On Borrowed Time (7 page)

“Nobody shuts the Colts down, moron.”

I was only half listening, so it took maybe twenty seconds before it clicked in. By that time they were on to other disputes.

“Did you say the Packers handled the Redskins?” I asked, and they both looked at me, as if surprised I was there.

“Yeah,” Willie said. “Why?”

“What about the Giants?”

“What about them?”

It was no longer a time to mask my ignorance; it was time to reveal it. “The Giants beat the Redskins to get into the playoffs, so why did the Redskins play the Packers?”

Willie and John made eye contact with each other; they weren’t reflecting their confusion, but rather their concern and pity.

For me.

Willie spoke slowly and patiently, as if to a child. “Rich, the Redskins beat the Giants to get in the playoffs. It was one of the most bizarre endings to a game in NFL history. You’re not familiar with this?”

“I saw the game,” I said, not mentioning that I saw it with Jen. “The Giants won that game. It was close, but I don’t remember anything special about the ending.” They were looking incredulous, so I added, “I can’t be wrong about this.”

Willie turned to John, as if to give him the floor, and John spoke in that same patient tone. “The last play of the game, the Giants stopped them on the fourth down when the Washington receiver caught the ball with his foot on the out-of-bounds line in the back of the end zone. They reviewed the call, and it took like ten minutes, and the teams were just standing around waiting to hear who would go to the playoffs.”

I remembered the last play, but not the fact that it was reviewed.

John continued. “They ruled in Washington’s favor, and the Redskins won the game. Then later in the day somebody in the stands, a fan, showed a videotape he made of the play, and it was a different angle. It showed the guy was out of bounds, and the Giants should have won, but it was too late to change the call.”

“You don’t remember that game?” Willie asked.

The truth was I did remember the game; I remembered it well. When I described a lot of it, Willie and John said that I was exactly right. Yet I thought the Giants won; until that moment I had thought they won.

But they lost.

How was that possible?

“I’m going to try and re-create my life, or at least the part I forget.”

I was talking to Allie at the Carnegie Deli, which I chose for lunch because it was as non-small-town-Wisconsin a place as I could think of. If it turned out she was going to be in New York for only a short time, I figured I should give her a taste of it. And in this case, I meant “taste” in a literal sense.

The inside of the place was as it always was, barely controlled chaos. Customers are shuttled to large tables, where they sit adjacent to strangers. It’s not a problem, because everybody is focused on the food. It’s delicious, and the aroma it causes throughout the room is so thick that you feel you could chew on the air.

The waiters and waitresses, if not rude, are at the least brusque. They never write down an order; they could be serving a table for twenty and they would just nod dismissively as each request was given. But if they’ve ever made a mistake, I’ve never been witness to it. It is pure New York.

Allie seemed mesmerized by it all, and let me order for her. I got her a baked salmon and whitefish platter, because Jen loved it. She used to call it “Jewish fish,” and bemoaned the fact that it was not available to her growing up in Ardmore.

“Re-create your life?” Allie asked. “What does that mean?”

“Well, obviously there are many things that I remember that don’t seem to have happened. But there are also things, a key one in particular, that happened which I don’t remember.”

“Like what?” she asked.

“I told someone that I was working on a story that could get me the Pulitzer prize.”

“You have no recollection of that?”

“None. But I must have said it. And if I said it, it had to have been a story I was working on intensely. It would have been my sole focus. My career has not been a series of ongoing Pulitzer contentions.”

“Wouldn’t you have been writing it for a particular publication? Wouldn’t they know what you were doing?”

I shook my head. “No. My investigative stuff I do on my own, and when it’s ready I sell it to the place I think is right.”

“Why do you do it that way?” she asked.

“Because stories change the more I dig, and I dig a lot. I ask so many questions it drives people crazy. They talk to me just so I’ll stop bugging them. But depending on where the story goes, the publication best suited to them can change.”

“I’m sorry that I’m asking so many questions myself; I hope I’m not bugging you,” Allie said. “If I had answers I would be more than happy to offer them. But do you have any idea what the story was about?”

“None. But if it happened in ‘real life,’ should there be such a thing, then there’s got to be a record of it. I would have done research, gone places, talked to people, taken notes … I’m a compulsive note-taker … there would have to be something tangible that I can follow. I just have to re-create it.”

“Let me help you,” she said.

“I have no reason to believe it has anything to do with Julie, or even with Jen.”

She nodded. “I understand that. But maybe it does. And at this point, I don’t have a lot of other clues to follow, or things to do. I can oversee the gift basket business from here, so I’m going to stay awhile.”

I didn’t have the heart to say no, nor did I have the inclination to. I enjoyed being around Allie, though I was aware it was because it almost felt like being with Jen. I knew that wasn’t particularly healthy, and that at some point I’d have to sort it out, but I had a list of things to sort that were ahead of it in line.

“Where do we start?” she asked.

“I have a cell phone bill which was paid, but which I have no record of paying. There are quite a few numbers I’m not familiar with; maybe some of them have to do with the story I was chasing.”

She smiled. “I’m great on the phone.”

I returned the smile. “My place or yours?”

“Yours. There’s only one phone line in my hotel room.”

“Then you’ll have to excuse me; I haven’t exactly been a tidy housekeeper lately. The place is a mess; it’s been a mess since—” I caught myself before I said
Jen left
, but Allie knew what I was going to say, and she smiled her understanding.

“Then I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll have another platter of Jewish fish while you go home and clean up.”

“Really?’

She laughed. “Of course not. Let’s go.”

There is no such thing as a private conversation. Anyone who thinks there is such a thing is wrong. Juice knew that better than anyone.

Anything someone says can be heard by anyone who wants to hear it. All it takes is money and technical savvy, and the Stone obviously had plenty of both.

Juice sat in his car on Fifty-third Street and Seventh Avenue, in front of a Starbucks, the motor running and the hazard lights on. The car’s presence there was certainly something that was not unusual in New York, and not likely to attract attention. Nor would anyone have paid any attention to the small device on the open window, pointing toward the Carnegie Deli.

The device was sending an invisible laser to the window of the Carnegie. Juice didn’t know that much about how it worked, but he knew that it “blanketed” the window on impact, and maintained the effect as long as it was turned on.

The data that the device recorded was sent back directly to the Stone and his people for analysis, and it would be remarkably detailed. It would reveal every single conversation that was taking place within the restaurant, and each one could be isolated. As long as the eavesdropper had a record of the timbre and pitch of the targeted voices, their conversations could be listened to as easily as if he or she were at their table with them. And certainly they had the data about Richard’s voice, and by now Allison’s as well.

Amazingly, the device could even paint a visual picture of the inside of the room, based on the sound waves. If the Stone wanted, he could learn exactly where everybody was sitting, and where all the furniture, etc., was positioned. It was not something that would be of any interest to him, but it would be there if he wanted it.

With nothing better to do than sit in the car and wait for Kilmer and the sister to leave, Juice had time to reflect on the potential a device like this inherently possessed. If it were used to target an expensive restaurant during a busy lunch or dinnertime, the possibilities were limitless. In private conversations, businesspeople would be discussing lucrative secrets, and personal indiscretions would be revealed in abundance.

The potential for profit by capitalizing on the business secrets or stock tips was great, as was the opportunity to use what was gleaned in the personal conversations for blackmail. Of course, Juice was thinking about this in the abstract, since money was never going to be a problem for him again.

Back to the matter at hand. Juice did not expect that the information garnered from this particular effort would be terribly enlightening. Since Richard’s apartment and phone were bugged, Juice already knew that he had uncovered the phone bill, and was now going to check the numbers. That was most likely what they were discussing now.

Dealing with the phone bill had been tricky, and Juice had handled it in the best way possible. But it hadn’t worked; Kilmer was both smart and lucky and had discovered the bill’s existence. Now he might use it to uncover the recent past, and like always, Juice would have to be the one to clean up the mess.

It would be a hassle that he didn’t need, and it would likely result in more people dying.

Juice actually shrugged at the thought, and the word that came to mind was the one his niece used when she tried to feign disinterest.

“Whatever.”

It was the call Susan Donovan dreaded, but the one she knew would come. Frank had told her otherwise, that he was free and clear, and that they would never come to him. But her fear was about to be realized, and she somehow knew it as soon as she heard the phone ring.

At first she considered not answering, especially with Frank not at home. If it was who she thought, she didn’t want to make a mistake, and with the pressure she was feeling it was likely that she would do so. But the thought of not knowing for sure was terrible, so she picked it up on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Hi, my name is Allison Tynes,” said the woman’s voice, and the relief that Susan felt was tangible. It was not who she expected; she was wrong to be afraid. “Can you please tell me who I’m speaking with?”

“Susan Donovan. If you’re selling something—”

Allie interrupted. “Oh, no, I’m not selling anything. I’m actually calling for Richard Kilmer.…”

Susan was gripped by panic, so much so that she didn’t hear the next few words that Allie said. She tried to focus, and heard, “… had called this number a while back, and we are retracing his steps, trying to figure out why.”

“We don’t know Mr. Kilmer,” Susan said.

“We?”

Susan immediately realized her mistake, but didn’t know how to compensate for it. “Yes.”

“Who are you referring to besides yourself?”

“My … my husband and I.”

“Is your husband there?” Allie asked. “Might I speak to him?”

“No … he’s not here.”

“But you know he doesn’t know Richard Kilmer?”

“I really can’t speak to you now; I have to go. I’m in the middle of something.”

“Can you ask your husband to call me when he returns?”

“Yes. Now I really have to go.”

Click.

As soon as she hung up the phone, she picked it back up and dialed her husband. Her hand was shaking so much that she pressed an incorrect button, and had to hang up again. She took a deep breath to calm herself, realized there weren’t enough deep breaths in the world to accomplish the task, and dialed again.

Frank answered on the second ring. “Donovan.”

“Frank, he called.”

“Kilmer?” He asked the question, although the sound of her voice made the answer a foregone conclusion.

“Yes. It wasn’t actually Kilmer, but someone calling for him. A woman. I don’t remember her name.”

“What did she say?”

“She wanted to know if we knew Richard Kilmer. I said we didn’t.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, I think so,” she said, trying to recall the details. “She asked if you would call her when you got home.”

“What did you say?”

“I’m not sure; I might have said you would. But I didn’t get her number.”

Frank tried to do the calculations in his head. This could end here; the woman might have believed Susan and moved on. It wasn’t likely, though. If Susan sounded this nervous when talking to him, he doubted that she would have sounded otherwise to the woman calling about Kilmer.

“What are we going to do, Frank?”

“We’re going to wait; there’s nothing else we can do right now.”

“We can leave,” she said. “We can pick up right now and leave. We should have done so already; I knew this was going to happen. I told you it was going to happen.”

“Susan, they can find us wherever we go,” he said.

“Kilmer? Kilmer will find us?”

“Kilmer is not our problem.”

“I think we might have something,” Allie said, as soon as she hung up the phone.

I was starting to dial another number in what had been appearing to be a series of dead ends, so I put the phone down immediately. “Tell me.”

“A woman named Susan Donovan said she didn’t know you as soon as I asked. And she said her husband didn’t know you either.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a breakthrough,” I pointed out.

“She volunteered the part about her husband, even though I didn’t ask about him. I had no way of knowing she even had a husband, and he wasn’t home at the time.”

“That’s it?” I asked, sounding more negative than I intended.

Allie shook her head. “No, she sounded strange.”

“Strange how?”

“Richard, the woman was afraid. I heard it in her voice as soon as I said I was calling for you.”