Don Winslow - A Cool Breeze on the Underground

“I don’t give a damn what your records show-”

“Our records show that you made five calls from a phone booth and charged them to your account.”

“From a phone booth? Who are you trying to-” Joe Graham was having fun, particularly when the operator got huffy.

“Yes, sir, from area code two-one-two, number eight-five-five five-seven-two-eight.”

“To what number in London?” he challenged.

“It’s on your bill.”

“I don’t have my bill with me.”

He listened to the long sigh, the one meant to let him know that people who called to complain about their bill certainly ought to have said bill in front of their noses.

“May I put you on hold?”

“Time is money, lady.”

She returned a couple of minutes later and read off the number. Very slowly. He asked her to repeat it and then hung up. Then he dialed the overseas number. It rang seventeen times before someone picked it up.

“’ello?”

“May I speak to-”

“This is a phone box, mate. You ‘ave the wrong-”

“A phone box. Where?”

“In the ’otel?”

“What hotel?”

“The Piccadilly. Got to run.”

Graham hung around for a while, thinking things over, and then decided he could think better in McKeegan’s. He had a beer and a hamburger, then another beer, and ambled back toward his apartment. The walk let him think, helped him make up his mind. When he did, he stopped in a phone booth on the corner and made a collect call to Providence, Rhode Island. He was surprised that The Man answered his own phone. He expected a butler or something like that.

He told The Man everything.

In the sunny days of late July, the lake became their playground. They would pack a picnic lunch of fruit and cold sliced meat and make the long hike over the moor and down through the sheep meadow to the wood, where they’d sit in the shade and watch the daily performance of Hardin and Jim. When the old man had shouted, “Gate!” and the collie had driven his charges from the meadow and along the lane, Neal and Allie would continue on, climbing the next hill to reach the lake.

The lake wasn’t really a lake at all but the remnants of a quarry- a reminder of a turn-of-the-century effort to make the moor bear more than tufts of grass, to make its stony soil pay. The villagers below had dreamed of selling the native stone to the gentry to build fine houses. But the gentry found it cheaper to import Scandinavian wood than transport Yorkshire stone, and the quarry failed after eight years of back- and heartbreaking labor. It became a convenient spot for the local youth to meet and produce more local youth, who would in turn leave the village to make a living elsewhere.

However, Neal and Allie had no idea of the quarry’s history, quickly dubbed it “The Lake,” and went every afternoon to skinny-dip. Well, Allie did, anyway. Neal could bring himself only to peel down to a pair of boxer shorts he’d found in a chest of drawers. This shyness was not faked. Neal had no intention of baring himself to Allie, mostly because she bared herself now so freely to him. She would shuck her clothes as naturally as a young girl in love, and if Neal found it disconcerting, all the better. She was more than aware of its effect on him, and of the reason that he clung so stubbornly to the thin facade of the ridiculous boxer shorts, and why he stayed waist-deep in the water, even when she sunbathed on the long slab of rock that rose from the cold blue of the quarry. She would tease him about his modesty, at the same time enjoying it immensely. She thought about all the guys who could never wait to get into her pants, and here was one she couldn’t talk into getting out of his.

She flirted with him, she played, she luxuriated in feeling attractive. She bathed in sunshine and his admiration. For Allie, sex had always been a commodity: something she traded for money or affection, attention or revenge. A quick exchange of need for need. Now she enjoyed the sweet leisure of courtship, the tantalizing slowness of discovery, the muted music of her body falling in love. After a quick, freezing swim, she would lie on the rock, letting the warm rays of the sun cover her-and it was him covering her, warming her, his heat filling her and warming her, him melting her and melting in her. And then she would open her eyes a slit, pretending to sleep but watching him shyly watching her, watching him swim determined laps, and thinking, That won’t help you, Neal, that won’t save you, but go ahead. She would laugh softly to herself and perhaps drift off into a sweet sleep, wake up and find him on the rock above her, reading a book and trying not to think about her, stare at her, gaze on her. And she would know, in that infallible, infuriating feminine wisdom that makes life possible, that he would eventually come to her, come in her, and she would enfold him and hold him inside her and they would feel the whole world in their joining. There was time for all of that, and now even the waiting was delicious, the gentle pangs of want. She loved him, and she was in no hurry.

For neal, the lake became the symbol of his dilemma. There was the cold, refreshing reality of the water against the sunbaked dream of the glistening rock and the golden girl. The siren song of Allie. Naked, she would perch on the rock above him, Mythology 101 sprung to seductive life. Her skin alone, dappled in sunlight and shadow, made him dizzy. He was swimming in desire. He could feel the insistent tug, the hollow thump, the fierce quick stir in his groin, the pleasant ache. He hadn’t felt it since Diane. Hell, he thought, he hadn’t felt it before Diane.

It complicates things, he thought, and things are complicated enough. You can deal with it later. Now you have five days to make it work. Five days before the shit hits. There’s a lot to do: make arrangements with Dr. Ferguson about the book… get on a plane with Allie… disappear. That would be the hardest of all, because Levine would come after him.

Joe graham sat in chase’s hotel suite, listening to the tirade.

“I didn’t want you to send that kid,” Chase was yelling. “But you all said he was the best! The best what? Fuckup? Head case? Let’s face it, gentlemen, he isn’t coming back and he sure as hell isn’t bringing my daughter with him!”

He was red in the face, Graham noticed, pure power-trip rage.

“I think we had better consider damage control now, gentlemen,” Lombardi said.

I’ll bet you do, Graham thought.

Levine hung tough. “We still have four days before your deadline expires. A lot can happen in four days.”

Let’s hope so, Ed, thought Graham. Let’s hope so.

Lombardi laughed and said, “You haven’t even heard from Carey in weeks, and will you stop doing that?”

“Doing what?” Graham asked.

“Rubbing your artificial hand into your palm. It’s driving me nuts.”

“I do it when I’m worried, and I’m worried about Neal.”

“You’d better worry about him if I ever get my hands on him,” Chase roared.

Fuck you, Graham thought. Fuck you all. Neal had Allie and now he’s missing, and one of you pricks arranged it and I think 1 know who. If my kid is hurt… if my kid is dead…

He rubbed his rubber hand into his palm and stared at Lombardi.

It was after a particularly compelling afternoon at the lake, during which she was certain Neal was finally going to touch her. She could feel him sitting on the rock above her, could feel his glances and was sure that he was just on the verge of sliding down and laying his hands on her shoulders. She could feel herself stroking the backs of his hands, and pulling him tighter, and she knew he was just about to come to her, just about… when he stood up and jumped into the cold water. This time she was pissed off, and she was quiet the whole walk back to the cottage, and they ate their dinner in silence. She went up to bed without a word of good night and watched the doorknob for a long time, willing it to turn.