Aphrodite (43 page)

“You’re lucky,” he said to Deena’s daughter.

“I am?” she said. “Why? Because I got to stay here and go swimming every day?”

“No. Because you get to grow up and experience all these great things that life has in store for you.”

“But there’s a lot of bad things, too, Jay. I know there are ’cause I heard you telling my mom. It scared me.”

Justin gave her a mock scowl. He chewed on the inside of his lip, wondering when and how kids got to be so smart. “You’re right, as usual,” he finally agreed. “There are a lot of bad things. But you can’t let them scare you.”

“But what if they’re
really
scary?”

“Well, for one thing, your mom and I are here. And one of our jobs is to make sure the really scary things don’t ever get to you.”

“But what if you’re not here? What if they do?”

“Then,” Justin said, “you just have to realize that all those scary, bad things don’t really matter. They’re just a part of life. Once you know that, they’re not so scary.”

“I don’t want them to be part of my life.”

“I guess nobody does. But you know what? There are so many good things that are also part of life, they make up for all those scary things. They more than make up for them because they’re so much more important.”

“What kind of things?”

“You know what the good things are,” he said. “You don’t need me to tell you.”

“You mean stuff like how much my mom loves me and all of that?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“So you don’t think I should worry?” the girl asked. “No, Kenny,” Justin said. “I don’t think you should worry one bit. Why don’t you leave that part to me.”

Kendall looked at him for a long time. Then she grinned and said, “Okay, Jay. I believe you. I won’t be scared anymore and I won’t worry, okay?”

“Okay,” he said as his mother and father came out of the den and walked up to them.

“She was a pleasure,” Lizbeth said, touching Kendall on the small of her back. “I’m going to miss her. We both are.”

Jonathan Westwood nodded his agreement.

“I’m sure she’s going to miss you, too,” Deena said.

“Lizbeth said I can come back any time I want, Mom. I bet you could too, if you wanted to.”

“You both can,” Lizbeth said, smiling. “You’re both welcome.”

“Can you stay for a few days?” Jonathan Westwood asked.

“No,” Justin told him. “There are some loose ends that need taking care of. We’ve got to get moving.”

“Will we see you soon?”

“I hope so,” Justin said. “I hope so too,” his father told him.

Deena turned to both of Justin’s parents. “Thank you for taking care of my daughter,” she said.

Lizbeth reached over and, to Justin’s astonishment, took his hand and squeezed it. “Thank you for bringing our son back home,” she answered.

37

Gordon and Wendell Touay were all packed.

The plan was simple. Nothing remotely fancy. They were going to drive to East End Harbor. They were going to wait until Justin Westwood and Deena Harper were together and they were going to kill them. If possible, they would hurt them first. Hurt them badly. But that would be a luxury. All they really cared about was putting an end to their lives. Putting this whole unpleasant situation behind them. The bonus, they hoped, would be the little girl, Kendall. Her they’d let live for a while. A little while, anyway.

They went out through the small workout room, into the garage. They had no luggage; they weren’t planning on staying overnight. When this was all done they had decided they were going to put their luggage to good use. They were going to take a long vacation. Maybe down to the Islands. Spend a few weeks on the beach, soaking in the sun, drinking margaritas. Looking for some new and different kinds of fun.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Gordon said as he opened the car door.

“What?”

“Did you drink my Diet Coke?”

“What? No.”

“Well, somebody did.”

“Gordon,” Wendell said, “I don’t drink Diet Cokes. I have never in my life had one of your Diet Cokes.”

“I’m just saying, I had one in the fridge this morning and now it’s gone.”

“Maybe you drank it and forgot.”

Gordon shook his head. “I didn’t drink it.”

Wendell looked at his watch. “Can we discuss this while we’re on the road?”

Gordon was certain Wendell was lying—who the hell else would have been in their house, been in their refrigerator—but he sucked back his annoyance, nodded at his younger brother, opened the door to the driver’s side of the car, and stepped in. Wendell got in the passenger’s seat, reached into the glove compartment, and pulled out the automatic garage-door opener. He pointed and clicked and the door began to slide up and open.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Gordon said as he put the key in the ignition. “Look.”

Wendell turned his head. On the floor of the driver’s side, by the gas pedal, was a hand grenade. Wendell had a collection he’d brought back years ago from the Gulf. Gordon reached down and picked it up, handed it to his brother.

“For God’s sake,” Gordon said again, then snapped, “How the hell can you leave this thing in the car? Have you lost your mind?”

“I didn’t leave that in the car,” Wendell said quietly.

“Well, who else do we know who has toys like this?”

“I’m not saying it’s not mine. It is. I have two of them left. I’m just saying I didn’t leave it here. And I didn’t drink your Diet Coke, either.” Then they both fell silent.

The silence was broken when their cell phone rang. The twins looked at each other. As far as they knew, Alfred Newberg was the only one who had that particular number. And he’d made it clear that he would not be calling anymore.

“Hello?” Gordon said tentatively into the receiver.

“I got your number from Newberg,” a man’s voice said.

“Who is this?”

“Also your address.”

“What the hell do you want?” Gordon asked.

“I just want to tell you two things,” the voice went on.

“Fuck off,” Gordon said. When the man didn’t say anything in response, Gordon put a little bit of sneer into his next words. He was getting angry. Whoever this guy was, he was going to suffer. “Okay, here’s your big break. What do you want to tell us, asshole?”

“First, thanks for the Diet Coke.”

Before the man could continue, Gordon and Wendell both heard the noise at the same time: a rolling noise, like a bowling ball slithering down a lane. The noise ended when whatever the object was came to a stop, bumping up against something. The rear right tire, it sounded like.

“You want to know the second thing?” the voice asked. “’Cause I’d really like you to hear it.”

Gordon swiveled around, saw a man standing outside their garage. The guy looked familiar. He looked like—

“Shit,” Wendell said. And when Gordon turned to face him, the younger twin said, “The other grenade.”

“Bye-bye,” the voice on the phone said. “That’s the second thing.” They both reached desperately for the door handles, Gordon to his left, Wendell to his right. Wendell got his fingers wrapped around the metal handle. Gordon didn’t even get that far.

By the time the fire trucks arrived, Justin Westwood was over a mile away, driving back north, heading out of New Jersey on the two-and-a-half-hour drive toward East End Harbor.

When he reached the sign on the side of the highway that welcomed him to Long Island, he realized he was whistling and had been whistling for quite some time.

38

FBI Assistant Director Leonard Rollins thought he was having a bad dream. In this dream, he was suffocating. He couldn’t breathe. It felt so real, as if something was stuffed down his throat, cutting off his air supply. At some point, the pain in his throat deepened, and that was when he realized he was awake. This was not a dream. He was in his queen-size bed in his room in the not-very-swank East End Motel, naked under one sheet. His eyes were open and above him he could see Justin Westwood. Westwood was holding a gun. The barrel of the gun was jammed into Rollins’s mouth. He could feel it pressing against the back of his throat and he could see Westwood’s finger on the trigger.

“I’m here to give you a message,” Westwood said. “And I want you to tell your boss exactly the way you hear it from me.” Justin tossed that morning’s
Times
on the bed. It landed on Rollins’s chest. Justin eased his finger off the trigger, then slid the barrel of the gun out of Rollins’s mouth. He motioned so the agent knew it was okay to move, to sit up.

Justin flicked on the bedside lamp and Rollins squinted at the sudden brightness. He waited a moment to focus his eyes, reached for the newspaper, and angled it so he could read the front-page story Justin wanted him to see. The story told about the discovery of the bodies of Douglas Kransten and Louise Marshall. The bodies were found in a room in their remote estate in the English countryside. One gun was found in the room. British police had ruled it a suicide pact. They determined that Kransten had shot his wife of over thirty years, turned the gun on himself, and pulled the trigger. Although there was no suicide note, the Justice Department had already issued a statement saying that Kransten and Marshall had been investigated for the past several months for illegal financial manipulations of their company, KranMar. The transgressions were of Enronlike proportions. Chase Welles, the head of the FDA, said that Kransten had been falsifying medical-research reports on many of KranMar’s products that had recently been released on an unsuspecting public. According to the
Times
, the company was about to declare bankruptcy and the couple faced, in addition to public disgrace, charges that ranged from fraud to murder.

“I know all about this,” Rollins said. “Who the hell do you think formulated the Justice Department’s response?”

“The threat’s over,” Westwood said. “Nobody has anything to worry about from Kransten or from the Aphrodite experiments. It’s over.”

“I told them it was you. They didn’t believe me. They couldn’t figure out how you got out of the country.” Rollins gathered himself under the sheet, propped himself up farther, and stuck out his hand. “You did pretty good. I told them they shouldn’t underestimate you.”

Justin ignored Rollins’s hand. Wouldn’t shake it. He waited until the agent slowly dropped it back by his side. “I did better than you think.”

“And I’m sure you’re going to tell me about it.”

“As a matter of fact, I am. Here’s the first thing you have to know— and here’s the first thing you have to tell your boss: Kransten had what you were so worried about. The formula was finished. He had the fountain of youth in his computer, along with marketing plans and a multi-million-dollar launch. The government’s worst nightmare come true. It exists.”

“What’s the second thing?”

“I’ve got it. The complete formula. All the details of the years of experimentation. It’s enough to re-create it perfectly.”

“Then just turn it over,” Rollins said, “and the whole thing’ll be forgotten.”

“Not a chance,” Westwood told him.

“You don’t want to be in that position, Justin. As long as you have it, they’re going to come after you.”

“As long as I’m the
only
one who has it.”

“Oh, Christ. What are you telling me?”

“It’s been distributed. To quite a few people. Everyone I trust has a copy.”

“You fucking idiot. You don’t know what you’ve done.”

“I know exactly what I’ve done,” Justin said quietly. “I’ve made sure you bunch of lying psychopaths leave me, Deena Harper, and her daughter, Kendall, alone.”

“You’ve done just the opposite. You just signed your own death warrants.”

“I don’t think so. You pass all this along: The people I’ve sent copies to …no one knows what he’s got. They don’t know its purpose. Everyone knows one thing only: Over the next ten years, starting today, if anything happens to me, Deena, or her little girl, they’re all to make the notes and the formula public. They’ve got instructions on exactly how to do it. And you’ll never be able to stop all of them.”

“Why ten years?”

“Less than that, you people hold grudges. You’d kill us out of spite as soon as you thought it was safe. More than that didn’t seem realistic. After a decade, I’ll take my chances. I figure by then you’ll be old and I’ll be able to take you in a fair fight if you decide to come after me.”

Rollins sank back in the bed. “How many people have copies?”

“Too many for you to go after. And in case you decide to, they’ve all got the names of three other people who have the disks. Anything suspicious happens to any of them, someone’s going to release the formula and spread the word.”

Rollins stayed quiet for the longest minute of his life. Finally, he said, “And all we have to do is leave you alone?”

“No. I want news coverage clearing us. Me, Deena, Frank Manwaring. I want a plausible explanation for Maura Greer’s death made very public. I want Wanda Chinkle to get credit for solving the case so you can’t fire her. You can link it to Kransten or Newberg or whoever you want. But we’re absolutely cleared of any suspicion in any of it. Same for the murders of Ed Marion and Brian Meves. Solve those cases and make sure we’re cleared. Wanda can get credit for everything, if that makes it easier for you. But I want to read about all of it in the
New York Times
and see it on every television news show in the country within forty-eight hours.”

“I don’t know if that’s possible,” Rollins said.

“I do. You want me to run down the list of murders the govern-ment’s been involved in that have never come to light? How about just a list of supposed suicides?”

“I have to check with my superiors.”

“Fine. While you’re at it, check and see how they’ll like it if CNN gets proof of the conspiracy that’s been going on for fifteen years with the pharmaceutical companies.”

“All right. Let’s assume you’ve got a deal.”

“I want to make it even clearer. I want to make absolutely certain you understand the way things stand, you little shithead. If anything happens to me, Deena, or Kendall over the next ten years—and I mean anything—you’re fucked. If any of us get hit by a car crossing the street or choke on a chicken bone in a restaurant or get cancer, the Aphrodite formula is made public and the conspiracy’s revealed. So you might not just want to leave us alone, you guys might want to hire crossing guards for us and make sure we’ve got really good medical insurance. You got it?”