Runner

'I changed it again. This is a new one, and there are copies with people I trust all over the country, so don't even think about waiting until I die and tearing it up. It can't happen.' He held out the white envelope.

Richard Beale had been up on the bridge too long. He was in a bad state of seasickness brought on by the slower speed, which had permitted some of the diesel exhaust to find its way up here. He waved the envelope away. 'Why don't you just tell me what it says?'

His father shook his head in a gesture of disdain for people who had no sea legs. 'All right. It says that when your first child is born, you get a one-tenth share of everything—the business, the property holdings, the bank balances.' He lifted his eyes from the will and glared at Richard. 'That was going to be the first of your presents that we had intended to reveal at the engagement party. I can see you know there's more coming. You're waiting for that. You're right. We waited and waited for you to share your news with us, until I got a bad feeling about it, so I added something. You've got until the end of this year.'

'What do you mean?'

'We figure this baby, our grandchild, is going to be born around September or October. Is that right?'

'I don't know. Yeah, I guess so. The fall, anyway.'

'Then you'd better make it work. If I don't have a grandchild by the end of this year, I give up on you.'

'What?'

'You heard me.'

'What does it mean? That if I don't hand you this baby by New Year's Day, I don't inherit anything when you die?'

'That's part of it. You'll also be out of the company on January 2. I'll pick somebody else to run it for me. You can go off on your own and work with what you've got, and maybe grow up and make something of yourself, or maybe not. Either way, you will have blown the opportunity you got by being born.'

'You didn't say this before. It's June. If Christine doesn't work out, I don't have time to father another baby by the end of December. This is completely unfair.'

'You think I got what I have by being fair to the guy on the other side of the table?'

'But this is one twenty-year-old girl. Sometimes relationships don't last. Maybe she doesn't want to marry me. Maybe she'll abort the baby.'

'If she was going to, she would have. She's almost six months.'

Richard was feeling worse. He couldn't meet the old man's eyes, but when he looked out the window to the side of the bridge, all he saw was the sea, then the sky, then the sea again. How did the old man know the exact moment of conception? 'Then she might give it up for adoption. She always said she wants to go to college.'

'Have her give the baby to you then—to us. I'll settle for a second chance to raise an heir with some sense of duty. I'll give the girl the cost of four-years' tuition and living expenses in exchange for the baby. More, even. You can keep screwing around and playing with cars, and keep being caretaker of the business until the kid is ready to take over.'

'Why are you suddenly in such a rush? This doesn't have to be the only chance for a grandchild. There are millions of other girls out there who might work out.'

'This is the only one you knocked up.'

Richard, in his nauseated state, almost protested that it wasn't, but caught the words before he ruined himself. 'What I'm trying to tell you is that I want to do what's expected, but this isn't a situation where I have absolute control.'

'Then take control, for Christ's sake. Be a man. As you just said, she's a twenty-year-old kid who's pregnant. She liked you well enough to let you get her that way. She's young, she's alone, she's probably broke. How hard can it be to persuade her to marry you?'

'Hard.'

'Christ. You want me to talk to her? Or your mother? She's another woman, and if she tells the girl how welcome she would be, that ought to do it.'

'In this case it wouldn't. Let me handle this myself.'

Andy Beale's sharp eyes stayed on Richard's for a moment. 'All right. Do it.'

'Are we done?'

'Yeah. You can go down and puke now. I'll head back to the harbor and let you off so your mother and I can get back out here in time to fish a little.'

RICHARD BEALE WALKED OFF the dock, stood in the parking lot, and watched as the Ruby B. slowly turned its fat stern toward him and began chugging back out of the harbor. He could see his father was feathering the throttle, trying to bring it up beyond the speed limit of the harbor without getting caught by the patrol. The boat sent waves spreading from its wake to rock the rows of boats tied in their berths, and make them buck and strain against their lines and shoulder into the bumpers, trying to break loose.

He stood on solid, unmoving asphalt and watched for ten minutes, long after the Ruby B. was out of his sight. He took deep, regular breaths to settle his stomach and get rid of the smothered, choking feeling. When he felt like less of an emergency case, he took out his phone and punched in Steve Demming's number, then changed his mind and deleted it.

Richard dialed Sybil Landreau instead. He knew that calling one of the women instead of Steve Demming and Pete Tilton wasn't terribly subtle, but he didn't want to be subtle. He hoped the bastards were shocked enough to begin worrying about their reputations. That was what people like them lived on. They couldn't put an ad on Channel 10.

'Yes?' said Sybil's voice.

'It's me,' he said. 'I'm calling to find out what's going on.'

'Hold on. I'll give you to Steve.'

'No!' He realized too late that he was shouting. He looked around to see if anyone in the parking lot was near enough to have noticed. 'Don't hand me to anybody. I want to talk to you. Are you still there?'

She said, 'Yes.'

'Then you tell me. Do you have her?'

'Not yet.'

'That means no.'

'It means we're working on it, and that we will have her, but it takes more time than this. We're doing all the right things. It just hasn't happened yet.'

'Wow,' he said. 'Wow. You're a bigger bullshit artist than Demming.'

'I'm a woman. I'm verbal. You want to talk to him now, or do you want to flirt some more?'

'Talk to him. But I want all four of you individually to know that I'm not a happy client. This should have been done the first night, when she was in Buffalo, which is—what?—three weeks ago?'

'I'll give you to Steve.'

He heard Steve Demming's voice, and he could detect the irritation in it. 'Yes?'

'It's me. I'm calling to find out what's the matter. I expected to see her back here three weeks ago.'

'Richard. You know we're on this, and we're doing the best job possible. This isn't a time to start losing faith and insulting each other.'

'There were six of you to one of her. I gave you her phone's Global Positioning locator so you knew exactly where she was at every second.'

'It's not six to one. You know this. She met up with a pro the very first night we were on this. They managed to slip her phone into the back of a truck on the New York State Thruway. We caught up with the truck when it was almost to New Jersey. If you want her phone back, I can give it to you. I just don't have the girl yet.'

'Tell me about this pro. Who is she?'

'We don't know a lot about her yet. She's probably a private detective working as a bodyguard. A lot of women don't want a man protecting them. They want somebody who can go into the ladies' room with them. We think that Christine flew all the way to New York just to hook up with her. She took over that night at the hospital, and we haven't been able to catch up with them yet. We will.'

'Come on. I don't believe this. How could Christine know anybody like that?'

'You wouldn't be the first one to think he's the only guy some chick knows, and be wrong. Somebody sent this woman to pick Christine up at the hospital. When we tried to keep her from driving her off in a car, she broke