Up close, Giller could see the steeliness to her: the tightness around her mouth, the eyes without warmth. A little flesh on her bones might have helped matters, but not by much. Connie White was all sharp edges: a man could cut himself on her if he wasn’t careful.
He produced an envelope, the smaller of the two he was carrying, and displayed its contents: $500. Giller was prepared to go up to $2,500, if her information was good, but no more than that. The rest he intended to keep, possibly for additional expenses, but mostly because he might need it if everything went south and he were forced to disappear.
‘That’s not what we agreed,’ said White.
Giller took a seat. He was on familiar ground here. He had spent many years negotiating, and was skilled in the art.
‘We didn’t agree to anything,’ he replied. ‘You told me how much you wanted, and I said I looked forward to speaking with you.’
He slid the envelope across the table and waited for her to pick it up. He didn’t have to wait long.
‘Take it as a down payment, a token of goodwill,’ said Giller. ‘You get to keep it one way or another.’
Just as quickly as it had been grasped, the envelope was gone, vanished into a front pocket of White’s jeans. She didn’t exactly soften – Giller didn’t believe she was capable of it – but a new light entered her eyes, even if only the glow of avarice.
‘You want coffee?’ she asked.
‘Sure.’
This, too, was part of the negotiating process: take whatever hospitality was offered, as long as it didn’t look like it was going to cost you in the end.
White filled two small cups from a pot on the stove. Giller declined cream and sugar.
‘Have you lived here long?’ he asked.
‘About six months. My brother owns the land. That’s his house you passed back on the main road. I lost my home after I lost my job. I tried to hold on to it as long as I could, but, you know, fucking banks.’
Giller knew. The judge had given White probation on the corruption charges, but in this glorious Internet age her name was now dirt. She’d be lucky to get a job hawking hot dogs outside ballparks, and bankers habitually looked unsympathetically on convicted criminals, unless the criminal in question was one of their own.
‘You keep the place nice,’ he said. ‘Uncluttered.’
‘That’s because I’ve had to sell most of my possessions to make ends meet. I can’t clutter it with what I don’t have. Are we done with the pleasantries?’
Giller figured they were.
‘Tell me what you know,’ he said.
White sat back, her arms folded. Jesus. Giller relented, and showed her the second envelope, containing a further $1,000. The final $1,000 he’d hand over later if the information turned out to be good.
‘There’s a guy, Gregg Mullis, lives over in Medford,’ said White. ‘He was married to a woman named Holly Weaver, but they split up about six or seven years back. She’s up by Guilford now. Has a kid, a boy, aged five or so, name of Daniel. No father’s name on the birth certificate, only the mother’s.’
Giller gave no indication that the name was familiar to him, but Daniel Weaver was on his list of twenty children.
‘After his marriage broke up, Mullis went out for a while with a friend of a friend of mine. He wanted kids, my friend’s friend didn’t – or not with him – and he moved on. It happens. He wasn’t a bad guy, she said, just not her pony for the long road.’
She paused, waiting. Giller counted out five fifties, and handed them over. They went the way of the first five hundred, except into a different pocket, and White resumed.
‘Mullis was sore, though. He and his ex-wife tried to have kids, but nothing ever took. Mullis was afraid it might be his fault, but they both got tested and it turned out it was his wife who was infertile. They talked about adopting, but Mullis didn’t want someone else’s child. He wanted his own. Funny how some men are.’
Giller agreed that it was funny.
‘And then, a couple of years later, his wife registers the birth of a son,’ White concluded. ‘So how does that happen?’
‘Maybe she got treatment.’
‘Or maybe the kid is Jesus.’
‘Is that it?’
‘Isn’t it enough?’
‘I don’t know, and I won’t until I speak with Mullis.’
‘I have an address for him, and a copy of the birth certificate. I’m sure you could find both yourself, but what’s your time worth?’
‘Another two-fifty. If Daniel Weaver is the child I’m looking for, I’ll give you the remaining thousand.’ Giller thought he might even throw in the extra five hundred, if White’s information brought his dealings with Quayle to a successful conclusion.
‘You’ll give me another two.’
‘And why is that?’
‘Because it isn’t your money. I know who you are. You work for people, so you don’t care one way or another about this child beyond finding it for whoever is paying you. I got no idea how much you’re skimming off the top, but I won’t be short-changed, or not by so much that it hurts. You’re not just paying for information: you’re buying my goodwill, and my silence, because I’ll bet your employer means no good for the boy, unless you’re going to tell me he’s the lost son of a billionaire and you’re just trying to make sure he receives his inheritance, in which case I’ll want a whole lot more than three grand.’
It was quite a speech, the substance of it uncontestable. Connie White was almost admirable in the purity of her corruption.
‘I don’t know why they want to find the boy – if Daniel Weaver is he,’ said Giller. ‘They’re not the kind of people one asks.’
The warning was clear.
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ said White.
‘Be sure you do.’ He paid her the final two-fifty, before reconsidering and throwing in another fifty on top.
‘What’s that for?’ White asked.
‘The coffee,’ he said.
White folded the bills, and recited Gregg Mullis’s address from memory while pulling a photocopy of a birth certificate from a sheaf of bills and invoices beside the microwave. Giller wrote down the address in a notebook barely bigger than the palm of his hand, placed the birth certificate in his pocket, and stood to leave.
‘You can stay awhile, if you like,’ said White, resting the palm of her right hand against Giller’s chest. The money had clearly set her juices flowing. Idly, Giller wondered why she wasn’t married. She was attractive enough to snare some fool, so long as he didn’t look too closely into her eyes and glimpse what remained of her soul.
‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘but I have to leave.’
She didn’t take the rejection personally. The cash warming her pockets presumably eased the pain.
‘Another time,’ she said. ‘Maybe when you bring me the rest of my money.’
‘Maybe.’
But he didn’t think so. If Daniel Weaver turned out to be the missing child, he’d have to share the source of the lead with Quayle and Mors. The abduction of a minor – and this, he felt certain, was their intention – was not the kind of act that passed unnoticed. When it occurred, it was possible that Connie White might perceive a financial benefit in coming forward with what she knew, which would not suit Quayle or Mors at all. It wouldn’t suit Giller either. He hoped White spent the money quickly.
But the consideration of White’s possible fate also caused him to contemplate his own. If Quayle and Mors might be prepared to act in order to silence White, where did that leave him? It was another reason to hold on to as much of the cash as he could, and also keep a bag packed, just in case.
White opened the door and stepped out in front of Giller to secure the dog. He’d have to warn Mors about it. He didn’t think Quayle would be the one to come calling when the time came.
‘Be seeing you,’ said White, as the dog recommenced its snarling, but Giller didn’t reply. He walked to his car in silence, as the rain fell and washed his footprints away.
76