The Old Man

by Thomas Perry

  He persisted. “I also want you to remember that when I die I want you to find a man again. Get married. Preferably to somebody better than I am.”

  “Of course,” she said. “And I want you to do that too, if I die. I don’t expect you to be celibate. That’s just stupid.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “Maybe I’ll start scouting the talent out there just in case you’re no longer with us.”

  “You do,” Anna said, “and I guarantee you’ll be the first to die.”

  He could see the expression on her face as she punched his arm. He wondered what she’d say about Zoe. He thought he knew, but he wondered if he was just telling himself to believe what made him happier. Zoe was exactly the sort of woman Anna always admired—pretty, elegant, accomplished but not overly proud about it. He frowned. The one thing that would have disgusted Anna was that he had not slept with Zoe for some straightforward reason—a crush, or even simple sexual attraction. He’d been using her as a blind, for his own protection.

  “You’re thinking about her right now, aren’t you?”

  He turned to look at Zoe.

  “Your wife. It’s okay. I was thinking about my ex-husband after I got up this morning. The sex made it inevitable. I’m pretty sure we weren’t thinking the same things, though.” She frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “That was scary.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were exactly right. It’s like one of those magic tricks that’s just a little bit too good.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I warned you that I’ve been thinking about you.” She took out her phone and looked at the time on the display. “Do you think Dave and Carol have had enough for now?”

  He looked at the dogs. They had stopped paying attention to the squirrels and were lying on the grass a few feet away. “They look that way.”

  “Then let’s start back. I can get in a couple of hours of practice and do some chores while you do whatever you need to do.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Do you want to stop on the way home to pick up some take-out food for lunch?”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m starting a diet today. Salad for lunch.”

  “You don’t need to go on a diet,” he said. “You look—”

  “Shush,” she said. “You’re going to be my diet inspiration. For the first time in quite a while, I’ll know there’s somebody who will see if I have a fat ass.”

  “It’s always nice to be of service.” They began to walk, and the dogs waited a few seconds and then got up to overtake them.

  The first thing Caldwell had done when he moved in to the apartment was to lock his bedroom door and go through his belongings to pick out things he didn’t want Zoe to see. He didn’t know much about her at the time, but he’d been fairly sure she was not someone who would go up into the crawl space above the ceiling. The access trap was in the ceiling of his closet. He stood on a chair, pushed up the square of wood that closed off the crawl space, and placed a few things up there—the two pistols, the spare ammunition and magazines, money, false identification packets.

  He knew that curiosity about him was something that came with intimacy. She would be tempted to look around in his room, maybe when he wasn’t present. She might even feel that she had the natural right.

  He was sure he had made himself reasonably safe from her curiosity, but when he came home from the walk, he got up on the chair again and checked to be sure Zoe had not opened the crawl space. Then he and the dogs went out into the living room and listened to her practice. His daughter, Emily, had played, but the only practice she had time for now was the medical kind. Emily had played in that way she had of doing things well because she did them hard. Zoe was the sort of person the piano had been invented for.

  He sat back in the big chair and read while Zoe played. The dogs seemed to like the sounds except when they were too loud. From time to time Caldwell would look up from his book and let his eyes linger on Zoe as long as he could do it without her noticing. She was intent on her playing. It was a difficult Mendelssohn piece he remembered her telling him was called Variations sérieuses. And she was serious. She kept at it for a couple of hours, taking on one passage at a time, repeating it over and over until she owned that passage, and then moving on to the next.

  When she stopped, she looked up and caught him. “Do I look weird when I practice?”

  “Not at all. Actually, when you’re in your head and forget you’re not alone you look your best.”

  “My daughter is coming to visit.”

  “When?”

  “Friday night. As soon as she finishes an exam, she’s taking a plane to Midway. I was afraid to tell you.”

  “I knew when I moved in that she’d come sometime. You even reminded me this morning.”

  “I was sort of studying you to see your reaction.”

  “Why be afraid?”

  She shrugged. “Another person around, and so on. Two of us with high, girly voices to set your teeth on edge.” She paused. “And, it’s kind of an inconvenient time, while we’re sort of getting used to each other.”

  “It’s absolutely fine. I’d like to meet her.”

  “There’s actually another reason. I was kind of hoping she could stay in your spare room.”

  “That’s fine too. I haven’t figured out what to do with it yet anyway. I’ve been thinking of putting in a handball court, or maybe an Argentinian tapas restaurant. Small plates don’t take up much space. But either of those could take months. How long is she staying?”

  She said, “Is a week too long?”

  “Of course not, unless she’s a terrible person. You said she wasn’t.”

  “I’ll swear to it,” she said.

  “All right.” He knew he was adding to the danger, agreeing to have another set of eyes scrutinizing him. But he also knew that Zoe would be grateful for his cooperation, and if he got through the visit, her gratitude would make him safer.

  Friday came and during the day Zoe was bustling around putting linens on the bed in the spare room and cooking things for her daughter. At about five o’clock he came into the kitchen and slapped her bottom. She spun around in surprise. “What the fuck?” she said.

  “You said I shouldn’t do that while she’s here, so I thought you must be expecting it other times. I thought I’d get it out of the way.”

  She kissed him and patted his cheek. “Thank you, Peter.” She went back to stirring her sauce.

  He said, “I’ll go out to a restaurant tonight, and let you two be together. It’ll also help us look more convincing as just roommates. Let me know when her plane comes in so I can be out of here by then.”

  “Seven thirty is my best guess for her to reach here.”

  “I’ll feed the dogs and take them out for their walk now.”

  The walk took them the next couple of hours, to a few places where they hadn’t been before, so he used the leashes. He felt comfortable walking them tonight. An older man walking a pair of matched mutts was not especially interesting to people. The new route also gave him a chance to add to his familiarity with the area.

  Whenever he was out, he was looking for signs that someone was studying him too closely or following him. He was now operating on the theory that the men who had tried to kill him had not been sent by any part of the government. There would have been no reason for government people not to do what they did best—put on bulletproof vests and jackets that said POLICE or FBI or something, arrive in numbers, kick down his door, and arrest him. He was not exactly guilty of stealing the money, but he was close enough to guilty for a legitimate conviction.

  No, these had to be people who had something else in mind. Maybe they wanted to kill him for revenge, or to give themselves lots of time to search his house for account numbers and take the missing money. He had seen three of them briefly, but he hadn’t been able to get any of them to speak, so he hadn’t detected an accent. He hadn’t had time to try foreign languages. They’d ha
d no identification, no phones, no tattoos, not even any jewelry. But they had been very professional, and that made him uneasy.

  He brought the dogs home and found that the daughter had not yet arrived. He kissed Zoe, assured her that the sauce she’d made for the chicken breasts was excellent, and left.

  His car had not been driven for a couple of days, so he took it into the city to the restaurant. All the way, he kept checking for cars that might be following him. He doubled back three times to be sure, and then had the parking attendants take his car so there would be someone watching it while he had dinner.

  The restaurant was called Le Meilleur, and it might not have been the best, but the name wasn’t a pathetic boast. It was far better than most. He spent a couple of hours on an excellent meal, a dessert of fruit, and a glass of Armagnac. Then he drove out to the suburbs and stopped at a grocery store for supplies. He wasn’t sure whether he was now allowed to buy groceries for both of them, at least while the daughter was visiting, but he was still responsible for feeding himself and his dogs. The only thing he added that he wouldn’t usually buy was four bottles of good wine.

  When he had put his car in the garage, he climbed the back stairs and went inside. As he came in the door, Zoe called out, “Is that a burglar?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But I’m not working tonight.” He put his grocery bags on the floor and began to load the perishable food into the refrigerator. A moment later, Zoe appeared in the doorway, and a few feet behind her was a girl about twenty-three years old with long, blond hair, but bright blue eyes like Zoe’s. Zoe said, “Peter, this is my daughter, Sarah.”

  Caldwell looked at her, and noted that she was the girl in the photographs, only a little older, and that she was more like her mother in person. Her movements and posture were the same. “Hi,” she said.

  He smiled as sincerely as he could. “Hello, Sarah,” he said. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  “I know. You’ve heard so much about me,” Sarah said.

  “Not that much, really,” said Peter. “I got the impression that your mother is very proud of you, and has been looking forward to seeing you. Both are good things. And she said you were in school.”

  “Law school,” she said. “At UCLA. Second year. This is my spring break.”

  “Great,” he said. “I hope you’ll enjoy it. The weather has been unseasonably good for this time of year, so it’s good timing.”

  “What? No lawyer jokes?”

  He shook his head. “Not for a second-year student. You will have heard all of mine during your first year. Have you met the dogs?”

  “Yes. My mother introduced us. They’re lovely.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I hope you’re not allergic or anything.”

  “No,” she said.

  Zoe said, “Okay, Peter. We’ll leave you alone now and let you put away your food.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll just finish this and then take Carol and Dave out for a bit. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sarah.”

  The two women went back to the living room, and the dogs appeared in the kitchen just as he put the last of the cans into the pantry and closed the door. He took the leashes off the hook, snapped them on the dogs’ collars, and took them out the kitchen door and down the back stairs.

  They walked the neighborhood for a few blocks, feeling a night chill that reminded him that spring hadn’t quite closed the door on winter yet. A late snow was a possibility that didn’t seem as remote tonight.

  The man simply came into existence forty feet behind him. When Caldwell had last looked no one had been there, but now he heard the footsteps. The dogs took notice too; their ears turned backward to listen. The footsteps quickened and the dogs wheeled around to face the man, so Caldwell turned too.

  The man was only a silhouette at first, striding toward Caldwell. The shape was young—slim, supple, and fast. When Caldwell saw him coming, he stepped off the sidewalk and pulled back on the leashes to prepare to let the man pass. But as he did, he saw the man reach into his jacket pocket and grasp something. As the man walked straight toward Peter his hand emerged from his pocket. He passed through a splash of light from a streetlamp and Caldwell saw the gleam on the finish of the revolver.

  Peter said, “Fassen.” Then he let go of both leashes. The two dogs dashed and then leapt at once, just as the young man began to lift his hand.

  Peter charged at him, but the dogs were much faster. They jumped high, baring their teeth at the man’s neck. The man stopped and leaned his body back to avoid being bitten, but that put him off balance. The weight of their bodies pushed him backward.

  Peter reached him, struck the young man’s forearm down, lifted a knee to his groin, and then landed a combination of quick punches to his face and throat. The light was dim, but Peter could see his skin was black.

  The man reeled and Peter clutched his wrist and brought his forearm down over his knee to make him drop the pistol, then retained his grip to jerk the man’s arm and bring his unprotected face forward to meet a hard punch. He used the back of his calf and swept the man off his feet onto the pavement, where he landed on his back and hit the back of his head. The dogs clamped their jaws on his arms and held him there.

  The army had trained Caldwell as a hand-to-hand fighter and he had continued his training through his adult life, but he knew that he never would have prevailed against this opponent if the dogs hadn’t done most of the fighting. The man was too fast, too young, and too strong.

  Caldwell snatched the gun off the ground and aimed it as the man began to recover his wind and his consciousness. Caldwell used the opportunity to get a close look at the man’s face. His attacker was younger than he’d thought. He looked about eighteen. Was this a gang attack or something? Caldwell allowed himself a half second to look up the sidewalk for others, then back at the young man, and then over his shoulder, but there were no signs of other attackers. Caldwell said, “Listen carefully. You get one chance at each question. What’s your name?”

  The boy looked at his arm and the gun. “James Harriman.”

  “Give me your wallet.”

  The young man carefully reached into his back pocket and came back with the wallet. Caldwell took it in his left hand and held it up to catch a little light from a distant streetlamp. The driver’s license had the same name. Caldwell noted that it said he was eighteen. He put a finger into the fold and saw there were twelve dollars, a ten and two ones. This wasn’t an operative or a hired killer searching for him. He was a delinquent teenager trying to rob an old man. “Is this a gang thing?”

  “I needed money.”

  “This is a stupid way to get it.” The shock, the adrenaline, and the exertion were adding heat to his anger, but he fought it down.

  Caldwell took a step back. He tossed the wallet on the young man’s chest. “I’m going to let you go, but I’ll have to keep the gun.”

  The young man looked relieved.

  “But if I ever see you again, I won’t be able to let you go. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said the young man.

  “Okay, then. Get the hell out of here.”

  The young man sat up, put his wallet away, and got to his feet. Then he began to hurry in the direction he had come from.

  “Stop.”

  The young man froze. His hands were up at shoulder height and he didn’t try to look back at him. Caldwell walked up behind him and stuffed the five twenty-dollar bills he was carrying into the boy’s jacket pocket. “Take this money and don’t try to rob anybody else.”

  “All right.” The young man started to walk. He called out, “Thank you.” Then he walked a little faster, and soon he had gained enough distance to break into a run.

  Caldwell waited for about two minutes after the kid was out of sight. Then he turned a corner and moved off too. From time to time he turned down an alley where he would have seen a follower appear if there had been one, and a few times he stopped and crouched beside a porc
h or stood in a closed store’s entrance and watched until he was sure he was alone.

  Just before he reached the neighborhood where he lived, he unloaded the revolver, dropped the bullets in a storm sewer, the frame in a second sewer a distance away, and the cylinder in a big dumpster behind a restaurant. He was shaken by the experience. He had come very close to firing a round into a teenager’s head because he had thought he was a professional killer. He had spent lots of time many years ago acquiring the skills to protect himself. Now he had to learn to reassess the nature of a threat.

  When he reached the apartment it was after midnight. He could hear Zoe and Sarah talking while they watched something on television. He slipped past the living room into the hallway and into his bedroom. Sometime later, he heard Sarah walk past his room, go into the guest room, and close the door. Before he went to bed, he climbed up in the closet again and checked to be sure the guns, money, and identification he’d left were still undiscovered. Everything was intact and undisturbed for now.

  9

  In the morning he woke to the sight of both dogs’ big brown eyes, full of sincerity, staring into his from a few inches away. When he lifted his head, they lifted theirs and rolled to sit up, their tails drumming on the mattress in a syncopated beat.

  “Good morning, Carol. Good morning, Dave.” He sat up too, went into his bathroom, and then came back to the bedroom, drying himself from his shower. It was early, so he decided to take the dogs to the park. He would buy coffee and a pastry at the place where he and Zoe had gone a couple of days ago.

  When he was dressed he went down the front stairs with the dogs to give them a chance to relieve themselves, and then brought them back up the kitchen stairs to have their breakfast.

  He found Sarah sitting at the table beside a plate painted with the bright yellow of an egg yolk and a cup of tea with the bag’s string hanging out of it. In front of her was a laptop computer.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning. I see you’re an early riser,” she said.