Trust Your Eyes (35 page)

“What Web site?”

“Some new one. I don’t know. Something political, like the HuffPo.”

“The what?” Lewis asked. He knew his way around the Internet, but he still preferred a real newspaper to reading one online.

Tarek shrugged. “You know, the one with the lady with the accent. She’s on Bill Maher’s show once in a while.”

Lewis hated that guy’s program. Left-wing dickhead.

“But not that site? A different one?”

Tarek shrugged. “That’s all I know. Good luck.”

LEWIS
got a booth at a café around the corner, ordered a corned beef on rye with a dill pickle and coffee, and called Howard Talliman.

“You know that HuffPo site?” he asked.

“Of course,” Howard said. “Why?”

“You know about some new site that’s coming out that’s similar to it?”

“I could ask around,” Howard said. “Why?”

“Just ask and get back to me quick as you can.”

LEWIS
was finishing his coffee when his cell rang. “Kathleen Ford’s starting one up,” Howard said.

“Should I know who the hell she is?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so I think it’s possible she may have hired our man to work for her.”

“You got a name?”

“Not yet, but I will. You got some contacts for this Ford chick?” Lewis had out his pen and notepad, scribbled down a couple of numbers Howard gave him. “You know her?”

“We are familiar with each other,” Howard said. “But I wouldn’t drop my name. She thinks I’m a reptile.”

Lewis ended the call, thinking maybe this Kathleen Ford was a pretty good judge of character, although he had no illusions that, if she were to meet him, she’d view him any differently.

FORTY-THREE

SHE
so wanted to call her mother. It was like an ache.

It had been nine months. Allison Fitch couldn’t believe she’d managed to hold off this long. Not that she hadn’t considered it dozens of times. More than once she’d picked up a phone—not her own; she’d pitched it within minutes of fleeing her apartment building—and started dialing. Once, she’d discovered a cell on a stall floor in the ladies’ room at the Lubbock restaurant where she was working briefly, and dialed every digit of her mother’s phone number but the last before she’d thought better of it and dropped the phone back where she’d found it. It was entirely possible her mother’s line was being tapped, her place being watched. Her mother didn’t own a cell phone, and even if she did, Allison figured there was probably a way to bug those, too. Didn’t they do it on that TV show about the drug trade in Baltimore?

She didn’t know for certain, of course, that anyone was listening to her mother’s phone conversations. But assuming they were, was it likely they were still doing it now, all these months later? Sooner or later, wouldn’t they just give up?

Allison could only imagine what her mother was going through. True, she had a history of putting Mom through this kind of anguish. When she was nineteen, hours before boarding her flight, Allison had informed her mother she’d be gone to Uruguay for a month with her boyfriend, the one who played electric piano in that band, and she’d been away for ten days before she even realized they’d actually gone to Paraguay. Then, at twenty-one she was given a car—an old rusted Neon, but who’s complaining—by her uncle Bert, on her father’s side, which prompted her to check out Malibu, which was only twenty-two hundred or so miles away. Threw some clothes in a bag and set off on her own. Five days into the trip she decided to drop in unannounced on her cousin Portia in Albuquerque, which was along the way, and when Portia opened the door and saw her she screamed, “Oh my God you have to call your mother she’s called everyone in the family and thinks you’re dead!”

But disappearing for nine months was, even by Allison’s standards of irresponsibility, over the top.

There was no way to tell her mother it was different this time, that there was no safe way to let her know she hadn’t called home not because she was a thoughtless, self-centered twit, but because she was afraid that if she did, she’d get herself killed.

Allison figured it was better to put her mother through hell and show up one day, alive, than put her mind at ease by calling and end up dead. In some ways, she thought, maybe her history of never considering how her actions affected others was a blessing. Perhaps it would make her mother worry less. If Allison were the kind of daughter who always let her parents know where she was every minute of the day, and then went missing, well, that’d be a real cause for concern.

Allison wanted to think that was the case, but knew in her heart it wasn’t. Her mother had to be going out of her mind.

Occasionally, during her travels, she’d borrow someone’s
computer and do a search on herself, see if there were any news stories about her disappearance. There was one, not long after she’d gone missing, but very little after that. Not much comfort there. Knowing that you mattered so little. That you could vanish off the face of the earth and they weren’t putting your face on the side of milk cartons. Maybe she was too old for that.

But there certainly were stories about the death of Bridget Sawchuck.

Whoa.

They were short on details, but what few details there were Allison knew to be total flights of fucking fantasy.

“Died suddenly.” Yeah, well, that was sort of true. But not really.

If Allison hadn’t been totally convinced before that running and hiding was the smartest thing to do, she certainly was after seeing the stories about Bridget. If the powers that be could cover up the murder of a woman like her, they could do anything.

Coming forward was not an option. Of course, to do so would mean she’d have to cop to a blackmail scheme, but she figured that to be the least of her problems. Allison feared that telling the authorities what she knew could get her killed.

So she kept moving. Starting with her flight from her apartment.

The second Allison Fitch saw what had happened in that bedroom, that someone had been sent—clearly—to kill her and had murdered Bridget Sawchuck by mistake, she just ran. She came out onto Orchard so fast, passersby could have been forgiven for thinking there’d been a gas explosion. She ran south for no particular reason except that if she’d gone north she’d have had to dodge a group of five middle-aged women blocking the sidewalk as they all tried to share one Fodor’s book. She turned west at the first corner, then north at the next, west at the one after that, running flat out, going in a different direction at every cross
street, her only goal to elude whoever that woman was who’d killed Bridget.

She turned, abruptly, into a coffee shop. She had no idea what street she was on. As she flew past the counter she shouted, “Latte, medium,” so no one would give her a hard time about using the bathroom, looked desperately for a sign that would tell her where it was, and instinctively descended a set of narrow brick steps to the basement. Found it, tried the door. It was locked.

“Just a minute,” someone called from inside.

Allison stood there at the bottom of the stairs, watching, waiting for that woman to come down after her.

A man emerged from the bathroom. She slipped into the tiny room with its one toilet and sink, dropped the lid, and sat down. She got out her phone as she struggled to get her breath.

Thought about who to call.

When your brilliant plan to blackmail the wife of an attorney general goes south, and people at the highest levels send someone to kill you, who do you call?

Good question.

Looking at the phone, she suddenly realized it might be used to track her. She powered it down, lifted the lid off the toilet tank, and dropped it in.

Think, think.

Okay, going to the police was too risky. And it was a safe bet they’d be watching her mother’s place. She couldn’t call any of her friends. She’d burned most of them, anyway, like Courtney. Borrowed money she’d never paid back. Taken tips meant for others. Slept with friends’ boyfriends.

There wasn’t a bridge she hadn’t burned.

You are one stupid bitch
, she thought.

She had a few hundred dollars in her purse. Enough to buy a bus ticket out of New York. Once she was out of the city, and felt reasonably safe, she’d have to figure out her next step.

Someone banged on the bathroom door. Allison’s heart skipped a beat.

“Hey! You eatin’ a pizza in there or what?”

SHE
settled first in Pittsburgh, if one defined “settled” as a place you stay for more than one night. Her bus ticket took her as far as Philadelphia. From there she hitchhiked. Figured she’d just head west, but not in a direction that took her too close to Dayton. Slept in a park in Harrisburg her first night, then in the morning went into a McDonald’s restroom and tried to make herself look like a human being with what she had in her purse, which amounted to little more than a comb, lipstick, eyeliner, and mascara. She needed work, no question about it. A shower, to start.

Allison didn’t see that she had much choice but to find a homeless shelter. She was given something to eat and had a shower. She brought her purse in with her, hanging it just out of reach of the spray, so it wouldn’t be stolen.

Her credit cards were useless to her. Most were maxed out, anyway, but she knew the moment she used one, they’d have her. She snapped all of them in two and tossed them in the trash.

One of the conditions of staying at the shelter was that she would have to help out. She opted for the kitchen detail. It was the closest thing they had to the work she’d normally done. She stuck it out there for the better part of a week, until one day when a pair of city cops came in asking questions. Not about her—they were looking for witnesses to the beating death of a homeless man three nights earlier—but they spoke face-to-face with Allison. She worried that if her face was on a missing persons file anywhere, and these two cops happened to see it, they’d remember where they’d run into her.

Time to put more distance between herself and New York.

Her plan had been to keep heading west, but that would take
her right past Cincinnati, and that was a little too close for comfort to Dayton. What if someone she knew, who knew her mother, recognized her? She didn’t want to take the chance, so she tacked in a southerly direction, hitching several rides that landed her in Charlottesville, a beautiful college town. She didn’t find herself working in the halls of academia, however. She got another kitchen job, in a diner that had a “Help Wanted” sign in the window.

By this time, she’d spent all her cash, and the diner job wasn’t enough to allow her to find a place to stay. Lester, who owned the diner, said she could sleep in his truck, a Ford pickup with a bench seat, and use the restaurant bathroom to clean up.

She lived that way for five weeks before moving on. Lester was starting to expect certain favors in return for the fine accommodation he was providing her. Allison wasn’t interested, on any level, but it took a raw egg down the front of his pants to persuade Lester.

Time to hit the road, again.

She hitched to Raleigh. Then Athens. A couple of hungry weeks in Charleston. Then, farther south, to Jacksonville. It was a good plan, getting to Florida as winter started to settle in. She didn’t have a coat or winter clothes, and had no money to buy any.

As she became more desperate, she occasionally suppressed her nature and found a way to say thank you to the men who gave her rides, provided they were willing to throw a few bucks her way. You did what you had to do.

In Tampa, she found work making up rooms at a motel called the Coconut Shade, a place where customers often rented by the hour. No references, no ID, no previous work experience required. She said her name was Adele Farmer. Octavio Famosa, the manager, of Cuban descent and in his midforties, offered her not a place to sleep in his truck, but a rollaway bed in a storage room.

Allison figured he’d be looking for something in return, like most of the men she’d encountered, but she was wrong. Octavio
was a kind, decent man. His wife, Samira, had died the year before from liver disease. He was raising their seven-year-old daughter, but he did not like to bring her to his place of work because it was not a proper environment. A place where people came, almost exclusively, to have sex. So his sister looked after his daughter when he had to work.

“People have needs,” he said, and shrugged. “And yours is for a safe place to stay. I have been where you are.”

Some days, he’d share his lunch with her. Every once in a while, on the night shift, he’d give her ten dollars from the till and send her to the nearby Burger King for something they could split. They would talk. Octavio’s parents were still in Cuba, and he hoped someday to bring them to Florida. “Before they are too old to come,” he said. “I want them to see their granddaughter. What about you?”

“There’s just my mom,” she said. “My dad died a few years ago, and I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

“Where is your mother?” Octavio asked.

“Seattle,” she lied. “I haven’t talked to her for a while.”

“I bet she misses you,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” she said. “Not much I can do about that.”

“You remind me of my daughter,” he said.

“How is that possible? She’s just a little girl.”

“I know, but you both need your mothers. You are both very sad.”

This entire experience, from the moment she’d fled her apartment to living now in Tampa, had given Allison Fitch time to do a lot of soul searching.

She was not, she concluded, a very good person.

She had lived off others and offered nothing in return, starting with her parents. She’d always thought of herself first. Her wants, her needs. What kind of person, she’d started asking herself, lies to her mother so she’ll send money? What kind of person
uses that money to book a vacation when she owes rent to her roommate? What kind of person turns a sexual relationship into an opportunity for a huge financial payoff? What kind of person resorts to blackmail?