Nathan’s outburst and the tension it uncorked had distracted all but Walter from the single dark cloud approaching them out of a bright sky at an altitude not much above the house. Conversation stopped abruptly as a very local, very surprising tropical downpour threw warm sheets of water onto the deck. The roof was so constructed that Walter had stayed put in precisely that spot during three hurricanes. He looked forward to rain in the closing moments of a hot Virgin Islands afternoon. It was a perfectly wonderful thing. Tom, Nathan, and Wesley apparently disagreed. The three of them maneuvered their legs prissily under the table to keep their silk trousers safe from water bouncing off the glistening planks.
“Won’t last long,” smiled Walter, mightily amused.
Tom checked his companions, as though to be sure that neither was going under. He resumed in his calm, rehearsed tone:
“This is your kind of work and we need your help. I know many of your clients are celebrity types, show business people. I’ve heard about some politicians. Maybe our needs are somewhat different from the ordinary run…”
Walter raised his hand, palm out. Tom stopped.
Walter’s hard look took them all in and he spoke with calibrated impatience that sharpened as he continued, “The first thing most people give me is a name. The first thing. Then I get a photograph and a description. They give me a story. Usually, they tell me a lot more than I want to know. They parade their hopes and dreams and the names of their pets. I see love and hate they keep from their shrinks. Sometimes I get the feeling I’m the only person they ever leveled with. And you know the people I’m talking about. If you think this is my kind of work, the first thing you better do is tell me is what the work is.”
“Fair enough,” Maloney said. Now he reached to cover much of Nathan Stein’s short forearm with a thick, rosy hand, anchoring that bird-faced bundle of nerves, hoping, no doubt, to keep him seated during whatever was to come. Then Tom spoke, uninterrupted, for forty-five minutes. When he was done he looked at the others, his suddenly forceful expression telling them, “If you have anything to say, say it now.” Neither uttered a sound. Nathan Stein’s face had gone from deranged to pathetic. He seemed to have aged and weakened during the speech, as though-forced to hear them all-the endless, disturbing details had worn him down. His narrow chest heaved silently. Wesley’s big, shrewd eyes had stayed with Maloney throughout. Now they returned to the glories of nature.
The rain had ended twenty minutes before, and the air was a good deal cooler. A breeze blew in off the water and the small boats had returned to the open sea. The sunlight was now a richer yellow, anticipating the reddening sun and the advent of the evening sky. Walter rose, walked around the table, and then, slowly, toward the grill and the tub. He stretched, took a deep breath, turned quickly, returned to the table, and resumed his seat. Tom had concluded by stating, and repeating forcefully, that they had no way to know what might happen. They had, he insisted again, done their due diligence. Dr. Roy had given them a green light, and now their lives were in danger because of “a terrible, a grossly unfortunate misunderstanding” that they sought desperately to correct. To do so they had to find someone only Walter could locate. When Tom used the word “locate,” the look in his eyes told Walter the depth of their research.
Walter looked at them all, more kindly now, and tilted his head. The gesture conceded that possibilities might exist. Then he said, “This will take much more of my time than I’m used to giving. We’re talking about weeks, possibly months. That’s a long time to devote to a single client.”
“Money is not a factor,” said Maloney.
“There’s more to it than money,” Walter replied. “It’s also about how I prefer to work.”
Tom’s eyes sparkled almost merrily, giving his angelic face a surprisingly racy cast. “We know you take eight or ten clients a year and rarely spend more than a few weeks on any one of them-sometimes a few days. We know of one client who didn’t come to you till a full month after his wife disappeared. You handled that in twenty-four hours, which was more than he expected, and much more than he hoped. We’re not expecting miracles, Walter. But we have a problem and we need fast action.”
Walter shook his head, preparing another objection.
Maloney went on, “Please let me finish. You didn’t file a tax return last year. It looks like you haven’t filed one since you were twenty-five. You’re independent. You’re a free man. Not easy to find. We heard someone call you a phantom. You’ve been in this line of work for a long time and you’ve done especially well in the last ten years. You took good care of your mother before she passed. We like that. It shows character. You have an ex-wife in Chicago who’s never remarried, although she could have. You’re very generous to her. You have a daughter in Kansas City with a less-than-successful husband and you’re helping them. You have trusts for three grandchildren. There has never been a mortgage on this house. You rent a desirable apartment on the Near North Side of Chicago. You don’t owe anyone anything and you spend as you wish. But you are by no means a wealthy man. Your checking account pays your bills. Your special account in the Caymans contains $774,526.” Maloney stopped to savor and punctuate the moment. He took a sip of iced tea and said, “You are earning slightly more than three hundred thousand dollars a year. There are cops and teachers and building inspectors with more equity in their pensions. Walter, we get what we want because we know what other people want. We think we know what you want. We’re not looking for drunken sailors or doped-up sixteen-year-olds. We face a challenge and we’re confident that you will help us deal with it.”
“Really,” Walter said, because, for once, nothing else came to mind.
Tom leaned across the table and grabbed a large handful of grapes from the silver platter. His eyes were sparkling furiously now. “A few years ago my mom had to go into a nursing home. She was a churchgoer, a devout Catholic, a member of St. Ann’s parish for many years. She wanted to go to the Catholic Home near where we lived. The home is connected to St. Ann’s church. For many years she did volunteer work there. She told me if she ever needed to go to a home, that was the only one for her. I went there. The nun in charge of admitting new residents told me there was an eighteen month wait. Walter, my Mom didn’t have eighteen months. I asked this nun what sort of contribution I could make to speed things up. I asked flat out how much money it would take. She said to me, ‘Mr. Maloney, if your dear mother was already on our list and we passed her over because a man, like yourself, gave the church fifty thousand dollars or a hundred thousand dollars you would be extremely upset, wouldn’t you?’ Then she stopped. Just stopped talking. And Walter, you know what she did next? She looked into her soul and had a wrestling match with Satan. It took five seconds, maybe six. When it was over she said to me, ‘But Mr. Maloney, if the contribution was of a certain amount, whatever that amount might be, I imagine that you and even your dear mother might very well understand.’ Then this nun looks me in the eye and says, ‘One million dollars, Mr. Maloney.’”
Tom paused for another, smaller drink of his iced tea. “You know what I said, Walter? You know what I said? I said, ‘How do I make the check out, Sister?’ ”
Maloney motioned to Wesley Pitts, who produced his attache case from under the table. It was a big one, the kind that opens with a double flap at the top. He gave it to Maloney, whose body registered the weight. “If you work for us,” he said, “you’ll get four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Add another fifty for expenses and you’ve got half a million.” He opened the case to let Walter see. “You are looking at half a million dollars right here. And underneath it, another half million. It’s yours.”
Walter knew you don’t get through an airport carrying a bag with a million dollars in it-not these days. “You’ve got friends here in the banking business,” he said.
“Yes, we do,” Tom said. “We have friends everywhere.”
St. John
“Five hits by the Harptones,” Ike crowed as Walter walked into Billy’s. “Billy don’t know no more than three.” He laughed through his big lemon teeth. Smoke came out of his nostrils.
“‘Sunday Kind of Love,’ ‘My Memories of You,’ ‘The Masquerade Is Over.’ I can’t remember no more,” said Billy.
“Walter?” asked Ike.
“The Harptones are okay,” said Billy, eager to put the subject behind them. “But they ain’t the best. Not even close.”
