Death Benefits: A Novel

steadily, and decided that must be what was being protected.

Stillman said, “What have we got?”

Constantine Gochay scanned the sheets. “I should have had Serena add this up for you before. I don’t know what the hell this is going to cost.” He reached the bottom of the last page. “Ah. I see. It’s thirty-five hundred.”

Stillman’s brows knitted. It was the first time Walker had seen him react to any expense.

Gochay nodded in sympathy. “I know. It’s not high enough, is it? She isn’t that hard to trace.”

“No,” said Stillman. “Is she even using fake names?”

“That much she’s doing,” said Gochay. “But it’s not complicated. She switches to a new one in each town, but then she’ll buy something with a card in the old name while she’s there. Or she’ll use it to buy a plane ticket to the next place.” He put the sheets in Stillman’s hands, then stood over his shoulder and pointed at the entries in order. “See?” He paused, and looked at Stillman again. “Maybe you should be careful, eh?”

“I haven’t thought of a reason yet why this one would want us to find her,” said Stillman. “I have to hope she’s just not too good at this.”

Gochay shrugged. “Then you’ll get what you get.”

“Hard to argue with that.” Stillman reached into his coat pocket, but Gochay stopped him.

“No, no. Please pay the lady on your way out.”

Walker followed Stillman into the hallway, through the work room, into the long space that Walker now realized was a false living room, placed between the outer walls and the rooms where everything illegal went on, to fool eavesdropping devices. The girl was lying on the couch staring disgustedly at a commercial with a red pickup truck bouncing unpleasantly up a steep dirt road in some mountains.

She looked up at Walker. “Did you and Constantine bring each other to a mutually satisfying completion?” Her accent was gone.

Walker answered, “Actually, you’re more my type.” He silently cursed himself. Why had he said that? This wasn’t somebody joking with him at the office. These people were criminals. She could even be Gochay’s wife. He could feel the hairs on his arms standing up.

But she smiled back, her eyes half-lidded in a way that made her look even more like a cat. “I don’t think so. I like girls.”

Walker said uncomfortably, “We have something in common.”

She brought her knees up and bobbed to her feet. “Good. We’ll go out some night and cruise the bars for pussy. Money, please.”

Stillman held out a handful of hundred-dollar bills. She snatched the money, folded the bills without counting them, then lifted her long sweater so she could stuff them into the pocket of her jeans. “Oh, Max. You shouldn’t have.”

“Good night, Serena,” said Stillman. “Always nice to see you.”

She opened the door. “Likewise, Max. Never darken my door again.” Stillman stepped out into the night. Walker tried to follow, but the girl moved in front of him, stood on tiptoes, and kissed his cheek. Then she pushed him toward the door. “Now go out and play with Max. Shoo!”

Walker found himself on the darkened porch. He couldn’t see Stillman, but he heard the voice. “She likes you.”

“Serena?” He stepped uneasily off the porch, relieved when his foot touched a surface that felt like a stepping-stone.

“Yep, God help you.” Stillman walked toward the street. “And whatever her name is, it’s not Serena. That’s just a six-letter computer password.”

10

As they moved to the end of the dark street and came around the corner toward the high school, the silhouettes of three men materialized out of the shadows. Walker’s muscles tensed, his mind first identifying them as the nameless, dangerous people he had been half-expecting to meet at Gochay’s, then transforming them into the two men who had appeared the same way in the alley last night. But they weren’t even looking in his direction. He reminded himself that he was near a high school. They were probably just boys hanging around after practice, the way he had at that age. They stepped apart to the edges of the sidewalk, so that Walker and Stillman could only pass between them. Stillman’s pace never slowed. “Evening,” he said. Walker had no choice but to fall a step behind, since there wasn’t room to pass except single file.

There was no answer. As Stillman came abreast of the men, Walker could see their shapes were bigger, wider than high school boys. He detected a sudden movement in the dim light. The man nearest to Stillman brought his hand up, but Stillman was in motion too. His left hand batted the arm down, and held it while he spun the man around and brought his right elbow into the man’s throat. The man instinctively backed up as fast as he could, trying to avoid the crushing force on his throat, until his head bounced against the face of the man in the middle with a hollow bone-sound.

Walker ducked low and hurled himself into the thickest shadows, where the two men’s bodies seemed to overlap. He knew his shoulder hit someone’s midsection when he felt the belly give inward and he heard a huff that came from somewhere above. He stayed low and punched wildly, his fists hammering at the two men as quickly as his arms would move. He leaned into them and kept advancing with his knees high, digging hard like a football lineman to keep the two men off balance.

His head rang and stung with glancing blows, and he endured two heavy hammer-thumps on his back. He kept moving, but suddenly ducked his left shoulder and swung his right arm higher toward the faces. In the darkness, the sudden hook upward caught someone by surprise and landed between an eye and nose.

There was a cry, and the resistance gave way abruptly. As he lunged forward into empty air, one of them landed a kick on the right side of his stomach. The sudden impact made his lungs refuse to breathe, and that induced a panic in him. He felt like a man in deep water struggling toward the surface. His legs pumped harder to get clear, and as they did, he realized his foot was pushing off the torso of a man who was down.

He felt his foot tangle in the arm of the fallen man, and then he knew the pavement was coming. His arms instantly pushed out in front of him in a reflex to break the fall, but they skidded on concrete and the burning sensation shot up to his elbows. He rolled and kicked out, and heard a wet thwock sound that told him his heel had made contact with an open mouth. He scrambled to his feet and felt a strong pressure around his shoulders that pulled him forward. The voice of Stillman was close to his ear: “Run.”

He dug in and ran a few steps with Stillman before he heard the noise. It was not as loud as it should have been, just a pop like a firecracker. His lungs expanded with alarm and sucked in a breath over the hurt, overruling whatever cramp it was that had squeezed his chest for the past fifteen seconds. He was running harder now, dashing along the street with each leg straining to put another footstep between him and a gun. He was aware of the quick, rhythmic tapping of Stillman’s shoes on the pavement to his right. He heard pop-pop- pop and spun his head to look, but Stillman was still up, and Walker’s awkward movement had given Stillman a chance to get a step ahead.

According to some rule that was too basic to put into words, that meant Walker was free to run as fast as he pleased. He stretched his legs, pumped his arms, and dashed onto the broad asphalt surface. He veered away from Stillman to keep from bumping him, and the next shot hit the pavement between them, splashing bright sparks and bits of powdered asphalt ahead like skipped stones.

Walker weaved in and out of the tall poles that held basketball backboards, then realized that would make his next move predictable. He let his next sidestep take him off at an angle away from the poles. He heard a bullet ring a pole and ricochet into the darkness, then determined to stop trying to be clever.

He heard Stillman’s voice. “Something’s wrong,” he rasped.

“No shit,” said Walker, annoyed.

“They’re not running after us.”

“Good!”

They reached the end of the pavement and Walker felt faster running across the grass, but the light from the