David Morrell - Assumed Identity

“Oh, it’s the truth. Even if you don’t believe it, it’s the truth. This is one of the most honest things you’ll ever hear from me. I want to help her because I want to be the person I was when I knew her. I want to choose to be somebody and to stay that somebody. I want to stop changing. I want to be consistent.”

“Because of all the people you impersonated?”

“I told you, I don’t know anything about-”

“Don’t act so defensive. I’m not trying to get you to admit to anything. You want to stop changing? Why make it so complicated? Why be somebody else? Why not be yourself?”

Buchanan didn’t answer.

“You don’t like yourself?”

Buchanan still didn’t answer.

“This woman, what was her name?”

Buchanan hesitated. All his instincts and training warned against revealing information. He prepared to lie.

Instead he told the truth. “Juana Mendez.”

“When you knew her, I’m assuming you were on an assignment together.”

“You know what you can do with your assumptions.”

“No need to get touchy.”

“Since the first time I spoke to you, I have never revealed confidential information. Everything I’ve said about my background has been hypothetical, a ‘what if’ scenario. As far as you’re concerned, I’m an instructor in military Special Operations. That’s all I’ve ever admitted to. This has nothing to do with the story you abandoned. I want that understood.”

“As I said, no need to get touchy.”

“After you left New Orleans. .” He told her about his drive to San Antonio, his discovery that both Juana’s and her parents’ homes were under surveillance, and his search of Juana’s records. He omitted all reference to the man he’d killed. “Drummond and Tomez. The files for those names were the only ones that seemed to be missing. Juana was a security specialist. I have to assume those people were clients.”

“Important enough to need protecting.” Pensive, Holly walked toward the briefcase she’d set on a chair and opened it. “I used the reference system at the Post. ”

“That’s why I had to get in touch with you. I didn’t have access to anyone else who could get the information I needed as quickly as you could.”

“You know. .” Holly studied him. “Sometimes you might consider trying to impersonate somebody with tact.”

“What?”

“I don’t delude myself that you’d go to all this trouble if you didn’t have something to gain. All the same, it wouldn’t have hurt you if you’d also left the impression that you found me interesting.”

“Oh. . I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. But if you were this charming with Juana Mendez, it’s no wonder things didn’t work out.”

“Look, I’m trying to make up for mistakes.”

Holly didn’t speak for a moment. “Let’s see if this helps. Drummond and Tomez. I had my suspicions, but I wanted to check thoroughly before I made any conclusions.”

“Drummond is Alistair Drummond,” Buchanan said. “I more or less figured that already. The last name brings him immediately to mind. He’s rich, famous, and powerful enough to fit the profile.”

“Agreed. I kept checking, but he’s the only Drummond I think we should consider.” Holly pulled a book and several pages in a file folder out of the briefcase. “Bedtime reading. His biography and some printouts of recent stories about him. I’d have given you his auto biography, but it’s such a public-relations whitewash that it’s useless for dependable information. Certainly it doesn’t show any skeletons in closets, and in Drummond’s case, skeletons in closets might not be a figure of speech.”

“What about Tomez?” Buchanan asked.

“That was harder. I’m a Frank Sinatra fan myself.”

“What’s he got to do with. .?”

“Jazz. Big bands. Tony Bennett. Billie Holiday. Ella Fitzgerald.”

“I still don’t see what. .”

“Listened to much Puccini lately?”

Buchanan looked blank.

“Verdi? Rossini? Donizetti? Not ringing any bells? How about titles? La Boheme. La Traviata. Lucia di Lammermoor. Carmen. ”

“Operas,” Buchanan said.

“Give the man a cigar. Operas. I guess you’re not a devotee.”

“Well, my taste in music. .” Buchanan hesitated. “I don’t have any taste in music.”

“Come on, everybody likes some kind of music.”

“My characters do.”

“What?”

“The people I. . Heavy metal. Country western. Blue-grass. It’s just that I never got around to impersonating anybody who liked opera.”

“Buchanan, you’re scaring me again.”

“For the past week, I’ve been thinking of myself as a man named Peter Lang. He likes Barbra Streisand.”

“You really are scaring me.”

“I told you, I’m changeable.” Buchanan-Lang smiled oddly. “But no one I’ve ever been had an interest in opera. If he had, believe me I’d be expert enough on the subject to give you a lecture. What does opera have to do with the name Tomez?”

“ Maria Tomez,” Holly said. “The name occurred to me immediately but not as strongly as Alistair Drummond. I wanted to make sure there weren’t any famous or rich or powerful people named Tomez I didn’t know about.” Holly took another book and file from the briefcase. “And indeed there are some, but they’re not pertinent here. Maria Tomez-to quote from her press releases-is the most controversial, charismatic, and compelling mezzo-soprano in the opera world today. As far as I’m concerned, she’s the only candidate for your attention.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because for the past nine months, Alistair Drummond and Maria Tomez have, despite the difference in their ages, been an item.” Holly paused for effect. “And Maria Tomez disappeared two weeks ago.”

Buchanan leaned forward. “ Disappeared? ”

“That’s what her ex-husband claims. Don’t you read the newspapers?” Holly asked.

“The past few days, I haven’t exactly had time.”

“Well, this morning, the ex-husband went to the New York City police department and insisted that she’d been missing for at least the past two weeks. To make sure he wasn’t treated as a crank, he brought along a couple dozen newspaper and television reporters. It turned into quite a circus.”

Buchanan shook his head. “But why would he think he’d be treated as a crank?”

“Because he and Maria Tomez had a very public and very nasty divorce. He’s been bad-mouthing her ever since. He recently filed a lawsuit against her, claiming she lied about her financial assets when they divided their property during the divorce. He insists he has a right to ten million dollars. Naturally, the police might think she dropped out of sight to avoid him. But the ex-husband swears he honestly believes something has happened to her.”

Holly gave Buchanan a page from the previous day’s Washington Post and a photocopy of a profile in the Post ’s Sunday magazine from five years earlier. Buchanan scanned the newspaper story and the profile. The ex-husband, Frederick Maltin, had been an agent who discovered Maria Tomez when she was twenty-two, starring in a production of Tosca in Mexico City. While a few male Hispanics, Placido Domingo, for example, had achieved significant careers in opera, no Hispanic female had ever had similar success. Until Maria Tomez. Indeed, despite her talent and fiery stage presence, the fact that she was Mexican had worked against her, relegating her to regional operas, mostly in South America. Traditionally, female opera stars got their training in Europe and the United States. For Tomez to have been trained in Mexico meant that she was combating a professional prejudice when she auditioned for major opera companies in the United States and Italy.