Tom Hyman (31 page)

“Who ? ” “Anne Stewart and her daughter.”

“Address ? ” “A brownstone at 272 West Eleventh Street. She’s on the second floor.”

“Got it.”

“Around the clock.”

“I’ll need help, then.”

“I’ll give you two men.”

“Visual surveillance only?”

“No. Sound too.”

“I’ll need at least five men.”

Roy was silent for a moment, apparently debating with himself whether the assignment merited such a expenditure of manpower.

“Five men, then,” he said, finally.

“Trained men,” Cooper added. “Five trained men.”

“Of course. Five trained men.”

Some time in the spring, Anne began to suspect that people were watching her.

One day she noticed the same man three different times at three different places. First, he was leaning on the rail next to Genny at the polar bear enclosure at the Central Park Zoo; then he was a counter away from her at Bloomingdale’s. She spotted him the last time outside a restaurant on Perry Street in Greenwich Village where she and Lexy had gone for dinner. Twice might have been a coincidence, but three times? The next day he was gone.

A few days later, someone else seemed to be following her, but she couldn’t be sure. The next several weeks produced similar episodes.

No rational pattern emerged. There was never anyone loitering on the street near her building, for example. Mostly it was just this feeling she had of being watched.

Lexy was dubious, but suggested that Dalton might be responsible. With a divorce in the works, his lawyers could have hired private detectives to snoop on her, hoping to prove adultery.

“Why would he bother?”

“Maybe he wants permanent custody of Genny.”

The possibility of losing Genny in a divorce settlement had never occurred to Anne. She immediately asked her lawyer to find out what was going on. He called Dalton’s lawyers. They swore that they had not hired anyone to tail her. Anne didn’t know what to think. If it wasn’t Dalton, who could it be?

Or was she just imagining it? Paul Elder thought so.

The evidence remained inconclusive. No one ever approached her or threatened her. There were no strange telephone calls, no anonymous letters in the mail. And most days passed without any hint at all that she might be under surveillance. Other days she could swear there were several people following her.

At first Anne refused to change her routines. The streets of the West Village were generally friendly, nonthreatening places, and she didn’t want to give in to whatever invisible force was trying to unnerve her.

But finally, to preserve her rapidly disintegrating peace of mind, Anne stopped going out by herself after dark-even to run an errand to the corner convenience store. And she made sure that her daughter was never left alone. She moved Genny into her own bedroom and let Mrs.

Callahan have the second bedroom to herself.

The separation agreement allowed Dalton to see Genny on weekends. He usually took her to Long Island; but since he was frequently away on business trips, Genny was so far averaging only a day or two a month at the North Shore estate, and Anne made certain that Mrs. Callahan was with her when she couldn’t be.

What else could she do about the situation?

Not much, she decided. Except to be vigilant.

..

‘ .

“God, I’m nervous,” Lexy Tate said, plucking at her blouse with her fingers. “Look at me. I’m sweating. Are you sure we have to do this?”

Anne pressed a finger to her lips and pointed at the cab driver.

Lexy laughed. “Are you kidding? He can’t understand a word.

It’s a city ordinance—no English-speaking cabbies allowed. Look at the name on his license. Ten consonants and no vowels.” Lexy bent forward and addressed the driver in a loud voice. “Hey, cabbie. Would you mind sticking your finger in your nose for my friend here?”

The cab driver glanced in his rearview mirror with a big grin.

“Okay!” he replied.

“And then put it in your mouth. Okay?”

“Okay!”

Lexy fell back against the seat, giggling uncontrollably.

Anne shook her head in disgust. “You’re such a teenager sometimes. I swear to God.”

Lexy choked back the rest of her laughter. “I’m just trying to ease the tension. I’m a nervous wreck. I don’t know why I agreed to do this. I love thrills, but this is crazy.”

Anne was just as nervous, but she was determined to go through with it.

“What if we get caught?” Lexy demanded, for the tenth time.

“We won’t get caught.”

“Well, just hypothetically. What could we be charged with?”

“I really don’t know. Don’t think about it.”

Lexy shifted nervously on the seat. “Trespassing—if they catch us before we take anything. And breaking and entering. But if they catch us after, it’s theft. Grand theft, I think. Or does that just apply to autos? As in grand theft auto? Fuck, I don’t know.

I’ve never heard of petty theft. Have you?”

“No. Stop talking about it.”

“I guess there isn’t any such thing. Anyway, it’s not armed robbery, because we’re not armed. Burglary—that’s what it is.

And that’s a felony. We could go to jail. Jesus—strip searches .

forced lesbian sex . . . badly prepared food. I don’t know if l could stand it.”

Anne pounded Lexy’s knee with her fist. “Lexy, we’re not even going to take anything. Now, for godsakes, shut up!”

Lexy slumped back against the seat. “I’m sorry. I babble when I’m nervous. Anyway, I know a hell of a good criminal lawyer.

And he owes me.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Anne replied in a harsh whisper.

“Are we doing all this for that doctor of yours?”

“We’re doing it for Genny.”

“Just because that doctor said you should? You trust him that much?”

“He didn’t tell me to. It’s my own idea.”

“Why the hell doesn’t 7e go with you?”

“Be sensible.”

“You know what? I think you’re in love with the guy.”

Anne felt her face flush.

“You talk about him all the time—Dr. X says do this, Dr. X says do that. Haven’t you noticed?”

“Dr. Elder. Stop pretending you don’t know his name.”

“How about sexy? Is he good-looking at all?”

Anne gazed out the window at Fifth Avenue. They were just passing Forty-second Street. “Eight more blocks,” she said.

Lexy repeated her question.

“Yes. No. I don’t know. He’s tall and kind of rumpled and shaggy.

And he’s great with Genny. They really hit it off.”

“How old is he?”

“I don’t know.

“You must have some idea. Twenty-two? Seventy-three?”

“Fortyish.”

“Single?”

“Yes.”

“Probably gay, then.”

“He’s not gay!”

“How do you know?”

“My God, you’re a pest tonight!”

Lexy remained silent for several blocks.

k;- “It still puts me in a rage, every time I think about it,” Anne burst out. “Using me as a guinea pig, playing games with Genny’s k life. I can’t understand that kind of thinking.”

“Dalton was thinking about his favorite subject—money.”

“I don’t know why I married him. I don’t know why I do anything anymore. I wake up now wondering if I really have any idea of what I want out of life. Or even if I know who I am.”

“We’re all entitled to a mistake or two, Annie. Hell, I’ve made thousands. God hasn’t struck me down yet. Although He may well decide to tonight.”

Anne continued on her own line of thought. “I would’ve forgiven Dalton almost anything before I’d ever have thought of leaving him.

Especially since Genny’s birth. He really seemed to have changed. But I feel so damned betrayed.”

“You deserve much better than Dalton. I’ve always thought that. We’ll find you an available duke or a count somewhere-some dashing European with a country estate outside Paris, a chalet in St. Moritz, and a villa in Juan-les-Pins, so I can visit you year round.”

“No more of your dashing anythings. That phony Italian count of yours was the limit.”

“You have to give him some points for style. I mean, suddenly there he is, stark naked on your bed, with a hard-on. Every girl’s fantasy.”

“It was insulting.”

“I’d have jumped right on and screwed his brains out.”

“Not my style, I’m afraid. And I’m not the type to have affairs, anyway. I couldn’t handle it. Especially now, with Genny.”

“What are your plans? To become a piano-playing nun?”

“We’re here.”

The taxi let them out at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirtyfourth Street. It was a chilly spring night. A strong wind gusted down the canyonlike avenue, adding to the discomfort.

“Let’s get inside!” Lexy gasped. “I’m freezing.”

They hurried down the Avenue to a big office building in the middle of the block and went inside. It was just past one o’clock in the morning, and the guard at the front security desk, a solemn black man in his sixties, looked up in surprise as the two women came bustling in. “You ladies working this late?”

Lexy took charge. “Never on your life,” she shot back. “We’ve been partying. Just stopped by to pick up something very important my friend here left in her desk.” Lexy gave the guard a big conspiratorial wink.

The security guard shrugged, completely puzzled. “Sign in here,” he said, pushing an open ledger across the desk. A cheap ballpoint was attached to the sign-in book by a partly unraveled length of string.

Lexy quickly scribbled “Gertrude Stein” and “Alice B. Toklas” in the column labeled “Name.” In the “Company” column she wrote

“Macro-peripherals, Inc.”; in the “Time In” column, “1:10.”

“I’ll have to look in your bags,” the guard said in a weary voice.

Lexy dropped her thousand-dollar designer pocketbook onto the desk and snapped it open. The guard stirred the contents languidly with a forefinger, then nodded.

“I thought you were just supposed to go through stuff on the way out?”

Lexy said.

The man rolled his eyes in bored resignation. “How do I know what you might be taking out if I don’t see what you’re bringing in?”

Lexy gave him a toothy grin. “Good point, sir.”

Anne settled her large leather handbag on the desk and undid the strap.

The guard stuck a hand in, felt around, and pulled out a black plastic removable cartridge disk, about the size of a paperback book. “What’s this thingamajig?” he asked.

Anne started to slammer something. Lexy cut in briskly: “It’s her homework—what do you think it is?”

“Homework,” the guard repeated, turning the RCD over in his hand.

“It’s the computer storage disk from her work station. She takes it home every night. Boss’s orders.”

The guard turned the disk over one more time, then dropped it back into Anne’s bag.

“Hey, be careful with that!” Lexy cried. “There’s very valuable data on it. If you damaged it, by God . . .”

The guard held up a palm. “Take it easy, ladies.”

Anne and Lexy strode swiftly past the security desk to the elevator banks.

“I didn’t expect him to pull that cartridge right out of my handbag,”

Anne said, as the elevator door closed behind them. “I nearly fainted.”

“It’s just as well. Now he’ll expect to see it in your purse when we come back down.”

They got off on the thirtieth floor, where the executive offices of Stewart Biotech were located.

The doors on both sides of the elevator banks were locked, but Anne had a key. Dalton had given it to her more than two years ago, so she could meet him there when he was working late. She had used it only once.

Dalton’s office was locked as well.

“Now what?” Lexy asked.

“Hank Ajemian keeps an extra key in his desk.”

“Suppose his office is locked?”

“It will be. But Hank is always forgetting his keys, so his secretary keeps an extra one in her desk drawer for him.”

Anne unlocked Dalton’s office with the key from Ajemian’s desk and turned on the switch by the door. The room came alive with a muted glow. It was an unusually large space, with Oriental carpeting, antique furnishings, and expensive art hanging on mahogany-paneled walls. The two outside corner walls were glass. Beyond, the New York skyline shimmered in the night, a breathtakingly romantic panorama of bridges, skyscrapers, and street traffic.

“How about this,” Lexy purred. “I should have known he’d have the most pretentiously upscale office in the city.”

Anne locked the office door behind them and moved behind Dalton’s desk.

It was an old-fashioned banker’s model, its cherry wood polished to a lustrously deep brownish-red sheen. A photograph of Genny, taken by the pool garden when she was a year and a half, sat at one corner, near the telephone console. Anne saw it and felt her anger return. She groped with her fingers along the right inner side of the knee well, found the button, and pushed it.

Across the room, a three-foot-wide hinged section of the bookcase that lined the inner wall swung out silently like a door. Behind it was a small safe, embedded in the thick concrete-and-steel inner core of the building. It was designed to withstand almost any conceivable assault—acid, lock picking, acetylene torch, or high explosives.

Only Dalton Stewart and Hank Ajemian knew the combination to the safe’s electronically controlled locking system, but Anne was confident she could figure it out. Dalton was very superstitious about numbers—particularly the number 51371. It represented the date—May 13, 1971—that his father had gone off to prison. He always used it.

Every PIN number of every joint account and charge card they had shared had used that same number. Whether he did it out of some kind of masochism, or ritual of revenge or atonement, she didn’t know.

Whatever his reasons, she was sure he would have used the same number for the safe’s combination, and she was right. As soon as she punched in 51371, the safe door clicked open.

Anne pulled the door back with trembling fingers. If someone should walk in now, there would be no explaining their presence.