"¿Is that your father?" Charlie asks. "So he's alive?" I add. The woman looks at both of us, but she remains focused on me. "He's been dead six months," she says almost too calmly. What did they want from him?
His voice is high pitched but strong, she doesn't seem intimidated at all. I advance a couple of steps; she remains motionless.
"Why did she lie about who he was?" I ask him. To our surprise, she smiles in amusement and rubs her foot on the grass. Then I realize that she is barefoot.
"Funny, she was about to ask them the same question.
"She could have told us she was her daughter," Charlie accuses.
"And you could have said why you were looking for him."
Biting my bottom lip, I know a draw when I see one. If we want information, we have to offer it.
"Walter Harvey," I say, holding out my hand and my fake name.
"Gillian Duckworth," she says, hugging her.
Across the street, the milkman goes about his daily routine. Charlie hides his machete behind his back and waves to me.
"Uh...maybe we should bring this inside..."
"Yeah…not a bad idea," I say, hiding the gun under my shirt. Why doesn't he come in and have a cup of coffee?
-With you two? After you've pulled out a pistol and a pirate's knife? Do I look like I want my photograph to appear on a milk carton?
The woman turns to leave and Charlie looks at me. "She's all we have."
"Please don't go," I say, taking her arm.
She pulls away from me but she doesn't raise her voice at all.
"I'm glad I met you, Walter. May she have a good life.
"Gillian..."
"We can explain it," Charlie yells.
She doesn't even slow down. The milkman disappears into the apartment next door. The last opportunity. Knowing that we need the information, Charlie jumps into the open grave.
"We think her father may have been murdered.
Gillian stops short and turns, head up. She brushes away from her three black curls from her face.
"Give us just five minutes," I beg. Then she can go. Tearing a page out of Lapidus' Manual of Stubborn Negotiations, she resolutely leads me to our apartment door, giving her no chance to say no. Gillian is right behind me.
When I walk into our apartment I expect her to make a joke or at least some sarcastic comment. The bare walls... the windows covered with calendar pages... it has to say something. But she doesn't. Like a cat exploring unfamiliar territory, Gillian speeds through the front room. Her slender arms swing at the sides of her body; her fingers rummage through the frayed pockets of her faded jeans. I offer him the folding chair next to me in the kitchen. Charlie offers her the sofa. She heads towards me. But instead of sitting in the chair, she propels herself up onto the white Formica counter. Her bare feet dangle off the edge. My gaze lingers too long and Charlie clears his throat. "Come on, please," she tells me with her eyes. "Like you've never been in a girls' locker room before." I shake my head and focus back on Gillian.
"She was telling us that her father..." I begin to say.
"Actually, he wasn't telling them anything," she replies. I just want to know why they think he was killed.
I look at Charlie. "Be careful," she warns me with a slight shake of her head. But even he realizes that we have to start somewhere.
"Until yesterday we both lived in New York, we worked in a bank," he began to say with an uncertain voice. On Friday, we were going through some old accounts...
"…and we came across one in the name of Marty Duckworth," Charlie interrupts, already mid-flight. I'm about to interrupt him in turn, but I change my mind. We both know who lies better. As far as we know, his father's account
it had seen better days... It was an old account abandoned in the system. But once we found her, and once we reported the finding to the bank's head of security, well... yesterday there were three of us on the run. Today there are only two of us.
Unable to finish the story, Charlie looks away and falls silent. He is still affected by everything that has happened to us. And when he relives what happened, it's clear that he still hears Shep...falling onto the wooden planks. My brother's eyes say it all. "God, why did we do something so stupid?" Charlie looks at Gillian, who's staring at him. She hadn't noticed it before, but she rarely takes her eyes off her. She is always watching. Her eyes meet, and only then does she seem to relent. Her feet no longer swing. She is sitting on her hands, absolutely motionless. Whatever she's seen in my brother, it's something she knows all too well.
-He is okay? I ask him.
Gillian nods, unable to speak. -I knew it, I knew it...
"Knew what?"
At first she hesitates, she refuses to answer. We are still two complete strangers. But the longer we sit there... the more she realizes that we're just as desperate as she is.
"What did she know?" - I insist.
"That something wasn't right, I knew the moment I got the report. Seeing the confusion on our faces, she explains. Six months ago, like any other morning, I was serving myself some cereal, and suddenly the phone rings. They tell me that my father died in a bicycle accident, that he was taking a ride on the Rickenbacker Causeway when a car veered out of her lane…" she shifts in her makeshift seat as she relives the memory of she. After reburying it, she asks us. Have you ever seen the Rickenbacker?
We shook our heads simultaneously.
"It is a bridge as steep as a small mountain. When she was sixteen, it was a very tough climb. My father was sixty-two years old. He had trouble driving on the paved road that runs along the beach. There's no way he was riding the Rickenbacker.
The three of us were silent.
Charlie is the first to react. -The police officers...?
—The day after the accident I went to his house to pick up the suit in which he was going to be buried. When I opened the door, the place looked like it had been hit by a hurricane. Broken cabinets... emptied drawers... but as far as I know they only took the computer. But best of all, instead of sending the police, the robbery was investigated by...
"The secret service," I say.
Gillian turns with a sidelong glance.
"How do you know?"
"Who do you think he's after us?"
That's all it takes. Just like she did with Charlie, Gillian fixes her gaze on me. I can't tell if she's looking for the truth or just a connection. In any case, he has found her. Her blue eyes pierce me.
Charlie coughs loudly.
"What do you think they were looking for?" she asks.
-Who? The guys from the secret service? -I ask.
"Of course, the Service.
"I never knew," Gillian explains, her voice still soft and lost. When I called her office in Miami, they told me they had no record of any investigation. I told them that I had met the agents but without the names there was nothing they could do to help me.
"So that's it?" Did you just throw in the towel? Charlie asks. Didn't it occur to you that everything that happened was a bit strange?
"Charlie...!"
"No, you're right," Gillian says. But you have to understand, when it came to my father's business, secrets were part of the game. That's how he was.
Charlie stares at her, but I nod to reassure her. When it comes to our jerk father, I've been able to forgive. Charlie never forgets.
"Okay," I say. I know how it feels.
As she reaches out to touch his arm, the strap of her bra falls below the tank top and circles his shoulder. He replaces it in her place with a movement of perfect elegance.
"Okay, wait a second," Charlie interrupts. I'm still not clear about the dates. His father died six months ago, right? Did that happen right after he left New York?
-NY? Gillian asks, puzzled. He never lived in New York.
Charlie looks at me and studies Gillian's expression.
"Is she sure of that?" Did her father ever have an apartment in Manhattan?
"Not that I know of," she says. She used to travel to New York from time to time. I know he was saving money to travel last summer, but other than that, my father lived in Florida his entire life.
"All his life." The words bounce like projectiles inside my brain. Has no sense. All this time we thought we were looking for a New Yorker who had made money and moved to Florida. And now we find out that he was a guy from Florida who could barely afford the few trips he had made to New York. Marty Duckworth, what the hell were you into?
"Please, can someone tell me what's going on?" Gillian asks as her eyes dart between us.