Aphrodite Part 13

He nodded. "Yeah. Me too, I guess."

"Did you have a bad dream?"

He thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Just the usual."

"What do you dream about when you have bad dreams?"

"Just life," he said, putting his gun back down on the nearby table. "That's all it takes."

Neither of them said anything for several moments. Then Deena whispered, "Well, I better go back to bed. Kenny's still sleeping. Nothing seems to wake her up."

He watched her disappear and close the door behind her. He looked at the cheap plastic clock radio by the side of his bed. It was 5 a.m. Justin decided to turn on his light. He would stay awake now.

No more dreaming today.

16.

At 8 a.m. she knocked on his door. Justin cleared his throat, called out for her to come in. When she did, he saw that she was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Her legs and feet were bare. Instinctively he tried to cover up the gla.s.s of scotch he was holding.

"I meant to tell you this yesterday," she said. "I want you to tell me how much all this grandeur"-she waved her hand around the motel room-"costs. You're doing enough for us. So I just want you to know I'll pay you back. I don't know how long we're going to have to be doing this, but whatever it is, I'll pay my way. And Kendall's, too."

"Don't worry about it," he said. "I can cover it."

"Is East End Harbor doling out six-figure salaries to their police force now?"

"I can afford it," Justin told her. "You've got other things to worry about. But I appreciate it."

She looked at him curiously, and he knew she was wondering about his secrets, but she didn't say anything, then she gave her lopsided half smile and said, "I'm going to work out. You want to join me?"

"You mean, like ...exercise?"

"Exactly like exercise," she said, brushing one of the curls away from her face. "I thought maybe I'd give you a yoga lesson."

"I don't think so."

"If you won't let me pay you, at least maybe I can make you feel a little better."

"I feel fine."

"Is that why you're drinking at eight o'clock in the morning?"

"I've already been up for three hours. So by my body clock, it's really lunchtime."

She just stared at him. Finally he put the gla.s.s down and said, "Okay. Let's exercise."

She led him nice and slow through a series of stretches as well as various sitting and standing positions with odd names like Downward Dog and Upward Dog. He felt extremely awkward and strangely vulnerable; he also was embarra.s.sed because he knew he was out of shape. She kept trying to get him to repeat the Sanskrit versions of the names of the exercises, which he deliberately mangled to annoy her a little bit. Within ten minutes, he was dripping sweat onto the motel-room wall-to-wall carpet and feeling his muscles ache and his tendons stretch. She, on the other hand, wasn't even breathing hard.

"You're not in very good shape for a cop," she pointed out.

"I haven't been a real cop for a while. I'm a little rusty. And aren't teachers supposed to be supportive of their eager students?"

"Stop stalling and get into squat position." When he didn't move, she said, "I know you know what that is. We just did it."

"I know what it is. But if I squat right now, I'm just going to warn you that several of my body parts might never return to normal."

"I'll risk it," she said.

So he made a face and contorted himself into a squat, his arms pointed straight up, his palms together. Then he was made to twist into two or three other positions he'd never dreamed existed. And he had to admit that she was a h.e.l.l of a teacher. Using her body to position him gently, demonstrating what the poses were supposed to look like without showing off her superiority. She was extremely strong and extraordinarily limber. He liked listening to her too. Her voice had a way of lulling him into a spell, so the whole session took on a kind of vague otherworldliness. It was as if she were keeping the real world temporarily at bay, which he realized was not such a bad idea at the moment.

One of his cell phones rang half an hour into the lesson. He was relieved to be able to stand up and stop working his recalcitrant body. But he instantly missed the touch of her hand, the feel of her weight against him.

"Yeah," Justin said into the receiver.

"I've got some information," Gary said on the other end of the line. "What's going on? You sound out of breath."

"Don't ask," he said. "Where are you calling from?"

"The station. No one else is here."

"Okay, what do you got for me?"

"Just about everything you wanted. You got a pen?"

"Go."

"There haven't been a lot of incoming phone calls to Growth Industries. I've got three in the last month, a total of eight in the past three months."

"Eight phone calls in three months? For eighteen phone lines?"

"Yeah. Well, seventeen now. The one that Susanna Morgan called's been disconnected. Even so, if they're sellin' something, I hope they're getting a good price for it, 'cause they ain't doing a lot of business."

"You have the numbers of the incoming calls?" Justin asked.

"Yeah. They're all from the Northeast. Ma.s.sachusetts, Vermont, New York, one in New Jersey." As Justin wrote, Gary read out each of the numbers of the incoming calls and matched them up to the Growth numbers they came in on.

"Okay," Justin said. "Next."

"None of the bills for the eighteen lines go to the Growth address. Nine of them are sent to a company called the Ellis Inst.i.tute and nine are sent to something called the Aker Inst.i.tute."

"What the h.e.l.l are those?"

"They're research firms."

"How do you know that?"

"I called 'em," Gary said. "What kind of research?"

"Medical. Ellis is in New York. Aker's in Boston." He gave Justin the phone numbers and addresses for both firms.

"Do we know who the bills go to at the firms?"

"Yes, we do. Edward Marion at Ellis. Helen Roag at the other one. But listen to this: When I called both places, I said I wanted to talk about a bill that wasn't paid. I used the names of companies that had called in to the phone machines."

"And what happened?"

"I got the runaround. I couldn't get past Marion's or Roag's a.s.sistants. They both said that those bills weren't paid there. They're always forwarded on to something called the Lobster Corporation for payment."

"And what's that?"

"No idea. They wouldn't give me a phone number or address. They said they'd look into it but that's as far as they'd go."

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," Justin said. "I'm impressed as h.e.l.l, Gary."

"Thanks. But there's more on Marion. I've got his home phone and address. He lives in Connecticut. His cell must be a company phone because I couldn't track it." He gave the information to Justin, then did the same for Helen Roag. "She lives in Boston. Actually, just outside Boston, in Marblehead. You did have the spelling right, by the way. It's R-O-A-G. And I've got her cell number, too." He pa.s.sed that along, then verified it after Justin read it back to him.

"You did a great job, Gary. I want to thank you."

"Don't you want to know what else I got?"

"I didn't ask for anything else. I can't imagine imagine anything else." anything else."

"I know. But I figured you might be a little busy wherever the h.e.l.l you are. So I called those numbers, the ones that made the calls to Growth Industries."

"And?"

"And it's pretty weird."

"How weird?" Justin asked.

"Very weird," Gary answered. "Every place that called? Every one of them's an old-age home."

Elron Burton had been feeling proud of himself ever since that secretary from Growth Industries had locked herself out of the office. There'd been a problem and he'd solved it. No fuss, no muss, no need to bother the big boss. So when that boss, Byron Fromm, came striding through the lobby that morning, Elron gave him a big smile and a wave and said, "Problem solved, bossman. Everything was A-OK last night."

"What problem is that, Elron?" the chubby, Jell-Olike Fromm asked.

"The problem with the lady who locked herself out. I let her in, just like you said."

"Let who who in? And when did I ever say to let in? And when did I ever say to let anybody anybody in?" in?"

"The lady from Growth. You know, up in 301. She got locked out and she called you and you told her to come see me. ..."

From the look on Byron Fromm's face, Elron had the sinking feeling that maybe he hadn't solved the problem. Maybe he'd created the problem. He wished he'd kept his big mouth shut.

"You'd better tell me the story from the beginning," Fromm said, and he looked mighty scary for someone with such a soft body.

"Yes sir," Elron said. And he told.

"That's amazing."

Justin and Kendall were watching Deena finish her yoga exercise. Justin had just seen her execute a movement where she went from standing straight up, slowly bent over backwards, and kept going down until the top of her head was resting on the floor. From that position, she slowly lifted her head up again, then uncurled her back until she was absolutely straight. Now Deena was balancing herself on her hands while her legs were bent backwards and wrapped around her own neck.

"This isn't an actual human position," Justin said. "I never saw anyone make herself so small."

"The point is balance," Deena said, not even breathing hard. "Not size. I'm perfectly balanced."

"You could also fit into somebody's briefcase."

"I don't think you're grasping the finer concepts of the practice."

"No," Justin agreed. "I think you're going to have to work on it with me. I'm mostly focused on the fact that your feet are in a place I can't even get my hands to."

Deena now slowly unfurled her body and lay on the floor, rhythmically breathing in and out. She crossed her legs, bent her head forward until the crown touched the floor, told Justin that she was sealing the practice. It wasn't until she'd lifted her head that Kendall asked, "So what do we do now?"

Justin looked at his watch and said, "Your mom's gonna take a shower, you get to watch TV, and I'm going to start running up our phone bill."

Byron Fromm sat in the office of Bert Stiles, the head of the Alexis Development Company. Bert had been silent for quite some time now. All he did, as Fromm sat there, was run an emery board across the tops of his fingernails. Occasionally he would pick up a nail clipper and use it to clean a nail or pinch off an untidy cuticle. The man was obsessed with his nails, was always buffing them or polishing them or neatening them. Watching him, Fromm began to fidget uncomfortably.

"Do you want to talk to Elron yourself?" Fromm asked when he couldn't stand the quiet or the filing any longer.

Stiles shook his head, put his hands together, and placed the well-manicured fingers under his chin.

"Is there anything else you want me to do?"

Stiles nodded but still didn't speak. He pulled his hands from under his chin, stared at the nails, and began filing again.

"What?" Byron Fromm asked. "What do you want me to do?"

"This Elton," Stiles finally said. "Elron," Fromm corrected. "It's Elron, not Elton."

"Byron," Bert Stiles said. "I don't give a rat's a.s.s what his name is. What I want to know is if he has any idea who these people were." When he raised his voice, he ran the emery board a little harder and faster.

"He doesn't. But I do."

"You?"

"I can't be sure. I mean, I didn't see them. But the guy, he sounds like someone who was around here two days ago. And then again yesterday. The first time, he was trying to get into the Growth offices. I didn't let him in. The second time, he insisted on talking to me out of the office, said it was too confidential to discuss inside. But it was just bulls.h.i.t. I decided he was a nut. But now I realize it was right around the time of the break-in. I went outside with him because he said he was a cop and I think he might be. Not local, though. He showed me his badge but it wasn't from around here."

"Where was he from?"

Fromm shook his head. "Long Island somewhere. He took the ferry over."

"What about the woman?"