About Face (16 page)

“Right then. Feel good. Get yourself back together. Ivan?”

“Yes?”

“Why are you outside?”

Shit. He hears the rain behind me.

“Ran out to get some milk of magnesia,” I hear myself say, immediately wishing I could catch the words before they make it out the other end.

Milk of magnesia?

Really?

This is the best I can come up with?

Silence.

“Gotcha,” Cobus responds after a pause. “Why not just have someone from the hotel fetch it?”

“Tried that. They were taking too long, so I decided to handle it myself. No big deal.”

“Got it. Get yourself right. See you at eight.”

He's gone.

I wait outside for what feels like a month. The rain and umbrella keep me shielded from most passersby. I nod cordially to those who happen to catch my eye. I wait. The rain stops. Twenty minutes later it starts again. I look at the new rose-gold Perregaux strapped to my wrist—6:50 p.m. I decide though people will still be coming by for a few hours, many more in the last little while have gone than come. Sensing a lull in the action inside, I head back to the house and up the stairs.

I look at the doorbell but opt for a semi-gentle knock. Nothing. I knock again. Just as I do, the door opens. It's Green's widow, and she's shell-shocked by my presence. She goes to slam the door.

I raise my hand and catch it so strong, so easily, there's zero give. She's so light she loses her balance a bit. We stare into one another's eyes. Again—sour face. She's searching for words she can't find. She's so pissed I think either the throbbing vein in her neck is going to explode or she's going to scream as loud as she can.

“Who do you think you are?” she pushes through her teeth.

“Please. I need to speak to you.”

“How dare you!” she forges on. “Do you have any idea—”

“Your husband contacted me before he died,” I cut her off.

I take a second and let her absorb my words. She's confused. Her expression unwittingly softens.

“Please,” I continue, “the last thing I want to do is cause you more pain. I'm not trying to hurt you. I simply need to talk to you.”

A glimmer of the strength I saw in her face hours earlier when we met returns. She turns back into the doorway, surveys the immediate area inside, then closes the door behind her. She steps under the umbrella with me. A cylindrical sheet of water falls all around us; it's like we're in a fairytale standing under a waterfall but not getting wet. We're face-to-face, my chin down a bit, her chin up.

“What do you mean, he contacted you?”

“He left me with something. A message, I believe.”

I decide this is the better way to go than telling her I watched him splatter his own head on a wall. At least for now.

“A message? I don't understand. What kind of message?”

“I'm not sure. And it might not have to do with you or your home. But I believe your husband—”

“Scott.”

“—Scott was trying to tell me something. Something that may be linked to his death.”

“What do you need from me?”

“Did Scott have a home office?”

We head back inside. As I guessed, the crowd has thinned for the time being. A couple of eyes from the dining room catch us as we cross the space, but nothing more.

I follow her up the wide, wooden staircase, some of our steps in unison, others a far cry from alignment. Once we hit the second-floor landing, we make a left and head down a narrow, navy-blue walled hallway lined with beautiful black-and-white photos of nothing but trees and leaves. At the end of the hallway we come to a door.

She's hesitant to turn the doorknob.

“I haven't been in here since I lost him,” she says, her back still to me. “Some officers came by to have a look—”

Shiny Dome Lovell, I imagine.

“But I just pointed them upstairs.”

“Would you rather I go in alone?” I ask.

She pauses then gently shakes her head.

“No.”

She turns the knob. Past her I see the office. Like the one at GlassWell, it's a complete mess.

She takes a couple steps inside and stops. I walk past her. Outfitting the wall to my left, facing Green's desk, is a large wall unit holding family pictures, a huge flat-screen in the center, stacks of what appear to be golf magazines, and paperweights commemorating certain real estate deals. The wall behind the desk is lined from floor to ceiling with bookcases stuffed with all kinds of materials. There are law books, real estate books and publications, you name it. I even see some novels in the mix—Silva, Coben, King, and Berry among other top names. I look across to the far wall where the windows are and walk over to them. Through rain-streaked glass I get a distorted look at a dark, soaked Thirtieth Street. I turn back in and face Green's widow. Then I take a few steps toward the weathered, black leather chair behind the old, nicked, black-painted wooden desk and I stop. I gesture toward the chair.

“May I?” I ask.

“Sure.”

I sit down in the chair and scan the desk. Just like his desk at GlassWell, it's a heap of files, Diet Coke cans, rubber bands, Tums, pens, pencils, and newspapers. In the far center, at the rear of the desk's surface farthest away from me, I notice a pen set holder. The base is unique. It's a raw, rough, rectangular chunk of white onyx about ten inches wide, six inches deep, and an inch thick. It sits in a sterling silver frame holding it about a centimeter off the desk. On top are two translucent holders.

Only one holds a pen.

The one on the right.

It's silver.

The butt, sticking up, is flat and engraved with the letter
W
.

I move my eyes again to my host. Her eyes take in my gaze; she's anxious. Without blinking, our vision locked, I reach into my inside jacket pocket and pull from it the set's match. As she catches a glimpse of it, she covers her mouth. When she does, I feel my heart race. The nerve endings on my neck and arms have my skin so sensitive I want to rip my shirt off.

I place the pen back in its rightful spot, an action that brings an unexpected sense of accomplishment. The pen has been on quite a journey, a cross-Atlantic-and-back odyssey that happened solely for the purpose of it finding its way back to this holder, right where it started, simply to tell me something. In the moment, I feel connected to Scott Green. And looking into his widow's eyes, I feel infinitely sadder for him.

A muffled choke, cry, sniffle thing escapes through her fingers. I look at the pens, the matching set.

“
D
and
W
,” I say.

“David and Wendy. Our children,” she responds. “Why do you have that?”

“Because your husband gave it to me.”

“When? Why?”

I leave the first one word question alone. The less she has about me, or the situation, the better. But I need to offer something to keep her believing in our newfound trust.

“I have no idea,” I say, responding to the latter.

David and Wendy.

Their children.

And?

I don't get it. I look around the desk again for nothing in particular, for no particular reason. Then again back at Green's widow.

“Are either of your children involved in real estate? Are they somehow connected to what your husband does?”

Shit.

“I'm sorry—did?”

“It's okay. No. Not at all.”

“Why did you get so angry once I said I knew your husband through business?” I change directions.

“Because his work is what killed him. Somehow, in some way, it's because of those people at GlassWell he's dead. My husband was a strong man, a man who loved his family. He would never take his own life. I don't care what the authorities say. Somehow, in some way, they did this.”

“Why do you say that?”

She takes a second and draws a deep breath while collecting her thoughts.

“Scott always dreamed of being in-house counsel for a big player, for a company that really mattered in the big picture. Since he started at GlassWell the workload has always been immense. One deal that required his undivided attention ran into the next, but these last few months were different.”

“Different? How?”

“It all got to him unlike it ever had before. The stress, the calls. Scott always liked a cocktail, but lately it had been different. I've never seen him drink in all the years we were together like he had been lately. He was definitely trying to escape something.”

“Calls? What kind of calls?”

“Calls that would happen at odd times. Late, early, whenever. I'd ask who it was. All he'd do is bark at me ‘No one. Just work.' All I know is he'd been literally having nightmares lately. He'd wake up sweating and shaking in the middle of the night.”

My gut feeling tears my ass from Green's chair. I lean forward and lift the penholder. It's heavy, solid rock. I sit back down with it. I remove the pens and place them on the desk. I start to manipulate the base in my hands. I immediately feel the rock and sterling are two pieces. I separate them. I closely examine each piece. Nothing. I shake each piece, as if hoping to hear something rattle inside. Nothing.

I don't get it.

I decide to start from scratch. I reassemble the pen set holder, then I replace the pens. I stare at the set.

The pen.

I remember Green's words:

“That pen, my young friend, is everything.”

I take the pen from the set again. Noticing a thin line running around the circumference of the center, I decide to unscrew it. When I do, it separates into two pieces. And something falls out of the top half.

I hear Green's widow suck in air as I reach down and pick it up.

“What is that?” she asks.

“A Micro UDP-chip,” I say, “or the world's smallest flash drive.”

“Flash what?”

I recognize the technology. It is the latest and greatest in electronic file storage—a USB flash drive so small it measures only three-quarters of an inch by a half inch, and is a millimeter thick. But this discovery leaves me with another question.

Why give it to me hidden in a pen?

Why not just hand it to me?

I think about running it right now in Green's desktop computer, but decide against it. God only knows what it contains. And I have no idea what this woman can or cannot handle, or really who these people even are.

I stand up and walk toward her.

“Thank you, Mrs. Green, for—”

“Anne,” she corrects me.

“Thank you—Anne—for trusting me. Now, I need you to keep doing just that—trusting me. You can't tell anyone about this. In fact, you can't tell anyone at all I was even here.”

“I don't understand? What was—why?”

“The only way I can hopefully find the answers you're looking for is by working on my own. Answers about your husband.”

“Why not just go to the police?” she asks.

“Because if it were that easy, your husband would have done so.”

S
T
. G
ALLEN
, S
WITZERLAND
2004

Over the course of the next five months, Gaston Piccard's country chalet became our entire world. Within a week, our physical transformation began. A world-renowned plastic surgeon who happened to be one of Gaston's childhood friends was secured. I was told he never knew any of our names or identities. All he knew was he'd be making a small mountain of cash for a few days work.

The attic of the four-story home was transformed into a wild contrast of rustic wood and state-of-the-art medical equipment with a couple small windows overlooking the lush, storybook countryside. The white-and-silver machines seemed so sterile you could drag your tongue across them, while at the same time the thought of walking in the space barefoot screamed “splinter.”

My surgery was hardcore. I was a full-out global fugitive, therefore I couldn't take even the slightest of chances. Changing an identity is all about the face. Altering the body surgically is both unnecessarily agonizing and pointless. If someone looks the same but has broader shoulders or they're a couple inches taller, they're still toast. But if a serial killer on the FBI's “America's Most Wanted” list were to brush shoulders with law enforcement with the
same exact bodily proportions but with a few strategic facial alterations they'd probably never recognize him.

In my briefing before we got started it was explained that in the world of plastic surgery there are two choices: to enhance or take away. For example, let's take the eyebrow line. We each have a certain projection of our brow based on cell tissue thickness and the proportion of our skull. If the brow starts out as protrusive, you can reduce, or make even more protrusive. If the bone starts out weaker—not dominant in terms of appearance strength with regard to a certain feature—you can build upon it: bone grafting, injection fills, or silicone implants.

All options have their pros and cons. Injections can be effective, but whether right under the skin like Botox or the deeper shit like Restolin, you're talking like six months before it has to be done again. Bone grafting while truly appearance altering requires bone to be taken from somewhere else—either another part of the body or a third party. Silicone can also be insanely effective in terms of changing one's look, and you'd be surprised to learn implants don't simply come in perfectly round bags for fake tits—they come in all crazy-shaped, small derivations made to be stuffed up into your face to change your cheekbones, eye sockets, you name it. But, this stuff can leak. The language of plastic surgery is a complicated one. Understood, it seems, only by those who perform it and upper-crust women who elect to put themselves through it.

The tip of my nose—do you think I went with more of a point or the exact opposite which left it looking like a little ass? Or what about the angle of how my nostrils attach to my face?