Deception (5 page)

“Anyway,” Jackie said. “Is everybody looking forward to the …”

“First time I saw one die,” Jill Murphy interrupted, “was on my third cruise. On the Italian Riviera. Helen Lowenthal was her name; I'll never forget it. They didn't know what to do with her, so they put her in the meat locker until we could reach a port. And do you know what happened? She froze stiff. By the time we docked, they couldn't get her around the corners in the corridors. We had to stay in port until she defrosted enough to bend. The funny part of it is, nobody thought just to stand her up and get her around the corners that way! Can you imagine?”

Hannah looked away. She felt quite ill enough without this kind of talk. The sea around them was calm; it did not seem right that she should have felt quite so ill. The water shaded from a dazzling turquoise near the ship to a deep, rich blue by the horizon. Foam-tipped waves marched steadily away from the swath cut by the
Aurora II
, leaving swirling whitecaps in the wake.

Renee Epstein was passing the table, shielding herself from the sun with a raised forearm. Jackie Burns turned in her chair. “Mrs. Epstein,” she called. “Would you tell your husband that it won't be any problem to mail his package? If he just leaves it outside of the cabin door, I'll make sure it gets to a post office. The charge will show up on your incidentals.”

Renee Epstein slowed. “Package?” she said.

“Yes—he asked me yesterday about mailing something.”

“Oh.” Renee seemed mildly perplexed. “Yes, I'll tell him. How is everyone doing this morning?”

“Better than Bruce Greene,” Jill started. “I was up half the night—”

A loudspeaker above the deck crackled, cutting her off. Then the captain's voice came booming out, speaking English with a thick Greek accent.

“Attention, all passengers,” he said. “We will be docking at the port of Methoni within the hour. Any passengers who would like to participate in today's tour of the fortress of Sapienza”—he pronounced the name crisply, with gusto—“please write your names on the sign-up sheet at the reception area. If you choose not to accompany us on the tour, you will have free time in the city of Methoni. Please remember that all-aboard time is five-thirty, and we sail at six. Thank you, and have a good day.”

The loudspeaker clicked off with a series of beeps and whines.

2.

As the
Aurora II
drifted into port, a heavily built man stood at one end of the dock's parking lot, smoking cigarettes and watching.

An observer would have been hard-pressed to identify the man's origin. He was lighter complexioned than the locals, but dressed with a similar Mediterranean flair: a colorful shirt worn open at the collar, loose chinos, and faded Naot sandals. A gold chain glimmered in a mat of graying chest hair; a battered brown leather bag hung across one broad shoulder. If one noticed the man at all, one likely would have assumed that he worked as staff aboard one of the half dozen ships moored along the quay—some larger than the
Aurora II
, some smaller, each flying a flag of a different nationality.

The parking-lot area abutting the dock was modern and Americanized, if several years out of step with America. Near the man stood a tourist stand displaying T-shirts—the Backstreet Boys, 'NSync, and Ricky Martin—above rows of distinctive Marlboro red-and-white packaging. Past the stand was a cluster of pay phones, a stall selling ice cream, and a sun-browned child hawking batteries and headphones.

Behind the parking lot was the town of Methoni, which was neither modern nor Americanized. The small houses were peach and yellow and light brown, soft pastel colors that set off the rich blue-green of the surrounding water. Many of the houses had flowerpots lining the sills. Many of the flowerpots had dozing cats sprawled among them. Stunted trees dotted the landscape, offering thin and threadbare patches of shade.

For a half hour after the
Aurora II
had docked, the man stayed where he was, lighting fresh cigarettes and watching. During this time, a ramp was affixed to the side of the ship, and a dilapidated tour bus pulled up. The passengers disembarked and clustered around the bus, buzzing.

Francis Dietz checked his wristwatch. He ran one hand through his curly, silvering hair. The cigarette in his other hand moved to his mouth and away with a slow, regular motion.

3.

“Vicky,” Jackie called. “You coming?”

Hannah turned back. “Give me one minute.”

“You've got five.” Jackie's voice, as ever, contained a hard note of forced cheer. “But don't make it longer. If the bus goes without you, you'll get all day on the island to yourself—and unless you brought your Mace, I don't think you want that.”

Hannah smiled vaguely, and turned away again.

As she covered the distance to the pay phone, she revolved that one over in her mind.
Unless you brought your Mace, I don't think you want that.
Because the Greeks were sexually aggressive? That must have been Jackie's meaning. A pretty young woman—if Hannah might allow herself the conceit, at age thirty-two, of still being relatively young—did not want to spend an entire day alone, unchaperoned, on a Greek island.

Or perhaps she was misunderstanding. Often she thought that people were coming on to her—she was a fine catch, after all, well-off and pretty and from a good family—and then was embarrassed to discover that it had all been in her imagination. Her mind tended to skew in naughty directions. The skin patch in the end table, for instance, which she had assumed was a condom; thank goodness she hadn't mentioned
that
to anyone. Further inspection had revealed that it was a seasickness medication, which would release scopolamine into the bloodstream when placed on the skin.

But in this case, she didn't think she was mistaken. Already she had seen the way the crew looked at her—not quite leeringly, but knowingly, and with an element of salacious interest. They thought that she was on the make. A quaint term,
on the make
, which she associated more with her parents' generation than her own. But that must have been the impression she gave: a married woman on a cruise without her husband, whose wedding band had mysteriously disappeared.

If that was their idea, she would let them have it. It was better, after all, than the truth.

She reached the pay phone and then removed the small address book from her pocketbook.
Not a good idea
, she thought, even as she spread it open to Frank's number on the gum-caked grille beneath the phone. The sun had liquefied the gum.
Not a good idea, Hannah. Don't do this.

But if she didn't, she would never know for sure.

If she didn't, she might return to Chicago to find herself walking into a nightmare; she imagined a whirl of spinning headlines out of an old movie. So she needed to call Frank, to confirm that it really was safe to return to Chicago. She would be as careful as possible. She wouldn't use her credit card. She would call collect, and stay on the line for less than a minute. Was that how long it might take to trace a call? According to movies and television, if she remembered correctly, it was. But who knew if movies and television were accurate?

She got an operator, spoke English, was transferred, got another operator, was transferred again, and then found someone who understood her as she recited the number.

Then, as the connection began to hiss with static, she turned to look at the town spread before her. The sun was nearing its midday apex; the town was taking a siesta, and the locals had retreated indoors. A sleepy feeling of timelessness hung in the air.

Beautiful
, she thought.

If only she had managed to lay her hands on more money, before running, she might have been content to spend the next few years traveling around islands such as these, absorbing the local color. If only—

The phone was ringing.

4.

The operator asked for her name. She nearly said
Vicky Ludlow;
then she nearly said
Hannah Gray.
Then she caught herself, thought quickly, and said: “Pooh Bear.”

It had been Frank's pet name for her. It had been Frank's pet name for everyone, as it so happened. But how many of his exes would be placing a collect call under that particular alias? She could only hope he would catch on.

The phone rang twice; then the voice mail picked up. She could hear Frank's raspy, familiar voice, thinned by the miles of long-distance connection. The operator came back on: an American now, with a nasal southern twang. “It's an answering machine,” she said. “Would you like—”

Hannah hung up.

She stood looking at the phone, wondering if she should try again.

Of course she shouldn't. She shouldn't have been trying in the first place. For she already knew the answer. Deep down, in a place of instinct and intuition, she knew. Frank had turned on her. He would plea-bargain her right into prison. In all likelihood, he was doing it at that very moment.

I tried to talk her out of it
, he'd be saying,
but you know the type.

By now he would have gotten the Feds on his side with some comment about a ball game, some shared joke at the expense of a woman. They would be nodding along with him, half smiling. The male fraternity.
You know the type. She gets an idea in her head and there's just no talking her out of it …

But in reality, Hannah thought, she had been guilty of nothing except poor judgment.

When she'd stumbled onto the first case of fraud, she should have gone straight to Bill Scarborough and filed a report. It had been a case of DRG upcoding, and as she'd pored over the documents she had realized that only one person could be responsible—Frank Anderson himself.

Instead of going to Scarborough, however, she'd gone to Frank, looking for an explanation. And she'd fallen for his excuse, flimsy though it may have been. To be honest, she thought now, maybe it had been his Lake Shore Drive apartment for which she had fallen. His spectacular view, his high-thread-count silk sheets.

When she had caught him the second time, redistributing and rebilling for prescription drugs after the original patient had died, she'd again considered going to Scarborough. Under the False Claims Act, a whistle-blower was entitled to a minimum of 15 percent of any judgment. If she had turned Frank in, she'd be sitting pretty right now. But of course, she hadn't. Instead she had tried to protect him. Daddy's little girl had learned some lessons early on about protecting the men in one's life.

By the time she had caught him the third time, it had been too late.

By then the sexual part of the relationship had been over. Hannah had gone to Frank feeling strong, determined to put an end to it.
Next time
, she'd announced,
I won't be there to cover for you. And if they come asking questions, I'll tell them everything I know.

Frank had grinned—a disconcertingly easy grin. They'd been sitting in a TGIF, sipping pints of Brooklyn Lager along with the rest of the Chicagoland Friday happy hour crowd.

“Pooh Bear,” he'd said, almost kindly. “You should remember—your hands aren't exactly clean.”

Almost as if he'd been waiting for her to make her threat. Almost as if he had planned for this.

He had suggested the joint account, entwining her more tightly in his web, protecting himself at the same time. And after a bit of prevarication, she had agreed. The romantic part of their relationship had been finished by then, but the business part had been only beginning.

She'd let Frank convince her that they weren't taking any real risk.
This company is big
, he'd said. A dollop of foam from the beer on his upper lip as he'd said it; the easy smile winking on again.
This company is
huge.
They can afford it. They'll never even notice, Pooh Bear. I promise.

She had believed him.

And now it was too late. In retrospect, the vibes she had picked up from Frank, during their last conversation, seemed undeniable. They were finished—busted. He hadn't come out and said it, but she knew it nevertheless. And in Frank's version, the original fraud would have been Hannah's. In Frank's version, she would be a Machiavellian force, a manipulative bitch, enticing him with her wiles.

Someone was coming up behind her. She guiltily jammed the address book into her pocketbook, and turned to face Jackie Burns.

“Come on,” Jackie said. “We're going.”

They crossed the dusty lot together, passing a man who stood smoking cigarettes and watching them. Jackie ushered Hannah aboard the waiting bus, where she was immediately waylaid by Renee Epstein.

“Here she is!” Renee said. “Darling, this is the young woman I was telling you about—Vicky Ludlow.”

The man sitting beside Renee Epstein was older than Hannah had expected, somewhere north of eighty. He had a liver-spotted pate and deceptively quiet eyes that locked on her face. “This is the one?” he said. His accent was faint, with roots in Eastern Europe.

“Isn't she lovely? She's married, of course. But I think it's possible that she might have a friend who would be right for—”

“Do you have the book?”

His manner was direct, almost accusatory. Hannah felt slightly taken aback. Renee smiled wider, as if accustomed to covering for her husband's social faux pas.

“Dear,” she said to Hannah. “I'm so sorry, but I seem to have made a mistake. Steven hadn't finished the book after all.”

Hannah slipped into a seat across the aisle, and found a smile. “I haven't even started it yet,” she said. “As soon as we get back to the ship, I'll be glad to bring it by your cabin.”

Jackie Burns stepped into the bus, conferred briefly with the driver, and reached for a microphone.

“Good morning!” she chirped as they pulled away from the quay. “We've got a special treat today, ladies and gentlemen. The world-famous fortress of Sapienza. Construction was begun by the Venetians in the thirteenth century …”