Bone Deep

25

In the pre-electronic age Peter Stanhope would have been called a private investigator. Today he was a security specialist who spent more time devising alarm systems and computer safeguards than tracking missing persons or counseling jealous husbands, but for a price he was still willing to do what the customer required. It was unusual for a suspicious man to have another man tailed, but the world was changing and Stanhope saw no profit in prejudice. Passion was passion, regardless of the source.

Stanhope suspected that his client had not given his right name, but he had no problem with that, either. Clients had many reasons to wish to remain anonymous, some of them legitimate, and it was of no real concern to Stanhope what they were. He was paid to provide information and that is what he did, no questions asked-provided the cashier's check for his services was good.

"Dr. Kom is a busy man," Stanhope said now, tapping a folder on the desk in front of him. "Hyperactive, you might say."

"So I've heard," said the client.

"So busy, in fact, that the operatives assigned to him were unable to find out anything about two of the women he was meeting-they had to keep after the doctor when the women left. Since you wanted a twenty-four-hour-per day surveillance of Dr. Kom, you were already employing three operatives full-time. If you wish to assign another operative to the case-which will add to the bill, I'm afraid, there's no discount for more activity-the other operative could determine the identity of the women he's meeting."

"I'm more interested in what you know than what you don't know," the client said brusquely. "Of course," Stanhope said smoothly. He opened the folder and spoke in the semiformal way that clients found most assuring. "You requested a summary of his activities when he was not at home, in his office, or in the hospital. In the past seven days he has had liaisons with three women other than his wife. He rented rooms in two separate motels. He paid in cash in the first instance and did not sign the register, which the clerk said was common practice. The clerk also said he might have seen Dr. Kom before but he was not certain.

Commencing at eight thirty-seven P.m., he spent one hundred and ten minutes in room seventeen with a woman approximately thirty-five years old, shoulderlength blond hair five-foot-six or — seven, fair complexion.

Kom opened the motel door when the woman's car arrived and she went directly into the room. The operative describes her as slim of build and adds that she did not think the blonde was natural. The operative in this case is female and I think we can trust her assessment. There is a good deal of description of the woman's attire if you'd care to hear it…"

Stanhope elicited a response with an arched eyebrow. The client gave a minimal shake of his head. Stanhope continued.

"Different operatives have different strengths," he said. "The woman arrived in a 1994 black Acura sedan and remained in the room after the doctor left the motel. The Acura is registered in the name of Nathan Waxman of Eight seventy-three Summer Street in Darien. The following day Dr. Kom left his office in Norwalk at eleven-sixteen A.M. and drove to New York City via the Merritt Parkway. He had lunch at a restaurant called Enrico's on East Sixtyseventh Street between Lexington and Third.

The client shifted his position in his chair and Stanhope looked up at him expectantly, waiting to be interrupted. The client's expression had not changed, only his body language. Stanhope returned to his paraphrase of the information in the folder before him.

"Kom had lunch at Enrico's with a woman who was already present when he arrived. The woman remained seated throughout Kom's stay, so the operative has no estimate as to size or weight. He describes her as very attractive, brunette with shoulder-length hair, wearing a dark blue business suit. No eye color was noted, as the operative could not get close enough. At one point the pair held hands on top of the table.

When Dr. Kom left they exchanged a kiss. The operative was not yet in position when Kom entered the restaurant and thus says nothing about how they greeted one another. The lunch lasted an hour and five minutes.

Kom left the restaurant, returned to his parking garage, and drove straight back to his office in Norwalk.

"The third meeting took place at a motel in the town of Trumbull, a twenty-minute drive from Dr. Kom's office, again on the Merritt. This was Tuesday, four days ago. Kom went directly from his car to room thirty-six, where the door was partially ajar. Again, in order not to expose himself, the operative was not yet in a position to see who, if anyone, opened the door. One assumes that a woman had preceded him and rented the room herself. The clerk was not forthcoming about details but the operative did manage to get close enough to room thirty-six to hear a woman's voice. He describes it as 'moaning low." The operative assumes sexual congress took place. You can understand that he was not able to remain in that position very long, so he could hear none of the actual conversation-if there was any. Once again, Kom and the woman left separately, Kom tirst. The operative offers no description of either the woman or her car, assuming she arrived in one."

Stanhope closed the folder with a decisive gesture, as if pleased with the job he had done, and equally pleased to be finished. "For the last four days he has limited his activities to his office and his home. And that brings us up to date," he said.

"Was there any local activity?"

"Local activity?"

"You kept his house under surveillance when he was home, didn't you?"

"Yes, of course."

"Did he leave the house at night?"

"It would be mentioned," said Stanhope, temporarily flustered, opening the file again.

"Would it?"

"Certainly… Sir, I assure you, there is no suggestion that his car ever left his driveway-"

"Did I ask you to watch the man, or his car?"

"The man, of course. And I assure you we did just that. Our surveillance is quite thorough."

"Does your report mention that for two of the last four nights the good Dr. Kom left his house around ten P.m. through the back door while your 'operative' was in the street in front of the house? Does it mention that he entered the woods next to his tennis court and walked through the woods until he came around to a position behind your operative? Or that he wrote down the license number on your operative's car? That was Tuesday night, which means he had discovered your operative sometime in the afternoon. Probably at the motel when he was slipping around and listening at the window when the woman was 'moaning low,' don't you suppose? Or on the ride home, who knows?

The point is, Kom knew for certain by Tuesday night that he was being followed. Which would explain why he was so quiet the rest of the week.

What would be interesting to know is what he was doing the other nights, those next two nights while operatives one, two, or three were watching the front of the house. Would you be interested in knowing, Mr.

Stanhope? I was. The first night after he identified your operative he did nothing at all. He went home and stayed home and-I think we may assume-thought over his next move. The night after that, he slipped out the back again, went into the woods again and walked to the grounds of the elementary school, crossed the playing field, crossed Clamden Road and popped into public view at Clamden Center, assuming there was any public there at eleven at night to view, which there wasn't. His wife had brought her car in for servicing at March's gas station in the center and left it there that afternoon and someone from March's had driven her home. Kom used his own keys and drove north on Clamden Road.

He was gone for forty-four minutes before he returned the car to the service station an d walked home the way he had come. And that brings us up to date. "

"How do you know this?" Stanhope asked. "Because I watched him… from the woods."

Stanhope was quiet for a long time. He twisted the folder back and forth on the desk.

"This is most unorthodoxy Stanhope said finally. "You might have interfered with the work of one of our operatives."

"I only covered what you didn't."

Stanhope rose. "Well then, shall I assume that our relationship is at an end, or will you be requiring our services further?"

"Stay on him for another week. I have to sleep sometime-but I don't want him to be able to."

Stanhope offered the file folder. "Whatever you want us to do, Mr…

Metzger, is it?"

"Close enough."

Becker took the file and entered the first coffee shop he came to, and there he sat and read the operatives' reports in detail. He had enlisted a private investigator for two reasons. One, he could not tail either Karen or Kom on his own because he would be too easily identified. Two, he could not enlist the services of the Bureau in a surveillance that might turn up Karen's name. It was to protect her name and reputation that he had chosen Kom as the target in the first place. If the world knew him for a philanderer of heroic proportions, it was only what he deserved, if even a fraction of Tovah's stories were true. But if they knew that Karen Crist, Associate Deputy Director of the FBI, was having an affair… Even thinking of it made Becker feel ill. He felt like weeping as he sat in the coffee shop; the notion of losing Karen was too awful, insupportable. It was not pride-he would beg her, he would crawl to her if he needed to do that to keep her-it was the fear of loss and the accompanying insecurity that crippled him, that made him hire an investigator, that filled him with shame for himself, for his activities, even for Karen. Becker suffered the cuckold's curse of uncertainty. Where was she now? Who was she with?

Who did she want to be with? And when Becker took her in his arms, whose image was in her mind? If one affair was acknowledged, would there ever be peace of mind? Would he ever again think that she loved him as he loved her? He was a worldly and experienced man, he knew that adultery in the right circumstances-a night in a hotel room while on a business trip, a brief and unrepeatable passion far from home, an undiscoverable and reactive response to boredom or loneliness or alcoholmeant little or nothing beyond the moment. It need not threaten a marriage, it was often no more emotionally involving than masturbation. But a continuing liaison, an affair contemplated and perpetrated at home with all the attendant risks, all of the apparent disregard for discovery by the spouse-such a relationship was played for much higher stakes and had more meaning. It was not throwaway sex, it was a perilous involvement with another that endangered stability, marriage, everything.

And there was no doubt that Karen was involved in exactly that kind of relationship with Kom. He knew Enrico's restaurant where Kom had lunch with the "very attractive" brunette. It was two blocks away from Karen's office at the Bureau. He knew the blue business suit she wore, and he had to make an effort not to visualize the holding of hands and the farewell kiss.