Authors: Harlan Coben
Myron said nothing. Greg continued to drive.
“You’ll call me if you hear something?” Greg asked.
“Sure.”
During the train ride back to Manhattan, Myron thought about what Greg had said. About Emily. And about what she’d done—and what she’d do—to save her son.
M
yron and Terese started out the next morning showering together. Myron controlled the temperature and kept the water hot. Prevents, er, shrinkage.
When they stepped out of the steamy stall, he helped Terese towel off.
“Thorough,” she said.
“We’re a full-service operation, ma’am.” He toweled her off some more.
“One thing I notice when I shower with a man,” Terese said.
“What’s that?”
“My breasts always end up squeaky clean.”
Win had left several hours ago. Lately he liked to get to the office by six. Overseas markets or something. Terese toasted a bagel while Myron fixed himself a bowl of cereal. Quisp cereal. They didn’t have it in New York anymore, but Win had it shipped in from a place called Woodsman’s in Wisconsin. Myron downed an
industrial-size spoonful; the sugar rush came at him so fast he nearly ducked.
Terese said, “I have to go back tomorrow morning.”
“I know.”
He took another spoonful, feeling her eyes on him.
“Run away with me again,” Terese said.
He glanced up at her. She looked smaller, farther away.
“I can get us the same house on the island. We can just hop on a plane and—”
“I can’t,” he interrupted.
“Oh,” she said. Then: “You need to find this Davis Taylor?”
“Yes.”
“I see. And after that …?”
Myron shook his head. They ate some more in silence.
“I’m sorry,” Myron said.
She nodded.
“Running away isn’t always the answer, Terese.”
“Myron?”
“What?”
“Do I look in the mood for platitudes?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you said that already.”
“I’m just trying to help.”
“Sometimes you can’t help,” she said. “Sometimes all that’s left is running away.”
“Not for me,” he said.
“No,” she agreed. “Not for you.”
She wasn’t angry or upset, just flat and resigned, and that scared him all the more.
An hour later Esperanza came into Myron’s office without knocking.
“Okay,” she began, grabbing a seat, “here’s what we’ve got on Davis Taylor.”
Myron leaned back and put his hands behind his head.
“One, he’s never filed a tax return with the IRS.”
“Never?”
“Glad you’re paying attention,” Esperanza said.
“Are you saying he’s never shown any income?”
“Will you let me finish?”
“Sorry.”
“Two, he has virtually no paperwork. No driver’s license. One credit card, a Visa recently issued by his bank. It has very little activity. Only one bank account, with a current balance of under two hundred dollars.”
“Suspicious,” Myron said.
“Yes.”
“When did he open the account?”
“Three months ago.”
“And before that?”
“Nada. At least nada that I’ve been able to come up with so far.”
Myron stroked his chin. “No one flies that far below the radar screen,” he said. “It has to be an alias.”
“I thought the same thing,” Esperanza said.
“And?”
“The answer is yes and no.” Myron waited for the explanation. Esperanza tucked some loose tresses behind both ears. “It appears to be a name change.”
Myron frowned. “But we got his social security number, right?”
“Right.”
“And most records are kept by social security number, not name, right?”
“Another right.”
“So I don’t get it,” Myron said. “You can’t change your social security number. A name change might make you harder to find, but it wouldn’t wipe out your past. You’d still have tax returns and stuff like that.”
Esperanza turned both palms upward. “That’s what I mean by yes and no.”
“There’s no paperwork under the social security number either?”
“That’s correct,” Esperanza said.
Myron tried to digest this. “So what’s Davis Taylor’s real name?”
“I don’t have it yet.”
“I would have thought it’d be easy to locate.”
“It would,” she said, “if he had any records at all. But he doesn’t. The social security number has no hits. It’s as though this person hasn’t done a thing in his whole life.”
Myron thought about it. “Only one explanation,” he said.
“That being?”
“A fake ID.”
Esperanza shook her head. “The social security number exists.”
“I don’t doubt that. But I think someone pulled the classic tombstone-fake-ID trick.”
“That being?”
“You go to a graveyard and find the tombstone of a dead child,” Myron said. “Someone who would be about your age if he’d lived. Then you write and request his birth certificate and paperwork and
voilà
, you’ve set up the perfect fake ID. Oldest trick in the book.”
Esperanza gave him the look she saved for his most idiotic moments. “No,” she said.
“No?”
“You think the police don’t watch TV, Myron? That doesn’t work anymore. Hasn’t worked in years, except maybe on cop shows. But just to make sure, I double-checked.”
“How?”
“Death records,” she said. “There’s a Web site that has the social security numbers of all the deceased.”
“And the number isn’t there.”
“Ding, ding, ding,” Esperanza said.
Myron leaned forward. “This makes absolutely no
sense,” he said. “Our phony Davis Taylor has gone to a great deal of trouble to create this phony ID—or at least to fly below the radar, right?”
“Right.”
“He wants no records, no paperwork, nothing.”
“Right again.”
“Even changes his name.”
“You go, boy.”
Myron put his arms out. “Then why would he sign up to be a bone marrow donor?”
“Myron?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Esperanza said.
True enough. He’d called last night and asked her to check out Davis Taylor. He had not yet told her why.
“I guess I owe you an explanation,” he said.
She shrugged.
“I sort of promised you I wouldn’t be doing this anymore,” he said.
“Investigating,” she said.
“Right. And I meant it. I wanted this to be a straight agency from now on.”
She didn’t respond. Myron glanced at the wall behind her. The sparse Client Wall again reminded him of a hair transplant that hadn’t taken. Maybe he should paint on a couple of coats of Rogaine.
“You remember Emily’s call?” he said.
“It was yesterday, Myron. My memory can sometimes go back a whole week.”
He explained it all. Some men—men Myron grudgingly admired—keep it all inside, bury their secrets, hide the pain, the whole cliché. Myron rarely did. He was not one to walk down the mean streets alone—he liked Win to be his backup. He didn’t grab a bottle of whiskey and drown his sorrows—he discussed them with Esperanza. Not very macho, but there you have it.
Esperanza stayed silent as he spoke. When he got to
the part about being Jeremy’s father, she let out a small groan and closed her eyes and kept them shut for a very long time. When she finally opened them, she asked, “So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to find the donor.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He knew that. “I don’t know,” he said.
She thought about it, shook her head in disbelief. “You have a son.”
“Seems so.”
“And you don’t know what you’re going to do about it?”
“That’s right.”
“But you’re leaning,” she said.
“Win made a pretty good case for not saying anything.”
She made a sound. “Win would.”
“Actually he claims to be using his heart.”
“If only he had one.”
“You don’t agree?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t agree.”
“You think I should tell Jeremy?”
“I think first and foremost you should put aside your Batman complex,” she said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you always try a little too hard to be heroic.”
“And that’s bad?”
“Sometimes it clouds your thinking,” she said. “The heroic thing is not always the right thing.”
“Jeremy already has a family. He has a mother and a father—”
“He has,” Esperanza interrupted, “a lie.”
They sat there and stared at each other. The phone, usually so active, was silent, as it had been for too long now. Myron wondered how he could explain it so that she would understand. She stayed still, waiting.
“We were both lucky when it came to parents,” Myron said.
“Mine are dead, Myron.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said. He took a deep breath. “How many days pass that you don’t still miss them?”
“None,” she said without hesitation.
He nodded. “We were both loved unconditionally and we both loved our parents the same way.”
Esperanza’s eyes started misting. “So?”
“So—and this was what Win said—isn’t that what makes a mother or father? Isn’t it about who raised us and loved us and not simply an accident of biology?”
Esperanza leaned back. “Win said that?”
Myron smiled. “He has his moments.”
“That he does,” she said.
“And think about your father—the one who raised and loved you. What happens to him?”
Her eyes were still misty. “My love for him is strong enough to survive the truth. Isn’t yours?”
He tilted back as though the words were jabs at his chin. “Sure,” he said. “But it would still hurt him.”
“Your father would be hurt?”
“Of course.”
“I see,” Esperanza said. “So now you’re worried about poor Greg Downing?”
“Hardly. You want to hear something awful?”
“Love to.”
“When Greg constantly refers to Jeremy as ‘my son,’ I want to yell out the truth. Right in his smug face. Just to see his reaction. Just to watch his world crumble.”
“So much for your Batman complex,” Esperanza said.
Myron held out his hands. “I have my moments too,” he said.
Esperanza stood and headed for the door.
“Where you going?”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said.
He sat back.
“You’re blocking,” she said. “You know that?”
He nodded slowly.
“When you move past it—and you will—we’ll talk about it again. Otherwise, we’re wasting our time here, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Just don’t be stupid.”
“ ‘Don’t be stupid,’ ” he repeated. “Check.”
Her departing smile was brief.
M
yron spent the rest of the day working the phones. He strapped on his Ultra Slim headset and paced the office. He talked up college coaches, mining for potential free agents. He touched base with his clients and listened to their problems, both real and imagined, therapist-style, which was a large part of his job. He sifted through his Rolodex of companies, trying to conjure up a few endorsement deals.
One serious lead came a-knocking on its own: “Mr. Bolitar? I’m Ronny Angle from Rack Enterprises. Are you familiar with us?”
“You run a bunch of topless bars, right?”
“We prefer they be called upscale exotic nightclubs.”
“And I prefer to be called a well-endowed stallion,” Myron said. “What can I do for you, Mr. Angle?”
“Ronny please. Can I call you Myron?” “Myron please.”
“Great, Myron. Rack Enterprises is entering a new venture.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’ve probably read about it. A chain of coffeehouses called La, La, Latte.”
“For real?”
“Pardon?”
“Well, I think I did see something about this, but I figured it was a joke.”
“It’s no joke, Mr. Bolitar.”
“So you guys are really going to open up topless coffee bars?”
“We prefer they be called upscale erotic coffee experiences.”
“I see. But your, uh,
baristas
will be topless, correct?”
“Correct.”
Myron thought about it. “Makes asking for milk something of a double entendre, don’t you think?”
“That’s very funny, Myron.”
“Thanks, Ronny.”
“We’re going to open with a big splash.”
“That another milk joke, Ronny?”
“No, Myron, but you’re a pretty funny guy.”
“Thanks, Ronny.”
“Let me cut right to it, okay? We like Suzze T.” Suzze T was Suzze Tamirino, a journeyman (or is it journey-woman?) on the pro tennis circuit. “We saw her picture in the
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue, and, well, we were very impressed. We’d like her to do a cameo for our grand opening.”
Myron rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “When you say cameo—”
“A brief performance.”
“How brief?”
“No more than five minutes.”
“I don’t mean brief in terms of time. I mean in terms of clothing.”
“We’d require full frontal nudity.”
“Well, thanks for thinking of us, Ronny, but I don’t think Suzze will be interested.”
“We’re offering two hundred thousand dollars.”
Myron sat up. Easy to hang up, but with this kind of dough, he had a responsibility to follow up. “How about if she wears a small top?”
“No.”
“A bikini?”
“No.”
“An itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny bikini?”
“Like in the song?”
“Exactly,” Myron said. “Like in the song.”
“I’m going to state this as plainly as I can,” Ronny said. “There must be nipple visibility.”
“Nipple visibility?”
“This point is nonnegotiable.”
“So to speak.”
Myron promised to call him back later in the week. The two men hung up. Negotiating nipple visibility. What a business.
Esperanza came in without knocking. Her eyes were wide and bright.
“Lamar Richardson is on line one,” she said.
“Lamar himself?”
She nodded.
“No relative or personal manager or favorite astrologer?”
“Lamar himself,” Esperanza repeated.
They both nodded. This was a good thing.
Myron picked up the phone. “Hello.”
“Let’s meet,” Lamar said.