by Thomas Perry
Carey shrugged, and Jane could see he had noticed she was getting angry. "Fair enough," he said. "I didn't mean to accuse you of anything. I was just trying to understand you because I love you."
Jane closed her eyes for a few seconds, then said carefully, "You're right that what I want most right now is to have a baby. It bothers me a lot that it hasn't happened. We both know that. But what made me take Christine away wasn't a sudden wave of female hormones at the sight of a pregnant woman, or some kind of sentimental craziness brought on by infertility. What I did—putting her out of the way of the people who were after her—was the only thing I could do. I didn't look for her, or tell anyone I was available or anything. I'm not going back to making people disappear."
"Why not? You just did."
"Because I've changed. The world has changed. When I started I was twenty, and running was easy. Whether you get caught or not depends on who's searching for you. In the old days, it was always just creeps, or once in a while somebody who was willing to kill someone for money. Now the whole government is looking for people with false identities, even for people who have blanks in their histories. Everybody's financial information is passed from one computer to another all day and all night. This country is a harder place to move people around."
"So you're not going to do it again?"
"I can't say that, Carey. I can say it's not practical anymore. There used to be holes in the system, and I was keeping people alive by sneaking through them. Now there are fewer holes. But if Christine Monahan came to me tomorrow, I would have to try."
Jane had said it, and the conversation had ended, and within a few minutes, the tension between them began to fade. What they had been talking about was painful to her, but after all, it was simply that she loved him and wanted to have his baby. He loved her, and wanted her to be safe and happy and understood.
Jane walked back to the bedroom in the dark, then lay on the bed beside him and watched his chest rising and falling peacefully. This was the place where she had always wanted to be. Maybe the growing sense that something was changing, that something was coming near, was just her frayed nerves from the trip home.
13
Richard Beale was in his office with the door open, staring out over his empty desk, across the lobby. This had been his father's office originally, and Andy Beale considered windows a distraction and a threat to privacy. But with the office door open Richard could look across the lobby with its glass walls opening onto the sunny courtyard. In the courtyard was a captive garden full of green tropical plants—sago palms, huge bromeliads, a few large ficus trees and one exotic eucalyptus with bark that looked like human skin. The receptionist's desk was right in front of the glass wall, so the sunlight always came in above and behind her and made her glow like an angel. Richard thought the view probably had been partly responsible for his troubles with Christine Monahan, and with a few of her predecessors.
Receptionists were beautiful. They simply were, just as bouncers at clubs were big and muscular. The physical attributes were part of the job. No skill or training, no other quality would do. The job of a bouncer wasn't to escort the unruly out of the bar and kick the shit out of them. The job was to scare the potentially unruly out of that train of thought by looking big and fierce. An adequate receptionist was at least pretty. The better she looked, the more substantial and respectable she made the company seem, because beauty was a commodity like anything else on the planet. Straight white teeth, delicate features, shining hair, a thin waist cost extra money, just as comfortable, well-designed waiting room furniture cost more than bad furniture.
Richard's father, Andy Beale, had often hired women who had been in beauty pageants. They had all learned to dress conservatively, walk gracefully in high heels, speak pleasantly, and produce convincing smiles. He had only been interested in those young women who had risen to become either queen of something or runners-up—what he referred to as "win, place, or show"—because they were the ones who had learned the most and tried the hardest. He was quite open about it, too, because the pageants all claimed loudly that they were about character, leadership, and scholarly ability.
The only time he'd had the threat of a lawsuit was an incident when he had been taken by surprise early in the morning. He had come into the building right at opening time and found that the receptionist he had hired only a week before had gotten her hair cut short. Andy Beale had let his disappointment slip out. "I hired you for your hair, damn it. That long, shiny black hair was the one thing that put you ahead of three other applicants."
Andy Beale had made himself into a multimillionaire because he was able to observe human behavior accurately. He had spent forty years noticing that when women cut their hair short, other women would say it was "cute" or "smart" or some such thing, but he had never, in any of the thousand times when he'd seen it, heard anything approaching approval by any male. He also had developed a clear-eyed view of the competitive nature of women. He knew that when one woman said to another that her hairstyle was "smart," she meant the opposite. The pleasure that could be heard in the woman's voice was delight over the temporary downfall of a rival.
He had stepped inside Richard's office and explained the true dimensions of the girl's mistake. Not only had she diminished her attraction for the Beale family's real estate customers, lenders, clients, and tenants, most of whom were male, she had also persuaded Andy Beale that she did not have the practical, commonsense variety of intelligence that he knew was necessary for success in business. He told Richard, "I had hopes for her, but no more. She was a contest winner, too. Most of these pageant winners are street fighters. We've got eight of them selling condos in that Phoenix development right now. They would never handicap themselves like that. I can't get rid of her, but I want her moved. Have her answer the general company phone number from a cubicle in the big office down the hall. That's all she'll see of this company."
A few weeks later, while the former receptionist was sitting near the back of the building answering phone calls in her cubicle, her lawyer paid Andy Beale a visit. Andy had not threatened to fire the girl, and she had accurately reported that to her lawyer, much to the lawyer's disappointment. But the lawyer felt that she deserved some sort of compensation in exchange for not filing a complaint. Andy Beale declined to pay off, and within a month, the woman resigned.
The reception area became a problem for Richard as soon as his father began to relinquish the daily operation of the business to him. The green plants and the light beyond the glass walls of the lobby made the reception area more inviting than the windowless office his father had insisted he take. As soon as he stepped out there for relief, the sight of the receptionist would distract him. His father never knew it, but by now Richard had caused half a dozen receptionists to quit. Richard had dated three of them, including a married woman whose husband caught her coming out of a hotel with Richard on the fifth date, one who broke up with Richard and quit on the second date, and one who threatened to charge him with sexual assault on the morning after their first date. A couple of them had refused to go out with Richard at all, and he had bothered them so often that they had begun circulating their résumés within days after accepting the job.
There had also been the case of Tracy Williamson. She had given Richard a slow case of surprise. He had not been careful. She had told him on the second date that she was on the pill, and so he had left birth control to her. But after only a few more weeks, he had realized that his firm belief in her efficiency and dependability had been induced by the way she looked in her glasses. She wore very flattering business suits to work—little tight skirts with matching jackets—and she had glasses with designer frames in about five colors to match the suits. She always looked put-together and organized. The idea that a girl like her would forget to refill her prescription for birth control pills and then forget that she had forgotten simply never occurred to Richard until he began to notice the work she had been doing at the office. There we
re messages she had forgotten to write down, or written down and given to the wrong rental agent or realtor. There were appointments written in Richard's calendar on the right day of the wrong month. There were letters and bills she had completed so late she'd had to take them out to mail instead of leaving them for the regular pickup, only to find them in her purse or her car a week later. She had gone out with the letters and forgotten why she was out, so she would salvage the trip by going to lunch or shopping.
When he realized how forgetful and disorganized she was, Richard sat her down in his office, locked the door, and tried to have a serious conversation with her about whether or not she had actually been taking the pills. His first attempt was unsuccessful, because when they had gone in and locked the door the other times, it had been so they could have sex in the windowless office during the day, something that they both relished. Richard allowed the click of the bolt in the doorjamb to trigger the impulse again. But the second time, she initiated the conversation. She walked into his office, locked the door, and told him she was pregnant.
Richard offered to pay for her abortion, but she had no interest in that. She wanted Richard to marry her. He refused, she insisted. She threatened to file a paternity suit. Richard knew that he couldn't stand a lawsuit the way his father could. Tracy would demand, and probably win, full support for her and the baby for eighteen years. It was a sum that would be impossible to conceal from his parents. Richard didn't have any serious money of his own. What he had amounted to a house and car that belonged to his parents' company and a pocket full of spending money, essentially a continuation of the allowance he had received as a child.
He offered to keep Tracy on the payroll long after she had the baby and stopped working, so the company would be paying for her support. But since he had turned down her proposals, she wanted a lump-sum payment, and told him she intended to have their brief affair declared a common-law marriage. It was absurd, illegal, and unfair. But she was showing herself to be very stubborn and surprisingly efficient.
As the weeks passed and he knew that the time was coming for her condition to become visible, Richard became desperate. What Tracy didn't know was that Richard Beale would do anything to keep his parents from finding out he had made her pregnant. Richard was an only child who had been born to a difficult mother and an impossible father. He knew that their reaction to the news would be unpleasant. They had already been ordering him to marry soon and give them grandchildren. If they knew Tracy was pregnant they were likely to take her side and give her what she had wanted in the first place—Richard as a husband. He would be tied for life to a woman who was essentially an enemy. The plan he had been pursuing of embezzling a few dollars at a time until he had enough to be independent would be effectively blocked. But leaving things as they were wouldn't prevent trouble either. If his father learned that he had proposed paying Tracy off by making her a phantom employee of the company, he would fire him and throw him out on the street. The business belonged to his parents. There was no way Richard could let the pregnancy proceed long enough so his parents could see it for themselves.
Richard called Steve Demming and asked him to have lunch at a restaurant in Del Mar. He had met Demming through Jerry McGern, a lawyer he had worked with on a development five years ago. Richard had told McGern about the trouble he was having with a roofing company. They were holding the whole project for ransom by delaying and asking for extra money. McGern had said, "Let me send a guy I know to see you." The guy had turned out to be Steve Demming. The roofing company had abruptly changed its position, and the roofs began going on the houses two days later.
He had hired Demming and his crew a number of times after that, but it was always on company matters. The real estate business in coastal California was tough and competitive, and the Beale family's interests were complicated. There were employees, suppliers, and subcontractors who needed to be watched without their knowing it. There were competing developers and speculators who needed to be persuaded not to bid on certain projects. There were buyers and tenants who signed agreements they didn't think they needed to keep, and had to be taught to keep their word. There were payoffs to be delivered to inspectors, commissioners, and politicians. It was important that the people who performed these services not be employees of the Beale Company. Whenever Demming's crew did any work for Richard, he would pay them by placing one of them in the separate budgeted account of a current building project.
Richard and Demming sat on the patio of the restaurant in Del Mar looking out at the horizon, where the blue-gray sea met the blue-gray overcast sky. Richard explained his problem with Tracy and asked for Demming's help. Steve's understanding and discretion had surprised him. Steve told him that one of the women on his crew, Sybil Landreau, had too much to drink now and then, and had managed to get pregnant a couple of times. She had a cordial relationship with a doctor just over the border in Tijuana who was a favorite with the local hookers. Steve and Sybil and Pete Tilton would simply drive Tracy to the doctor and return her to the United States in a day or two. When Richard said, "Tracy won't go to Mexico with you," Demming said, "This doctor won't mind if a patient arrives anesthetized."
Richard knew that the problem had been solved, because he never heard from Tracy again. It gave him a warm feeling about Demming and his people—not just gratitude, but a kind of camaraderie. Like Richard, they were reliable. And they weren't the sort of people to look down on him for being human. They were people who sometimes had done foolish things themselves, and knew they probably would again.
The crew had solved Richard's trouble with Tracy, but that had not cured him of his receptionist problem. There was another occasion a couple of years later. The receptionist's name was Heather, and Richard had to ask Demming to handle the problem again. Heather had seemed to welcome his attentions until they had sex, but then she had begun to make snide remarks. They had sounded like jokes at first—that she was just teasing him about the fact that the way they had gotten together was, technically, sexual harassment. But the jokes came more and more often, and then she asked him for a raise. She wanted her salary doubled, and she wanted to move into one of the new condominiums the company had built and live there for free. A couple of days after Heather vanished from San Diego, Richard's cell phone rang.
"Richard? It's me—Heather."
His breath caught in his throat, but he recovered. "What's up?"
"You know damned well what's up."
"I don't."
"Your friends, your scum, drugged me and kidnapped me. I woke up in Mexico."
"Aw. That's too bad."
"Too bad? Too bad, Richard?"
"Yeah. It sure sounds that way."
"When I woke up I was in some crummy hotel with a couple of your friends. The woman said if I ever told anybody anything about you or them, they'd sell me to a Mexican whorehouse where the pimps would kill me if I tried to run away."
"Jesus, Heather. If that's true, maybe you shouldn't have told me."
"You knew, you bastard."
"No way."
"You paid them to do this to me. All I'm asking is that you admit it. Tell the truth once."
"I don't know anything about this."
"I don't believe you."
"What do you want from me? Do you want to come in and talk?"
"I can't come in and talk. I'm in Ciudad Juarez, where your friends dumped me. I don't have any money to get home. I don't want to go talk to you. I hate you. You'll never see me again, you pig." She hung up.
Richard stared at his cell phone. What could be better? he asked himself. It was perfection. They had made sure all she had was a crazy story that she would be too scared to tell, and she had just given him a guarantee that she would leave him alone forever. This was science. It was art. Richard began to cherish Demming and his crew. They never seemed to be surprised at what he asked of them, and they were never at a loss about how to accomplish it.
Of course, having Demming solve a problem
was expensive, and as this Christine Monahan problem dragged on, it was becoming more so. Keeping four people traveling around searching for somebody was like keeping four people on a perpetual vacation, running up bills at hotels, restaurants, airlines, car rentals. And having Ronnie Sebrot dealing with hospitals and doctors for his knee was worse. Richard wasn't sure what it was going to cost him for Carl McGinnis's death. He was hoping that Carl was a bachelor, without a widow to pay off. He remembered hearing some remark that Carl had something going with Claudia Marshall, but that proved nothing. The crew had spent a lot of time together—lots of it nights away from San Diego—for years, and he supposed that they must have routinely taken care of each other in that way.
The phone on Richard's desk rang, and he waited while Marlene, the new receptionist, answered it. In a few seconds, his phone buzzed, and he snatched up the receiver. "Yes?"
"It's a Mr. Demming for you, Richard." The voice was musical and efficient and cheerful. He knew that what he had been thinking should have made him immune to any thoughts about the new receptionist, but it hadn't. He modulated his voice carefully so it was businesslike, yet friendly.
"Thanks, Marlene." He hit the button that was blinking. "Hi, Steve."
"Richard, I wanted to give you an update on what we're doing."
"I was hoping you were calling to say you had her."
"Not yet."
Richard hated Not yet, but he was sure Demming must remember that he hated that answer, and be saying it anyway. He couldn't afford to alienate Demming now, so he ignored his irritation. "Okay. So what's happening?"
"We've been circulating the pictures of Christine online to people around the country we think will look for her if there's money in it. We've set the payoff at a hundred thousand."
Richard swallowed, but his throat was so dry he swallowed air. "I guess that's okay. I don't actually have to pay anybody, right?"
