The Ultimate Exit Strategy, page 15
Justin rolled his eyes, “You’re fucking that Detective Hope aren’t you?” I guess I ought to have been offended that he’d made no efforts at tact, as if this completely explained my tenacity. Maybe it did. Reflected in the side-view mirror, my face wore a ridiculous, shit-eating grin that had hijacked my face at the mention of her name.
“My God, Virginia. That is just pathetic,” Justin was saying. “You know she’s just using you for what she needs, information,” as if this were a subtlety to my relationship with Cassandra that I might, in my mind-boggling naivete, have missed. But she wasn’t just using me for information because she didn’t have to sleep with me to get that in case Justin had forgotten about the options, the fortune I would make when the deal went through. I said it wasn’t like him to lose sight of the money and his face flushed slightly.
“FYI,” Justin said, “when your friend Detective Hope called me in for questioning today, she asked if I was gay, which is not something I want advertised in case you’ve forgotten. Just because she’s in your pants, Virginia, doesn’t mean I want her in mine.”
“News flash,” I said Cassandra had gotten his story from August Madsen so I imagined it was already pretty public knowledge.
“She’s lying.” His face got redder, but he didn’t say anything else.
“I neither confirmed nor denied.” It was an expeditious lie, and after the little cover story Justin had put out around the firm about the two of us, I thought we were even. “Look,” I was trying to get things back on the subject. “What do you know about Wes’s girlfriends? How angry do you think you’d be if your boyfriend had gotten Elana Gutierrez pregnant?”
“Who said he got Elana pregnant?” Justin shook his head, then sighed in a kind of moral defeat, rubbing his forehead with his palms. “The guy’s dead. Can’t people just give his sex life a rest?”
But Winslow’s sex life seemed the key. “Isn’t that why Winslow demoted Camille, because Elana was pregnant?” Justin shrugged out the window, shifting in the seat beside me as if his legs were getting stiff. I could see him from the corner of my eye let his shoulders rise and fall lazily having completely lost interest in what I was saying. “I think if you’re looking for angry women, Virginia, you should talk to your friend, Ellen Borgia. Ellen’s lawyers were advising her to take the settlement for weeks. Against their best advice, she refused.”
Remembering that afternoon’s drunken lunch at Marshall Field’s, that was beginning to make sense. Justin made his voice confidential. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, Virginia, but Wes was afraid a law suit would kill the Gold Rush deal even if he could win it. That’s why he was bothering to talk to Ellen at all. Whytebread’s lawyers suggested that he just change The List to look a little more favorably on Ms. Borgia and others that might be part of her class action.”
I thought so much for a good job rewarded. “So the new List was a bribe.” It upped the ante big time to get Ellen Borgia to go away. Somehow the whole thing hurt my feelings; if it had been a bribe for her, it was a bribe for me too, something taken undeserved. “Ellen didn’t know this was coming?”
Justin face went casually blank as he smoothed down his hair. “Well, she certainly must have expected it.”
* * *
It had taken more than the normal half an hour to go from Whytebread’s offices to Justin’s apartment. Now when we got to the end of the zoo, traffic was a ten-minute back up to the underpass. After I dropped him at his door, I’d had to haul it north up Lakeshore Drive as fast as I could. I made Chardonnay shortly after seven, praying that Em had been in the mood to wait. The gravel lot was nearly empty but her Saab convertible was there, parked under a streetlight. Em’s little accountancy practice had done very well in the time we’d been apart. The Saab had been the final, nasty parting cut after all those years of criticism she’d leveled at the impracticality of my own convertible car in a cold Chicago winter, the frugality she still imposed on me, but now it seemed, not herself. As I passed her car, I took a mean-spirited pleasure in the thin line of undercarriage rust below the door.
Em herself had held up rather well; she was still the same big blonde girl, who years ago had swept me off my feet, imposing that Teutonic discipline on my life and finances.
“You look fabulous, lost weight?” I was guessing.
“No.” It made her smile with a kind of modesty, only half put on. “I’ve gained actually, ten pounds, but I’ve lightened my hair again.” Em certainly had become preternaturally blonde – and with winter coming too, but there was something else.
“Well maybe it’s just that I’m in love.” She broke into a dopey grin.
She might as well have hit me hard in the stomach and, of course, she knew it. Not that I wanted her back. I just didn’t want to be left out. There she was my old girlfriend, grinning foolishly at something that had absolutely nothing to do with me. She had beaten me to the punch – truly moved on.
“Yes, I’m in love,” she exuded now a breathless kind of self-satisfaction. “I was wondering if it really showed.”
“Sure,” I told her it showed. It always did. Of course it hadn’t ever showed like that when she was in love with me. She was grinning a grin I’d never seen before. “That must be it,” I conceded grudgingly.
The little half-hearted prompting was all it took for Em to begin reciting the gooey history of her new grand passion: how they met (in line at the Joan Armatrading concert); what she was wearing (a black leather jacket, and day-glow pink Skechers, of course); where they first made love (Em’s apartment four weeks before, on the couch, the dining room table, the kitchen sink, and the bed). She (her name was Karen) had moved in the following week. “She makes me really happy.” Underneath this reported bliss was the implicit dig that I had not.
“Well enough about me,” Em announced after the bartender had brought her what was apparently a second or third draft. “We both know your taxes are a wreak, so how’s your love life, Virginia?”
It hadn’t escaped my notice that since we’d broken up Em had gotten to be a tad competitive that way, daring me to have a better existence than the one she was having, or than the one we had together. Up to now I’d been winning, and I wasn’t pleased to have to tell her my relationship with Spike was headed toward catastrophic failure. It had been Em’s final prediction when she’d left – that no one could make me happy. “I’ve met someone else,” I admitted not wanting to be completely outdone.
“Really?” Em sipped on her beer, smiling speculatively. The thing about being married, the thing about being with Em was she really knew me. She saw me for the deeply flawed individual I was. “Does Spike know yet?”
It was almost a relief to drop the pretense of decency. I spilled it all to Em, my faithlessness unvarnished and waited for the comfort of her censure. It can feel good to be punished when you’ve done wrong, a restorative for your belief in the order of the world. I confessed that Spike had no idea. “I feel like shit.”
Em was frowning. “Yes. I’m sure you do.” Since our split she had perfected the moral high ground. “You always feel like shit, Virginia – just not enough to stop,” which wasn’t exactly true.
It was just that whatever it was that I was waiting for, the sign that I ought to settle down hadn’t happened yet. Now I was worried that it might never happen. Despite Em’s needling superiority, it was nice to reveal my innermost fears to someone who held me in minimal regard. Talking to Em was like unloading my myriad sins on some priest who by training anticipates the very worst in human weaknesses. I told her I’d been with Spike for almost four years already and it felt like we’d been married for twenty.
“Oh right, I forgot.” Em was shaking her head, as if she expected nothing more evolved. “You were never much good at that.” She specified, “Commitment.” Ever the accountant, she had credited my interpersonal deficiencies and with the look on her face, my books were balanced and closed. “You know, I’d like you to meet her – my lover.” She squinted at me in a critical afterthought. “You’re all right with this aren’t you, Gin?” I had the idea it might amuse her if I wasn’t, even though it had been years since Em and I had anything other than a slightly cutting accountant-potential-tax-evader relationship.
“Oh come on,” I said. “Of course I am,” and she seemed a little put out not to be breaking my heart. But in an apparent second attempt, she took out my last year’s tax returns sighing as she hefted an overstuffed, brown briefcase up onto the bar, a bag big enough for the sun and moon. “You know, I do a routine check for all my clients in the fall,” she began to explain as if she wanted to be sure I didn’t think I was getting any special treatment. “You paid this amount last year and you’ve only withheld this amount.” Em was pointing briskly with a sharp new pencil at an entry on the most recent monthly paycheck from the stubs I sent her so she could keep my bills straight. Apparently the tax law said I had to withhold at least what I withheld last year or pay a penalty for stealing the time value of money from the federal government.
Em replaced her pencil neatly behind her aggressively blonde ear. “Bottom line you’re going to have to crank up your withholding for the rest of the year to avoid a penalty. I don’t suppose you remembered your W-4?”
I hadn’t, but ever the Boy Scout, Em was prepared with a fresh form from a pocket in the leather case. Where it said exemptions, she wrote a large, fat zero in pencil and then dug in her case for a pen, which she used to reinforce the character with black ink. “Sign it.” She pushed the form and pen at me and I wrote my name with a carefree flourish.
“That was easy.” At least I would be able to avoid the penalties.
Em had drained her beer. “You think so?” She was collecting her things from the top of the bar and making to go now that she had someone to hurry home to. “Just wait and see what that does to your take-home pay.” She made a nod of her head at her empty glass, and slung her briefcase over her broad shoulder. “You’ll get this won’t you, Gin?” Em didn’t bother to wait for an answer.
After a while the bartendress came around expectantly so I paid her tab and ordered myself smother beer for the road, taking the glass to the payphone near the restrooms and digging out Cassandra’s number. It was show really, extracting the card from my wallet as I knew the number by heart from the four or five times I had almost called it today, fooling myself that I still had some pride.
“When will I see you?” I had not identified myself, wanting to be the only one who could be calling her asking this. I wanted one of those sweet, stupid phone conversations about nothing but an excuse to call, but Cassandra’s voice was off-putting and literal.
“Tonight I have to study. My Torts class is eating me alive.” She was laughing dryly. Her voice held an ego deflating lack of regret, an unaccommodating firmness.
“After that?” Even I couldn’t fail to notice my tone of wheedling clingyness. “You know, I was wrong about Ellen Borgia’s law suit,” I began, unashamed to be desperately baiting the hook with gossip. “Ellen’s lawyer was pressuring her to settle. Justin claims she must have known that Winslow would give her the options to force a deal.”
I could hear Cassandra’s second line ringing in the background. “That’s me.” She seemed to jump at it. “I have to go, but I’ll call you soon,” a promise that lacked any clear time dimension.
“What about dinner,” I said, “tomorrow? I have to watch my friend Sandra’s kid, but I could make us something to eat.” There was a long, fat pause, the sound, of invented excuses.
“I have class.” Somewhere on her end the line was still ringing.
“What about after?” A little more time had passed between us, slowly. “Maybe I’ll come over, but now I have to go.” She said I have to get this call. “What if I come by your place later, about eleven o’clock?”
Just in time for bed. It was important to me that I take on a more explicit importance to her. I said, “You could have been a man,” which I meant as a kind of bracing insult, but Cassie seemed to take it no way at all. The phone on her end was ringing persistently. “I’ll call you,” she promised, “soon,” hanging up.
* * *
Outside of Chardonnay, I was sure the sunglasses brunette in the red car was stalking me, parked on Montrose, across from the parking lot, but I was far too dejected to care about my personal safety. As I walked towards my car, she pulled off squealing her tires; and of course, I hadn’t gotten a license number.
XVII
After hours the parking garage elevators only went as far as the lobby where you had to swipe your key card first through the reader at the security, and then through a reader on the main elevators to go up to the Whytebread offices. Without a card, the night guard had to sign you in and get up from his desk to unlock the elevators. They didn’t like to do that and the night security man was letting me know it was a huge imposition as he grudgingly unlocked the elevator with his master card.
I’d sprinted across the spooky deserted garage, forgetting my access card in my car. I hadn’t been the only one.
“Busy night,” the security guard remarked and I was heartened to think that Starr was eager enough to talk that she’d come early.
* * *
Whytebread’s 25th floor lobby was dark enough that it took me a minute to adjust when I stepped out of the elevator. I’d blindly pressed the combination into the cipher lock and held onto the doorknob until my eyes had dilated enough to negotiate the almost completely opaque inner hall.
The floor was laid out over a large area in mostly indistinguishable square little offices and cubes, like a maze of boxes, with and without tops, so that light from the workspaces and subsections of the office didn’t necessarily illuminate the hall. The lights were on timers set for blocks of offices after 7:00 p.m. and required dialing up the access number and typing in the specific block code, which I knew for my own block on the opposite side of the floor from the entry door, but not any others. So, that night I was forced to travel the twists and turns of the Whytebread corridors to my office by rote.
I was rounding the corner towards Wesley Winslow’s old office when I heard a rustling sound followed by the soft click of a door being pulled gently shut.
“Starr, is that you?” I was calling out in that first-unsuspecting-idiot-about-to-die-in-the-slasher-movie voice. “Starr,” not bothering to consider how big a problem it would be if the rustling I’d heard didn’t happen to be her. This perspective on safety occurred to me much too late to avoid being vivisected by some psychopath wielding a garden machete, but fortunately no one jumped out from behind the copy machine. So I kept walking and calling, wondering hopefully if the security guards actually patrolled the floors like they were supposed to. About halfway down the hall, I saw a light and a tall, thin shadow fall across the window blinds. By its vertical proportions the figure that emerged from Wesley Winslow’s office couldn’t have been Starr. It was tall enough to be Winslow himself, a good, solid six-footer – a lean man, or one very big girl, the silhouette of the head showed the uneven edges of bushy hair. It slid out of Wes’s office, pulling closed the door behind itself and flawlessly circumnavigating the maze of cubicles and bookcases in the unreliably dim light. It was down the hall and gone almost before I consciously registered that anyone had been there. I was stupidly watching the empty space where the figure had been and wondering if I hadn’t just hallucinated the moving shadow until a hand caught my shoulder.
“Shit.” I might have screamed, but the hand was Ellen’s. “What are you doing here?”
She shrugged the question back at me, but I chose to ignore it, asking instead, “Did you see that guy come out of Wes’s office?”
She shook her head and asked again what I was doing in the office as if she suspected my prowler story of being a diversionary ploy.
I explained I was picking up some stock sheets and she countered that she had some research to catch up on. “With all that’s happened it’s been difficult to stay on top of things.” Ellen nodded conversationally, but not saying much else. She was walking away when I caught the shadow again at the corner of my eye. He was standing there, across the office, at an opening in the maze of cubicles like a deer at a clearing.
“Hey,” I shouted more loudly now that I had my wits and some company, “Hey you!” but the shadow bolted and was gone again. A door slammed in the stair well. “Hey,” I shouted again at the back of Ellen’s retreating figure. “Did you see him, a tall guy with an afro.”
“What afro?” Ellen spun around. “A guy with an afro?” She was staring at me goofy-faced. “I thought you were talking about someone else. Jeremy’s here,” she admitted, reluctantly agreeing that we ought to call security about the prowler.
“A little past you’re regular hours isn’t it?” Ellen had just, in fact, hung up with the front desk when Jeremy appeared. He sounded a little too friendly and casual for my taste, but among the three of us nobody seemed to think much of anyone else’s story.
It had taken the guard, an older, roundish, puffy-faced man who seemed to be breaking a pretty good sweat just from the exertion of riding the elevator twenty-five floors a very long ten or fifteen minutes to arrive, which I spent trying to decide how I would explain it when Starr showed up.
I was telling the guard about the man I’d seen and he was dabbing at the sweat on his upper lip with a well-used handkerchief from the back pocket of his uniform. Of the mystery man, I could say with confidence, “He was tall and thin with big curly hair like an afro,” but of course that didn’t matter because in the time it had taken for this guard to arrive whoever it was could have hightailed it halfway to the airport.
“Black male?” The security guard asked the three of us generally, to which Ellen shook her head vigorously up and down. Jeremy looked blank and I couldn’t say. All I’d actually seen was a brief silhouette that was not very racially definitive, a tall lean figure with a bush of hair.
