Cast in Stone (14 page)

"Pull
strings, Howard. It's what you do best. Do it. Call in whatever
favors you're owed. Press some flesh. Grease some palms. I don't care
how, just do it, just do it. If it costs money, send me a bill. The
firm seems to be quite efficient at billing."

"I
shall assuredly do my—"

"By
Friday."

"Mar—Mrs.
Sundstrom, believe me, I and the rest of the members of the firm
sympathize with your most grievous loss, but this is no time to—"

He
reached out to pat her hand, which sat motionless on the desk.
Before he could make contact, she eased the hand back into her lap.

"I
got your card. Very thoughtful. By Friday, Howard."

He
uncrossed his leg and sat back hard against the chair like a spoiled
child denied a second helping of dessert. After a short interval of
staring into space, he pulled a hand though his close-cropped hair,
leaning forward toward Marge again as he absent mindedly ran his
cupped hands down both sides of his nose.

"You
do realize of course, don't you, that if—and I acknowledge this
possibility only with the greatest skepticism—but if your
suspicions are indeed correct and there has been some willful
misappropriation of these assets, access to these accounts will
almost surely lead only to a dead end."

Marge
looked to me for confirmation.

"You're
talking numbered Swiss accounts. That kind of thing?" I said.

"Most
certainly," he breathed. "As you so astutely put, Marge,
that is precisely what we do. It's never been easier to obscure
funds. Never. The emergence of the third world has created a massive
underground banking system that makes the fabled Swiss seem
positively effusive. If—"

He
held up a bony finger.

"If
that is indeed where the funds have gone.

That
will most surely be the end of the matter right there. Neither mine,
nor any other firm"—he sent a paternal, forgiving glance
toward Marge—"can be of any help from there."

"I
understand," I said. "From you, all we need to know is
where the money went after it left the Seafirst Bank. You get us into
the records. We'll have to see where, if anywhere, that leads and
then take it from there."

He
levered himself from the chair and spoke directly to Marge.

"This
isn't going to be easy, and it isn't going to be cheap," he
intoned gravely.

"Well
then," Marge said sweetly, "that's something we'll all have
in common, then, won't we?"

The
rebuff had no discernible effect. He bid Marge a courtly good-bye,
sent a dismissive nod in my general direction, and was gone.

"A
charmer," I commented when the sound of his heels had faded.

"He's
always thought so. Howard always wants to have business meetings when
he knows Heck's out of town."

"Probably
because he has a genuine interest in your assets."

"A
woman's greatest asset is a man's imagination," she said without
a trace of humor.

Her
tone made me doubly glad I hadn't taken her retainer.

I
filled her in on what I'd been doing, complete with all the details.
About Richmond's conviction that his yacht was sound. About Allison's
refusal to take on a crew. About confirming that a wharf rat named
Norma had, as Heck insisted, disappeared about the same time the
Risky Business had gone down. About sending the Boys out to see
if they could find where she'd lived. About leaving the pictures with
Carl and the probability of getting a workable likeness of Allison
Stark.

She
listened in silence, no questions, clasping and unclasping her hands
on the desktop as I spoke as if the fingers were a pair f bellows
pushing air in and out of her lungs.

"Doesn't
amount to much, does it?" she said when I'd finished.

"On
the contrary. Nothing I've found discredits Heck's idea either. That,
in itself, is pretty interesting considering how far-fetched this
whole conspiracy thing is."

She
considered my assessment.

"Do
you think your friend can really make a picture out of those
snapshots?"

"Let's
find out," I said, pointing to the slim black phone on her desk.

She
passed it over. I dialed Carl's home number.

"What?"

"Can
we come over and take a look at the picture?"

"Why?"

"Why
what?"

"Why
come over? I already seen enough of you and them silly clothes for
one day. Where's the nearest fax machine to you?"

I
held the phone to my chest and spoke to Marge.

"Is
there a fax machine here?" I asked.

"Right
over there," she said, pointing to a gunmetal-gray unit about
the size of a portable typewriter sitting on the bottom shelf of
the wall unit at the far end of the office.

It
occurred to me that I was going to have to do something about my
abhorrence of technology. I was rapidly becoming a dinosaur.

"Got
one right here," I said into the mouthpiece.

"Say
hello to Warheads for me," he said.

"Yeah,
sure, you can count on it, Carl." '

"Well?"
"Well what?"

"What's
the fucking number?"

Marge
anticipated my question. I repeated the number into the mouthpiece as
Marge gave it to me.

"Use
something dark. Magic Marker, something like that. The fax ain't real
good with light lines. Just give me a shape. I'll take care of the
rest. Send it back corrected when you're done."

I
started to hang up, but heard him shout into the receiver.

"You
screeched?"

"How
in the hell are you gonna send it back without my fax number, you
fucking moron?"

"You
may have a point," I admitted. "Okay, what is it?"

He
told me and then hung up in my ear.

By
the time I'd stood and returned the receiver to its cradle, the fax
machine emitted its first trilling ring. Then another, followed by a
short series of electronic squeaks and beeps, silenced by a single
soft click.

Allison
Stark came out of the machine neck first. Right in front of my
sneakers, she emerged into a red plastic basket. The machine clicked
off. I tore the image off, carried it back across the room, and set
it on the desktop in front of Marge. Her breath caught in her throat.
She looked away.

She
smoothed the sheet and looked again. The picture was of a
narrow-faced young woman with a Prince Valiant hairdo. Just above
shoulder length. Long bangs. Her slim lines were accentuated by large
almond-shaped eyes that didn't seem to be focusing anywhere in
particular. The nose might have been too narrow on a bigger face, but
it worked just fine here. As Carl had predicted, there was a certain
blankness to the expression, as if she had just risen from a long
sleep.

"Well?"
I said.

"More
than I dared hope. Amazing, almost— remarkable really." "A
good likeness?"

"Close
. . . close . .. not quite right, but close," she said, more to
herself than to me.

"What
needs to be changed?"

Marge
Sundstrom spent a long minute studying the image, running the tip of
one scarlet nail over and around the outlines of the face.

"First
the lips, I think," she said. "She had thicker lips.
Particularly the lower lip. She had that pouty look. You know those
collagen-injected lips. I know she had them done."

I
picked a red felt-tip pen from a cup on her desk and handed it to
her.

"Fix
'em," I said.

She
began to trace an outline.

"No,
no," she said disgustedly. "I was never any good at art."

"Try
again."

I
pulled a pink Kleenex from the ceramic dispenser on the desk and
handed it to her. She wet the Kleenex with the tip of her pink tongue
and rubbed out the red ink. The image came off with the ink.

"Shit,"
we said in unison.

I
called Carl.

"Send
another one."

He
didn't require an explanation.

"Make
copies, you idiot. Faxes aren't fast." Click.

They
seemed pretty quick to me, but I took his word for it. This time, I
used the Xerox machine to make five copies. On the third try, Marge
was satisfied with the lips.

"That's
as good as I can get them."

"What
else?" I prompted.

"Too
fat in the face. She needs to be more. . . gaunt. The little bitch
never ate anything. I don't think I ever saw her take more than six
bites of anything. It got so if I ordered anything more than cottage
cheese, I felt like such a sow. I couldn't even enjoy my meals."

I
handed her the fourth copy. Still muttering, she shaded in the
cheeks. "Like that," she said.

I
faxed both pictures to Carl and then took out my notebook.

"While
we're waiting, tell me about all these stories she used to tell about
her background." "That rubbish?"

"Most
likely not all of it," I said. "Liars usually mix up a
little truth with the lies. It not only sounds better that way, but
it's a hell of a lot safer. Gives them a few verifiable details to
throw around. Lends an air of authenticity to the lies. You probably
never thought about it, but liars have to be careful about what they
lie about. If they go around long enough telling people they
graduated from the University of Illinois, sooner or later they're
going to run into somebody else who either went to school there or
who lived in Champaign. At that point, they'd better have at
least some basic geography down."

"I
see," she said dubiously.

"Start
at the beginning. Give me whatever personal history you can remember.
Try to recall those things that she seemed most credible about."

Marge
heaved a sigh and started.

"Wisconsin.
Born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin. Only child. Her father
was a doctor, of course. According to her, she had the perfect
childhood. Big house, picket fence, tree swing. The whole ball of
wax. Parents killed in an airplane crash when she was fourteen, but
you know that already. Very convenient. Brought up by this aunt—the
one she named as next of kin. Went to the University of Wisconsin on
a small insurance settlement. Had all these summer jobs

there.
River guide, aerobics instructor. During the school year she worked
part time in a pizza parlor to make ends meet. When the insurance
money ran out, she had to drop out and went to work selling
time-shares. She—" Marge stopped.

"Timeshares,"
she repeated. "She knew all about timeshares." "You're
sure?"

"I'm
an expert, Leo. Heck was such a sucker for those things. We've owned
three over the years. I had to stop letting him go out by himself
when we were on vacation. He kept coming back with a new timeshare
every time. Allison knew timeshares inside and out."

"You
know where she sold them?"

"Supposedly
at Chelan. Over east at the lake."

"Anything
more specific than that? Last time I was over there, every third
person was selling time-shares."

"Afraid
not."

We
were interrupted by the soft click of the fax machine. By the time I
reached the far side of the room the picture had dropped into the red
plastic basket. I took it directly to the copy machine and made five
copies.

"The
lips are right," Marge said after squinting at the new picture
for a full minute, "but the face is too thin now. She looks
emaciated. And ... I don't know . . . there's something wrong about
the eyes."

She
picked up the marker and began to doodle, defacing and destroying
three of the copies to no end except to litter the floor around her
desk.