The Lazarus Trap (41 page)

Terrance gave no indication that he was even aware of Val's presence. Terrance had not shaved since performing for the camera. Nor did it appear that he had slept. His eyes had retreated back into plum-shaded caves. Nowadays Val addressed Terrance in a prison warden's manner, unemotional direct commands.

Val told him, “We leave for the church in ten minutes.”

Slowly Terrance's head lifted. “What did you do with the money?”

“We've been through this a dozen times.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“I already have. I wired it back to Insignia's accounts.”

“You couldn't have.”

“Terrance . . .” Val had a sudden sense of staring into a mystic mirror, one that revealed how close he had come to living solely for vengeance.

“What?”

“Do this thing for Audrey,” Val said, still captured by the image of his journey to the brink. “I won't make you come with me when I visit Stefanie.”

Terrance's head sank back to his hands.

Val retreated from the room. “You've got ten minutes to shave and dress.”

The church's interior was unpainted stone. The slate floor was washed by the tide of centuries. The windows were tall and narrow and set deep in slanted recesses. The priest's robes were from another era, as was his chant as he lit candles at the coffin's head and feet. Audrey sat between Val and Gerald. Terrance sat further along the same pew, sandwiched between Bert and Dillon. Incense wafted from two burners set to either side of the altar. The painted medieval frieze behind the priest's lectern came alive in the smoke. In Val's exhausted state, the ceremony's measured cadence carried him back through time, joining him with centuries of worshippers long gone, yet with them still. Then he felt Audrey's hand reach over and take his own. He wrapped her hand in both of his, and wondered if perhaps she recalled another time, when she had brought him to such a place and sought to give him only the best of what she had. And what she had, he needed as strongly as breath.

The priest invited those who wished to come forward and say a few words. Audrey rose and walked over to stand above the coffin. Val tried hard to hear what she said. But his heart spoke too loudly just then. Strange how such a time and place could generate such an overwhelming sense of gratitude.

As she returned to her seat, she glanced at Terrance. But he gave no sign he saw her. Dillon nudged the man. Still Terrance did not respond. Audrey sighed and shook her head, a single tight gesture.

Val rose to his feet, slipped from the pew, and stood at the coffin's head. He said, “Arthur's daughter told me recently that everything good in her came from this man. I can only say that he must have been a very fine man indeed. One I wish I had known better.”

He looked at her then. And said, “One whose example I can only hope to follow.”

VALARRANGED THE MEETING FOR SIX FORTY-FIVE IN THE MORNING, precisely the time he had been scheduled to be blown up. The sense of living irony helped steady his nerves as he stepped out of the elevator and walked through the penthouse foyer. The Insignia chairman's office was empty, but he heard sounds emanating from the adjoining boardroom.

Jack Budrow was tucked into a sumptuous breakfast and surrounded by a lovely spring sunrise as Val stepped into view. The chairman's expression was almost comical, his fork frozen in midair as he searched for an appropriate response. All he could think to say, however, was, “I can have security up here in thirty seconds.”

“Don't bother.”

“You're that man. What's his name.”

“Val Haines.”

“I . . . I don't understand. The call came from . . .”

“Terrance. He decided to remain downstairs.”

The mental tumblers flipped and spun. But nothing of worth came to mind. Jack Budrow pushed his plate aside. “I can't tell you how glad I am to see—”

“Save it.” Val walked to the front of the room and slid aside the shoji screen hiding the television, then slipped the DVD into the slot. “I want you to see this.”

It took him a moment to work out the remote's unfamiliar controls. By the time the television and sound came to life, Terrance was already into his spiel. He heard Jack Budrow choke on the sight of Terrance seated there beside Val.

“—Arranged with my two partners, Jack Budrow and Don Winslow, to defraud Insignia Corporation's pension funds of four hundred and eighteen million dollars. We arranged to pin the theft on Marjorie Copeland and Valentine Haines.”

Terrance looked like a talking corpse as he read from the prepared script. His hands trembled slightly in time to his voice's tremor. “Using the services of Suzanne Walters, we arranged to blow up the New York offices of Syntec Bank, destroying both the people we were framing, the banker through whom we had worked, and all records not held in-house and doctored by myself.”

“Turn that off!” Budrow sputtered. “I didn't know anything about this!”

“But Val Haines did not die as expected in the New York blast,” Terrance droned. “With full support from Winslow and Budrow—”

“That is a lie!”

“—I flew to England with Suzanne Walters. We accepted the services of a local mobster, Josef Loupe.” In a cryptlike monotone, Terrance detailed their work, Loupe's scheme to steal all the money for himself, and finally, “I personally witnessed Josef Loupe murdering Don Winslow with one shot from an automatic pistol to his chest.”

Jack Budrow stumbled around the boardroom table. He pawed the other chairs out of his way, leaving wreckage in his wake. He grabbed the remote from Val and hammered it with tight bursts of breath, as though throwing punches. When the television finally cut off, he threw the remote to the ground. “I knew nothing about any of that. Winslow and d'Arcy were acting completely without my knowledge—”

“Here's how it's going to play out,” Val said. He slipped the DVD from the machine, placed it back inside the jewel box, and slid it down the table. It sparkled in the growing sunlight as it spun and slid and finally came to rest beside Jack Budrow's unfinished breakfast. “Today you are going to resign all your positions with Insignia.”

“You can't possibly think I would even consider—”

“You will relinquish all retirement benefits. You will refuse any consulting position. You will turn over your stock options and all your shares in the company to the Insignia pension fund. It is a benevolent final gesture to repair the damages made to the hopes and futures of all your loyal employees.”

Jack Budrow's face had drained of blood. One hand gripped his chest. The other used the doorjamb for support. “You're insane.”

“If that announcement is not made public by tomorrow, copies of this DVD will be delivered to the chairman of the SEC. Others will go to the
Wall Street Journal
, the local papers, the television, and everywhere else I can think of.”

Budrow whimpered a protest that died before it was fully formed.

“One day,” Val repeated. “And one day more to make good on the promises. Otherwise I go public.”

Val slipped past the chairman and started for the exit. He turned back and repeated, “One day.”

When Val arrived back at the car, Terrance gave no sign that he was aware Val had departed, much less returned. His gaze carried the bleak emptiness of a man staring a life sentence in the face. Which, in a sense, he was.

From the rear seat, Audrey observed Val with cautious reserve. “How did it go?”

“Fine.” He started the car. At least she had decided to accompany them to America. Nor had she bothered to claim it was to keep an eye on her brother. Val started the car and said, “Everything is just fine.”

Forty minutes later, they pulled up in front of a mammoth steel-and-glass building, headquarters of the long-distance and cell-phone company that ran its international operations from this campus north of Winter Park. Outside, brilliant Florida sunlight splashed against the stream of corporate employees racing the morning clock. In the rearview mirror, Val saw that Audrey was still watching him. He hoped his sense that something was melting inside her was not just his imagination. Until he was certain, however, he was determined to wait it out. He wanted to give her whatever space she needed. This time he wanted to get it right.

Terrance touched the knot of his tie and murmured, “I suppose I should be reporting for work.”

Audrey leaned forward and said to her brother, “You're doing the right thing, Brother.”

Terrance opened his door, grabbed his briefcase, and walked into the sunlight.

Audrey sighed and leaned back. Shook her head. Closed her eyes.

Val turned around in his seat. “Give it time.”

“He's had a lifetime. That isn't long enough?”

“You've reached hard cases before,” he replied.

She opened her eyes. “Have I?”

“Absolutely.”

After a long moment, Audrey opened the rear door, rose from the car, and slipped into the seat vacated by Terrance. She asked, “When do you leave?”

He started to say, when he could be sure she would be there when he got back. But that sort of statement was too far a reach into a tomorrow she had not yet offered him. “A few days. As soon as Terrance delivers the first batch of goods, and I can be certain he'll be okay on his own for a while.”

She spoke the words with slow caution, as if needing to assess the texture of each individually. “Do you want me to do anything while you're gone?”

“Does this mean you're going to stay?” He swallowed, then added the words, “With me?”

“Let's just take this one step at a time, all right?”

In reply, Val put the car into gear. Wondering if perhaps the faint stirrings he felt at heart level meant there really might be a future he could call his own.

VAL HAD THE CAB WAIT FOR HIM OUTSIDE THE HOTEL EVEREST. Vince watched him push through the doors. “If it isn't Mr. Smith. How we doing today?”

“So far so good.”