Coincidence (10 page)

As another old friend of mine, now deceased (while resisting arrest), would have said, my sad ass was green, green grass.
It was going to take a miracle to get me out of this.

Instead, things got worse. I saw him at the same time he saw me. He was the third member of the team and cleverer than the
other two, which was why I’d missed him till then. But he hadn’t missed me.

He shouted something, and the three of them started following my cab on foot. It took no more than a fast walk with the heavy
traffic at that time of day. I debated whether to get out and run. Then, looking ahead, I saw a chance.

“Twenty if you get through before that light changes,” I said, holding a bill over the driver’s shoulder. He tried to grab
it, but I pulled it away. “You’ve got to do it first,” I said.

He spoke with a guttural accent. “If we see cop, you tell him you having heart attack.”

He almost gave me one as he hit the gas, bounced off the curb, and powered ahead with his fist on the horn, provoking a screeching
of brakes on all sides. After the intersection the traffic flowed better. My pursuers weren’t even clear of the snarl-up we’d
created before we were out of sight. I dropped my twenty into the front of the cab.

“Where to now?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, realizing I didn’t. “Just keep driving.”

Where could I go? If they were staking out the bank, it meant they’d followed the money, which made it unlikely they’d found
my hotel. On the other hand, going back there was a risk I didn’t need to take. I had everything I needed with me, including
my passport, my few remaining dollars, and a collection of plastic that hadn’t worked for the past week.

“Pull over here,” I said, not wanting to spend any more money than I already had.

I got out and looked around, then started walking against a one-way system so that even if they came after me in a cab or
another car, they couldn’t follow me. It was after a few blocks of this zigzagging, lose-a-tail strategy that I heard a voice
behind me say, “Mr Daly?” and then felt a hand on my arm.

My first thought was I’d walked into another trap, but I quickly realized that this very attractive young woman was making
a simple mistake, and if I let her go on making it she was going to take me to some place off the street, which was just what
I needed at that moment.

Then came the rest. The coincidence. The realization that something very strange and interesting had happened.

I believe in coincidence. Doesn’t everybody? If there is no such thing as coincidence, then everything must be planned or
intended in some way, which makes no sense.

But I do not believe in synchronicity. I do not think there’s anything more going on in coincidence, including repeated coincidence,
than meets the eye. Coincidence is remarkable by definition, and the more it happens the more remarkable it is. But only idle
minds find patterns in it and pretend it means something. People with nothing better to do.

People like George. Jerk-off George. What was I supposed to make of that story of his about finding playing cards and heart-shaped
cakes, crossword puzzles, and some name outside a movie theater? Just more New Age crap as far as I was concerned.

As I said, I accept coincidence for what it is, and I accept that a remarkable coincidence happened to me. One remarkable
coincidence. That was running into Nadia Shelley when I did. The fact that I was jerk-off George’s long-lost twin was not
a coincidence, it was just a fact waiting to be discovered. George found a clue to that discovery when his father died, then
he hired a detective agency to follow it up. I happened to be where I was that afternoon for no reason connected with George
Daly or any part of my family history. And then a woman who knew George saw me and mistook me for George. It’s not that big
a deal. But it is a coincidence, I grant you.

George, rubbing his hands with glee, said it was a classic synchronicity.

Damn fool.

The first thing I had done after leaving Nadia Shelley’s office was take a cab across town to see where George lived. It was
an expensive address. The smallest apartments in a building like that started at between two and three million, and I saw
from his file that he lived in the penthouse.

Anxious though I was to catch sight of him, I couldn’t hang around indefinitely without attracting attention myself. I went
around the corner and got a cup of coffee while I thought this out. In the end I decided just to go straight on in there and
ring his bell. It was the most open and honest way to handle this thing, the way that would make the best impression on him.
I was anxious to do that because I wanted him to trust me. At that moment he seemed like maybe my best chance.

Just as I got to the corner of the building a shiny black chauffeur-driven Town Car surged out of the garage. Sitting in the
back was a dark-haired woman I’d never seen before, and next to her was… myself.

It was truly the weirdest moment of my life, unreal and yet happening, like the moment of shock people describe when they’re
in some terrible accident. There was my identical twin, my doppelganger, right there before my eyes.

Neither of them glanced my way, or I daresay they’d have had as big a shock. In a moment they were gone, heading downtown
in the late-afternoon traffic. I registered almost in retrospect the fact that they had both been wearing evening dress, which
at this hour suggested they were headed for some gala performance at Lincoln Center or somewhere similar. That meant it would
be a late night, so there was little point in my hanging around.

That was when I had the idea of sending a letter—to “myself’ at his address. I looked at my watch. There was still time. I
found a copy shop close by and quickly mocked up a sheet of plain paper with the detective agency’s address. Then I did the
same with an envelope. It took only a few moments to type and print the letter, then I caught the last post. It would be there
in the morning.

There was one last thing I had to do that day, which was call my friend Skeeter up in Oregon. I made the call collect from
a pay phone: Skeeter could afford it, with his ranch and the horses he’d bought after getting lucky that last time he and
I did business. Skeeter owed me too much to refuse me the favor I was going to ask him. Also I knew too much about him, including
where the bodies were buried—literally. I told him I was in Manhattan and needed—urgently—to get out. I had no money, people
were looking for me, so I needed him to arrange a pick-up. He didn’t hesitate, just asked when and where. I said the following
day, somewhere in Manhattan. I didn’t know exactly when or where, but I’d check back with him once he’d gotten everything
set up and we’d do the details.

After that I had a drink in a bar and counted my dwindling reserve of dollars. There was just enough for a room in the cheapest
hotel I could find. It was an uncomfortable and noisy night, as a result of which I was up early and on my way to George’s
apartment at about the time I expected the post to be delivered. It suddenly started to rain hard. I took cover under a bus
shelter across from the building’s entrance, and to my surprise after a couple of minutes saw George emerge with an umbrella,
solicitously shepherding his wife into a waiting cab. When he went back in I saw him pick up his mail from one of the locked
brass boxes on the back wall of the lobby. I decided to give him a while.

The rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun. I started walking on the glistening wet sidewalk, intending to circle a couple
of blocks before giving him a call. I tried to imagine him opening the letter and almost certainly rereading it several times
in disbelief. Then he would try to phone the agency, but I knew no one was there over the weekend. Nadia Shelley had offered
to give me an emergency number when I’d asked about this, but I’d said it wasn’t necessary. The fact that she had offered
it meant almost certainly that George didn’t have it, which was useful to know.

After fifteen minutes I was ready to give him a call. I’d noticed a pay phone near the bus shelter where I’d hidden from the
rain earlier. I imagined he’d be able to see it from his balcony, which meant I could get him to look down and I would wave
to him—a suitably unthreatening way, I thought, to break the ice.

When I got there, naturally enough, the pay phone was busy. So I waited. But suddenly, in the background, I saw George crossing
toward the park. He was walking with his shoulders hunched and his hands deep in his pockets, the classic body language of
tension and frustration.

I couldn’t resist a faint smile of amusement as I set off after him. Twenty minutes later we were talking.

W
hat did I want from him when we first looked at each other? I don’t think I really knew. Whatever I could get, I suppose.
A sympathetic ear, certainly, for the story I would tell him, and a little money to get me through the immediate future. I
had only a few hours before I had to call Skeeter again. His team was probably in place by now, and I was certainly going
to need money.

I was glad when he suggested we go back to his apartment to talk. I’d had more than enough of looking nervously over my shoulder,
hoping he didn’t notice. We spent the afternoon like a pair of teenagers hashing over their lives, comparing every little
like and dislike, talking about our parents, figuring out their motives, and tracing the events that had, as it seemed to
us, brought us to that point. At the end of it all we dreamed up this childish prank of switching roles and playing a joke
on George’s agent, Lou Bennett. I swear I hadn’t planned it all. It was only as the day wore on and things started falling
into place that I conceived of doing what I did. As I said, it’s all about making the most of your chances.

After we’d tried on each other’s clothes and were pretty sure that nobody would be able to tell which of us was which, I asked
George if I could use his phone. He handed me a mobile, then went off to the kitchen for something, leaving me alone to talk
in private. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d overheard what I had to say; it was innocuous enough. I simply called Skeeter
and asked him if everything was in place. He confirmed that it was. I told him I would call him back in the next hour.

Dusk fell, and it was time for my rendezvous with Lou. I was anxious to get going, which made me careless. I should have been
the one, not George, to point out that I needed some way of identifying Lou. It was a clumsy mistake on my part, which, to
a smarter man than George, might have suggested that I had no intention of keeping that appointment with his agent. Luckily,
the moment passed without causing a problem.

We took the elevator to the garage and left the building as we had entered it, seeing no one. We walked a block or so, then
I hailed a cab. As it drove off, I turned to grin back at George through the rear window, giving a little wave and a gesture
of reassurance that everything was going to go just fine.

Then I took out his mobile phone, which I’d brought with me, and called Skeeter again. I told him that in fifteen minutes’
time I would be walking along Central Park South. I described the clothes—my clothes—that George would be wearing, though
this was probably unnecessary: They would have spotted him anyway once they’d been told where to look. The important thing
was that he was carrying my wallet with my credit cards and driver’s license. He would not lightly talk himself out of that.
He would do his best, of course, but without success. The killers themselves, the men who actually did the job and who I’d
seen outside the bank the day before, spoke very little English.

But they were professionals, skilled and ruthless. They would pick him off the street without a scuffle. No one would notice
a thing as he was bundled into the back of the waiting car. I didn’t know where they would take him, but everything would
have been planned in advance. They would put a bullet in his head—that much was tradition. Then the body would be disposed
of with equal permanence. They would use a lime pit, or possibly a deep hole in the foundations of some construction site,
into which he would be thrown, after which rubble and concrete would be added.

That this would happen I knew with certainty. I knew it because I knew that Skeeter had betrayed me. I had suspected for some
time that I could no longer trust him, and seeing those men yesterday had confirmed it. I knew that anything I told him would
be relayed directly to the people who wanted me dead. He thought I had played into his hands, whereas in reality he had played
into mine. I owed this reversal of fortune to pure chance. I had been in deep, deep trouble, and only the accident—coincidence,
if you prefer—of meeting George had saved my life. That was extraordinary, I grant you. Quite extraordinary.

A month earlier, such a coincidence would have been amusing at best, perhaps simply irritating, and certainly irrelevant.
But it has always amazed me how quickly things can change. A month earlier I’d been on top of the world. I was taking risks,
but then I always had, and so far I’d always gotten away with them. Perhaps I’d started taking my luck too much for granted.
Was that my fatal mistake?

I’d used the music business as my cover for many years. When I felt myself burning out on the creative side, which had happened
after a very short time, I started arranging introductions, for a fee, between people in the business and others who could
provide certain services and substances much in demand in the music world. This had led to an increasing involvement in the
financial side of things, until a federal money-laundering inquiry had curtailed my activities. Charges had been dropped owing
to lack of evidence, more particularly lack of witnesses owing to a couple of unfortunate accidents.

It had been a setback nonetheless. The people I worked for had stood by me, but chiefly out of self-interest. Now I was a
liability, and found myself being rapidly sidelined. I decided to take one last shot at a big payday while I still had the
chance. I could have done it a hundred times in the past, but never had. I’d imagined doing it and knew how it would work,
but it was just a mental exercise, neither a plan nor an intention.