Death Benefits Read Free Page A

the cost, because she had given him an unusually generous tip, so she had probably told him the truth about the driver trying to double up on her and make her late.
    On the other hand, everything else had been a lie. She had said the airport, but really wanted to go to a hotel. When he had heard where she was really going, he’d decided she had to be some kind of businesswoman on the way to a breakfast meeting, with that briefcase and all. Everything about her implied that she was meeting some big executive who had flown in from somewhere, and she was here to sell him something before he flew out again. That impression had only lasted a minute. When she had gone into the lobby, she had not gone to the front desk. She hadn’t gone to the concierge’s table to pick up the phone and tell somebody she was here. She hadn’t gone to the dining room. She had walked straight to the elevators to head upstairs.
    Nobody wore a suit like that to go to a hotel for an affair, and he had never seen anybody arrive for that purpose at five-thirty A.M. , either. That convinced him. This young woman had done everything possible to make this look like business, so it wasn’t business. After all, what else was upstairs but people’s hotel rooms? And changing cabs on impulse was a pretty good way to be sure you had not been followed by some private detective trying to prove you were fooling around.
    He thought the incident through one more time, to be sure he had not misinterpreted any of the evidence, and was satisfied, but not glad. He had instinctively liked that young woman from the moment when he had seen her jump out of the other cab and walk up to him, trying to look sure of herself. He hoped she had not gotten herself into something that she would regret when she was a little older, but he supposed she probably had. Everybody seemed to make a few mistakes after they looked grown up, and then really grew up while they were trying to make up for them. He pronounced a silent benediction on her and turned his attention to the airport dispatcher, who was already waving him forward. After that he was busy, and the young woman left his thoughts and then his memory. It was as though she had stepped into that elevator, and it had carried her out of the world.

2
    “He’s asking people questions,” Maureen Cardarelli announced. She sat still, her eyes wide and expectant, waiting for Walker’s reaction.
    “Like what—‘Can Cardarelli be trusted?’ ”
    Her eyes took on a half-closed, suspicious look that still managed to be oddly seductive, her face lowered so a curtain of coal-black hair would fall to place it in half-shadow. “He hasn’t talked to you?”
    “No,” said Walker. “Maybe he can tell I’m busy.” He let his eyes move significantly in the direction of the pile of papers on his desk, then back to meet hers.
    She said with slow malice, “Odd that he hasn’t said anything to you, of all people.”
    “Why me?” Walker pretended that her uncharacteristic lack of subtlety had not made his mind stall for an instant while he searched his memory for guilty secrets.
    She shrugged and stood up, then said, “It’s a big building. Lots of departments, lots of places to camp out, but he seems to like it near you.” She smiled indulgently to imply that it had been a playful slap and he was still one of her closest confidants. “Well, I’d better let you go back to sleep.”
    Walker watched her walk to the opening of his cubicle and spin around the corner to take her first few steps in that special way she had. It was at once too graceful to be conscious and too efficient and purposeful to be anything else. As she walked toward the elevators, everything from the set of her shoulders to the
pock-pock-pock
of her high heels on the terrazzo floor insisted that she was on a mission of importance.
    Walker tried to force himself to return to his work. He looked down at the stack of handwritten papers on his desk, then surveyed