The Shadow Box (19 page)

The younger Giordano smiled. He sat back, folding
his arms.

“Mohammed,” he asked, “of all those black market
steroids out there, what percent are bogus?”

“Not so much, I think. Less than one percent.”

Johnny G. seemed disappointed. He recovered. “Wait,
I asked it wrong. Forgetting the caffeine and corn oil, what
percent are the real thing? By
real,
I mean made by legal
drug companies.”

“Almost all of it is real. But almost none is legal. It
comes from many secret laboratories in Europe . . . Mexico . . . my country . . ,”

“But steroids is all they make, right?”

The Pakistani had to laugh.

“Tell Mr. Doyle what's funny.”

“They make everything.”

“Pills for anxiety, for ulcers, for arthritis? Anything a
lot of people use. Anything they can't
stop
using.”

“That is so. Yes.”

“And they're all counterfeit.”

“Of course.”

“Tell Mr. Doyle . . . wait . . . Give Mr. Doyle your
best guess on this. What percent of all prescription drugs, sold in this country . . . not just on the street
...
I mean
through drugstores and hospitals
...
is counterfeit.”

”I would say half.”

Mohammed Yahya had been sent to wash his hands.

“I'm going to ask you again,” said Fat Julie Giordano.
“Did Jake have a piece of this?”

“No.”

“But Michael did.”

“Julie . . . no.”

”I want to believe you, Brendan. But someone at Ad-
Chem, or at Lehman-Stone, has a serious beef with Mi
chael and we both know they killed Jake.”

Doyle blinked. “Mizda confirmed that?”

“He didn't know. But
you're
confirming it. Your face,
right now, says that you think they killed Jake and I want
to know what he was into.”

“Julie
...
I swear before Christ. It is
nothing
like you
think it is.”

“We know that AdChem supplies the gooks who make
heroin. Are they also making counterfeit pills?”

“To hear Mohammed Yahya, who isn't?”

“Was the Parker guy right? Was Michael some kind of
spy, you know, like . . . what do they call that in
companies?”

“Industrial espionage,” his brother answered.

Doyle grimaced. He shook his head, but slowly.

“You say no. But you don't look so sure,” said Fat
Julie.

He shook it again, more firmly. “Truth is I wondered.
But now I'm sure. If you got him talking you'd see he's
proud of all the good their products do.”

“Brendan . . . you have to help me out here.”

“Okay, listen to me,” the lawyer said quietly. “While Michael lives, I can't and won't tell anyone what I
think
might have led to this. I'll only tell you that it goes back
to a time when Mike was a little kid. There's just no way
that he could know what happened then.”

“Does Moon know?”

“Yes.”

“Gimme a number. I want to talk to him.”

“He won't tell you either. Him most of all.”

“Then he'll say so. Gimme a number.”

Chapter 14

Three days
had passed since Michael's visit to
Woods Hole. He had awakened each morning with Megan
on his mind. Megan of the tied-off blouse and rock-hard
belly. Megan of the sad and distant eyes.

He also woke with a measure of guilt because there in
the background each time was Bronwyn. Bronwyn of the
violet eyes. They were saying, “How could you? How
could you so soon?”

Well he couldn't and wouldn't. Megan was exactly what
he didn't need right now. Even if she had started to like
him a little, even if she was not a fraud, she was probably
more than a little nuts. No young girl lives so reclusive a life without having been seriously damaged somewhere
along the way. Any idiot could see that any relationship
with her was bound to be destructive. She would only
make him crazy again just when his own scars were start
ing to heal.

“
A very mature assessment, Michael.
”

“
Butt out, Dr. Greenberg.''

Three days.

And at the end of each of them, every night at midnight,
he would look out his bedroom's front window and there
would be Parnel, standing in the street below, his fingertips
held to his temples. Pamel would announce his arrival by
letting his bike fall over with a crash that could be heard
a block away.

Days starting with Megan were bad enough. He didn't need them ending with Parnel. By the third night he had
pretty much decided to take Millie's advice and invite
Parnel in. Michael would listen to his pitch and be done
with it. Then give him some work to do. The gutters
needed cleaning anyway. Michael made himself a scotch
and waited for the bike to fall over.

The crash c
a
me and he looked out. There was Parnel going into his act but suddenly something was different.
He wasn't looking at the house. He was looking back
down toward the docks and his hands were not at his
temples. He was wringing them as if in supplication.

Fallon pressed his cheek against the window and fol
lowed Parnel’s line of sight. His heart started thumping again. There, walking up, was Megan. She was dressed in
a foul-weather jacket, a thick turtleneck underneath, and
jeans. She was walking with her hands in her pockets but
she pulled one of them out and raised it. This was appar
ently to calm Parnel who was already moving toward his
bike. She reached him and put a staying hand on his shoul
der. He seemed to go limp. He stood there, nodding vigor
ously in response to whatever it was she was saying.
Abruptly, Parnel left. He didn't mount his bike. He walked
it. Twice, Michael saw him turn and make a jerky little bow in Megan's direction.

Holy shit, thought Fallon. There should have been thun
der. All bow before Megan, Queen of the Netherworld,
fashions courtesy of Sperry and Levi Strauss.

But a part of him was glad to see her.

Michael would never tell anyone what happened next.
After she rang the bell, that is. After he let her in. He
would not have believed it himself.

Fallon greeted her, dressed only in a robe and
slippers.
He told her he was out of beer but the wine was cold. He
lied about the beer. Just something to say. She ignored
him.

She began moving through the first floor, each room,
very slowly. He told her that the murders had been up
stairs. Where the lady in white appears. Except on Hallow
een when she's out eating children. But Megan didn't
smile. There was no response at all. She behaved as if he
weren't there.

His next move was to step in front of her, take her by
the shoulders, and say, “Hey. Remember me? I live here.
Michael Fallon?”

Nothing.

With one hand he lifted her chin so that she would have
to look at him. He looked into those eyes. There was nobody home. The pupils were dilated. He saw hardly
any green.

Amphetamines had to be the answer. Megan was stoned.
But if so, her heart should have been running away and
he could barely feel a pulse at her throat. Fallon stepped
aside.

It was this way all through the first and second floors.
She would linger at the oddest places. She would stop to
touch an old portrait, for example, or an antique clock.
This, he assumed, was to contact someone who had lived
here. But she also stopped at a writing desk that Fallon
knew to be a recent purchase. She would cock her head, as if listening, and then move on.

The third floor, Michael's floor, took the longest. He
had time to pour a second scotch and nearly finish it. In
his bedroom she found the Colt Python. She had touched
the nightstand, moved away, then cocked her head and
made a bee-line back to the drawer it was in. She opened
it. Using the tips of her fingers, both hands, she picked up the big chromed revolver and brought it to her lips.
She was tasting it, smelling it, he wasn't sure which.

Something else in the nightstand seemed to draw her
attention. She reached a hand back in. It found his bottle
of Seconal, another of Dalmane, and a third that contained
his last two Valium tablets. She had shown no fear of the
gun but the pill bottles clearly frightened her. And yet, wide-eyed, she brought them to her cheek. She listened to
them. Then, suddenly, she threw them. She threw them
back into the open drawer, then wiped her fingers against
her breast as if the pills had made them unclean.

She stood for a moment, gathering herself. She looked
once more at the heavy revolver. She squinted at it. A
slight nod, then another, and one more.

“Three,” she whispered. “But not you.”

It was the first time she'd spoken.

“What does that mean? Three what?”

She gave no sign that she heard him. But she crossed
the room in his direction, moving sort of sideways the
way you might approach a ledge, and she reached out to
touch him. He offered his hand but she pushed it back down. She touched his chest and listened.

She said, “Two
...
no
...
more than two. Many.”

She looked up at him. Abruptly. Eyes widened.
“Hundreds?”

It was a question. Fallon could only shrug and shake his head. The eyes, he saw, were not in focus.

She lowered them, then placed both palms against his chest. She brought her face against it. His bathrobe both
ered her. She opened it to feel his skin. She stood that
way, not moving. Fallon raised his hands to her shoulders,
more for balance than to embrace her. She stiffened at
his touch, then slowly seemed to melt. Minutes went by.
Neither moved.

Fallon had no idea what to do. Talking was no good
because she wouldn't answer. He tried sitting her down
but she resisted. Steering her toward his bed seemed totally
inappropriate because this was as unpromisingly unroman
tic a situation as he had ever been in his life. It was
like, one time, there was a girl left over at a party. She
was too stoned or drunk to be sent home and was clinging
to him. The opportunity was there, even some interest. But
to act on it would have been crummy.

And yet sex was clearly what Megan wanted. She
steered
him,
first pausing to turn off the light. He tried,
gently, to break free of her but she tightened her grip.
Megan-the-deck-ape was amazingly strong. He tried again.

“No,” she hissed sharply. “Don't.”

She raised one finger as if ordering him not to move.

Fallon threw up his arms in frustration. “Hundreds,” he hissed back at her. “What does ‘hundreds' mean?”

He asked this as the foul-weather jacket slid to the floor
and the turtleneck was being peeled off. She shook her
head sharply, then reached to undo her bra while kicking
her deck shoes aside.

“Listen . . . Megan . ...”

That finger again.

The jeans and panties came off together. But with effort. They knotted at her feet and she tore free of them. Almost
angrily. She guided him to the edge of the bed and, with
her free hand, pulled back the comforter. She climbed in
first and pulled him down with her. They lay together.
Neither moved.

This was not lovemaking. This was not even sex. That
girl at the party would have been a transcendent, soaring
joining of hearts compared to this. This reminded him
more of his first dancing lesson, aged thirteen and shy,
when he could not bring himself to touch the Arthur Mur
ray lady's waist with more than his fingertips and kept
arching his back lest he chance to come in contact with
her bosom.

Megan rolled over him. She straddled him, sitting up
right. Fallon, for the first time, felt himself rising. Until
now, he did not think it would happen. Megan felt him as
well. She took him in her hand and then the damndest
expression crossed her face. It was sort of a what-am-I-supposed-to-do-with-this look followed by an oh-yeah-
I-remember.

They had sex, sort of. And of the unsafe kind. Not a
moan out of Megan. Not a hint of heavy breathing. It took
Fallon quite a while to make his plumbing work. To make
it work at all, he had to envision Megan setting that storm
jib, dressed in her cutoffs and that blouse tied off at the
waist. To Fallon, in this circumstance, that picture was
infinitely more erotic than Megan astride him, totally nude
but a zombie.