Whistleblower and Never Say Die (36 page)

They were standing in the studio dressing room. Against one wall hung a rack of women’s lingerie; against the other were makeup tables and a long mirror.

Victor frowned at a cloud of peach silk flung over one of the chairs. “What kind of photos does your friend take, anyway?”

“Hickey specializes in what’s politely known as ‘boudoir portraits.’”

Victor’s startled gaze turned to a black lace negligee hanging from a wall hook. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“What do you think it means?”

“You know.”

She headed into the next room. “Hickey insists it’s not pornography. It’s tasteful erotic art….” She stopped in her tracks as she came face-to-face with a photo blowup on the wall. Naked limbs—eight, maybe more—were entwined in a sort of human octopus. Nothing was left to the imagination. Nothing at all.

“Tasteful,” Victor said dryly.

“That must be one of his, uh, commercial assignments.”

“I wonder what product they were selling.”

She turned and found herself staring at another photograph. This time it was two women, drop-dead gorgeous and wearing not a stitch.

“Another commercial assignment?” Victor inquired politely over her shoulder.

She shook her head. “Don’t ask.”

In the front room they found a week’s worth of mail piled up beneath the door slot, darkroom catalogues and advertising flyers. The roll of film Cathy had mailed the day before was not yet in the mound.

“I guess we just sit around and wait for the postman,” she said.

He nodded. “Seems like a safe-enough place. Any chance your friend keeps food around?”

“I seem to remember a refrigerator in the other room.”

She led Victor into what Hickey had dubbed his “shooting gallery.” Cathy flipped the wall switch and the vast room was instantly illuminated by a dazzling array of spotlights.

“So this is where he does it,” said Victor, blinking in the sudden glare. He stepped over a jumble of electrical cords and slowly circled the room, regarding with humorous disbelief the various props. It was a strange collection of objects: a genuine English phone booth, a street bench, an exercise bicycle. In a place of honor sat a four-poster bed. The ruffled coverlet was Victorian; the handcuffs dangling from the bedposts were not.

Victor picked up one of the cuffs and let it fall again. “Just how good a friend is this Hickey guy, anyway?”

“None of this stuff was here when he shot me a month ago.”

“He photographed
you?
” Victor turned and stared at her.

She flushed, imagining the images that must be flashing through his mind. She could feel his gaze undressing her, posing her in a sprawl across that ridiculous four-poster bed. With the handcuffs, no less.

“It wasn’t like—like these other photos,” she protested. “I mean, I just did it as a favor….”

“A favor?”

“It was a purely
commercial
shot!”

“Oh.”

“I was fully dressed. In overalls, as a matter of fact. I was supposed to be a plumber.”

“A lady plumber?”

“I was an emergency stand-in. One of his models didn’t show up that day, and he needed someone with an ordinary face. I guess that’s me. Ordinary. And it really was just my face.”

“And your overalls.”

“Right.”

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“I can guess what you were thinking,” she said.

“I don’t even want to
tell
you what I was thinking.” He turned and glanced around the room. “Didn’t you say there was some food around here?”

She crossed the room to the refrigerator. Inside she found a shelf of film plus a jar of sweet pickles, some rubbery carrots and half a salami. In the freezer they discovered real treasures: ground Sumatran coffee and a loaf of sourdough bread.

Grinning, she turned to him. “A feast!”

They sat together on the four-poster bed and gnawed on salami and half-frozen sourdough, all washed down with cups of coffee. It was a bizarre little picnic, paper plates with pickles and carrots resting in their laps, the spotlights glaring down like a dozen hot suns from the ceiling.

“Why did you say that about yourself?” he asked, watching her munch a carrot.

“Say what?”

“That you’re ordinary. So ordinary that you get cast as the lady plumber?”

“Because I am ordinary.”

“I don’t think so. And I happen to be a pretty good judge of character.”

She looked up at a wall poster featuring one of Hickey’s super models. The woman stared back with a look of glossy confidence. “Well, I certainly don’t measure up to
that.
”

“That
,” he said, “is pure fantasy.
That
isn’t a real woman, but an amalgam of makeup, hairspray and fake eyelashes.”

“Oh, I know that. That’s my job, turning actors into
some moviegoer’s fantasy. Or nightmare, as the case may be.” She reached into the jar and fished out the last pickle. “No, I really meant
underneath
it all. Deep inside, I
feel
ordinary.”

“I think you’re quite extraordinary. And after last night, I should know.”

She gazed down, at the limp carrot stretched out like a little corpse across the paper plate. “There was a time—I suppose there’s always that time, for everyone, when we’re still young, when we feel special. When we feel the world’s meant just for us. The last time I felt that way was when I married Jack.” She sighed. “It didn’t last long.”

“Why did you marry him?”

“I don’t know. Dazzle? I was only twenty-three, a mere apprentice on the set. He was the director.” She paused. “He was
God.
”

“He impressed you, did he?”

“Jack can be very impressive. He can turn on the power, the charisma, and just overwhelm a gal. Then there was the champagne, the suppers, the flowers. I think what attracted him to me was that I didn’t immediately fall for him. That I wasn’t swooning at his every look. He thought of me as a challenge, the one he finally conquered.” She gave him a rueful look. “That accomplished, he moved onto bigger and better things. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t particularly special. That I’m really just a perfectly ordinary woman. It’s not a bad feeling. It’s not as if I go through life longing to be someone different, someone special.”

“Then who do you consider special?”

“Well, my grandmother. But she’s dead.”

“Venerable grandmothers always make the list.”

“Okay, then. Mother Teresa.”

“She’s on everyone’s list.”

“Kate Hepburn. Gloria Steinem. My friend Sarah…” Her voice faded. Looking down, she added softly: “But she’s dead, too.”

Gently he took her hand. With a strange sense of wonder she watched his long fingers close over hers and thought about how the strength she felt in that grasp reflected the strength of the man himself. Jack, for all his dazzle and polish, had never inspired a fraction of the confidence she now felt in Victor. No man ever had.

He was watching her with quiet sympathy. “Tell me about Sarah,” he said.

Cathy swallowed, trying to stem the tears. “She was absolutely lovely. I don’t mean in
that
way.” She nodded at the photo of Hickey’s picture-perfect model. “I mean, in an inner sort of way. It was this look in her eyes. A perfect calmness. As though she’d found exactly what she wanted while all the rest of us were still grubbing around for lost treasure. I don’t think she was born like that. She came to it, all by herself. In college, we were both pretty unsure of ourselves. Marriage certainly didn’t help either of us. My divorce—it was nothing short of devastating. But Sarah’s divorce only seemed to make her stronger. Better able to take care of herself. When she finally got pregnant, it was exactly as she planned it. There wasn’t a father, you see, just a test tube. An anonymous donor. Sarah used to say that the primeval family unit wasn’t man, woman and child. It was just woman and child. I thought she was brave, to take that step. She was a lot braver than I could ever be….” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, Sarah
was
special. Some people simply are.”

“Yes,” he said. “Some people are.”

She looked up at him. He was staring off at the far wall, his gaze infinitely sad. What had etched those lines of pain in his face? She wondered if lines so deep could ever be erased. There were some losses one never got over, never accepted.

Softly she asked, “What was your wife like?”

He didn’t answer at first. She thought:
Why did I ask that? Why did I have to bring up such terrible memories?

He said, “She was a kind woman. That’s what I’ll always remember about her. Her kindness.” He looked at Cathy and she sensed it wasn’t sadness she saw in those eyes, but acceptance.

“What was her name?”

“Lily. Lillian Dorinda Cassidy. A mouthful for such a tiny woman.” He smiled. “She was about five foot one, maybe ninety pounds sopping wet. It used to scare me, how small she always seemed. Almost breakable. Especially toward the end, when she’d lost all that weight. It seemed as if she’d shrunk down to nothing but a pair of big brown eyes.”

“She must have been young when she died.”

“Only thirty-eight. It seemed so unfair. All her life, she’d done everything right. Never smoked, hardly ever touched a glass of wine. She even refused to eat meat. After she was diagnosed, we kept trying to figure out how it could’ve happened. Then it occurred to us what might have caused it. She grew up in a small town in Massachusetts. Directly downwind from a nuclear power plant.”

“You think that was it?”

“One can never be sure. But we asked around. And we learned that, just in her neighborhood, at least twenty
families had someone with leukemia. It took four years and a class-action suit to force an investigation. What they found was a history of safety violations going back all the way to the plant’s opening.”

Cathy shook her head in disbelief. “And all those years they allowed it to operate?”

“No one knew about it. The violations were hushed up so well even the federal regulators were kept in the dark.”

“They shut it down, didn’t they?”

He nodded. “I can’t say I got much satisfaction, seeing the plant finally close. By that time Lily was gone. And all the families, well, we were exhausted by the fight. Even though it sometimes felt as though we were banging our heads against a wall, we knew it was something we had to do.
Somebody
had to do it, for all the Lilys of the world.” He looked up, at the spotlights shining above. “And here I am again, still banging my head against walls. Only this time, it feels like the Great Wall of China. And the lives at stake are yours and mine.”

Their gazes met. She sat absolutely still as he lightly stroked down the curve of her cheek. She took his hand, pressed it to her lips. His fingers closed over hers, refusing to release her hand. Gently he tugged her close. Their lips met, a tentative kiss that left her longing for more.

“I’m sorry you were pulled into this,” he murmured. “You and Sarah and those other Cathy Weavers. None of you asked to be part of it. And somehow I’ve managed to hurt you all.”

“Not you, Victor. You’re not the one to blame. It’s this windmill you’re tilting at. This giant, dangerous windmill. Anyone else would have dropped his lance and fled. You’re still going at it.”

“I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“But you did. You could have walked away from your friend’s death. Turned a blind eye to whatever’s going on at Viratek. That’s what Jack would have done.”

“But I’m not Jack. There are things I can’t walk away from. I’d always be thinking of the Lilys. All the thousands of people who might get hurt.”

At the mention once again of his dead wife, Cathy felt some unbreachable barrier form between them—the shadow of Lily, the wife she’d never met. Cathy drew back, at once aching from the loss of his touch.

“You think that many people could die?” she asked.

“Jerry must have thought so. There’s no way to predict the outcome. The world’s never seen the effects of all-out biological warfare. I like to think it’s because we’re too smart to play with our own self-destruction. Then I think of all the crazy things people have done over the years and it scares me….”

“Are viral weapons that dangerous?”

“If you alter a few genes, make it just a little more contagious, raise the kill ratio, you’d end up with a devastating strain. The research alone is hazardous. A single slip-up in lab security and you could have millions of people accidentally infected. And no means of treatment. It’s the kind of worldwide disaster a scientist doesn’t want to think about.”

“Armageddon.”

He nodded, his gaze frighteningly sane. “If you believe in such a thing. That’s exactly what it’d be.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand why these things are allowed.”