Payback (3 page)

“I think it’s a good idea,” Charles said, turning on the dishwasher. “Myra, take the girls to the war room and I’ll make the call. I’ll join you shortly. I’ll have Murphy stand guard when I get ready to join you.”

Myra led the way through the house to the library where she stepped in front of a solid row of bookshelves. She counted down the various carvings on the intricate molding that ran the length of the bookshelves. At the same moment her fingers touched the lowest carving, the wall moved slowly and silently to reveal a large room with wall to wall computers that blinked and flashed as well. A mind-boggling, eye-level, closed-circuit television screen was focused on the security gates. Each wall seemed to be made up of television screens. MSNBC was playing on the south wall, CNN on the north wall and the FOX news channel was playing on the east wall. Fans could be heard whirring softly. There were no windows.

They’d all been here before in the command center and knew that Charles had installed a modern day ventilation system. He had also installed a cutting-edge, solar powered electrical system. If the weather took a turn for the worse, there was enough stored power to last a month.

The women waited for Myra to secure the door before they took their seats at a large round table surrounded by deep comfortable chairs. The only thing on the table was a Keds shoe box and a stack of bright yellow folders at Myra’s place.

When Myra joined them the women made small talk as they waited for Charles to join them. No one, it seemed, was interested in going to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington over the weekend. Nor were they interested in inspecting the new drainage and sprinkling system Myra said she had installed last month. They were saved from further mundane conversation when the door slid open and Charles entered the room.

“Six K-9’s will arrive for duty at five this afternoon. All right, ladies, we’re ready to discuss business. If anyone has a question or a problem, aside from the problem of Jack Emery, let’s hear it now before we get down to work.”

Alexis took a deep breath and raised her hand. “I’m not ready,” she said. “I thought I was but I’m not. I’ve done nothing but think about this the whole past month and I can’t come up with a suitable punishment for the people who framed me and sent me to prison. Well, that’s not exactly true, I did come up with something but it’s death. I don’t want any of us to be responsible for a murder. So, I want to give up my mission, for now, to one of you.”

Kathryn tugged at the sleeve of her flannel shirt. “Alexis, are you sure? I felt the same way when my mission was called first. Don’t you want to talk to us about it? Maybe we can come up with something.”

“Yes, I’m sure. I want to be the one to come up with a punishment. I was the one who sat in a federal prison for thirteen months. I haven’t come to terms with it yet. Please, can we pick someone else?”

Myra looked at Charles and then let her gaze sweep around the table. “Raise your hand if you agree to cancel out Alexis and move forward with a new mission.” Seven hands, including Myra’s, shot in the air. Charles raised his hand at the last second.

“It’s unanimous, then. Obviously, these are not needed now,” Myra said, indicating the yellow folders that contained all the information the Sisterhood would need for Alexis’s mission. “We’ll need some additional time to plot out a new mission once we choose a new sister. Can you all return here in, say, three days? You’re welcome to stay if you like. Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s choose a name first,” Myra said.

Everyone watched as Charles scribbled names on small pieces of paper, put them in the shoe box, then shook it vigorously. Isabelle did the honors and picked a slip of paper. She handed it to Myra.

Myra smiled as she read the name. “Julia Webster!”

Julia’s clenched hand shot in the air. “Unlike Alexis, I am soooo ready! However, I wonder if I might request a two part mission. The one has nothing to do with the other but the reason I’m asking for this favor is…when…if I’m no longer here, you might want to consider replacing me with the person I want helped.” Julia bit down on her lip, her eyes filling with tears. “Welcome her to the Sisterhood…”

Kathryn, who was tough as nails and meaner than a snake, slid her chair closer to Julia to put her arms around her. “I’m for whatever you want, Julia, and you’re going to be with us for a long time. Tell us what you want.”

Julia cleared her throat and spoke sharply and clearly. “I want my husband to suffer. I want him disgraced and destroyed for what he did to me. I want his face plastered all over the front pages of the newspapers. I want his colleagues to look at him with disdain and disgust. I want him destitute. I don’t care if he has to live on the street and sleep in a cardboard box.

“The second part of my mission deals with a colleague of mine. She’s an oncologist and has to deal with people who can’t get the medical care they need because their HMO refuses to authorize the proper treatment. There is one HMO in particular that a good majority of her patients belong to, actually three HMOs under one umbrella and owned by the same family. My friend’s name is Sara Lang and we’ve known each other since college. We roomed together. In many ways she’s like a sister. She’s at the end of her rope and talking about giving up on her profession. I just want to tell you about one patient of hers. It was a little nine-year-old girl with leukemia. Sara found a bone marrow donor for…for…Emily. The HMO wouldn’t pay for it. The family, the grandparents, were broke. There was no place left to borrow. No place for them to go for help. Emily died last week. They all die! All her patients who have that crappy HMO die. Do you hear me, they fucking die!

“Now let me tell you about the family that owns the three HMOs. They have billions of dollars. That’s billions with a B. It’s a woman, her husband and her son who run the company. They’re worse than those Enron and WorldCom people who cheated all their employees out of their pensions. They know every politician in Washington on a first name basis and that includes my husband. They throw parties, donate to causes if it gets their name mentioned or their picture in the paper. They are on every party list in town. I want them punished. I want it so bad, but if we can’t do a two-part mission then I want to give up my personal mission with my husband. I’ll just…kill him myself. What do I have to lose?”

Exhausted, Julia fell back in her chair.

The silence in the room was broken only by the whirring of the overhead fan. When Charles cleared his throat the sound was so loud, all the women jumped.

“I personally don’t see a problem if the others agree. However, I’ll need more than three days to pull all that together. Can we meet back here one week from today? If I manage to get everything together sooner, you’ll be notified. Now, who wants to leave and who wants to stay?”

Kathryn elected to leave to do a run to New Jersey with a load of Florida oranges and grapefruits, promising to keep her cell phone on the entire time. Julia said she would go home, gather all pertinent papers and return, assuring everyone her husband wouldn’t even know she was gone. Yoko had a husband and couldn’t stay. That left Isabelle, Nikki, and Alexis who would stay and help Charles.

Outside in the bright spring afternoon, Myra gathered Julia in her arms. She felt so thin, so fragile. “We’ll make it all come out right, dear. I wish I had known, I would have helped.”

“Those bastard companies have to be made to pay. Maybe it will make the other HMOs sit up and take notice. I don’t want to see Sara give up her career. She’s one of those rare doctors who cares about her patients. She uses all her own money to help. She lives in a hovel if you can believe that. She’s just too tired to fight anymore, Myra.”

“It’s now our problem, Julia. We’ll take care of it. Hurry back but drive carefully.”

“Myra?”

“Yes.”

“He doesn’t deserve to live. But I don’t know if I really have the guts to kill him.”

“Shhh. We’ll take care of Senator Webster.” Myra bent down and picked a bright red tulip from the border along the walkway. She handed it to Julia who smiled.

Myra waved as the women climbed into their vehicles and drove away. Murphy barked from the passenger seat as Kathryn’s big rig sailed through the gates.

Myra stood where she was for a long time, her eyes scanning the dense foliage that surrounded the house. Somewhere out there, Jack Emery was watching her. She could sense it, feel it. She shivered, not with cold but with fear.

It was a balmy sixty-nine degrees outside; the women had been chattering about sunning themselves later if time permitted. Charles held up his hand for everyone to quiet down. He found the instant silence gratifying.

Today, a stack of green folders sat in front of Myra. “I think we can dispense with the formalities and get right to business,” Myra said as she handed out the folders with Julia’s case outlined in detail.

“What you have in front of you is the life history of Senator Mitchell Webster as we know it. Unfortunately, there really isn’t all that much information so I’m hoping Julia can fill in the blank spots. Julia?”

Julia quickly scanned the loose sheets of paper and appeared stunned at what she was reading. “I don’t see anything here about Mitch’s childhood.” Julia laughed bitterly at her own words. “His childhood, his background, was created by the very high-powered marketing firm, Johnson and Powell. You do stuff like that in the political game. I guess it’s more glamorous.”

“That particular firm certainly falls into the big league. I’ve heard of them,” Charles said. “Julia, you need to explain exactly what the firm created in regard to your husband. Tell us everything you know even if it doesn’t seem important.”

“You mean besides creating a monster?” Julia shook her head. “I don’t know where to start. It was so long ago. I was just starting medical school in New York when I first met Mitch. He could’ve sold me the moon and stars I was so awe-struck by him. I was twenty-two. He was thirty-four, an older man. I was flattered that he even talked to me, even more flattered when he asked me out for coffee. The rest, as they say, is history.”

“He was a junior senator. What was he doing on a Manhattan college campus?” Nikki asked.

“He was giving a speech. I was just one of hundreds who skipped class that day to listen to him. Being a junior senator, he felt the need to distinguish himself from all the other junior senators as well as the senior senators. He liked to be noticed. He needed a
cause,
something that would get him singled out by the media, his peers, it didn’t matter who or what it was, just as long as he got noticed.

“In the mid-eighties, the hot topic was abortion. That was Mitchell’s ticket. Women’s rights and abortion. He couldn’t have picked better causes. Both were hot button issues. He was young, incredibly handsome. Women gravitated toward him. I was one of those liberated, pro-choice flunkies who hung on to every word he said. When he was in the paper, I read about it. Hell, I even clipped the articles and started keeping a scrapbook. When I learned he was giving a speech at Columbia, I was ecstatic.”

Charles looked at Julia, a frown building on his face. “What was so horrible about his past that made him feel he had to reinvent himself? Was he afraid of something? Or maybe someone?”

“It’s a long story,” Julia said.

“We’re not going anywhere, dear. We’ve got all the time in the world,” Myra said in a soothing voice.

“I know, it’s just that
I
don’t have all the time in the world.”

“I think you should start at the beginning, dear, just like we did when we were preparing to take care of Kathryn’s problem. Charles, please turn the recorder on.”

Julia licked at her dry lips and took a sip of water before she started her story.

“It was in the fall, around the first of November, the first time I met Mitchell. We met a few times after that, just going for coffee, that kind of thing. He appeared to like me because he called quite often and we’d talk. I had this really weird feeling that he had checked up on me and knew my family was wealthy. He never mentioned it, though. Each time I would try to find out about his background, he’d change the subject and say things like, ‘What you see is what you get’ or ‘I’m an open book.’ His evasiveness bothered me so I did a check on him myself. Nothing jumped out at me right away. He wasn’t close to the people he left behind. And, no, I never did meet any of Mitch’s family.”

“Never?” Myra said.

Julia shook her head. “In a way it really didn’t seem important. I was in medical school, Mitch was in Washington ‘running the country’ as he put it. We were lucky we could meet up twice a month. I knew there was something wrong but I didn’t want to pry. Remember, I was in love. I was also young and impressionable.

“Anyway, I managed to get a little background on Mitch, just enough to scare me out of my wits. If what I found out was true, Mitch should be in prison. He’d been involved with a young girl who was later found dead. Mitch then disappeared, according to what I was able to find out. I thought there had to be a mistake and there were two Mitchell Websters. You don’t get to be a senator without a thorough background check. I convinced myself Mitchell was who he said he was. I let it go. Years later when DNA became well known and used, it turned out Mitch hadn’t killed her after all.

“Mitch and I got married a year later and moved here. I put his name on all my bank accounts and brokerage accounts. We were happy. At least I was. I never, ever, dreamed he was…seeing other women. I suspect now that he was an alley cat from the beginning. I was so busy…he was so busy…We had our weekends. That’s what our marriage was for many, many years. Weekends. Then even those dropped away because Mitch was always going somewhere. He moved up, sat on more prestigious committees and became very high profile. I was busy with my patients. We still had sex once in a while, but the last three years of our marriage became strained. Mitch started staying away for days at a time, but he was mysterious about it. He said everything he did was on a need-to-know basis and he couldn’t talk about it. I’m sad to say I believed him.