On Borrowed Time

by David Rosenfelt

  I didn’t have the heart to say no, nor did I have the inclination to. I enjoyed being around Allie, though I was aware it was because it almost felt like being with Jen. I knew that wasn’t particularly healthy, and that at some point I’d have to sort it out, but I had a list of things to sort that were ahead of it in line.

  “Where do we start?” she asked.

  “I have a cell phone bill which was paid, but which I have no record of paying. There are quite a few numbers I’m not familiar with; maybe some of them have to do with the story I was chasing.”

  She smiled. “I’m great on the phone.”

  I returned the smile. “My place or yours?”

  “Yours. There’s only one phone line in my hotel room.”

  “Then you’ll have to excuse me; I haven’t exactly been a tidy housekeeper lately. The place is a mess; it’s been a mess since—” I caught myself before I said Jen left, but Allie knew what I was going to say, and she smiled her understanding.

  “Then I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll have another platter of Jewish fish while you go home and clean up.”

  “Really?’

  She laughed. “Of course not. Let’s go.”

  There is no such thing as a private conversation. Anyone who thinks there is such a thing is wrong. Juice knew that better than anyone.

  Anything someone says can be heard by anyone who wants to hear it. All it takes is money and technical savvy, and the Stone obviously had plenty of both.

  Juice sat in his car on Fifty-third Street and Seventh Avenue, in front of a Starbucks, the motor running and the hazard lights on. The car’s presence there was certainly something that was not unusual in New York, and not likely to attract attention. Nor would anyone have paid any attention to the small device on the open window, pointing toward the Carnegie Deli.

  The device was sending an invisible laser to the window of the Carnegie. Juice didn’t know that much about how it worked, but he knew that it “blanketed” the window on impact, and maintained the effect as long as it was turned on.

  The data that the device recorded was sent back directly to the Stone and his people for analysis, and it would be remarkably detailed. It would reveal every single conversation that was taking place within the restaurant, and each one could be isolated. As long as the eavesdropper had a record of the timbre and pitch of the targeted voices, their conversations could be listened to as easily as if he or she were at their table with them. And certainly they had the data about Richard’s voice, and by now Allison’s as well.

  Amazingly, the device could even paint a visual picture of the inside of the room, based on the sound waves. If the Stone wanted, he could learn exactly where everybody was sitting, and where all the furniture, etc., was positioned. It was not something that would be of any interest to him, but it would be there if he wanted it.

  With nothing better to do than sit in the car and wait for Kilmer and the sister to leave, Juice had time to reflect on the potential a device like this inherently possessed. If it were used to target an expensive restaurant during a busy lunch or dinnertime, the possibilities were limitless. In private conversations, businesspeople would be discussing lucrative secrets, and personal indiscretions would be revealed in abundance.

  The potential for profit by capitalizing on the business secrets or stock tips was great, as was the opportunity to use what was gleaned in the personal conversations for blackmail. Of course, Juice was thinking about this in the abstract, since money was never going to be a problem for him again.

  Back to the matter at hand. Juice did not expect that the information garnered from this particular effort would be terribly enlightening. Since Richard’s apartment and phone were bugged, Juice already knew that he had uncovered the phone bill, and was now going to check the numbers. That was most likely what they were discussing now.

  Dealing with the phone bill had been tricky, and Juice had handled it in the best way possible. But it hadn’t worked; Kilmer was both smart and lucky and had discovered the bill’s existence. Now he might use it to uncover the recent past, and like always, Juice would have to be the one to clean up the mess.

  It would be a hassle that he didn’t need, and it would likely result in more people dying.

  Juice actually shrugged at the thought, and the word that came to mind was the one his niece used when she tried to feign disinterest.

  “Whatever.”

  It was the call Susan Donovan dreaded, but the one she knew would come. Frank had told her otherwise, that he was free and clear, and that they would never come to him. But her fear was about to be realized, and she somehow knew it as soon as she heard the phone ring.

  At first she considered not answering, especially with Frank not at home. If it was who she thought, she didn’t want to make a mistake, and with the pressure she was feeling it was likely that she would do so. But the thought of not knowing for sure was terrible, so she picked it up on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, my name is Allison Tynes,” said the woman’s voice, and the relief that Susan felt was tangible. It was not who she expected; she was wrong to be afraid. “Can you please tell me who I’m speaking with?”

  “Susan Donovan. If you’re selling something—”

  Allie interrupted. “Oh, no, I’m not selling anything. I’m actually calling for Richard Kilmer.…”

  Susan was gripped by panic, so much so that she didn’t hear the next few words that Allie said. She tried to focus, and heard, “… had called this number a while back, and we are retracing his steps, trying to figure out why.”

  “We don’t know Mr. Kilmer,” Susan said.

  “We?”

  Susan immediately realized her mistake, but didn’t know how to compensate for it. “Yes.”

  “Who are you referring to besides yourself?”

  “My … my husband and I.”

  “Is your husband there?” Allie asked. “Might I speak to him?”

  “No … he’s not here.”

  “But you know he doesn’t know Richard Kilmer?”

  “I really can’t speak to you now; I have to go. I’m in the middle of something.”

  “Can you ask your husband to call me when he returns?”

  “Yes. Now I really have to go.”

  Click.

  As soon as she hung up the phone, she picked it back up and dialed her husband. Her hand was shaking so much that she pressed an incorrect button, and had to hang up again. She took a deep breath to calm herself, realized there weren’t enough deep breaths in the world to accomplish the task, and dialed again.

  Frank answered on the second ring. “Donovan.”

  “Frank, he called.”

  “Kilmer?” He asked the question, although the sound of her voice made the answer a foregone conclusion.

  “Yes. It wasn’t actually Kilmer, but someone calling for him. A woman. I don’t remember her name.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She wanted to know if we knew Richard Kilmer. I said we didn’t.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes, I think so,” she said, trying to recall the details. “She asked if you would call her when you got home.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I’m not sure; I might have said you would. But I didn’t get her number.”

  Frank tried to do the calculations in his head. This could end here; the woman might have believed Susan and moved on. It wasn’t likely, though. If Susan sounded this nervous when talking to him, he doubted that she would have sounded otherwise to the woman calling about Kilmer.

  “What are we going to do, Frank?”

  “We’re going to wait; there’s nothing else we can do right now.”

  “We can leave,” she said. “We can pick up right now and leave. We should have done so already; I knew this was going to happen. I told you it was going to happen.”

  “Susan, they can find us wherever we go,” he said.

&n
bsp; “Kilmer? Kilmer will find us?”

  “Kilmer is not our problem.”

  “I think we might have something,” Allie said, as soon as she hung up the phone.

  I was starting to dial another number in what had been appearing to be a series of dead ends, so I put the phone down immediately. “Tell me.”

  “A woman named Susan Donovan said she didn’t know you as soon as I asked. And she said her husband didn’t know you either.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much of a breakthrough,” I pointed out.

  “She volunteered the part about her husband, even though I didn’t ask about him. I had no way of knowing she even had a husband, and he wasn’t home at the time.”

  “That’s it?” I asked, sounding more negative than I intended.

  Allie shook her head. “No, she sounded strange.”

  “Strange how?”

  “Richard, the woman was afraid. I heard it in her voice as soon as I said I was calling for you.”

  “Do we know anything else about her, or her husband?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet; let me scout around online. See what I can find out.”

  It didn’t make sense to me that some woman I didn’t know would have a reason to fear a phone call from me, but Allie seemed to have a strong instinct about it, so I was fine with her following up on it.

  Certainly I wasn’t doing any better; all of the calls I was making were benign and seemed to have nothing to do with either a story I might be working on or Jen’s disappearance.

  For example, I apparently had called a wine shop on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, though I am much more of a beer drinker. And I had placed two calls to Jefferson Auto Parts, a dealership near Damariscotta, Maine. They didn’t have any record of me buying anything from them, and didn’t seem to care much one way or the other. Not exactly suspicious stuff.

  Allie came over, having finished with her own calls, and watched me make the rest of mine. As I always did, I took meticulous notes as I did so.

  “What are you writing?” she asked, trying to read them over my shoulder. My handwriting is indecipherable to anyone but me, so she didn’t have a chance.

  “Nothing important, I’m afraid.”

  “So why the notes?”

  “I’m a journalist. That’s what we do; we write everything down, and then we write about what we wrote.”

  My last call was to a 212 area code, which meant it was located in Manhattan. An answering machine picked up.

  “This is Dr. Philip Garber. If you are calling between the hours of nine A.M. and five P.M., I am likely in session and unable to come to the phone.”

  The message then went on to list numbers to call if it was an emergency, and then an invitation to leave a message for a return call. I left my name and number, and hung up.

  I didn’t have that much to base it on, but based on the tone of voice, the reference to a possible emergency, and the use of the word “session,” I had a hunch that I had reached a psychotherapist’s phone, which was intriguing.

  All I had to do was Google Dr. Garber’s name to know that I was right. Not only was he a shrink, but he was apparently a shrink of some stature: the head of a psychoanalytic institute. There were also a bunch of articles about him being the keynote speaker at some international conference of shrinkdom.

  By this point it came as no surprise to me that I had no recollection of ever talking to, or even hearing of, Dr. Garber. It had already become crystal clear that I only remembered those things that did not happen, while completely blocking out everything that did.

  Nothing else eventful came out of the phone numbers, which was a disappointment to me. I guess I was hoping to reach a number where a receptionist would answer with the perky message, Welcome to the Explanation Institute. Please hold for a counselor who will explain all the insanely bizarre things that have been happening to you.

  Allie had a decidedly different point of view about the day’s events. “I really feel like we’re getting somewhere,” she said.

  It was good for me to have someone with that level of irrationality around. Ever since Jen disappeared, I’d been the lunatic in whichever room I’ve been in. Comments like Allie’s gave me the opportunity to play the cynical realist, which certainly helped me widen my range.

  “Where might we be getting?” I asked.

  “If Julie was with you all that time, then you’re the key. We need to know what happened to you. And now I think we’ve got some leads.”

  “We do?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Susan Donovan and that shrink, Garber.”

  “You realize that they could have nothing to do with this?”

  She looked at me like I was nuts; it’s a look I’d come to recognize. “What good does it do for us to spend time and energy thinking like that?”

  I didn’t have a good answer for that, so I didn’t offer one. Instead, I asked, “Do you need help checking into Susan Donovan?”

  She shook her head. “Not right now. I’ll get started looking online right away. I’m really good on a computer.”

  “Okay; find out why Susan Donovan is afraid of me. You want to grab an early dinner?”

  “You don’t have to babysit me, Richard. I’m not here to take over your life.”

  “Is that a no?”

  She smiled. “Of course not. I just don’t want to become a burden.”

  “That doesn’t seem to be a clear and present danger.”

  “Good,” she said. “So where’s all this great Italian food I hear New York has?”

  I took her to Peppino’s, a terrific Italian restaurant down on Hudson Street in the West Village. It is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of New York restaurants that are simultaneously popular and undiscovered. By that I mean that most New Yorkers have never heard of them, yet they’re always crowded.

  We arrived without a reservation at five-thirty, a time when no self-respecting New Yorker would be having dinner. That’s why we were able to get in, though we were told that there was a reservation for our table at seven-thirty, so we had to be out by then.

  The waiter came over to the table to tell us the specials. It turned out to be a five-minute recitation of at least fifteen dishes, mentioning every ingredient in each dish. His memorization of it was fairly amazing; I kept looking around to see if there was a hidden teleprompter.

  We decided when we sat down that we would try to talk about something other than the person missing from our lives, but that vow lasted less time than it took to recite the specials. Neither of us could think about anything else, so it was only natural that we talk about it.

  We didn’t figure anything out, of course, but it was still the most pleasant evening I had spent in a while. Allie was fun to be with, upbeat but not venturing into the dreaded “perky-land,” and whip-smart. She reminded me so much of Jen, yet surprisingly being with her didn’t increase my pain.

  After dinner, we took a cab back uptown and I dropped her off at her hotel before heading home. On the way, she looked out the window at the busy streets and endless lights and said, “Someday I’m going to love this city.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. Now was not the time that she was free to love anything, not with the constant pain and emptiness we were both feeling.

  When I got back to my apartment, the message light on my phone was flashing 3, but the first one was the only one I cared about.

  “Richard, this is Philip Garber. I’m very glad you called. Please call me back at any hour, or if you prefer, I have an opening tomorrow at eleven A.M., so I could see you in my office. I hope you’re well.”

  I played the message back four times, taking in every nuance. He called me Richard, which indicated to me that he knew me from more than my phone call. He referred to himself as “Philip” rather than “Mr.” or “Dr.” Garber, which felt like another sign of familiarity.

  More importantly, he seemed very pleased to hear from me and anxious to speak with me, which certainly cam
e as a surprise. The fact that he was leaving time open to see me also felt significant, as was the fact that he didn’t bother to give his office address.

  Maybe I’d been there before, even though I didn’t know it. Maybe he’d been my shrink for twenty years. Maybe he was my cousin or brother.

  Maybe Philip Garber would know what was going on with my life.

  The Lexington Institute for Psychoanalytic Training was located in a four-story brownstone on East Sixty-eighth Street, not surprisingly just off Lexington Avenue. It was the kind of building that very, very rich people might call home, and was probably worth many millions, even in a down market. Training shrinks must be profitable.

  I did have a vague feeling that the building was familiar to me, though I had no recollection of ever being there. I considered it possible that there was a memory that was repressed but near the surface. Maybe I could get in touch with it.

  Or maybe not.

  The receptionist told me that Dr. Garber’s office was on the third floor, and that I could either take the spiral staircase or the elevator. The elevator was so small that I figured I couldn’t inhale on the ride up, so I took the stairs. Another receptionist-type person was waiting for me at the top of the stairs, and she brought me directly to Garber’s office.

  Philip Garber was younger than I expected, probably no older than forty. He greeted me with a handshake and a smile that seemed meant to be soothing. “Richard, thanks for coming in. Nice to see you again,” said the man I had never seen before in my life.

  In the hallway right near his office was a coffee machine, and he walked toward it. “Still black with one sugar?” he asked, and I nodded. He definitely knew me.

  I hadn’t really thought about how honest to be with him, but in the moment I decided to lay it all out there. I mean, the guy was a shrink, so he was used to interacting with psychos. Besides, he obviously already had an idea what he was dealing with, from some previous meeting we apparently had.

  “I’ve got to be honest with you, Dr. Garber. I have no recollection of ever meeting you before. Or drinking your coffee. Or being in this building.”