Runner

13

Richard Beale was in his office with the door open, staring out over his empty desk, across the lobby. This had been his father's office originally, and Andy Beale considered windows a distraction and a threat to privacy. But with the office door open Richard could look across the lobby with its glass walls opening onto the sunny courtyard. In the courtyard was a captive garden full of green tropical plants—sago palms, huge bromeliads, a few large ficus trees and one exotic eucalyptus with bark that looked like human skin. The receptionist's desk was right in front of the glass wall, so the sunlight always came in above and behind her and made her glow like an angel. Richard thought the view probably had been partly responsible for his troubles with Christine Monahan, and with a few of her predecessors.

Receptionists were beautiful. They simply were, just as bouncers at clubs were big and muscular. The physical attributes were part of the job. No skill or training, no other quality would do. The job of a bouncer wasn't to escort the unruly out of the bar and kick the shit out of them. The job was to scare the potentially unruly out of that train of thought by looking big and fierce. An adequate receptionist was at least pretty. The better she looked, the more substantial and respectable she made the company seem, because beauty was a commodity like anything else on the planet. Straight white teeth, delicate features, shining hair, a thin waist cost extra money, just as comfortable, well-designed waiting room furniture cost more than bad furniture.

Richard's father, Andy Beale, had often hired women who had been in beauty pageants. They had all learned to dress conservatively, walk gracefully in high heels, speak pleasantly, and produce convincing smiles. He had only been interested in those young women who had risen to become either queen of something or runners-up—what he referred to as "win, place, or show"—because they were the ones who had learned the most and tried the hardest. He was quite open about it, too, because the pageants all claimed loudly that they were about character, leadership, and scholarly ability.

The only time he'd had the threat of a lawsuit was an incident when he had been taken by surprise early in the morning. He had come into the building right at opening time and found that the receptionist he had hired only a week before had gotten her hair cut short. Andy Beale had let his disappointment slip out. "I hired you for your hair, damn it. That long, shiny black hair was the one thing that put you ahead of three other applicants."

Andy Beale had made himself into a multimillionaire because he was able to observe human behavior accurately. He had spent forty years noticing that when women cut their hair short, other women would say it was "cute" or "smart" or some such thing, but he had never, in any of the thousand times when he'd seen it, heard anything approaching approval by any male. He also had developed a clear-eyed view of the competitive nature of women. He knew that when one woman said to another that her hairstyle was "smart," she meant the opposite. The pleasure that could be heard in the woman's voice was delight over the temporary downfall of a rival.

He had stepped inside Richard's office and explained the true dimensions of the girl's mistake. Not only had she diminished her attraction for the Beale family's real estate customers, lenders, clients, and tenants, most of whom were male, she had also persuaded Andy Beale that she did not have the practical, commonsense variety of intelligence that he knew was necessary for success in business. He told Richard, "I had hopes for her, but no more. She was a contest winner, too. Most of these pageant winners are street fighters. We've got eight of them selling condos in that Phoenix development right now. They would never handicap themselves like that. I can't get rid of her, but I want her moved. Have her answer the general company phone number from a cubicle in the big office down the hall. That's all she'll see of this company."

A few weeks later, while the former receptionist was sitting near the back of the building answering phone calls in her cubicle, her lawyer paid Andy Beale a visit. Andy had not threatened to fire the girl, and she had accurately reported that to her lawyer, much to the lawyer's disappointment. But the lawyer felt that she deserved some sort of compensation in exchange for not filing a complaint. Andy Beale declined to pay off, and within a month, the woman resigned.

The reception area became a problem for Richard as soon as his father began to relinquish the daily operation of the business to him. The green plants and the light beyond the glass walls of the lobby made the reception area more inviting than the windowless office his father had insisted he take. As soon as he stepped out there for relief, the sight of the receptionist would distract him. His father never knew it, but by now Richard had caused half a dozen receptionists to quit. Richard had dated three of them, including a married woman whose husband caught her coming out of a hotel with Richard on the fifth date, one who broke up with Richard and quit on the second date, and one who threatened to charge him with sexual assault on the morning after their first date. A couple of them had refused to go out with Richard at all, and he had bothered them so often that they had begun circulating their résumés within days after accepting the job.

There had also been the case of Tracy Williamson. She had given Richard a slow case of surprise. He had not been careful. She had told him on the second date that she was on the pill, and so he had left birth control to her. But after only a few more weeks, he had realized that his firm belief in her efficiency and dependability had been induced by the way she looked in her glasses. She wore very flattering business suits to work—little tight skirts with matching jackets—and she had glasses with designer frames in about five colors to match the suits. She always looked put-together and organized. The idea that a girl like her would forget to refill her prescription for birth control pills and then forget that she had forgotten simply never occurred to Richard until he began to notice the work she had been doing at the office. There were messages she had forgotten to write down, or written down and given to the wrong rental agent or realtor. There were appointments written in Richard's calendar on the right day of the wrong month. There were letters and bills she had completed so late she'd had to take them out to mail instead of leaving them for the regular pickup, only to find them in her purse or her car a week later. She had gone out with the letters and forgotten why she was out, so she would salvage the trip by going to lunch or shopping.

When he realized how forgetful and disorganized she was, Richard sat her down in his office, locked the door, and tried to have a serious conversation with her about whether or not she had actually been taking the pills. His first attempt was unsuccessful, because when they had gone in and locked the door the other times, it had been so they could have sex in the windowless office during the day, something that they both relished. Richard allowed the click of the bolt in the doorjamb to trigger the impulse again. But the second time, she initiated the conversation. She walked into his office, locked the door, and told him she was pregnant.

Richard offered to pay for her abortion, but she had no interest in that. She wanted Richard to marry her. He refused, she insisted. She threatened to file a paternity suit. Richard knew that he couldn't stand a lawsuit the way his father could. Tracy would demand, and probably win, full support for her and the baby for eighteen years. It was a sum that would be impossible to conceal from his parents. Richard didn't have any serious money of his own. What he had amounted to a house and car that belonged to his parents' company and a pocket full of spending money, essentially a continuation of the allowance he had received as a child.

He offered to keep Tracy on the payroll long after she had the baby and stopped working, so the company would be paying for her support. But since he had turned down her proposals, she wanted a lump-sum payment, and told him she intended to have their brief affair declared a common-law marriage. It was absurd, illegal, and unfair. But she was showing herself to be very stubborn and surprisingly efficient.

As the weeks passed and he knew that the time was coming for her condition to become visible, Richard became desperate. What Tracy didn't know was that Richard Beale would do anything to keep his parents from finding out he had made her pregnant. Richard was an only child who had been born to a difficult mother and an impossible father. He knew that their reaction to the news would be unpleasant. They had already been ordering him to marry soon and give them grandchildren. If they knew Tracy was pregnant they were likely to take her side and give her what she had wanted in the first place—Richard as a husband. He would be tied for life to a woman who was essentially an enemy. The plan he had been pursuing of embezzling a few dollars at a time until he had enough to be independent would be effectively blocked. But leaving things as they were wouldn't prevent trouble either. If his father learned that he had proposed paying Tracy off by making her a phantom employee of the company, he would fire him and throw him out on the street. The business belonged to his parents. There was no way Richard could let the pregnancy proceed long enough so his parents could see it for themselves.

Richard called Steve Demming and asked him to have lunch at a restaurant in Del Mar. He had met Demming through Jerry McGern, a lawyer he had worked with on a development five years ago. Richard had told McGern about the trouble he was having with a roofing company. They were holding the whole project for ransom by delaying and asking for extra money. McGern had said, "Let me send a guy I know to see you." The guy had turned out to be Steve Demming. The roofing company had abruptly changed its position, and the roofs began going on the houses two days later.

He had hired Demming and his crew a number of times after that, but it was always on company matters. The real estate business in coastal California was tough and competitive, and the Beale family's interests were complicated. There were employees, suppliers, and subcontractors who needed to be watched without their knowing it. There were competing developers and speculators who needed to be persuaded not to bid on certain projects. There were buyers and tenants who signed agreements they didn't think they needed to keep, and had to be taught to keep their word. There were payoffs to be delivered to inspectors, commissioners, and politicians. It was important that the people who performed these services not be employees of the Beale Company. Whenever Demming's crew did any work for Richard, he would pay them by placing one of them in the separate budgeted account of a current building project.

Richard and Demming sat on the patio of the restaurant in Del Mar looking out at the horizon, where the blue-gray sea met the blue-gray overcast sky. Richard explained his problem with Tracy and asked for Demming's help. Steve's understanding and discretion had surprised him. Steve told him that one of the women on his crew, Sybil Landreau, had too much to drink now and then, and had managed to get pregnant a couple of times. She had a cordial relationship with a doctor just over the border in Tijuana who was a favorite with the local hookers. Steve and Sybil and Pete Tilton would simply drive Tracy to the doctor and return her to the United States in a day or two. When Richard said, "Tracy won't go to Mexico with you," Demming said, "This doctor won't mind if a patient arrives anesthetized."

Richard knew that the problem had been solved, because he never heard from Tracy again. It gave him a warm feeling about Demming and his people—not just gratitude, but a kind of camaraderie. Like Richard, they were reliable. And they weren't the sort of people to look down on him for being human. They were people who sometimes had done foolish things themselves, and knew they probably would again.

The crew had solved Richard's trouble with Tracy, but that had not cured him of his receptionist problem. There was another occasion a couple of years later. The receptionist's name was Heather, and Richard had to ask Demming to handle the problem again. Heather had seemed to welcome his attentions until they had sex, but then she had begun to make snide remarks. They had sounded like jokes at first—that she was just teasing him about the fact that the way they had gotten together was, technically, sexual harassment. But the jokes came more and more often, and then she asked him for a raise. She wanted her salary doubled, and she wanted to move into one of the new condominiums the company had built and live there for free. A couple of days after Heather vanished from San Diego, Richard's cell phone rang.

"Richard? It's me—Heather."

His breath caught in his throat, but he recovered. "What's up?"

"You know damned well what's up."

"I don't."

"Your friends, your scum, drugged me and kidnapped me. I woke up in Mexico."

"Aw. That's too bad."

"Too bad? Too bad, Richard?"

"Yeah. It sure sounds that way."

"When I woke up I was in some crummy hotel with a couple of your friends. The woman said if I ever told anybody anything about you or them, they'd sell me to a Mexican whorehouse where the pimps would kill me if I tried to run away."

"Jesus, Heather. If that's true, maybe you shouldn't have told me."

"You knew, you bastard."

"No way."

"You paid them to do this to me. All I'm asking is that you admit it. Tell the truth once."

"I don't know anything about this."

"I don't believe you."

"What do you want from me? Do you want to come in and talk?"

"I can't come in and talk. I'm in Ciudad Juarez, where your friends dumped me. I don't have any money to get home. I don't want to go talk to you. I hate you. You'll never see me again, you pig." She hung up.

Richard stared at his cell phone. What could be better? he asked himself. It was perfection. They had made sure all she had was a crazy story that she would be too scared to tell, and she had just given him a guarantee that she would leave him alone forever. This was science. It was art. Richard began to cherish Demming and his crew. They never seemed to be surprised at what he asked of them, and they were never at a loss about how to accomplish it.

Of course, having Demming solve a problem was expensive, and as this Christine Monahan problem dragged on, it was becoming more so. Keeping four people traveling around searching for somebody was like keeping four people on a perpetual vacation, running up bills at hotels, restaurants, airlines, car rentals. And having Ronnie Sebrot dealing with hospitals and doctors for his knee was worse. Richard wasn't sure what it was going to cost him for Carl McGinnis's death. He was hoping that Carl was a bachelor, without a widow to pay off. He remembered hearing some remark that Carl had something going with Claudia Marshall, but that proved nothing. The crew had spent a lot of time together—lots of it nights away from San Diego—for years, and he supposed that they must have routinely taken care of each other in that way.

The phone on Richard's desk rang, and he waited while Marlene, the new receptionist, answered it. In a few seconds, his phone buzzed, and he snatched up the receiver. "Yes?"

"It's a Mr. Demming for you, Richard." The voice was musical and efficient and cheerful. He knew that what he had been thinking should have made him immune to any thoughts about the new receptionist, but it hadn't. He modulated his voice carefully so it was businesslike, yet friendly.

"Thanks, Marlene." He hit the button that was blinking. "Hi, Steve."

"Richard, I wanted to give you an update on what we're doing."

"I was hoping you were calling to say you had her."

"Not yet."

Richard hated Not yet, but he was sure Demming must remember that he hated that answer, and be saying it anyway. He couldn't afford to alienate Demming now, so he ignored his irritation. "Okay. So what's happening?"

"We've been circulating the pictures of Christine online to people around the country we think will look for her if there's money in it. We've set the payoff at a hundred thousand."

Richard swallowed, but his throat was so dry he swallowed air. "I guess that's okay. I don't actually have to pay anybody, right?"

"Actually, Richard, if they find her for us, you do. If somebody can find her, he can find you. Some of these people aren't anybody you want to fuck around with."

"Look, Steve. I'm not sure if I made this entirely clear. She's not in the same situation as the other girls I asked you to help me with. I really need Christine back here healthy and in a receptive mood."

"A receptive mood?"

"If possible, I'd like her to be happy to see me."

"It's kind of late to worry about her mood. But I'll think about it, and see what we can do."

"Thanks," said Richard. "And I appreciate your keeping me up on everything. I really need to have this work out."

"Good-bye, Richard."

Richard sat there, staring at the phone for a moment. Maybe this extra aggravation was the price for letting Demming and his crew handle personal problems for him. There was a kind of unwelcome familiarity to the way Demming had been talking to him for the past couple of weeks. He seemed at times to think he was indulging Richard's whims. Maybe that was Richard's imagination, but Demming didn't sound like an employee talking to his boss.

Richard decided that he needed to get out of the office. Maybe he would take an early lunch. Maybe he would ask Marlene the new receptionist to go with him.

"There you are." The voice was his father's.

Richard looked up. "Of course I'm here. This is my office, where I work."

"That's why I'm surprised." He came in and sat on the couch. He always sat in the center of a couch and rested both arms on the back, taking up as much space as one human being could. If anybody else wanted to sit, they would have to endure a terrible proximity to him, and only after they actually sat would he move slightly. He looked at the door as though he hadn't seen it before. "Close that door, will you, Richard?"

Richard kept himself from expressing what he felt. He got up from his desk, walked around it to the door and closed it. "What's the occasion?"

"Maybe I'm here to take a close look at what you're doing to my business. Maybe I brought fifteen CPA's and four computer experts to snoop around and see if there's anything being hidden from me. Would that bother you?"

Richard fixed a smile on his face, but he knew it was the sort of smile a man put on when he didn't want to fight an opponent he knew would crush him. "Not unless they wasted a lot of time doing it."

Andy Beale smiled, too, but his smile was more convincing, and to Richard it was chilling. Why would he say that if he didn't think Richard had something to hide? "Well, I'm just here to talk to you about Christine. Have you talked to her since the day we were out on the boat?"

"No."

"Have you even tried?"

"Of course. She left her apartment a month ago and hasn't been back. No one has heard from her."

"That's it? You knocked on her door and talked to her friends?"

Richard took a moment to decide. There were a hundred reasons not to tell him any more than he had to, but there was no way to get rid of him without meeting each of his insinuations with an answer. "I've done a lot more than that. I hired some professionals to develop their own leads and find her for me."

Andy Beale cocked his head as though he had heard a sound in the distance that he couldn't quite identify. "Well, that's interesting. Who?"

"They've done some work for us before, and they've done it well, so I trust them. They're security specialists."

"I didn't ask what they were. I said, 'Who?'"

"The head man is named Steve Demming. He has a crew of three other men and two women."

"Women? That sounds sensible. It ought to reassure her if they find her."

"That's what I think. And they will find her."

"But they don't have her."

"Not yet."

Andy Beale looked at his son with new interest. "So how are they going about it?"

"I just got off the phone with Steve. He's offering a reward and distributing photographs of her. He's also using the Internet to get people to e-mail him if they see her. He has his own sources." He saw the unchanged look of curiosity on Andy Beale's face, and knew what his father was going to say before he said it.

"That's pretty convenient for you, having somebody else do it all?"

"I've been running credit checks on her every day to see if she uses a credit card or anything. So far, she hasn't. There's a skip-tracing company that I've occasionally used to find tenants who skip owing rent. I've got them searching the big commercial databases for any sign of her."

"She's been gone for over a month. How much cash could a girl like that have—a week's worth? After that she couldn't buy a meal or fill up at a gas station without the credit bureaus noticing. She's got to be with somebody."

The conversation had moved from the uncomfortable to the excruciating for Richard, but he could not think of a way to change the subject. He tried retreating behind a haze of vagueness. "Well, we'll see."

"Yeah. You damned well ought to see. Somebody's helping that girl, probably putting her up and paying her bills and signing for things so she doesn't leave a trail. Everything you're doing only works if she's alone, and she isn't. You must have some idea of who the guys are she might know well enough. You were fucking her for six months or so. Who else was?"

Richard felt his cheeks heating up. "Nobody. She was a virgin when she came to work here. And after that I was with her all the time."

"A secretary, about half your age, who had never been with anybody else. She wasn't exactly a difficult girl to impress, was she? Wasn't that a little too easy even for you?"

"She was a pretty, young girl, good-natured and unmarried. I work very long, hard hours, in case your spies hadn't mentioned it. I'm not out very often where I might meet a lot of women."

"Yeah, I know. You're a regular monk. One way or another, you found her and got her to sleep with you. But somebody besides you is taking care of her right now. Don't you think you ought to be curious about who the guy is?"

"It's not a man. It's a woman."

"What woman? Her mother? A sister? Just trace her the way you would Christine."

"My man Steve says it's a pro—a detective or a bodyguard or something. The night they found Christine in Buffalo this woman broke one guy's knee and ran into another one with her car. I don't know much more than that, but we're assuming she's keeping Christine out of sight for now."

"This isn't normal," said Andy. "Are you sure your man Steve isn't just full of shit?"

"He's not. Why would you say that?"

"Where the hell would a girl like Christine get to know somebody like that?"

"We don't know that yet, either."

"What do you know about her relatives? Her parents?"

"Her mother died when she was a kid. Her father's in jail. He's serving a ten-year sentence for embezzling money from the company where he worked. She also has a stepmother and a half sister and brother she hates. The stepmother ended up with all the father's money and threw Christine out of the house when she was sixteen."

"It's the father, then. You've got to go see the father."

"In jail?"

"If that's where he is, that's where you see him."

"Why would I do that? He's not hiding her."

Andy Beale's expression showed his frustration and hopelessness. He didn't seem to see any point in raising his voice, or to have enough energy to do it. He blew out a breath and said carefully, "Christine is a kid. Somebody found this woman professional for her and hired her. The wicked stepmother didn't do it. The father is the most likely one. He's also sitting twenty-four hours a day in the best place there is for making contacts who know women who break legs and run over people. Maybe he talked to somebody in prison who could get in touch with the woman on the outside. From what you just said, of all the people Christine knows, the only one she's going to talk to again for sure is her father."

"And?"

"If you want to get a message to her, he's the one you have to leave it with."

"What am I supposed to say to him—that I knocked up his sweet little daughter, but he should be my buddy and help me out?"

"I said to get a message to the girl. You tell him you're in love with her. There was a spat, just a misunderstanding, and she got hurt feelings and ran out on you."

"Do I tell him I was her boss?"

"You tell him everything that will make him think you're a reasonable prospect for his daughter. You're not only her boss, but also the future owner of the company, a rich, successful guy. You're worried about her, you miss her, and you want to marry her." He glared at Richard with irritation. "Sometimes I think you're not a regular person, Richard. You're like some kind of lizard or fish or something, and you don't feel what other people feel. You have to make some kind of leap of imagination so you can figure out what to tell them to make them feel the way you want."

"What am I trying to get from him?"

"Maybe he hired this woman pro, and you can get him to let something slip about her. The least you want him to do is pass your message on to Christine. You want him to help you get her back. A twenty-year-old girl who was sleeping with you might think hearing from you is good news. But the father first. You need him on your side. If he's showing signs that he might think you're good news, too, then ask him for permission to marry his daughter."

"Why would I ask some jailbird for permission to do anything?"

"There. That's what I'm talking about. You've got to put yourself in this man's place. Yes, he's in jail. He's feeling guilty because being there made him unable to protect his daughter, so she got chucked out on the street. He wants to believe you, because it would mean everything worked out all right. She found a nice, steady, prosperous guy who loves her. So you help him believe in you. If he does, he'll try to get her to give you a chance."

"Why should she listen to him?"

Andy Beale studied him for a moment. "The more I think about this, the more I think you're not right for this. Forget I said to see him. I'll do it for you."

"I didn't say I wouldn't do it."

"No," said Andy Beale. "But you probably shouldn't. We get one chance with this guy, and you'd probably fuck it up. I'll just let you know what happened."

"Whatever." Richard shrugged and leaned back in his chair.

"What I want you to do is try some other angles on your own. Think. She's pregnant. She's going to be seeing an obstetrician. She's not going to wait and walk into an emergency room when the baby comes. You're her employer, so try to work with the health insurance company. We're the real customer, because we pay the premiums."

"They're not going to tell us anything about her medical file. It's private."

"Try. All you need is the name of a doctor. Hell, even a city would do. Another thing she'll need is an apartment. We're in the rental business. Send a picture of her to a thousand other large owners and say she's somebody who stole from us and we want to find her. Think about her. What does she need to get by? Who does she know to ask for help? Work on it."

"I will."

"Be sure you do," said Andy Beale. "If you screw around until after she's had the baby, it will be a whole lot harder to persuade her that she needs you." He stood and walked to the door, opened it, and looked out at the receptionist thoughtfully. "What's her father's name?"

"Monahan. I think it's Robert Monahan."

"And where is he?"

"Lompoc."

"All right. I'll talk to you soon." He spared Richard only a glance. "What's the new girl's name?" He returned his eyes to the receptionist.

"Marlene."

"Don't complicate things by fucking her, too."