Legal Tender (20 page)

“Miaow! Miaow!”

“Oh, shut up,” I shouted at the animal, instantly regretting it. It was Bill’s, after all. I picked it up from the bed. It felt frail and bony, but I found myself hugging it. It gave more comfort than I expected, or knew I needed. I took one last look at Bill and a fruitless look around the cabin, then retrieved the CD and left.

I struggled back through the woods with the kitten’s flimsy claws stuck in my suit. Rain drenched us until I finally got a bead on the glow-in-the-dark Camaro. I headed toward it herky-jerky, confused and distracted, thinking about Bill. I’d have to call Mrs. Zoeller. To hell with my cell phone records, her son was dead. I dreaded how she’d take the news. I reached the car, pried the kitten off, and dialed the Zoellers.

“Murderer!” she screamed, as soon as I told her.

“What?” I asked, stunned.

“Murderer!”
It came out like a scream of anguish.

“No—”

“You killed him! Bill? Bill? Oh God, Bill!”

“No, wait. I didn’t kill him, nobody killed him. He overdosed, I saw the needle!”

“Overdosed? Bill never took drugs a day in his life! Never! You killed him and made it look like he did drugs!”

“No! He must have—”

“Never! With a needle? Never!” She burst into sobs. “Bill fainted … when he saw blood, all his life! They couldn’t … put anything in his arm without him lying down first, even the school nurse!”

My heart stopped in the cold, dark car. She was confirming something I hadn’t allowed myself to suspect. Mark murdered and now Bill? Where did the CEO fit in? I felt sick inside.

“His stepfather always called him a … sissy on account of it, but he wasn’t! He wasn’t! You killed him! You said you were going to help him but you went up there to … to … kill him!”

“Mrs. Zoeller, why would I do that? It makes no sense!”

“Bill knew you killed that company president! He was gonna tell the police … and you killed him! Gus? Gus, call the police! Call 911!”

I hung up the phone, my hand shaking. I slammed the car key into the ignition and roared out of there.

I had to get away. Fast. Faster. I careened through the woods, tearing up the road I hoped led out. My high beams swung in an arc on wet tree trunks as I took the curves. In time the dirt and rocks under my tires turned to asphalt and I was rolling. Out of the woods. Gone. The rearview was clear and the hammer to the floor.

The next few hours were a dark blur of rain and fear as I sped down the slick highway. I watched the rearview for cops, trying to wrap my mind around what I’d seen and heard. Bill fainted at the sight of blood and there were no needle tracks in his arms. It was a murder set up to look like an overdose. Who had done it? Was it connected to Mark? I sensed it was, but didn’t know how. It made me more determined than ever to find out what was going on.

I clicked on the car radio for the news. Would they announce the murder? They didn’t have enough to charge me with, did they? I accelerated despite the yellow caution signs. I knew where I was going, I had decided almost as soon as I started the car. I’d felt out of place the whole time I’d been out west. The country, the woods, inland. I got lost out here. I didn’t fit in, with my tailored suit and pumps. I was out of my element, a rower out of water.

I needed to get back to Philly. It was the most risky place for me, but it was also the only place I had any leverage. I’d lived there all my life. Knew its neighborhoods, its ways, its accents. I could disappear there, I knew how. What place is more anonymous than a city? What person more forgettable than a lawyer in a suit?

Going where the weather suits my clothes. I drove into the night and the storm and the fear, Midnight Cowboy with an attitude.

I
t was 6:15, Friday morning. I had driven all night.

I took inventory in the underground parking garage of the Silver Bullet building. My hair, suit, and shoes were dry. I had a briefcase, a cell phone, and a kitten. Also a master plan.

I fingercombed my new hair, threw on some eye makeup, and grabbed my phone and briefcase. “Wish me luck,” I said to the kitten, who didn’t. I shut and locked the car door.

6:20. I knew the rhythms of the Silver Bullet from my days at Groan & Waste. The security guard would be at the desk upstairs, his shift started at six o’clock. I reached the elevator bank and punched the up button. I’d have to stop at the lobby floor and sign in, since the elevators didn’t go all the way up. The guard would be the first test of my redheaded persona.

I stepped into the elevator and when it let me out I took a deep breath and entered the lobby like I was sleepwalking, which wasn’t much of a stretch.

“Miss!” called the guard. A young black man with handsome features, he was sitting behind the front desk.

“Yes?” I turned in character, looking confused, exhausted, and beleaguered. In other words, the typical oppressed associate in a major law firm.

“You have to sign the book.” He waved at a notebook on the desk.

“Oh, sorry.” I walked over and dragged my heels loudly on the white marble floor. The desk was also of white marble and surrounded the guard like a corporate cavern. On the cave walls were the scratchings of modern man: flickering security screens and a computer directory for the building. I wouldn’t be on it; I’d have to fix that when I got upstairs. “I’m not awake yet,” I said sleepily. “Got a pen?”

“Sure.” He handed me a ballpoint, smiling easily. “I’m with you on that. TGIF.” His red uniform looked boxy on his shoulders and his hat was too big for his head.

“I’m working way too hard lately,” I said, stalling with the pen in hand. I needed a name. Damn.

“Where you work? Grun?” His nametag said Will Clermont, and next to him on the desk was a folded
Daily News
and a covered cup of coffee. It smelled like hazelnut. Ah, civilization.

“Yeah, I work at Grun. How’d you know?”

“Everybody there works too hard.” He laughed again, and I sensed he was lonely on this gray morning, happy to have even a lawyer to talk to. It served my purpose just fine. I needed information.

“How come I never saw you before, Mr. Clermont? You must work the early shift.”

“Yeah. Call me Will.”

“So you’re out by three, huh, Will? Banker’s hours.”

“You got that right. Gets me home in time to see my girl, my Oprah. She’s too skinny now, but I like that lady, I sure do.”

I shook my head. “Three o’clock, you’re lucky. I leave late, so I know the night guys. The nice one, what’s his name again?”

“You mean Dave?”

“Dave, right. I forget his last name.”

“Ricklin.”

“He’s comes on at three, right? He’s nice.”

Will’s dark eyes lit up. “You just like Dave ’cause he’s tall, like you.”

I made a mental note. “Hah, I could kick his butt, no matter how tall he is. Him and the other one, you know him?”

“Jimmy? Black guy, kinda heavy?”

“Right. Heavy.”

“Not too heavy.”

Whoops. “Not to you. You think Oprah’s too thin.”

“She is! She looked better before. I would tell Stedman, marry that girl, she’s lookin’ good!” He pushed the notebook toward me. “Say now, don’t forget to sign in.”

“Sure.” As soon as I think of a name. I took a closer look at the tabloid. LAWYER ON THE LOOSE! screamed the headline. My throat caught. Underneath it said,
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS INSIDE, BY LARRY FROST
. I lowered my head and scribbled into the book, then stepped away from the desk to the elevator bank. “Well, I’d better get going. See you.”

“Stay ’wake now,” he said. He was trying to read my entry when the elevator arrived.

I scooted in and hit the button, but felt uneasy even after the doors closed. I was in the news, probably with a photo, but I’d passed the first test despite it and collected the names of the security guards. Maybe my plan would work. I geared up for the next step as the elevator whisked me silently toward Grun.

The doors opened with a hydraulic
swoosh
onto 32, the Loser Floor. Every big firm has a Loser Floor. It’s where you find the low-wattage lawyers who attract lint more easily than clients and spend way too much time with their families. At Grun, the losers lived on the same floor as the conference rooms and were viewed as equally productive.

I looked around the empty offices and for the first time the Loser Floor seemed like heaven to me, not corporate hell. It was deserted, with everything mine for the taking. None of the losers were in this early, being losers, so I borrowed an office, a computer, and an office directory, and went to work. Or rather, Linda Frost did.

She found Grun’s New York office in the directory and picked out the people she needed. Then she wrote a memo to the personnel office in Philadelphia, informing them that a new associate, one Linda Frost, would be arriving from the New York office this Friday to prepare for trial in a very important securities matter,
RMC v. Consolidated Computers
. The memo requested Personnel to issue Ms. Frost a Grun ID card, a building pass, and a set of keys, and also to list her on the computer directory in the building’s lobby. Given the traditional close communication between Grun’s Philly headquarters and its branch offices, it would take Personnel two or three years to catch on.

For good measure, Ms. Frost backdated the memo to last week, printed it, and stuck it in a confidential interoffice envelope. Then she stomped on it, crumpled it up, and ripped off an edge to make it look lost in the interoffice mail before she set it in the nearest out box. It would produce the desired effect as soon as it reached Personnel, which would hop to, since it’d apparently screwed up. Again.

Next, Ms. Frost typed a memo to the billing department, requesting a client code and matter number for
RMC v. Consolidated Computers
. She opened the matter as a “transfer” from the New York office so that it wouldn’t be flagged by the New Client Committee, set up to screen out those wannabe clients who couldn’t afford to be gouged by Grun. In addition, the industrious Ms. Frost wrote a memo to the facilities department, reserving Conference Room D on the 32nd floor for “the foreseeable future” for her exclusive use on the above-captioned confidential securities matter.

Finally, she fired off a note to the supplies department, ordering a computer and office supplies be sent to Conference Room D for use in trial preparation, and sent a separate note to the kitchen, requesting that a sandwich be sent up every day at noon, with a Diet Coke and a carton of whole milk, such meals to be billed to
RMC v. Consolidated
Computers
.

I sent the last memos by e-mail, so that in a nanosecond, I would have a new identity, an office, and a job. An entirely new life and citizenship. True, it was temporary, valid only within the Silver Bullet, like a corporate green card. But for the time being, I was hiding in plain sight.

But wait, a loose end. I sat back in the Loser Chair and thought for a minute. Other lawyers might become curious about the redhead in the conference room. Maybe they’d inquire, even stop by. No lawyer is an island. Hmmm. I called up a blank screen and tapped out under today’s date:

Perfect. It would send any lawyer worth his billings screaming in the opposite direction. I’d be dead and petrified before I’d see a partner or an associate from this firm. They’d slip the food under the goddamn door, like I carried Ebola. I hit the
SEND
button on the e-mail menu, feeling a swell of satisfaction.

I was back in business.

I
spent the morning in Conference Room D, working and watching wage slaves bring me a computer, a phone, and office supplies. I thanked them enough to be polite but not memorable. Between their visits, I studied Mark’s file, which was spread out at the far end of the conference table, shielded from view by a bunker of dead files from one of the other conference rooms. I kept the door closed, so the room was soundproofed against the losers trundling in at nine o’clock. Didn’t they know the day was half over by then?