“If Stan Morton doesn’t have his hands tied, he might keep the spotlight on. There doesn’t have to be a king.”
“Yes, there does. It is the nature of power. It is inescapable.”
“Well, I’m escaping.”
“Then do it quickly.” That was it. The apron string had been machine-gunned. “If you think you can break up your father’s holdings, you’re wrong. Someone will put them back together. But now it is imperative for you to be removed before you do any more damage.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I don’t need to. You are more than enough threat to yourself.” He opened a desk drawer and jabbed his hand into it.
And then, for three seconds, I knew with certainty who the murderer was. I knew his motives and I knew who his next victim was going to be. I already had my hand balled and ready when his hand came out of the drawer with a handkerchief.
He applied it to his face, where I had been about to apply my own fist, rubbing off the perspiration of his passion. I was sweating from the adrenaline. I had to get out before either of us committed a crime.
“Good night, Fred.”
He already had his own anger controlled and was working through his next move. I left him there, a dinosaur plotting my extinction.
I couldn’t bring myself to drive home. Where was home going to be now? I finished my interrupted climb to the top of the building.
I called Rosita to say I would be out for the night, and laid my buffeted body onto the sofa. I’d had my nap at Eric’s. Now I was awake.
What would happen after one week, or whenever Jacob Rosen-berg finished earning his thirty pieces of silver? I just couldn’t picture it. Maybe I wouldn’t live that long anyway.
Katie. What should I do now? Even if I could talk her into a life with me instead of money, did I want to? She’d be better off without me. But I had to talk to her-to try one more time, with both of us calm. She needed to be rescued as much as I did, and she was much more worth saving. I had to talk to her.
Just not tonight. I’d had enough.
It was night and the office sofa was as good as a bed, but I wasn’t sleeping.
At eleven o’clock I might have been the only person in the building without a vacuum cleaner. Except perhaps Fred. I rode the elevator to the ground, to the empty lobby, and went out into the streets.
Three nights ago I’d been meeting Clinton Grainger in this same dark. I could just get myself shot-if not by an assassin, then just a regular mugger would do. That would end a lot of peoples’ problems. I even looked down a couple dark alleys, but no luck.
I drifted. It was like being lost at sea in the dark. I was no more able to get where I wanted to go, because I still didn’t know where that was.
There were few cars and no people. The hotels were four blocks away. I came to a corner and I could see the Hilton down the street, even the site of Grainger’s last stand.
It made me wonder who had stood there with him and how it was done. Just in the middle of a conversation? Had Grainger even seen the gun? Or maybe they had already parted and Grainger didn’t even know he was not alone.
Angela had known what was about to happen to her. What was that moment like, I wondered. It must seem like an eternity. And then, real eternity.
The night was cold enough to shiver in. There was no hope.
32
The sun through my office window woke me up, and I called Pamela and ordered a toothbrush. She arrived forty minutes later, at seven, with that and a razor, comb, bagels, and no questions.
But I had answers.
“Pamela. Sit here.” I put her in the Fred chair, facing me on the sofa. “I’m resigning.”
She looked at me over the top of her glasses. “That doesn’t sound like you’re running for the Senate.”
“I’m running the other way.”
“Tell me all about it, dear.”
I talked to myself, and she listened in. I retraced every step from the first funeral to walking the streets in the dark, and each decision I’d made, or whoever or whatever had made. And I repeated the questions that had chased me down the path and had finally caught me Saturday night. She nodded and shook her head at the right times, and when I’d finally run out of gas, she sighed.
“What do you think?” I said.
“I think you have a hard road in front of you.”
“Do you ever ask big questions, Pamela?”
“That’s why I go to church, dear. Will you be sleeping here for a while?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
“I’ll get a few more things so you’ll be more comfortable.”
“What will you do when I can’t afford a secretary?”
She smiled. “My husband and I have saved some over the years.”
“Melvin left you some money, too.”
“He was very generous. And there are two hundred little children in an orphanage in Honduras who are a lot better off now.”
Was that her own mini-foundation? “You knew about Melvin’s deals and everything he was doing?”
“Oh, yes.”
“But you kept working for him?”
She knew where I was going. “I did. He never asked me to do anything he knew I wouldn’t.”
“He just asked other people to do it. Didn’t it bother you to be part of his organization?”
She paused, and for the first time I was seeing into the secrets behind the secretary. “Every day. I try to live my life the right way, Jason, and it would be very hard sometimes.”
Even Pamela was compromised. For the money? “Why did you stay?”
A dear, sweet smile. “I promised your mother I’d look after him.”
That was the answer I would never have guessed. She waited for me.
“I don’t even know what to say about that,” I said. “Uh… you were friends with her?”
“Yes. When she married your father, I helped her get settled into her new house. And we stayed close.”
“And how were you supposed to look after Melvin?”
“Just be there. We both knew he wasn’t the type to take advice, especially from his secretary.”
I was taking deep breaths. “Did she say anything about me?”
“She asked me to look after you, too, and Eric.”
“Have you been?”
My cell phone started ringing.
“Every day.”
I didn’t understand, but I couldn’t ask. I had to answer the phone. The caller ID said it was Katie.
It was seven thirty. “You found me,” I said to my wife.
“What did you do, sleep on a sofa in your office?”
“Yes, actually.”
“And you’re still wearing the same clothes from yesterday.”
“I had a spare suit here in the office.”
“You don’t need to sleep there. We have beds here.”
“Would you want me in the same house?”
“Of course I do, Jason. We’re still married.”
