Runner (26 page)

"How do you know that?"

"I knew your Mr. Demming and company were watching for her, so I hired somebody to watch your people watch."

"Jesus Christ," said Richard. "You paid Demming to report to you before me, didn't you?"

Andy Beale shook his head sadly. "Richard, we're on the same side. We're a father and son. And since I'm assuming the pay for Demming and his people isn't coming out of your personal salary, I'm their real employer. But I didn't do what you think. I hired a detective. Period."

"You're interfering and getting in the way of what I'm trying to do."

Andy stared at Richard for a second, and couldn't help thinking what a fine-looking man he had grown into—and what a fool. He shrugged. "I didn't interfere with your people. What they were going to do, they did. They were watching the prison parking lot. When the woman came out, who did your Mr. Demming have there to see her and take advantage of the opportunity? One lone woman, who proceeded to follow her a few miles and then lose her in
Lompoc, which was not, last time I looked, a huge and complicated metropolis."

"What you're saying is they made a mistake. If they didn't get her, then you're right. It happens. There are only four of them at the moment, and all four can't be in one place waiting for a woman who isn't even Christine."

"Exactly," said Andy. "So I'm changing the way we go about this, as of now. I want you to put business aside. Most of the money is invested in undeveloped land that will keep passively growing in value as long as we don't set off a nuclear weapon on it. The rental properties are pretty much the same, and we have people for maintenance and bill collection. The real estate sales people work on commission. So let it go."

"I think you're underestimating what it takes to run this business now. It's grown a lot since you retired."

"I'm not as out of touch as you wish I was. If we both died today, the property would still keep making money for years. I want you to concentrate on getting your girlfriend back."

"You know I've been doing that."

"Your girlfriend is at least six months pregnant, and she's been gone at least a month. It's time to stop waiting for spontaneous changes of heart or your half-assed crew of security people to come through. It's pretty damned clear that your people have had chances and blown them all. It's time to make an emotional appeal, which is what you should have done in the first place."

"How do you suggest I do that—put a note in a bottle? Hire skywriters?"

"This is a twenty-year-old girl. Kids don't read newspapers anymore, so you put what you want to say into your computer and find a way to be sure she'll find it. You could start a Web site and type
your appeal into it. You tell her you love her and want to marry her and raise your baby together. Find other ways to get into her computer. See if she has a Web site under another name, or a MySpace page or YouTube or whatever else they do. Do it today. I'll want to see what you've done tomorrow night when I get back."

"Get back from where?"

"Lompoc. I told you I was going to see her father. You may have to see him, too, after I've made my visit. We'll see. I needed to write and get the man to agree to see me, and then get special permission from the prison authorities. I'm going tomorrow morning."

"All right," said Richard. "I hope it's not a waste of time."

"But you think it will be?" said Andy. "Just get your stuff done, and you won't need me."

The old man left, and Richard walked out of his office to the lobby window to see the Lexus pull out of the driveway and down the street. The last time he had come, Richard had devoted six hours to searching his office for cameras and microphones, but had found nothing. His father had been in here reading over the files on Richard's desk, and might have had time to do just about anything.

It was hard to know what the purpose of his visit had been. Maybe he had hidden cameras and microphones in here before, but had known that when he'd started bragging about how much he knew, then Richard would search for hidden devices. He might have come in during the night and removed them. Today's visit might have been to read what he could no longer see on a monitor. Or it could have been to reinstall the cameras and microphones now that Richard had completed his search. In spite of his crudeness and bullying, the old man was very cunning. He had always been particularly good at predicting what Richard would think and feel, and making pitiless use of it against him in these battles. If he hurt
Richard's feelings it seemed to be a bonus for him. He was capable of putting bugging equipment in just for that purpose.

Richard took a quick look around the office, paying particular attention to electrical outlets, where some permanent bug could be planted. He examined the telephones and the computer to see if their shells had been opened. Then he looked under the furniture and stood on his desk to lift a ceiling tile and look around in the empty space above the frame. He heard a noise coming from outside the door, so he hastily climbed down and waited, but nobody entered. He leaned against the door. Nothing happened. He walked out into the lobby past Marlene, the pretty receptionist he had hired to take Christine's place. Or had he hired her? He had selected her, but who was to say why she had applied? She could easily be working for his father. Richard felt sick. Having his receptionist spying on him would be a thousand times worse than being bugged.

The thought made Richard feel panicky about Christine again. She knew too much about him, had been present for too many transactions, whether she had enough experience to know how to sort out what she knew or not. She was like a bomb, hidden somewhere and getting ready to go off in less than three months and obliterate him. Richard went outside to the parking lot behind the building and used his cell phone to call Demming.

"It's me," he said. "I hear one of your girls saw the woman who's been hiding Christine."

"How the hell did you hear that?" Demming said. Demming's surprise and annoyance made Richard feel in control. He was almost grateful to his father for a second.

"My father told me. He had somebody watching your person at Lompoc. I hear the woman got away."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Then it's true."

"Yes."

"Well, my father is going to visit Robert Monahan tomorrow."

"How is he going to do that? When you're sent there you have to give the warden's office a list of the people who might visit you—family and no more than three friends. He sure as hell couldn't have put down your father."

"My father says he wrote letters to Monahan and the prison people, and got permission."

The silence told Richard that Demming felt humiliated and angry. After a few seconds Demming said, "Does he know what to say?"

"I think he does. He's going to try to get Monahan to tell his daughter to come and see me. You know—that I can't wait to marry her and all that."

"Look, Richard. The woman got there first. If she said anything to him, it will be that he should tell his daughter to stay out of sight. She will have told him everything we did to try to grab Christine and bring her back. Maybe it's not such a good idea to have your father do this."

"I can't stop him."

"Do you think he'll accomplish anything?"

"I don't know anything about this woman who's helping Christine. I know my father has sold a few hundred houses and dozens of square miles of land over the years. He's a good salesman."

"Well, then, let's hope he's having a great day tomorrow."

"Maybe," said Richard. "I was wondering. Who was it that was watching the prison today?"

"That doesn't make any difference. If she lost this woman, then anybody would have."

"Who? Claudia?"

"No. It happened to be Sybil. You would have lost the woman. I would have. This is a person who played chicken with us on a dark
highway in upstate New York at like ninety miles an hour, and she never swerved or touched the brake pedal. She's shown us a couple of times that she's ready to die to keep us away from Christine. She's a fucking crazy person and I think we've got to recognize that and work around her. It's not a wonderful situation, but it's the one we're in. Now, if we can trust your father to do this right, maybe he'll get Christine's father to tell him something, or pass his daughter a message."

"Uh, Steve?"

"What?"

"Can you have whoever is watching the prison tomorrow pay special attention to my father?"

"Of course. We were going to put Claudia there. She's already on her way to Lompoc. That woman might have come just to see if it would be safe for Christine. If she doesn't see Sybil she may think it's safe. But we can make sure she doesn't harm your father."

"No, I meant something slightly different. I'd like you and the others to get a look at him, get used to his clothes, his movements, the car he drives. And try to spot the person he's hired to watch the prison."

"Just what are you planning, Richard?"

"I'm not planning anything."

"Of course you are."

"I'm asking you to keep an eye on my father for a couple of hours, and you have someone there anyway."

"You're putting him under surveillance like somebody who might become an enemy."

"All right, all right. I'm in trouble here. I'm under terrible pressure. What I want most is that you find Christine before she has the baby and bring her back here to see me. That's all I really want, and it's what I hired you to do. If I had her now, there wouldn't be any
problem. Since I don't have her, I have to start worrying about what happens if I don't get her."

"What happens?"

"My mother wants that grandchild. If I don't get Christine by the time that baby is born, my father is going to give up on me. It's what he's wanted to do for years. He'll take control of the company away from me, fire me, and evict me from my house. I'll be out on the street with no job and no place to live. I'm thirty-eight years old. I've never worked anywhere but the family business, so I wouldn't even have anything to put on a résumé. Meanwhile, Christine will be out there somewhere. She's twenty, but she won't be twenty forever. At some point she's going to understand everything she saw while she worked and lived with me. She'll either hold it over my head for money or just flat out turn me in. Are you starting to get the picture?"

Steve Demming's tone changed. "If I were you, I'd be setting aside a lot of cash, pulling it out of the businesses as fast as I could, and hiding it."

"What do you think I've been doing? But I don't know how much my father knows. I don't know who works for me, and who works for him."

"So you've decided to prepare for the chance that things don't go right."

"Yes," said Richard. "For all I know, everything is going the right way, and he'll get what we need from Christine's father. But if he doesn't, and Christine doesn't turn up where you're looking, then I've got to have a way to save myself."

"Of course," said Demming. "And what about your mother? If he's gone, will she be on your side and keep from asking questions?"

"No," said Richard. "We'll have to think about her, too, I suppose. But not yet. Give my father some time."

The next morning, as Andy Beale drove into the parking lot outside the prison, he saw his detective Grace Kandinsky getting out of her car so he would see her. She turned her head at an odd angle to her left as she lit a cigarette, so he couldn't help following her eyes to see a woman in a black sedan across the lot. She seemed to be young, and had a sweet-faced attractiveness, with long blond hair. That had to be the replacement for the woman Grace had told him about, the one Demming had assigned to watch the prison. The blond woman took out her telephone while Andy parked his car a distance away from hers. He supposed she was going to report to Demming that he was here, but when he got out of his car and walked toward the prison entrance, he realized that she was taking his picture over and over with her cell phone as he walked. He looked the other way and pretended he hadn't seen her do it. It was always best to keep to himself how much he knew and how much he didn't.

He went inside the prison entrance and separated himself from the proceedings emotionally. The prison officials cleared him and briefed him and made him wait. He reminded himself that the
guards didn't have anything against him and no reason to be impressed by him. They just needed to be sure he wasn't going to hand one of their prisoners something dangerous or forbidden. Andy Beale had learned in the navy that a man who tried to resist authority was wasting his time. He could see that prisons were the same. Getting by was really just a matter of going where they pointed you and waiting quietly until they were ready to point you somewhere else. In due time he found himself in a visiting room, being ushered to a counter across from a man about fifty in khaki clothes. "Mr. Monahan?" he said. "I'm Andy Beale."

Monahan sat down. "Hello, Mr. Beale."

There was no handshake, no smile. Andy Beale sat down, trying to use the seconds before he talked to read Monahan's face. There was a lot of wrinkling around the forehead and eyes, where he saw a look of anxiety that he was sure predated the prison term by many years. Monahan had the look of a man who had gotten used to losing. "Mr. Monahan," he said, "the reason I drove up here today is to meet you in person and see whether you and I can help our children. I'm the father of a strong, healthy, successful son who's had his heart broken."

Monahan was impassive. "Is that something I'm supposed to worry about? When you drove into this place did you happen to notice it was a federal prison?"

"Maybe I'm just teasing myself with false hopes. I know from Richard that Christine loves you very much, so I thought she might have confided in you a little, and you would know what I'm talking about."

"She does confide in me. I know who Richard is."

"I'm glad," he said, in spite of the fact that Monahan's expression didn't indicate that he'd heard anything good. "Then what I have to tell you is that since Christine left, he's been absolutely
devastated. He's always been a cheerful, optimistic young man. Now he's moping around all the time. For a few days he'll throw himself back into business and be in the office working from dawn until dark the way he always did, but it's not the same. I can see he's just desperate to take his mind off her for a few hours. I can see he hasn't slept much. His eyes are hollow and he never smiles. Then he'll exhaust himself and one day he won't even get out of bed. I'm telling you, I'd turn him over to the psychiatrists, except that I know what's wrong. All they could do for him is load him up with antidepressants, and that won't solve anything."