Shadow Woman jw-3

by Thomas Perry

He slowly drove the car through the opening in the fence and up a dirt road into the orchard. The road was pink with blooms that had spilled from the apple trees on both sides. He bumped along deeper into the orchard as Jane stared eagerly out the windshield. “Okay, stop,” she said, opened the door, and stepped out.

  She walked to the far edge of the orchard and sidestepped a few paces down a little slope, then stopped. She slipped off her shoes and walked down the hill a short distance, paused at the edge of a thick patch of ankle-high wild plants with round, serrated leaves that covered the lower slope, then turned and looked up at Carey McKinnon. “Come down,” she said. “I knew I could find some.”

  He cautiously stepped toward her, looking down to be sure of his footing. When he looked up she was bent over, fiddling with something under the hem of her skirt. Then she pulled off her stockings and handed them to him. “Put these in your pocket for me, will you?” She walked barefoot among the thick, soft plants, then bent over and ran her hands into them, touching here and there in the dark.

  Carey stepped closer and she held out her hand. In the palm were a dozen little round shapes no bigger than a half inch across. “What’s that?”

  “Dessert,” she said. “Wild strawberries.”

  She popped one onto her tongue and squeezed it against the roof of her mouth, then chewed it. “They’re perfect.” She held out her hand again and poured the little strawberries into Carey’s palm.

  He tasted one and smiled. “They’re good. Soft, sweet.” But she was already bent over, running her hands quickly among the fuzzy leaves of the little plants.

  Carey knelt on the weeds with her and picked strawberries until they had a double handful. Carey gave them to her and then spread his new coat in the weeds and they sat on it, feeling the warm June air and the intense darkness of the new moon and eating strawberries.

  They turned to each other and kissed, then slowly and gradually the kisses grew longer and deeper and they leaned back to lie on the coat, the tall weeds now sheltering them on both sides like a nest. Carey’s hand began to move along her body—breast, waist, hip—and the clothes Jane had chosen didn’t need to be tugged up and pulled down tonight. In the darkness they seemed to melt away, and she hoped, knew he had asked her to wear them with this moment in mind. Or maybe his asking and her compliance and this moment were part of the same event, one long act of asking and complying, her wanting him to ask, even turn his eyes in some direction so she could offer before he even formed the desire. The kisses were long and hungry now, and the hands—the long, gentle fingers and the wide, smooth palms moving everywhere, touching and outlining her shape in the darkness, the skin feeling itself traced and caressed so she could see herself with her eyes closed, the smaller, graceful shape and the curves she had somehow forgotten were her until now, when he saw them, touched them, pulled her against him. The embrace defined them both, his body all tense, hard muscles, the skin tickly with hair, but the boundary between them gone.

  There was only the smell of the strawberries and the taste of them on her tongue, the warm, dark motionless air that might never change at all, and this heartbeat and this indrawn breath. But there was time because the feelings were growing, moving down to her belly and thighs, too many breaths until it grew into a longing, an ache, and he knew it. Then she was relieved, so much better, happy, actually happy, out of time now entirely, because if this feeling went on forever it would not be enough, but it went on, and she heard her own breaths coming quicker, and her voice coming out with them, and it was going to go on until she was obliterated, burned up like a moth flying into a blast furnace. And in this moment of wanting and having, that seemed just fine to her … better, best. And then time came back because this could not go on, was about to pass, not gasping for breath, but filled with it, and then so light and cool, shivering almost and the word delicious coming into her mind and passing away again because contentment was too lazy and pleased to hold on to it.

  They lay naked on the hillside in the little space of flattened weeds, smelling the strawberries again. She opened her eyes to extend the depth of her gaze far up into the night sky.

  For the first time in ages, she heard his voice. “Were the strawberries what you wanted to show me?”

  “Sort of,” she laughed. “It’s kind of a multidimensional experience. In the old days, they used to court in strawberry patches.”

  “I’ll bet it wasn’t quite the same.”

  “I’ll bet it was,” she said. “See, they would slip out of their longhouses at night and meet in a place like this.”

  “I mean they didn’t make love.”

  “Of course they did.” She laughed. “That was what they were doing out here in the middle of the night. Maybe right here.”

  “I can see why strawberries grow on the way to heaven.” He ran his hand along her hip, smoothing it gently. “Ripe and sweet and perfect and rare.”

  She sat up and looked at him with a tiny hint of a wish. “Just the opposite. The reason they were so precious was that they weren’t rare at all. They grew from one end of Iroquois country to the other. No matter what, they came up every May and ripened every June. They were easy—always there, always as many as you wanted, and always just as good as the first one you ever put on your tongue.”

  He sat up and looked at her closely, his eyes blue-gray and shining. “That was what you wanted me to know.”

  “You’re getting better,” she said. “You have a shot at ‘Most Improved Naked Man.’ ”

  “I’d like to think I was already smart enough to appreciate you, and never let myself forget how special you are, even after a few years of getting our strawberries in supermarkets like other people.” His hand moved gently from her shoulder down her side to her hip, thigh, knee, shin, foot. “But I’m glad you took me on the field trip.”

  “Me too.”

  He said quietly, “It’s not like you to waste all this wisdom on the first naked man you meet in a strawberry patch. To make it worthwhile, you’d almost have to marry me.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I will.”

  4

  The boardroom for Pleasure, Inc., overlooked the Polynesian water slide. Somebody had once joked that the architect’s plans had been folded and the contractor hadn’t noticed. It sounded true because mistakes in Las Vegas were not little slipups that made a few chips fall between the floorboards. They were hideous, gargantuan blunders, like building a billion-dollar casino on ground that was a foot lower than the adjacent square mile of parking lots, so the whole place got inundated with water in a flash flood every five years. But the location of the Pleasure Island boardroom had been no mistake; it had been a suggestion from Calvin Seaver, vice president for security.

  Seaver stepped from the elevator and stared out through the double layer of one-way glass at the beautiful waterfall and the rocks and the lush tropical plants and flowers. He saw a pair of boys—he guessed eight and ten years old from the memory of his own boys—and then the father, a guy in his late thirties with a little baby fat around his middle and a U.S.N. anchor tattoo that showed he wasn’t troubled with neck pains from holding up his brain. They stood on the platform ten feet from Seaver, waiting for something. He guessed it was Mom. And there she was. Not bad. A trace of cellulite in the haunches and sag in the tits, but nothing for her to worry about. She plunked down at the top of the slide with them, and all four went slipping down, around, under the waterfall, and out of sight. Good for them.

  Seaver was trained to feel a presumptive hostility, watching the guests for some sign that they were going to cause a need for his services, but the reason he was the best was that he could tell the sheep from the goats. These were sheep. They wouldn’t know how to cause trouble, because it wasn’t in their nature. During their stay they would never know that he was watching over them, protecting them while they played and while they slept, making sure that nothing disturbed the artificial tranquility around them.

  Those four were eviden
ce that things were going beautifully. They would stay maybe five days. Mom and Dad would get a taste of canned glamour and carefully controlled risk. The boys would spend some time in the virtual-reality arcades, getting the feel of paying money to get excitement, and ensure Pleasure, Inc., of repeat business for the next fifty years. The family would pay Pleasure, Inc., more than they spent on this year’s taxes to their home state, and then they’d be gone.

  The goats were different—card counters and con men and shortchange artists and call girls and pickpockets—always trying to fade in among the sheep, but restless. He knew half of them by sight, but he didn’t need to. He could detect it in their eyes the first time he saw them. They were hungry. He had sensed something too eager in Pete Hatcher’s eyes early on, but he had misinterpreted it. His mistake was in accepting the bosses’ assurances that all Hatcher was after was pussy.

  He glanced at his watch and moved on down the hallway. Seaver was probably the only one who could see this part of the complex clearly when he looked at it. The elevators and the long, narrow hallway gave his people plenty of time and means to isolate anyone who had some business that wasn’t on the board’s agenda. The double panes of one-way glass kept anyone from amplifying the vibrations to pick up a conversation or using any sort of photography. Being next to the water slide ensured that nobody who wasn’t wearing a bathing suit could get close, and anybody scanning with a directional microphone from a distance would pick up the waterfall and eighty customers talking about nothing.

  It wasn’t the sort of security that an underground room would have, but it had worked well enough so far. What he was worried about these days was some kind of futuristic emergency—some loser driving a car bomb through the front entrance, or some Japanese cult releasing nerve gas in the climate-control system. He had consultants working on countermeasures, but so far nothing they had brought him was good enough to bring to the big guys. All the plans involved lots of rebuilding to make space for some strategy they could not guarantee would work.

  The big guys were never reluctant to spend money on remodeling. What they hated was having to shut anything down while they did it. But Seaver believed in outside consultants, and he was confident that they would solve these problems, one by one. Security was a matter of batting down specific threats. Nothing worked all of the time for all purposes.

  He opened the door to the boardroom, stepped inside onto the thick carpet, and quietly took a seat at the enormous rosewood table. The door closed silently behind him. The automatic closer had been Seaver’s idea too. The time when people were going in and out was a gaping breach in the room’s integrity. Anyone who managed to defeat the other obstacles could learn a lot by picking up a few seconds here and there and studying what he had heard.

  This time there was no meeting of the Management Team. The only ones in the room were the big guys themselves, Bobby Salateri, Max Foley, and Peter Buckley. They met this way more often than people would think, to talk without the twenty upper-level functionaries who ran housekeeping or finance or public relations or security.

  Peter Buckley first deigned to notice Seaver. “Morning, Cal.”

  “Peter,” said Seaver. Then he added, “Bobby, Max,” as the others saw him. Then he waited. They took their time, and it was a compliment to him.

  “Having water misters all over the place is okay this year. It’s okay next year,” said Salateri. “How does it look ten years from now? I mean politically?”

  “It’s not exactly all over the place,” said Foley. “It’s just on the golf courses. The sun shelters are already plumbed. It’s just a matter of installing these little fixtures around the roof. That’s thirty-six misters. They’ll make the players feel cool and comfortable.”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Salateri. “It’s nothing, really. But every single time some TV station does a report on wasting water I see footage of misters over some hot dog stand.”

  “The estimate says the trees around the shelters will catch some of the water and the shade will keep the mist from evaporating as fast. If there’s ever rationing, it’s just that much more water grandfathered in.”

  “That’s a point I hadn’t thought of,” said Salateri. “I can buy it on that basis. How about you, Peter?”

  “Sure,” said Buckley. “If things really get stupid, we’ve got something we can give away: Pleasure Island shuts down misters to save water.”

  “I’ll have them go ahead,” said Foley. He turned to Seaver. “Little problem last night, huh, Cal?”

  “Yes,” said Seaver. “I wish I had some excuse. I don’t.”

  “So where does that leave us now?” asked Buckley.

  “Hatcher wasn’t on any flight leaving McCarran, or a train. A bus is too haphazard for him. He undoubtedly drove out. If he had the sense to keep driving, he could be in Chicago by now.” He reached into his breast pocket. “My resignation is ready, if you want it.”

  “Stick it in your ear,” said Salateri. “This isn’t the fucking army, where you get to resign your commission and hand in your sword and go write your memoirs. We’ve got a parasite that could eat us alive. We need you more than we did yesterday.”

  “Thank you,” said Seaver. It was the only thing Salateri had ever said to him that could have been a compliment.

  “How did he lose your people?” asked Foley. “Maybe that’s the place to start.”

  “He met a woman at the Inside Straight for the midnight lounge show. The Miraculous Miranda picked him out of the audience, made him disappear a couple of times, and brought him back. The last time, she didn’t. He probably slipped out the stage door. My men got suckered. They followed the woman and a decoy out of the show, then lost the decoy too. The woman was a pro. She got them to watch her for an hour, then split them up and cornered one of them in the elevator. She left him with a broken leg, a broken nose, and some damage to his eye.”

  “A professional what?” asked Salateri. “Boxer?”

  “I don’t know what term she uses on her business cards,” said Seaver. “But I don’t think Hatcher could have set this up for himself. I don’t know what part in this Miranda played—maybe just picking him out of the crowd was enough, and magicians will sometimes do that as a favor if you send a waiter backstage and ask. Maybe—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” interrupted Buckley. “I’m not about to start grilling Miranda, and I hope you’re not.”

  “Only if you asked me to,” said Seaver. “If she knows anything, there’s no reason for her to tell me, and no way I can make her. If the woman is a pro, then Miranda probably doesn’t know much.”

  Salateri shrugged and made a face of distaste. “I’ll see if I can talk to Vincent.” He sat quietly for a moment, then noticed the others staring at him. “Why not? You think if Vincent Bogliarese wanted to do us harm he’d do it this way—have his girlfriend sneak the guy off in a puff of smoke? Get real. He’d send eight hundred guys in shiny suits to pull our guts out and set fire to them.” He added, to no one in particular, “I say that, of course, with the greatest respect, and in confidence. The man is a friend of mine. I’m not saying he’ll find out anything for us, but it won’t hurt to ask.”

  Max Foley looked at Seaver. “It looks to me as though we really have to handle this ourselves, Cal. This screw-up is yours, but the underlying problem isn’t. It’s ours, the three of us. We picked out Hatcher, we misjudged him, and we trusted him with a lot of things we shouldn’t have.”

  “That’s right,” said Buckley.

  Salateri nodded sadly. “He was smart, easy to be around, he behaved like a man. Now we’re in trouble, and we don’t even know what kind.”

  “We can guess,” said Foley. “No matter what he thinks he’s going to do now, at some point he’s going to end up in the hands of the F.B.I.” He added, “Unless he doesn’t.”

  Buckley leaned back in his big chair. “Do we have anybody on our payroll who can take care of this kind of problem?”

  “No,” said
Seaver. “We’ve been very careful not to hire anyone like that full-time. They’re not the sort of people you want to have around year in and year out. Other employees figure out what they’re there for, and so on.”

  The three men sat in a row and looked at him. “You’ve been in the security business for a long time,” said Foley.

  “And a cop before that,” added Salateri.

  Foley continued. “Yes. You must know someone who would be able to do it. I mean a full-service specialist, who can find him and handle the rest.”

  “There’s someone I can probably get,” said Seaver. This was going to be the delicate part. He wasn’t sure they knew what this involved. “I’ll need a lot of cash. Maybe a hundred thousand to start, and more later.”

  “Cash?” said Buckley. “Well, hell, Cal. Cash is what we do. Go downstairs and give this to Eddie.” He rapidly scribbled a note and handed it to Seaver, who glanced at it: “Give Seaver whatever he wants. P.B.” Buckley folded his hands across his belly. “Who is this guy?”

  “It’s a Mickey-and-Minnie team. I’ll talk to them today.”

  “Just don’t bring them here,” said Salateri. “I don’t want to meet anybody like that.”

  “And if you’re going to hire them, don’t call them from here, either,” said Foley. “A year from now I don’t want some prosecutor going down the hotel phone bills and finding their number.”

  Seaver nodded. “Of course. I’ll be flying to Los Angeles to talk to them in person. There are just a couple of things I should tell you. They’ll give me a price, but expenses will be on top of that.”

  “This goes without saying,” said Buckley. “What else?”

  “Once they leave their house, it’s done. I won’t be able to call them off. They’ll keep at it as long as it takes, and they won’t check in with me or be any place I can reach them. If we find out tomorrow that Pete Hatcher was the most loyal employee the world has ever seen, it’ll be too late. He’ll already be dead.”

  “I guess this is the time to ask.” Buckley looked at his two partners. “Are we all sure we aren’t going to change our minds?”