Exit Strategy

by Charlton Pettus

  “Let me go now and we can try to work something out, Jordan. Security is going to be here any second. The building is constantly monitored.”

  “I doubt that,” Jordan said. “I don’t think you want anyone else to know what goes on here and the people you work for have no reason to threaten you. They need you.”

  He typed Terry Allison’s password—“a-r-s-e”—tik-a-da-tik.

  The screen revealed a root directory, Unix. Figured. There was a separate Windows partition. Jordan navigated to it and booted into Windows. Seven, never upgraded. So much for security.

  “Bravo,” Sam said. “Terry always was a little lax. But what’s it going to do for you? You need to stop and think, Jordan. You are killing your children.”

  Jordan whipped around and tore a length of duct tape off the roll and wrapped it over Sam’s mouth.

  He scanned the directory system and opened, then copied, several files. Then he opened Chrome and logged on to Gmail. He sent an email, attaching the files he’d copied.

  “Now we wait,” he said. He leaned back against the wall, too uncomfortable to sit. Sam stared at the screen. A few minutes later there was a ding and a new email in Jordan’s in-box. There was no subject. Jordan opened it and smiled.

  It said, Ça va, Yanqui?

  Jordan hit Reply and typed, Ça va, con, and hit Send.

  He ripped the tape off Sam’s mouth and swiveled the chair so Sam was facing him.

  “So here’s where we are. My friend has received a series of Excel files. He has confirmed that they contain information on the identities and whereabouts of many, if not all, of your current clients. You will not be able to find him. The account I sent them to is already gone.”

  Sam said nothing but continued to watch Jordan with a wry smile.

  “While I assume these are probably not very nice people,” Jordan went on, “I have no interest in outing anyone. I just need some insurance. I need to know I’ll be left alone. Do we understand one another?”

  Sam nodded. “Very well, I think.”

  “I think it would be best,” he went on, “if Jordan Parrish stayed buried. I’m sure you of all people can provide me with documentation for some other identity.”

  “Of course,” Sam said. “Your wife has gone missing, by the way,” he added, watching Jordan’s face.

  Jordan tried to keep his face still. He didn’t want to give any more away but his heart was bursting. Stephanie had disappeared. She’d gotten the message in the bottle and understood. She was coming.

  “Ah, you knew. I see. You are full of surprises this evening.”

  “I have a question for you,” Jordan said. “How long ago did my partner approach you about getting rid of me?”

  “Quite some time,” Sam said. “For what it’s worth I tried to dissuade him but he could be...convincing.”

  “Could?”

  “Our mutual friend has become somewhat of a liability.”

  Jordan took this piece of information as if it were a foreign object inexplicably turned up in an old suit jacket pocket. He held it up in his mind and turned it this way and that, trying to figure out where it fit into his evolving worldview.

  “I’m afraid he was drawing a great deal of unwanted attention,” Sam said. “It’s unfortunate.”

  Jordan nodded as if this were explanation enough.

  “I’ll need money,” he said finally. “I thought we might augment what’s left of mine with funds from some of your more—what’s the word?—let’s say ethically challenged clients.”

  Sam tentatively flexed his left arm and winced as he nodded. “Oh, and I could use some clothes.”

  81

  HARRODS

  Natalie M’Bute paused by the smoked salmon. There was a lifelike sculpture of two peacocks facing each other over a plain peahen. She assumed they were fighting over her. Wasn’t that the way of the world? She smiled to herself. Cradling her green Harrods bag, she elbowed her way past a couple of tentative Englishwomen and commanded the attention of the young man behind the counter. He was in his early twenties and very attractive, she thought, in an earnest, son of a cabbie sort of way. The food halls at Harrods were the one bit of menial shopping she truly enjoyed doing herself. She usually sent Celeste out to do the rest of the errands but every Friday she would have Mahdi drive her to Harrods and circle the block while she stocked up on delicacies.

  She had a weakness for seafood: Kumamoto oysters, Scottish salmon and, of course, Russian caviar. All chased down with bottles of Krug. Of course, it wasn’t just for her. She had to take good care of the general, or Abdi as she was now supposed to call him. An absurd thing. His name, Obah, meant king in Yoruba and Abdi was a word for a servant. Natalie snorted in derision. Her husband, a servant. That would be the day.

  The boy came back with the salmon wrapped in thick brown paper. “Anything else today, ma’am?”

  “No, thank you,” Natalie replied with an imperious nod. “Good day.”

  She found an open seat at the oyster bar and ordered a dozen of her treasured Kumamotos and a Buck’s fizz while she rested her feet. Two fizzes later, feeling sated and a little sleepy, she texted Mahdi and asked for her bill. She paid with her Barclays card.

  The girl came back a couple of minutes later, somehow managing to look apologetic and impertinent at the same time.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Samuels, your card has been declined. Would you like to try another?”

  When the second card was declined, people said Natalie’s outraged screams could be clearly heard three floors away in Men’s Shoes.

  * * *

  One loose end, Herron thought. The widow closes a checking account with $137,684.19 in it. That same day—surprise, surprise—a new account is opened at a Citizens branch in Somerville with a cashier’s check in exactly that amount. The account holder is one Jessica Levine. Mrs. Levine and two children flew to Chicago that night. Credit card records place her at the O’Hare Comfort Inn. Follow the money to the widow. Follow the widow to Prenn.

  * * *

  Alex had killed his own father and stepmother. Jesus. And every policeman in Boston was looking for him. He would never find her now. Stephanie tried to inventory her feelings on the subject but they darted away like minnows. She’d tackle that one later. She had more pressing questions. Three days to Easter. Where the hell was she supposed to be going?

  Slow down. Start at the beginning. Wikipedia. She read it out loud.

  “‘Phosphorus is the chemical element that has the atomic number 15 and the symbol P.’”

  P. It was too obvious. That’s why she hadn’t seen it before. Occam’s razor, Jordan’s favorite old chestnut from Philosophy 101: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.” In other words, the simplest solution is almost invariably the right one.

  It was just P. The single letter P. Jordan couldn’t have made it any plainer.

  She wouldn’t need to search through the vowels; she already knew. There was a picture in her purse.

  82

  PAIA

  Mary Star of the Sea was just off the Hana road in Paia on Luna Lane. It was the only church in town. Paia, on the north coast of Maui, was spared almost all of the tourist overrun that was the blight of the southern coast. Most of the residents were unreformed hippies or hard-core surfers. It was a tradition to hit the 4:00 a.m. Easter vigil before heading out to Jaws, the massive break on the east coast of the island for a dawn ride. Father Ray lit the small pile of wood chips in the bowl as he recited the opening prayer. Then he lit the new Paschal candle, a four-foot cylinder of pure white. At first the flame wouldn’t take, but as the wax around the wick melted it sputtered and caught.

  “The light of Christ,” he said.

  “Thanks be to God,” the congregation responded.

>   Father Ray lifted the candle and walked toward the chancel. The congregation followed. Twice more he stopped and proclaimed, “The light of Christ,” and twice more they responded.

  He stopped in front of the altar and turned. The members of the congregation came up one at a time and lit their candles from the Paschal candle. The congregants had small white tapers pushed through Dixie cups to catch the wax. Stephanie guided Haden’s and Sophie’s hands as they lit theirs. She was worried about Haden igniting his candle. She knew Sophie didn’t need her help but didn’t want Haden to feel slighted.

  They filed back to their pews and sat for the reading. Stephanie looked around her. The candlelight made a warm dappled pool. The faces of the young surfers seemed so earnest and guileless. Half of them looked just like the traditional depictions of Christ with long brown hair and trimmed beards. Several were already in their wet suits, though Stephanie had opted for a simple flowered dress and the children were dressed in the best she’d been able to piece together.

  Father Ray read from the Book of John. He told the Easter story of how Mary went to the place where Jesus was buried and found the stone had been rolled aside. As she is weeping Jesus comes to her and she mistakes him for the gardener.

  “‘Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.’”

  Then a girl with ironed blond hair sang and played acoustic guitar. The congregants sang along with the Alleluias, perhaps the only word in the liturgy that seemed equally plausible in both Latin and Hawaiian.

  At the end of the service Father Ray led the congregation outside and they headed for home or for the beach in groups of twos or threes, their candles flickering in the distance like little constellations fanning out from the church. Stephanie and the children walked down the Hana road. Behind them Anthony’s Coffee was shuttered tight but the light was already on at the Fish Market.

  They turned left down Lolo Lane, a dirt road lined with ramshackle houses, many with chickens already scratching in the predawn gloom. Forty-three Lolo Lane was on the left just before the road petered out into a little path that ran between a couple of houses and down to the beach. It looked small and unprepossessing from the road but when you walked inside it revealed itself, a sprawling six-bedroom with magnificent Pacific views from every room.

  The house had been built in the ’60s by Brian Nelson, a contractor who had made a killing putting up hotels along Maalaea Bay. When the boom had subsided, Nelson had moved back to California. His youngest son, Sandy, eventually grew up and went to Harvard, where he lived for two years in Jordan’s co-op in Central Square. Sandy had magnanimously offered use of the family home on Paia to all of his housemates. Jordan had taken him up on the offer only once, years later. He and Stephanie and their two young children had spent an idyllic week lazing by the pool, watching sea turtles surf in the break and playing Monopoly way past the children’s bedtime at the flaking white wicker table in the den.

  Stephanie nursed her coffee and watched the sky shift from gray to pink to blue. Haden and Sophie had fallen asleep, curled up together on the sofa. She watched the light blanket rise and fall with their breathing. What would happen to them? Doubt began to seep through the cracks and gaps like smoke from a basement fire. Did she really believe that Jordan was alive? Not only alive but coming here to meet them? It sounded crazy. And based on what? Translating his junk DNA with some silly code they’d shared when they were practically children. If ever a fantasy reeked of desperate wish fulfillment and self-delusion this was it. Wasn’t it far more reasonable to believe that she had, driven by her own grief and loss, found his message the same way dime-store clairvoyants find messages in tea leaves or inscribed by the pointer on a Ouija board? She’d been so certain, but now, an ocean away from home, it seemed absurd. She finished the last dregs of the now-cool coffee and set the cup down. She’d know soon enough. And perhaps, when he didn’t come, she’d finally be able to let him go.

  83

  HERRON

  The Levines had checked out but the trail was still warm. Mrs. Levine had used her MasterCard to book three one-way tickets to Hawaii. They’d flown from O’Hare to Denver, then Denver to Seattle and finally Seattle to Kahului/Maui.

  Herron wasn’t prepared for the air. It had a soft warmth to it with none of the crisp brine or the wet-blanket weight of its Atlantic counterpart. He took off his light suit jacket, feeling suddenly self-conscious, rumpled and pasty. His breath smelled rank, fermented airline coffee and scrambled eggs with some sort of dense biscuit that now sat like a deadweight in his churning stomach. When he had been a child his father had joked that he wanted his gravestone to read “Dan Herron. Never went to Hawaii, never wore blue jeans.” It hadn’t in the end. Just the name and dates. Beloved husband and father. That was a good one.

  At the Enterprise counter he was greeted by a guy and a girl, both young and attractive, dark skin, brilliant white teeth. In fact, all the locals seemed absurdly good-looking. Relaxed, smiling, fit. Weren’t they supposed to be bloated on Spam or something? It seemed like either brilliant or lousy marketing, Herron couldn’t decide which. Who wanted to go on vacation and feel like the ugly American? On the other hand, the departure lounge was full of vacationers headed home and they all seemed pretty tan and mellow. Maybe that was the pitch: if you stayed in paradise long enough you turned beautiful and happy, too.

  He opted for the Jeep Grand Cherokee. Put it on his personal card. You never knew when you might have to off-road it. Leilani traced the route to the South Island on the map. All Herron had to do, she explained, was follow the Mokulele Highway, which cut straight across the neck of the island like a necklace, or a garrote, he thought.

  * * *

  Haden woke up hungry. No surprise there. Stephanie cut up a fresh pineapple and sliced some mango. She had another cup of coffee as the kids devoured the fruit by the pool. Watching them play, Stephanie was struck by how much better they both seemed. Coming here had been good for them. The tension had broken. Something about the change of venue, or maybe it was just that their frozen mother had finally begun to move again. The direction didn’t matter; the sense of purpose was everything. They would be all right. There was light.

  Sophie taught Haden how to dive. First they sat side by side at the edge of the deep end. Then she showed him how to hold his arms over his head, hands overlapping and pointed, arms pressed over his ears. Then, on her clear, decisive three count, he leaned forward and plopped into the water. He came up, sputtering, “Mom, Mom! Did you see?”

  “I did. That was amazing,” she said.

  “Look. Look,” he cried as they did it again. By the time the sun cleared the row of palms and struck the patio directly, Haden was standing on the edge of the diving board, knobby knees shaking as he tipped off into a perfect cupped belly flop. Sophie laughed hysterically but he was beaming when he surfaced.

  “You gotta go in straight,” Sophie said. “Pretend you’re holding a thousand-dollar bill between your ankles.” She bounced lightly off the board and entered the water with the merest ripple. Two hours later Haden was diving nearly as well as his sister and both children’s lips had started to turn blue.

  “Everyone out of the pool. Let’s get dry, get warm and go grab lunch,” Stephanie said, tossing the three-year-old Thanksgiving Saveur aside and grabbing towels.

  Lunch was mahi-mahi burgers at the Fish Market and gelato at Ono’s after. It was the same every day. She was low on cash so Stephanie paid with her new debit card at Ono’s.

  * * *

  Half an hour after she swiped her card, an email flagged Urgent hit Herron’s phone. Ono’s Gelato, Paia. Sent from a numbered dot-gov a
ccount. He was burning through a lot of favors, Herron thought.

  84

  SUNSET

  After lunch the kids wanted to go to the beach but Stephanie told them she was tired and wanted to stay close to the house. Not that she expected anyone to show up. She was certain now. It had all been a fantasy, a fantasy fueled by grief and denial. She was beyond all of that now. Call it due diligence. She was just seeing the thing through.

  Haden caught a lizard and Sophie helped him make a terrarium in a shoebox. The box would periodically shake and jump as the kids pored over a thousand-piece puzzle of a van Gogh self-portrait. Stephanie left them and went outside to sit and watch the waves.

  As the sun finally rejoined the sea, balancing on edge for an impossible moment before breaking the surface tension and beginning to sink slowly beneath the long swells, she poured herself a glass of white wine and walked down the cement stairs to the beach. There was no sand here, just uneven rock studded with black volcanic boulders and slick tidal pools. The land had begun to shed its heat and the flow changed to a light offshore breeze that blew wisps of Stephanie’s hair into her face.

  She sighed deeply as she watched the great orange ball dissolve into a stain across the water. Tomorrow she’d have to figure out what their next step would be, but it would wait. She’d think about that tomorrow. She smiled, picturing Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, resolute before the painted backdrop of Tara.

  She was about to head back up to the house when she saw the tiny figure just rounding the point, picking his way carefully over the rocks. Some trick of foreshortening made it seem that he could walk indefinitely without ever getting any closer. She couldn’t make out any features but he seemed to favor his right side; there was a slight hitch in his walk. Finally, she could discern light-colored trousers and a darker shirt, facial hair, maybe. Then, as he followed the swing of the shoreline, he disappeared from sight for several minutes. Waves lapped at the shore with a light slap and a yawning retreat. Time was suspended.