Talk Talk (25 page)

What she saw was a typical neighborhood bar, half a dozen men in short-sleeved shirts, the white-haired bartender with his flaming ears and red-rimmed eyes, the cocktail waitress in a little skirt and net stockings, bored, her elbows propped on her tray. The TV was going--baseball--and nobody was eating. Too early yet. Too hot. Too rainy.

She stood beside Bridger, her hand locked in his, as he leaned in at the end of the bar and waited for the bartender to acknowledge him. There was a suspended moment, people giving them furtive glances, the quick assessment, her blood racing with fear and hate even as she felt crushed by a kind of trivial nostalgia for the place, for the way she was then, as a girl, when her parents were still married and her brothers were contained by these very walls, and then the bartender made his slow way down the skid-resistant mat and she saw his lips shape the obvious question: “What'll it be?”

She couldn't bear to look at him--she was watching Bridger, as if that could protect her, expecting the thief to step out of the shadow of the alcove and put an end to it all. “Is Frank here?” he asked. And then the movement caught her eye and she was watching the bartender's head swing back as he called down the bar and the cocktail waitress, buried under the glitter of her nails and the sediment of her makeup, awakened briefly to drift to the swinging door of the kitchen, lean into it and convey the message, the name passed from mouth to mouth: “Frank,” she imagined her saying, or maybe shouting over the noise of the dishwasher, the radio, the tintinnabulation of pots and pans, “Frank, somebody wants you.”

Frank Calabrese turned out to be a disappointment. He wasn't who he was supposed to be, not even close. The door to the kitchen swung open and she caught her breath, expecting the Frank Calabrese she knew to emerge wiping his hands on an apron, hiding out here in his father's or uncle's or cousin's third-string Mafia restaurant till the heat was off him and he could ruin somebody else's life, a mama's boy, a failure, wasted and weak, and this time she would be the one to stare him down, but the face she saw in the doorway was the face of a stranger. This man was short, broad-shouldered and big around the middle, and he was too old--forty, forty at least. He looked to the waitress, then to the bartender, and followed the line of sight from the bartender's pointed finger to herself and Bridger.

He was deceptively light on his feet for such a big man, this Frank Calabrese, and he glided down the length of the room as if he were wearing ballet slippers, his features composed, his eyes searching hers. “Hi,” she said, and held out her hand. “I'm Dana, and this”--indicating Bridger--“is my fiancé, Bridger. You're Frank Calabrese, right?”

“That's right,” he said, and he'd caught something in her speech that made him narrow his eyes and cock his head ever so slightly as if to get a clearer picture. “What can I do for you?”

Bridger started in then--Bridger, her spokesperson. He dropped her hand and unconsciously ran his fingers through his hair, trying to smooth it back in place. “We're looking for this guy--”

She cut him off: “Criminal. He's a criminal.”

“--this guy who I guess must have used your name as an alias, because--”

She couldn't make out the rest, but she knew the story anyway, not just the gist of it, but the whole of it in all its sorry detail, and she watched Frank Calabrese's face till the rudiments of awareness began to awaken there--Yes, somebody had used his credit cards without his knowledge, and yes, it had been a bitch to straighten it all out; he was still getting bills in the mail and this was three years ago already--and then she unzipped her black shoulder bag and extracted the file folder. Frank Calabrese stopped saying whatever he was saying. Bridger gestured to the bar, meaning for her to lay the folder there and display the evidence. Everyone was watching now, the customers, the bartender, the waitress. She took her time, almost giddy with the intensity of the moment, and then she leaned forward to spread open the folder on the counter, making sure that the police report, with its leering photograph and parade of aliases, was right there on top.

The moment was electric. Frank Calabrese laid a hand on the rail of the bar to steady himself and she could see the current flowing right through him, his face hardening, eyes leaping at the page, and before she formulated the question she knew the answer: “Do you know this man?”

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Son of a fucking bitch.” He looked up at her, and it was as if he didn't see her at all. “You bet your ass I know him,” and his fist came down on the bartop with a force she could feel through the soles of her shoes. She didn't catch what he said next, the key they'd been looking for all along, the base identifier, the name Bridger repeated twice and then reproduced for her with his rapidly stitching fingers so that it hung like a banner on the air: “Peck Wilson. William Peck Wilson.”

He knew he should never have come back, knew it was a disaster in the making, knew that the forces ranged against him--Gina, her fuck-head father, Stuart Yan, the cops, the lawyers--were still in place, merciless and unyielding, and that they'd strip him down to nothing if they had the chance, but it was his choice, wrong or not, and he would have to live with it. Could Dudley be trusted? No, he couldn't, though he'd try his best to be cool about it and that would last all of maybe forty-eight hours or until he ran into somebody from the old days and had his first drink and smoked his first number and started laying out his disconnected version of life under the sun. “Hey, man, this is for your ears only, and don't tell anybody because it's supposed to be like a secret or whatever, but guess who I ran into the other day?”

But he had come back. And he liked the feeling and he liked the house and all that went with it, the shopping and settling in, the smell of the grass as he traced one row after the other on the riding mower that came with the place, the contented squeak and release of Madison's swings pulling hard against their chains, the propulsive thrust of Natalia's figure as she lined the couch up under the picture window or slid the astrakhan rug into place in front of it. And there was Sandman too. Geoff. Geoffrey R. He'd missed him, missed having a buddy, a confidant, somebody he could hang loose with without having to worry about slipping up, because there were times when he looked in the mirror or slapped a credit card down on a waitress' tray and didn't know who he was. William, Will, Billy, Peck, Frank, Dana, Bridger--and the new one, a winner worth something like fifty million Sandman had sniffed out, M. M. Mako, as in Michael Melvin. The name was so ridiculous it had to be real.

All right. Fine. He'd made his choice and he wasn't concerned, not particularly. Even if he got pulled over, the cops had no way of knowing who he was. All they knew was what the license told them: he was Bridger Martin, with a pristine driving record and no outstanding warrants, solid, fiscally responsible, and he was just passing through on his way to Nantucket, a little vacation, and thank you, Officer, yes, I'll be sure to watch my speed. Still, as he carried his mug of coffee and the newspaper down to the office he'd set up in the basement, he couldn't help feeling the smallest tug of uneasiness when he thought of Dudley and Dudley's big mouth and whose ears might be cocked in anticipation. What he wanted--and it came home to him more than ever as he settled in behind his desk, folded back the financial section and looked out on the woods and the river and the pair of squirrels chasing each other across the lawn in quick darting loops--was to live quietly, anonymously, to live in this house with this car and this woman and not have to put up with any shit from anybody ever again. Go north. Go south. Stay invisible. Establish a base in the city, maybe get a little apartment in the Village or TriBeCa, an efficiency, anything, just to have a place to spend the night, because if they were going to go out, if they were going to party, have a nice meal, that was the place to do it. Not that Westchester didn't have plenty of fine dining--and Putnam and Dutchess too--but the real life was down the line, in New York, and nobody would recognize him there. Running into Dudley was a fluke, that was all, and it could happen again or maybe never, not for years. He lifted the paper to the light, took a sip of coffee. Yeah, and what if it was Gina? What if it was Gina he ran into?

It was then--just then, just as he was holding that thought--that there was a rap at the door behind him, the door that gave out onto the lawn. This was a French door, eight panes and a grid of painted mullions. A flimsy thing, old and unsteady on its hinges, a door anybody could see through, anybody could enter. He started--he couldn't help himself--and when he swung round in the chair, a little lariat of coffee sloshed out of the mug to spatter the front of his shirt.

“Hey, man, I didn't mean to startle you”--it was Sandman, the door cracked open, his hand on the knob, his face hanging there in the void, and he was grinning, his eyes winnowed down to two sardonic points of light--“and I wouldn't want to be the one to criticize, but maybe you've had enough caffeine for one morning. I mean, you practically launched out of that chair.”

He felt a tick of irritation. He'd been caught unawares, his guard down, caught fretting and worrying and wringing his hands like some paranoiac, some loser. He managed a tight smile as he reached for a wad of Kleenex to dab at the stains on his shirt. “Yeah,” he said, “you're right--too much caffeine, who needs it?”

Sandman crossed the room, his big shoulders bunched under a theatrically ducking head, as if he were afraid he'd scrape the ceiling--and it “was” low, only six and a half feet from the floor to the exposed pipes overhead, but this was all exaggerated, all for show--and then settled one haunch down on the corner of the desk. “Right, but I wouldn't mind a cup of mud myself, if you could spare one. Or Natalia. If the pot's full, I mean. If you've got coffee, some of that Viaggio mocha maybe, maybe with real cream and brown sugar? Two lumps. Or honey. I could do honey.” He lifted one eyebrow, stroked the strip of fur beneath his lip. “Because you know me, I wouldn't want to be the one to impose--”

He was doing his Sandman thing, always just this side of sincere. Everything a joke and every line delivered with a smile, as if he couldn't just walk upstairs and pour himself fifty cups of coffee if that was what he wanted, or move in permanently or borrow the car and take it to Maine or ask for a pint of blood and get it without stint or question. He was testing. Just testing to see if you were still with the program. And sometimes, like in Greenhaven, the program could be brutal. That smile, that Sandman smile, could freeze you at a hundred paces.

“Shit,” Peck said, ignoring him. “I ruined my shirt.”

“So buy another one.”

“If you didn't come creeping around like some fucking meter reader or something--”

“Me? I'm not creeping. Shit, I just rolled over here with the top down because it is one fucking day out there, and then I slammed the door and “stamped” down that driveway like Paul Bunyan... look”--he raised one leg--“I'm wearing my boots, see that? I've been stomping and stamping all morning, man.”

Peck was still in the chair, still dabbing at his shirt. He reached for a new wad of Kleenex. “I ran into Dudley,” he said.

Sandman gave him a puzzled look.

“This guy I used to know, this kid--he used to work at the restaurant. I saw him over in Newburgh--he's waiting tables at a place over there.”

Sandman let out a sigh. “Is that what it is? Is that what's bothering you?”

There was the whine of a motorbike going by on the road out front, the blat-blat-wheeze of a two-stroke engine shifting gears, some geek on his way to carve figure eights in the dirt down by the railroad tracks. They both looked up to follow the sound. “I don't know,” Peck said. “I just don't want any hassles, that's all. Don't want any talk, you know?”

“You didn't give him your business card, did you? Your home phone? E-mail? Your bank account number?” Sandman pinched his shoulders and flashed both palms for emphasis. “No worries, come on, man--he doesn't even know your name.” A long beat. He patted distractedly at his pockets, as if he were looking for a smoke, but since he didn't smoke anymore he let his hands drop to his lap. “So what did you tell him?”

“What do you think I told him?”

“All right, all right. Fuck it.” Sandman got up from the corner of the desk and made a show of shaking out his legs, as if he'd been cramped in the middle seat of a jetliner for the last six hours. “What I wanted to know is, number one, where's my coffee? And number two, do you want to take a ride on the most beautiful day in the history of mankind with the top down and the breeze in your hair?”

“Where to--the library?” He was pushing himself up now, stretching. He took a final dab at the shirt and dropped the Kleenex and newspaper into the trash.

And here was the grin, opening wide. “Yeah, that was what I was thinking. Maybe cruise across the bridge over to Highland Falls or someplace like that, Monroe, Middletown, whatever--they got a library there, right?” Now there was another bike out on the road--or two more bikes, a whole mini-motocross thing going on, the summer morning sawed lengthwise and then sawed through again. Sandman shifted his weight, tented his fingers in front of his nose. “No big deal, nothing strenuous--use the hookups there for a couple hours, make some money, that sort of thing, you know. And then maybe lunch and a couple brews or a nice bottle of wine, I mean, if Natalia doesn't need you to haul furniture around or anything--how about that place up along 9W there where you sit outside way high up and look down on the whole valley?”

“Like gods?” He was smiling himself now too. The tension, whatever it was, had slid away from him like a wet coat in the foyer of a very good restaurant.

“That's right,” Sandman said. “Like gods.”

Sandman's latest scheme was built on a solid foundation of research (“Research I was doing while you were dicking around in California,” he said, but with a grin, always with a grin), and it made sense both logically and financially. Instead of picking up IDs in an almost random way--off the Internet, out of the innards of the Dumpster, paying some kid three dollars a pop to skim credit card numbers at the gas station or the Chinese restaurant--Sandman was looking to target the rich and the super-rich and make the kind of connection that could pay the bills for a whole lifetime to come. “Why not?” he insisted. “If it works small, it works big, right?” Peck had to agree. He was ready to graduate. More than ready.

Because women found him interesting (and he found them interesting in turn; he'd been married something like four or five times), Sandman was able to extract certain small favors from the ones he felt especially close to. At the moment, he was simultaneously seeing two women Peck had never met, and never would meet, both of whom worked in the financial sector. One of them was some low-level functionary at Goldman Sachs--a secretary maybe--and the other, who was divorced and had two kids who were monumental pains in the ass, was an analyst at Merrill Lynch. What did they do for him? They provided stationery. And a legitimate address.

At the library, Sandman eased himself into a chair, booted up one of the computers and showed him how to access the files of individuals the Securities and Exchange Commission kept on its website as a public record. Then they migrated to separate ends of the row of computers and went to work. Once they were in possession of this information, they would use the stationery to request credit histories on selected individuals, and this would give them access to the brokerage account numbers. Then it was easy. Or it should be. Go to the Internet, transfer funds from existing accounts to the ones they'd set up elsewhere, let things rest a couple days and transfer them again, taking it deeper. Then close it all down, in and out, and nobody the wiser. And nobody hurt, except a couple of fat cats so fat they couldn't keep track of their own sweat trail. And they were crooks, anyway. Everybody knew that.

It was past two when Sandman came up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder. He didn't know where the time had gone. Rather than print things out--and he was still a little paranoiac here--he was copying the files by hand into a notebook he'd brought along for that purpose, and he must have had a good hundred names already, but it was like fishing in a deep hole where they just won't stop biting. Or better yet, picking up nuggets off the floor of a gold mine. When have you got enough? When do you stop? He could have sat there all day and all night too.

“Hey, buddy, time for lunch, what do you say?”

Peck just stared at him, his eyes throbbing and the first faint intimation of a headache blowing like a sere wind through the recesses of his skull.

“Some fun, huh?”

“Yeah,” he said, but he couldn't elaborate, not yet, still in thrall to the munificent and all-encompassing kingdom of information. He glanced to his right, where another library patron, a titanic black woman with a pretty face and a sweeping curtain of dreads, was maneuvering her mouse so delicately she might have been peeling a grape with one hand. She looked up then and smiled at him, a smile surfeited with sweetness and simple pleasure, and he smiled back.

“But it's okay, we got enough,” Sandman was saying, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Tomorrow we type some letters and then we move, get in and out quick before anybody knows what hit them, because you know they're going to pull the plug on this, they got to. I mean, I can't believe we're the only ones--”

“Yeah,” Peck said, his voice sounding unnatural in his ears as he turned back to him and logged off the computer. He was so charged up he could barely breathe. “I know what you mean.”

Then it was back down what had to be one of the most scenic highways in the world, the road sliced right out of the side of the mountain like a long abdominal suture holding the two pieces together, and the view had never seemed so exotic to him, sailboats on the river like clean white napkins on a big blue tablecloth, the light portioning out the sky in pillars of fire. Sandman had the radio cranked, the car--a new yellow T-Bird he'd nicknamed “the Canary”--was taking the turns as if it were riding on air and the two of them were as high as lords and they hadn't touched a drop of anything yet. It was glorious. It was golden. It was good to be back.

They pulled up the long gravel drive just after six, the sun shuddering through the trees, the air heavy, saturated, offering up a feast of odors he'd forgotten all about, from the faint perfume of the flowers along the path (and what were they, daffodils?) to the one-part-in-a-billion offering of a skunk's glands and the fresh wet unchlorinated scent of rainwater in the barrel under the drainpipe to the wafting glory of top-quality angus beef hitting the grill on somebody's hibachi two or three houses over. He felt new-made. Felt unconquerable. It didn't hurt that he and Sandman had shared two bottles of the best wine on a pretty poor list in a pretty poor restaurant with the best view in the universe, because the second bottle, a Sauvignon Blanc chilled to perfection so that it went down cold enough to refresh you but not so cold that you couldn't pick up on its body and the subtle buttery oakiness of the cask it had resided in, lifted his quietly buoyant mood and made it soar. Was he drunk? No, not at all. His senses were awakened, that was all. The world was putting out its vibes, and he was receptive to them.