“Is Jane a part of your new realism?”
I filled the glass and took a drink. “You’re out of bounds now,” I said, but she didn’t care.
“You know she’s been staying with me the last couple of nights? She’s not comfortable here while those people are still… watching. She said it creeps her out.”
“That makes two of us.”
“It’s not just the being followed, it’s that you didn’t tell her anything about it. And that you keep working on whatever this is, even though you have no client- and even with this threat.”
“This is really not your business, Laurie.”
“You can understand why she’d be a little scared.”
“I understand perfectly,” I said slowly.
Lauren looked down at her white hands for a while, and then she looked at me. “You won’t meet a lot of people like her, Johnny. She-”
“Jesus Christ!” I said. “Don’t you have someplace else to be? Don’t you have a husband somewhere, and a job? Go spend your time on them. Go have a kid or something. Go lead your own fucking life.” My voice was tight and harsh, and Lauren went quiet. She turned away from me and stood near the windows. The rain had grown heavier and made a sound like ice on the glass.
“That’s pretty funny, from someone who barely has a life himself, who runs away from any chance of having one, who’d rather poke around in someone else’s life than lead his own. It’s pretty funny- in a sad, pathetic kind of way.”
I sighed. “Do you have even a clue of what you’re talking about?”
“Of course not. How could I have a clue? How could anybody? That would mean you let someone intrude on you and your anger. That would mean you actually told someone what the hell happens inside your head.”
I laughed nastily. “I’ll leave the psychobabble to you; you have a knack for it. I think chemistry is my ticket to better living.”
“Right, right, it’s a big joke, getting help. Who the hell could possibly need that? Certainly not you. You’ve got your own personal twelve-step program going, a perpetual one-man meeting. Tell me, do you serve yourself doughnuts and coffee and give out little tokens for each day of joylessness? Probably not doughnuts, I guess; those might be too much fun. And they might somehow interfere with getting those precious miles in. Now, in which step do you pledge yourself to complete and utter isolation? Is that before or after the hair shirt and the self- flagellation?”
“You’re pretty funny yourself,” I said quietly, but it didn’t slow her down.
“I guess you’ve made it work for you, though,” she said. “I mean, I can’t remember the last time I heard you mention Anne.”
“Jesus-”
“Do you talk about her to anyone, Johnny? Can you even bring yourself to say her name?”
I stared at Lauren’s back. Her shoulders were stiff and her head was bent. “You should get the fuck out of here,” I said.
Lauren laughed bitterly and turned to face me. “That might carry more weight if I didn’t actually own this place,” she said. Her green eyes were wet, and she ran a hand over them and looked at me. “But you’re right, I should go. There’ve got to be better ways for me to spend my time.” She’d walked to the door and pulled on her raincoat and picked up her umbrella. “You don’t get that many chances, Johnny,” she’d said from the doorway. “You should try not to fuck this up.”
I heard the hiss of tires on asphalt. A gray Mercedes pulled up to the building’s entrance, and even before it stopped a security guard came out at a run to open the glass doors. Two men climbed out of the car. I recognized one as Jeremy Pflug. The other, I assumed, was Hauck. They spoke briefly with the guard and Pflug glanced my way, and then they went inside. I took my feet off the dash and locked the car and walked across the lot. Nobody ran to hold the doors for me.
The lobby was stone- smooth and pale on the floor, rough blocks of gray and tan on the walls- and it was spare, with no art or corporate logo or sign of any kind hanging, and no waiting area for visitors. The only adornment- if you could call it that- was the guard station, like a stone fortification at the far end of the space. A guard was waiting there, and so was Pflug.
“The early bird,” Pflug said. He looked at my cheek and put a finger to his own and smiled. It was wide and toothy and entirely unappealing on a Sunday morning- or at any other time. The Long Island lockjaw was less pronounced today, and he’d traded his duck hunting look for something more corporate: gray trousers, blue blazer, white shirt. He wore the jacket open, and I could see a shoulder rig under his left arm, and the butt of something heavy hanging there.
“Assume the position for me, John,” he said, and gestured toward the guard station.
I was wearing jeans and a black polo shirt, and unless you were blind or stupid it was pretty clear I wasn’t carrying. Pflug was yanking my chain, and I stared at him.
He shook his head and smiled. “Rules are rules, my friend, and we’ve all got to live with them. So be a good scout or go away- I don’t care which- but you’re not going in without a pat-down.”
I sighed and held my arms out. The guard came around the stone counter with a hand-held metal detector. He was maybe twenty, and tentative, and he ran the wand quickly along my sides and legs and around my waist. It warbled at the car keys in my pocket and at my belt buckle but was otherwise quiet. I put my arms down and he stepped back and looked at Pflug.
Pflug shook his head. “No, no, no,” he chided the guard. “Where did you learn to do this, at Wal-Mart? You can’t rely on that little gizmo; you’ve got to lay hands on him. You’ve got to grab him.” A blush and a pained expression spread across the guard’s face, and he looked from Pflug to me and back again. I helped him out.
“Take me to Hauck or go explain to him why not,” I said to Pflug. “That’s your choice. I’m done with this sideshow.” The guard went back behind the counter and studied his clipboard intently.
Pflug smiled and shook his head. “Don’t get yourself in a twist, John, we’re going, we’re going.” He went around the guard station and into a corridor on the left. I followed.
The corridor was paneled in shiny blond wood. The lighting was soft and the carpeting was thick. We progressed in silence, past darkened offices and around corners, to a smoked-glass door. Pflug pushed it open.
There was an elaborate secretary’s desk to the left, in blond wood that matched the wall paneling, and a waiting area with tan leather sofas to the right. Straight ahead was a set of double doors with sleek brass handles. The doors were shut.
“We wait,” Pflug said, and sat on one of the sofas. He crossed his long legs and patted the seat next to him. “Come on, take a load off, John. Don’t be shy.”
I looked at him but said nothing.
He laughed. “Peevish today? What’s the matter, not seen enough of your little friend lately? She is a busy beaver.” I stared at him. He cracked his knuckles and showed me more of his big teeth. He held his hands in front of his face like an imaginary camera and moved his finger up and down. “Click-click,” he said. I shook my head and the double doors opened.
Marcus Hauck was my height but heavier, and his close-set features were half a size too small for his round pink face. His hair was blond gone gray, cut close and slicked down, and his brown eyes were moist and guileless behind wire-framed glasses. He wore an oxford shirt that was tight across the belly and khaki pants that were an inch too short, and his careful mouth was set in a tiny smile. Hauck was deep in his forties, but despite the graying hair and spreading gut, he had an unripe, somehow fussy look, like an over-large choirboy.
“Come in,” he said. His voice was soft and had no accent.
It was a long room with a desk at one end, in front of a wall of windows that looked out on a stone terrace. The desk was a broad slab of maple with sharp edges and tapered legs, and there was a tan leather chair behind it and two Windsor chairs in front. The desktop was bare except for a leather blotter, a black telephone, a coffee mug, and a crystal sphere the size of a baseball.
A maple console sat along the wall to the left, its surface mostly covered with flat-panel monitors arranged in a strict row. There was a green rug on the floor, with a geometric pattern. It ran the length of the room, and at the far end, facing the desk, was a large weathered statue of a plump four-armed man.
He sat cross-legged on a stone plinth, and his stone features, and the elaborate carvings of jeweled strands on his arms and across his belly, were blurred and indistinct. His four hands held a club, a cup, a bowl, and a pouch,
