Where? said John.
She's working for a defense contractor. In the paralegal pool. Radar equipment. Guess what name she's using.
Leather Tuscadero.
Ha-ha. She looked out the window below at the warehouse grids of City of Industry. Fawn Heatherington.
That's so corny, Ryan said. It's like something right out of The Young and the Restless .
Ivan, said John, make sure we have a car waiting for us on the tarmac at the other end. And make sure there's a map inside it. We'll be there in a few hours.
Vanessa said, There's something else strange I found out.
What? asked John.
Judging from various spikes in her typing speeds and frequencies compared against her other data she used to do data inputting for the Trojan nuclear plant up on the Columbia River back in the late eighties particularly as regards her use of SHIFT key and the numbers one to five, I'm going to make an educated guess here.
What would that be?
Marilyn's going through menopause.
John looked at Vanessa and then turned to Ivan. Ivan, Vanessa now works for us.
Good, said Ivan. What will Vanessa be doing for us?
Running our world. John felt a bit better for having conspired to make Vanessa lose her job. He was smoking furiously now.
I thought you quit last year, said Ivan.
I smoke when I'm worried. You know that.
Ivan noticed that John made no connection between his current posture in the jet, alert and driven, versus the crumpled heap he'd been on the floor months previously.
They landed in Cheyenne. An airport worker directed them to their car. Ivan asked Vanessa to be navigator. No time to start your new job like the present. She sat in the front, and Ivan leaned over and whispered to Ryan, The secret to success? Delegate, delegate, delegate assuming you've hired somebody competent to begin with.
Ryan felt like a thirteen-year-old being given advice by a cigar-chomping uncle.
They drove through the city. It was a cold hot day on the cusp of a harsh autumn. The air felt thin and they managed to hit every red light as they wended through this essentially prairie town that was more Nebraska than Nebraska, certainly not the alpine fantasia conjured up by the name Wyoming, or from John's prior experience in the deepest Rockies filming The Wild Land.
Over there, said Vanessa, the blue sign. Calumet Systems purchased just last week by Honeywell.
They encountered yet another low-slung corporate glass block surrounded by a parking lot full of anonymous-looking sedans and a wire fence topped with razor wire. A security Checkpoint Charlie precluded their entering the lot. Vanessa made John pull the car into the Amoco station across the street. John said, Ivan, did you bring the binoculars like I asked?
John looked, but didn't know what to expect to see Marilyn making coffee in the cafeteria? Filing a letter? Readjusting her Peter Pan collar?
Can I see those, John?
He handed Ryan the binoculars and Ryan scoured Calumet's lot. John turned on the radio and settled on a Spanish dance station, which Vanessa turned off. This is no time for the Cheeka-Chocka.
Ryan said, I can see her car.
Bullshit, said John.
No. I do. It's a maroon BMW. I remember it was in the news footage when Susan went home to her mother's.
John said, Paralegals for prairie defense contractors don't drive BMWs.
Ryan continued staring at the car through the binoculars. John, you forget the settlement Marilyn made and then lost with the airline after the Seneca crash. She's clinging to her last remaining item of wealth like a lifeboat.
It was a claret-colored BMW, said Vanessa, adding, So what's the deal, John? I mean, we find Marilyn and then what? We trail her all day and all night? To what end?
She'll lead us to Susan.
How do you know that? My professional finding instincts are baffled.
We don't know where Susan went that year nobody does. But Marilyn vanished, too, and now suddenly we find she's Fawn von Soap-Opera working here in Cheyenne at a defense plant. I mean,two people in a family vanish? That's no coincidence. Defense contracting? Spying? Espionage? Who knows. But there's a link. A strong one.
Oh my, said Ryan. I don't quite believe this myself, but La Marilyn has left the building. She's walking toward her car. Jeez, what a mess she is.
Let me see, said Vanessa. Work isn't over until five. Why's she leaving early? Shit Ryan's right. It is her with a $6.99 hairdo and a pantsuit ordered from the back of a 1972 copy of USSR This Week. I thought she was supposed to be stylish or something. She kissed Ryan. Agent 11, you are good.
John started the engine to follow Marilyn, who was pulling out of Checkpoint Charlie. They turned onto the main strip, just then plumping up with the beginnings of rushhour traffic. They skulked three cars behind her for many miles, past a thousand KFCs, past four hundred Gaps, two hundred Subways and through dozens of intersections overloaded with a surfeit of quality-of-life refugees from the country's other larger cities, with nary a cowboy hat or a crapped-out Ranchero wagon to be seen in any direction. They drove out of Cheyenne's main bulk, and into its fringes, where the franchises weren't so new and the older fast-food outlets were now into their second incarnations as bulk pet-food marts, storage facilities and shooting ranges. Marilyn pulled the car into the lot of the Lariat Motel. She got out of the car and ran into room number 14.
Well, kids, said John, guess where we're spending the night.
Chapter Thirty-one
Erie was having a bad winter that year and Randy's heating was on the blink. Randy, wearing several layers of sweaters, was channel surfing around dinnertime, chili vapors drifting in from the kitchen, when he found CNN announcing that Marilyn had settled her airline lawsuit for ka-ching -point-four million dollars. He whistled, slapped his thighs and yodeled,Soozan-oozan-oo-AY-oo. She came in from the laundry room, where she had been changing Eugene Junior's diaper, and watched the coverage stone-faced: Marilyn, her arm around her lawyer's shoulder, was emerging like a catwalk model from a Manhattan courthouse.
She's got gum in her mouth, the old crone, Susan said. You can tell because of the slight lump behind her left ear. She doesn't think people can tell, but I can. She thinks gum chewing develops your smile muscles.
Marilyn spoke into a copse of network mikes. She said that justice had prevailed, but dammit, she'd happily forfeit every penny of her settlement for the chance to speak to Susan again for even one minute.
Oh, Randy, this is so Oscar clip.
Randy's eyes darted between the screen and Susan's face. The trial had cast a spell on the house in the three months since Susan had arrived. She pretended not to care, but she did. Even on the days she claimed not to have read the paper, she was invariably up-to-the-minute on the trial's progress, and never lost a chance to assassinate her mother's character. More importantly to Randy, Susan had let it be known over the past months that once Marilyn finalized her suit, she, Randy and the baby would move out to California and put into action Operation Brady, which Randy hoped would be the next phase of his life.
Look, Randy, she's still wearing those cheesy Ungaro knockoff outfits, and she's even got those fake Fendi sunglasses she bought at the Laramie swap meet. She smiled at Randy. Well, there, pardner, looks like we're a packin' up and headin' west.
Their plan was not complex. Randy, Eugene Junior, and the dogs were to drive to Los Angeles. Once there, Randy would rent a Brady Bunch house in which he and Dreama would raise the baby in a deftly twisted version of nuclear familyhood. Susan would have to live close by until what could only be an enormous amount of fuss died down. Susan wanted to minimize any public glare Eugene Junior might have to endure. But most of all, Susan wanted to keep Marilyn away from the child. That greedy old battle-ax's claws are never going to touch Eugene.Ooohh, that's going to torture her more than anything no access to Eugene. Finally I'll have a bit of youth I can take away from her.