No Way Back (29 page)

‘Yes?’ A woman peers at me through the slit of door, behind a brass chain, still fastened. I see white skin, a pale blue eye, and a wisp of brunette hair.

‘Mrs Adams?’

‘Yes?’ says the pale blue eye.

‘My name is Jim Thane. I’m the new CEO of Tao Software.’

‘I know who you are.’

The door slams, so near my face that I feel the whiff of air, and I flinch. I stand there, unsure whether to stay or go. But then the chain rattles, and the door opens wide.

The woman in front of me is tall, forty years old. She was beautiful once – with dark hair, blue eyes, a complexion like snow. But now her beauty is gone. Her arms are scarecrow thin, her
cheekbones protrude like tent poles. Her paleness has turned morbid and cadaverous. Her hair is streaked with grey. She looks as though someone sneaked into her house, late one night, while she was
asleep, and loosened a tiny valve on her body, so that all the colour and energy and life drained from her.

‘Come in,’ she says.

I follow her inside. Before she shuts the door, she sticks her head out and looks around furtively, like a nervous animal. Whatever it is that she’s searching for, she does not find. She
closes the door and slides the chain. She locks the deadbolt. Then the second deadbolt.

She leads me into a sunken den. The decor is Miami, 1985, entirely monochromatic. Everything is white – the walls, the ceilings, the pile carpet, the sleek modern coffee table, even the
vase that rests upon that table, holding a single white orchid, probably fake.

My eyes adjust, as they might adjust to twilight, and now I can make out a different colour on the far wall – an abstract painting – a tiny splash of beige. In the whiteness of the
room, this single small dab is loud, even shocking.

The woman gestures to a modern, angular couch. ‘Sit,’ she commands.

I do. My thighs land with a thud on what turns out to be plastic – one of those couches that feels like a subway bench.

‘Would you like a drink?’ she asks.

‘No, thank you.’

She walks across the room. Her steps are silent, and mincing, and she seems to float above the carpet. She stops at a bar, a little cubby decorated with white tesserae, which – until she
brings it to my attention – was invisible in the room’s gloaming. There’s a crystal decanter on it. She fills a glass. ‘It’s five o’clock somewhere,’ she
mutters, mostly to herself. She lifts the glass, and turns her back, and empties it down her gullet. She fills and repeats. Suitably fortified, she returns to me, with yet another full glass, and
sits down in the white chair nearby.

She’s very close to me, and I can smell the drink. Sherry. It may be five o’clock somewhere, but here in Florida it’s not quite eleven in the morning. She is, I decide, a woman
quite after my own heart.

She fixes me with her pale eyes, and says, in a not particularly friendly tone, ‘Why are you here, Mr Thane?’

On the table near us I see a photograph of a little girl, with her hair in pigtails. She wears a paper party hat and is blowing out three candles on a birthday cake. I say: ‘Your daughter?
She’s very pretty.’

She looks down at the photo, surprised, as if she forgot it was there. She doesn’t reply. Obscurely, I feel that I’ve said something wrong, but am not sure why.

I say: ‘Would you mind if we talked about your husband?’

‘My husband?’ She straightens in her chair, backing away, as if she wasn’t expecting this subject – not at all – and indeed hasn’t thought about the man in
quite some time. ‘My husband is... missing.’

‘Yes, I know. And I’m very sorry for that.’ Which comes out sounding too much like a condolence, and so I add quickly: ‘But I’m sure he’ll turn up.’

No. That’s much worse. I might as well have said: ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up
floating in a river.
Or
dug up by a coyote
.’

Mrs Adams doesn’t seem to notice the faux pas. She fixes me with pale blue eyes, and says, ‘Yes, perhaps you’re right.’

Now that she’s staring at me, I feel something odd about her gaze. She reminds me of someone. Who, exactly? I study her, trying to discern the similarity. And then, suddenly, it comes to
me. Libby. She reminds me of Libby. Indeed, put brown hair on her instead of grey, and restore the curves and flesh that she surely lost when her husband disappeared, and the two women would be
very alike. The same pale blue eyes. The same fine bone structure. The same elegant bearing, the same height. It’s uncanny.

Mrs Adams breaks my reverie. ‘What is it exactly that you want to know?’

What I exactly want to know is her husband’s relationship with a man named Ghol Gedrosian. According to the FBI, Charles Adams and Ghol Gedrosian were ‘business associates’. It
was a business association that apparently ended rather badly, when Mrs. Adams’s husband disappeared from the face of the planet.

It’s not just morbid curiosity that led me to his widow’s house. There’s more than a little self-preservation, too. It has occurred to me this past week – and it occurs
to me even more now, as I sit and stare at his wife, who looks so much like my own – that I have followed very close in my predecessor’s footsteps. Uncomfortably close.

Today, I am doing exactly what Charles Adams did in the weeks before he vanished: running a company on behalf of a Russian mobster. Ignoring cash disbursements and receipts. Trying to keep
things quiet on my employer’s behalf.

‘Did you and your husband ever talk about his work?’ I ask.

‘We were married, Mr Thane,’ she says. ‘Husbands and wives share everything together.’

‘Of course they do,’ I agree. I think about Libby, and her secrets, and her mysteries.

‘But yes,’ she says, her voice softening. ‘We did talk about his work, quite a bit.’

‘Did he ever mention anything...
unusual
happening at Tao?’

‘“Unusual”?’

Illegal
, I want to say. But don’t. Instead I ask: ‘Did he talk to you about problems he was having?’

‘Problems? Oh, my husband had problems. But not the kind you’re thinking of.’

‘What kind of problems did he have?’

‘He was an addict, Mr Thane. Did you know that? Methamphetamine.’

I did not know that. I suspected it, maybe, based on what Joan Leggett told me, when I asked her about Charles Adams. But receiving confirmation from his wife, and now learning his drug of
choice – the same as mine – I have a strange feeling. I feel as if I’ve been transported into Charles Adams’s body. No, that’s not quite right. I feel like I
am
Charles Adams, seated in my own house, staring at my own wife. So much of our lives in common. Our love of drugs. The similar women that we married. Our employment, or our partnership
– or whatever it is – with a man named Ghol Gedrosian.

‘He cheated quite a bit, too,’ she adds.

And that, as well.

‘I think with that receptionist at work,’ she says. ‘What’s her name, again?’

She looks at me, as if I should know that name very well indeed. I say nothing.

‘But, you know,’ she goes on, with sudden and surprising warmth in her voice, ‘when you love someone, you forgive so much.’

‘Yes, you do,’ I say. And I think of Libby, forgiving me for Cole. And for so much else that I’ve done. ‘Yes, you do.’

‘But to answer your question,’ she says. She takes a slug of sherry, wipes her lips with the back of her hand. ‘He
did
talk about work. He was very depressed about it.
Not enough sales. Expenses too high. That sort of thing.’

‘It’s a hard business,’ I say. ‘I’m learning that first-hand.’

‘I’m sure that you are.’ She looks at me significantly. What does she mean by that? She says, ‘It was a constant source of stress for Charles. Maybe that’s why he
did the drugs. To escape.’

‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘Did he ever mention any names to you?’

‘Names?’ She looks puzzled.

‘Unusual names?’

‘Unusual?’ She stares at me, stupidly. Too stupidly. And it is at this precise moment that I know she’s lying. She knows about the Russian. The man with the most unusual name
of all. She knows about him. And she’s not telling me.

‘For example, did he mention the names of any of his investors?’

‘Let me think.’ Her eyes dart around the room. What is she looking for? When her gaze returns to me, she says, ‘No, he never did.’

I wait a decent interval for her to add more, but she doesn’t.

I stand from the couch. ‘Well, I appreciate your time, Mrs Adams. I should really be going.’

‘Yes,’ she says, agreeing with this notion entirely. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ She offers me her hand. ‘Good luck to you, Mr Thane.’

She turns, and starts from the room. But I stay behind, with the distracted air of someone who has just suddenly remembered something. I snap my fingers and say, ‘Oh, there is one other
thing.’

She’s poised at the edge of the room, on the step leading from the sunken den back to the foyer. She turns to me.

‘There is one name in particular that I’m interested in,’ I say. ‘I wonder if you heard it. It’s a Russian name. Did your husband ever mention the name...
’

But even before I finish, something happens to her. She changes. Her body stiffens. Her face, which was pale before, now completely drains of blood. Her skin turns the grey mottled colour of old
melted snow. By the time I finish the question, my words are superfluous, my question already answered. ‘Did your husband ever mention the name Ghol Gedrosian?’ is what I say.

She tries to recover. She keeps her body motionless. She looks me in the eye and says, ‘No. I’ve never heard that name. Never.’

She turns and walks to the front door. I follow. She unlatches the chain, and then the two deadbolts –
slip clack clack
– and pulls open the door. ‘Goodbye, Mr
Thane.’

‘Goodbye, Mrs Adams. Thank you again.’

But just as I am about to walk from the house, she grabs my arm. I look up, surprised. Her index finger is pressed hard to her lips. She has a crazy, bug-eyed look. She reaches into her pocket,
takes out a slip of paper, and hands it to me.

I unfold it. A woman’s handwriting says:

She slams the door, and fastens the chain and the bolts, locking me inside with her. She taps a finger to her lips again, and beckons me to follow.

I do. We walk up the stairs, to a second-floor landing. We go down a short hall, passing a little girl’s room, all pink and gingham. The bed is neatly made, with dolls arranged on pillows.
Toys are piled in the corner – a stuffed dog, and cat, a unicorn. On the bureau is another picture of the same girl that I saw in the photograph downstairs.

Mrs Adams turns, makes sure that I’m directly behind, and touches a finger to her lips again.

We pass another empty bedroom. And a third. The tour has taken us past every room in the small house, and now it’s clear that there is no one else here with us – not another soul
– no one but me and Mrs Adams. So why her insistence that I remain quiet?

She walks through the last door in the hall. It’s a bathroom. I remain at the threshold, wondering whether I should follow.

I have followed a lot of strange women into a lot of strange bathrooms, which is what you tend to do when you need to get high. But something about this day, and this bathroom, and this woman,
seems different. Peculiar. Dangerous.

I peer in. Mrs Adams is leaning over the tub. She looks over her shoulder at me, waves for me to join her.

I do. She unscrews both faucets of the tub, as far as they turn. Water gushes.

She edges past me, back to the sink, and opens the faucet, full flow. She closes the bathroom door and locks it.

The sound of rushing water fills the tiny room, loud as a jet. Steam billows up from the bath. When she whispers to me, finally, her voice is so quiet that I can barely hear her words.

‘He has ears,’ she whispers.

‘Who does?’

‘
Shh
.’

I say again, more softly, ‘Who does?’

‘You know who.’

I study her. Is she drunk? She did finish two glasses of sherry. On the other hand, she seems steady on her feet, and, more to the point, seems to be a professional – not an amateur
– drinker, someone who could have kept up with me, back in my bad old days.

She asks, ‘Has he given you gifts?’

‘Who?’

‘Stop. You know who I’m talking about. Has he given you gifts?’

I think about it. Two million dollars? A job? Are these gifts?

‘There’s a price,’ she whispers. ‘That’s what I want to tell you. That’s what you can’t see yet. Not at first. But he demands his price. I promise you
that.’

Before I can say anything, she touches my arm. ‘Stay here,’ she says. She opens the door and leaves the bathroom. The cool air rushes in, swirling the steam. It condenses on my skin
and turns clammy. She returns a half-minute later, holding a shoebox. The bottom has rainbow stripes. The top is purple, with a Stride Rite logo in big childish letters. This box is achingly
familiar; my son’s closets were filled with shoeboxes like this.

‘This is what he gave to Charles.’

‘Shoes?’

She holds it out. ‘Open it.’

I take the box. I peek under the lid, cautiously. I see only darkness.

‘Open it,’ she says again.

I remove the lid. Inside are photographs, five by eights. I take out a stack of them. They are colour photos of young boys, nine or ten years old, pre-pubescent, lying naked on a bed. As I flip
through the pile, the pictures become worse, more explicit – boys engaged in sexual acts with older men. Horrible acts. Some boys are crying, with tear-streaked faces. Others look confused
and lost, with dead eyes. The men – the ones whose faces are visible – have strangely blank expressions. What is it that I see in them? Lust? Fear? It’s hard to know.

‘No,’ I say, and push the pictures back at her.

‘Shh!’ she hisses. She refuses the photos. ‘Look at them,’ she whispers. ‘These are what he gave to my husband. These were his gifts.’

‘Gifts?’

‘Even before we married, I knew. In my heart, I suspected. The way Charles looked at boys. Some of the things he said. But he never acted on those urges. Never, Mr Thane. You have to
believe me. He was a kind man, a good man. He was weak; I admit it. He had urges. But he never acted on them. Never. Please believe me. Please.’