no more. 'what will be long enough. What time and where?'
Dusk was settling in when Nolan Wainwright's Mustang nosed to the curb outside the Forum East apartment building where Juanita Nunez lived. Moments later she emerged through the main floor entranceway, closing it carefully behind her. Wainwright reached over from belund the wheel to open the nearside door and she climbed in.
He helped fasten her seat harness, then said, 'Thank you for coming.'
'Half an hour,' Juanita reminded him. 'That's all.' She made no attempt to be friendly and was already nervous about leaving Estela alone.
The bank security chief nodded as he eased the car away from the curb and into traffic. They drove two blocks in silence, then made a left turn onto a busier, divided road, lined with brightly lighted stores and eateries. Still driving, Wainwright said, 'I hear young Eastin came to see you.' She responded sharply, 'How did you know?' 'He told me. He also said that you've forgiven him.' 'If he said it, then you know.' 'Juanita may I call you that?' 'It is my name. I suppose so.'
Wainwright sighed. 'Juanita, I already told you I'm sorry about the way things went between us once before. If you still hold that against me, I don't blame you.'
She thawed slightly. 'Bueno, you had better tell me what it is you want.' 'I want to know if you'd be willing to help Eastin.' 'So he is the one.' 'Yes.' 'Why should I? Isn't forgiving him enough?'
'If you ask my opinion more than enough. But he was the one who said you might…' She interrupted. 'What kind of help?'
'Before I tell you, I'd like your promise that what we say tonight will go no further than the two of us.'
She shrugged. 'There is no one to tell. But you have the promise.'
'Eastin is going to do some investigative work. It's for the bank, though unofficial. If he succeeds it may help him get rehabilitated, which is what he wants.' Wainwright paused while he maneuvered the car around a slow- moving tractor-trailer. He continued, 'The work is risky. It would be riskier still if Eastin reported directly to me. What the two of us need is someone to carry messages both ways an intermediary.' 'And you decided it should be me?'
'No one's decided. It's a question of whether you'd be willing. If you were, it would help Eastin help himself.' 'And is Miles the only one this would help?'
'No,' Wainwright admitted. 'It would help me; also the bank.' 'Somehow that is what I thought.'
They had left the bright lights now and were crossing the river by a bridge; in the gathering darkness the water gleamed blackly far below. The road surface was metallic and the car wheels hummed. At the end of the bridge was the entrance to an interstate highway. Wainwright turned onto it.
'The investigation you speak of,' Juanita prompted. 'Yell me more about it.' Her voice was low, expressionless.
'All right.' He described how Miles Eastin would operate under cover, using his contacts made in prison, and the kind of evidence Miles would search for. There was no point, Wainwright decided, in holding anything back because what he didn't tell Juanita now she would find out later. So he added the information about the murder of Vic, though omitting the more unpleasant details. 'I'm not saying the same will happen to Eastin,' he concluded. 'I'll do everything possible to make sure it won't. But I mention it so you know the risk he's running, and he understands it, too. If you were to help him, as I said, it would keep him safer.'
'And who will keep me safe?'
'For you there'd be virtually no risk. The only contact you'd have would be with Eastin and with me. No one else would know, and you wouldn't be compromised. We'd make sure of that.'
- 'If you are so sure, why are we meeting this way now?'
- 'Simply a precaution. To make certain we're not seen together and can't be overheard.'
Juanita waited, then she asked, 'And that is all? There is nothing more to tell me?' Wainwright said, 'I guess that's it.'
They were on the interstate now and he held the car at a steady 45, staying in the right-hand lane while other vehicles speeded past. On the opposite side of the divided highway three lines of headlights streamed toward them, passing in a blur. Soon he would turn off at an exit ramp and return the way they had come. Meanwhile, Juanita sat silently beside him, her eyes directed straight ahead.
He wondered what she was thinking and what her answer would be. He hoped it would be yes. As on earlier occasions he found this petite, elfin girl-woman provocative and sexually attractive. Her perversity was part of it; so was the smell of her a bodily feminine presence in the small closed car. There had been few women in Nolan Wainwright's life since his divorce, and at any other time he might have tried his luck. But what he wanted from Juanita now was too important to take a chance with self-indulgence.
He was about to break the silence when Juanita turned to face him. Even in the semidarkness he could see her eyes were blazing. 'You must be mad, mad, mad!' Her voice rose heatedly. 'Do you think I am a little fool? Una boba! tonta! No risk for me, you say! Of course there is a risk, and I take all of it. And for what? For the glory of Mr. Security Wainwright and his bank.' 'Now wait…'
She brushed aside the interruption, storming on, her anger spilling out like lava. 'Am I such an easy target? Does being alone or Puerto Rican qualify me for all the abuses of this world? Do you not care who you use, or how? Take me home What kind of pendejada is this anyway?'
'Hold it!' Wainwright said; the reaction had astonished him. 'What's pendejada?'
'Idiocy! Pendejada that you would throw a man's life away for your selfish credit cards. Pendejada that Miles would agree to do it.' 'He came to me asking for help. I didn't go to him.' 'You call that help?'
'He'll be paid for what he does. He wanted that, too. And it was he who suggested you.'
'Then what is wrong with him that he cannot ask me himself? Has Miles lost his tongue? Or is he ashamed, and hiding behind your skirts?'
'Okay, okay,' Wainwright protested. 'I get the message. I'll take you home.' An off ramp was close ahead; he turned onto it, crossed an overpass and headed back toward the city. Juanita sat fuming.
At first, she had tried to consider calmly what Wainwright was suggesting. But while he had talked, and she had listened, doubts and questions besieged her, then afterward, as she considered each, her anger and emotion grew, and finally exploded. Coupled with her outburst was a fresh hate and disgust for the man beside her. All the old painful feelings of her earlier experience with him now returned and were augmented. And she was angry, not only for herself, but about the use which Wainwright and the bank proposed to make of Miles.
At the same time Juanita was incensed at Miles. Why had he not approached her himself, directly? Was he not man enough? She remembered that less than three weeks ago she had admired his courage in coming to her, facing her penitently, and asking forgiveness. But his actions now, the method of working on her through someone else, seemed more in keeping with his earlier deceit when he had blamed her for his own malfeasance. Suddenly her thinking veered. Was she being harsh, unjust? Looking inside herself, Juanita asked: Wasn't part of her frustration at this moment a disappointment that Miles had not returned after the encounter in her apartment? And wasn't there exacerbating that disappointment here and now a resentment that Miles, whom she liked despite everything, was being represented to her by Nolan Wainwright, whom she didn't?
Her anger, never long sustained, diminished. Uncertainty replaced it. She asked Wainwright, 'So what will you do now?' 'Whatever I decide, I'm certainly not likely to confide in you.' His tone was curt, the attempt at friendliness i gone.
With sudden alarm, Juanita wondered if she had been needlessly belligerent. She could have turned down the request without the insults. Would Wainwright find some way to retaliate within the bank? Had she put her job in jeopardy? the job she depended on to support Estela. Juanita's anxiety increased. She had a sense, after all, of being trapped.
And something else, she thought: If she were honest which she tried to be she regretted that because of her decision she would see no more of Miles.
The car had slowed. They were near the turnoff which would take them back across the river bridge.
Surprising herself, Juanita said in a flat, small voice, 'Very well, I will do it.' 'You'll what?' 'I will be whatever it was an…'
'Intermediary.' Wainwright glanced sideways at her. 'You're sure?' 'Si, estoy segura. I am sure.'
Por the second time tonight he sighed. 'You're a strange one.' 'I am a woman.'
'Yes,' he said, and some of the friendliness was back 'I'd noticed.'
