then, snap! The minute shivers in his eyes remain, but his mouth is solid again. He looks to her left, where an old gent in a parka and tweed cap is reading a magazine. “Is that your friend? Or is it the woman over there who’s been looking into the window of Forever 21 a suspiciously long time?”
“Maybe it’s both of them,” Holly says. Now that the confrontation is here, she feels okay. Or almost; those eyes are disturbing and disorienting. Looking into them too long will give her a headache, but he would take looking away as a sign of weakness. And it would be.
“You know me, but all I have is your given name. What’s the rest of it?”
“Gibney. Holly Gibney.”
“And what is it you want, Holly Gibney?”
“Three hundred thousand dollars.”
“Blackmail,” he says, and gives his head a small shake, as if he’s disappointed in her. “Do you know what blackmail is, Holly?”
She remembers one of the late Bill Hodges’s old maxims (there were many): You don’t answer a perp’s questions; the perp answers yours. So she simply sits and waits with her small hands folded beside her unwanted slice of pizza.
“Blackmail is rent,” he says. “Not even rent-to-buy, a scam Chet on Guard knows well. Let’s suppose I had three hundred thousand dollars, which I don’t—there’s a big difference between what a TV reporter makes and what a TV actor makes. But let’s suppose.”
“Let’s suppose you’ve been around for a long, long time,” Holly says, “and putting money away all the while. Let’s suppose that’s how you finance your . . .” Your what, exactly? “Your lifestyle. And your background. Bogus IDs and all.”
He smiles. It’s charming. “All right, Holly Gibney, let’s suppose that. The central problem for me remains: blackmail is rent. When the three hundred K is gone, you’ll come back with your Photoshopped pictures and your electronically altered voiceprints and threaten me with exposure all over again.”
Holly is ready for this. She didn’t need Bill to tell her that the best confabulation is the one containing the most truth. “No,” she says. “Three hundred thousand is all I want, because it’s all I need.” She pauses. “Although there is one other thing.”
“And what would that be?” The pleasant TV-trained tones have become condescending.
“Let’s stick with the money for now. Recently my Uncle Henry was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He’s in an elder care facility that specializes in housing and treating people like him. It’s very expensive, but that’s really beside the point because he hates it there, he’s very upset, and my mother wants to bring him back home. Only she can’t care for him. She thinks she can, but she can’t. She’s getting old, she has medical problems of her own, and the house would have to be retrofitted for an invalid.” She thinks of Dan Bell. “Ramps, a stair-chair, and a bed-hoist to start with, but those things are minor. I’d want to hire round-the-clock care for him, including an RN in the daytime.”
“Such expensive plans, Holly Gibney. You must love the old dear very much.”
“I do,” Holly says.
It’s the truth even though Uncle Henry is a pain in the ass. Love is a gift; love is also a chain with a manacle at each end.
“His general health is bad. Congestive heart failure is the main physical problem.” Again she has Dan Bell to draw on. “He’s in a wheelchair and on oxygen. He might live another two years. It’s possible he could live three. I’ve run the numbers and three hundred thousand dollars would keep him for five.”
“And if he lives six, you’d come back.”
She finds herself thinking of young Frank Peterson, murdered by that other outsider in Flint City. Murdered in the most gruesome and painful way. She’s suddenly furious with Ondowsky. Him with his trained TV reporter’s voice and his condescending smile. He’s a piece of poop. Except poop is too mild. She leans forward, fixing her gaze on those eyes (which have finally, thankfully, begun to settle).
“Listen to me, you child-murdering piece of shit. I don’t want to ask you for more money. I didn’t even want to ask you for this money. I never want to see you again. I can’t believe I’m actually planning to let you go, and if you don’t wipe that fracking smile off your face, I just may change my mind.”
Ondowsky recoils as if slapped, and the smile does indeed disappear. Has he ever been spoken to like this? Maybe, but not for