the Second Horseman (2006) (6 page)

He hadn't cut his hair since his trial, and it now hung in his face, weighted down by dried mud he'd picked up the night before. Turning on the faucet, he splashed some cold water over his pale face and then felt around for the towel next to him. He hadn't spent much time in the sun over the past few years -- content to sit in the shade and read during exercise time.

Brandon plugged in the clippers and five minutes later, his hair was a uniform half inch. With the new glasses, it created a disguise that would fool all the blind people and about half of the mentally challenged, unless they were really paying attention. His only hope was that the media would let out a collective yawn at the inelegant escape of an obscure, nonviolent diamond thief.

"Looks good," Catherine said when he walked back into the kitchen. "Everything fit okay?"

After a gloriously lonely shower, he'd chosen a pair of jeans, a white silk shirt, and a reasonably fast-looking pair of tennis shoes that might prove useful. The stink of nervous sweat was gone and he was almost ready to accept that his time in prison was just a bad dream and he was actually a married insurance salesman living in the burbs.

"It must feel good to be out of prison," she blurted when he didn't answer her question about the clothes.

"Yeah. Nothing like a hot shower and a steak to make you forget that every cop in the country is looking for you with the idea of either shooting you or putting you away for the rest of your natural life. I'm just having an outstanding day."

Her expression took on a brief deer-in
-
the-headlights quality and then she beat a hasty retreat to the back deck. "I'll go put the steaks on."

When she returned, she seemed a little better composed. "I have a proposition for you."

His eyebrows rose unbidden.

She held a hand up. "Bad choice of words." "Right."

"Look, we need the help of someone with your . . . skills. Actually, we need a miracle worker. And that's your reputation."

He didn't answer, instead standing there mesmerized by her performance. This woman had undoubtedly been trained to snap his neck like a twig at the slightest provocation, yet she played the nervous innocent with such depth and conviction that even he was almost fooled. He'd worked with some talented people in the past, but no one like this. How was it that their paths hadn't crossed before?

"In return, we'll give you a new identity, enough money to live on for the rest of your life, and a little vineyard in South Africa. Paid for, of course." She pulled a photo of the vineyard off the fridge and held it out toward him as though it was proof of her complete sincerity.

He didn't look at it, instead pointing to a small jar on the counter. "And if I don't? Is there cyanide in there?"

"It's garlic salt."

"You say."

She shrugged -- an oddly appealing gesture that made her shoulders disappear briefly into her hair. "Nothing so sinister. If you say no, I just walk away and wish you luck. You can either try to get out of the country or turn yourself in and take your chances with the courts."

"That seems kind of unlikely to me."

She put on an oven mitt and used it to retrieve her casserole from the oven. "It's a pretty nice day. I figured we'd have dinne
r o
utside."

They ate in silence on a wooden deck surrounded by thick hedges and flowers. The sun was still high and its heat overpowered the fall air. Even the weather seemed to have been set up to put him at ease, to rock him gently into a sense of well-being and trust. No harm in giving in just for a little while. He was out of prison, having a pretty good dinner with a beautiful woman, and there was nothing he could currently do about it. If there was one thing his mother had pounded into him, it was that if the moment was good, for God's sake live in it.

Catherine finished her steak, eating with the careless velocity of the terminally uncomfortable, and tapped her gorgeous lips with her napkin.

"So? Are you interested?"

He almost wanted to say no just to watch that perfectly nonthreatening demeanor suddenly turn black. To see if she still seemed so disarming when she was pointing a gun at his face.

The sad thing was that it wouldn't have been all that radical a change from his past relationships with women. When you lived like he did, generally the best you could hope for was a cute sociopath. Despite th
e f
act that Catherine was undoubtedly on the verge of killing him at any moment, she was clearly a step up from most of the women he'd dined with. No relationship was perfect, after all.

"You're staring," he said. "What?"

She seemed embarrassed. "Nothing."

"If you've got something to say, say it."

She remained silent for a few seconds apparently gathering her courage. "Okay. I was wondering why you became a criminal."

"Oh, so now we're getting personal? You're going to try to get in my head?"

"It's not like that. I --"

"Psych degree?"

She shook her head. "Political science. I'm not trying to pry or anything, but you've got to admit, you're kind of . . . interesting."

"Am I?"

She nodded. "You got a near perfect score on the math portion of your SAT and then just left the English portion blank."

"You know, that's confidential information. You could get in big trouble for looking at those records."

She smiled. Just barely, and she looked away first.

"I like math problems," he said. "The English stuff was boring."

"And yet you never did better than a D in a high school math class."

"Politics. The teachers had it in for me."

He finished the last bite of steak, reveling in the fact he could chew without worrying about breaking a tooth on a piece of bone. "My father was a con man and a gambler," he started. "Not a bad guy, though. Not really. He always wanted me to go to college and even saved the money to pay for it. I did a few classes, but it didn't suit. Dad was pretty upset. I think he just wanted a lawyer in the family so he could get a deal on fees."

"Really?" She seemed to be hanging on his every word.

"Well, maybe. He's one of the few people I could never read. Honestly, I think, deep down, maybe he felt responsible for having exposed me to it."

"Crime, you mean?"

"Yeah. It's all I knew from as early as I can remember. I was always surrounded by crooks. Scams. Whatever. I didn't see it as good or bad. It was just the world I was born into."

"That's so fascinating," Catherine said, putting her elbows on the table and resting her chin in her hands. The intensity of her gaze amplified to the point that he felt lik
e h
e was a rock star and she was an adoring groupie.

"Fascinating? You really think so?"

"Definitely. I mean, not the story itself, but the way you tell it so convincingly. None of it's true, right?"

Brandon grinned broadly. "No. I guess not."

"I'd love to hear the real story."

"You don't already know it?"

"Just the bare facts. Your father is still alive -- a retired accountant with barely a parking ticket his whole life. You traveled all over the world when you were young, apparently with your mother --"

"Do you know what happened to her?"

"No."

"Oh," he said, trying not to sound disappointed.

"So?"

"What? My story? My real story? It's complicated."

"That's okay," Catherine said. "If I'm good at anything, it's complicated."

When he looked up again, she seemed to have leaned even farther over the table. He knew he should just keep his mouth shut, but there was something about her that made him want to talk. Prison must have scrambled his brain.

"My mother's hard to describe. She was beautiful and brilliant, but mostly she had a light inside her that was so powerful that you had to experience it to understand it. Everyone who ever met her loved her." He paused for a moment. "I know that sounds like an obituary cliche, but in her case I mean it. Actually, maybe it would be more accurate to say that everyone who ever met her was in love with her. Men, women, old people, kids. If you walked down the street with her, men would give her flowers and ask her to dinner right out of the blue."

"So that's where you get it."

"Get what?"

"Your job tends to revolve around getting people to trust you."

"Oh, I suppose that's true. But I'm just a bad copy of her. There's really no comparison."

"So how did a woman like that end up married to an accountant from Sacramento?"

"I have no idea how they met, actually. He was just in the right place at the right time, I guess. Mom had . . . Well, she had lots of relationships."

"But she married your father. And as far as we can tell, they never divorced."

"The difference with that relationship was that she got pregnant. She was young. Nineteen at the time," he said, continuing to push his food around his plate. "From what Dad said, she mostly stuck around for a couple years, but then started doing some trips. And they got longer as time went on. She wasn't the type for a house and a family and a dog, you know?"

"So your father raised you."

"Mostly, yeah. Mom'd show up a couple times a year for a few weeks. Then, one summer when I was ... I don't know. Eight? She asked me to go to Europe with her. I couldn't believe it."

"I'm surprised your father would allow it."

He smiled and shook his head. "See? You still don't understand. No one could say no to her about anything. She'd left, but Dad still loved her. I don't know which of us was more excited when she showed up on our doorstep -- him or me. That's why he never divorced her. Never got remarried."

"We have records of her traveling and you traveling with her, but there's no real record of her having a job. And no record of your father ever giving her a significant amount of money."

"No."

"So she was some kind of criminal. A con artist."

Brandon took a deep breath and let it out. There was a time when those would have been fighting words, but he was older and had mellowed on the subject.

"Not really. I mean, she sort of transcended that label. People wanted to be near her. And they gave her things. Money, places to live, plane tickets, food, clothes. Whatever. But they benefited just as much. And when she left -- like she eventually always did -- they were really sad. Sometimes even devastated. But I don't think they would have given up that time or wanted the things they'd given her back."

"Strange life, though. For a kid your age, I mean."

Brandon shrugged. "I saw the world and had experiences that were pretty unique. And in the end, I wasn't any different than anyone else. I wanted to be with her. As much as it hurt when she was finally gone, I wouldn't give up the time I spent with her."

"But you don't know what happened to her."

"No. Dad hired a guy who traced her as far as Russia, but the trail went cold there."

"Did you ever try to find her?"

He shook his head.

"Why not? I would think you'd have contacts that would be pretty useful."

"She's dead. What is it they say about the bulb burning the brightest burning the shortest? She wasn't meant to get old."

"But --"

"Can we change the subject?"

"Sure. Sorry. Why don't we go back to the original question? Why did you become a criminal? If it wasn't really your mother's influence, and it certainly wasn't your father's . . ."

The sun had gone down and he couldn't help looking over the back fence as the trees lost their color. He could jump over it and run. But then what?

"Who says I'm a criminal? I'll have you know I was wrongfully --"

She held up her hands, silencing him. "Hypothetically."

He started tapping his fork on the table, listening to the dull clack of it fill the air. Was this a setup? Were they trying to get him to admit something? What would be the point? He'd never done anything all that bad, and they'd already put him in prison.

"Funny story," he said, finally. "When I was in school, I actually considered going to work for the FBI. Hard to picture, isn't it? Me as an FBI agent?"

"Oh,1 don't know," Catherine said. "Why didn't you?"

"Police work isn't like what you see on TV. Ninety-nine percent of it is complete boredom and you never really accomplish anything. Bust one drug dealer or terrorist and there are five to take his place. Then you have the bureaucracy to deal with. Imagine your life being ruled by some fat bureaucrat lifer who spends all his time pissing in corners." He shuddered dramatically. "Crime, though . . . Now that's a good time. Seventy percent fascinating intellectual exercise and thirty percent full-on rush. Leaving zero percent for dealing with some asshole in a toupee who's planning on giving you a shitty annual review because you made him look bad in a meeting."

Catherine nodded with what he'd swear was real understanding.