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Chapter 23

 

 

When it was over I sat for a minute, trying not to shake. I didn't pride myself on what I'd done. Marlene had actually been crying on the phone.

I lied to her, copiously and imaginatively, just as Henry Davidson-Jones wished. I told her a long line of hogwash about how I'd been feeling as though I had a nervous breakdown coming on. I just needed to get away for a while, I said. My crazy ideas about Henry Davidson-Jones were just part of being overstrained and mixed up, I said. Everything would positively be all right, I said, and I promised I'd keep in touch every now and then. And I filled it all in with chitchat about whether Henry Stanley's New Jersey state forms had been filed, and how Terry Morgenstern's CDs needed to be rolled over—the kind of day-to-day stuff that only I would know about, so she would be sure this person on the phone was no impostor.

Toward the end of the conversation she stopped crying and began to get mad. That didn't make it any better, and I was glad when it was over.

Of course, I had to do that. For her sake.

But I couldn't make myself believe that. Not at that moment, not at all that day, and not for a good many of the days that followed.

 

Shipperton escorted me back to his office. We didn't speak. When we got there he poured me a drink and I took it.

"So now," he said tentatively, "can we figure there aren't going to be any more threats and arguments out of you?"

I didn't answer that. I didn't have to. When I had picked up that telephone to talk to Marlene Abramson I knew what I was doing. I was making a major decision, and the decision was to stay on Narabedla.

"Would he really have killed her?" I asked.

He shrugged uneasily. "I don't think so. He never has. But it would have been bad for her, one way or another." He peered at me. "Are you all right?"

"What makes you ask that?"

"I don't know. You look—you look kind of funny."

"How should I look?" But I knew the answer to that. My conscience made it clear to me. It told me I should look like a man who had just got done ratting out on Marlene and on Irene Madigan . . . on all of my friends, on my clients, on my country—and most of all on my planet and the whole human race that inhabited it.

He poured me another drink. "You know what that tombstone was?" he said, making conversation. "It was his son. Right, he was married once; only his wife and his kid got drowned on a boat. They never found the wife's body."

"So he just took his son's identity?"

"Later on he did. Well, he kind of has to, now and then, doesn't he? I mean, he stays too young to have only one identity. The way you will, here."

"Are you giving me another sales talk?"

"Well, we really do need to get you to sign a contract, you know."

"All right."

He stared at me. "Really? Well, hell, Nolly! That's fine. Just a minute, I've got blanks here in my desk, and you can sign—"

He broke off in the middle of the sentence, peering at my face. "What's the matter now?" he demanded.

I finished my drink and put the glass down. My mind was made up. I said gently, "Sam, have you ever negotiated a contract with a CPA before? No? I thought not. Well, I hope you've still got your coffeepot. It's likely to be along night."

 

 

 

 

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