“Heavens!” I said, looking at my watch. “Is that the time? My poor husband will be wondering where on earth I’ve gotten to. So nice to meet you!”
I was drifting through the back parlour when I caught sight of a man and woman I recognized, sitting on a sofa, looking like successful executives in love. Lois and Mitchum Kenworthy. Or at least that’s what they had been calling themselves last time we ran into each other, three years ago, when they were up on embezzlement and fraud charges. Two old friends. Now I knew who had provided the fake Friedrich. I edged into another room, where I could watch them without being seen.
No sign of Cess Silverman, the Secretary, or Honeycutt, for that matter. No doubt they were huddled in the treehouse with the rest of the secret club.
Parties are like life—you think that what you see is all there is, until you discover the next layer, a whole other culture that’s going on all around you but you never knew existed. About three months after Helen married Mick, she called me up and we went to the Vortex. Somewhere around the fourth drink, she stopped talking and stared at her wedding ring. “It’s just a piece of metal, but it’s weird. It’s like a funny handshake. All of a sudden I find myself part of this club that I never even knew existed. With this ring on my finger, I’m visible, I’m real to other members of the club. They treat me differently. Even my mother treats me differently. She calls up and starts telling me all this stuff, about her and Pop, about their marriage. As if I’ll suddenly be able to understand. I was thinking the other day, my god, if I’d never married, I would never have learned all this about my own mother and father. Mind you, sometimes it’s not stuff I want to know. Then again, you know, it makes me feel good. To belong. To be one of Them. I mean, I’m thirty-eight, and for the first time in my life I’m being treated like a grown-up by the grown-ups. Even my dental hygienist treats me like a real person now. It’s frightening. I mean, what other clubs are there out there that I don’t know about?” She wasn’t looking for an answer. “My god, last time I was in the airport, some kid offered me his seat.”
“And you liked it?”
“Well…”
“Mostly?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“And that makes you feel guilty, sorry for all those people like me who’ll never belong to your marvellous club.” She stared. “Don’t worry about it. I belong to the big bad butch club, where only dykes who have broken people’s noses are welcome. Then there’s the tough cop club. And the ex-pat club. Not to mention the filthy stinking rich unemployed. You should be writhing with jealousy, not guilt.”
She burst out laughing. “You’re so refreshing. Let’s get drunk.”
And what I hadn’t told her was that you could be accepted as part of any club if you pretended you were already a member. The hard part was working out the fact of a particular club’s existence.
But I knew all about Cess Silverman’s secret club, the cronies sipping whiskey and talking about who to make or break in state politics. I’d been born into the Norwegian version, but declined to take up membership as an adult. Ten years ago, Denneny would have been at this party, fighting to gain entry to the club. He had even tried to use me. “Inside information would be very useful,” he said. “With your background and smarts you’d be a natural.” What he’d meant was, You’ll do well, and you’ll be seen as my protégé, and then I’ll do well. And I’ll be informed. He always had been ambitious. He’d been very bitter for a while when he was refused that promotion to commander, but perhaps that was partly because his wife was drinking herself to death. Now he no longer seemed to feel anything at all.
I waited until the back hallway was clear so no one would see me go upstairs. I cruised the upper floor. Sensors on the windows, no motion detectors in the corners of rooms. This time the wiring ran along the baseboard. He needed a new cleaning service.
I found the breaker box in the closet of what looked like a guest bedroom. I put a chair in front of the door, so anyone coming in would knock it down and give me warning, and flipped open the box.
He had made it too easy: everything was neatly labelled. I slid the screwdriver from its snug leather band on my thigh and hummed as I worked. He had what he thought was a good system: sensors on all windows and doors, battery backup in case someone cut the mains. I simply disconnected the battery from the mains so it could not recharge, and switched the alarm hookup over to the circuit labelled HALL: a few hours’ extra life for the fish in that fancy aquarium in case there was a power hit. No booby-trap lines to the phone. Good.
I closed up, put the screwdriver away, and went back to wandering. The carpet in the hallway was the particular shade of deep red that men favour when there is no woman around to tell them any better. It was wonderfully thick. An elephant could probably jump up and down outside Honeycutt’s bedroom and he wouldn’t hear a thing. Just made to be burgled. There was a reasonable amount of art, but nothing like the quantity Eddie had shown me. I recognized a particularly ugly sculpture in one of the bathrooms, and the large Day-Glo painting on the wall. No icons, no precious statuettes, no display cases. Given the shoddy electronic security, I doubted he had anything that small and precious in the house at all. They were too easily hidden in a pocket or…smuggled. Of course. Part of the money would be washed that way. Use dirty money to buy art quietly. Ship art abroad where it’s sold for clean money that can come back quite legally.
I opened the door to what seemed like a den, but the air was empty of the scents of use: no paper, no hot plastic from faxes and computers, no smoke or alcohol, no late-night sweat. The desk had a pile of papers on it, but they were tidy and curling at the edges. This was a front.
At the end of the hallway was a second, smaller stairway leading to the third floor. I walked up two stairs and tilted my head back. From above my head came a creak and sigh, the sound of a bored man on a chair outside a room. A guard. Another time, then.
The music from below was louder, a lot louder, and now it had a pronounced beat. People were dancing. I started downstairs.
Charlie Sweeting met me in the hall. “There you are. I think your young charge might have had a bit too much to drink.”
“Where?”
He stepped back. “It wasn’t my—”
“Where?”
“Dancing.”
He had to almost run to keep up. People peeled from my path like sod before the plough.
One of those party songs from the early eighties was thumping from the speakers and the dance floor was half full. Beatriz was being whirled around by some young man. Her hair was loose, eyes brilliant, cheeks flushed. She was laughing. People were watching. But her feet were sure and her energy high.
“She’s not drunk. Just having the time of her life.” I smiled at Charlie, as much to make everyone in the room relax as to reassure him. He muttered something I didn’t hear over the music, and headed for the quieter back parlour. I watched him walk past the Kenworthys, who were talking to someone with his back to me, then turned again to the dance floor. I watched for a long time, unseen.