Nobody Runs Forever

“It would be better if we could find it,” the detective said. “I mean, just informally, without going through the process of getting a search warrant from a judge or anything like that.”

Feeling increasingly put-upon, Elaine said, “Do we really have to make such a big deal over it?”

“If you’d like,” the detective said, “I could phone for a few officers to just come out and look for it while we chat. They wouldn’t disturb anything, I promise. Of course, if you’d rather check with your attorney . . .”

“No.” Elaine sighed, and that was as honest as the blush had been. “Go ahead,” she said. “Make your call.”

4

When Jack Langen saw the dark blue police van parked at his front door, next to a nondescript tan Plymouth Fury, his immediate thought was, What’s she done now? He just took it for granted, if the police were here, it would be because of something Elaine had done. She was a prickly, difficult woman, and a part of the problem of her existence was the way she would suddenly spurt into action somewhere without the slightest thought for the consequences. So if the police were here, what had Elaine done now?

Thumbing the garage opener on the visor, putting his black Lincoln Navigator into the garage next to Elaine’s white Infiniti, Jack told himself he shouldn’t be hasty in his assumptions. Hasty, half-baked assumptions were Elaine’s specialty, after all, not his. So if the police were here, and say for argument’s sake it was not because Elaine had been stupid or careless, what reason might it be?

The bank move. The date for that had just been settled this afternoon. Elaine didn’t even know it yet, unless the police had just told her. The four armored cars from Boston would arrive here the night of October 4, just one week from today. Rooms for the four drivers and the eight accompanying guards had been taken at the Green Man Motel. The packing of over seventy-five years of correspondence and records and files and all the many kinds of necessary government forms had just begun. The cash reserves in the vault in the basement of the Deer Hill building would undergo a final audit in the two days before the move, being brought up to the bank itself starting after closing time on the fourth.

This was going to be the largest single act of Jack Langen’s life. The company they’d hired to oversee the operation, Secure Removals, the American subsidiary of a British private security corporation, had already been on- site, and Bart Hosfeld, the manager in charge, had told him this afternoon that the closest thing in life to a move of this sort was an invasion in a war. “Well, except,” Jack had said, “there’s no enemy shooting at you.”

“With this much money in cash floating around the midnight roads?” Bart had answered. “Don’t be that sure.”

A happy thought.

But that was why they were keeping the whole move as secret as possible, and why, he told himself as he got out of the Navigator and walked around the Infiniti and on into the house, it might very well be that the reason for the police presence at his house at this moment had something to do with the move.

But not. When he walked into the kitchen, a woman in police uniform was in there, wearing white rubber gloves and searching the kitchen drawers. She looked around when he entered, nodded and said, “Good afternoon, sir.”

Nothing to do with the bank. Everything to do with Elaine. But why are they searching the kitchen? Jack said, “Is my wife here?” half-expecting she was in a jail cell somewhere.

But the woman cop said, “Oh, yes, sir, she’s in the front room with Detective Reversa.”

“Detective Reversa.”

“Yes, sir. Excuse me, I’m almost done here.”

It was now twenty to five in the afternoon. Usually, when Jack got home from the office each day at around this time, he would make himself a small scotch and soda to begin the daily unwinding process, but he somehow couldn’t see himself mixing a drink under the eyes of a uniformed woman cop searching for . . .

For what? What on Earth could this woman policeman be looking for in Jack Langen’s kitchen? What has Elaine done now?

Feeling stupidly awkward in his own home, Jack said, “Well, um, nice to meet you,” and left the kitchen. As he walked through the house, bracing himself for whatever mess Elaine had made this time, he reminded himself that this difficult period of his life was very nearly over.

When he’d met Elaine shortly after college, with her family and her money—and her own bank!—the difficulties of having to deal with her seemed a small price to pay. Besides, old Harvey was still alive then, and could keep some sort of control over her.

Once the bank merger was complete, then he could make his move. Now, Elaine could still throw a monkey wrench into the process, but once the merger was a done deal, a very quiet little divorce would shortly ensue, and then Jack Langen would be a free and a happy man.

To have leveraged that chance meeting with Elaine into marriage and money and a career at the bank was wonderful enough for an impoverished nobody like Jack Langen, but now, to have leveraged her bank into a senior position of his own at a larger and more successful bank, run by a bunch of fellows with whom Jack could get along very well indeed, and in which Elaine herself was shuffled out of any position of power or importance, that was a coup of which Jack felt very justly proud. So all he had to do now was wait it out, wait it out, wait it out. No matter what Elaine had done this time, just wait it out. The end was in sight.

He couldn’t think what this trouble might be. Not another affair; that business with Jake Beckham had been, Jack was sure, the most humiliating experience of Elaine’s life. He knew that what she really wanted, and would always want, would be to get herself out of this corner of Massachusetts forever, go someplace entirely different, where no one would know what an ass she’d made of herself back home.

Well, after the divorce, she’d still be reasonably well off, so let her go where she wanted. Alaska, or some island.

Jack didn’t realize he was smiling when he entered the front parlor, but then the smile faded, replaced by confusion when he saw Elaine sitting in there with a very good-looking young woman, a tall, svelte blonde of the sort Jack himself fancied from time to time, though never at home, never anywhere around here. He wouldn’t make a public fool of himself, the way Elaine had, no matter what the woman looked like.

Though this one did look good. “I’m sorry,” he said to both of them. “They said you were in here with a policeman.”