I’ve had a woman go after me with a claw hammer, attempt to dust me with a twenty-two target pistol, and aim parts of her china collection at my cranium from a fourth-story window.”
“The same woman?”
“Of course not. She’d have to be an idiot.”
“So would you.”
“I suppose so, but I have a forgiving nature. Women don’t. At some point you might want to give her a call just to see if you ought to rest easy or make a run for the border. I wouldn’t trifle with Serena’s affections, as they say.”
“Her name’s not Serena.”
“Did she tell you to call her something else?”
“Yes.”
“First and last name?”
“Middle, too.”
“Flowers, then,” said Stillman. “Definitely flowers. Big red roses. They like to be ambiguous, but they don’t like you to be.”
“I’m supposed to take advice from a man that women chase with a claw hammer?”
“One way or another, I get under their skin,” said Stillman. “It doesn’t matter. I trust you’ll know what’s appropriate.”
“Thank you,” said Walker.
“And she’s intriguing. If I weren’t old enough to be her father, I’d have been interested myself.”
“I would never have suspected that Max Stillman would let mere propriety enter into that kind of decision.”
Stillman turned to look at him in surprise, then returned to his driving. “Age isn’t a matter of propriety. It’s a whole series of inexorable changes that have already happened before you notice them. The ones you can’t see are bigger than the ones you can. One day you just discover that you can’t watch this movie or read this book or have this conversation anymore. Sometimes you’ve had it too many times already, but at others, it’s not even that. It’s just that nothing in it is anything that you’re interested in anymore.”
“You mean you know too much.”
“Not exactly. There’s nothing wrong with the conversation, and maybe it’s a set of thoughts everybody ought to have pass through his brain at a certain time of his life. Everybody has a right to be young. It’s a crime to be the one who’s there when a young woman is having some kind of exciting revelation and not be in it with her: to be just kind of watching from a distance and knowing everything she’s going to figure out in the next five steps. Because you’re there, she can’t be with somebody who will be surprised with her. It denigrates and devalues the experience she’s having, makes her suspect that she’s naive and foolish, and destroys it for her. She sees there’s no uniqueness in it, and she knows it’s not even her thought or experience, because plenty of people have had it first.” He frowned at Walker. “You can kill somebody that way.”
Stillman brightened. “If they’re at least thirty-five or forty, and there’s anything they still haven’t found out, been taught, felt, or experienced, then it’s high time and Max Stillman’s their man.”
Stillman swung onto the divided drive into the airport. “If you’d like to go to San Francisco, you’ve got a ticket waiting. That’s your terminal coming up. I’ll pop the trunk, you can get your suitcase out, and be on your way. Last chance.”
Walker said, “I told you before, I’m not going to San Francisco. I’m not going to bail out until we find her.”
“Good. Then you can make yourself useful,” said Stillman, with no surprise or hesitation. He swerved suddenly to the white curb. “Go in there while I return this car. Go to the American Airlines desk. They have your name.”
Walker stopped at the counter and the airline woman produced two tickets, one in Stillman’s name and the other in Walker’s. They were for Chicago. He looked at the date of purchase. It was yesterday. Again he tried to retrace Stillman’s movements, and again Stillman had left tracks in all directions. Had he really made a reservation for Walker to fly to San Francisco on United this morning? If he didn’t want Walker to go to Chicago with him, he would not have reserved a ticket to Chicago for him. He had said “Good” when Walker had told him he was not going home. So he had wanted Walker to go to Chicago with him. Maybe at the last minute, Stillman had been planning to offer him some inducement that had not been necessary. And maybe he had sent Serena to provide the inducement.
When Stillman came into the terminal with his little suitcase, Walker fell into step with him. Walker said, “How did she know we were staying at that hotel?”
“That’s what she does for a living. She traces people.”
“Did you call her and ask her to come?”
Stillman raised an eyebrow. “Did you get the impression that if I had, she would have done it?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Then what made you think I called her?”
“She told me if I wanted to see her again I had to go with you and find Ellen first.”
Stillman stared ahead as he walked on. “Interesting.”
They waited to get through the metal detectors, then walked to their gate and waited some more. When they were in the plane at last, Walker leaned back and closed his eyes. The noise and vibration of the plane’s engines relaxed his muscles and put him into a dreamless sleep.
He did not wake until the plane jolted his spine and rattled down the runway to a stop. As the plane turned ponderously, and then bumped along toward the terminal, he slowly came to full awareness and looked out at a huge field striped with runways. O’Hare Airport, he reminded himself: Chicago.
“You okay?” asked Stillman.
Walker said, “I guess so.” He came to himself. “What are we doing here?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
Walker was getting used to Stillman’s routine now. He stayed at Stillman’s shoulder while they shuffled down the long, narrow aisle, then walked with him along the concourse to the escalators and down to the rental counters. He knew that the process would take fifteen minutes, and when the time had elapsed, they were on the road again.
Walker said, “Are we in a hurry?”
“Not really,” Stillman answered.
“Can we stop at this plaza up here?”
Stillman swung the car into the parking lot and stopped in front of a florist’s shop. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and produced a business card. “Here,” he said. “You’ll need the address.”
Walker accepted the card. He walked into the shop and ordered a dozen long-stemmed roses to be sent to Mary Catherine Casey. When the girl at the counter handed him the form to fill in the address, he looked at the business card. It was Stillman’s, not Gochay’s. He flipped it over and saw that Stillman had used the back as a scratch pad. Walker copied the handwritten address onto the form, then put the card back in his pocket and handed the girl his credit card.
When he was back in the car he said, “Thanks,” and held the business card out.
“Keep it. It’s worth the printing cost to know I’ve salvaged your disordered personal life.”
Walker looked at the card again. “Who are the associates?”
“What associates?”
“It says, ‘Max Stillman and Associates, Security.’ ”
Stillman started the car and backed out of the parking space. “That’s just so new clients don’t get the erroneous impression that when they hire me, all they get is a middle-aged, balding man with rubber-soled shoes.”
“So it’s a lie.”
Stillman shook his head. “No. Stillman and Company would be a lie. Stillman, Fozzengraf, Pinckney and Wong would be a lie. Stillman and Associates is the truth.”
“Except that the associates are imaginary.”
Stillman turned out of the lot and accelerated onto a freeway ramp. “No, you’re not.”
