Assumed Identity

by David R. Morrell

  “Because of all the people you impersonated?”

  “I told you, I don’t know anything about—”

  “Don’t act so defensive. I’m not trying to get you to admit to anything. You want to stop changing? Why make it so complicated? Why be somebody else? Why not be yourself?”

  Buchanan didn’t answer.

  “You don’t like yourself?”

  Buchanan still didn’t answer.

  “This woman, what was her name?”

  Buchanan hesitated. All his instincts and training warned against revealing information. He prepared to lie.

  Instead he told the truth. “Juana Mendez.”

  “When you knew her, I’m assuming you were on an assignment together.”

  “You know what you can do with your assumptions.”

  “No need to get touchy.”

  “Since the first time I spoke to you, I have never revealed confidential information. Everything I’ve said about my background has been hypothetical, a ‘what if’ scenario. As far as you’re concerned, I’m an instructor in military Special Operations. That’s all I’ve ever admitted to. This has nothing to do with the story you abandoned. I want that understood.”

  “As I said, no need to get touchy.”

  “After you left New Orleans . . .” He told her about his drive to San Antonio, his discovery that both Juana’s and her parents’ homes were under surveillance, and his search of Juana’s records. He omitted all reference to the man he’d killed. “Drummond and Tomez. The files for those names were the only ones that seemed to be missing. Juana was a security specialist. I have to assume those people were clients.”

  “Important enough to need protecting.” Pensive, Holly walked toward the briefcase she’d set on a chair and opened it. “I used the reference system at the Post.”

  “That’s why I had to get in touch with you. I didn’t have access to anyone else who could get the information I needed as quickly as you could.”

  “You know . . .” Holly studied him. “Sometimes you might consider trying to impersonate somebody with tact.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t delude myself that you’d go to all this trouble if you didn’t have something to gain. All the same, it wouldn’t have hurt you if you’d also left the impression that you found me interesting.”

  “Oh. . . . I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted. But if you were this charming with Juana Mendez, it’s no wonder things didn’t work out.”

  “Look, I’m trying to make up for mistakes.”

  Holly didn’t speak for a moment. “Let’s see if this helps. Drummond and Tomez. I had my suspicions, but I wanted to check thoroughly before I made any conclusions.”

  “Drummond is Alistair Drummond,” Buchanan said. “I more or less figured that already. The last name brings him immediately to mind. He’s rich, famous, and powerful enough to fit the profile.”

  “Agreed. I kept checking, but he’s the only Drummond I think we should consider.” Holly pulled a book and several pages in a file folder out of the briefcase. “Bedtime reading. His biography and some printouts of recent stories about him. I’d have given you his autobiography, but it’s such a public-relations whitewash that it’s useless for dependable information. Certainly it doesn’t show any skeletons in closets, and in Drummond’s case, skeletons in closets might not be a figure of speech.”

  “What about Tomez?” Buchanan asked.

  “That was harder. I’m a Frank Sinatra fan myself.”

  “What’s he got to do with . . . ?”

  “Jazz. Big bands. Tony Bennett. Billie Holiday. Ella Fitzgerald.”

  “I still don’t see what . . .”

  “Listened to much Puccini lately?”

  Buchanan looked blank.

  “Verdi? Rossini? Donizetti? Not ringing any bells? How about titles? La Bohème. La Traviata. Lucia di Lammermoor. Carmen.”

  “Operas,” Buchanan said.

  “Give the man a cigar. Operas. I guess you’re not a devotee.”

  “Well, my taste in music . . .” Buchanan hesitated. “I don’t have any taste in music.”

  “Come on, everybody likes some kind of music.”

  “My characters do.”

  “What?”

  “The people I . . . Heavy metal. Country western. Blue-grass. It’s just that I never got around to impersonating anybody who liked opera.”

  “Buchanan, you’re scaring me again.”

  “For the past week, I’ve been thinking of myself as a man named Peter Lang. He likes Barbra Streisand.”

  “You really are scaring me.”

  “I told you, I’m changeable.” Buchanan-Lang smiled oddly. “But no one I’ve ever been had an interest in opera. If he had, believe me I’d be expert enough on the subject to give you a lecture. What does opera have to do with the name Tomez?”

  “Maria Tomez,” Holly said. “The name occurred to me immediately but not as strongly as Alistair Drummond. I wanted to make sure there weren’t any famous or rich or powerful people named Tomez I didn’t know about.” Holly took another book and file from the briefcase. “And indeed there are some, but they’re not pertinent here. Maria Tomez—to quote from her press releases—is the most controversial, charismatic, and compelling mezzo-soprano in the opera world today. As far as I’m concerned, she’s the only candidate for your attention.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because for the past nine months, Alistair Drummond and Maria Tomez have, despite the difference in their ages, been an item.” Holly paused for effect. “And Maria Tomez disappeared two weeks ago.”

  9

  Buchanan leaned forward. “Disappeared?”

  “That’s what her ex-husband claims. Don’t you read the newspapers?” Holly asked.

  “The past few days, I haven’t exactly had time.”

  “Well, this morning, the ex-husband went to the New York City police department and insisted that she’d been missing for at least the past two weeks. To make sure he wasn’t treated as a crank, he brought along a couple dozen newspaper and television reporters. It turned into quite a circus.”

  Buchanan shook his head. “But why would he think he’d be treated as a crank?”

  “Because he and Maria Tomez had a very public and very nasty divorce. He’s been bad-mouthing her ever since. He recently filed a lawsuit against her, claiming she lied about her financial assets when they divided their property during the divorce. He insists he has a right to ten million dollars. Naturally, the police might think she dropped out of sight to avoid him. But the ex-husband swears he honestly believes something has happened to her.”

  Holly gave Buchanan a page from the previous day’s Washington Post and a photocopy of a profile in the Post’s Sunday magazine from five years earlier. Buchanan scanned the newspaper story and the profile. The ex-husband, Frederick Maltin, had been an agent who discovered Maria Tomez when she was twenty-two, starring in a production of Tosca in Mexico City. While a few male Hispanics, Placido Domingo, for example, had achieved significant careers in opera, no Hispanic female had ever had similar success. Until Maria Tomez. Indeed, despite her talent and fiery stage presence, the fact that she was Mexican had worked against her, relegating her to regional operas, mostly in South America. Traditionally, female opera stars got their training in Europe and the United States. For Tomez to have been trained in Mexico meant that she was combating a professional prejudice when she auditioned for major opera companies in the United States and Italy.

  But Frederick Maltin, who had been on vacation in Mexico, had been enchanted from the moment he first heard Maria Tomez sing. He had sent flowers to her dressing room after the performance, along with his business card and his Mexico City telephone number. When he received a call the next morning, he considered it significant that the call had come so early and that it was Maria herself who called, not her representative. Which tended to suggest that she either didn’t have a representative
or else didn’t have confidence that the representative would contact him at her request. Professionally speaking, she was available.

  Maltin invited her to lunch. They continued their conversation after an afternoon rehearsal and later, at dinner, after an evening performance of a different opera, Rigoletto. As Maltin repeatedly emphasized, in those days Maria’s schedule had been brutal, and he had sworn to her that if she agreed to let him represent her, he would change all that. He would make her a worldwide opera phenomenon. He would arrange it so that she performed only where and when she wanted to. Two years later, he had achieved his promise.

  They married in the interim, and working relentlessly on her behalf, advising her about her clothes, her hairstyle, and her makeup, insisting that she lose weight, hiring a physical trainer to give her body definition, calling in every favor owed to him by anyone of influence in the opera world, Maltin promoted Maria Tomez as a singer in the passionate tradition of Maria Callas and Teresa Stratas. The former was Italian, the latter Greek, and Maltin’s genius was in making his client’s weakness her strength, in making audiences associate Maria Tomez with those divas because of a common denominator they shared, their ethnic origins. For Maria Tomez at least, it suddenly became fashionable to be Hispanic. Out of curiosity, European audiences came to hear her sing. Impressed, they stayed. Enthusiastic, they kept attending her other performances. After Frederick Maltin finished creating her public image, Maria Tomez never had any performance that wasn’t a sellout.

  Buchanan rubbed his throbbing forehead. “This guy Maltin sounds like a cross between Svengali and Professor Henry Higgins.”

  “That’s why the marriage failed,” Holly said. “He wouldn’t stop controlling her. He supervised everything she did. He dominated so much that she felt smothered. She endured it for as long as she could. Then fifteen years after she met him, she abruptly left him. It’s almost as if something inside her snapped. She retired from performing. She went into seclusion, making occasional public appearances, mostly keeping to herself.”

  “This started . . .” Buchanan picked up the newspaper article to jog his memory. “She divorced him six months ago, a few months after she took up with Alistair Drummond. But why would a comparatively young woman—what is she, thirty-seven now?—choose a man in his eighties?”

  “Maybe Drummond makes no demands. I know that seems out of character for him. But maybe he just wants to shelter her in exchange for the pleasure of her company.”

  “So she went into seclusion, and now her ex-husband claims she’s disappeared altogether.” Buchanan frowned. “He could be wrong, or he could be lying. He’s an expert in publicity, after all. He could be trying to attract so much attention that to get any peace, she’ll have to deal with his claims about the property settlement.”

  “Or maybe something really happened to her.”

  “But what?” Buchanan became impatient. “And what does that have to do with Juana? Was Juana protecting her? Are they both hiding somewhere? Are they . . . ?” He was about to say dead, but the word stuck in his throat, making him feel choked.

  Someone knocked on the door. Buchanan spun.

  “Room service,” a man’s voice said from the hallway.

  Buchanan breathed out. “Okay.” He glanced toward Holly and lowered his voice. “In case this is trouble, take your camera bag and the briefcase. Hide in the closet.”

  Holly’s brow knotted with worry.

  “I think everything will be fine. It’s only a precaution,” Buchanan said. “Here, don’t forget your coat and hat.”

  “I asked you before. How do you stand living this way?”

  After shutting the closet, Buchanan approached the room’s entrance, peering through the small lens in the door, seeing the distorted image of a man in a hotel uniform next to a room-service cart in the hallway.

  Buchanan no longer had his handgun. Having traveled with it from Fort Lauderdale to Washington to New Orleans to San Antonio, he’d finally been forced to throw it down a storm drain. His trainers had emphasized—never keep a weapon that links you to a crime. Plus, the urgency of his self-imposed deadline had required him to use a commercial airline to get back to Washington, and he wasn’t about to risk getting caught with a handgun in an airport.

  With no other weapon but his body, Buchanan concealed his tension and opened the door. “Sorry I took so long.”

  “No problem.” The man from room service wheeled in the cart. A minute later, he’d turned the cart into a table and set out the food.

  Wary about having to compromise his hands, Buchanan signed the bill and added a 15 percent tip.

  “Thanks, Mr. Duffy.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Buchanan locked the door behind the waiter. Slowly, he relaxed and exhaled.

  Holly emerged from the closet, her features strained. “I guess in your line of work, you have to distrust everybody.”

  “I was taught early—a person’s either on the team or not.”

  “And if not?”

  “There aren’t any innocent bystanders.”

  “Cynical.”

  “Practical.”

  “And what about me?”

  Buchanan took a long time answering. “You’re not a bystander.”

  10

  Buchanan had ordered pasta primavera for both of them. Now, instead of eating, he glanced at his watch, saw that it was ten o’clock, and went to the phone. Before leaving San Antonio, he and Pedro Mendez had chosen a pay phone near where Pedro worked. Buchanan had instructed Pedro to be waiting next to the phone at nine—ten o’clock in Washington. An enemy could not have anticipated that location and eavesdropped on the line when Buchanan called to make certain that there hadn’t been any trouble after the prisoners were released.

  Pedro had been told to use English if he was being pressured. To Buchanan’s relief, he used Spanish.

  “Any problems?”

  “The men followed the agreement,” Pedro said. “When I let them go, they did not harm us.”

  Buchanan imagined the courage that Pedro and Anita had required in order to go through with their part of the bargain.

  “But I do not think they are far away,” Pedro said. “I have to believe that they are nearby, watching us.”

  “I think so, too,” Buchanan said. “I never believed them when they said they’d leave town. Don’t remove the microphones from your house. Do everything as usual. The two things protecting you are that they believe you don’t know anything about your daughter’s whereabouts and that they need you alive and well in case Juana tries to get in touch with you. If they harm you, they’re destroying a potential link with her. Pedro, I need to ask you a question. It might have something to do with Juana, but I want you to think carefully before you let me ask it. Because if it helps explain why Juana disappeared, you’ll be putting yourself in danger. You’ll have exactly the kind of information that whoever’s trying to find Juana needs to know.”

  The line was silent for a moment.

  “I don’t have a choice,” Pedro said. “If this is about my daughter, if it might help her, I must do my best to answer your question.”

  Buchanan’s respect for Pedro kept increasing. “Does the name Maria Tomez mean anything to you? Did Juana ever mention her? Does Maria Tomez have anything to do with—?”

  “Of course,” Pedro said. “The singer. I don’t know anything about opera, but I saw her perform. A year ago, she came to San Antonio to sing at HemisFair.” Pedro referred to one of San Antonio’s main attractions. The site of the 1968 world’s fair, it had been converted into a cultural-athletic complex, linked to the city by a canal. “I remember because that was one of the few times Juana told us anything about her work. She was hired to do the security for the performance. In fact, she gave us front-row seats. I didn’t want to go, but Anita made me, and I was surprised that I liked it. I don’t remember the name of the opera. It was about students living in slums. Maria Tomez played somebody who was dyi
ng from a disease. The words were in Italian, but Spanish is close enough to Italian that I understood. Maria Tomez sang like an angel. I was stunned. But what does this have to do with Juana and what happened to her? How would an opera singer who came here a year ago . . . ?”

  “I don’t know yet. Listen carefully, Pedro. From time to time, I’ll phone your office to make sure no one’s bothering you. I’ll use the name Ben Clark. Can you remember that? Ben Clark. I’ll ask about a Ford you’re supposed to be repairing. If you tell me it’ll cost a lot of money to fix, I’ll know you’re in trouble, and I’ll get there as soon as I can to help you.”

  “. . . Ben Clark.”

  “Right. Take care, Pedro.”

  “Jeff Walker, whoever you are, thank you.”

  Exactly, Buchanan thought as he set down the phone. Whoever I am.

  When he turned, he saw Holly watching him.

  “What’s the matter? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Ben Clark? A Ford? In this room, you’re Charles Duffy. Downstairs, you’re Mike Hamilton. You mentioned something about Peter Lang. That doesn’t include . . . How the hell do you keep it all straight?”

  “Sometimes I wonder.” To avoid the topic, he sat down and started eating, not realizing how ravenous he was until the first bite of food hit his stomach. During his phone call, the pasta had gotten cold. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t get enough of it.

  Holly set down her fork. “You’ve been constantly on the go since you left the hospital.”

  Buchanan kept eating, trying to ignore his headache.

  “Don’t you think it’s time you slowed down?”

  “Can’t. As soon as we finish eating, I’ll get you out of the hotel. Then I have to take a trip.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s better if you don’t know.”

  “You don’t trust me? After I proved I want to help? You said I was on the team.”

  “It’s not a matter of trust. What you don’t know won’t hurt you—and it won’t hurt me if . . .”