Ransom X

by a b

  Chess bubbled over with laughter on the third night. She wanted to know everything about Wagner, how she dressed, got her hair that way, she even brought up the topic of cooking.

  Legacy couldn’t believe it. Chess was the girl who had once threatened to dye her hair pink in rebellion if Legacy brought home a cookware set. But there they were chatting about how Wagner had clarified the butter before letting the parsley soak into and add to the character of the fish.

  Chess hated fish. And she asked for a second helping, then let fly with the most candid comment of the night. “Do you think I might look – beautiful? Someday?” Her face shone in youthful innocence, whatever Wagner said would be taken far too seriously.

  Wagner responded, “You are beautiful right now.”

  Chess continued analytically “But not like you, I’m two categories below at least, I’m friendly, shy pretty.” Chess said dangling her fork over the ridges of the herb-encrusted cod on her plate.

  Legacy took a hold of one hand on each young woman, he said in his most deep, rich supportive tone “Do you know what makes a woman truly beautiful?” It was a melody, the resonant command tone made both Chess and Wagner catch their breath, in a trance, waiting for his answer. Legacy let his eyes wander back and forth, he was in complete control and it was time for the answer. “A cup of hot black coffee.”

  The dishes were cleared and dinner concluded with Wagner promising to help Chess with her make-up next time she came over. This raised an eyebrow with Legacy.

  “No make-up.” Legacy said.

  Wagner crossed behind Legacy and her breath brushed his ear. A confidential message, “Her friends are getting tattoos and piercings. Do you want to wait until it gets to that?”

  Chess stood at the table. “I know you guys are talking about me. I’m just going to my room to cry myself to sleep, can I get either of you anything first?” She knew exactly how much sass could be excused.

  Legacy grumbled then relented, “No lipstick.”

  The thumbs up from Wagner sent Chess skipping from the room. “Goodnight, Dad. Goodnight Angela.”

  Legacy couldn’t remember having heard Chess say her name out loud before, it made him think about whether or not he liked the name for the person. Wagner caught him staring at her.

  “I know I should never wear white.” She pointed to a stain on the white shoulder strap.

  “I was looking at your body. To see if it fit.”

  “Fit what?”

  “Your name.”

  Wagner must have had a couple of glasses of red wine with dinner because she did a playful twirl shifting weight between her legs to put motion into her skirt.

  Legacy parried with “I like the name Angela better when it’s said than when it’s on paper.” He left the room before he could show any of the embarrassment he should have felt sooner.

  Later that night, around three AM, Wagner stumbled to the living room door, her blouse untucked, names and numbers tumbling around her head so much that she was distracted to the point of finding Legacy’s voice unexpected.

  “Goodnight.” He said, without purpose, or agenda. It was the closest he’d come to issuing courtesy to another person in years.

  Wagner, her feet so heavy the carpet felt like quicksand, was in no condition to appreciate the gesture. She casually nodded her weary head and left the room.

  Legacy was back onto the trail of the manifest of satellite parts delivery, it had seemed so promising, but it turned out that Blue was too smart to have the parts shipped to the same P.O. box twice. The pickup in Provo identified the model receiver that the Vinyl Men were using, and narrowed the corridor but it didn’t point to a door. They might be able to sit on the next order, if only they had a year to crack the case. Legacy missed his old job.

  The paper he was holding had Tracy’s name at the top. It was an autopsy report.

  Legacy drifted into an inner dialog between himself and the trial lawyer father of Tracy whose deposition after finding the body was one of the more poignant and eloquent retracing of steps that he’d ever read. Legacy was standing in the morgue watching the father standing over his daughter. The man hadn’t talked directly to his daughter in years and yet his memory of her recounted in testimony to the police made her into a perfect child. He embraced her dead body and her life long defiance of him and all he stood for - all slipped out of his hands and he was holding his child again.

  “Beeeeeeeep!”

  Legacy came back to the present found his arms cradling the paper from which he was reading. Notes in the margins, with answers to questions that he had for the father about what a person looking at his daughter on a TV screen would know immediately. In scraggy handwriting that didn’t look like the rest he had written, was one word: DEFIANCE.

  Legacy found the phone on the eleventh ring. The voice on the other end didn’t have time for greetings and launched right into, “It leaked.” It was Tyke.

  “What leaked?” Legacy asked.

  “37 seconds ago on the internet – “ His voice was strained.

  Legacy tried to put him at ease. “What took you so long to call?” Tyke had always been high strung. Whatever it was, it wasn’t as bad as Tyke thought.

  “His system for picking the girls off satellite TV is in the fucking press.” Legacy retreated within himself with those burning words as his company. He let the receiver drop from his ear. He watched his one secret advantage slip back into Blue’s hands through the public domain. Legacy rediscovered an anger that he’d thought he’d tamed with all of his routines and regimens. Someone was going to pay for this mistake, and he knew that it would most likely be in blood.

  But before that would happen, he was going to get to the bottom of this. Legacy made one call, and he spoke deliberately. He gave orders, and used every emotional leverage point to give those orders the full force and weight of country and God. And when he was done, the director of the FBI, one of the most powerful men on the planet, obeyed. He was to get underway in early hours of the morning and come to Legacy.

  Legacy hadn’t reported the selection process to anyone up the chain of command. His knuckles crackled under a tight grip as he asked if Doorner knew. A pause, then it came back that he did. Legacy told the director how much had been compromised by this leak and that everyone up the chain of information had to be coaxed to the meeting. There was a traitor in the group.

  Security around the building was stepped up with the surprise arrival of the highest dignitary short of the president. Legacy walked through the large glass front door to a bustle of activity that crisscrossed the lobby.

  He still hadn’t explained to Wagner the details, all he’d told her was that he’d called an important meeting, and that if shit and quicksand could mix that was the cocktail he preferred to serve in a huge trough beneath the entire gathering. He was going to be pulling someone down, in the way he used to in the field. Without regret, thought, or remorse he would destroy someone today.

  Chapter 42 Dry Sparks

  Legacy blasted through the conference doors like a cannon; he icily regarded clerks serving coffee to members of the gathering, and took command. Everyone could feel the explosive power of his power unleashed. “No coffee, nothing to eat. Nobody gets comfortable.”

  The clerks looked at Director Doorner, who nodded, confirming who was in charge inside the confines of those very special circumstances. Cups were whisked from the table and Legacy’s eyes toured the room. Doorner, Wilkes, and Bailey sat awkwardly on the receiving end of a ten-minute diatribe. Members of Wilkes staff sat across the table, three of them. One pass of the eyes told him that any one of them would buckle under ten seconds of scrutiny. They were educated, but untested in the field.

  People who spend time in the field looked like Wilkes and Doorner, they wouldn’t give up their secrets without a fight.

  Doorner brought one thin freakishly tall secretary, whose devotion shone out from behind her plain looks and bookish chic glasses. She’d do anythin
g to protect the man sitting across from her.

  Legacy held up a newspaper, banner headline citing, “Abducted Girls TV Ties.”

  “How did they get this?” He processed every move in the room. The head scratch to the shifting in the seat. “Nobody should have known, but you all did, right?”

  Doorner was the object of his abrupt tone, and although inwardly offended, he nodded with great civility. His secretary tightened her grip on a pen that she used to take notes and practically snarled at Legacy.

  Legacy prowled the room, and Wagner caught a glimpse of what made him so good in the interrogation room. Nothing escaped his senses. He laid out the rules, hands on the table palms up. One question that everyone at the table had to answer looking into his eyes. “Did you leak this information?”

  One by one they stared into Legacy’s eerie still pupils and gave their answers. One by one the answer “no “seemed to take all of their energy to say and the relief was palpable when their turn was over. Legacy had a way of making a room of grown men and women feel the weight of their possible guilt the same as if it were real.

  Wagner watched the circle come round to her, standing at the door. She felt something grip her from the inside as he swiveled on her with a questioning look. She heard a voice rise inside of her.

  “I am the spy. I reported on your progress.”

  Legacy took one look at Bailey and confirmed what Wagner had said. His eyes lost their intensity for just a moment then he said in a voice that Wagner would never forget. “Did you leak it to the press?”

  She wanted to weep, to breakdown right there; she wanted Legacy to know the answer without asking the question, that she’d failed him. She’d failed Laura too, she realized. Her mouth moved but no words came out.

  Legacy had his answer, “Of course you didn’t.” She felt for a moment that she was forgiven, but his next words came quickly with venom. “But you gave away this investigation to whoever did.”

  They’d all passed the test. Legacy put a single finger down on the table and pressed. It was meant to focus his mind on one spot – but his thoughts were going in a thousand directions. There had to be someone else who knew. Tyke respected secrets more than he did his own brilliance. Wagner. He hadn’t seen that coming, but he did know that she’d never jeopardize a clean collar on the Vinyl Men. He couldn’t be that wrong about her.

  His eyes snapped up from the table with one final question for Doorner. “There’s no one else who knew this information?”

  “Absolutely none.” He said thinking that Legacy must have failed to find the leak. However in that line he was completely wrong, in that moment Legacy figured out exactly who it was, he just didn’t want to believe it.

  “Have security escort the aides to holding. I need to talk to the directors in private.” Wagner touched his left shoulder and he practically flinched.

  “Legacy.” Her voice pleaded.

  “Get out.” He responded.

  “You would have known anyway when you asked –” She said.

  Legacy took her hand from his shoulder and replaced it by her side, like he was posing a doll with great care and yet emotional attachment that vanished the second it was in place. “I wasn’t going to ask you.” Legacy didn’t read the people closest to him. It was something he couldn’t tell her before, and he didn’t expect that she’d ever know now.

  Bailey left the room like it was a matinee performance, a lazy smile on his lips. Wagner didn’t make eye contact even when he brushed by her in the doorway. She was still looking back at Legacy. Even when the chamber doors shut with her on the other side she didn’t feel like she’d escaped the pull of Legacy on the other side.

  She knew how a fish must feel not understanding the tug from inside, but knowing that their guts were ripped out with every struggling motion. And she couldn’t help believing that she deserved to be on the hook.

  Whatever was going on in that conference room buzzed in the shadows of the corridors well beneath the lowest levels of the superstructure. Legacy was in control of the entire building, and his energy powered the turbines that kept oxygen moving. He allowed people to breathe his air. Wagner reached their office and slumped in his chair taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling.

  Legacy dropped his interrogation powerhouse persona the minute the door closed behind Wagner, as it was no longer necessary. Everyone in the room knew it. He reached out a long arm across to shake Director Wilkes hand.

  “Congratulations, Daniel, your men passed.” A look of confusion crossed Director Doorner then Legacy extended his other hand, “the same for you, Bob.” There they stood, in an awkward triangle, both shaking a different hand of Legacy’s.

  “So it was all Wagner?” Director Doorner asked, pulling back.

  “I didn’t say that, Bob.” Pulling his hand forward so that he could shake it in synchronization with Director Wilkes.

  “Is this some sort of test?” Wilkes asked impatiently.

  Legacy dropped both hands suddenly. “You know it is, you also know that I didn’t find a single liar in the bunch. There were only two people who could have lied to me on the first try and gotten it past me. But only you, Daniel, are observing my behavior – the trait of a guilty man trying to discover what he’s let slip.”

  Wilkes smiled and chuckled. “So you think it’s me?”

  Legacy drilled straight into his cerebral cortex and came out on the other side with a core sample, visually of course. “I know it is.”

  Wilkes looked between Doorner and Legacy. His affable smile dropped and he spoke. “Do you want to interrogate me?”

  Wilkes had seen Legacy in the room; it was the mental equivalent of turn of the century dentistry with no anesthetic, while using a dull drill. The cost of spending fifteen minutes fighting Legacy was a price that he was unwilling to pay. He turned to Doorner.

  “I have nothing to show for endless hours on this case, and this lead represented less than zero chance of honing in on them. I needed an excuse, for when this case, the most important case in history of the Agency, did not end favorably. Legacy’s investigation appeared to be a way not to shoulder the entire blame.” Wilkes’ pragmatic tone and military bearing gave even words spoken in cowardice and confession a noble bent. “I chose a target, someone who everyone would believe would be capable of fucking up the case by taking his eye off the ball.”

  Legacy added “Never mind that we’re old friends, eh?”

  “I never liked you, Legacy.” He stared him down.

  Legacy took the temperature of his words, “Yes, Daniel, you did.” He said with finality.

  Doorner stood in a slow calculated motion and he spoke in slow, calculated phrases, “I can’t replace you Agent Wilkes, it would take a month to bring someone up to speed. Legacy, you have my apologies, but I’m in Daniel’s corner on the viability of this lead, it was worse than a needle in a haystack. Still, you should have failed on your own merits not with the carpet ripped out from under you. Daniel there will be repercussions when –” Doorner folded his hands in front of himself hearing his own slip of the tongue and standing at attention for a moment as the error slipped past him and out the door, “I mean if this does not end favorably. Now, this discussion has been a great waste of time.”

  Doorner left the room like the trailing edge of a cloud burst with Wilkes quickly on his heels. Legacy could tell that Wilkes didn’t want another word to have to pass between he and Legacy. Whether it was shame or animus it was hard to tell.

  Chapter 43 Dope Friend

  Blade kissed both of his hands in a tender gesture before putting them to Laura’s temples and messaging in a therapy oil that he’d applied in two small circular dabs. Any more would be far too much, as she was on the maximum dose. He’d found the mixture one of his trips to Mexico. It was dissolved in a cyclohexane solvent that allowed the drug to be soaked in through the skin. The drug itself was organic, but it made librarians into hippies in front of a person’s eyes.

  B
ehavior alteration was one of the secrets to his sex trade. Everyone loved to watch his girls break out of their molds, but what they and the girls never knew was that by increasing the amount of oil that went into their temples, Blue could create a level of initiative, erase the boundaries of what constituted the molds in their sober lives.

  “How much have I made you?” She asked in a slur. The drug’s effects were strongest at the point of application. If a drop got on her jaw or lips they became numb. Blue worried for a moment that he’d become careless and would have to postpone the next session.

  He hated anything that threw off his timetable; after all, as she reminded him with cliché words, time is money. She was like a taxi ride, where bells dinged and fare accrued.

  Laura took the pencil in her hand and lifted it to Blade’s face. He flinched thinking that if she wasn’t so completely under his control, it would end up in his eye, and they’d be in a bloody fight within moments. He knew, however, that she’d become as attached to him, even more so than the other girls. Still there was something that made him uneasy at moments like this, with her wide mirrored eyes training on him and the low husky sound of her breath tickling his ear, it was like he could hear the rumble of a distant thunder, a sound of deception inside her. The sharp tip of the eyebrow pencil drew down the bridge of Blade’s vinyl nose, then playfully around the nostril. Blade almost laughed in earnest, but cleared his throat instead and pulled back.