to hold on to his secrets. And when he finally found whoever it was he was looking for, everything was all right again. No one held the secrets against him because he’d helped; he’d done the work.
His wounded nature reshaped itself around a peculiar structure of isolation. That peculiarity killed his marriage. It kept her out. And who wants to live with that? Gloria waited for him to let her in, but he never did. After four years she told him she had to go. She loved him, but that was all she could do. He knew she was right and he hated being without her.
He tried to try, but whenever she threatened to touch him at a certain depth of feeling, an iron door shut hard in his head. And when that happened he froze her with the look in his eye and the deathly sound of his voice. And all that lasted until his mind relaxed and his shame unclenched and he could think and act like a normal man. It happened, and happened, and happened because the threat was unrelenting. Both of them came to understand it. When she left, Gloria told him, “You’ll be fine Walter. You really will.” He never doubted it. And she had been more right than wrong. That iron door had grown rusty over the years. No one had wandered back there for decades.
And now, he thought, this girl. And this idiotic thing about who drove the car-Kermit. For reasons he could not imagine, he felt the rusty hinges move. Yes, he had a fine working method, and it should certainly be maintained. No point at all to pointless speculation. Never bend the rules that matter most. But he’d never had a partner before. He’d made that rule number three (after not promoting himself and never accepting supervision). And it’s different with a partner, like it or not. You have to exchange ideas in a different way. Besides, they had conjectured together. They traded hypotheses, worked them to theories, set out conditions for proving facts.
“Are you okay?” She looked concerned.
Walter knew he’d broken a sweat. He knew that she saw his agitation, had to have glimpsed the fear. At the moment it thrashed and towered. It felt like a wave breaking over and inside his eyes. The door squeaked louder; he could hear it. Once it thundered shut he would shiver and freeze again after all those years.
But if he let this other thing out…
He confronted the prospect of thirty years of heavy protective machinery wrecked around him. He wondered what the arrangement would be after that.
He said, “I think he’s Carter Lawrence.”
And then, to his amazement, he slumped quite comfortably into his sturdy bamboo chair, remembering the time he and Gloria flew to Denver. He’d loaded her up with valium to cut her fear. He’d held her hand as the plane taxied into position. He’d smiled at her as she turned to look out the window. And when the engines fired up and swept them into the smooth silk sky she put her head on his shoulder and giggled. He’d done that. But it was long ago.
“Kermit,” Isobel said, “… is Carter Lawrence?”
“I don’t know. I’m not even sure why I think so.” Walter felt more than comfortable now-he felt euphoric.
He enjoyed a deep breath of moist Caribbean air. His thoughts jumped like unruly pets.
“So where does this leave us?” said Isobel.
He went to autopilot. “If Carter’s the guy, he may help a lot. There’s always a way when people are…” He waited for the word. They waited together. “Vulnerable,” he said. “He may be vulnerable.”
Isobel offered ideas for going at Carter, reworking their background, designing a quick, simple plan of action aimed to open him up.
By then Walter’s mind had shifted back to the point he needed to care about most: the widened gap between what Tom Maloney had told him and the version Dr. Ganga Roy gave to Leonard Martin. To the extent that Roy had it right, and Walter had no reason to doubt it, Maloney and Stein were far from the relative innocents Tom described, mistakenly targeted by a madman. They were the ones who set the death train in motion. How did Leonard put it? He labeled them “premeditative mass murderers.” Accused them of making a cost-benefit analysis. And he said they “decided to kill my family for money.” That altered the picture. It suggested questions. What else didn’t Walter know about his clients? And what did they really expect for their million dollars?
New York
“I’m turning into an addict. Prozac doesn’t do it anymore. I get up at five and swim sixty laps. I have an agitated depression. Exercise doesn’t help. My shrink is useless too. He doesn’t listen. I don’t listen. I dream about getting shot-over and over again-which might be alright, but it never kills me. I can’t even die for a minute.”
Louise Hollingsworth’s eyes were inflamed. She’d been flying apart for weeks. Nothing she wore seemed to match. Her stiff yellow hair was at war with itself. Her high hawk nose and razor mouth had become unattractively mobile. She paced like a neurotic crane. Her thin soprano voice had developed a rasp.
“Every time I leave my apartment. Every time I leave the office. Every time I go anywhere. It’s all I think about. I am decompensating. Nothing is worth this experience. Not all the money you can…”
The meeting had been a bad idea. Getting them all together like this had only reinforced the shared perception of danger. Tom Maloney tried again to offer a drink.
“I’m loaded up with Prozac,” she wailed. “Prozac and whiskey? I don’t think that’s wise.”
“I’ve done it a hundred times. Maybe you can take a nap. You can take a nap right here.”
“Bourbon,” she sniffled. “But not too much.”
The others watched as he fixed her drink and got her to sit in one of the black leather chairs.
Tom was calmer than he’d been in months. In the past few days he’d worked out some ideas. He thought his new thinking might help the others get a grip. But today in Nathan’s office was proving to be the wrong time and place.
From the other end of the room, Nathan watched Louise with momentarily calm contempt. He moved the odd-shaped crystals on his desk as though he were playing chess, a game he never understood.
“What’s with Sherman? Where’s the report?” he asked when Louise was settled. “Didn’t he call you, Tom?”
“He doesn’t call. I got an e-mail.” Louise looked up from her drink. Wesley Pitts in the other black chair grunted curiously.
“He knows who it is,” said Maloney.
“No shit!” said Wes, on his feet, athletic again for a second. He clapped his hands. “He’s going to get him. He’s going to nail his ass.”
“Who is it?” asked Louise. “Anyone we’ve looked at?”
“I don’t know,” said Tom. “He’s a fellow named Leonard Martin.”
“Well that’s great, just great. Why didn’t you call him?” Nathan shouted, no longer calm and composed, out from behind his desk, heading for the other three. “We know the guy. Where is he? What’s the story there?”
“I called him,” Tom replied. “He doesn’t like to talk.”
“ He doesn’t like to talk!” Nathan climbed the register. “Fuck him, he doesn’t like to talk. He works for me!”
“I work for you. We all work for you. Sherman’s an independent. Very independent. When I called him he told me not to do it again. He meant it. That’s how he is, whether we like it or not. He’ll be in touch when he thinks it’s time.”
“What did the e-mail say?” Wesley Pitts’s enthusiasm died. There was a flag on the play.
“Just that he knows who he is.”
“So, where the fuck is this… Leonard Martin?” demanded Nathan.
“He’ll tell us when he’s ready. The entire country wants this guy. Walter Sherman found him.”
“Did he say he ‘found’ him?” Nathan’s anxious face turned shrewd. “Or does he just say he knows who he is?”
“He didn’t say he found him. But it’s only a matter of time. That’s Sherman’s history. That’s why we went to him. He will get the job done.”
Wesley had slumped back into the chair. “Somebody better kill this guy in a hurry. I can think of a couple of guys who will do it for a car.”
