A Safe House

32

Stone, Jenna, Dino, and Viv were having dinner in the kitchen booth downstairs, talking of not much, when Jenna brought them to attention.

“I have a job,” she said.

Everybody else stopped talking. Images flashed through Stone’s mind of her in the typing pool at Steele Insurance.

“Tell more,” Stone finally managed to say.

“It’s a modeling job. A trusted friend booked it for me,” Jenna said. “It’s the cover of a mother/daughter special edition of Vogue.” She looked around at the blank faces staring at her. “I’m the mother,” she said.

“Oh,” Stone said.

“Let me see if I can answer the questions you probably have,” Jenna said. “First of all, it shoots tomorrow, but it doesn’t publish for another couple of months.”

“Are you getting a published credit for the work?” Viv asked. “I mean, on the contents page where it gives the name of the cover photographer: Does it also give your name?”

“The photographer is Harry Benson.”

“Good. Wonderful,” Viv said. “Does it give your name?”

“Yes.”

“Which name?”

“Jenna Jacoby.”

Each of the diners emitted an unintelligible sound.

“I can’t go on being Jamie,” Jenna said. “Being her means that I don’t exist. I tried to use a credit card on a phone purchase today, and they said the card account was closed. I can’t go into my bank and cash a check.” She looked around the table at their faces. “Is anybody hearing what I’m saying?”

“Actually,” Stone said, “I spent half an hour on the phone with Lance Cabot today, explaining that very thing to him.”

“And what did Lance say?”

“He said, and I quote: ‘I’ll get back to you.’ ”

“Has he?”

“Not yet.”

“I can’t go on being dead,” Jenna said. “I can’t live that way.”

“Literally, true,” Viv said.

“So, what’s the answer?”

“The answer to what?” Dino asked.

“We need all the publications that said I was dead to say that I’m not.”

“I think the news report that you are not dead would get more media coverage than the one that said you were.”

Dino spoke up. “I can see the line on the ‘corrections’ page in the Times: ‘Last week we said Jenna Jacoby was dead. She is not. Our apologies to everyone who thought she was.’ ”

“Do you think they will also say that Senator Wallace Slade, R-Tex, didn’t murder her?” Stone asked. “Otherwise, he’s going to sue the socks off them.”

“That’s Lance’s problem, isn’t it?” Dino asked.

“Yes, but I don’t want to be the one telling him that.”

“Are you afraid he’ll press a button and dissolve the phone in your hand?”

“Something like that,” Stone said. “And my ear with it.”

“Okay, that’s your problem.”

“Let’s go back to the root of this business,” Viv said. “Who was the first person to say that Jenna was Jamie?”

“I don’t think that anybody actually spoke those words,” Stone said. “The idea just sort of descended from above.”

“You’re blaming God?” Viv asked.

“No, no, it was just so obvious that we all went along with it.”

“How did it get into the papers?”

“I don’t know. Lance sort of jiggled an elbow or something, and the next thing we knew, it was on the AP wire.”

“So, it’s Lance’s elbow’s problem?”

“Sort of.”

“Then you’d better add that to the list of other things you have to tell Lance.”

“I’ll try to remember that. Anybody want dessert?”

Stone was at his desk the next morning when Joan buzzed him. “Lance on one.”

Stone picked up. “Hello?”

“Scramble.”

“I’m scrambled.”

“You’re sure? I don’t want any mistakes about that.”

“Is this conversation being recorded?”

“You should assume,” Lance said, “that any phone conversation with a high official in American Intelligence is being recorded.”

“Okay, I’ll listen, but I won’t talk.”

“Then how can you tell me what I need to know?”

Stone remained silent.

“Stone?”

“I’m listening.”

“Oh, all right, I’ll turn it off. There. You are not being recorded.”

“You swear?”

“You can’t ask me to swear. I’m not testifying.”

“I don’t care, I want you to swear you’re not recording this conversation. I want it on the tape.”

“I swear this conversation is not being recorded. There, it’s on the tape.”

“Okay. Jenna is out right now, breaking cover.”

“That’s an odd locution.”

“It’s a bird-hunting expression, I think. Possibly quail. I’m not sure about that.”

“How is she breaking cover?”

“She’s being photographed by Harry Benson for the cover of Vogue, as we speak.”

“Jesus H. Christ!”

“You read that somewhere.”

“Tell me more!”

“It’s for a mother/daughter issue. Jenna is the mother. It comes out in a couple of months, and her name will appear on an inside page.”

“But she’ll look like Jamie, what with the new hair and makeup.”

“Who knows? But her cover will be blown.”

“Well, at least we’ll have some time to get her dead again.”

“She won’t have it, Lance. She says she’s Jenna again, and you have to make everybody who said she was dead take it back.”

“That’s not a problem. We’ll just say that she’s alive. That will make nationwide headlines.”

“That’s good for me,” Stone said. “But what are you going to do about the odious Wallace Slade?”

“Do? Why do I have to do?”

“Because your first news story implied that he murdered her, or had it done. He could sue, big-time.”

“There is no such news story with my name on it,” Lance said resolutely. “I do not do bylines.”

“Okay, problem solved. Now, how about the one about keeping Jenna alive?”

“If she’s going to ‘break cover,’ as you so sportingly put it, then she’s on her own. I’m having nothing to do with Vogue, and I’m having nothing to do with subsequent events, whatever they might be.”

“Well,” Stone said, “that solves all your problems. I’ll explain it to her.”

“Don’t mention my name,” Lance said.

“What?”

“We’re recording again, now.” He hung up.