Scott Turow - Identical

Instead Cass whispers the same thing in a singsong several times until his brother slugs him in the shoulder. In reprisal, Paul asks, “Brewski or not? Or are you just going to hide in the bushes until you can climb up the drainpipe?”

This effort to get even is so simpleminded but inevitable that Cass breaks into loud laughter. The night is ripe. After the rain, the air has become cool and clear. There is a slice of moon over the river, and the water rushes below. Cass has a full sense of life’s possibilities and the joy of loving certain people. Paul. And Dita. He loves Dita. He realizes he has decided.

He will ask her to marry him tonight.

In prospect, Evon had regarded retirement from the FBI as something akin to dying. She had her twenty in more than three years ago, but was required to wait until age fifty to claim her retirement benefits-about half her salary for the rest of her life, one of the big selling points of the Bureau to start. Within the agency, the standard advice was to go as soon as possible, when you were young enough to establish yourself in another career, but she’d thought she had time to figure out her future-until a local headhunter called. With the headlines then about ZP employees in Illinois bribing tax assessors, Hal and the board had decided to replace Collins Mullaney as head of security with somebody who had shining armor and a crime-buster reputation. The fact that Evon had also done an MBA in the weekend program at Easton-a way to stay busy after Doreen died-and had management experience as deputy special agent in charge of the Kindle County RA made her a perfect fit, and one to whom Hal made the proverbial offer she couldn’t refuse.

So here she was, the senior vice-president for security at a publicly traded company. But the most unexpected aspect of the job was how much she loved it. Heather, who could be astute about everybody else, had sized Evon up accurately one night when she said, ‘You’re just one of those people who loves to work.’ True, but the challenges were intricate in masterminding security for a company that owned 246 malls and shopping centers in thirty-five states, with over three thousand employees. She basically confronted the same issues as a suburban police chief, with far less authority. There was a big-league felony on one of their properties every day-serious drug deals, truck hijackings, shootings. Terrorism preoccupied her, since the haters could make quite a statement by, for instance, blowing up a mall during Christmas season. Over two thousand security guards roamed their sites, most rented from an outside vendor, but they became her problem when they stole from tenants or, like one creep, raped somebody in a clothing store dressing room. Every day she had to deal with reports of road rage in the parking lots, vandalism somewhere, kids caught smoking pot on the security cameras, slip-and-falls, and six-year-olds getting their sleeves snagged in the escalator. Who would have believed that so many protest groups would desire to make their case in the local mall? And none of that considered internal operations, where she was responsible for computer security and investigating the astonishing range of misbehavior your own employees could think up, everything from sexual harassment to a guy in Denver who was pocketing the proceeds when he rented out the far side of the company parking lot for football games at Mile High Stadium. Not to mention compliance issues, which brought the never-ending grillings from the lawyers. Often, she was still at her desk at ten at night and back at seven, with not much time in between when her brain went into neutral.

Her days, of course, were frequently prolonged by hours listening to Hal. Apparently, a session was about to begin. His slender assistant, Sharize, appeared in Evon’s doorway to tell her she was needed immediately. In Hal’s vast office, she found him seated on the beige ultra-suede sofa near the windows beside his elderly Aunt Teri. A desperate look emanated from amid the dark rings that often made Hal’s brown eyes look like caves.

“Aunt Teri is giving me hell about taking our licks at Paul Gianis.”

Evon had known the old lady since coming to work here. Childless, Teri had always been close to her only nephew, and now that both his parents were gone, Hal spoke to her at least once a day, often in marathon conversations that made him late for meetings and conference calls. Evon admired the old woman in a way, although she frequently had the sense that Teri had become a prisoner of her own outrageousness, the foul-mouthed, razor-tongued spinster who’d toughed her way through the world, and by now was a self-conscious imitation of the gutsy and shameless old broad everybody expected. Hal took great pleasure in recounting their adventures together. Teri, for example, had taken Hal bungee jumping without his parents’ knowledge when he was sixteen-he admitted she virtually cast him off the bridge-and flown him to see the monuments at Mount Rushmore, piloting the plane herself, not long after she’d gotten her license. Hal loved to burnish her legend, speaking of the men she drank under the table-starting with him-or the way that Teri would routinely announce at family dinners that she was taking a trip the following week, usually to Manhattan or Miami, to get laid. There had apparently been only a few serious boyfriends, and none of them able to keep up with her.

“This serves no purpose,” Teri said to her nephew, largely ignoring Evon. She had a hand on her gnarly cane, which looked to be an old shepherd’s crook, undoubtedly Greek, and half her face was covered in large turquoise-framed sunglasses. Macular degeneration had left the old lady legally blind. “I’ve never liked vengeful people, Herakles. Never. Paul had nothing to do with that murder. And you know it.”

Evon had met a few folks approaching ninety who retained considerable physical grace, and Teri might have been one of them if she had ever been persuaded to give up alcohol and cigarettes. Sometimes Hal let her smoke in the office, but she hadn’t lit up yet, a sure sign that he wanted to get her on her way. Teri’s appearance was, to be honest, about as trashy as a half-blind octogenarian could get away with, with giant rose balls of rouge inflaming her cheeks, dyed shoulder-length blonde hair resembling a pile of hay, and crimson fingernails grown out like talons. Beneath the rouge and powder-and a full daily baptism in perfume-she seemed to have shrunk inside her own skin, which hung in folds from her forearms. She wore lipstick the color of a fire hydrant, and gold jewelry by the pound, huge pieces clanking on her neck and around her wrists. She was seriously bent and one hip was terrible. But she remained willful and cagey, and except for occasional difficulty remembering names, her intellect was largely undimmed. The reverence she was automatically due as a person of advanced age made her a tough customer, and she knew it.

Hal continued to resist.

“The hell I do. Have you been watching TV?”

“Georgia Cleon is a jealous twat,” said Teri. “She’s bitter. Nobody told her to marry Jimmy. I’m sorry it turned out bad for her, but that wasn’t Paul’s fault. She’s just mad because”-she was briefly stumped for a word-“because Paul dumped her. Or dumped on her. However they say he broke her heart. Isn’t that what they say now?” She finally turned to Evon, but only for brief clarification.

“Dumped her,” said Evon quietly. That was the term Heather used in her messages on Evon’s cell. She talked until the allotted time ran out, bouncing between extremes, raging and then begging for another chance. ‘I can’t believe you dumped me. I deserved so much better from you,’ last night’s barrage had started. Evon had no explanation for why she listened to every word until the message was cut off. Because you love her. Because you are hoping in every syllable to hear some semblance of the beautiful girl you fell in love with-beautiful and graceful, and sane.