She played with the base of her martini glass.
“Brad saw both of our children being born, saw them even before I did. We’ve been through chicken pox and broken bones and even a car accident. It all starts to add up and become something more than just two people, just a marriage; it becomes, I don’t know, maybe like a museum, where all these things are on display, things that you expect to have around, maybe even need to have around. They tell you who you are.”
She stopped, took a sip of her martini, then just looked at me.
“Your husband’s no prize,” I said, “but I guess you know that.” My stomach was churning.
“I’ve known it for a long time, Mr. Taylor.”
“But there’s history, right?”
“Yes, the museum, and I’m one of the caretakers — no, maybe one of the trustees. Whatever. Anyway, there’s responsibility there. The kind you might not really want, but there you are. You’ve got it. Like the captain of a ship, maybe. Even though you think the ship might start sinking, you stay aboard. You know what I mean?”
My hand fell away from the briefcase. I knew what she meant. I didn’t agree, but I understood.
So now I’m walking toward Bradley’s office complex, briefcase in hand. Inside is my little treasure trove and the Ruger. I’m about to drop in unannounced on Mr. Bradley Davison and have a little chat. I don’t know if he’ll listen to me, or if he will even care about what I have to say, but it’s the least I can do for Nora.
Franklin Saunders has been neutered. But he was never really the threat. He wasn’t what Bradley was worried about when he rested his head against the side of his Expedition after he came out of TMG International Trading. Those boys play a rougher game than Franklin Saunders. They’re right up there with Attila the Hun and Vlad the Impaler. You irritate them, like I think Bradley has irritated them, and they’ll come after you, your wife, your kids, and your canary. They don’t care. There are no rules in their world, except the ones they make up right before they pull out their knives.
Earlier this morning, I went down to my basement and pushed around some old boxes. I found my college copy of Lord Jim. I blew the dust off, wiped away some cobwebs, and brought it upstairs. I poured some coffee and sat at the kitchen table thumbing through the book, noting passages I had underlined back when the world was simpler and I didn’t have so many scars. I thought about what I would have done in Jim’s place. Jump? Who knows. And if I did, would I then seek redemption? Find my lost honor? Did such a thing matter anymore, or even exist?
I’m still thinking about that as I stand in front of the elevators, waiting for a brass door to slide open and whisk me up to where they cut deals, not throats. Will Bradley Davison listen? Does it matter? I don’t think he’s cut out to handle his playmates with the knives. It’s not his type of game. And sooner or later, they’ll come after him and his family. They’ll come after Nora.
There are only two ways to stop them. One is to make Bradley Davison go away, permanently. The other is to make TMG International Trading go away permanently.
You never know what you’ll do when you think the ship’s sinking. Some people jump, others stay. The thing about staying is, you never get a chance to do it again. You just go down once. Maybe that’s the point. If you’re going to stay, going to go down, you might as well do it right, with a little class.
Maybe, after my little talk with Bradley. I’ll price out some leather boots, the ones with those killer heels that remind you there’s always a little pain mixed in with love. Yeah, as I remember, Shoes 4-U is having a sale. Then maybe I’ll go upstairs and show them to the boys at TMG. Find out their opinions on love, and pain.
Jeffery Deaver
Triangle
From Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
“Maybe I’ll go to Baltimore.”
“You mean...” She looked at him. “To see...”
“Doug,” he answered.
“Really?” Mo Anderson asked and looked carefully at her fingernails, which she was painting bright red. He didn’t like the color but he didn’t say anything about it. She wouldn’t listen to him anyway.
“I think it’d be fun,” he continued.
“Oh, it would be,” she said quickly. “Doug’s a fun guy.”
“Sure is,” Pete Anderson said. He sat across from Mo on the front porch of their split-level house in suburban Westchester County. The month was June and the air was thick with the smell of the jasmine that Mo had planted earlier in the spring. Pete used to like that smell. Now, though, it made him sick to his stomach.
Mo inspected her nails for streaks and pretended to be sort of bored with the idea of him going to see her friend Doug. But she was a lousy actor; Pete could tell she was really excited by the idea and he knew why. But he just watched the lightning bugs and kept quiet. Unlike Mo, he could act.
“When would you go?” she asked.
“This weekend, I guess. Saturday.”
They were silent and sipped their drinks, the ice clunking dully on the plastic glasses. It was the first day of summer and the sky wasn’t completely dark yet even though it was nearly nine o’clock in the evening. There must’ve been a thousand lightning bugs in their front yard.
“I know I kinda said I’d help you clean up the garage,” he said, wincing a little, looking guilty.
“No, I think you should go. I think it’d be a good idea,” she said.
I know you think it’d be a good idea, Pete thought. But he didn’t say this to her. Lately he’d been thinking a lot of things and not saying them.
Pete was sweating — more from excitement than from the heat — and he wiped the sweat off his face and his round buzz-cut blond hair with his napkin.
The phone rang and Mo went to answer it.
She came back and said, “It’s your father,” in that sour voice of hers that Pete hated. She sat down and didn’t say anything else, just picked up her drink and examined her nails again.
Pete got up and went into the kitchen. His father lived in Wisconsin, not far from Lake Michigan. He loved the man and wished they lived closer together. Mo, though, didn’t like him one bit and always raised a stink when Pete wanted to go visit. She never went with him. Pete was never exactly sure what the problem was between Mo and his dad. But it made him mad that she treated the man so badly and would never talk to Pete about it.
And he was mad too that Mo seemed to put Pete in the middle of things. Sometimes Pete even felt guilty he had a father.
He had a nice talk but hung up after only ten minutes because he fell Mo didn’t want him to be on the phone.
Pete walked out onto the porch.
“Saturday,” Mo said. “I think Saturday’d be fine.”
Fine...
Then she looked at her watch and said, “It’s getting late. Time for bed.”
And when Mo said it was time for bed, it was definitely time for bed.
Later that night, when Mo was asleep, Pete walked downstairs into the office. He reached behind a row of books resting on the built-in bookshelves and pulled out a large, sealed envelope.
He carried it down to his workshop in the basement. He opened the envelope and took out a book. It was called Triangle and Pete had found it in the true-crime section of a local used-book shop after flipping through nearly twenty books about real-life murders. Pete had never ripped off anything, but that day he’d looked around the store and slipped the book inside his windbreaker, then strolled casually out the door. He’d had to steal it; he was afraid that — if everything went as he’d planned — the clerk might remember him buying the book and the police would use it as evidence.