The Oxenburg Woman, page 5
“Who do you work for?” he said, anticipating that she would feed him a cover.
“Sun West. It’s an insurance company.”
He studied the modems. “What do you do exactly?”
She followed his gaze, “I don’t use all of those. I’m a database admin and I do the ad hoc database analysis for the underwriters.”
“Explain.”
“I’m not sure how much of this you’ll understand.”
“Try me.”
“Okay.” She sounded doubtful. “Let’s say the underwriters want to evaluate some business that the sales group is going after . . . a lot of insurance is sold as a package. A salesman gets inside a company to sell, let’s say, executive life insurance. But the company wants to bundle their insurance, so they’ll only switch if we can give them, you know, fire and theft and workers comp, product liability, malpractice. So, of course, the salesman wants this deal and he’s saying ‘no problem’ all the way.”
She looked at him, questioningly, then continued, “But depending on the business profile, the underwriters may not want to take on the whole thing. Insurance is what we do, we can’t survive without new business, but the underwriters need facts, statistics, industry averages to justify high premiums. If they’re smart,” — she made a face — “and some of them are, they want the facts before they decide how to price it. Sometimes, they’re already in a war with the sales department and they just want some quick statistics to support their position.”
He couldn’t find anything obviously wrong with what she was saying. She was doing it well, he almost believed her. “So Stan. What about him?”
“He used to be a salesman. He made a lot of money closing questionable deals. Now he’s in underwriting. There’s no fanatic like a converted fanatic.”
She appeared almost ready to smile at him, once again disarmingly unafraid and confident. He felt drained. The bed looked good. He hoped she’d just keep talking in that nice, even voice. And so what if it was pure bullshit, as long as it kept her busy so he could think and maybe get the fire in his chest to die down so he could rest.
She went to the desk and began to sort through the papers strewn across it. “If you’re worried about more phone calls, I could finish this.”
Now, what? Did she want to check in with somebody? It could be so easy, a matter of dialing one number. She wouldn’t even have to say anything, the call itself could be a code. So the modems were out. But if she wanted to continue this charade by pretending to work, fine. He needed to get horizontal before he passed out.
“How long will it take you to drive to those places you mapped out?”
She turned from the papers, frowning. “Between thirty-five and forty-five minutes, depending on traffic.”
He pinned the papers against the desk with the flat of his hand and leaned over her, trapping her in the chair.
“I want to leave this house at three forty-five, and I mean that exactly. So you will be dressed and ready to go at that time. Wear something nice, like you would to any wedding. Understand?”
She nodded.
“In the meantime you can work if you want to, just stay local. No connecting.”
He straightened and undid the snap inside the front of the trousers. “And you are going to have to do a little recovery work on my clothes.” The pants were coming off when he glanced at her face. “Did you cut the jacket?”
“Just your shirt,” she said.
“Put it back together,” he said. The bed was as cold as he remembered.
She evaluated his trousers. They were muddy, damp, and misshapen.
“Sponge them,” he said, “and steam them. The jacket, too.”
She stood up.
He sighed, “Don’t make me chase you. That would be unpleasant.”
She crossed to the closet and reached up for a blanket from the high shelf. She shook it out and over him in one motion.
“Turn those off,” he said, pointing to the comm tower, then watched as the lights winked out. She went to the desk and flipped on the computer. When she was engaged in sifting through the papers, he transferred the transparent phone cable from his right hand to his left. He shortened it until it was snug and took a wrap around his hand under the blanket.
Despite himself he was lulled by the warmth of the blanket and the constant, reassuring sounds from the desk. She pushed back the heavy hair before each period of typing, and scanned the papers with a pencil that she tapped at random while she thought. It was a pretty fair imitation of every tech he’d ever observed, and he waited, unconvinced, for the little act to break.
She was punching the keypad with the phone in her hand before the click of the receiver being lifted registered with him. He yanked the cable, and the set flew off the desk, bounced against the wall and hit the floor jangling.
She whirled to face him as the receiver was torn out of her hand. He glared at her with a murderous fury, ready to wrap the cable in his hand around her neck. The reborn agony in his chest held him to the bed.
“Are you crazy?” she said. “I was just calling the data center.” She raised her hands. “Calm down. I won’t do it again.”
“Next time that will be you down there,” he choked. His racing heart pounded the pain in his chest, cramps rippled through his gut, holding him down.
She scooped the set up and put it on a shelf, out of reach. Then she sat down abruptly, looked down at her hands and then apprehensively at him over her shoulder.
“Work, if that’s what you want to do,” he gasped between breaths. The red haze was closing in, blurring his vision.
Like the earlier dreams, this one did not take him completely and he lay drifting in a state of arrested vigilance. His mistrust of this woman who said her name was Suzanna was like a thorn in the throbbing hole in his chest, so it was a surprise when Angel appeared in the dream. He accepted the sight of her wearily.
He watched the Brazilian embrace Angel, saw the man’s swarthy face clearly as he kissed her possessively, his fingers busy with her blouse. Angel’s lover had been the chief executive officer of a major Brazilian bank, a man who had dedicated sixty years to personal indulgence, growing more affluent, more corrupt, and more arrogant every day. Angel carried the hypodermic in a wrist holster, and he observed her skill with reluctant admiration as the needle appeared and was plunged into the rolls of fat over the man’s belt.
“One of these days you’re going to put that stuff right into his kidneys,” he’d said, when the banker’s bulky body lay sprawled across the bed.
Angel smiled. “But not today,” she said coolly. “For today, he will just sleep for a few hours.”
“And when he wakes up?”
“I’ll know everything he knows,” Angel replied, working on the buttons. She smiled, noting his attention.
“Don’t you think he might wonder what he’s missed?” he asked, angry at Angel’s smug attitude.
She smiled again and came to him, using one hand to pull him down to her lips. “In his dreams,” she purred, “he is always with me, and missing nothing.” She smiled again, unperturbed by his disgusted rejection of her taste mingled with that of the Brazilian. “All men are the same, you just don’t know it yet.” Her English was accented, an imitation of the native Portuguese population. He knew it was artificial, but it lent her voice a potent appeal.
Her voice resonated through the dream, pulling him down into the images.
“The ones who are interested in you,” he’d replied bitterly.
Angel laughed aloud at that. “Yes,” she’d said, “like you.”
* * * *
He awoke to the sun in his eyes. Startled and blinded, plucked from the dreamlike images by a touch, he thrust out his arm instinctively.
Someone was bending over him. Female. A hand grazed his forehead. His hand caught her over the ribcage. He grabbed a handful of material, holding her off, the image of Angel’s hypodermic fixed in his mind.
Suzanna cried out, alarmed, and pulled back. The material was damp and hot under his hand. When he twisted to avoid the shaft of sunlight, he saw that her face was glowing with perspiration. The T-shirt she wore was soaked in a V at the neck and slippery over her midriff, making his grip ineffectual against her wiry strength. Half-conscious, torn between Angel and reality, nothing mattered but the threat of a syringe. He twisted the thin shirt, forcing her across his legs, pinning one hand beneath her. Her other hand flailed wildly, increasing his alarm.
He could hold her with his left hand but could do nothing to capture the dangerously thrashing hand. He had surprised her, but in seconds, she’d recover and stick him with the needle. Her hair brushed his partially numb right hand. That hand found her throat and his fingers closed. Her struggles increased to a momentary frenzy and then subsided.
His left hand released the shirt and grasped her slack, free hand. It was empty. He arched to a sitting position, scanning the bed. With the change of position, the pain in his chest exploded and radiated down his arm and settled in his hand like a cramp, and he lost his grip on her neck.
Then she was rolling across his legs, gasping and choking as she went. She hit him once, with the heel of her hand. The blow was wild and undirected but dead center on the wound. As she dropped off the bed, the world went black.
* * * *
He was awake, lying with his eyes closed, spacing each breath. He didn’t hear her enter the room but the sound he did hear was familiar. As she completed racking the clip on his Walther, he opened his eyes.
She held the gun with both hands, pointed at his chest. “Now,” she said, “I think this belongs to you, but in case I’m wrong, I’ll tell you about it. This is a Walther PPK. It’s not a common gun. I’ve never fired one but I doubt you’re a gambler. No safety, the clip is full. I’ll keep firing until it’s empty and I can hardly miss at this distance.”
Her voice was low and strained. She was wearing the outsized white shirt again. On her neck, the marks of his fingers were visible. As he watched her face, he felt his heart shrink in anticipation of another bullet.
“You’re going to keep your hands to yourself,” she said. “I started out to help you. I have no idea how I would explain your dead body in my house, but difficult as that would be, it doesn’t bother me enough to let you kill me.”
He hoped she’d keep talking — at least long enough to cool down — but she seemed to be waiting for a response.
Finally, she said, “I’ll drive you to this wedding. Then you can take your chances with your buddy and his ex. I don’t care about that, you’re on your own with that. Deal?”
The gun was absolutely steady. She looked capable of killing him. He waited silently, thinking that a pro would’ve cut off his options long ago so maybe she was just a civilian after all. If so, she was as dangerously unpredictable as any other civilian.
“Say it,” she said.
He raised his left hand slightly in a gesture of conciliation. “You don’t hurt me,” he said carefully, “I won’t hurt you.” Then he closed his eyes. He waited, his body tense and aching. After a full minute, he looked and she was gone.
* * * *
The next thing he knew, the sun was warm on his legs. He swung himself off the bed, leaned over the desk and checked the clock on the monitor. It said three-seventeen p.m. He leaned against the desk, relieved that it wasn’t later and dizzy from standing too quickly.
He found his clothes hanging on the bathroom shower rod. The shirt was in one piece, a press-on patch reinforcing the right front behind the frayed edges where she’d cut it from the hem up to the entry site. The parts of the shirt that would show under his jacket were presentable, though it smelled of bleach.
He scowled when he noticed the shirt studs lying on the vanity. They were going to be pure hell. He unearthed a package of disposable razors in the medicine cabinet and went to work on his beard — not that it would help much. He looked as bad as he felt, and shaving wasn’t going to change that.
He’d selected Hispanic weddings knowing their propensity for enormous, formal receptions. The only thing he had to wear was his tuxedo, so he’d go where everybody else would be wearing one, too. But his appearance bothered him. Disappearing in a crowd was not easy for anyone his size, even without the additional liability of a virtually immobile right arm and a face that was gray and hollow from dehydration.
He held himself to the tasks of shaving and dressing, resisting the temptation to check on Suzanna, although he wondered where the gun was and whether she was keeping it with her. It would make things easier if she did. He wouldn’t have to look for it when he wanted it. She obviously didn’t intend to use it on him. At least not yet.
He’d prowled the empty kitchen and living room twice before investigating the stairs. When he was halfway up, he could hear the shower running and followed the sounds of the water to the door of the master bedroom. The bathroom door was open. He crossed the bedroom quickly.
She was washing her hair, her body enveloped in white suds and distorted by the patterned glass of the shower door. He watched her for a moment, thinking she would never get that much hair dry and wondering why the smell of the shampoo made him hungry.
The bedroom shared the living room’s glass wall, though here it was softened with translucent blinds in soft gray. The room was oversized, as was the bed. Under the bed, the carpet was overlaid with a Chinese rug in pale greens and the same delicate gray from the blinds. As he looked around, he tried to remember how long it had been since he’d been in a woman’s bedroom in a private home. A long time since he’d seen one like this, anyway.
The damp T-shirt was on the floor of the closet with a pair of socks. The Nikes had been kicked off against the wall. He stared at them in disbelief, remembering the slick, hot feel of her body. Running, for Christ’s sake. She was totally uncontrollable. His right hand touched his wound carefully, reminded of the blow she’d landed there. He was tempted to drag her out of the shower and force the truth out of her. But what he really wanted was to go down to the telephone, call the Group and have them pick him up immediately — just get him the hell out of there and damn the consequences. He rejected both thoughts, disappointed in himself. This was how it happened: You got desperate, gave in to the pain and confusion, and pushed things before you knew enough. That’s how you blew it. Then your career and sometimes even your life ended.
A library opened off the stairs, a long, narrow room incorporating the remainder of the glass wall. It was furnished with more of the Italian leather and an elaborate entertainment center. The electronics were expensive and comprehensive, giving the same impression of deliberate and discriminating selection as the modems downstairs. Books lined the wall opposite the window, sets of them, in leather bindings side by side with paperbacks and tattered hardcovers, both old and new, novels and classics including, incongruously, a complete edition of the Encyclopedia Europa. He studied the assortment, shook his head and moved on. Very elaborate for a safe house.
The noise of the shower had stopped. A pair of guest bedrooms with a shared bath occupied the remainder of the upper level. He gave them each a quick inspection before heading back downstairs, attuned to the drone of a blow drier from her bedroom.
He was impatient by three-forty. By three-fifty he had covered every inch of the living room a dozen times. He was ready to go up after her when he heard her on the stairs. The time she’d spent upstairs had not been wasted. The dress she wore was short and black, exposing long, sleek runner’s legs. In a moment he’d taken in her tanned arms and shoulders, and the slice of collar bone on either side of the high, tight collar.
She was almost at the bottom before he spoke. “Where the hell do you think you’re going in that?”
She froze on the step. Then she put one hand on the stair rail and reached the other up behind her head to pluck at the back of her collar. She looked at him intently while she steadied herself, but he couldn’t decipher the look on her face. When she started down the stairs again, she came toward him like she intended to drop the dress and walk right out of it.
So this was the plan. While he’d been passed out in that dim back bedroom she’d gone for a little run, met her co-conspirators and now her cooperation was going to end. They needed time to set something up so her job was to keep him in this house. Clearly amateurs. He had a plan and he needed a driver. If he had to stuff her back into her clothes to get on with it, that wouldn’t be a problem.
Not those clothes, though. There wouldn’t be a male within a mile who’d miss this show. He covered the distance to the stairs in two strides. “Do you usually go to weddings dressed like a hooker?”
“I don’t usually have to dress to hide things,” she said.
“That’s obvious.”
“Is it?” Both hands were busy behind her head while she spoke. “Well, if you don’t like this, maybe you should go up and pick something else. But you probably won’t like me any better in something that shows this.” Her hands opened the collar and caught the front of the dress as it fell forward. He saw what the high collar had hidden.
She’d done something with her hair. It was fastened behind her head and fell back behind her shoulders in waves. The dark hair was the perfect backdrop for the marks he’d left on her neck. Her skin was a mass of red and purple bruises. The bruises were ugly, but the relief that she wasn’t going to fight him about leaving the house outweighed everything else. She was watching him with the dress held against her chest with both hands, looking like she might cry.
“Right,” he said. “I guess the dress will have to do. Now, get back up those stairs and put something over it. I’m not even a little bit interested in what you look like, and it’ll be better for you if nobody else is either. We’re late.”
She struggled to refasten the tight collar. “If you want to be even later, I can start over. This is Arizona. We don’t overdress. I’ve been through my closet three times, but maybe you think you can do better. While you’re at it, look for something to cover this, too.” She held out her arm with purple bands of bruising from where his grip had held her on the stool.
