“I don’t usually drink during the day,” Taylor said, then added, smiling: “Oh, what the hell.”
“That a girl,” Brett said. The waiter disappeared as Brett leaned in. “Okay, look, let’s get right to it. I have no idea how much you want to talk about this, but I have to ask. How are you? Really?”
Taylor shrugged. “I’ve had some bad nights,” she admitted. “A couple of times when I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it. But you know the old saw, that which doesn’t kill you-”
“Beats the crap out of you and nearly kills you,” Brett interrupted.
Taylor found herself laughing in a way she hadn’t in a long time. It felt good, as if a weight had been lifted from her.
“You know,” she said. “You’re right. It feels like this nearly killed me. But it didn’t. I survived. And it feels great to be back at work and back here, and it’s wonderful to see you again.”
Brett smiled back at her, then turned serious. “Have they made any progress toward finding him?”
“You get the same news channels I do, honey. I haven’t heard a word. There’s an FBI agent that’s been really nice to me. We’ve talked a couple of times since I got back. Last I heard, they had nothing.”
“Amazing,” Brett said, then she lowered her voice. “Where the hell do you think he is?”
Taylor shrugged again. “Who knows? He could be anywhere.”
“What was it like when he disappeared? Did they just go nuts down there?”
Taylor nodded. “It was pandemonium. The first thing the judge did was throw Michael’s attorney in the slammer for contempt, then they hauled me in for questioning.”
“You? What the hell did they think, that you helped him?”
“I think they were just more embarrassed than anything else. They should have been watching him a little better.”
“God, I feel like for the rest of our lives, he’s going to be the eight-hundred-pound white elephant sitting in the middle of the living room that no one wants to talk about.”
“I’m okay with it,” Taylor said as the waiter brought her wine. “Really. This is all going to work out. It’s going to be okay.”
The two ordered lunch and made small talk for a while.
Then the conversation turned to business.
“Jack decided to move up the pub date,” Brett said.
“That’s interesting. How come, as if I didn’t know?”
“He’d be crazy not to,” Brett answered. “Look, darling, advance orders for The Sixth Letter have broken all company records. We’ve never had a book come out of the blocks like this one.”
“You know,” Taylor said, a sadness settling over her face,
“when I really think about it, I hate that so much money is being made off human suffering. It’s evil what he did. We ought to give the money to the families.”
“Let ‘em sue him if they want to,” Brett said. “But this is the publishing business, and it’s a business fueled by this kind of media attention. We’d be crazy not to take advantage of it. You gotta make hay while the sun shines.”
“I know,” Taylor admitted. “Doesn’t mean we have to like it.” “So that brings up another subject,” Brett said. “All this money, the royalties, the sub rights income. Where’s it going to go? If the author is an escaped fugitive on the run, where do we send the checks?”
“Joan and I met with the lawyers on Wednesday,” Taylor said. “We’ve set up an escrow account to hold the money until he’s caught-or whatever. At some point, I would assume the courts will have some input into where the money goes.
I know they’ve frozen all his bank accounts. He couldn’t get to the money even if we did write him a check. He’s already had his passport confiscated. His options are really limited.”
“Then what’s he using for money?” Brett asked.
“Who knows? My guess is he had some stashed away somewhere.”
Brett and Taylor lingered over lunch for two hours, with two more glasses of wine each, then coffee afterward. Taylor enjoyed the company, the chance to get away from the office and to simply get lost in a crowd of people where if anyone recognized her, they had the good manners to not acknowledge it.
Just after two-thirty, the two left and hailed separate cabs.
They made plans for dinner the following Friday night and agreed to talk before then. Taylor was relaxed and drowsy as she settled into the back of the cab. The driver headed across town back to the office on East Fifty-third.
As he pulled to a stop in front of Joan Delaney’s brownstone, Taylor’s cell phone went off. She stuffed a ten-dollar bill through the tray in the clear plastic shield between the front and back seats, then scrambled out onto the sidewalk.
She fumbled in her purse for the cell phone, then pulled it out and flipped the cover open.
“Hello,” she said.
“Taylor,” a voice said.
Taylor froze. Everything around her seemed to go quiet and still, the people around her shifting into slow motion, the traffic noise hushed.
“Michael?” she gasped.
CHAPTER 37
Thursday afternoon, Manhattan
“What’re you- My God, where are-?” Taylor stammered.
She felt like she’d been body slammed. It was all she could do to remain upright.
“It’s good to hear your voice,” he said, as if he’d been away on holiday.
“Michael, where are you?” she asked.
“I’m in the city. You’ll pardon me if I can’t be more specific.”
Taylor’s mind raced. How to handle this? What to say?
What had Hank told her?
Don’t get into it with him, he’d said. But what did that mean?
“How did you get here?”
“It’s a long story, but let’s just say I had to take a very circuitous route.”
Yes, Taylor thought, and how many dead bodies did you leave behind on the way?
“Look, Michael,” she said, trying to keep herself and her words calm, “why are you calling me?”
“Because I missed you,” the disembodied voice said with a thin layer of cell-phone static over it. “And because I hoped you’d be glad to hear from me.”
Taylor stood there. The wind picked up off the East River, funneled down through the city streets by the rows of buildings. She shivered, wondered if she should just walk on to the office, but she knew from experience that her cell phone wouldn’t work inside the building.
The silence was broken by a low hiss and crackle. She wondered if she’d lost the signal.
“And because I need your help,” he said.
“My help? Are you crazy? I can’t help you, Michael. You need to turn yourself in. Get this over with. They’re coming after you and they’ll eventually get you.”
“Turn myself in so they can kill me? Is that what you want?”
“They haven’t passed sentence yet, Michael. You don’t know that that’s what’s going to happen.”
“C’mon, Taylor. You and I both know that if the state of Tennessee doesn’t do it, somebody else will. They’ve got it in for me.”
“Michael, what do you want from me?” Her voice stiffened, sounded cold even to her.
“I know things are over between us,” he answered. “I’ve accepted that. But surely you can’t want them to kill me. I have to get out of the country.”
“They’ve got your passport!” she said. “You can’t leave!”
“I can sneak into Mexico,” he said. “And if I can get there, then I can go anywhere else. Someplace where they won’t extradite capital cases. France, maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far.”
“That’s crazy, Michael. How are you-”
“I need money,” he interrupted. “Cash is the only thing that’s going to get me out of here. They’ve frozen all my accounts. I can’t even use an ATM machine. But I’ve got money hidden, Taylor. Overseas. Lots of it. Enough to disappear forever. All I have to do is get to it.”
“And what about the girls, Michael? What about all those girls, and God knows who else?”