“Is there anything else, then, Ms. Kitchener?” Mr. Percival had returned to his desk and was writing on the memo pad.
Was there anything else? She found herself remembering the portrait of the weak-chinned man at the institute. It had been leaning against the wall on her last visit, and Dr. Crossman and his nurse had been packing things in boxes. The hole in the ground shouldn’t have come as such a big surprise.
“If not …” Mr. Percival looked up from the memo pad.
“One more thing,” Nina said. “What’s the name of the foundation?”
“What foundation?”
“The foundation that sold the institute.”
“It wasn’t a sale, technically. It was a straight exchange of land for shares, as I mentioned.”
“Shares in Standard Foods.”
“Correct.”
“And who got the shares?” He paused. “Come on, Mr. Percival. It must be a matter of public record. I could look it up in the Wall Street Journal.”
Mr. Percival licked his lips. “The Standish Foundation,” he said. “But I don’t see how it matters.”
“Who are they?”
He shrugged his round shoulders. “A nonprofit organization involved in scientific research.”
“And they might know where Dr. Crossman is?”
“Perhaps.” He stood up. “Don’t worry. You’ll know as soon as I do. Now, if there’s nothing else at this time …”
He led Nina to the door. “Be patient,” he said, shaking her hand. His was soft and warm, reassuring as his voice, his view of Central Park, his picture of John Wayne.
Mr. Percival’s assistant was waiting in the reception room. She showed Nina the anonymity form. Nina sat down to read it. She had signed her name to everything Mr. Percival had said she had. There was her signature at the bottom. In blue ink. That was because the pen they had handed her at the institute had been blue. Not they: he. She remembered the two pens clipped to Percival’s inside jacket pocket—a fat gold one and a cheap blue ballpoint. Nina herself always used black ink.
“Could you ask Mr. Percival if I could have a Xerox of this?” Nina asked.
“Certainly,” said his assistant, starting down the hall.
As soon as she was out of sight, Nina rose and stepped into the elevator. She tucked the anonymity form under her shirt. She didn’t want to lose it. Her signature on the suicide note was written in blue ink too.
31
Detective Delgado, sitting alone in a coffee-shop booth off Foley Square, looked terrible. The skin of her face sagged loosely on the bone structure. Her eyes, gazing into a steamy cup of black coffee, were red and puffy; has she been crying? thought Nina, sliding onto the opposite seat. Delgado glanced across the table at Nina, then stared down again into her cup. She didn’t acknowledge Nina in any way.
“What’s wrong?” Nina asked.
Delgado snorted. “Nothing. Things are peachy. Just peachy.”
Nina sat silent, waiting for the right moment to begin. When it didn’t come, she began anyway, unfolding two sheets of paper, the anonymity form and her suicide note, and laying them in front of Delgado. “I want you to look at the signatures.”
Delgado’s gaze shifted, slowly and without interest, to the papers. “I’m looking.”
“What do you see?”
Delgado glanced up sharply. “I’m not in the mood for games. What is it you want?”
I want my baby back and it’s your job to help me. This, her first response, Nina kept inside. She said: “They were both written with a blue ballpoint. The same shade of blue.”
“So?”
“I signed this form at the Human Fertility Institute, but not with my own pen. I distinctly remember being handed a pen. But it couldn’t have been mine anyway—I always use black pens.”
“Why is that?”
Why did she use black pens? That was not the question Nina had expected. She recalled the reason only hazily—it had something to do with a girlhood rebellion against an art teacher. “It’s just a habit,” Nina said. “The point is I don’t use blue pens. I’m sure there isn’t even a single one in my apartment.” Nina paused to let this sink in.
“So?” Delgado said.
“So? So it means I couldn’t have signed this supposed suicide note at the apartment. But unless it’s a perfect forgery, this is my signature. I’ll accept that. Therefore I must have signed it in some other place, and at some other time—before, in other words. Like maybe before the suicide note was even typed on the page. When I was at the Human Fertility Institute, for example.”
Saying it aloud awoke something in Nina, something hopeful, but nothing lit up in Delgado’s eyes. “What the hell are you driving at?” She didn’t get it. Did she even want to get it?
“Christ. I’m saying this proves I didn’t try to kill myself. Somebody—”
Delgado reached across the table and grabbed Nina’s jacket. “Don’t curse at me, you neurotic bitch. I’ve got enough fucking trouble without you.”
They stared at each other. Adrenaline coursed through Nina’s limbs. She had a wild vision of throwing the coffee cup at Delgado’s face, but it was followed closely by an overhead image of two women playing the roles of hot-headed little men. “Let go,” she said.
Delgado let go. She stared at Nina a moment more, then sighed. “Shit.”
“A crime was committed against me,” Nina said quietly. “Even if I did try to kill myself, which I did not. Kidnapping is a crime. And these notes prove that there’s much more to it than some random act of madness. They’re evidence.”
Delgado took a deep breath. “Evidence of what?”
“Of forethought. Of planning. Of a horrible, horrible … plan.”
Delgado’s hand inched toward the papers. “Just because they’re written in blue ink?”
“Yeah. And not just that, but the same shade of blue.”
“The same shade of blue?”
“Yes. Don’t you see where this is leading?”
“No. I do not. Are you really telling me there isn’t a blue pen at your apartment?”
“I am.”
“Not in the back of some drawer, maybe? Or behind a pillow on the couch?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Not to your knowledge. Did you look? Before you came to me with this theory?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Nina didn’t reply.
“Why not?”
“You’re going to make me say it.”
“Say what?”
“I’m afraid to go in there alone,” Nina said. “Wouldn’t you be?”
“That’s a tough one.” Detective Delgado patted a bulge under her left armpit. “I’ve got this.”
You’d be afraid, Nina thought. She said: “Then bring it.”
“You want me to go to your apartment?”
“To get this blue pen question resolved in your mind.”
“Now?”
“Why not?”
“Why not, she says. Shit.” But Delgado got up, slowly and heavily, and walked outside. A cruiser sat by the curb with a uniformed man at the wheel. Delgado and Nina got in the back. They were pulling out when a man in a Mets jacket ran up and tapped on the window.
“Yeah?” said Delgado, rolling it down.
“Captain wants to see you after the shift change.”
The skin around Delgado’s lips went pale. “He walked?”
The man in the Mets jacket nodded.
“Surprise, huh?” Delgado said. The man moved away, saying nothing. Delgado’s eyes moistened with tears. Nina saw her fight them off. The cruiser started rolling. People flowed out of the courthouse, bobbed down the steps. The media closed in, wielding overhead booms like strange fishing gear. They caught a big silver-haired pinstripe. He didn’t seem displeased about it: his smile was visible all the way across the square. Delgado watched, the same way players in the losing dugout can’t take their eyes off the celebration on t
he mound at the end of the World Series. The cruiser rounded a corner and moved uptown.
“What’s that all about?” Nina asked.
“No business of yours,” Delgado replied.
They rode the whole way in silence. Delgado stared straight ahead. Once or twice she chewed on her fingernails. On the last block, Nina said: “Did you speak to the real estate woman in Dedham?”
“Yeah,” Delgado said.
“And?”
“And she says there was a man in the house, calling himself an appraiser. Why do you think I’m here?”
They went up to Nina’s apartment. Nina unlocked the door. Delgado entered first. There was nothing to fear. Everything looked the way it had when Nina and Suze had come to collect some of Nina’s things. Delgado checked the hall, the nursery, the living room, and walked into the kitchen. “What’s this?”
“What’s what?” Nina said, following her in.
Delgado was standing at the kitchen table. The kitchen table where Nina had first laid eyes on the opening paragraph of Living Without Men and Children … and Loving It: “All happy families suck. Unhappy families suck too.” The kitchen table on which her electronic typewriter had sat waiting with the suicide note. The manuscript was gone now, of course, and the typewriter put away. There was nothing on the table but an empty vase, a pepper mill and a ballpoint pen.
A blue ballpoint.
Delgado picked it up. She tore a sheet out of her notebook and wrote: Nina Kitchener. “Got those papers?” she said over her shoulder: a businesslike question, but the tone was venomous.
“That pen wasn’t there before. I’ve never seen it in my life.”
“Just give me the papers.”
Nina handed her the anonymity form and the suicide note. Delgado placed them on the table, on either side of her notebook sheet: Exhibits A, B, C. Nina stared down at three representations of her name, two in the same hand, one different, but all penned in the identical shade of blue. Under her gaze, Nina Kitchener tore loose from its meaning, each character seeming to bear some coded message.
Delgado was watching her.
“It wasn’t there when I left,” Nina said. How feeble it sounded. She tried to make her voice strong. “Or ever,” she added. “Someone must have—”
Delgado cut her off. “Did I miss something on the calendar?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? Today must have been set aside for making me look like an asshole.”
“I’m not—”
Delgado’s voice began to rise. “First Ezekial walks because my witness, who I went to the fucking wall for, folds on the goddamned stand. Then comes you and your little mindgames.”
“Mindgames?”
Delgado brandished the pen in Nina’s face. “This is a Bic finepoint. There must be a million of them in the city, so it’s no surprise that you’ve got one too.”
“But I don’t. I didn’t.”
“You have one, lady,” Delgado said, holding it in front of Nina’s eyes. “This is one, right here. A blue Bic finepoint. Maybe there are others under the pillows on the couch or at the back of the desk drawer. But we don’t need to look for them. Because this is one. Get it?” Detective Delgado dropped the pen on the table and walked out of the apartment. The door closed. The lock clicked. Nina sat down at the table.
She folded the papers and put them in her pocket. Nina Kitchener. Nina Kitchener. Nina Kitchener. Then she had just the vase and the pepper mill to look at. The pepper mill made her think of chess. She felt as though she’d been playing chess with a faceless and vastly superior opponent. Winner keeps the baby. She laid her head on the table. No tears came, not even tears of frustration. Did that mean she was beaten? She didn’t know. Maybe she was one of those people who never knew when they were beaten. That didn’t make them winners. It made them stupid. But Nina pushed herself up from the table anyway. Keep punching, stupid. At least stay on your feet.
Nina stood on her feet for a few minutes. Then she remembered the Standish Foundation. She checked the phone book. There was no listing. She tried information. Information didn’t have it either. She called the reference room at the public library. Throwing punches. “I’m looking for a list of foundations,” she said.
“Like the Ford Foundation?” The man at the other end sounded very young.
“Right.”
“I’ve got one right here.”
“You’ve got one right there?”
“People ask for it all the time. Free money. Then they see what the forms are like.”
“Is there a listing for the Standish Foundation?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to look.”
“But I’m here. And you’re there.”
The young man laughed and looked it up. She’d landed one. “The Standish Foundation, P.O. Box 101, Washington, Connecticut, oh-six-seven-nine-three,” he told her. There was no phone number.
Nina tried information for Washington, Connecticut. No number. She found the town on a map: a dot almost hidden in the folds of the Connecticut Berkshires. Nina estimated the mileage, called a rental-car company and reserved a compact. She was on her way out the door when the phone rang. Nina stood still in her doorway. For a few minutes, she had forgotten the fear of being alone in her apartment. It came back in waves, with each ring of the phone. She answered it.
“Nina Kitchener?” said a man; young, perhaps, although not as young as the man in the reference room at the library. And this man had an Australian accent.
“Who’s calling?” Nina said.
“My name is Muller. Bernie Muller. I’m a producer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Current affairs department. That’s like your public affairs. I heard about the dreadful thing that happened to you, if you are Nina Kitchener, that is, and I’d like to meet if it’s not too inconvenient.”
“You came all the way from Australia to do a story on me?”
The man laughed. He had a loud, hearty laugh that made her think of beaches and beer and the fun life that the travel agencies were selling Down Under. “I was already here, love. I’m researching a documentary on missing children in America. I visited Channel Four the other day and they told me about you.” He paused. “If you are Nina Kitchener.”
“I am,” Nina said.
“Great,” Bernie Muller replied. “Then what d’you say?”
“I really don’t see how an Australian documentary will help get my baby back.”
“No argument there,” said Bernie Muller. “More in it for me than for you. But I have gathered some material on child kidnappings that you’re welcome to go over. I’m not suggesting a formal interview on tape, or anything like that. Just some preliminary chat. I won’t take a lot of your time.”
“What kind of material?”
“Case studies. Just a few, actually. We’re still in the early stages.”
“Case studies from New York?”
“None from New York. Philadelphia. San Francisco. Boston, if I remember. A few others.”
“All right,” Nina said.
“Great,” said Bernie Muller. “Should we meet somewhere? My hotel? Your place?” Nina didn’t like either suggestion. There was a silence. Then Bernie Muller said, “How about Grand Central Station?”
“Grand Central Station?”
“Down below. They’ve got a super oyster place.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Bernie Muller laughed his big laugh. “Have I said something horribly tourist, then?”
“No, no. The Oyster Bar will be fine.”
“Great. I love seafood. How’s tonight?”
“No. I’m … busy tonight.”
“Tomorrow?”
“That should be all right.”
“Six o’clock?”
“Fine.”
“Great. See you then.”
“Wait,” Nina said. “How will I know you?”
Bernie Muller laughed. “Big lout,” he said. “But
not to worry—I’ll know you.”
“You’ll know me?”
“I saw your tape. Don’t take offense, but aside from all the personal tragedy, you’re very good on the tube.”
They said goodbye. Aside from all the personal tragedy. How authentically TV. Nina almost didn’t bother calling “Live At Five.” “Oh, sure,” said the researcher who had come on the shoot at her apartment. “The Australian guy. He was in yesterday.”
Nina picked up her rental car and stopped at Suze’s. She didn’t want to drive to Connecticut alone. But Suze was gone. The note said:
Never apologize, never explain, right? But the apology is I’m sorry and the explanation is there’s a deal meeting tomorrow at Paramount and I’ve got to be there. Stay here. The fridge is full and there’s wine in the top cupboard. See you soon. Love S.
Nina thought of Jason. But Jason was at the office. She couldn’t ask Jason. He’d been handling the business for weeks. And that wasn’t fair, no matter what; Nina decided at that moment to go back to work when she got back. She thought of asking the Australian man. Bernie Muller. But he hadn’t mentioned the name of his hotel. So Nina drove alone to Connecticut.
32
Temporary went on and on.
Component number three, out of touch with the tingling electromagnetic force and the smell of the living planet, accepted what components number one and two had to give him: nourishment he could not taste and air he could not smell. Component number three was free, free of responsibility, free of distraction, free to pursue what it now knew to be its purpose—to think, to remember. Component number three: the living brain in the carcass.
Not quite true to say free of distraction. That would leave out Dr. Robert. “Pneumonia,” he might be saying in a low voice, just outside the circle of vision. “I was afraid of this.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Mother, also invisible.
“Let’s not say afraid. Let’s say cognizant of the possibility.”
“But what are you going to to?”
“Be aggressive,” spoke the voice of Dr. Robert. “We’ve got options.” He listed three or four drugs, like a pagan priest invoking the gods.
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