Greg Iles - The Quiet Game

“It’s practically deserted in here,” I say. “Let’s just grab a booth.”

Jenny suddenly looks on the verge of tears. “It’s nothing weird, I promise. It’s… personal. It has to do with what you’re working on. Your case.”

Curiosity muffles the alarm in my head. “The Payton case? What do you know about that?”

She glances at the bartender, who’s totaling numbers on a calculator a few feet away. “It has to do with the Marston family.”

I’m convinced. “Okay. Upstairs it is. Have another on me, Kelly.”

“Glad to, boss. Keep your pants on.”

Jenny leads me to the rear of the restaurant, where a spiral staircase winds up to the second floor. We pass some long tables set up for a party, then climb a short flight of stairs to a small landing and a red door. Jenny takes a key from her pocket, opens the door, and waits for me to go through.

Her apartment is as spartan as the cell of a lifer. You could bounce a quarter off the bed, and the linens are surprisingly masculine. A tall set of shelves stands against the wall to my right, and it’s filled from top to bottom with books. Literary novels mostly, though the familiar spines of my books are among them, along with Martin Cruz Smith, Donna Tartt, and Peter Hoeg. There’s no television, but a boom box sits beside the bed, an Indigo Girls concert flyer tacked to the wall above it. Caitlin’s suspicion that Jenny has a crush on me is looking less accurate by the second.

With careful steps Jenny crosses the room to the far corner, where a microwave oven and coffeemaker stand on a table beside a lavatory. She pours water from a Kentwood bottle into the coffee carafe, then from the carafe to the coffeemaker. Her back is to me, but she appears to be concentrating on her movements.

“Is green tea okay?” she asks.

“It’s fine.”

A spoon jangles loudly in a cup. Jenny’s hands are shaking.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She nods quickly, still facing away from me. “Just nervous.”

“How do you know the Marston family? Are you originally from Natchez?”

“No.” She turns and faces me, revealing the anxiety in her eyes. I have a sudden intuition that she’s about to tell me Leo Marston forced her to commit some sexual act, or perhaps got her pregnant. She’s far too young for him, but if an impoverished killer like Ray Presley can rob the cradle, why can’t Leo Marston?

“But you know the Marstons,” I press her.

“I know Olivia.”

Olivia. “Does Livy have something to do with the Payton case?”

“I don’t know.”

“Jenny, why don’t you just tell me what you know? Start at the beginning, and let me decide how important it is.”

She shakes her head. “You’ve got the wrong idea. I mean-I misled you a little. This isn’t about your case.”

My alarm is ringing again, full volume now. “Then what’s it about?”

“This is so hard for me.” She wrings her hands and looks at the ceiling, then focuses her glistening eyes on mine. “I think-I mean, I’m pretty sure-Mr. Cage, I’m pretty sure you’re my father.”

I’m pretty sure you’re my father.

Jenny’s words hang in the air like ozone after a lightning strike. My discomfort escalates to panic in a fraction of a second. This is the root of the strange fascination Caitlin picked up that first night. It’s something I’ve heard about my whole life, orphaned or adopted children convincing themselves that the father who abandoned them is some famous man.

“Look, miss-” I grope for her last name, then realize I never knew it.

“Doe,” she says. “Isn’t that pathetic? That’s my last name. Jennifer Doe. It’s on my birth certificate.”

I’m backing toward the door, which leads to the stairs and the second floor and the spiral staircase and the restaurant and sanity. “I think we’d better go back down.”

She holds up her hands in supplication, pleading for my attention. “I don’t want anything from you. And I’m not crazy. Please believe me. I’m scared to death right now. I’m so scared. I just want to know who I am!”

Hot, clear water bubbles out of the coffeemaker, for tea that will never be made.

“I can’t help you with that question, Jenny.”

“If you’d listen to me for two minutes, you’ll know you can.”

My hand is on the doorknob.

“Livy Marston is my mother!”

This stops me.

“I was born in February of 1979.”

My brain is working backward to the point of conception. February, January, December-oh hell, just go back twelve months and add three. If Jenny is telling the truth, she was conceived in May of 1978. The month Livy and I graduated high school.

“My birth certificate proves it,” she says in a defensive voice.

I drop my hand from the knob. “Let me see.”

She goes to the bookshelf, takes down my second novel, and opens it to the flyleaf. From there she removes a white sheet of paper, which she holds out to me. I don’t look at her face as I reach for it. If I did, I know I would be searching for similarities to my own.

The birth certificate looks authentic. Issued by the state of Louisiana, the city of New Orleans. The child’s name is listed as Jennifer Doe. What nearly stops my heart is what is printed on the line for Mother. Right there in black and white is the name Olivia Linsford Marston.

The line beside Father is blank.

“Jesus God,” I murmur.

“It was a privately arranged adoption,” Jenny says. “Set up before I was ever born. The adopting parents wanted the name Jennifer on the birth certificate.”

My heart is skipping beats.

She rushes on, her voice shaky. “I didn’t know any of this until a year ago. I spent most of my life in foster homes. I wanted to know where I’d come from. Who my birth parents were. I didn’t have anybody-”

“Jenny, slow down.” I hold up my hands. “I’m going to listen, okay? Just calm down and tell me your story.”

She looks frozen, like a strip of film stopped in mid-motion. The relief in her eyes is heartbreaking. If she wasn’t so caught up in her own emotions, she might realize that after seeing that birth certificate, it would take a winch to pull me out of her apartment. Already thoughts that haven’t meshed for twenty years are falling into place. Livy was pregnant our senior year. Or the summer following it, rather. And she carried the child to term. That is why she disappeared. I guess the assumptions I made about female reproductive biology in 1978 were about as accurate as my judgments of Livy’s true nature.

“Pour the tea,” I say dazedly. “That’ll calm you down.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Okay… you said you wanted to find out who your birth parents were. How did you go about doing that?”

“Well, like I said, it was a private adoption, which is big business in Louisiana, if you don’t know. It took a lot of work, but I finally learned the name of the lawyer who handled the adoption. Clayton Lacour, from New Orleans. I did some checking on him, and I found out he was well connected. Mafia connected. I was afraid that if I just walked in and asked, Lacour wouldn’t tell me anything about my birth parents. All the law required was that he ask my mother whether or not she wanted to be found by me. And I was pretty sure that whoever she was, she wouldn’t be too happy about me showing up on her doorstep after twenty years.”

Jenny’s voice is leveling out; the act of telling her story has distracted her from the fears bubbling inside her.

“I’d been around a little. I knew the street. So instead of marching in and asking my questions, I applied for a job at Lacour’s office. P.A., gofer, answering the phone, whatever. I dressed like a college girl-a loose one-and I made sure Lacour saw me when I went in. He practically licked me from head to toe. Took me into his office for a personal interview and hired me on the spot.”