by Harlan Coben
"I thought only the real thing aroused you."
"This isn't the real thing?"
They parked in JFK Airport's short-term parking and reached the Continental Airlines gate ten minutes before the flight touched down. When the passengers began to appear, Win said, "I'll stand over in the corner."
"Why?"
"I wouldn't want to cast a shadow on your greeting," he said. "And standing over there affords me a better view of Ms. Collins's derriere."
Ah, Win.
Two minutes later, Terese Collins — to use a purely transportational term — disembarked. She was casually decked out in a white blouse and green slacks. Her brown hair was up in a ponytail. People lightly elbowed one another, whispering and subtly gesturing, giving her that surreptitious glance, the one that says "I recognize you but don't want to appear fawning."
Terese approached Myron and offered up her breaking-to-commercial smile. It was small and tight, trying to be friendly but reminding viewers that she was telling them about war and pestilence and tragedy and that maybe a big happy smile would be somewhat obscene. They hugged a little too tightly, and Myron felt the familiar sadness overwhelm him. It happened to him every time they hugged — a sense that something inside of him was crumbling anew. He sensed that the same thing happened to her.
Win came over.
"Hello, Win," she said.
"Hello, Terese."
"Checking out my ass again?"
"I prefer the term 'derriere.' And yes."
"Still choice?"
"Grade A."
"Ahem," Myron said. "Please wait for the meat inspector."
Win and Terese looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
Myron had been wrong before. Emily was not Win's favorite. Terese was — though it was strictly because she lived far away. "You are the pitiful, needy type who feels incomplete without a steady girlfriend," Win had told him. "Who better than a career woman who lives a thousand miles away?"
Win headed for his Jag while they waited for her luggage. Terese watched Win walk away.
Myron said, "Is his ass better than mine?"
"No ass is better than yours," she said.
"I know that. I was just testing you."
Terese kept looking. "Win is an interesting fellow," she said.
"Oh yeah," Myron agreed.
"On the outside, he's all cold and detached," she said. "But underneath that — way down deep inside— he's all cold and detached."
"You read people well, Terese."
Win dropped them off at the Dakota and returned to the office. When Myron and Terese got inside the apartment, she kissed him hard. Always an urgency with Terese. A desperation in their love-making. Pleasant, sure. Awesome even. But there was still the aura of sadness. The sadness didn't go away when they made love, but for a little while it lifted like cloud cover, hovering above instead of weighing them down.
They had hooked up at a charity function a few months back, both dragged there by well-meaning friends. It was their mutual misery that drew them, as though it were one of those psychic crowns only they could spot on each other. They met and ran away that very night to the Caribbean on a let's-just-flee dare. For the usually predictable Myron, the spontaneous act felt surprisingly right. They spent a numbingly blissful three weeks alone on a private island, trying to stave off the flow of pain. When Myron was finally forced to return home, they'd both assumed it was over. They'd assumed wrong. At least, it appeared that way.
Myron recognized that his own healing was finally under way. He wasn't back to full strength or normal or any of that. He doubted he ever would be. Or even wanted to be. Giant hands had twisted him and then let go, and while his world was slowly untwisting, he knew that it would never fully return to its original position.
Again with the poignant.
But whatever had happened to Terese — whatever had brought on the sadness and twisted her world, if you will — still held firm, refusing to let go.
Terese's head lay on his chest, her arms wrapped around him. He could not see her face. She never showed him her face when they finished.
"You want to talk about it?" he asked.
She still hadn't told him, and Myron rarely asked. Doing so, he knew, was breaking an unspoken though cardinal rule.
"No."
"I'm not pushing," he said. "I just wanted you to know that if you're ever ready, I'm here."
"I know," she said.
He wanted to say something more, but she was still at a place where words were either superfluous or they stung. He stayed quiet and stroked her hair.
"This relationship," Terese said. "It's bizarre."
"I guess."
"Someone told me you're dating Jessica Culver, the writer."
"We broke up," he said.
"Oh." She did not move, still holding him a little too tightly. "Can I ask when?"
"A month before we met."
"And how long were you two together?"
"Thirteen years, on and off."
"I see," she said. "Am I the recovery?"
"Am I yours?"
"Maybe," she said.
"Same answer."
She thought about that a little. "But Jessica Culver is not the reason you ran away with me."
He remembered the cemetery overlooking the school yard. "No," he said, "she's not the reason."
Terese finally turned to him. "We have no chance. You know that, right?"
Myron said nothing.
"That's not unusual," she went on. "Plenty of relationships have no chance. But people stay in them because it's fun. This isn't fun either."
"Speak for yourself."
"Don't get me wrong, Myron. You're a hell of a lay."
"Could you put that in a sworn affidavit?"
She smiled but there was still no joy. "So what do we have here?"
"Truth?"
"Preferably."
"I always overanalyze," Myron said. "It's my nature. I meet a woman, and I immediately picture the house in the burbs and the white picket fence and the two-point-five kids. But for once I'm not doing that. I'm just letting it happen. So, to answer your question, I don't know. And I'm not sure I care."
She lowered her head. "You realize that I'm pretty damaged."
"I guess."
"I have more baggage than most."
"We all have baggage," Myron said. "The question is, does your baggage go with mine?"
"Who said that?"
"I'm paraphrasing from a Broadway musical."
"Which one?"
"Rent."
She frowned. "I don't like musicals."
"Sorry to hear that," Myron said.
"You do?"
"Oh yeah."
"You're in your mid-thirties, single, sensitive, and you like show tunes," she said. "If you were a better dresser, I'd say you were gay."
She pressed a hard, quick kiss to his lips, and then they held each other a little more. Once again he wanted to ask her what had happened to her, but he wouldn't. She would tell him one day. Or she wouldn't. He decided to change subjects.
"I need your help with something," Myron said.
She looked at him.
"I need to break into a bone marrow center's computer system," he said. "And I think you can help."
"Me?"
"Yup."
"You got the wrong technophobe," she said.
"I don't need a technophobe. I need a famous an-chorwoman."
"I see. And you're asking for this favor postcoital?"
"Part of my plan," Myron said. "I've weakened your will. You cannot refuse me."
"Diabolical."
"Indeed."
"And if I refuse?"
Myron wiggled his eyebrows. "I'll once again use my brawny body and patented lovemaking technique to make you succumb."
" 'Succumb,'" she repeated, pulling him closer. "Is that one word or two?"
Chapter 9
It took a shockingly short time to set up.
Myron told Terese his plan. She listened without interruption. When he finished, she started placing calls. She never asked why he was looking for the donor or how he and the donor were connected. The unspoken rule again, he guessed.
Within the hour a news van complete with a handheld television camera was delivered to the Dakota. The director of the Bergen County Blood Center — a nearby New Jersey bone marrow center — had agreed to drop everything for an immediate interview with Terese Collins, anchorwoman extraordinaire. The power of the idiot box.
They took the Harlem River Drive up to the George Washington Bridge, crossing the Hudson and exiting onto Jones Road in Englewood, New Jersey. After they parked, Myron hoisted up the camera. Heavier than he thought. Terese showed him how to hold it, how to lean it against his shoulder and aim. There was something bazooka-like about the whole thing.
"Do you think I should wear a disguise?" Myron asked.
"Why?"
"People still recognize me from my playing days."
She made a face.
"I'm rather famous in certain circles."
"Get real, Myron. You're an ex-jock. If someone by some miracle recognizes you, they'll think you got lucky and didn't end up in a gutter like most ex-jocks."
He thought about it. "Fair enough."
"One other thing," she said. "And this will be nearly impossible for you."
"What?"
"You have to keep your big mouth shut," Terese said.
"Egads."
"You're just the cameraman here."
"We prefer to be called 'photographic artists.'"
"Just play your part. Trust me to handle him."
"Can I at least use a pseudonym?" He put the camera to his eye. "You can call me Lens. Or Scoop."
"How about Bozo? No, wait, that would be a synonym."
Everyone's a wise guy.
When they entered the clinic's lobby, people turned toward Terese and did that surreptitious stare again. Myron realized that today was the first time he had been with her in public. He had never quite thought about how famous she was.
"You get these stares wherever you go?" he whispered.
"Pretty much."
"Does it bother you?"
She shook her head. "That's horseshit."
"What is?"
"Celebrities who complain about people staring at them. Want to really piss off a celebrity? Let him go someplace and not be recognized."
Myron smiled. "You're so self-realized."
"That a new way of saying cynical?"
The receptionist said, "Mr. Englehardt will see you now."
She led them down a corridor with thin plaster walls and a bad paint job. Englehardt sat behind a plastic-wood desk. He was probably late twenties with a slight build and a chin weaker than machine-dispensed coffee.
Myron quickly noted the computer setup. Two of them. One on his desk. One on the credenza. Hmm.
Englehardt jumped up as though he'd just been passed a note that his chair had cooties. His eyes were wide and fixed on Terese. Myron was ignored and felt like, well, the cameraman. Terese smiled brightly at Englehardt, and he was lost.
"I'm Terese Collins," she said, extending her hand. Englehardt did everything but take a knee and kiss it. "This is my cameraman, Malachy Throne."
Myron sort of smiled. After the Broadway-musical debacle, he had worried. But Malachy Throne? Genius. Pure genius.
They all exchanged quick pleasantries. Englehardt kept touching his hair, trying very hard to look subtle about it and not like he was prepping for the camera. Not happening, bub. Finally Terese signaled that they were ready to begin.
"Where would you like me to sit?" Englehardt asked.
"Behind the desk would be nice," she said. "Don't you agree, Malachy?"
"Behind the desk," Myron said. "Yeah, that's the ticket."
The interview began. Terese kept her gaze on her subject; Englehardt, trapped in the beam, could look nowhere else. Myron put his eye to the camera. The consummate professional. Very Richard Avedon.
Terese asked Englehardt how he'd gotten started in this business, his background, general crap, relaxing him, putting him on that comfy ground, not all that different from the technique Myron had used with Dr. Singh. She was in on-air mode now. Her voice was different, her eyes steadier.
"So the national registry in Washington keeps track of all donors?" Terese asked.
"That's correct."
"But you can access the records?"
Englehardt tapped the computer on his desk. The screen faced him, the back of the monitor toward them. Okay, Myron thought, so it was the one on his desk. That would make it more difficult, but not impossible.
Terese looked at Myron. "Why don't you get a back shot, Malachy?" Then turning to Englehardt, "If that's okay with you."
"No problem at all," Englehardt said.
Myron started moving into position. The monitor was off. No surprise.
Terese continued to hold Englehardt's gaze. "Does everyone in the office have access to the national registry's computer?"
Englehardt shook his head firmly. "I'm the only one."
"Why's that?"
"The information is confidential. We don't breach the secrecy under any circumstance."
"I see," she said. Myron was in place now. "But what's to stop someone from coming in here when you're not around?"
"I always lock my office door," Englehardt said, up on his haunches and eager to please. "And you can only access the network with a password."
"You're the only one who knows the password?"
Englehardt tried not to preen, but he didn't try too hard. "That's correct."
Ever see those hidden-camera stories on Dateline or 20/20? They always shoot from some strange angle and in black-and-white. Truth is, it's easy for any layperson to buy one and it's even easy to get one that films in color. There are stores that sell them right in Manhattan, or you can go online and search under "spy stores." You'll see hidden cameras in clocks, pens, briefcases and, most common of all, smoke detectors — available to anyone with the proper buckage. Myron had one that looked like a film case. He dropped it now on the window ledge with the lens pointing toward the computer monitor.
When it was in place, Myron tapped his nose with his finger, a la Redford in The Sting. Their signal. Bolitar. Myron Bolitar. A Yoo-Hoo. Shaken not stirred. Terese picked up her cue. The smile dropped off her face like an anvil.
Englehardt looked startled. "Ms. Collins? Are you okay?"
For a moment she could not bear to face him. Then: "Mr. Englehardt," Terese said, her voice Gulf War-grave, "I must confess something."
"I'm sorry?"
"I am here under somewhat false pretenses."
Englehardt looked confused. Terese was so good, Myron almost looked confused.
"I sincerely believe you are doing important work here," she continued. "But others are not so sure."
Englehardt's eyes were widening. "I don't understand."
"I need your help, Mr. Englehardt."
"Billy," he corrected.
Myron made a face. Billy?
Terese didn't miss a beat. "Someone is trying to disrupt your work, Billy."
"My work?"
"The national registry's work."
"I'm still not sure what you—"
"Are you familiar with the case of Jeremy Downing?"
Englehardt shook his head. "I never know the names of patients."
"He's the son of Greg Downing, the basketball star."
"Oh, wait, yes, I heard about this. His son has Fanconi anemia."
Terese nodded. "That's correct."
"Isn't Mr. Downing supposed to hold a press conference today? To track down a donor?"
"Exactly, Billy. And that's the problem."
"What is?"
"Mr. Downing has found the donor."
Still confused. "That's a problem?"
"No, of course not. If the person is the donor. And if the person is telling the t
ruth."
Englehardt looked at Myron. Myron shrugged and moved back to the front of the desk. He left the film case on the windowsill.
"I'm not following you, Ms. Collins."
"Terese," she said. "A man has come forward. He claims that he is the matching donor."
"And you think he's lying?"
"Let me finish. He not only claims he's the donor, but he says that the reason he refused to donate his marrow was because of the terrible treatment he received from this center."
Englehardt nearly tipped back. "What?"
"He claims he was treated shabbily, that your staff was rude, and that he's even debating leveling a lawsuit."
"That's ridiculous."
"Probably."
"He's lying."
"Probably," she said again.
"And he'll be found out," Englehardt continued. "They'll test his blood and see he's a phony."
"But when, Billy?"
"What?"
"When will they do that? A day from now? A week from now? A month? But by then the damage is done. He's going to appear at the press conference today with Greg Downing. The media will be there in force. Even if it ends up being false, no one remembers the retraction. They just remember the allegation."
Englehardt sat back. "Jesus."
"Let me be frank, Billy. A number of my colleagues believe him. I don't. I smell a publicity hound. I'm having some of my best investigators dig into this man's past. So far they've come up with nothing, and time is running short."
"So what can I do?"
"I need to know it's not true. I can't stop it merely because I believe it's not true. I have to know for certain."
"How?"
Terese chewed on her lower lip. Deep thought. "Your computer network."
Englehardt shook his head. "The information in here is confidential. I explained that before. I can't tell you—"
"I don't need to know the name of the donor." She leaned forward. Myron moved as far away from the action as possible, trying to be no threat whatsoever. "I need to know what's not the name."
Englehardt looked hesistant.
"I'm sitting over here," she said. "I can't see the monitor. Malachy is by the door." She turned to Myron. "Your camera is off, Malachy?"
"Yes, Terese," Myron said. He put it down for emphasis.
"So here is what I suggest," Terese said. "You look up Jeremy Downing in your computer. It will list a donor. I give you a name. You tell me if the name matches. Simple?"