The Woman (29 page)

“Pope Mark?”

“Well, Marcus is his actual given name. Fabian made it and is at one of the catholic churches in Baltimore. Victor and Marcus, Mark, rejected the church, turned from their mother and became soldiers. I met Mark after we all came to work for Webster. Victor I knew. He started in Special Forces under my command. He’s personable, but mean, likes violence. Years later, their mother got cancer and suffered long and hard. During her suffering, Victor and Mark were racked with guilt for having ignored their mother’s wishes. Mr. Webster stepped up and got her the best of care. In return, the two sons remain loyal to Webster.”

“She reminds me of my own mother.”

“Was your mother also intensely Catholic?”

“My mother was the poster woman for intensely Catholic. Every morning, she started her day by going to the church to pray, her little girl in tow. The first words I heard every morning were get up, brush your teeth, and get dressed. I don’t want to be late for church. I never understood that, often there would be no mass. We would be there alone, so how could we be late?”

“Tell me some other things you remember about your mother, random thoughts.”

“A hair grew out of a large mole on her neck. She always smelled of baking something. She wore super thick glasses. Back then, they hadn’t invented plastic lenses so people’s glasses just got thicker and thicker as their vision worsened.”

“Forgive me for saying so, but your mother doesn’t sound like an attractive woman.”

“Not after about age forty. Before that she was a real looker. That’s what my daddy always used to say after she had let herself go. ‘Your mother used to be a real looker,’ he’d say.”

“Tell me the event that involved your parents that you most clearly remember from when you were young.”

“Oh. That’s easy. I was twelve. My parents thought I had gone to bed. I had, but I often snuck down the hall upstairs to lie on the carpeted landing and watch the adults downstairs.”

“And?”

“That particular night, my father put on a record he had bought that day at the record shop downtown, a Cole Porter song, Love for Sale. Well, my mother started moving around the room in front of my father, stripping as she went.”

“Whoa! I like your mother. What did you think about that?”

“I’d never heard that song before, and I’d never seen anything like that before. I didn’t think it happened outside of the books I snuck to read under the covers with my flashlight. But here was my mother . . . my mother! I could feel myself blushing, just watching. She was glorious.”

“I take it your father liked it.”

“Liked it? My father was throwing money at my mother. That made her laugh and shimmy all the harder. It was really something. After all these years, I can still see the whole thing in my mind, every detail. Like it’s happening again right now, right in front of me.”

“Have you ever done that for a man?”

“No.”

“Is that regret I hear in your voice?”

“I’ve always thought that one day, I would, but no, not yet anyway.”

“Tell me about your father?”

“Ah. There was a man for the ages. He died two days before my twenty-first birthday. We were going to go down to his favorite tavern and he was going to buy me my first legal drink.”

“What’s your fondest memory of him?”

“His taking me with him sometimes when he went to the park where he played chess. Some men play golf every Saturday. My dad and his buds played chess in the park or, with bad weather, in the tavern. The other men were all like uncles. I loved them all.”

“You know, you won’t find your father in one of the men you pick up in taverns.”

“What are you now, assassin slash psychiatrist?”

“It’s a gift.”

“That’s enough about my family. Tell me more about that town where you and Gene grew up.”

“There’s not much to tell. Just a little town, there’s a million of ‘em, a small school, Daughters of the American Revolution chapter, firemen’s pancake breakfast fund raisers, lots of fishing and hunting. Those Norman Rockwell paintings could have been done in my hometown.”

“Your parents?”

“Both dead.”

“Ex-wives? Kids?”

“None. None.”

“So you’re really the Lone Ranger? Gene was your Tonto, but now he’s gone, too.”

“Something like that.”

“Does that concern you?”

“Sometimes, I suppose. Look, we need to get on to the business at hand.”

“Okay. How is the mother of the three popes doing?”

“She’s dead. I thought I said that. Despite the doctors Webster brought in, the disease was unstoppable. In the end, Webster had bought himself two loyal soldiers.”

“And you said, those two rarely go out on . . . what do you call them, assignments or missions?”

“Military types often say missions. Webster speaks of assignments. But, no, Victor and Mark are mostly at Webster’s side. When one travels with him, the other stays at home. They’ve gotten softer from lack of action. However, make no mistake both are stone cold killers with their hands, a variety of weapons, and have the ability to improvise that is inbred during Special Forces training.”

* * *

Ryan, who had taken over the driving about an hour before, had driven into New Mexico before either of them spoke again.

“So, you’ve never been married,” Linda asked.

“Never. Marriage is less relevant than it once was.”

“Why do you think that?”

“The social and sexual emancipation of women. They’ve become more honest about their physical desires and are less needy, less clingy. On the man’s side, he can buy whatever he wants, pretty much whenever he wants, wherever he is, without involvement or the discomfort about how to walk away the next morning, with none of the difficulties of ending a relationship that isn’t working.”

“That may be true,” Linda said, “but what about the desire for true intimacy beyond sex?”

“Women still equate sex with love. For most women, it’s part of the cultural imperative that lets them feel they remain good after sex.”

“And men?”

“Men equate sex with lust. They equate fidelity with love. At least those who make good husbands do.”

“You are quite the philosopher, aren’t you?”

“In my business there’s lots of free time. Helps rationalize what I do.”

“How does love and sex help rationalize what you do?”

“No. Not love and sex, the philosophical thinking.”

“Is that what led you to have reservations about what you do? Look out. There’s a cop up ahead on the left just beyond the overpass.”

“I see ‘im. My speed’s within the limit. The last thing we need is to be pulled over.”

“You were saying?”

“I don’t have reservations about what I do. Like I said, some people deserve to die. Many people know such a person. They might even wish that person were dead, but they lack the resolve to turn their desire into action. The famous attorney Clarence Darrow once said, ‘I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with pleasure.’ From there it isn’t all that far to just taking the matter in hand and doing the killing.”

Linda looked over at Ryan. “Webster certainly appears to be deserving.”

“That he is. Still, I find it difficult.”

“Why?”

“As they said in the old west, ‘If you take a man’s money, you ride for his brand.’”

“What’s that, some kind of Louie L’Amour philosophy of the plains?”

“Don’t laugh. We all do it. Everyday people follow the orders of their employers and do things they know are wrong, maybe even illegal. You don’t think Bernie Madoff had employees that suspected something wasn’t on the up and up. Then there are the employees of the banks who played games with foreclosure documents. That kind of shit goes on all day, every day. Salespeople who lie about the product they’re trying to sell.”

“I’m sorry, but that doesn’t climb high enough to equate to killing people.”

“Like I said, some deserve to die. And you, Miss Darby, have agreed that Webster is one of them.”

“Okay. But for me, it’s self-defense. You’ve made a business out of it.”

“I told you, I’m not one of the good guys.”

“But you are. At least you are to me.”

“Life is never quite what it seems, is it? Everything must be viewed from a given perspective, considered in one context or another. It changes things, doesn’t it? I like to think there’s a difference. I rarely kill women, never children, and only men who qualify.”

“And there’s the crux again,” Linda said. “Who decides?”

“Like I’ve said, it’s up to the person paying.”

“And that’s how it should be?”

“How it should be matters little. That’s how it is,” Ryan said, as he angled the car into the right lane that would take them into a rest stop that had bathrooms. “That’s how it always will be. It’s the golden rule: he who has the gold, rules.”

After getting back on the road, Ryan asked Linda to tell him about her ex-husband.

“We’ve got Webster to deal with. Let’s focus on one vermin at a time, please.”

“Aha. The lady is still carrying a torch.”

“That’s ridiculous. I hate ‘im.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah. I hate him like—another cop on your left beyond the overpass.”

“We’re fine,” Ryan said. “Go on, you were saying you hate your ex.”

“That’s the emotion that lingers. But even when you hate a man, you’re not sure . . . really sure there’s not still some love mixed up in it. Love and hate are two rooms divided by a very thin wall.”

“Would you go back to him if he asked? Right now, well, as soon as our current unpleasantness is finished.”

“No. I might want to, but no.”

“Do you want to get married again?”

“Before all this started happening, I’d have said no and meant it. Or at least believed I meant it.”

“Now?”

“Funny how all this has gotten me thinking. My life the last seven years has been isolated, lonely, bordering on reclusive.”

“You know who would be a good man for you?”

“First you were a philosopher, then a psychiatrist, now a matchmaker, and through it all, a soldier of fortune.”

“What can I say, it’s another gift.”

“All right, I’ll bite. Who?”

“Clark, the waiter in O’Malley’s Bistro. Well, I guess I should say Chief McIlhenny’s new deputy.”

“Clark? What made you say him?”

“He’s a good man. I’ve watched him. He’s solid and dependable.”

“Yeah. I think so too.”

“And he cares about you.”

“He likes me. I know that.”

“His feelings are deeper than that. I’m not just talking about the blood you donated for him. That gets you gratitude, but that’s not what he’s feeling. Trust me. I know.”

“Okay. I’ll look into it, let him audition.” Linda laughed and moved her seat all the way back, putting her bare feet on the dashboard. “That is, I will if I ever get back to Sea Crest.”

“So, what changed your outlook about getting married again?”

“The prospect of dying I guess. Knowing there is no one who will much care. That you’ve left no one behind. It’s like, I don’t know how to say it, giving up my place in the universe.”

“Now who’s the philosopher?”

“I guess all of us to some degree.”

“Maybe,” Ryan said, “after this, you and I should get married?”

“Ask me again in a couple of days, if we’re still alive.”

“If we don’t survive, who will raise our children?” Ryan asked. “Your mother?”

“My mother’s dead. But we don’t have any kids.”

“Then we better not get killed.”

* * *

Hours later, as they drew nearer Albuquerque, Ryan said, “We’ll catch a plane here and fly into Pittsburgh. From there we’ll drive.”

“Why not just fly into D.C. or Baltimore? They’re both closer to where you told me we’re going.”

’This is what I do. Trust me. Drive. Fly. Drive. Fly. First go to a point south of your destination, then one to the north of your destination. Change names. I assume you have a couple of false Ids left?”

“I do. Should I use one for the flight?” He nodded. Then she asked, “What about you?”

“I generally don’t need them. Ryan Testler is a dead-end identity. No records, just a false trail of papers. However, I will use another identity for the flight to Pittsburgh to avoid the possibility of Webster’s data center spotting someone traveling under the name Ryan Testler.”

“Then Ryan Testler is not your real name?”

“No.”

“What is?”

“Not important.”

“Is that your answer to everything you choose not to answer?”

“Pretty much.”

Chapter 45

Four hours later they were on a direct flight to Pittsburgh. Ryan spoke little on the plane, choosing to snooze. Linda’s mind, on the other hand, was a battlefield raging between hopes and fears.