Russell Andrews - Aphrodite

"What do you dream about when you have bad dreams?"

"Just life," he said, putting his gun back down on the nearby table. "That's all it takes."

Neither of them said anything for several moments. Then Deena whispered, "Well, I better go back to bed. Kenny's still sleeping. Nothing seems to wake her up."

He watched her disappear and close the door behind her. He looked at the cheap plastic clock radio by the side of his bed. It was 5 a.m. Justin decided to turn on his light. He would stay awake now.

No more dreaming today.

At 8 a.m. she knocked on his door. Justin cleared his throat, called out for her to come in. When she did, he saw that she was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Her legs and feet were bare. Instinctively he tried to cover up the glass of scotch he was holding.

"I meant to tell you this yesterday," she said. "I want you to tell me how much all this grandeur"-she waved her hand around the motel room-"costs. You're doing enough for us. So I just want you to know I'll pay you back. I don't know how long we're going to have to be doing this, but whatever it is, I'll pay my way. And Kendall's, too."

"Don't worry about it," he said. "I can cover it."

"Is East End Harbor doling out six-figure salaries to their police force now?"

"I can afford it," Justin told her. "You've got other things to worry about. But I appreciate it."

She looked at him curiously, and he knew she was wondering about his secrets, but she didn't say anything, then she gave her lopsided half smile and said, "I'm going to work out. You want to join me?"

"You mean, like…exercise?"

"Exactly like exercise," she said, brushing one of the curls away from her face. "I thought maybe I'd give you a yoga lesson."

"I don't think so."

"If you won't let me pay you, at least maybe I can make you feel a little better."

"I feel fine."

"Is that why you're drinking at eight o'clock in the morning?"

"I've already been up for three hours. So by my body clock, it's really lunchtime."

She just stared at him. Finally he put the glass down and said, "Okay. Let's exercise."

She led him nice and slow through a series of stretches as well as various sitting and standing positions with odd names like Downward Dog and Upward Dog. He felt extremely awkward and strangely vulnerable; he also was embarrassed because he knew he was out of shape. She kept trying to get him to repeat the Sanskrit versions of the names of the exercises, which he deliberately mangled to annoy her a little bit. Within ten minutes, he was dripping sweat onto the motel-room wall-to-wall carpet and feeling his muscles ache and his tendons stretch. She, on the other hand, wasn't even breathing hard.

"You're not in very good shape for a cop," she pointed out.

"I haven't been a real cop for a while. I'm a little rusty. And aren't teachers supposed to be supportive of their eager students?"

"Stop stalling and get into squat position." When he didn't move, she said, "I know you know what that is. We just did it."

"I know what it is. But if I squat right now, I'm just going to warn you that several of my body parts might never return to normal."

"I'll risk it," she said.

So he made a face and contorted himself into a squat, his arms pointed straight up, his palms together. Then he was made to twist into two or three other positions he'd never dreamed existed. And he had to admit that she was a hell of a teacher. Using her body to position him gently, demonstrating what the poses were supposed to look like without showing off her superiority. She was extremely strong and extraordinarily limber. He liked listening to her too. Her voice had a way of lulling him into a spell, so the whole session took on a kind of vague otherworldliness. It was as if she were keeping the real world temporarily at bay, which he realized was not such a bad idea at the moment.

One of his cell phones rang half an hour into the lesson. He was relieved to be able to stand up and stop working his recalcitrant body. But he instantly missed the touch of her hand, the feel of her weight against him.

"Yeah," Justin said into the receiver.

"I've got some information," Gary said on the other end of the line. "What's going on? You sound out of breath."

"Don't ask," he said. "Where are you calling from?"

"The station. No one else is here."

"Okay, what do you got for me?"

"Just about everything you wanted. You got a pen?"

"Go."

"There haven't been a lot of incoming phone calls to Growth Industries. I've got three in the last month, a total of eight in the past three months."

"Eight phone calls in three months? For eighteen phone lines?"

"Yeah. Well, seventeen now. The one that Susanna Morgan called's been disconnected. Even so, if they're sellin' something, I hope they're getting a good price for it, 'cause they ain't doing a lot of business."

"You have the numbers of the incoming calls?" Justin asked.

"Yeah. They're all from the Northeast. Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, one in New Jersey." As Justin wrote, Gary read out each of the numbers of the incoming calls and matched them up to the Growth numbers they came in on.

"Okay," Justin said. "Next."

"None of the bills for the eighteen lines go to the Growth address. Nine of them are sent to a company called the Ellis Institute and nine are sent to something called the Aker Institute."

"What the hell are those?"

"They're research firms."

"How do you know that?"

"I called 'em," Gary said. "What kind of research?"

"Medical. Ellis is in New York. Aker's in Boston." He gave Justin the phone numbers and addresses for both firms.

"Do we know who the bills go to at the firms?"

"Yes, we do. Edward Marion at Ellis. Helen Roag at the other one. But listen to this: When I called both places, I said I wanted to talk about a bill that wasn't paid. I used the names of companies that had called in to the phone machines."

"And what happened?"

"I got the runaround. I couldn't get past Marion's or Roag's assistants. They both said that those bills weren't paid there. They're always forwarded on to something called the Lobster Corporation for payment."

"And what's that?"

"No idea. They wouldn't give me a phone number or address. They said they'd look into it but that's as far as they'd go."

"Son of a bitch," Justin said. "I'm impressed as hell, Gary."

"Thanks. But there's more on Marion. I've got his home phone and address. He lives in Connecticut. His cell must be a company phone because I couldn't track it." He gave the information to Justin, then did the same for Helen Roag. "She lives in Boston. Actually, just outside Boston, in Marblehead. You did have the spelling right, by the way. It's R-O-A-G. And I've got her cell number, too." He passed that along, then verified it after Justin read it back to him.

"You did a great job, Gary. I want to thank you."

"Don't you want to know what else I got?"

"I didn't ask for anything else. I can't imagine anything else."

"I know. But I figured you might be a little busy wherever the hell you are. So I called those numbers, the ones that made the calls to Growth Industries."

"And?"

"And it's pretty weird."

"How weird?" Justin asked.

"Very weird," Gary answered. "Every place that called? Every one of them's an old-age home." Elron Burton had been feeling proud of himself ever since that secretary from Growth Industries had locked herself out of the office. There'd been a problem and he'd solved it. No fuss, no muss, no need to bother the big boss. So when that boss, Byron Fromm, came striding through the lobby that morning, Elron gave him a big smile and a wave and said, "Problem solved, bossman. Everything was A-OK last night."