Puppet Page 17

  “Then it’s another man named John Mallins.” Amanda feels a sudden rush of dizziness. No wonder, she thinks, lowering her wineglass to the floor. They were going around in circles.

  A long pause. “How much do you want to bet that John Mallins’s passport lists his birthday as July fourteenth?”

  Amanda says nothing. A gnawing sensation in the pit of her stomach is telling her if she takes that bet, she’ll lose.

  “Look, you said you’re representing the woman who killed that bastard. Why don’t you just ask her who she thought she was pumping bullets into?”

  You think I’m stubborn? Amanda wants to shout. “What about this guy your brother was involved with? Did Johnny ever mention his name?”

  Rachel shakes her head. “He called him Turk. Apparently it was a nickname of some sort.”

  “I hate nicknames,” Amanda mutters.

  “Me too. But I do like this wine. Would you like another drink?”

  Amanda lifts up her empty wineglass, holds it out for more. “Thanks,” she says, taking several quick swallows. “I should probably get going, let you pack.”

  “Oh, I’m not going anywhere. I just said I was leaving to get you to move your ass.” Rachel walks to the closet, retrieves Amanda’s coat. “You warm enough in this thing? It’s kind of flimsy.”

  Amanda is thinking this is as good a description as any of her life at the moment as she slips her arms inside the coat’s sleeves. “I’m fine, thanks.” She opens the door, steps into the hall. “Thanks again for the wine.”

  “Amanda,” Rachel calls as she heads for the elevators at the end of the hall. The word tugs at Amanda’s back, like a fishhook. “You’ll let me know if I’m right about July fourteenth, won’t you?”

  An elevator door opens. Amanda steps inside.

  Two things Amanda feels grateful for: (1) the hotel’s housekeeping staff has mopped up her bathroom floor, replaced the towels, and generally returned the room to its original pristine condition, and (2) they have not taken away her glass of wine.

  She gulps at the latter while admiring the former, debating whether to call Ben. He won’t be happy when she tells him about her latest escapade. You did what? she can almost hear him yell. You did what? It was bad enough she’d gone to see Hayley Mallins without his permission, but this latest stunt, going out alone to interview some woman who, in all probability, was nothing but a delusional drunk, well, that took the cake. Where was her common sense? She could have gotten herself killed, for God’s sake. Hadn’t he told her to order room service, take a bath, and get into bed? “I tried,” she offers weakly, finishing her wine while sitting on the side of the bathtub, and reaching for the hot-water tap. “If at first you don’t succeed.” She giggles, a large puddle of wine settling between her ears, upsetting her already delicate balance, as she pulls her sweater over her head and walks into the bedroom. Soon she is naked, and standing by the phone. She is also, she recognizes, very drunk.

  “This is Ben Myers. I’m not home right now, but if you’ll leave your name and number after the beep, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you, and remember to wait for the beep.”

  Isn’t that just like Ben to assume she doesn’t know how voice mail works, as if everyone doesn’t know you’re supposed to wait for the beep. “Well, hello there, Ben Myers,” Amanda says, speaking before the beep has a chance to sound. “Oops. Not a very good listener, am I?” She laughs, waits for the beep. “Well, hello there, Ben Myers,” she says again. “I’m calling—why am I calling?—oh, yes, I’m calling to apologize because it seems I was a bad girl and didn’t do what you told me to do. Whatever that was. I can’t remember. But hopefully I’ll figure it out by the time you get this message and call me back. Did you hear me? Call me back. It’s important. I think.” She laughs again as the beep cuts her off in the middle of her last word. “Well, that was rather rude,” she says as she replaces the receiver. “Didn’t even have time to tell him to give Jennifer my love. Give Jennifer my love,” she shouts in the direction of the phone, hearing the muffled sound of water from the bathroom. “Oh, no!”

  Amanda trips over her feet as she races into the bathroom and throws herself at the tub, the water just about to spill over the top as she plunges her hand into the boiling water and pulls up the plug. “Shit! That’s hot!” The water level begins receding immediately. Amanda waves her arm, red from the elbow down, into the air in an effort to cool it down, then waits till the water level is at a suitable level before replacing the plug and adding cold water to the mix. “I think somebody’s had a bit too much to drink,” she says, climbing inside the bathtub and pushing away the little voice telling her this is becoming an all-too-frequent occurrence of late. “These are special circumstances,” she says, recalling Rachel’s words. “The man calling himself John Mallins got what he deserved.”

  The man calling himself John Mallins, she repeats silently, reaching for the bar of soap and running it across her breasts before she realizes the soap is still wrapped. “Oops.” She laughs again, the sound becoming noticeably shrill, as she pulls the paper from the bar of soap, watching the paper float along the top of the water even as the soap sinks to the bottom. Is it possible that any of what Rachel Mallins told her is true? That the man calling himself John Mallins isn’t? That’s he’s an impostor who killed the real John Mallins twenty-five years ago, to steal his identity?

  And so what if he did? Does it really matter if the man her mother shot is named John Mallins or not? Facts are facts, and the fact is this: her mother killed a man, a man who might be someone named John Mallins, or he might not. “Whoever he was, he isn’t anymore,” Amanda pronounces, reclaiming the soap and running it haphazardly across her body.

  Except if he wasn’t John Mallins, who was he?

  And wouldn’t the answer to that question go a long way to clearing up a lot of other questions?

  Such as why her mother shot him?

  He called him Turk. Apparently it was some sort of nickname.

  “I hate nicknames,” Amanda whispers into the washcloth she spreads across her face. The wet terry cloth burrows into her mouth and nostrils, like a death mask.

  Puppet, she hears someone call. Puppet. Puppet.

  Amanda pulls the washcloth roughly from her face, struggling to her feet and climbing out of the tub. She proceeds, dripping wet, into the main room, where she picks up the phone. “The Metro Convention Center hotel,” she directs the operator. “Jerrod Sugar,” she tells the voice at reception. “Jerrod Sugar,” she informs the man who answers on the second ring. “This is Amanda Travis. And this is your lucky night.”

  A knock on the door wakes her up at two in the morning.

  Amanda hears the knocking as part of a dream in which she is alone in the middle of a rickety, old rowboat that is rapidly sinking into the ocean. As she frantically bails water, she can see sharks circling beneath her, one shark disappearing under the boat to hammer against its fragile bottom. One knock. Two knocks …

  Amanda sits up in bed, the pounding in her head echoing the pounding on the door. She checks the clock on the nightstand, wondering who the hell could be knocking on her door at two in the morning. Is there a fire? Has she slept through the fire alarm? Is someone trying to warn her to evacuate the building before it’s too late?

  She climbs out of bed, wrapping herself in her terry-cloth robe as she hurries to the door, her head throbbing painfully with each step. “Hello?” she whispers hoarsely, securing the chain across the door and opening it just a crack.

  “Amanda, what the hell is going on?”

  “Ben?” Amanda unfastens the chain and steps quickly into the hallway. “What are you doing here? Has something happened?”

  “You tell me.”

  Amanda stares hard at the handsome young man who was her first husband. She sees that he is dressed in jeans and a heavy Irish knit sweater, that his hair is uncombed and sprinkled with snow, and that his face is contorted with a mixture of wo
rry and fatigue. And something new, she realizes, trying to focus on his eyes. Anger, she realizes, gripping the door handle behind her back.

  “What was with that message you left on my voice mail?”

  “The message …?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  Amanda struggles to regroup. “I don’t remember my exact words. I’m half-asleep. You woke me up.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “No. I was sound asleep.”

  “I’ve been working all night on this case I have in the morning. I’m dead tired. I’m just about to crawl into bed when I decide I better check my messages—”

  “You weren’t out with Jennifer?”

  “And there you are, sounding so … I don’t know …”

  “What?”

  “Desperate,” he says finally, and Amanda pulls back, the word hitting her like a slap across the face. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “I assure you I’m not at all desperate.”

  “Okay, listen, I think we’ getting off the point here.”

  Unexpected tears fill Amanda’s eyes. Immediately, she lowers her head, looking toward her bare toes, and struggling to control her voice. “I’m sorry I scared you. That wasn’t my intention. Look, I’m really sorry. Why don’t you go home, get some sleep, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Ben brushes the hair from his forehead, closes his eyes in frustration. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Why did you call me?”

  “What?”

  “You said it was important.”

  “It’s nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow.”

  “You said you’d been a bad girl, whatever the hell that means, and you didn’t do what I told you to do. What did you do?”

  Amanda glances over her shoulder toward her room, the pounding in her head increasing with each subtle shift in position. What’s the matter with me? she wonders. What am I doing to myself?

  “Let’s take this inside,” Ben is saying. “There’s no point arguing out here in the hallway.”

  “No. Really. I think you should go,” Amanda protests, but Ben’s hand is already pushing her door open, and his hand is on the light switch on the wall before she can stop him.

  “What happened tonight, Amanda?” Ben asks as, all over the room, lights snap on.

  Shuffling noises. The sound of sheets crumpling. A ghostly figure, pale and befuddled, stirs in the middle of the bed. “Jesus,” Jerrod Sugar says, pushing his head off the pillow and shielding his eyes from the unexpected spotlight. “What’s going on here?”

  Amanda watches Ben’s cheeks stain bright pink, as if frostbitten. She feels the clenching of his jaw, the coiling of his fists. “Okay. Well. Okay,” he says, his body swaying uneasily from one foot to the other. “Sorry about the interruption. My mistake.” He switches off the lights and walks from the room.

  Amanda doesn’t move.

  “What was that all about?” Jerrod Sugar asks as the door slams shut.

  Amanda stands absolutely still for several seconds before climbing back into bed, the sharp crack of the slamming door echoing, like a whip, inside her brain. “Nothing,” she says, gathering the covers around her ears in an effort to block the sound, and closing her eyes.

  SEVENTEEN

  THE Toronto courthouse—referred to as the new courthouse, despite its being more than thirty years old—is located at the corner of University and Armoury. It’s called the new courthouse to distinguish it from the old courthouse, which is located in old City Hall, at the intersection of Bay and Queen. New City Hall, whose construction was completed in 1965, stands just across the street and consists of two crescent-shaped buildings of towering gray granite, curving in toward one another. New City Hall boasts a large, once-controversial outdoor sculpture by Henry Moore that looks a bit like a bronze chicken without its head, and a large, public skating rink, where people are already showing off their moves at eleven o’clock in the morning.

  Amanda is reminded of these facts the next morning when the taxi driver takes her to the wrong address.

  “You say new City Hall,” the cabbie insists in heavily accented English.

  “I said the new courthouse.”

  “Courthouse in old City Hall.”

  “That’s the old courthouse. I want the new courthouse.”

  “New courthouse not here,” the man replies. He makes an illegal U-turn on Bay, heads back in the direction from which they came.

  It’s my fault, Amanda thinks, leaning her still-throbbing forehead against the cab’s dirty side window, watching the dull parade of downtown buildings as they fade into the sickly gray sky. I should have been paying closer attention.

  To a lot of things, she decides ruefully, thinking back on last night’s disaster. “How could I let that happen?”

  “Something wrong, Mrs.?” the cabdriver asks warily. His dark, liquid eyes in the rearview mirror have narrowed, as if he suspects she is about to change her mind again.

  Well, let’s see, Amanda thinks. My mother’s in jail. I have a horrible hangover. I slept with a virtual stranger. And my former husband thinks I’m a slut. Make that my old former husband, she thinks, stifling a laugh. As opposed to my new former husband. Who cares what he thinks anyway? “No,” she tells the cabbie. “No problem.”

  She pulls back her shoulders and sits up straight, the dark green vinyl of the seat making noises of protest beneath her black coat. What right has Ben to judge her anyway? Doesn’t she have enough to deal with at the moment? So she was drunk. She’s entitled. Just as she’s entitled to sleep with whomever she wants. Even if she doesn’t really want to.

  Damn you anyway, Ben Myers. Why’d you have to come over last night, like some white knight riding to the rescue on his antique steed? Who said I need rescuing anyway? “Do I look like I need rescuing?” she demands out loud, spooking the cabbie, who makes a sharp left turn, causing Amanda to lose her balance and tumble over onto her side.

  “New courthouse,” the driver says, pulling up in front of an attractive gray-stone building.

  Amanda takes a moment to steady herself before climbing out of the car. “What am I doing here?” she asks, her words disappearing inside the collar of her coat. She wonders how Ben is going to react when he sees her and hopes it’s better than the way he reacted last night. Taking a deep gulp of bitterly cold air, she enters the building, checking the piece of paper in her purse for the number of the correct courtroom. “Courtroom 204,” she whispers under her breath, passing through the metal detector and mounting the escalator just inside the entrance, watching as the main floor recedes beneath her.

  Stepping off the escalator, she walks right into the path of an icily attractive blonde wearing the flowing black robes that lawyers in Canada wear when arguing a case in court. Jennifer? she wonders, seeing flashes of the woman’s shapely calves beneath her robe as she strides confidently into Room 201. Is that you? And why weren’t you with Ben last night?

  At least that way I wouldn’t feel so damn guilty about Jerrod Sugar. Although why I should feel guilty about Jerrod Sugar is a mystery to me. I can sleep with whomever I please. You can hardly accuse me of cheating on a man who hasn’t been my husband for eight years.

  Okay. Well. Okay, she hears Ben say, the door slamming behind him.

  Amanda notices a middle-aged man looking lost and inconsolable on a bench outside one of the courtrooms and can’t help but remember the hapless look that overwhelmed Jerrod Sugar’s face when he saw Ben standing at the foot of the bed. Her hand still pulsates with the beat of his heart as it raced against her open palm when she tried to hold him after Ben’s departure. He’d left minutes later, claiming he was too shook up to get back to sleep, and not even the promise of another round of lovemaking was enough of an enticement to persuade him to stay. He was sorry, he demurred, scrambling into his clothes, but he had a really full week ahead of him, he’d try to call her before he left to
wn, maybe they could arrange to meet back in Florida, good-bye, it was great, thanks for thinking of me.

  My pleasure, Amanda thinks, stomping some invisible snow off her boots and walking down the long corridor. Except it hadn’t been. Not really. Amanda tries to think of the last time she really enjoyed sex, stops when an image of Ben pushes itself back into her line of vision. “Oh, no. You are definitely not going down that road,” she castigates herself, pulling open the door to Courtroom 204 and stepping inside.

  The courtroom is modern but unexceptional. A robed judge sits at the head of the room, surrounded by numerous court clerks, all looking somewhat bored with the proceedings. A policeman sits in the witness box, looking toward the empty jury box on his left. Several spectators sit on rows of wooden benches behind the lawyers’ tables. The assistant crown attorney, a dumpy young woman whose sallow complexion is framed by a bramble of unruly dark hair, makes an obvious show of rifling through a stack of papers. She wears the constipated expression on her face almost proudly, like a diamond necklace she never intends to take off. Amanda shakes her head knowingly and sits down beside a middle-aged woman twisting a string of rosary beads through her shaking fingers. Amanda cranes her neck around the people in front of her, sees Ben whispering to a pretty young girl sitting beside him at the defense table. He pats the girl’s hand, then stretches, looking casually over his shoulder, his eyes stopping on Amanda.

  What are you doing here? his eyes say.

  I have something to tell you, Amanda answers silently, but Ben has already turned his attention back to the front of the courtroom where the prosecutor has risen to argue a point of law.

  Her voice is nasal and unpleasant, and every time she glances at the pretty young woman who is the defendant, her eyes narrow with barely contained fury. What she is really saying beneath all her high-sounding legal phrases is I’m going to show you. You, with your long, shiny hair and your expensive little dress on your perfect little body. You spoiled child of privilege who thinks life is nothing but a big bowl of ice cream to be devoured without consequence. Well, I’m here to burst that little bubble once and for all. I’m here to show you what life is really like.