. He had never been the sympathetic-ear type, but the tortured look on Mark’s face was nearly unbearable to watch. “You wanna talk about it?”

  “About what?”

  “About whatever’s bothering you.”

  “You a psychiatrist now?” Mark asked.

  “No,” T.C. replied. “I’m just a guy who’s trying to help you out.”

  “You’ve done too much already,” Mark said. “I can never repay you.”

  “I don’t want to be repaid. Look, I’m your friend, right? Friends are supposed to help each other out. Would you have done the same for me?”

  “No chance.”

  T.C. laughed. “You’re still an asshole. I remember—”

  “Careful,” Mark interrupted. “The past is over. You’re the one who told me that.”

  “Yeah, I know. Sorry. You want to be alone?”

  Mark did not respond right away. T.C. watched him. Yeah, he decided, he wants to be alone. He glanced at his watch. Have to go anyway. I have to be—

  “What am I doing?” Mark asked out loud. “I mean, am I doing the right thing?”

  “Hell of a time to ask,” T.C. said.

  “Would you have done the same?”

  “Nope. But it’s easy for me to say that. I wasn’t in your shoes.”

  “Why didn’t you stop me?”

  “Truth? I couldn’t think of a better solution at the time.”

  “And now?”

  T.C. shrugged. “Like you, I wonder what if. Maybe it didn’t have to go this far. Maybe we panicked.”

  “What else could I have done?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know if I would have the courage to do what you did.”

  “Courage?” Mark repeated. “What a load of bullshit. What I did didn’t take any courage.”

  “You’re wrong, my friend. You gave up the only thing you cared about. That takes courage.”

  Mark waved him off. “I had no choice. You know that. But what do I do now?”

  “Go on. Survive. It could be worse. You could be dead.”

  Mark smiled sadly. “Like David Baskin?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Once you’re dead, the pain is over. Isn’t that what they say?”

  “Some.”

  “Then he’s pretty well off, isn’t he?”

  “Maybe he is,” T.C. said. “Who knows?”

  “Oh, cut the crap. You can be as bad as your friends at the FBI.”

  “Meaning?”

  “All of this Mark shit when we’re alone. It’s not necessary.”

  “Don’t you remember what I told you in June?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I remember,” Mark began. “You said that if we went through with this whacko idea, we would have to do it right. That means that we have to make David Baskin dead, really dead, even in our minds.”

  “And even in private,” T.C. added. “David Baskin is dead.”

  “But he’s not dead,” Mark said. “We’ve given him a new name, changed his face, his voice, his eye color. But we haven’t killed him. He still lives. He still wants to play basketball. He’s still your best friend. And most of all, he still … ”

  “Loves Laura?” T.C. finished.

  Mark nodded. “So let me hang on to David when we’re alone. You’ll be the only one who knows he’s still alive. I don’t want him to die, T.C. I don’t want to be just Mark Seidman. Mark Seidman is some fictional character I still don’t understand. He barely even knows Laura.”

  T.C. shook his head. “You have to accept him. You have to let go of your past.”

  “I’m not Mark Seidman, T.C. There is no such person. You can perform all the cosmetic surgery you want, but you can’t change me into a man who does not love Laura.”

  “As a brother?”

  Mark chuckled sadly. “Touché.”

  “David Baskin was a hell of a guy,” T.C. continued. “He loved Laura like no man has ever loved a woman. But David Baskin also learned the unpleasant truth. And accepted it.”

  “We could have made it work. It would have been difficult but we loved each other.”

  “You want to give it a try?” T.C. asked. “You want to tell her the truth now?”

  Mark thought for a moment and then shook his head. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “So what now?”

  T.C. shrugged. “Let’s get out of here. I’m freezing.” “You go ahead. I’ll be home in a little while.”

  “You sure?”

  He nodded.

  Without another word, T.C. turned and left.

  Mark did not take his eyes off the fog floating above the river like a bad special effect from an old horror movie. Thoughts of what might have been, of what should have been scurried across his mind. The present and the past merged into one obscure reality. Only one thought remained clear and in focus: Laura.

  SERITA dropped Laura off in front of her apartment building. “Do you want me to come in?”

  “Thanks anyway. Why don’t you head home and get some sleep?”

  “Are you sure?”

  Laura nodded. “I need time to just sit and sift through this.”

  “You’ll call me if you need anything? Even if you just want to shoot the shit at four in the morning?”

  “You’ll be the first to know. You’re a good friend, Serita.”

  Serita gunned the engine. “The best.”

  Laura moved past the security guard. The elevator was already on the ground level. She stepped in, pushed the button, and watched the door close. A minute later, she was on the eighteenth floor. Her key unlocked the door. She pushed it open and entered her apartment. The room was dark, except for the lamp in the corner. The lamp shone on a sight that made Laura inhale sharply.r />
  “Laura?”

  Laura ran across the room. Gloria’s lips were thin, her eyes hollow and wide. “What’s the matter? What happened?”

  “Oh, God, oh, please… .”

  Laura wrapped her arms around her sister in much the same way she had when Gloria’s sleep had been plagued by those terrible nightmares during their childhood. For a moment she understood what her mother had meant when she discussed the bond between sisters. They might fight or disagree or be from completely different worlds, but they were eternally linked in a way that they could never hope to understand.

  “What’s wrong?” Laura asked gently. “Did Stan do something?”

  Gloria looked up. Her bleak eyes were swollen and red. “He’s dead.”

  Laura thought she had misunderstood. “Dead?”

  Her sister nodded. “He was shot in South Boston tonight. I just got back from the police station. They say they’re going to investigate, but nobody cares, Laura. They think Stan was just a punk and a gambler who played games with the wrong people and got a bullet in the chest for his troubles. They’re not even interested in finding out who murdered him.”

  Laura said nothing. There was indeed a curse on the Baskin men. Three of them were dead now, all tragically killed in their youth. But what about the curse on the women they left behind? What about the broken hearts and shattered dreams they left scattered about?

  “He stopped gambling, Laura. I know you don’t believe me. I know he did some terrible things to a lot of people … including you. But he had stopped. He was getting better. A few days ago, one of his old bookies called because he had not placed a bet in such a long time.”

  Holding her sister, Laura started to cry.

  Gloria snuggled closer. “You never got to know him, Laura. I barely got to know him. He was the most unhappy person I have ever met. But Stan was changing. You could see it, feel it. And I’m not just talking like some blindly optimistic girlfriend. Stan was finally getting his chance, his one last shot to lead a normal, happy life. Someone took that away from him.” She fought back more tears. “And someone took that away from me.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Gloria closed her eyes as though she were summoning up some hidden strength. “His death has something to do with what’s going on lately, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I but I’ve had a little while to think this through and here’s what I know: Aunt Judy wanted to speak to you about the drowning. Before she died, she handed you a thirty-year-old picture of Sinclair Baskin. Only one person witnessed Sinclair’s murder and could identify the killer. Stan. Now he, too, has been murdered. It’s all tied together, Laura, isn’t it? All the deaths are connected—Sinclair, Judy, Stan … and even David.”

  Laura lowered her head. “I think so.”

  Gloria’s eyes did not waver. “Then we have to find out what happened to them.”

  The doorman’s intercom buzzed. Laura moved over to the squawk box and pressed the TALK button.

  “Yes?”

  “There is a woman named Estelle here to see you,” the doorman said. “She says she has an important package for you. This may sound weird but she said to tell you it has something to do with nineteen sixty.”

  Laura turned back to her sister.

  “Does Estelle’s package have anything to do with this?” Gloria asked.

  “Probably.”

  “A clue?”

  Laura nodded. “She may have found something that solves this whole puzzle.”

  “Then I want to see it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Laura pressed the TALK button again. “Send her up.”

  When Laura turned back, Gloria stood on shaky legs and said, “Tell me what’s going on, Laura. Please.”

  Laura moved across the room, her fingers rubbing against her palms. “Sit down,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  30

  THE bitter cold slit through the night like a sharpened razor, but Mark did not really notice. He stood in the present yet his mind was somewhere in the past, untouched by the icy surroundings and frosty blasts. He flashed back to June 17, to their honeymoon in Australia. He smiled sadly. How perfect life had been on that day.

  And how quickly it had changed.

  He could still hear the phone ringing in their suite, could still remember picking it up, could still remember the panic in Mary’s voice.

  “I have to see you, David. I have to speak to you right away.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in Cairns. The Pacific International Hotel. Room 607. Come right away.”

  More confused than frightened, he agreed to go. He left a fun note for Laura with the receptionist, walked down the dirt path to the main road, hailed a cab (the only car on the road), and headed into the city of Cairns.

  He stood by the Charles River now, half a globe and a full lifetime away from the warmth and joy of his honey-moon bliss. Had he known back then what was about to happen to him? Had Mary given him any clue? No, not really. There was just a slight trembling in his heart, a faint stab of fear in his chest. But David had no way of knowing that the taxi was taking him from Heaven to Hades, that he was heading into an emotional ambush without a single weapon of defense. The familiar pain rushed through him as he remembered hearing the awful truth.

  “I don’t care if it’s a sin. I love your daughter.”

  “You can’t mean that. Laura is not just my daughter, David. She’s your sister. Think about her for a moment. She’s always wanted to have children, a family. You can’t give her those things.”

  Because of his father. Damn him, that callous son of a bitch. David had been an infant when Sinclair Baskin killed himself. He did not remember his father at all, not even a blurry image of what he might have been like. He had spent much of his childhood wondering what sort of man his father had been, what had driven him to kill himself, what kind of a man could pull a trigger and leave his wife and two small children to fend for themselves. Now maybe he knew.

  Sinclair Baskin. His father. He had been dead for as long as Mark could remember and yet he had managed to reach from beyond the grave and crush everything that mattered to his younger son. His father had created Laura, and he had taken her away from him. Life’s cruel ironies.

  “Then I’ll tell her the truth.”

  “No! Please, David, I beg you. If you say something, Laura will lose a father she loves dearly and never forgive me for what I’ve done. In the end, she may be left with none of us. You have to think of what’s best for her.”

  “Then what am I supposed to do?”

  “Break it off. End it. If you love her, let her go. She will be hurt at first. Devastated even. But you’ll be surprised how resilient the heart is.”

  But even then, David had known that he could not just hurt her and walk away. He would never be able to tell Laura that he no longer loved her, that his love for her had died. His heart wanted so much to ignore the frightening reality of his situation, to deafen his ears to everything he had heard. But he also knew that Mary’s words were true. What choice did he have? All their dreams of a family and life together had been trampled to death by the heavy boot of past sins. They could no longer stay together. Telling Laura the truth would not change that fact. It would only hurt her father and tear her away from her family. He would have to leave her. He would have to turn his back on the only thing in life that truly meant anything to him.

  But how could he do it? How could he tell Laura that his love for her had withered away and died? How could he say that the love they shared had been a lie after Laura had risked everything and given him all that she had?

  Better, he decided then, to have love ripped away from you than to think it had never been more than a deception. Better to have lost love in a tragedy than to be told it had never really been.

  A plan began to form in his mind.

&n
bsp; Completely numb, David walked out of room 607, took an elevator to the lobby, and called T.C.

  “She’ll call you first.”

  “What about her father?” T.C asked. “Or her sister?”

  “She won’t want to worry them yet. She’ll figure you’ll know what to do.”

  “Okay. Now call your bank as soon as we hang up. Then stay hidden till I get there. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  David Baskin died that day. And Mark Seidman was born.

  Back in the present, Mark turned away from the Charles River and headed up the embankment. His face was red from the cold, his breath coming in frigid gusts.

  It was time to go home.

  ESTELLE stepped through the door. She had moved the contents of the safety-deposit box into a large manila envelope during the flight home and now she handed them to Laura.

  “The key opened your aunt’s safety-deposit box at the First National Bank in Hamilton,” she told Laura.

  “Thanks, Estelle.”

  “No problem, boss. You need me for anything else?”

  Laura shook her head. “I’ll see you on Monday. Thanks again.”

  “Bye.”

  Laura closed the door and moved back toward the couch.

  “So what are we looking for?” Gloria asked.

  “I don’t know exactly,” Laura admitted. “I guess it will have something to do with Sinclair Baskin. It may be nothing but more old photographs.”

  “Let’s get to it.”

  “Are you sure you’re up to it?”

  “Positive.”

  Laura took hold of the letter opener and slit the envelope at the belly. The contents fell to the cushions of the couch. She put down the opener and started to shuffle through the items.

  “What are all these things?” Gloria asked.

  “Savings bonds. Mom has some, too. Grandma left them to her.”

  “Laura, you don’t really think that Mom could have killed anybody, do you?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not. But then again, I never thought she would have an affair and deceive all of us.”

  “It’s all so crazy. What is going on? Why is everybody being killed?”