Kat pushed her hair out of her face. “I thought you could help me.”
“Of course I’ll help you.”
“I mean something else.”
“I’m mystified.”
Kat thought for a moment. “I thought you could be helpful. I thought that you could discover, quote unquote, the story, this story, by talking to Becky and then I could make you my primary source. I thought you’d be more of a hook than some Indian woman no one ever heard of. My editor’s trying to kill the story and I got desperate. It’s totally unethical, it wouldn’t have worked, and I’m sorry.”
“So it’s a big story. For you, I mean. Professionally.”
Kat looked at him. He seemed to be taking it with equanimity, or perhaps he was flattered by the idea that he was a bigger hook than Becky. He kept his eyes on the road. “I think it is. It could change things for me, yeah,” she said. “If I find him, that is.”
“Your friend’s sure?”
“She’s sure. She identified him.”
“Why do you think he stayed around here?”
Kat shrugged. “Perversity. Sense of humor. Wanting to see if he’d get caught. Who knows?”
They’d entered the motel strip on the outskirts of Cherry City, neon motor courts and cocksure three-story chains looming over their dingy patches of private beach. Vacancies everywhere. The state cruiser was stopped, lights flashing, in the parking lot of one of the motels, but there was no other sign of activity.
“Why would he want to get caught?”
“Why would he want to spend his life running from people who’ll kill him as soon as they find him, with a suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills to worry about?”
“Too complicated for me,” said Mulligan.
Kat snorted.
“What’s so funny?”
“Look who’s talking.”
“Me? You’re kidding, right? You just confessed to this Machiavellian scheme. At least I try to keep things simple.”
“Oh, is that right?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Kat opened her mouth and then shut it again.
“Go on,” said Mulligan. His voice had a forced quality to it, as if the chipper tone he attempted wasn’t good for his respiratory system. “Go on. You have a theory. Everybody’s always got a theory they like.”
“Maybe I do have a theory. It’s not about you, though. OK?”
“I thought you were talking about me.”
“No, you were talking about you. As usual.”
“You were saying?”
“What I was saying.” She pursed her lips and nodded her head for a moment. She continued. “What I was saying was this. I looked you up.”
Mulligan’s face registered a kind of dumb smirky pleasure.
“Obviously, I was interested,” she went on. “I found out a lot more about you than I expected. You’re notorious, in a way. Or you were, anyhow.”
“Good old Internet,” said Mulligan. “Keeps everything fresh.”
“All that trouble, over this little piece of private business that didn’t have to hurt anyone. I’ve done it. As you’re aware. The gas station attendant’s probably done it. Look at all these motel rooms around here, Alexander. How do you think they pay the bills all winter long? A pair of bodies coming together, just for fun. No greater motive. And it could have stayed just between the two of you, but you both tossed a grenade into a crowded room and then stayed around for the explosion. Which makes me think something.”
“What,” said Mulligan, tightly.
“You must have liked it.”
“You think I liked it.”
“I think you both liked it. It was built into the affair, some self-destructive drama factor. So don’t come on all shocked about why Saltino would want to get caught.”
They rode in silence for a while. Kat said, “You know what else? What you did, what Saltino’s doing, that’s the typical thing. Look, Mom, no hands. Check me out. Which I don’t get. I think that every day you should do one thing you’ll never tell anybody about, that you’ll make sure no one ever finds out about. Every single day, to remind you that you’re free. To be free. Sometimes it’s the only way you know you’re alive, by keeping some secret knowledge that’s going to die when you do.”
“That’s a whole lot of secrets.”
“And a lot of inconsequence. All that BS about everything being connected, about chains of cause and effect. It’s not true. We’re just each of us alone.”
“Pretty cynical.”
“It’s not that it never matters, Alexander. It’s that it rarely matters.”
“I don’t know if that’s true.”
“’Course you don’t. It’s the total opposite of you. Secrets? You don’t need no stinking secrets. Whatever you do, whatever pops into your head, you have to turn it into a story. It’s compulsive.”
Mulligan didn’t speak. They were in some traffic now, moving into downtown.
“What happened to her, anyway? You went back to your wife. Did she end up back with her husband? When you were done with her?”
“No,” said Mulligan. “She never went back to her husband.”
“You in touch?”
Mulligan glared at her. “I thought you looked it all up.” He made a left and headed into the residential sections. “I’m taking you with me to my house,” he said. He felt a sharp thrill speaking to her as if she were an object.
“What if I want to go back to the hotel?” she said.
He didn’t have to look at her. “You don’t,” he informed her.
FOUR DAYS AGO
Hanshaw dressed in a clean, faded pair of coveralls that he found in his garage, in a box that hadn’t been touched since Annie had packed and labeled it and hoisted it onto the shelf. It was a box of folded clothes she’d probably intended to take to the Goodwill, and she had left nothing of her essence in it, but he’d lingered over her careful everyday handiwork for a moment. She’d been a tidy one. Then he’d rifled through the box until he found what he was looking for and shoved the box back on the shelf. From under the front seat of the truck he retrieved a magnetic sign that read SUMMIT HEATING AND VENTILATION SERVICE AND REPAIRS and slapped it on the driver’s door. He drove to the casino in a light mist, wipers flicking intermittently across the windshield. He went around to the back of the building and parked near the service area. He took a toolbox out of the truckbed and carried it inside. He rode up in the service elevator with two maids and their trolleys.
“What’s broken now?” one said.
He looked at her.
“I don’t know what holds this place together,” said the other. “The entire building must have been rebuilt already piece by piece.”
“Did you know,” said the first, “that all your cells die and get replaced numerous times over the course of your life? We lose over a pound of skin alone every year. There’s no part of us you can see that’s original.”
“Have a nice day,” he said, getting off on his floor. He walked purposefully into the corridor, deliberately nodding at a passing pair of guests, then crouched at the door to Argenziano’s suite. He opened the toolbox and removed a butter knife and a pair of gloves. The likely cycle programmed into the security system would bring his image into view on the monitors in the security room at ninety-second intervals for four seconds each time. He assumed that the odds were in his favor. Of course, all of his activities would be recorded on the DVR, but it was unlikely that anyone would review the data before it was deleted, unless he was interrupted, in which case it would hardly matter. Still, he worked quickly to get the door open, inserting the blade of the knife between the Saflok and the jamb and forcing it downward. In and out. Once inside, he placed the toolbox on the floor and removed his shoes. The suite was modest; the door opened onto a small sitting room with a love seat and an easy chair. The television dominated the room. A kitchenette was in an alcove to one side. Hanshaw crossed the space and entered the bedroom. There was a bed, a bureau, a nightstand, a desk. He proceeded from most obvious to least obvious and hoped that he would find what he was looking for before he had to plunge his arm down the toilet or into a jar of mayonnaise. It occurred to Hanshaw as he flipped through the papers in the desk that while he rarely asked questions, he often looked for answers. He knew that he wanted to be sure about what he was doing. He had about three scruples left and he liked to exercise them when he could. He looked through financial documents for ten minutes before deciding that Argenziano probably hadn’t left any obvious record of his misdeeds, which figured. He opened the closet and poked around for a while amid the suits and shirts. Nothing. He sat down on the bed and looked around. As he gazed at the wall opposite the foot of the bed, he noticed a jagged crack running from about eight inches beneath the ceiling. It disappeared behind a framed reproduction of Wheat Field with Crows, then appeared again below the frame. Hanshaw stared hard at it. The reproduction, alone amid all the fussily symmetrical decor, was off-center, and appeared to have been moved from its original spot above the bureau. He rose and lifted the frame from the wall. A safe had been installed behind it. It was definitely aftermarket: he’d already spotted the room safe in the closet. It was also definitely too small to hold much cash. He returned to the front door and retrieved the toolbox, then sat on the bed again and contemplated the safe. It had a basic keypad entry system. He could try to remove the safe from the wall and reset the code through the mounting-bolt holes, but it would be crude and time-consuming. He went to the desk and found a document with Argenziano’s birthdate, then returned to the safe and entered the first four digits, figuring it was worth a shot. The safe emitted three beeps and a small green light went on next to the keypad.