And When She Was Good (21 page)

He leers, another bit of innuendo at her expense. She won't miss these jokes. Heloise wants Paul to tell her something new about his marriage, something she hasn't heard before. “As I said, I understand the practical reasons you stay married. It's only that I would like to believe that there's some comfort there for you, some understanding, that when you do go home, you can sit in silence and be happy.”

“That,” Paul says, finishing off the martini he had been trying to pace through the six-course meal, “depends on the silence. Some are companionable. Some are meaningless. Some feel like I'm in a damn Indiana Jones movie, surrounded by snakes and booby traps, where the slightest movement could be lethal.”

“All my silences are the same,” Heloise says. “That's the thing about one-person silences.”

“Do you live alone, Heloise?”

Here is the curiosity she thought she wanted, even if she always discouraged it. Turns out she doesn't like it. She sips her tea, envying him the drink, but she would never have a drink at midday.

“Sorry,” Paul says. “Did I break a rule there, asking you a personal question?”

“I was trying to do the same thing with you. Break you out of the compartments we've inhabited all these years. A natural thing to do, I guess, as a relationship ends.”

“Are we saying good-bye?”

“Soon. If not today, very soon.”

They clink glasses.

“Of course, if you were a lobbyist, I'd still see you.”

She can't help feeling a flare of hope. “You said it would never work.”

“No, not the way you want it to, no. Best-case scenario? You'd be a joke, Heloise. People would laugh about the beautiful ex-hooker pretending to be a lobbyist.”

“No one laughs now.” She keeps the question mark out of her tone, but it's in her head.

“No, no one laughs now. I guess that's—irony? Human nature? The people who know you and know what you do—they respect you. Your skills and your discretion have earned you far more respect than any lobbyist enjoys. But if you tried to go legit, people would make fun of you.”

“Hardly seems fair.”

“It's not. But you'll have a nice chunk of change when you complete the sale, I think. You could go to law school or underwrite a new business. You'll have lots of options.”

Paul's wrong about that. Options are the one thing that Heloise has never had.

T
hey end up taking a room. Why not? As Heloise noted, it's good-bye for them, or soon to be. The Mandarin Oriental is a sophisticated place in all aspects; it's probably not the first time that an attractive couple has inquired about room availability after a leisurely lunch. Still, Heloise is not so nostalgic that she throws Paul a freebie. So even with valet parking and the expensive lunch, she comes out ahead for the day.

Leaving a discreet twenty-five minutes after Paul, Heloise glances at the concierge desk, where a woman very much like her—late thirties, a polished appearance that is more about impeccable styling than overt sexuality—is trying to soothe an agitated man with a florid face and an air of self-importance. Her manner is solicitous, her attitude unimpeachable, yet Heloise knows, or believes she knows, the inner dialogue, the mockery at a remove, as she calms this noisy baby of a man.

In the valet line, she remembers the moment when the inspiration for WFEN hit her and wonders, wistfully, if lightning might strike twice. But all she gets is her car. She drives north, listening to the news cycle around and around, listening to Betty Martinez's gradual disappearance from the public imagination. Will she disappear from her young son's mind in the same way? Is it better that he's too young to remember much about her, or does that set him up for a life of chronic sadness, a hole that can never be filled?

And for the first time, Heloise wonders how Scott's fictional dad figures in
his
thoughts. It's always been a story for her, a pretty fiction and pretty hollow, no different from all the other pretty myths that parents tell children. Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, your father. But for Scott the story about the handsome, loving, heroic redheaded father is true.

Heloise thinks back to Reverend Frida's attempt last month to soften the ugly Old Testament verse:
in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.
She had said it was probably pain, not sorrow, that God was not cursing women to be sad about the act of motherhood, although the verse also conveys the understanding that all parents, fathers and mothers alike, are seldom at peace once a child is in the world.

Reverend Frida wasn't burdened by the actual knowledge of what it was to be a parent, but that didn't keep her from filtering every experience through her own. She did that awful thing that the childless sometimes do, equating her cats to progeny. Even Coranne was outraged.

Heloise remembers something she hasn't thought of for years, Scott's second day of life—the red-all-overness of him, from his feet to his hair, his squinched-up face. A nurse had come into her room to conduct a test to determine if the fluid had disappeared from his ears. Usually not a problem with vaginal births, she said cheerfully, but the test failed to deliver a satisfactory score. She tried it once, twice, three times and said she would not be allowed to release him if he didn't have a passing score in both ears. Then it turned out the testing equipment itself was malfunctioning and required only a reboot. Scott was fine.

Heloise never was again.

T
UESDAY,
N
OVEMBER 8

A
nd still she has to visit Val. Visit him, cajole him, entertain him, never alluding to what she believes she knows about the death of Bettina. Even when she sells the business, she will probably have to continue to visit him. That's an argument in favor of moving, not that she can make it to Scott:
Let's go somewhere else so I never have to see your father again.

Val's in good spirits today, which only confirms Heloise's belief that he had Bettina killed.

She risks, “You look like the cat who swallowed the canary.”

“Nope. Just the usual feed.” Still, his closed-mouth smile looks as if it might burst.

“Seriously, what's up, Val? It's clear you're gleeful about something.”

He leans toward the glass, and she inclines her head toward his, an instinctive gesture after all these years. “I don't know if you've heard about this, but there's a ballistics guy, testified in my trial, and it turns out he lied about his credentials.”

Tell me something I don't know. Tell me something that hasn't been keeping me awake for weeks.

All she says is “I think I heard something about that.”

“Well, last night he attempted suicide.”

“I didn't hear
that
on the news.” And Lord knows she has been listening to the news.

“Maybe they're keeping it quiet. Privacy or whatever. It was kind of a bullshit attempt the way I heard it. Halfhearted. A real man would kill himself.”

Even from Val, this sounds extreme. “Really?”

“Yeah. He's a liar. He hurt people. He shouldn't be able to live with himself.”

She has to wonder if Val's words ever circle back to him. Heloise decides to risk disagreement, something Val allows as long as it's strictly intellectual, done in sport.

“I heard—I read, I mean—that he may have faked his credentials but his testimony will stand. Other ballistics experts will affirm what he said. It's pretty cut-and-dried stuff. Which is why it's weird that he felt it necessary to exaggerate his background.”

“I'm sure that's what the prosecutors are putting out. We'll see. We'll see. My lawyer's readying the motion, going to put it in when the time is right.”

“What's the advantage in waiting?”

“I don't second-guess his strategy.”

That rings false, too. Val has always questioned everyone else's strategies, always believed himself the smartest person in the room. He wasn't wrong either, most of the time, but then—he chose who was in the room. Why would Val want his lawyer to wait? What could possibly change? Is he hoping that the ballistics expert will make another attempt on his life and succeed?

Or is he waiting for someone else to die?

Shelley. Bettina. Heloise. What do these three women have in common?

“What have you been reading?” Heloise asks, and uses his answer, which she knows will be detailed enough—he's still working his way through everything he can find on the Civil War—to allow her to follow her own thoughts.

Shelley dead.

Bettina dead.

Heloise alive.

Two were prostitutes. Two were suburban mothers. There was only one thing that united the three of them in the present day.

They had all seen Val kill Martin. He already believed that Bettina had ratted him out once. What was to stop Bettina from providing testimony if there was a retrial? Propriety, a desperate desire to keep that part of her life secret. But would Val understand that? She was at large in the world, and she had betrayed him. That would have been reason enough to kill her.

As for Shelley—hadn't Val suggested that her arrest had made her nervous, unreliable, that she was looking for things to trade? Heloise had thought that his only concern was that she would reveal he was still capable of running criminal enterprises while jailed. But maybe that was the least of Val's worries. If Shelley had been willing to testify against Val in the event of a retrial, she probably could have made a deal for herself.

Shelley had died before the information about the ballistics expert had become public. But people had known already. Paul had shared it as idle gossip that had been in the pipeline for a while. Tom knew, too. Maybe Val's lawyer was more plugged in than anyone realized.

Now Val's going on about the Wilderness and Cold Harbor. As much as Heloise has read, as much as she loves history, she has no affinity for war. The only thing she can remember about these two battles is that they were in Virginia. And awful, but aren't they all? War strikes her as illogical beyond belief. To put on a uniform, to sign up for a job where the implicit directive is kill or be killed.

Kill or be killed.
There are those who would argue that she has lived her life that way. She remembers Billy, gibbering into Val's surveillance camera. She didn't wish him dead, but if that's what it took to keep her alive . . . She sees herself in Jolson's office, denying any knowledge of Shelley. She thinks about Bettina, her second chance destroyed by Heloise's wayward lie.

And she sees Val, on the other side of the Plexiglas, his skin so beautifully fair now, glowing from the lack of light, a stunning contrast to his eyes and hair. If the state had wanted to kill him for Martin's murder, she wouldn't have regretted her decision to implicate Val. Meanwhile, add Martin to
her
scorecard. Wasn't she the one who'd supplied an immature young man with the information that ended up killing him? Who has killed more people, Val or Heloise?

“Heloise?”

“Yes, Grant. I know how much you admire him.”

“I was talking about Meade,” Val says, impatient with her for not keeping up.

“What?”

“Meade, that poor motherfucker. Couldn't catch a break. It's impossible not to admire Grant as a military man, but he
wasn't
perfect. I mean, seven thousand casualties in the space of an hour. Al-Qaeda needed four planes and two improperly built skyscrapers to achieve less than half as much.”

“Fascinating,” Heloise says.

He's appeased. For now.

T
HURSDAY,
N
OVEMBER 10

T
he offer from Paul's mystery buyer is low, even lower than Heloise feared.

She counters, via Paul, and it comes up slightly, but she's going to end up buying less time than she hoped. She's very clear that's the ultimate nature of the transaction. Every dollar buys her a minute, maybe literally. No, not even. A dollar a minute—she does the math—comes to $1,440, more than a half million annually. Once she's paid Val his share, then paid off Sophie, she'll be lucky to have six months of savings on which to live. Six months in which to figure out what to do next, even as she's spending the money she'll inevitably need as capital for a new start.

Selling the house and moving to Florida might be the way to go after all. But first she's going to have to lowball Sophie the way Paul's buyer has lowballed her. Not a seller's market, Paul-the-proxy has explained, yet he still wants a finder's fee of 5 percent. She wonders if Anna Marie is tied to the deal, if the girl was telling the truth when she said Paul recruited
her
. She wouldn't mind. Anna Marie would try to keep the group health-care plan intact, continue to use the HoJacks and the car service, whatever it takes to keep the girls safe. Heloise is keeping the travel agency and the shopping service, empty shells that they are once severed from the main business.

“It says here that a lawn service is a good business to start in a down economy,” Audrey says. She is at Heloise's office desk, studying the Kiplinger site, where Heloise has been taking a series of tests to gauge if she's knowledgeable enough to start her own business. Surprise, surprise—she is. On the other hand, she's apparently doing a terrible job of saving for her retirement. It's because she's too risk-averse for her age, but if only Kiplinger knew: She's a ninety-year-old woman trapped in the body of a thirty-seven-year-old.

“That makes no sense to me,” Heloise says, still resentful that she missed this particular question on the self-administered quiz. “When people have to cut their budgets, they start with things they can do themselves. Laundry, if they've been sending it out. Restaurant meals. Besides, I can see lots of women happily getting rid of the lawn service on the theory that their husbands could benefit from the exercise. And you know it's usually women who make out the household budgets.”

“I'm just reading what it says here,” Audrey counters. “Don't argue with me, argue with Mr. Kiplinger.”

“At any rate, a lawn service isn't something I could do. I like gardening as a hobby.”

“I've always thought,” Audrey says, “that you could do better by your own landscaping here given that you use a service. It's a little bland. No real color or anything.”

“I
like
it bland.” This is not exactly true. But Heloise believes it's better to have a yard of no distinction, to live in a place that is not easily identified. Ordinary colors, even on the door, no distinguishing characteristics. Blend, blend, blend. Luckily, this makes the house easier to sell, too, although Scott has decided that he'd prefer not to move until the end of the school year, if possible. Maybe, Heloise has said. Maybe.

However, to appease Sophie, who believes that the house is Heloise's primary asset, she has listed it on a for-sale-by-owner Web site, pricing it too high, which she has learned is the most common rookie mistake. As the house languishes online, it buys her time with Sophie. Heloise has been trying to figure out if she can put WFEN into a fake bankruptcy at the same time, calculating that a defunct business can't be sued for workers' compensation. However, that would involve outright fraud. WFEN is still solvent, thank God, earning a tidy profit, which is what makes it attractive to a buyer, who Heloise suspects is linked to one of the coming casinos. It is a nice synergy, a casino and an escort service, although the work is slightly different. A casino needs girls to prop the guys up, keep them gambling between small bouts of sex and comfort. She'll tell Sophie the house won't sell and offer her a third of what she demanded.

She hears her own voice in her head, from all those years ago, the last time she was blackmailed:
She'll come back, just like any alley cat you feed.
Bettina.

Audrey leaves the computer to Heloise and goes back to searching the files for any paperwork that can be discarded. They are shredding what they can, boxing up only the financial documents that would be needed in case of an audit, then putting aside a few things for the new owners, although most of the info on the clients remains in Heloise's head, still to be transcribed and shared. They also are shredding anything relating to Sophie, but that's more of an emotional journey. Thanks to Heloise's compliance, the state and federal government both have W-2s establishing Sophie's employment with WFEN. Heloise can't unring that bell.

“I don't see any medical records,” Audrey says.

“We wouldn't have those. Privacy law and all. Those go to her directly.”

“But you were paying for the drugs—”

“I was, but I just gave her cash, because our health insurance didn't include a provision for prescriptions.”

Audrey looks at Heloise, puzzled. “Then how do you know she has AIDS?”

“Technically, she has HIV, but— Oh,
fuck
me.”

“Heloise!” Audrey reprimands. “That's a five-dollar word.”

“Fuck me,” she repeats. “And I'll put in ten bucks when I get upstairs. Maybe I should put in twenty, because I don't think I'm through.”

How does Heloise know that Sophie has HIV?
Because Sophie told her so.
And because Sophie looks different, but maybe she looks different to Heloise simply because Heloise believes she has HIV. Yet why would Sophie lie about something like that?

Because she got almost as much money to sit on her ass as she did to work.
Heloise had given her cash for the drugs because there was no prescription plan, covered her rent, kicked in for the odd expense here and there.

Heloise's mind roots around for the truth, on its scent at last.

“I never liked her,” Audrey says. “She was snooty, acted like she was better than everyone.”

Yes, she was, Heloise thinks. Snooty and clever. Heloise doesn't like being outwitted by someone—who does?—and it's particularly shameful that this lazy young woman might have done just that. Whatever Heloise's mistakes and flaws, laziness isn't among them. She thinks about Sophie's abandoned degree—again something Heloise accepted as a consequence of Sophie's illness. And the severed relationship with her parents, which Heloise chalked up to shame, but there is no shame if there is no diagnosis. Why else would she be on the outs with her parents?

Because she's an addict.

Bingo. That would explain much—the need for money, the lack of support from parents and friends, assuming Sophie ever had friends. But, Jesus, how could Heloise miss that? How could her clients miss it? She thinks about the customers lost, the ones who declined the HIV test and the ones who took it. Obviously it's better for her if Sophie is lying. Then she truly has no leverage. Heloise won't have to pay her a cent. And she wouldn't wish HIV on anyone, not even an enemy. Which Sophie will avowedly be if she's lied all this time, undoing Heloise's relationship with Leo—and to what end? Really, she almost wishes that Audrey's instincts, always suspect in Heloise's experience, are wrong yet again.

There's only one way to find out. She picks up the phone. Sophie doesn't answer. She never does. Heloise imagines her on the sofa in a messy apartment, watching afternoon television, screening her calls. A chance at a degree from Hopkins, and she just throws it away, all the while mocking Heloise's own lack of education. Heloise leaves a curt message, saying things have come together more quickly than she hoped. They should meet sooner rather than later.

T
hat afternoon, at Scott's soccer game, Tom drifts onto the field, hands in his pockets. It has been such a strange fall—warm well into October, a freak dusting of snow the day before Halloween, then a week of viciously cold temperatures, followed by this spate of balmy days. End-of-the-world weather, Heloise thinks. The boys are in high spirits, the game a little wild and undisciplined. Scott's ready for the season to be over, Heloise can tell. He likes the other boys, but he doesn't truly like soccer. He's better than average, but that's not enough for him. He likes to be good at things, preferably the best at things. She's pretty sure that's her gift to him, whether by nature or nurture.

And now she will be the best . . . at what? She still doesn't have an inkling. Yet it's the first thing she says to Tom when he comes up to her.

“I'm getting out.”

“That's good,” he says a little absently, scanning the field, finding the one redhead.

“Did you hear me?”

“You said you were getting out more. That's nice. You've always deserved more fun.”

“No, I'm getting
out.
I'm going to”—she decides not to mention selling the business. Even Tom, soon-to-be-retired cop that he is, might find that too juicy a target once she's detached, will figure the new owner isn't buying Heloise's protection from him. That wouldn't be fair to the new buyer, much less all her regulars. She's not going to screw Paul over now, even though she suspects he's screwing her a little. Finder's fee, her ass.

“I'm going to close down the business, come up with something legit to do.”

“In this economy? That's going to be tough.”

“I have enough savings to go for a while. And aren't you doing the same thing, leaving a safe job to try something new?”

“I've got a pension and a job waiting for me. What are you going to do, though? Do you have any ideas?”

His skepticism is hurtful. Tom, of all people, should believe in her.

“There are some interesting franchise opportunities.” She doesn't know where this lie comes from; it flies out of her mouth, a tangential idea from her computer searches, where she has seen promises of burgeoning franchises. Frozen yogurt, tea shops. But that's not what really interests her. She wants to create another business from the ground up. Whatever Tom thinks about WFEN, it is a successful small business and almost wholly her creation. She has accomplished something that many people never do. She should be the kind of woman who's feted at banquets, celebrated for her achievements, the
Daily Record
's Woman of the Year.

“Well, that's great,” Tom says, but there's not much oomph behind the words. He glances around, gauges their distance from everyone else. “So about this other business, the reason you asked me to drop by?”

“Yes?”

“I don't think I can go to Jolson and try to bullshit him that I knew Shelley and Bettina back in the day, like it just came to me.”

“But you were investigating Val back then and you did meet Bettina once.”

“Yeah, years later, and how do I explain that, Heloise? ‘You see, six years ago Bettina tried to extort money from some other prostitute that I know, so I paid her a visit, persuaded her to change her mind.' ”

Some other prostitute.
That seems unnecessarily harsh.

“What should I do, Tom?”

“I don't know. Maybe accept that it worked out as you wanted. Val's in prison, and he has no idea that you're the person who put him there.”

“But Bettina—”

“I know. But I'm in a different jurisdiction. I don't know the guys working her murder, don't know how to share information with them without being asked a lot of questions. Besides, if you're right, Heloise, the guy's probably a pro, did it right, learned from his mistakes on the first homicide. If you're wrong, it's bad info and it sends them in the wrong direction.”

“I'm not wrong,” she says. But she wavers because she wants to be wrong.

“Why do you care so much?”

“Because . . . because it's my fault. Don't you feel that way?
We
did this.”

“I never put her name in play, Heloise. I provided a confidential informant who did what he had to do, then had the courtesy to die from cirrhosis, just as we planned. You're the one who had to embroider it, tell Val how the guy learned it from some other prostitute.”

Some other prostitute
—there are those words again, hurtful and cruel. Has she been wrong about Tom all these years? Does he feel only contempt for her?

“But if you think Val is the one who had her killed—”

“I could go either way on that, frankly. And either way you'll be fine. If he managed to put out a hit on her, he thinks he's done and you're safe. If he didn't do it, then it's random and you're still safe.”

“Unless he gets a new trial and gets released. Then nothing can keep me safe.”

“Jesus, how many times do we have to go over that? First of all, while the ballistics expert may have lied about his credentials, his information is still solid. Val's gun, hidden on Val's property, killed Kristofer Martin. He's not going to get a new trial, much less be acquitted.”

“But what if he thought he was?”

“What if ?”

“With Val the only thing that matters is what he believes. His reality is the only reality. Even if he thinks that Bettina is the one who ratted him out, he might fear me as a potential witness against him.”

“Well, even in Val's reality, cockeyed as it is, he knows you can't testify against him because you'd have to tell the courtroom what you did, who you are. And you'd never do that because—”

His eyes go to the field, searching out the boy that Heloise knows he wishes were his. They watch the game in silence, and she is reminded of what Paul told her, about all the different kinds of silence that a couple can inhabit. This is neither companionable nor cold, merely distant, the fraught quiet between a man who wanted more and a woman who wanted less. Tom loved her once, she's sure of that, but she realizes now that he hasn't loved her for a long time.