Once again he considered simply getting himself out of this before she knew he had been involved. Seeing him with Stillman would destroy any respect that she had for him. Then he reminded himself of the facts. She had dumped him over a year and a half ago, well before the training period had ended. She had not changed her mind before she had left for her first post. She had not called him after that, or sent him a note. It was over.
Going along to make sure she was safe was a neutral, disinterested act that had nothing to do with any present or future relationship. It was simply necessary because in the course of their past relationship he had come to understand her well enough to know she was not dishonest. She wasn’t a lover, and she never would be again. It didn’t matter what she thought of him now. If it turned out that she needed an advocate, he would be there. Just as he was succumbing to a fantasy in which he cleared her name, she learned of it afterward, and appeared unexpectedly in San Francisco with gratitude that knew no bounds, his ears popped.
The plane was descending threateningly, moving in toward the runway. In a moment it bounced once and rattled to a stop. Walker overcame his impulse to hurry to keep up with Stillman.
Stillman was waiting for him near the end of the boarding tunnel, but while they walked, he did not speak. Walker noticed that at the car-rental counter downstairs, Stillman merely claimed a car that he had somehow reserved. He had been behaving as though he had received a telephone call at McClaren’s and run for the airport. Maybe he had, and he had called ahead from the plane. But Walker determined to remember these small discrepancies until he could perceive a pattern that was unambiguous.
Stillman sat behind the wheel and drove out onto Century Boulevard. Twice Walker caught Stillman staring at him. Finally, Stillman said, “What the hell is the matter with you?”
Walker said, “Nothing. Nothing new, anyway. What are we doing?”
“I told you. Investigating.”
Walker reviewed his question and admitted to himself that asking questions was a bad strategy. No matter what the answer had been, it would not have changed what he was doing, which was sitting in the passenger seat letting Stillman drag him wherever he pleased until he was sure Ellen was not in trouble.
Stillman’s voice struck him as a distraction. “I’ll tell you what I know so far, so you recognize names. A guy named Andrew Werfel bought a life insurance policy from McClaren’s in 1959. It was one of those policies that rich guys buy to pay the inheritance tax so the government doesn’t take everything when they die. The payoff was twelve million. Okay so far?”
“Sure,” said Walker. “It’s pretty common.”
“He died a month ago. The beneficiary was his only begotten son, Alan Werfel. Everything cut-and-dried. A couple of weeks later, Alan Werfel showed up at the Pasadena office with a certified copy of the death certificate. After a few preliminary faxes and calls to the home office, he was given the usual forms to sign off on, and then a check for the twelve million. Still okay?”
“This doesn’t sound like anything but a dull day at the Pasadena office. I assume there was something wrong with Alan Werfel?”
“That’s the way it looks. The agent who handled the Werfel thing was the assistant manager of the Pasadena office, a young lady named Ellen Snyder. She’s the one who verified the death certificate, checked Alan Werfel’s ID, requested the payout, and handed over the check.” Walker could feel Stillman’s eyes on him.
“Is this where I come in?” asked Walker. “Do I think Ellen Snyder did something dishonest? No. Can I prove it? No. I just have no reason to think she would, and quite a few to think she wouldn’t.”
“I got that far on my own,” said Stillman. “She has a good record, and when she was hired, nothing got into her personnel file that was faked . . . . unlike a few other people.”
“You’re saying there’s something wrong in my file?”
“I’m not investigating you. I didn’t check everything in your file.”
“You want to give me a lie detector test?”
Stillman rolled his eyes and then blew out a breath in displeasure. “You are not the problem. You are helping me analyze the problem. And by the way, don’t ever volunteer to take a lie detector test.”
“Why not—because people will just think I beat the machine?”
“You hear about that more than it happens. Most of the people who can do it are nuts, and you don’t need a machine to know that you met one. What you don’t hear about is—HAH!” His shout was sudden and deafening. “How’s your pulse, kid?”
It took Walker a second to settle back into his seat. His shirt collar suddenly felt tight. The arteries in his neck were pounding, and a faint film of moisture had materialized on his forehead. He fought down the anger. “That wasn’t funny.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be funny,” said Stillman. “It was instructive. Your heartbeat, blood pressure, and breathing just took a big jump all at the same time. You’re lying.”
“You’re saying the lie detector people are going to scream in my ear?”
“They don’t have to. Any six-year-old on a playground knows how to piss off the kid beside him enough to get a reading.”
“Then I’ll stay away from playgrounds, too.”
“Good. Now, back to Ellen. You fucked her, right?”
Walker sucked in a deep breath. “Are you still trying to be irritating?”
“No, it’s a natural by-product of the search for knowledge,” said Stillman. “Didn’t you?”
“No. I didn’t.” He tried to detect whether the tone of his voice had betrayed him, and judged that the genuine anger in it had masked the lie. He tested a suspicion. “Did somebody tell you I did?”
“I don’t remember who told me. Cardarelli, maybe. Or it could have been Marcy Wang.”
Walker smoldered. The idea that they would express outrage to him that Stillman was spying on employees, and then tell Stillman all the personal information he wanted on other people, was incredible. How had they even known? The revelation that any of them had known enough about what had passed between him and Ellen to make any conjecture was a shock. It had begun and ended in training, when they had all been almost strangers. “I can’t believe it,” he muttered.
“Then don’t. Maybe I made it up and forgot. I heard you took her out during training. You didn’t?”
Walker was tense and angry. What right did this guy have to ask these prying questions? This had nothing to do with his job or Ellen’s. He said with feigned patience, “I asked her out to dinner once. Then I asked her to go someplace with me another time, and she said no. A concert. That was it. She wasn’t interested, so I dropped it.”
“What do you mean she wasn’t interested?”
Walker sighed to convey his weariness of the topic. “She went out with me once. It was a nice place. We were both pleasant and smiled a lot. I liked her, and I wanted her to like me. A couple of days later, I got tickets to a concert, because she’d said she played the piano when she was a kid and still loved music. But when I asked, she gave me one of those excuses they have that tells you to forget it.”
“Like what?”
“Like they have to wash their hair. It was better than that, but it was still—I remember—she had to study for an exam we were having the day after the concert.” He glared. “Satisfied?”
“You were twenty-two, and so was she, and neither of you was married,” said Stillman. “Jesus, I don’t know about people in your generation. You look the same as people used to, except for the hair, but you’re not.”
Walker said, “What’s the complaint?”
“It would seem to me,” Stillman said, “that the natural thing would be to make friends, have foolish sexual relationships, blow your paycheck, feel remorse. But you don’t. All of you are so serious, so interested in making the leap from third assistant manager to second assistant manager. What is it? Are you all crazy for money?”
Walker stared out the window, pretending not to listen.
“Tell me this. Are men and women still attracted to each other?”
“I was attracted, she wasn’t.”
“That reassures me about you, anyway. A twenty-four-year-old who can’t wait to be sixty and move into the corner office has got a problem.”
Stillman stopped the car in front of a convenience store, but he didn’t go in. Instead, he walked down the sidewalk and turned the corner onto a residential street. Walker got out and caught up, but Stillman still seemed to be marveling over the degeneration of civilization.
“Mind if I ask where we’re going?” asked Walker.
