10.12.2008 / EP. 46
Figuring It Out
On her way home, ostensibly, Milly’s Porsche growled its satisfaction. Light clouds dotted the spring sky. Milly drove aggressively. She opened the car window; cool air inspired her. If Pam had drug ambitions, it wasn’t in America. She could get all the money and power she wanted here legitimately, through the construction business and the influence of Brull’s entourage. Yet Pam was pushing the envelope on drugs. The reason had to lie elsewhere. Ernest wasn’t behind it; Pam’s husband was a research chemist. Consumer goods didn’t interest him. Say, for argument’s sake, Pam wanted influence in Paris. What steps would she take? Her drugs, after all, came from France. Who did she know there and how did she acquire the connection? Milly could tap that planchette and see what ghosts emerged on the ouija board. She had no better ideas.
France was a dark corner in Pam’s history. The traditional biographical sources all included Pam, but uniformly ignored any country in her past bar the United States. Milly didn’t think this was chauvinism in the compilers. She couldn’t explain France’s absence from the record or from the surface of Pam’s life. There was some connection; that much Milly knew. And as she geared down to take a corner at speed, Milly admitted that the connection was both alive and concealed.
Milly ticked off on her fingers the points that troubled her about Pam. Pam was rich in her own right. She had a husband with money. She’d have all the power she wanted if her friend the Governor won the election. Pam didn’t have to conspire or manipulate. Nor was she the type who, like a miser, craved for the mere sake of possession. She clearly was under strain. Milly had noticed it in her face last night. The puzzle wouldn’t fit together no matter how Milly arranged the pieces. She almost caused an accident thinking about it. At the corner of Edgefield and Brook she abruptly turned left and a car headed towards her had to swerve hard. Milly imagined consequences. The driver had been talking on a cellphone but dropped the device in panic. The call was from the driver’s estranged wife, timidly wondering if he’d be interested in coffee. She interpreted the cut line as a negative reply. Her reaction was to accept a date with a dermatologist who’d been suggesting dinner. She didn’t feel any passion for the man, but as a result of the date within six months she completed her divorce and was engaged to the dermatologist, who was pleased and baffled by his luck. Milly herself engaged in a mildly erotic episode as she pulled into the Evans Gems reserved parking stall behind the supermarket near her office. Opening the ’storeroom’, Milly gratefully sank into her chair and typed the computer access codes. Milly would have to eliminate Pam. That was the clean solution. While the computer navigated its firewalls, Milly let her thoughts range free. The estranged wife, now married to the dermatologist, was approached by an old friend who knew an unsavoury episode from her past. The friend threatened to blackmail the wife unless she killed someone. The wife was attracted to the excitement of the chase. She planned thoroughly and had few scruples. Best of all, she had no prior convictions and her fingerprints weren’t on file. She’d make the death look like a road accident, she thought. Milly’s computer was now poised for action. Her real workday had begun.
Milly swore for the hundredth time she’d retire from government after the election. During a routine day, buried under paper, she watched the hours crawl slowly towards four o’clock while she chipped away at a mountain of words. It was no fun shifting pages from pile to folder to envelope to pile to folder again. Night, with its danger and isolation, the absence of safeguards and rules, brought her to life. She didn’t have to be fair or kind. There was no one to satisfy. A mailed fist controlled the playing field. And the fist was wielded by Milly, from the safety of a silent dust-free room, regulated for heat and static electricity, to which access was barred except with her consent, an artificial environment in which Milly was the dominant form of life.
***
Andreas met Ernest in the morning, once more prolonging their discussion about producing Immortality in America. Andreas needed an excuse to stay in Albany and he and Ernest got along famously. Their conversation suited them to a T. Through Ernest, Andreas had met Pam and now saw her whenever he wished. This part of Andreas’s mission was a piece of cake.
Andreas found it more difficult to get at Milly. After the failed car accident, Andreas returned to professional methods. The gist of professionalism was careful observation and waiting. A few days passed in this manner, during which Andreas also plumbed the keyholes of Matignon and the Elysee to see where the barrier against disclosure of information about Daloux originated. The process was like environmental testing: an engineer sank bore holes in random locations, which translated to English as asking discrete questions of key advisors. Andreas found the most sensitive location was at the Elysee, the President’s mansion in Paris, more particularly the military wing. Matignon would have been an easier tooth to pull, because it was the seat of French government where intrigue and power struggles were common. The Elysee, on the other hand, ran like a Swiss watch. It was exempt from budget accountability and Presidents left office with millions of euros in cash from the private vault. But the Elysee was also Antoine’s power base. Antoine agreed to raise the subject of Daloux with a few friends.
Southeast Asia crept out of the woodwork when Antoine asked about Daloux. Someone in France’s past had done Marianne, the affectionate name for France, a valuable service. The son had replaced the father, now dead, but honour on both sides demanded respect for old traditions. When France made a request, the son assisted. No hesitation, no questions, no limits. And if the son needed a favour, France lent a hand. Here Antoine’s murmuring informant changed the subject. Someone had come into the room. There was nothing to gain by pressing. Antoine told Andreas that Southeast Asia was the place to look. Which, as it happened, was a vital clue. Or so Andreas believed. He’d seen a man peering through binoculars at him in the park. The man was Asian.
***
Pam changed cars in the underground lot at Dove and Madison. She left her Buick and took the Saturn. She drove out route 90 then caught 146 to Guilderland. At Serenity, she parked. A space was reserved for her. Pam Carrera was a generous donor and director. She made her way to 518, Serenity’s largest suite with a west view. She saw the most beautiful sunsets there. Someone with thin gray hair sat at a table, writing. “Hello, mother,” Pam said.
“I’m busy,” her mother answered. “How did you get in?”
“You gave me a key. I’m Pam, your daughter.”
Pam’s mother wrote. She wrote notes to herself about where she lived and her schedule each day. She wrote warnings to Serenity’s staff not to take anything from her room. She reminded herself that her telephone number hadn’t changed, that her parents were dead, that she had retired, that meals were served downstairs. Pam’s mother taped these notes to the walls and doors of her apartment. They repeated her address and the names of her children, where she ate and slept. They were mirrors into her soul; she had written them, therefore she was alive. They reminded her who she was. The messages replaced the memories that dementia had stolen. The compulsion kept her occupied. Pam’s mother was 87 and her memory was slipping away along with her other powers. She dressed and washed herself, but she couldn’t handle her bank accounts or mail. The inability distressed and frustrated her. Her eyesight was failing. She tired quickly. She’d lost the social skills that were necessary for politeness, so she couldn’t make new friends. She didn’t read or watch television or keep abreast of current affairs. There was nothing to talk about and nobody to talk to. Her patience with the world was low just when the world was least patient with her. Pam bore the brunt of her mother’s discontent, the burden of her isolation.
Pam’s mother’s name was Colette. There was no one Pam could talk to about her. Ernest had tolerated a few hours before he ventured an opinion that closed the topic. He felt that Pam should hire a full-time caretaker. He believed Pam was setting herself up for a breakdown when Colette died, that Pam lacked the skills and disposition to nurse her, that Alzheimer’s had already radically altered Colette from the loving mother Pam remembered, that Pam’s daily yearning for affection coupled with its disappointment and resulting pain amounted to abuse and dependency. Pam had to break the cycle, he thought. But Pam wouldn’t hear of it. Pam suffered silently the repeated blows of her mother forgetting who she was. No one knew the hurt she carried like an anvil in her heart. Ernest saw that Colette would soon die. The question was whether she’d take Pam with her.
Pam checked that her mother was taking her medication. By and large she was. She checked that she had enough cash. She did. Her mother asked whether she had a mother or father, whether she had a sister or brother still alive. Did she have any children? Just me, Pam wanted to shout. Where do I live, am I in Albany? Where do I eat? What day is it? Pam eventually said she had to go. She’d see her soon. They kissed each other’s cheeks. Pam’s mother was writing again before the door closed.
