“When we have this analyzed, Mr. Cantrell, I’ll bet my career we find at least several million dollars in there. Unbelievable. This guy burned everything he had.”
“Are you sure that stuff is real?”
“I’m no expert, but those look pretty damn real to me. The lab will confirm it. They’ll take a fine-toothed comb to everything in the place.”
“Why would he do something like this?”
“That’s the first question I intend to ask him, providing we ever find him. Any ideas on that?”
“Not a clue. You guys are the experts in finding people.”
The cop rubbed his forehead. “So they say, Mr. Cantrell, so they say.”
§
A dozen blocks away, in a part of Derbytown that remained forgotten and forlorn, a solitary figure sat against a brick wall in a litter-strewn alley. His clothes were rags, his hair in wild disarray. A month’s worth of gray stubble was forming itself into a straggly beard.
Just another homeless derelict in a part of town full of them. He was hungry, his stomach churning, but he didn’t know what to do. Instinct told him to make for downtown. It took all his strength to rise to his feet. On wobbly legs, he began wandering in that direction.
Where there were people, there would be food. And how are you going to find it, hmmmm? Beg? Steal? Rummage through trash cans?
For all his financial acumen, for all the business skills he’d spent a lifetime honing, today Stuart Brown found himself as confused and helpless as an infant.
8
There must have been thousands of grams of cholesterol in the feast before him.
Janice had gone all out to impress this Friday night, planning the dinner with impeccable taste and richness—mussels on the shell in a rich butter garlic sauce, fois gras and beef tenderloin. It was presented with silver, linen and crystal, the latter containing a rare vintage French Bordeaux.
Bill Sloane silently counted calories in his head. He’d been to his cardiologist once again, just that afternoon. As always, the doctor had assured him that his cholesterol levels and blood pressure were fine, exceptional in fact.
He believed none of it, of course.
Janice’s appearance reflected the elegant presentation. Her hair was freshly coifed at the finest salon in the city, her makeup impeccable. She wore a designer slit skirt that revealed a generous length of thigh; the diamond necklace he’d given her on their fifth anniversary; the black satin pumps that never failed to seduce him.
“It’s wonderful, darling,” he said, sipping the wine. “We could have gone out and . . . ”
She flashed a kitten smile and put a finger to his lips.
“Tonight, sweetheart, you’re dining at the best place in town.”
“And with the sexiest lady in town . . . ”
“I want tonight to be perfect, Bill. In every way.”
He smiled, retrieving a mussel from its shell. It was delicious, but as it slipped down his throat, he wondered how many minutes on the treadmill it would take to wear it off.
Janice enjoyed watching him indulge himself. She was happy, for the moment at least. Bill was here, enjoying himself; they had the whole night ahead of them. All to themselves.
The moment was shattered by the shrill beep of Bill’s cell phone.
“I’m sorry, darling . . . ” he pulled out the device, flipping it open. He quickly read the text message, deleted it, and returned it to his coat pocket.
He made no mention of the call, resuming his meal.
Janice let it slide for a few minutes, but that was all.
“Who was that, Bill? Who would be texting you at . . . ” She glanced at her watch. “ . . . eight thirty p.m. on a Friday evening? A client, perhaps? A
legal assistant . . .
?”
Bill recognized the tone. The soft, purry questions were only the start. He knew the pattern of her progression only too well.
“Nothing to be concerned about,” he smiled, putting his fork back onto the plate.
“But I
am
concerned, Bill.” Her tone went up a notch. “Why can’t you tell me who it was?”
Janice glanced at her empty glass and began to pour herself more wine. She changed her mind and went instead for the decanter in the cabinet. It held scotch. She filled a tumbler with the golden fluid and downed half in one gulp.
“Who was it, Bill?”
He knew she wouldn’t believe it. She never believed it, but he answered anyway.
“It was a text message from my doctor, Janice. My cardiologist. That’s all.”
“Oh, your cardiologist again. He sure seems to call you a lot, doesn’t he?”
“You know I’ve been going weekly. You know I’m worried.”
“Yeah, you’re worried.” She took another slug of her drink.
“But I’m the one who should be worried, shouldn’t I? How do you do it, Bill? How do manage to disguise those incoming messages and phone calls? Do you have some sort of secret code or something?”
“Janice, you’re getting . . . ”
“Don’t say it again! I’m not hysterical, Bill! I just deserve the truth. I should be worth at least that much to you, or am I just a piece of shit that you’re tired of?”
“Janice, please . . . ”
She didn’t hear the rest of his sentence. It amazed her how goddamn handsome he was, despite his age. The women called him the “silver fox” down at the office. He only grew more attractive with each passing year. Janice knew she couldn’t say the same for herself. She wasn’t unattractive, but she’d gained a few pounds here and there over the past few years; needed rinse to keep the dreaded gray out of her hair, and, despite using the most expensive creams and ointments on the market, the lines on her face were becoming impossible to hide.
“Don’t you ever get tired of lying, Bill? Come on, grow up! You’re not in the courtroom. You’re with me. There’s no jury, no judge. For God’s sake, just tell me the truth for once.”
She feigned a smile. “You’ll feel better, I promise.”
“Janice, let’s not ruin a wonderful night.” He sounded tired. “I’ve told you over and over that I’m not hiding anything from you. I love you.”
He was thinking something rather different as he spoke. He was thinking that he should have known better; that this supposedly romantic interlude at home was really nothing more than an elaborate set-up. She’d baited him, only to ask the same old ridiculous questions, with the same old equally ridiculous accusations. This was really great—first a heart attack for a meal and then, for the coup-de-grace, a cardiac argument to finish it all off.
Bill took a sip of wine and suddenly realized that telling her the truth might be the best thing after all.
“You want the truth? Okay, I’m going to give it to you. There is no girlfriend, Janice, no mistress, no crushes, no secret encoded phone calls or text messages. Nothing. But there
is
something. For the past few months, I’ve become
scared
. Terrified, in fact. I’ve been thinking a lot about my father. You know how old he was when he died, and you know how he died. It was a massive heart attack, Janice, at the age of 66 years. And do you know why?”
She shook her head mockingly.
“He ignored the warning signs; too much of a hero to take one hour away from work to visit the goddamn doctor. He could have been alive to this day. I’m not going to let that happen to me! I’m 65 now, and I’m already getting the warning signs—chest pains, difficulty breathing, a tingly feeling in my arm. I know it’s creeping up on me, but I’m too young to die.
“So here’s the big dark secret, Janice, the same one I’ve told you over and over and over: I’ve been going to the cardiologist. Every week, like clockwork. And every week, I get the same response. I’m fine, I’m fit as a horse, I’ll live another twenty years! But I don’t believe it. I
feel
the truth, right here in my chest. And I’m not going to go down without a fight. That’s the whole story, may God strike me dead.”
Janice took a languid drink of scotch and flashed him a warm, reassuring smile. She rose from her seat and approached him, planting a warm kiss on his lips, running her fingers through his silvery hair. For a moment, just a moment, Bill believed that she believed. She returned to her side of the table.
“Is that the best you can do, Bill?” she purred in a warm tone that chilled him to the bone.
Although disappointed, he wasn’t really surprised. He was condemned to live with a woman who had gone mad with paranoid jealousy. As an experienced lawyer, he knew the difference between logic and emotion; between someone who lies and someone who suffers from delusion. Janice, sadly, was among the latter.
He shook his head and closed his eyes, preparing himself for the verbal onslaught that he knew was coming.
It did, like a tempest.
Janice’s voice rose to a shrill, accusatory pitch, the high ends of her syllables breaking into tortuous little shrieks. Her eyes were wide, her nostrils flared, spittle flew from the side of her mouth.
Through it all, Bill did his best to tune her out. It wasn’t easy, but after a while, all he heard was noise. The individual epithets were inaudible, buried beneath the static of her harangue. He just hoped it would end soon.
After some time, he opened his eyes. They were immediately attracted to a flashing red light in the distance—strangely reminiscent of an ambulance’s flashing red lights. He peered into the kitchen, noticed that it was the digital clock on the counter. Had there been a power outage? The red light began to blur, then other things too: the kitchen, the hallway; even Janice’s contorted face across the table. He became oblivious to everything—the shrieking, the smashing plates, the overturned vases.
Oh God . . . was this it? He’d often wondered how it might start . . .
Even as the thought entered his mind, Bill felt the pang in his chest; a shortness of breath, the strange ache in his left arm. He sensed that it was going to be a big one—a killer—and desperately hoped that someone would be there to rescue him.
The son of a bitch wasn’t even listening anymore, just . . . sitting there like a lump, his eyes closed, shaking his head like a damn baboon.
Liar, cheat; pathetic gutless coward!
Janice didn’t even know what she was saying anymore, her voice distant and disembodied, functioning of its own accord. The words were nothing but noise; white static or animal chatter, pouring from her like poison from a lanced boil.
Her focus blurred, her sense of orientation faded. She felt drunk, far more than she should have been on only two scotch and waters.
Where . . . where was she? What had she been doing . . . ?
She opened her eyes, finding herself in the entrance to a large motel room. The carpet was white and thick, the lights low, with a soft pink cast. She heard the distant strains of lounge music, and low voices, whispering nearby . . .
Bill was somewhere else too.
It might have been his office building. It might have been his doctor’s office. It was a room, a place, but nothing looked familiar.
A sharp pain in his chest forced his head back. He felt himself falling, from a chair perhaps, striking the hard floor. There were explosions in his head—white fireworks—an outrageous roaring in his ears, like he was standing in front of Niagara Falls.
Janice crept toward the bedroom, making no noise on the thick carpet. Now she could discern two distinct voices—a man and a woman. They were talking low, and giggling. Obviously enjoying each other. There was also the sound of clinking glass—a bottle of champagne being poured.
She peered around the corner of the bedroom door and was not at all surprised at what she saw:
Bill was in bed, nude from the waist up. Sitting on the edge, a glass of champagne in her hand, was a blonde. She was nude, buxom; no older than 22. The woman took a sip of champagne, turned to Janice, licked her lips and smiled.
He felt and heard movement all around him, but he couldn’t see it. Those damn white fireworks were still going off like a thousand fourth of Julys in his head.
Bill heard the clank of metal, the excited voices of men working. They were speaking in technical jargon—medical, perhaps—that he couldn’t understand.
He felt himself being lifted and then slid, or wheeled, into a small space. He still couldn’t see, but he could
smell
—antiseptic, medical, sterile.
The pain in his chest was now intolerable. He would have screamed, if only he could.
She was suddenly calm.
She knew what to do now.
Somehow, the blonde no longer existed. There was only Bill, lying luxuriously in the ridiculous heart-shaped bed with an obscene mirror high above it. He looked at her smugly, as if daring her to do something about it.
She felt something in her hand. She had no idea how it got there; long, cold, and very sharp, matching the smile that spread across her face.
Bill was suddenly able to see. He saw the technicians tearing open his shirt, rudely applying some sort of device to his chest, smelled the rubber of the oxygen mask covering his face. He saw the lurid red glow of the ambulance lights outside the tiny window on the back door as it hurtled through the night.
Then pain.
The earlier pangs had been mere hints of this. Paralyzing, indescribable agony, all thought and personality swept away beneath it.
Real. This is real.
And not only real:
reality,
the same reality whose revelation he’d so long feared. At last, it had made itself known, and now, there was nothing to obscure or deny it.
Shuddering, he let it take him, sinking into a condition where all notions of his former life dissolved, where self was picked apart by cold surgeon’s hooks and scalpels. Death, once the ultimate terror, became something prayed for; the only desire, or hope of salvation.
Be quick, be quick! He begged.
But it was not.
§
All was quiet in the Sloanes’ flat.
Aside from a few broken plates and overturned glasses, the dining room almost appeared normal.