Nightwork, page 32
“It’s all the normal for you. It takes some of us—me, for instance—a little longer to find that normal. When I first met you? I thought: Oh, he’s a little shy. And of course, that made me determined to get through. That’s how I work. But what I saw as shyness was really more caution. Necessary for you. So I can look back, and I know you meant the things you said to me, but it was all through your filter of normal.”
He couldn’t argue with any of it. Remembered all of it. “I can’t go back and fix what happened.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. Not at all. It’s just … You’re an incredibly honest person for someone who makes their living in a dishonest way. And what you said to me before, about how an actor brings something of himself into a part? I’m seeing that you may change your name, even your look, your cover, all of it, but it’s still you.
“I’m coming to terms with that.”
“You could let me know when you get there.”
“All right. Meanwhile, why don’t you sit down and tell me how things went with tech?”
“You really want to hear it?”
“I actually do. Especially since it’ll give me an excuse to have a second glass of this and unwind before I lure you upstairs and seduce you.”
He picked up the bottle. “I’ll make it quick.”
* * *
On his lunch break, Booth took a quick swing to the theater. Hammers and nail guns pounded, and he heard the whine of a drill. As he headed down the center aisle he smelled fresh paint where some students worked on the drop of the train station for the “We Love You, Conrad” number.
Jill Bester, his student lighting tech’s mother and volunteer set designer, stood over another student while he drilled a screw into one of the lower cubicles for the opening number.
“Good job, Chuck. We got her done.” Then she called to Booth and tapped the bill of her fielder’s cap. “What do you think?”
He studied the cubicles of varying lengths, widths, and could already see the cast standing, sprawling, sitting inside them with prop phones.
“It’s perfect.”
“It will be when we paint it.” She walked over to a folding table for her tablet and brought up the design. “Check, check, right?”
He looked at the screen, the bright, bold colors, thought about lighting cues that would accent, spotlight. “And one more perfect. I don’t know what we’d do without you, Jill.”
“I love working on the spring musical especially.”
“You’re not going to quit on me when Tod graduates, are you?”
“Try getting rid of me. I’ve only got this crew for another twenty, but Missy drafted some of her art students to help with the painting next period. You’ll be able to use the cubes and the kitchen set for rehearsal tonight.”
“You’ve nearly finished the builds. Right on schedule.”
“That’s how we like it. You’ve put plenty of time in on it.” She propped her hands on her hips as she studied what some would see as chaos.
“The drops should be done by the end of the week. And we thank you for not putting time in there.”
“Another dig at my artistic talents.”
“You have none in the drawing and painting fields.”
“Harsh, but true. Grab some lunch, Jill. I’ll check in later.”
He snagged a Coke and an apple from the teacher’s lounge, did a spot check on wardrobe, then set up for his next class. The upcoming weeks would run on the same frantic schedule. And he was fine with that.
He thought about when that schedule would loosen up again, and wondered how Miranda felt about hiking, kayaking. He’d never had time to find out.
Should they be dating? Dinner out, a movie, a drive to DC for a concert? How could he be so in love with her and not have figured the simple things out?
They’d talk about it, he decided as the last bell rang, and kids made their noisy dash for the door.
Except for Louis, who always seemed to have a question after that last bell.
“Hey, Mr. Booth.”
“What’s up, Louis?”
It only took about ten minutes to address Louis’s anxiety over the upcoming test on Julius Caesar. A transfer student from Pennsylvania, and a freshman, Louis had yet to find his circle, his comfort zone, or his feet.
“You know, Louis, I could really use another stagehand.”
“Oh, I don’t know anything about that stuff.”
“We can show you the ropes.” And there was nothing, in Booth’s judgment, that helped open up a shy, anxious kid like theater. On or backstage. “Why don’t you check with your parents, see if it’s okay for you to watch rehearsal.”
Louis’s caution and anxiety leaked through like water through a crack in a glass. “Just watch?”
“If you want. We start at four. I’m actually heading there now.” Booth rose, packed his briefcase. “You can walk down with me. You don’t take the bus, right? You walk to school.”
And both parents worked, Booth recalled. No sibs.
“Yeah, it’s only a couple blocks.”
Booth started out so the boy would fall into step with him.
“We’re still working on the sets, but most of the builds are done, and we’ve got the props situated.”
“Are all the stagehands kids?”
“That’s right. The stagehands, the techs, the property master, stage manager, the actors. Students build and paint the sets, too.”
“How do they know how to do that?”
Worry, worry, trickle, trickle.
“We teach them—some learned from a parent, but we teach and supervise.”
Some students loitered in the hallways, flirting by lockers or texting somebody they’d seen two minutes before, but the school already had that hollow feel of a building that had done the bulk of its job for the day.
He turned into the theater, deserted now before the cast and crew began to come in. Booth saw Jill had finished the cubes and left them standing center stage, bright, bold.
Booth hit the house lights. “The kids built that, with Mrs. Bester—the mom of one of the students—showing them.”
“What’s it for?”
“Hang out and see. Call your mom.”
“I can just text her.”
“Do that then.”
“Okay, but what does a stagehand do?”
“Some set pieces like that are on casters. They lock so they don’t go rolling around. Stagehands come on between scenes. They’d roll that away and put the next set on its marks.”
“What marks?”
Booth gestured, started down the center aisle. “Text your mom.”
Gotcha, Booth thought as Louis peppered him with questions, texting as he walked.
By four-fifteen, Booth had wrangled the cast members in the scene into the cubicle.
“Joley, lean back against the wall, stage right. Give me a leg extension and prop your foot on the opposite wall. Yeah, that’s it. Phone in your other hand—don’t block your face.”
He directed other students, then stepped back. “What do you think, Louis?” he asked the boy in the front row.
“It looks really good.”
“I think so, too. Curtain goes up. Hold positions, hold for applause. Hold them until the music cue and the first ring.”
He cued the music and watched the run-through. It gave him a lift, a good, solid lift.
He called out a few new directions over the voices, nodded as the kids made the most of their spaces.
When the number ended, Louis broke into spontaneous applause.
“Man, sorry.”
“No one on a stage ever objects to applause, pal.”
By five, he had Louis onstage moving scenery and props.
By six-thirty, the boy looked as if he’d been given the keys to the kingdom.
“Can I really be a stagehand, Mr. Booth?”
“As long as your parents give the go-ahead. You caught on fast.”
“It’s fun.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Hey, Lou! You’re walking my way, right?”
Louis blinked at the boy who called out. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Let’s book it.”
When everyone cleared out, and Booth shut off the lights, he thought there were no kids like theater kids.
His footsteps echoed on the way out, hollow feeling complete.
Outside, a breezy March wind blew, but he saw the start of greening on the trees, and a few hopeful daffodils already starting to pop. Spring riding in, he thought as cars carrying his kids pulled out of the lot. A couple tooted, so he waved as he walked.
He kept walking when he saw the sedan next to his car, and the man who got out to wait for him.
Not the one he remembered from a dozen or so years before, but the same type. Broad shoulders, stony face, hard eyes.
A second man got out—slightly older, a little taller.
He didn’t feel anything, he realized. Not panic, not grief, nothing. After all, he’d known this day would come sooner or later.
“Get in the car.”
“I’ve got a car.”
“Hand over your keys. He’ll drive your car.”
Take a stand now, Booth thought, or everything rolls over and flattens you.
“I’ll keep my keys, drive my car.”
“You don’t want any trouble here.”
“No trouble. Your friend here can ride with me. But I drive my own car. Tell LaPorte you can follow me home. Where else am I going to go?”
After a short stare down, the bodyguard nodded to his associate.
Booth got in, pressed the ignition. He turned off the radio, as music didn’t seem appropriate with a spine-cracker riding beside him with a gun on his hip.
He drove in silence and considered his options. He had contingencies. He always did. Maybe Miranda changed them, once again, but he had contingencies.
First order of business. Keep LaPorte away from her. Keep him away from Mags and Sebastien, Dauphine and her family. And away from the people of Westbend.
Second? Avoid broken bones or gunshot wounds.
After that? He had a variety of scenarios.
LaPorte wanted something. He wanted Booth body and soul, but he’d want Booth to get something for him.
He could use that, whatever and wherever it was.
He didn’t flick a glance at Miranda’s house when he passed it, but he caught the gleam of lights in her windows as dusk settled toward night.
He’d said he’d text once he got home.
That would have to wait.
He pulled into his carport and got out without a word.
Instead of going in through the mudroom—friends used that entrance—he walked to the front of the house with his passenger close beside him.
He heard the second guard get out as he unlocked the front door. Ignoring them, he went inside, coded the alarm. And used the first contingency by engaging the recorders and cameras he’d attached to it.
“Check the house, Angelo,” the first man told Booth’s passenger.
“There’s no one here.”
“Check the house. Do you have any weapons, Mr. Booth?”
“Your boss would’ve told you I don’t use guns. I’ve got a really good set of knives in the kitchen. I like to cook.”
He pointed to a chair. “Sit.”
“I’m going to take off my jacket and hang it up. In there.”
When he pointed to the closet, the guard crossed to it, opened the door, checked it and his other jackets for the nonexistent weapons.
Booth waited him out, then hung up his coat. He sat, set the briefcase beside the chair.
The guard took it, checked it, set it down again.
The second guard came back down the stairs. “It’s clear.”
“Tell Mr. LaPorte, then you can wait outside.”
Booth occupied his time speculating on just how LaPorte had found him—and thought he had a glimmer there. And just what LaPorte wanted him to steal. There he hadn’t a clue.
The man himself came in. He had a languid, in-charge stroll. He wore a gray pin-striped suit, with a paler gray shirt and a blue-and-gray-striped tie.
Business mode, of course.
His hair still flowed, a golden mane, and without a hint of gray. Since LaPorte was in the middle of his fifties, Booth concluded he covered the gray. Just as he knew LaPorte had work done here and there to maintain a face that taut, that smooth.
Vanity, of course. Everything stemmed from vanity.
“It’s been some time since we’ve had a chat.” Before he sat, LaPorte glanced around the room. “A bit rustic, I’d think, for a man with your vast experiences.”
“It does the job for now.”
“Yes, for now is part and parcel, isn’t it? You live a nomad’s life, yet here you are, playing at high school teacher in a—I suppose I’d call it a three-horse town rather than a one. You must be unspeakably bored.”
“Not yet. I’ve enjoyed the break. What do you want me to steal?”
“Oh, we’ll get to that. I left you alone through your adventures in Europe, and through your odd choice of this place, this life for the last few years. I could have, of course, visited you at any time, but I’m a patient man.”
Lies, Booth realized. He left out South America, Australia, New Zealand, New York, and elsewhere. He hadn’t known until now. And the lies—vanity—added power to Booth’s side of the scale.
“And,” LaPorte went on, “I realized you’d do better, for me, with more seasoning. Now you’ve had that time, we can discuss what’s next.”
“I have no interest in working for you.”
Supremely confident, LaPorte waved a hand. “Your interest doesn’t concern me. But I imagine your aunt continues to concern you. And Sebastien, perhaps, though you elect not to spend time with them. Do I bear responsibility for that?”
Some bait on the water, but Booth didn’t nibble. “I’ve been busy.”
“As so often happens with families, with friends. I hear you’re very involved with your students—educating young minds. All so young, so fresh, with so much ahead of them.”
“Really?” Booth let out a short laugh that was all disgust. “Threatening kids now?”
“Accidents happen, even in a quiet sort of town, don’t they?”
“I’d say that’s beneath even you, but I see it’s not.”
“I could move straight to the woman. What a treat it must be to have your long-ago love back in your life.”
He’d been ready for this, and met LaPorte’s gleaming eyes levelly. “Not really, no. What we want at twenty changes. But she recognized me. I didn’t know about her damn godmother.” Booth shrugged it off. “But I know how to stir embers when needed, and turn them to my advantage. She’s susceptible to a sad story and a good roll in the sheets.”
Booth caught the flicker of interest, and suspicion.
“She doesn’t know what you are?”
“What do you take me for? She’d hardly keep her mouth shut if she did. My aunt, you see, had an unfortunate drug addiction that led to trouble with the police. I had to help her, had to try. Things didn’t go well, and so on. I finally changed my name, finished my education, and was much too ashamed to contact Miranda again.”
“And your aunt?”
“Well, she’s dead—tragic overdose—for the purposes of this play. Now my college flame walks back into my life, and those old feelings bloom again. For a clever woman, and she’s clever enough, she’s an easy mark.”
With the faintest sneer, Booth shrugged. “Most are if you know how to find the soft spots. I’d be sorry to see her hurt—I don’t like violence. It’s messy. But she’s just another woman, another mark. You may have had a part in curing me of making attachments, but cured I am.”
LaPorte steepled his hands. The interest on his face now didn’t strike Booth as entirely pleasant. More that of someone eyeing a strange smear under a microscope.
“But you didn’t finish your education. No degree for you, certainly no certification. All lies, all fake. Your superior at the school, the community, the parents, the authorities would find that revelatory, I’d think, should I send word their way.”
“No doubt about it, but you’re not going to do that.”
“Aren’t I?”
“You want something, and this cover works for that as much as it does for me. Blow it for me, and the cops come sniffing.”
At ease, the thief stretched out his legs.
“You want me, LaPorte, because I make sure they don’t come sniffing. I’ve made sure of it since I was nine. You have others you can call on, and have, to acquire things you want. None of them can say the same.”
Relaxed, faintly amused, Booth sat back. “You can set the cops on me, and they can—if they catch me—put me in prison. That won’t get you what you’re here for. So let’s cut the bullshit. Tell me what you want me to steal.”
“You’ve yet to learn your manners.” LaPorte flicked a glance toward the bodyguard.
“Be careful.” Booth spoke very quietly and had LaPorte holding up a finger. “You’ve got a new guard dog, and you can tell him to smack me around like the other, but that won’t incentivize me to get you what you want. You need me incentivized. You have nothing to pressure me with now.”
Booth leaned forward, eyes hard and cold. “I made sure of it.”
“You want incentive? Three million dollars. That’s what I’ll pay you.”
Booth sat back, crossed his ankles. “That’s not the staggering amount to me it was when I was twenty. I name my own fee, and I don’t name it until I know what I’m going after.”
“I’d like a brandy.”
“I’d like a pair of hot blondes waiting upstairs for me. Tell me what the fuck I’m going after and you’ve got a better chance of getting what you want tonight than I do.”
“The Red Goddess.”
At the name, Booth’s mask of bored derision slipped. Seeing the stunned reaction, LaPorte smiled. “Now, I’d like that brandy.”
“Most believe the Red Goddess is a myth.”
“Most are idiots. Most don’t know exactly where she is. I’m not an idiot, and I know. If you’d like to know as well, fetch me a brandy.”
