In the Night Room

right.”

Tom laughed. “He’s been ‘making things right’ all afternoon. I bet his shredder’s seen a lot of use.”

Willy drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. To Tom, in the low light of the bedside lamp, she looked, at first, only a few years older than the mysterious girl he had met in 1985; then he saw the fine lines around her mouth and the faint tracery under her eyes and, although he had never before thought of her in these terms, that she was one of the most distinguished women he knew.

“And of course another way he could make things right was to grease the wheels for your withdrawal. How much money did you walk out with?”

“A hundred thousand.”

“Jesus Christ.” He half-rose from the chair and looked at the floor on the other side of the bed, then at the closet door.

“It’s in the closet. I didn’t know where else to put it. A thousand hundred-dollar bills makes a pretty big stack.”

“I’ve never been in a room with that much money before.”

“Mr. Bender told me I could come back tomorrow and get another hundred thousand, but I don’t think I should do that.”

“No,” Tom said. “What did you do after you left the bank?”

“I almost killed Roman Richard Spilka, that’s what I did. I got out of the bank, and I was walking toward my car, holding one of my bags and rolling the other one along behind me, and in pulls Mitchell’s car, with Giles driving and Roman Richard sitting beside him. All of a sudden, I felt like this horrible, reeking cloud of villainy was all around me. . . . I couldn’t see, I could barely breathe. . . . Aah!”

Willy threw out her arms and waved them violently in front of her, as if she were trying to shake off spiderwebs or frighten away a bat. Her eyes were wild and out of focus. She kept uttering aah! in a small, stifled voice that went higher and higher. Scattered tears flew from her eyes.

Tom jumped off the chair, stretched out on the bed beside her, and put his arms around her. At first, it was like holding a trapped animal, but after a few terrible seconds in which Tom felt his own self-control begin to waver under her assault, Willy ceased to thrash in his arms and pound her fists against his back. He stroked her head, saying her name over and over. Eventually, she sagged against him, as limp as if she were boneless. She said, “Oooooohh, just hold me for a while, okay?”

“Try and stop me,” he said.

Sometime later, Willy groaned and separated herself from him. “I said something about a cloud of evil, and all of a sudden it was literal, a literal cloud, all sticky and foul. . . .” She chafed her hands together, wiping off imagined gumminess.

“It was ‘villainy,’ not ‘evil,’ ” Tom said. “A ‘reeking cloud of villainy.’ I thought that was pretty good. You know, you have a certain way with words. Ever think about becoming a writer?”

She groaned again, this time with a touch of self-mimicry. “I never got to the part where I almost killed that fat pig, Roman Richard. So they’re in the car, and I’m close to mine, right?”

“Right.”

“Giles puts on his brakes, but I keep going. When I’m tossing my bags into the back seat, Giles and Roman Richard are both getting out of the car. Giles says, ‘You left home pretty early this morning, Willy.’ I say, ‘Isn’t that allowed these days?’ They’re both walking toward me, but slow, like this is just an ordinary conversation on an ordinary day. I didn’t know if Giles had gone in and seen the pictures, and if he did, he doesn’t know if I did. ‘No need to worry about me,’ I said, and I got in behind the wheel. Now they’re walking a little faster. Giles says, ‘Hold on, Willy,’ and we look at each other, and bang, he sees that I know, and I see that he sees, and now we’re not playing games anymore. Giles yells, ‘Stop her!’ to Roman Richard, and they both come running. I got my car started just in time, and I turned the wheel and jammed the pedal, and the car just shot forward. Then Roman Richard was right in front of me, and there was a kind of a soft thump, and off he flew to the side. I hit him, all right.”

“How do you know you didn’t kill him?”

“I don’t even think I hurt him all that much. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw him getting up. He sure was mad, though.”

She pushed herself a bit farther away on the bed, picked up his right hand with both of hers, raised it to her mouth, and kissed it. She flattened the palm of his hand against her cheek. “You were wonderful to come here and tend to me. I hope you won’t mind if I tell you I love you.”

“I was just thinking the same,” Tom said.

Willy placed his hand on the bedspread and patted it. “Now I have to go into the bathroom and wash my face.”

He patted her hip as she swiveled sideways to get off the bed. For a second, sexual interest raised its head, and Tom was astonished for the second it took him to imagine that, at one level below consciousness, she had just reminded him of his first lover, slight, brilliant Hiro, who had relieved him of his virginity in his sophomore year. Then he thought, No, it’s Willy, I can’t believe it, she’s turning me on. What’s happening to me?

Sounds of running water came from the bathroom. “Really, Tom, I’m so grateful you’re here,” she called out.

“Me, too. Willy, didn’t they follow you?”

“I got away too fast. The bank is only half a block from the expressway, and by the time they got themselves organized, I could have gone in either direction. They probably guessed that I came to New York, but I don’t see how they could know where I am.” She appeared in the bathroom doorway, wiping her face with a small white towel. “I just hope I’m not getting you into any trouble.”

“Don’t worry about me. I don’t suppose there’s any way he can find out you’re in this hotel, is there?”

“Molly once told me that the Baltic people can find anything out, but after all, we’re talking about Mitchell, not the whole company. And he’s still in France.”

“How did you check in here? Did you use a credit card?”

“As far as the hotel is concerned, I’m W. Bryce. That’s the name on my AmEx card. Jim Patrick told me to do that when I applied for the card. Actually, Jim made out the application, and he told me that was the name he wanted me to use. We hardly ever took the AmEx cards out of our wallets, though. When we paid with plastic, we usually used MasterCard.”

Willy was drawing the towel over first one hand, then the other, staring at the moving towel, as if she expected something to slip out from beneath it. She glanced at Tom.

“I figured it was about some accounting rigamarole, because we got the American Express cards through a service division of his company. It was like we got reduced rates, or something like that.”

“Did the bills come through the company, or directly to you?”

“They came straight to us. I used to write the checks. But like I said, we almost never used those cards.” She stopped moving the towel across her hands. “That wasn’t an idle question, was it?”

Tom shook his head.

“You think he was trying to protect me.”

“I think he was probably covering his ass.”

“My ass, you mean.” Willy flipped the towel into the bathroom. “He knew something was wrong. Damn him. What kind of company are they, anyhow? Oh, as if that hasn’t become transparently clear. But Jim was such a nice man, and such a smart man, too—he was kind, you know? Do you suppose he had Holly with him to keep her safe? To protect her from being kidnapped?”

Tom was looking straight at her, giving nothing away.

“All this stuff is going through my head! Did I tell you that I almost broke into a produce warehouse because I was sure Holly was imprisoned inside it? I could hear her calling for me! I knew my daughter was dead, but I couldn’t stop myself—I got out of the car, fully intending to break a window and climb in. I swear to you, Tom, sometimes it feels as though I am being made to do things. Like I’m a marionette, and someone else is pulling the strings.”

Wild-eyed again, she held her arms straight up and wiggled them as though they were controlled by puppet