Forever (4 page)

'But the drivers' licences and passports
weren't forgeries. They were the real McCoys. And they had your
fingerprints all over them! How do you explain that?'

He shrugged.

Her voice was soft. 'They were yours,
weren't they?'

'But I just got through telling you -'

' - You told me
bupkus
.'

He smiled angelically.
'Bupkus
. A
Yiddish word meaning goat shit. I didn't know you were Jewish,
Stephanie.'

'Jed,' she sighed, 'this is strictly off the
record. Okay?'

'Yes, Stephanie?' He gave her his full
attention.

'Why did you ask for me to come and
interview you? Your lawyer specifically told everyone that you
wouldn't grant any interviews.'

'Yes, but did anyone listen? You saw them
when you came in here, Stephanie. You heard them just now.' He
gestured to the door Ted Warwick had gone through. 'The press
room's full of hungry animals hot on the scent of blood. Do you
know how many reporters are out there, Stephanie? Over one hundred
and fifty. All waiting to see me die.' He chuckled dryly. 'Death,
it seems, is the ultimate human interest story.'

'Maybe. But you still didn't answer my
question. Why me? They were all camped out here already. You could
have had your pick. The
New York Times
, or
Sixty
Minutes
. Even
A Current Affair
, if your taste runs in
that direction.'

He made a steeple of his fingers and pressed
the tips of his index fingers to his lips. 'Perhaps I asked for you
because you weren't here already.'

'Oh, cut the bullshit,' she said
wearily.

'Ah,' he said, and tapped his teeth with his
index fingers. 'So you're not easily misled. Good.' He hunched over
slightly, folded his arms on the desk, and looked at her with his
most sincere expression. 'Then I'll try to explain. I've wanted to
meet you for the longest time, Stephanie - it was my deathbed wish,
you might say. You know, like those terminally ill children who get
one last wish before they die, and someone takes them to Disney
world, or an athlete comes to visit them?'

She nodded.

'Well. You made my wish come true. You see,
you, Stephanie Merlin, are
my
Disney world.
My
athlete.'

Close up, his incisors looked savagely
pointed and sharp, and he covered the microphone so that the
videocam's sound system couldn't pick up what he said.

'What would you say if I were to tell you
that I've been watching your show religiously for over two years
now? And not because it's good. But because . . . you fit my
feminine ideal?'

She fought the impulse to grimace.

'I see that you're not impressed. But then,
I didn't think you would be.'

'I'm . . . honoured that you should think so
highly -'

'No, Stephanie. No, no.' He shook his head.
'You're not honoured. You're . . .
frightened!
"

She stared at him. He'd hit the nail right
on the head.

'Are you afraid I might hurt you? Is that
it?' He didn't expect a reply. 'Obviously, you'll be as relieved as
the rest of them once they strap me into Old Sparky and throw the
switch, won't you? You think I'll be gone for good then, and you
find that comforting.'

She didn't reply.

'But guess what? I
won't
be gone! You
see, I'll be waiting for you on the other side, Stephanie.'

The flat grey of his eyes seemed to reach
out and touch her physically.

'You do believe in life after death,
Stephanie, don't you?'

The air between them seemed charged; she
could swear it rippled and distorted.

The door opened again, distantly, as though
it were part of a lateral dimension. Again, the multitude of voices
outside rose in sound.

'Steph,' Ted Warwick called to her. 'Could
you come to the phone for a minute?'

She waved him off without turning around.
'Jot down the number and tell whoever it is that I'll call
back.'

'It's important, Steph. It's Sammy Kafka.
He's calling from New York.'

Sammy!
For a moment her heart stopped
dead. 'Ted . . .?' she said weakly.

He gestured her outside.

Jed Savitt watched as she pushed her chair
back, rose, and headed for the door.

'Don't stay away too long,' the killer
called out after her. 'My time's running out!'

She was glad when the door clanged shut on
his giggles.

The large room where the press was gathered
was a beehive of noise and activity. Thick electrical cables snaked
all over the floor.

'The phones are this way,' Ted Warwick
said.

'Ted. Wait!' She stood her ground, oblivious
to the army of reporters and cameramen all around.

He retraced his steps back to her.

'Ted,' she said firmly. 'Please. What's
happened?'

He pulled her into a corner, away from
earshot. 'It's your grandfather,' he said softly.

She grabbed him by the arms, her eyes wide,
searching his face.

Ted Warwick sighed. 'He's dead, Steph.'

She flinched from the pain. 'How? Did he
have a heart attack? But he couldn't have! He'd just had his
checkup. His EKG was fine and -'

'He didn't die naturally, Steph.'

'Ted? What are you trying to tell me?'

'Sammy said . . . ' He sighed and wished
there was some gentler way to break it. 'He said it looks like
suicide.'

'Sui - ' The word slammed into her, its
punch leaving her reeling. She leaned her head back against the
cinderblocks and shut her eyes.

Somewhere, a million miles away, an intercom
speaker crackled, and a distorted voice came on:
'Ladies and
gentlemen, the Supreme Court of the United States has just stayed
Mr Savitt's execution. Mr Savitt will not be giving interviews and
is being returned to his cell at this time. You will be briefed in
full shortly. We appreciate your patience
.'

The amplified voice made absolutely no
impression on Stephanie Merlin. Rivulets of tears coursed down her
cheeks. Slowly, she raised her head and opened her eyes. Then a
quiet kind of strength shone in her face.

'My grandfather,' she told Ted Warwick with
quiet conviction, 'would never have killed himself.
Never!
'

Inflight • New York City

Stephanie stared out through the square of
scratched Perspex, unaware of the lights below receding as the jet
banked and climbed steeply. Her face was pale and she was hugging
herself tightly. She felt so cold, so empty, so robotic.

But if I'm a robot, why do I feel such pain?
she kept wondering.

She felt a hand gently touching her
shoulder. Slowly she turned her tear-streaked face and raised it.
The cabin attendant was leaning across the businessman in the aisle
seat beside her. 'Can I get you anything?' the uniformed young
woman asked.

Stephanie shook her head. 'No, thank you,'
she said dully, and started to turn away.

The attendant looked at her a moment longer
and then touched her on the shoulder again. 'Could you come with
me, please?'

Stephanie was too withdrawn in her shroud of
grief to question her or refuse. Obediently, she fumbled with the
buckle of her seat belt. Her fingers felt numb and awkward, as if
she was suddenly all thumbs. As she squeezed past the businessman,
it seemed as if her every movement was made in slow motion.

Once in the aisle, she looked at the
stewardess as if to ask. What now?

'You look like you could use some privacy,'
the woman said sympathetically. 'Come with me. There's an entire
empty row in the back.'

Stephanie nodded. 'Thank you,' she said
gratefully, and followed her on unsteady legs.

Once settled, she accepted a glass of brandy
and drank it all down at once.

'If you need anything else, just press the
button,' the attendant told her gently. 'I'll be happy to get it
for you.'

I need my grandfather alive, Stephanie
wanted to tell her. Can you get him for me? But politeness won out.
She said, 'Thank you,' once again, and then turned her head and
stared unseeingly out at the flashing light on the wingtip. After a
while she closed her eyes wearily and surrendered herself to the
pain.

Pain and memories. With death they were one
and the same.

Death.

Death had taken her grandfather. Had stolen
him away from her.

How ironic that death, too, should have
thrown them so closely together in the first place . . .

She had been five years old and staying with
her long-widowed grandfather when her parents died. It happened
overseas and was one of those freak accidents that you only read
about in the papers. Apparently the radar on a light plane went out
and a blanket of fog was shrouding Mont Blanc. The pilot never knew
the cable carrying the tramway up the face of the cliff was
directly in his flight path. Even when he crashed right into the
packed car, his last thought was that he'd hit the mountain.

Stephanie often wondered if her parents,
aboard the doomed tram, saw the aircraft coming at them in that
last split second of horror - and if they'd mercifully died in
midair. She could only hope so.

For plane and tram both fell out of the sky,
plunging thousands of feet down into a ravine where the twisted
wreckage of one was unrecognisable from the other.

'We've both got to be brave,' her
grandfather had told her after the funeral. 'All we have left now
is each other.'

Nothing was too good for Carleton Merlin's
only living relative. Perhaps to make up for the loss of her
parents, he spoiled his granddaughter shamelessly. He hired a
decorator to turn her room at the Osborne into a pink fantasy fit
for a princess. He showered her with gifts and bought her so many
clothes she couldn't possibly wear them all before outgrowing
them.

It was he who insisted she attend Brearley,
one of Manhattan's finest and most expensive private schools. And
it was he who attended the P.T.A. meetings, who took her to the
zoo, which she adored, and the opera, where she fell asleep.

When he crisscrossed the country doing the
talk-show circuit each time one of his celebrity biographies was
published, he took her with him. In her sophomore year of high
school, when she decided she wanted to become a journalist, he
paved the way by using his connections to get her a summer job at
the New York Post. Thanks to him, she spent the summer of her
junior year in the newsroom at NBC.

NBC decided her. She loved the excitement of
the newsroom. It gave her a sense of participating in history as it
was being made. Not surprisingly, she decided to apply to Columbia
and study broadcasting and journalism.

'It's a tough field,' Carleton Merlin warned
her. 'The competition's fierce.'

She proved herself tougher, spent the
summers and semester breaks in various newsrooms, and graduated
summa cum laude
.

Carleton had been as proud as the NBC
peacock. 'She'll be the next Barbara Walters,' he told anybody who
would listen.

After spending a year as a news writer at
WOR-TV, she was hired to cover the metropolitan beat for
Live at
Five
. Suddenly, it seemed, she lived with a spiral notebook in
one hand and a microphone in the other. Every day brought her a new
assignment, a new tragedy, new victims and new heroes. The
excitement stimulated her like nothing she had ever imagined. But
increasingly, she became frustrated at the one- and two-minute time
slots allotted to each story. She wanted to dig deeper and get to
the meat and bones, to the people involved, to their motivations
and the long-term effects of their tragedies and triumphs.

She and Ted Warwick, a producer at
Live
at Five
, spent long hours talking about it. Together, they came
up with the idea for a weekly news magazine show focusing on a
single subject. They called it
Half Hour
, made a pilot, and
pitched it to the networks.

The networks all turned it down.

They plunged ahead with it anyway, quit
their jobs, and put their money where their mouths were, deciding
to syndicate the show. When their money ran out, it was her
grandfather who injected fresh capital into it. 'I'm not doing it
for you,' he'd lied to Stephanie. 'I'm doing it because I think
it's a good investment.'

It turned out he was right. They sold the
show to hundreds of independent stations, and the rest was history.
Half Hour
took off like a rocket and propelled Stephanie to
instant celebrity status.

Overnight, she became one of the most
visible women on television - and richer than she'd ever dared
dream.

She knew that without her grandfather's
backing it would never have happened. She owed him everything.
Everything.

She wiped the tears from her eyes.

The plane was making its final approach to
La Guardia, and the fuselage shuddered as they descended into
warmer air. The cabin was caught up in that bustle which marks an
imminent landing. Muzak was playing, the passengers were livelier,
the interior lights brighter. The attendants were hurrying up and
down the aisle, gathering up cups and glasses and seeing to it that
the tray tables were stowed and the seats were in the upright
position.

Below, from horizon to horizon, the New York
metropolitan area was spread out like a giant lit-up circuit
board.

Stephanie stared down.

Another few minutes and they'd be landing.
In the city that never sleeps.

Where Carleton Merlin was now sleeping for
eternity.

'Grandpa,' Stephanie mouthed soundlessly to
herself, and her face distorted as the pain inside her grew more
intense.

Why, God? she demanded in silent rage. Why
couldn't he have lived for ever?