“So how much?” He felt he was entitled to ask that question. But this had to be out of their ballpark. His ballpark anyway. He had to admit it was convenient. Only forty-five rush-hour minutes from his office. But they couldn’t touch this place. He looked expectantly at his fiancée.
She looked nervous, played with her hair. “Three million eight.”
Jack’s face went gray. “Three million eight hundred thousand? Dollars?”
“Jack, it’s worth three times that.”
“Then why the hell are they selling it for three million eight? We can’t afford it, Jenn. Forget it.”
She answered him by rolling her eyes. She waved reassuringly to the Realtor, who sat in her car writing up the contract.
“Jenn, I make a hundred twenty thou a year. You make about the same, maybe a little more.”
“When you make partner—”
“Right. My salary goes up, but not enough for this. We can’t make the mortgage payments. I thought we were moving into your place, anyway.”
“It’s not right for a married couple.”
“Not right? It’s a friggin’ palace.” He walked over to a forest-green-painted garden bench and sat down.
She planted herself in front of him, arms crossed, a determined look on her face. Her summer tan was starting to fade. She wore a creamy brown fedora from under which her long hair tumbled across her shoulders. Her pants were perfectly tailored to her elegantly slender form. Polished leather boots encased her feet and disappeared under the pant legs.
“We won’t be carrying a mortgage, Jack.”
He looked up at her. “Really? What, are they giving us the place because we’re such a terrific young couple?”
She hesitated, then said, “Daddy is paying cash for it, and we’re going to pay him back.”
Jack had been waiting for that one.
“Pay him back? How the hell are we going to pay him back, Jenn?”
“He’s suggested a very liberal repayment plan, which takes into account future earnings expectations. For godsakes, Jack, I could pay for this place out of accumulated interest on one of my trusts, but I knew you’d object to that.” She sat down next to him. “I thought if we did it this way, you’d feel better about the whole thing. I know how you are about the Baldwin money. We will have to pay Daddy back. It’s not a gift. It’s a loan with interest. I’m going to sell my place. I’ll net about eight from that. You’re going to have to come up with some money too. This is not a free ride.” She playfully stuck a long finger into his chest, driving home her point. She looked back at the house. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Jack? We’ll be so happy here. We were meant to live here.”
Jack looked over at the front of the house but without really seeing it. All he saw was Kate Whitney, in every window of the monolith.
Jennifer squeezed his arm, leaned against him. Jack’s headache moved into the panic zone. His mind was refusing to function. His throat went dry and his limbs felt stiff. He gently disengaged his arm from his fiancée’s, got up and walked quietly back to the car.
Jennifer sat there for several moments, disbelief chief among the emotions registering across her face, and then angrily followed him.
The Realtor, who had intently watched the exchange between the two while seated in her Mercedes, stopped writing up the contract, her mouth pursed in displeasure.
It was early morning when Luther emerged from the small hotel hidden in the cluttered residential neighborhoods of Northwest Washington. He hailed a cab to the Metro Center subway, asking the driver to take a circuitous route on the presumption of seeing various D.C. landmarks. The request did not surprise the cabbie and he automatically went through the motions to be replicated a thousand times before the tourist season was officially over, if it was ever truly over for the town.
The skies threatened rain but you never knew. The unpredictable weather systems swirled and whipped across the region either missing the city or falling hard on it before sliding into the Atlantic. Luther looked up at the darkness, which the newly risen sun could not penetrate.
Would he even be alive six months from now? Maybe not. They could conceivably find him, despite his precautions. But he planned to enjoy the time he had left.
The Metro took him to Washington National Airport, where he took a shuttle bus across to the Main Terminal. He had prechecked his luggage onto the American Airlines flight that would take him to Dallas/Fort Worth, where he would change airlines and then head to Miami. He would stay there overnight and then another plane would drop him in Puerto Rico and then a final flight would deposit him in Barbados. Everything was paid for in cash; his passport proclaimed him to be Arthur Lanis, age sixty-five, from Michigan. He had a half-dozen such identifying documents, all professionally crafted and official-looking and all absolutely phony. The passport was good for eight more years and showed him to be well-traveled.
He settled into the waiting area and pretended to scan a newspaper. The place was crowded and noisy, a typical weekday for the busy airport. Occasionally Luther’s eyes would rise over the paper to see if anyone was paying more than casual attention to him, but nothing registered. And he had been doing this long enough that something would have clicked if he had anything to worry about. His flight was called, his boarding pass was handed over and he trudged down the ramp to the slender projectile that within three hours would deposit him in the heart of Texas.
The Dallas/Fort Worth run was a busy one for American, but surprisingly he had an empty seat next to him. He took his coat off and laid it across the seat daring anyone to trespass. He settled himself in and looked out the window.
As they began to taxi to the takeoff runway, he could make out the tip of the Washington Monument over the thick, swirling mist of the clammy morning. Barely a mile from that point his daughter would be getting up shortly to go to work while her father was ascending into the clouds to begin a new life somewhat ahead of schedule and not exactly easy in his mind.
As the plane accelerated through the air, he looked at the terrain far below, noted the snaking of the Potomac until it was left behind. His thoughts went briefly to his long-dead wife and then back to his very much alive daughter.
He glanced up at the smiling, efficient face of the flight attendant and ordered coffee and a minute later accepted the simple breakfast handed to him. He drank down the steaming liquid and then reached over and touched the surface of the window with its queer streaks and scratches. Wiping his glasses clean, he noted that his eyes were watering freely. He looked around quickly; most passengers were finishing up their breakfast or reclining for a short nap before they landed.
He pushed his tray up, undid his seat belt and made his way to the lavatory. He looked at himself in the mirror. The eyes were swollen, red-blotched. The bags hung heavy, he had perceptibly aged in the last thirty-six hours.
He ran water over his face, let the droplets gather around his mouth and then splashed on some more. He wiped his eyes again. They were painful. He leaned against the tiny basin, tried to get his twitching muscles under control.
Despite all his willpower, his mind wandered back to that room where he had seen a woman savagely beaten. The President of the United States was a drunk, an adulterer and a woman beater. He smiled to the press, kissed babies and flirted with enchanted old women, held important meetings, flew around the world as his country’s leader, and he was a fucking asshole who screwed married women, then beat them up and then got them killed.