Aphrodite (32 page)
Justin watched his mother lightly trace her finger over the lines in her own cheek. “The men in the old-age homes,” he said. “Bill Miller wasn’t an illusion. Neither was Lewis Granger.” He stood up, letting the financial report drop to the carpet. He spoke faster now. His voice got louder. “I know what you’re saying. I’ve been thinking the same thing. I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud earlier because it defies all logic—it’s like science fiction—but if they’ve come up with a way to actually extend life, get people to live to a hundred or more, what’s the point of keeping it secret? It doesn’t make sense. My God, what would it be worth to the company? How many billions?”
“My guess is that Roger will have a precise financial answer for you once he’s made all these connections. But the answer will be staggering.”
“Then why not make it public? The stock price alone—”
“I don’t know,” Jonathan Westwood told his son. “But if there is a reason—if there is some secret that has to be kept—it sounds like a secret that’s worth killing for, don’t you think?”
Justin didn’t answer. The look on his face settled into something grim and determined. “Will you do me one more favor, Dad?” he said.
“What would you like?” Jonathan Westwood asked.
“Sell the goddamn stock,” Justin told him. “Just sell that goddamn stock.”
Leonard Rollins tried calling Wanda Chinkle at home. When he got her answering machine, he tried her at the office. Wanda did not have much of a personal life; her existence revolved around the Bureau. She was capable of working at her desk until midnight, he knew. He made a mental note to himself that, in the future, he should always call her at work first.
Wanda’s phone was answered by one of the bright young agents she’d recruited. Rollins didn’t know which one he was talking to, but it didn’t matter. All of Wanda’s recruits were good. Dedicated, clever, loyal. So when he asked to speak to Agent in Charge Chinkle and was told that she wasn’t in, Rollins didn’t hesitate to tell the young man why he was calling.
“You’ve heard about the manhunt that’s on for Justin Westwood?” Rollins asked. The agent told him he had. “He’s from Providence and his family’s still there. It’s a long shot, but there’s a chance Westwood will return home. If other avenues are cut off from him, it just might happen. It’s a bit of a cliché, but people do it all the time. Tell Agent Chin-kle I’d like her to assign someone to watch Westwood’s father’s house. Just in case.”
“I think she’s already on the case, sir,” the young agent said.
“How so?”
“She was up in Providence today. At the Westwoods’. She told me she used to work with the son. The one we’re looking for.”
“Yes. They were quite friendly.”
“That’s what she told me, sir. She was pretty upset by all this.”
“I bet she was.” Rollins stayed silent. “Is there a particular message you want me to give her, sir?”
“No,” Rollins said, after another pause. “Just tell her I’d like an agent in place as soon as possible.”
AD Rollins hung up the phone. Drummed his fingers on his desk for several seconds, then picked the phone back up and dialed. It only took a couple more minutes for someone at the Bureau’s twenty-four-hour in-house travel agency to book his flight to Providence for first thing in the morning.
Justin’s eyes were closed, although he was nowhere near falling asleep, when he heard the faint creak of the bedroom door opening, heard the quiet padding of footsteps, and felt the mattress dip slightly. He didn’t open his eyes until he felt her arms slip around him and her body curl against his under the sheet.
“I feel like I’m back in high school,” Deena said.
“You must have gone to some high school.” He raised his right arm, and used it to pull her closer to him. “I talked to my parents. They’ll take Kenny and watch out for her.”
“Jay, are you sure it’s the right thing to do?”
“I know you don’t like leaving her. But you’re a danger to her right now. I can’t quite make the connections—I haven’t put everything together yet—but I’m getting close. And I know that whoever’s after you isn’t going to let Kenny walk away if she’s nearby.”
Deena nodded, accepting what he was saying. “When do we leave here?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“And where are we going?”
“It depends on the answers we get.”
“You look exhausted,” she whispered. He shrugged, not disagreeing, and she said, “Do you want me to let you sleep?”
“Yes,” he told her. And he let her lift the sheet away, start to move out of the bed. Then he grabbed her wrist, pulled her back beside him. “I meant eventually,” he said. “But not quite yet.”
Roger Mallone was the first one to finish his initial assignment. He showed up at the Westwoods’ front door at 7:15 a.m. Everyone in the household was awake when Mallone burst in, carrying two large briefcases.
He opened them, let several enormous stacks of papers, pamphlets, and files spill out onto the long side table in the entryway. “It’s everything you ever want to know about Douglas Kransten,” he said. “Can I have a cup of coffee? I’ve been up all night and I am
tired
.”
“How in the world did you put this together so fast?” Jonathan Westwood asked.
“Well,” Mallone said, “your name carries a lot of weight and I bandied it about like a son of a bitch. I had financial analysts faxing, scanning, and e-mailing materials all night long, I had Green and Bayer pulling things off the computer at the office, and since you said price was no object—”
“I don’t recall saying that,” Jonathan said.
“Well, you implied it. So I paid off someone I know at the IRS up here. He was extremely helpful.”
“And how much did you have to pay him?” Jonathan asked.
“We can discuss that later,” Mallone answered, then decided it might be a good idea to lay on a “sir,” so he did. He turned to Justin. “I’ve been going over everything, trying to organize it and make it as understandable as possible. I’ll tell you one thing, this guy doesn’t have a dummy corporation, a tax dodge, a shell, a project, an employee, a goddamn dog that’s not listed somewhere in all this. Can I have that coffee now?”
Deena was upstairs with Kendall and Lizbeth. She knelt in front of her daughter.
“We’re going to go now, Ken. But I want to make sure you’re okay with this.”
“I’m okay,” Kendall said.
“Jay doesn’t think we’ll be away for long. And I’ll call you every day.”
“Okay.”
“Kenny, it’s okay to be upset. And it’s okay to be scared. You don’t have to pretend.”
“I’m not upset, Mom. And I’m not scared. Lizbeth said she’s gonna take me shopping. And did you see the pool out back? She said I can swim every day. And they have a cook. We don’t even have to go out for french fries—she said Annabelle can
make
french fries. I didn’t even know real people
could
make french fries—I thought they were only in restaurants.” She stopped suddenly. “I mean, not that I’m gonna eat french fries, Mom, because I’m gonna eat really healthy, you know, like normal.”
Deena leaned over and kissed her eight-year-old. “When I come back, try to pretend you’re happy to see me, okay?”
“Of course she’s going to be happy,” Lizbeth said. “Aren’t you, Kenny?”
Kendall cocked her head at her mother and grinned. “Can we get a cook when we go home, Mom?”
“No, we cannot,” Deena said.
“Well, I’ll still probably be glad to see you.”
Deena gave her one more kiss and another hug for good measure.
“She’ll be fine,” Lizbeth said.
“I know,” Deena told her.
“And so will you,” Lizbeth added softly.
Deena shrugged, then effortlessly rose to her feet in one fluid motion. “That one I’m not so sure about,” she said.
Roger Mallone had pulled his black Mercedes off to the side of the Westwood house, leaving it in the twelve-car parking area that had been added on several years ago. He strolled over there, got in the driver’s seat, closed the door behind him. After one more solid yawn, he turned the key and started the engine. When the car got to the gate, he stopped, waited for the automatic doors to swing open, then cautiously pulled out onto the street. There was a silver Ford parked a quarter of a block away. The driver, a powerful-looking guy, had the aura of an ex–football player or a boxer. He was sipping coffee from a tall foam cup. Roger waved to the guy, a friendly good-morning wave, as he passed by, but the coffee drinker didn’t wave back. Roger drove three blocks away, turned the corner, waited a few minutes, then got out of the car and opened the trunk.
Roger leaned in, stuck his hands inside the trunk, and helped Deena Harper step out. When she was standing, he extended his hand toward Justin, who made it out, too, although a little less gracefully than Deena had. Justin reached back in and took the two large briefcases that Roger had brought over half an hour earlier.
“You were right about the house being watched.” He described the man drinking coffee in the car.
“Rollins,” Justin said.
“Do you think Wanda told him?” Deena asked.
“It’s possible. But if she did, I don’t think he would be waiting outside. He’d know for a fact we were inside and he would have come in.”
“To arrest you?” Roger said.
“I have a feeling this guy’s not here to make arrests,” Justin told him.
“Oh,” Roger said. Then he realized the implication of Justin’s words and repeated it, with emphasis.
“Oh
…well …the key’s in the ignition. Maybe you should—you know—get the hell out of here.”
“One more thing.”
“What?”
“You have a cell phone?”
“Sure.”
“Can I take it? I’m sure they’re not only tracking mine, they’re tapping it. I can’t risk it.”
“They can do that?” Roger asked. “They can tap cell phones?”
“They can,” Justin told him.
Roger reached into his pocket, pulled out a small phone. “It’s all yours.”
“I can’t thank you enough.”
“Don’t even think about it. There’s got to be a promotion in this for me somewhere. And don’t even worry about screwing up the car. If anything happens to it, I’ll make your dad buy me a new one.”
They shook hands. Roger gave Deena an awkward hug. Then he wished them both luck, stepped back onto the sidewalk, and watched as Justin got behind the wheel of the Mercedes and drove away.
“They can really tap cell phones?” Deena asked.
Justin nodded. “There’s a device called a Trigger Fish. About the size of a briefcase. It can not only tap in so they can listen to conversations, they can triangulate off satellite sites so they can get a fix on our location. That’s what I’m really worried about. Rhode Island’s small enough to hide in without helping them out.”
“Come on. They can tell exactly where we are?”
“Maybe not exactly. But within about a block. And if they get that close, we wouldn’t be too hard to find.”
“I don’t think I like the twenty-first century.”
For the next half hour they rode in silence. Then Deena mentioned that she had never driven a Mercedes before and she asked if she could give it a shot. Justin said, “Why not?” He pulled over and, as they were switching seats, she said, “Oh, damn. I forgot. Your father told me to give you something after we left.” She reached into her bag, pulled out an envelope. She watched as he opened it, saw his lips curl up in the faintest of smiles.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Something we need,” he told her. “Something I guess he didn’t think I’d take from him directly.” He held the envelope out for her to see. It held about ten thousand dollars in cash.
“I’m starting to like your father,” she said.
Deena drove the rest of the way into Newport. When they were approaching the city, Justin pulled out Mallone’s phone and made a call to Billy DiPezio.
“Did you get it?” he said into the phone. Then he listened for a minute, said, “Okay, thanks,” and hung up. Deena glanced at him quizzically, but all he said was, “A little favor from Billy. Nothing essential.”
She was hurt by his evasive answer, but she didn’t want to say so. Too petty, she decided. But she sulked for the rest of the drive. Justin didn’t seem to notice, though; he was lost in thought. Deena could practically hear the wheels spinning in his head as he tried to put the pieces of the inexplicable puzzle together.
She forgot all about her hurt when they arrived in Newport. She was too stunned to sulk anymore. This was a town that reeked of money. Money, snobbery, and faded grandeur. As they drove past manor after manor, the sea air misting over the city, she felt as though she were stepping back into a Gatsby-like past that never really existed and yet still managed to dominate the present. She felt as though everyone on the street should be wearing smoking jackets and sipping tea out of china cups.
Justin directed her toward the waterfront; she pulled up in front of the gates of a mansion and he hopped out of the car. Deena was proud of herself that she didn’t gape or go, “Oh my God!” because this house dwarfed the Westwood home in Providence. She didn’t know houses came in this size.
Justin punched the security code into the enormous gates, watched as they swung out, then waved her through. He hopped back in—she watched as the gates closed automatically behind them—and she drove up the quarter-mile road that twisted its way to the main house. Once there, Justin walked about ten feet to the left of the front door, picked up one flowerpot in the midst of several, and lifted a key from beneath it. He used the key to open the door. As soon as he was inside, he raced to a green glass vase that sat on a landing by the stairway, took a key from beneath that vase, then ran back toward the front door. He inserted the key into a small silver-metal box on the wall. When the door to the box swung open, he punched in another series of numbers. Then he turned to her and said, “Come on in. All security systems are off.”
He led her upstairs, put their one small bag in a bedroom, and dropped Mallone’s briefcases in the middle of an enormous king-size bed.
“Ready to start work?” he asked.
She nodded and he pulled her onto the bed. They both kicked off their shoes, turned on the table lamps to the side of their respective pillows, nestled back against the headboard, made themselves as comfortable as possible, and began reading. After four hours with hardly a word being spoken, Deena finally dropped one of her files on the floor and said, “How about some coffee?”