Forever (21 page)

'No.' He shook his head. 'She couldn't have.
She struck me as a God-fearing, Christian sort of woman.'

'That's not what the cops seem to think. The
one I talked to?' She waited for him to nod. 'He said all the veins
in her arms had collapsed from shooting up so much.'

'I'll be damned.'

Lisa sighed. 'Well, I might as well mosey
along. If I have to identify the body, I want to get it over and
done with.'

He nodded. 'Take the rest of the afternoon
off.'

'Thanks. Well, see you later.' She turned
and started for the door.

Aaron swivelled around in his chair and
stared out of the window.

Does this mean I should stop searching for
the child? he wondered. Then he shook his head. This makes the
mystery only that much more tantalising. If I have to, I'll
continue the search on my own time.

That decided, he swivelled back around.
'Damn!' he muttered.

Now the computers were down.

They were still down by the time four
o'clock rolled around, so he decided to call it an early day. It
was a long way home on foot - he lived at Eighty-first and
Riverside Drive - but all the better. The weather was perfect, and
God alone knew he could use the exercise.

When he reached Riverside Drive and
Eighty-first Street, Aaron looked around with pleasure, soaking in
the peace and quiet. The swell of the mid-town crowds had thinned
out to near nothing; this was a quiet residential neighbourhood,
one where birds sang in the trees and you could actually hear
yourself think. With a little stretch of the imagination, it wasn't
difficult to believe that this elegant parkside street was part of
another, smaller and gentler, city.

The pedestrian light was red. On the
opposite side of the intersection, a well-dressed young woman with
a perambulator was waiting for it to change; an older couple beside
Aaron, coming home from the supermarket carrying plastic shopping
bags were exclaiming in outrage over the price of groceries. Then
the traffic light changed and they all started to cross.

Aaron was in the middle of the intersection
when he heard the roar of an engine being gunned. He stopped
walking and looked to his right. A brown UPS delivery van was
bearing down on him, hurtling forward at full speed.

It took a moment for the situation to
register, and when it did, it was too late. The windshield and the
grille loomed larger and larger, he heard the woman with the
perambulator shout a warning, and at the last moment, Aaron lifted
an arm to shield his face. He screamed at the moment of impact, and
it was as if a giant metal fist had smashed into his body. Then,
mercifully, everything went black.

A red rose, tossed from the van's window,
landed beside him on the pavement.

New York City • Sitto da Veiga, Brazil

It seems impossible, he thought. And
wondered for one terrible moment whether it was too good to be
true.

Thomas Andrew Chesterfield III was seated in
his office, hanging up the telephone. He was stunned by the news.
It was the last, the very, very last thing he had expected to hear
from the whisperer who filled him with such dread.

He was so shaky with relief he almost burst
into tears. Dare I believe my ears? he wondered. He really didn't
know. Because this time, he was given no name to feed to The Ghost
for annihilation. If the caller was telling the truth, from now on
his hands would no longer be tainted with blood.

'You have been of great service, Mr
Chesterfield,' the whisperer had told him. 'You have done well. But
before we terminate our relationship completely, we have one last
request to make of you. After that, you will receive the original
and all the copies of your son's film in existence.'

He had listened with growing disbelief,
thinking, I'm dreaming! I must have died and gone to heaven or else
I'm dreaming!

The whisperer said, 'Now then, Mr
Chesterfield. I'm going to give you a telephone number. Please
memorise it carefully and pass it on to The Ghost. Tell him that a
client wishes to retain his exclusive services, and that, in
return, one million dollars will be deposited into any Swiss or
Cayman bank account of his choosing. Also, that the client will pay
an additional one hundred thousand dollars per job. Up front. The
Ghost is to deal directly with us.'

'I'll pass on your message this
evening.'

'Good. And one more thing, Mr
Chesterfield?'

'Yes?'

'I advise you to forget the telephone number
as soon as you have given it to The Ghost. Please. Do yourself a
favour. Forget it, and don't pry.'

Chesterfield's voice was shaky. 'And . . .
that's it?' he'd asked hoarsely.

'Why, yes, Mr Chesterfield. That's it. After
this, you will be out of the picture completely.'

Can this be for real? Chesterfield kept
wondering. All he had to do was fulfil this one last request, and
he would be off the hook for ever?

He kept staring at the telephone, afraid
that the whisperer would call back to tell him it was all a mistake
. . .

But the telephone remained blessedly
silent.

And for once, he couldn't wait until
nightfall.

After dark, he cruised along Ninth Avenue
for the last time.

His eyes searched the hen party on the
corner. There she was! Wearing a little gold bra-like thing, gold
hot pants, and six-inch gold spike heels. He saw her turn her head
and recognise his car. Then she sashayed over to him, one hand
twirling a tiny gold purse on a long gold chain. Making it blur
like a propeller.

She ducked her head in through the open
window, it's you again,' she said.

He swallowed almost painfully and
nodded.

Slowly she slid the pink tip of her tongue
across her upper lip. On the corner, the girls jabbered like
magpies and then fell quiet. From down Thirty-eighth Street, a fire
truck pulled out of the firehouse, emergency lights flashing.

'You miss me?' she asked.

He glanced nervously past her, at the
approaching fire truck.

'That's just the fire department,' Shanel
said dismissively, and wiggled her buttocks. 'They're not going to
bust us.'

He nodded, not speaking, as ear-shattering
klaxons added to the scream of the sirens, and then the truck
roared past and was gone, its cacophony fading.

'Well?' she asked when the noise started to
die away. 'You going to ask me in?'

He nodded and she ducked her head back out
of the window, tried the door, and waited until he unlocked it from
the instrument panel. Then she pulled it open and slid in.

'Drive,' she said. 'You know the way.'

He pulled carefully out into the traffic,
took a right turn, and then another right into the by-now familiar
parking lot.

'How much?'

'One-fifty to pass on the message,' Shanel
said.

He handed it over. She counted it, unsnapped
her bag, and crumpled the bills inside before snapping it shut
again.

'Now, what you want me to pass on?' she
asked.

He told her how someone wanted to deal with
The Ghost without going through him, and that he had a phone number
in case The Ghost was interested.

'How much they paying?' she asked. 'Not that
I care.'

He told her.

She shrugged; his reply didn't surprise her
in the least. 'I'll call and tell him. But you better write the
number down on a piece of paper. I don't remember numbers. Every
time I try, they just slip right outta my head. You know?'

He used a notepad and pen he kept in the
glove compartment. After he had jotted it down, he tore the sheet
off the pad and handed it to her.

She palmed it and stuck it in her little
gold bag.

He dropped her off at her corner for the
last time.

Without her hooker drag, Shanel would have
been unrecognisable to her clients. She looked positively chic,
wearing a sedate white-and-beige striped blouse with the top two
buttons open, a silk Hermes scarf tied loosely around her neck, a
canary-yellow jacket, and tobacco-coloured cotton slacks. Her
lace-up shoes were flat and brown and expensive, and her London Fog
raincoat was tan. She wore it unbuttoned. She had a big Vuitton
shoulder bag wedged under her arm.

She closed her umbrella and shook the rain
off it. Then she walked into the airlines ticket offices opposite
Grand Central Station, looked around, and followed the signs to the
escalator. When she got to the second floor, she headed for the
payphones.

She chose the one at the far end because it
afforded the most privacy. Then, setting down the Vuitton bag, she
rummaged around inside it. Kleenex, compact, wallet . . . there it
was: the paper with the telephone number the white dude had given
her. She dug around in the jumble again. Mace, tights, roll of
stamps . . . lipsticks, tampons, more lipsticks - right on\ The MCI
she'd lifted from an obnoxious john while giving him head. Looking
at it made her smile; running up his bill would give her immense
pleasure.

She hummed to herself as she lifted the
receiver and inserted a quarter in the phone.

Then she waited.

First, there was a series of clicks and
pauses, as if the call was being rerouted; then more clicks and
more pauses, like it was being rerouted some more. Finally, she
could make out the sound of distant rings.

A guarded voice answered, saying, 'Yes?'

Shanel said, 'I'm supposed to give you a
message from The Ghost?' Sounding unsure of herself, not coming
right out and saying any more in case she'd got a wrong number or
something.

The voice said, 'I'm listening.'

She took a deep breath. 'Well, The Ghost say
. . . lemme see ... it was something to do with accepting a
business arrangement your man proposed. Un-huh. And The Ghost also
say, soon as the money's, deposited in his account? That he work
exclusively for you then.' She paused and asked tentatively, 'You
want me to give you the bank account number and stuff?'

'Please,' the voice said dryly.

'I know it somewhere in Switzerland. Wait a
minute. I got it here someplace . . . '

She cradled the receiver between her
shoulder and ear and burrowed around inside her bag. Further
digging yielded the scrap of paper. She smoothed it out.

'Here it is!' she said into the phone, and
read off the information.

The voice at the other end of the line
repeated it, and added, 'I will need a telephone number where The
Ghost can be reached at all times.'

'Let me see ... '

She had to search in the bag for another
scrap of paper. She read off the number.

It's an answering service,' she explained.
'You can leave messages there around the clock, seven days a week.
The Ghost checks in daily. When he hear from you, he call.
Okay?'

'Yes. You can inform him that the money will
be wired to his account within the hour, along with the fee for the
first job.'

'Just pass on the information.'

And the line went dead.

She glanced surreptiously over both
shoulders and lowered her voice. 'You need him for a job
already?

The next afternoon, Thomas Andrew
Chesterfield III bounded down the steps of the Fulton Street subway
station, a spring in his step and a whistle on his lips. He had
just left his office, and he, like a veritable horde of well-to-do
Upper East Siders, took the train simply because it was the fastest
way to get uptown from downtown during rush-hour.

Christ, but he felt good! Better than he had
in years. Because suddenly, everything had changed. Life was sunny
once again. Just an hour earlier, a messenger had dropped off a
giant Jiffy bag addressed to him. It was marked Personal.

As promised, it contained video cassettes;
eight VHS videocassettes, to be exact.'

Heart thumping, he'd told his secretary that
under no circumstances was he to be disturbed. Then he'd shut his
door, dashed back behind his desk, and begun prying the cassettes
open with a pair of shears. He not only unravelled the tapes, but
snipped them into useless pieces.

When he was done, he stuffed his handiwork
into his wastebasket and smiled. There. Now there was no way
anybody could salvage them. Each tape was as good as shredded.

At last.

At last, he could breathe easier. No more
blackmail. No more whispering phone calls at odd hours. Life was
back to normal, and ah! How sweet it was!

His token ready, he breezed through the
turnstile, swinging his briefcase jauntily. Once downstairs, he
took up position at the edge of the crowded subway platform, slid
the folded-up Wall Street Journal from under his arm, snapped it
half open, and began reading.

It wasn't long before the train roared out
from the maw of the tunnel and into the station, its headlight
shining like a Cyclops eye. Chesterfield refolded his newspaper,
tucked it back under his arm, and waited. Unnoticed by him, someone
slid a red rose between the pages of newsprint.

The roar turned into thunder as the train
approached, and just as its brakes screeched their ear-piercing
squeal, Chesterfield was shoved violently from behind.

Arms flailing, he went flying through the
air - wanting to shout that this was all wrong, that he didn't
deserve to die! But before he could open his mouth, his body hit
the third rail. He thrashed about wildly and screamed, thousands of
volts frying him, and then, as if death by electrocution was not
enough, the train crashed into him, dismembering him as well.

In the ensuing panic and confusion, The
Ghost strolled calmly off the platform, unseen and unheard.
Thinking: At this rate, I 'll be able to retire within a year. As
long as these jobs keep right on coming . . .