crossing what she considered to be a profound threshold. A small, but prestigious publisher was seriously considering her first novel. Although she had written since puberty, an English teacher in high school starchily upbraided her not to call herself a writer until her work was in print. She desperately wanted to call herself a writer.
Laura was insecure and self-conscious but her friends and mentors had urged her on. Her book was publishable, she’d been told, so naively she sent the manuscript, unsolicited and unagented, to a dozen publishers then proceeded to write the screenplay version because she saw it as a film too. Time passed and she became acclimated to heavy packages at her door, the boomeranged manuscript plus a rejection letter-nine, ten, eleven times-but the twelfth never arrived. Finally, a call instead, from Elevation Press in New York, expressing interest and wondering if, absent a commitment, she’d make some changes and resubmit. She readily agreed and did a rewrite in accordance with their notes. The day before, she’d received an e-mail from the editor, inviting her to their offices, a nerve-wracking but auspicious sign.
Nancy found Laura a fascination, a glimpse into an alternative life. Lipinskis weren’t writers or artists, they were shopkeepers or accountants, or dentists or FBI agents. And she was interested in how Will’s DNA could possibly have produced this untainted charming creature. The answer had to be maternal.
In fact, Laura’s mother-Will’s first wife, Melanie-wrote poetry and taught creative writing at a community college in Florida. The marriage, Laura told her, had lasted just long enough for her conception, birth, and second birthday party, before Will smashed it into smithereens. Growing up, the words “your father” were spat as epithets.
He was a ghost. She heard about his life secondhand, capturing snippets from her mother and aunts. She pictured him from the wedding album, blue-eyed, large and smiling, locked in time. He left the sheriff’s department. He joined the FBI. He remarried. He divorced again. He was a drinker. He was a womanizer. He was a bastard whose only saving grace was paying child support. And he never so much as called or sent a card along the way.
One day Laura saw him on the news being interviewed about some ghastly serial killer. She saw the name Will Piper on the TV screen, recognized the blue eyes and the squared-off jaw, and the fifteen-year-old girl cried a river. She began to write short stories about him, or at least what she imagined him to be. And in college, emancipated from her mother’s influence, she did some detective work and found him in New York City. Since then they’d had a relationship, of sorts, quasifilial and tentative. He was the inspiration for her novel.
Nancy asked its title.
“ The Wrecking Ball,” Laura replied.
Nancy laughed. “The shoe fits, I guess.”
“He is a wrecking ball, but so are booze, genes, and destiny. I mean Dad’s father and mother were both alcoholics. Maybe he couldn’t escape it.” She poured herself another glass of wine and waved it in a toast. By now her speech was a little heavy. “Maybe I can’t either.”
Nelson Elder was arriving at the foot of the driveway of his home, a six-bedroom mansion at The Hills, in Summerlin, when his mobile phone rang. The caller ID registered PRIVATE CALLER. He answered and pulled the large Mercedes up to one of the garage bays.
“Mr. Elder?”
“Yes, who is this?”
The caller’s voice was pinched with tension, almost squeaky. “We met a few months ago at the Constellation. My name is Peter Benedict.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t recall.”
“I was the one who caught the blackjack counters.”
“Yes! I remember! The computer guy.” Strange, Elder thought. “Did I give you my cell phone number?”
“You did,” Mark lied. There wasn’t a phone number in the world he couldn’t grab. “Is it okay?”
“Sure. How can I help you?”
“Well, actually, sir, I’d like to help you.”
“How so?”
“Your company is in trouble, Mr. Elder, but I can save it.”
Mark was breathing rapidly and visibly shaking. His cell phone was on the kitchen table, still warm from his cheek. Each step of his plan had taxed him, but this was the first requiring human interaction, and his terror was slow to dissipate. Nelson Elder would meet with him. One more chess move and the game was his.
Then his doorbell jolted him into the next level of autonomic overdrive. He rarely had unannounced visitors, and in fear he almost bolted for his bedroom. He calmed himself and hesitantly went to the door and opened it a crack.
“Will?” he asked incredulously. “What are you doing here?”
Will stood there with a big easy smile on his face. “Weren’t expecting me, were you?”
Will could see that Mark was unsteady, like a tower of playing cards trying to maintain a composure. “No. I wasn’t.”
“Hey, look, I was in town on business and thought I’d look you up. Is this a bad time?”
“No. It’s fine,” Mark said mechanically. “I just wasn’t expecting anybody. Would you like to come in?”
“Sure. For a few minutes, anyway. I’ve got a little time to kill before I head to the airport.”
Will followed him to the living room, reading tension and discomfort in his old roomie’s stiff gait and high voice. He couldn’t help profiling the guy. It wasn’t a parlor trick-he always had the knack, the ability to figure out someone’s feelings, conflicts, and motivations with lightning speed. As a child, he’d used his natural acumen to fashion a protected triangulated space between two alcoholic parents, saying and doing the right things in the right aliquots to satisfy their neediness and preserve some measure of balance and stability in the household.
He’d always wielded his talent to his advantage. In his personal life, he used it in a Dale Carnegie way to win friends and influence people. The women in his life would say he used it to manipulate the hell out of them. And in his career, it had given him a tangible edge over the criminals who populated his world.
Will wondered what was making Mark so uncomfortable-a phobic, misanthropic kind of personality disorder or something more specific to his visit?
He sat down on an unyielding sofa and sought to put him at ease. “You know, after we saw each other at the reunion, I kind of felt bad I hadn’t gone to the effort to look you up all these years.”
Mark sat across from him, mute, with tightly crossed legs.
“So, I hardly ever come out to Vegas-this is just a onenighter-and on my way to the hotel yesterday someone pointed out the Area 51 shuttle and I thought of you.”
“Really?” Mark asked with a rasp. “Why’s that?”
“That’s where you sort of implied you worked, no?”
“Did I? I don’t recall saying that.”
Will remembered Mark’s odd demeanor when the subject of Area 51 came up at the reunion dinner. This looked like a no-go zone. In fact he didn’t care, one way or the other. Mark clearly had a high-level security clearance and took it seriously. Good for him. “Well, whatever. It doesn’t matter to me where you work, it just triggered an association and I decided to drop in, that’s all.”
Mark continued to look skeptical. “How’d you find me? I’m not listed.”
“Don’t I know. I’ve got to admit it-I queried an FBI database in the local office when 411 didn’t do the trick. You weren’t on the radar screen, buddy. Must have an interesting job! So I called Zeckendorf to see if he had your number. He didn’t, but you must’ve given him your address so his wife could mail you that picture.” He waved at the reunion photo on the table. “I put mine on the coffee table too. I guess we’re just a couple of sentimental guys. Say, you wouldn’t have anything to drink, would you?”
Will saw that Mark was breathing easier. He’d broken the ice. The guy probably had a social anxiety disorder and needed time to warm up.
“What would you like?” Mark asked.
“Got scotch?”
“Sorry, only beer.”
“When in Rome.”
When Mark went to the kitchen, Will stood up and out of curiosity had a look around. The living room was sparsely furnished with characterless modern things that could have been in the lobby of a public space. Everything
