by Davis Bunn
Loupe read off the numbers, then demanded, “What is the total in those accounts?”
Terrance watched as the boss flushed at what he heard on the phone. Dust. All was dust and ashes.
Beads of sweat appeared on Loupe’s forehead. “I want you to transfer the entire amount to my account in Luxembourg.” He gave the bank details from memory.
The banker replied with something that caused Loupe’s eyes to shift from father to son and back again.
Loupe said, “I was given to understand that these computer codes granted me full access without any such conditions.” He waited a fraction. “I see. Very well. You will please remain on the line.”
The hand holding the phone out to Arthur trembled slightly.
Arthur replied, “Not until my son and I are seated in a taxi.”
Loupe was already rising to his feet. “Mark my words. Any hint of mischief and your daughter—”
Arthur raised his voice for the first time. “Threaten me or my family in any way, and I will call for the authorities.”
“Just so long as we understand one another.”
In response, Arthur pushed himself from the sofa, then motioned for Terrance to rise. When he did not move fast enough, Terrance felt himself lifted by one of Loupe’s men. Arthur gripped his son’s arm and turned him toward the door. “Not long now.”
Loupe said into the phone, “Are you still there? Excellent. We will only be a moment longer.”
As they exited the hotel and entered the blinding sunlight, Arthur said, “Do you know, this is the first time in six months I am not in pain.”
Had he been able to speak, Terrance would have replied that he felt sufficient agony for them both.
VAL FORCED HIMSELF TO STEADY UP. “GO AHEAD.”
Gerald darted nervous glances first at Val and then Dillon. The younger man agreed, “Do it.”
Gerald asked, “What was this neighbor’s name again?”
“Smathers. Lives at number nine Alders Way. For the twentieth time.”
Gerald puffed like he was finishing a marathon, and gave it a high-pitched breathless note. “Yes, good morning. It’s Smathers here, down Alders Way. I’ve been hearing the most horrid noise from next door. Yes, Smathers. What kind of noise? Oh, a horrible racket. Just the worst possible sort of din. Like a woman screeching. Yes, that’s right. Like she was being hurt something fierce. Oh, oh, there it goes again. Can you hear it?”
Gerald listened a moment. “Number nine, Alders Way. Down at the bottom. What is the number . . . Oh, you mean next door. That would be number eight, wouldn’t it? There’s some strange lot renting over there, I saw them move in yesterday. Six or seven men, great hulking brutes and all wearing dark suits. What sort of holiday rental is that, I ask you? Carrying on at all hours of the day and night.”
Dillon stuck a fist to his mouth and turned to look out the side window.
Gerald went on, “I’ve been after those agents before, you know. Here we sit, down here for a bit of peace and quiet. Oh, there they go again. That poor woman, I know they must be up to something beastly in there. It’s the agency, you mark my words. They’ll rent to anybody with ten quid in their pocket, never mind us who have to live with this horror. We’re left waiting for blood to run down the front steps. Yes. All right. Good-bye.”
Dillon took a moment to turn back around. “That was inspired, that was.”
“Long as we’re in time.” Gerald looked at Val. “Perhaps I should stay.”
“Can’t neither of us pilot the plane, mate,” Dillon replied.
“Go collect Arthur and Terrance.” Val opened his door. “Take them to the plane. Be ready to move the instant we arrive.”
“If I’d been planning a job, one look at this place would’ve earned it an instant pass,” Dillon told him. “One way in, one out. A recipe for disaster, that is. And ruddy little to show for the effort besides. Basic two-up, two-down fifties council house, not worth a second glance save for the location. That’s what people who don’t know better pay for. Take a nothing sort of place like this, give it a garden the size of a throw-rug, set it in tight like sardines on toast, throw in a bit of the sea, and people think they’re somewhere exotic.”
They were seated in the Rover. Val was behind the wheel. The old car smelled of dust and oil and age, with a vague sense of Audrey’s perfume thrown in for good measure. Dillon had grown talkative with the wait. Val did not mind the noise. The quiet was unnerving. Nothing moved on the cul-de-sac.
“Before you two showed up this morning, I was busy recollecting my first talk with Audrey. Not my first meeting, mind. That came four months before the other and doesn’t bear thinking about. When I got out I tried a couple of times to apologize for the things I said back then. But Audrey always claimed not to remember. It being Audrey and all, I almost believed her.”
Val nodded slowly. “I know just what you mean.”
At the sound of a car, Dillon turned and then slid below the dash. “Crouch down, mate. It’s the old bill.”
“The police?”
“What I just said.” Dillon eased himself up a fraction as the police car passed them. “Quite a difference from the early days, me being glad to see the likes of them show up. Back then, one glance of the men in blue was good for heart failure.”
Val glanced up, but lowered himself at a hiss from Dillon.
Dillon kept popping up for the occasional glimmer. “Leave the looking to an expert at not being seen, why don’t you.”
“Tell me what’s happening.”
“Two blue bottles are approaching the house. A third is hanging well back, hand on his radio. It’s taking a while for somebody to answer their ring. Hang on, here he comes. Hello, what’s this?”
Val risked a look. The man who answered the door looked straight out of a tourist brochure. Pleated shorts and polo shirt and a watch that glittered down the length of the lane. No socks. Deck shoes. Legs springtime pale but well muscled.
“Took time to lose the suit, didn’t he? Smart move, that. Look at the smile he gives the johnnies, will you. A real charmer. Chatting up the coppers like he’s paid for the duty. Which he is, in a manner of speaking.”
Val watched his hopes fade. The cops wanted to go inside, but the guy wasn’t having any of it. Why should he, since they had no warrant and him standing there with a valid rental contract. “This is bad.”
“He’s got the coppers off-balance, no question.” Dillon chewed his lip. “They’re turning this way; get down.”
Val slid back below the level of the console. Dillon waited a moment, then risked another look. “That tears it.”
“What’s happening?”
“The copper who was hanging back, he’s headed round to the house next door. Going to question this Smathers bloke who called it in.”
“Who won’t be there.”
“Too right. We got us a sweet old dear in fuzzy slippers answering the door. Waving a hello to her neighbor.” Dillon slapped the dashboard. “The coppers are apologizing to the bloke and calling in their report. Bang and done and on their way. What do we do now?”
“Get out of the car. Stay low.” Val fiddled with the gearshift and controls, trying to orient himself to everything being on the wrong side. “If something goes down, I’m going to use a false ID that claims my name is Jeffrey Adams.”
Dillon must have seen something in Val’s expression. “Not on your life. I’ve never run out on a mate, and I’m not starting now.”
“You’re not running. You’re being sent.” When Dillon looked ready to argue, Val added, “You just heard me promise Doris.”
Reluctantly Dillon opened his door. “What are you going to do?”
“Whatever it takes.” Val started the car. “You just hang back and be ready.”
Val rammed the car into first as the cops slipped back into their car. The Rover’s gears meshed improperly, as though the old car was well aware of the fate in store.
Dillon stepped awa
y. He might have said something more, but the roaring engine cut him off. Val had a little trouble on takeoff, as he’d never driven a car with steering on the right. Pity his first lesson would be so brief.
“In for a penny,” Val said. It was another of Audrey’s sayings. He recalled how she had carried a photo of Arthur standing beside this old car in her billfold. Two hundred and seventy-seven thousand miles on the clock, and it still managed a full-throated roar as Val jammed the accelerator right down on the floor.
Arthur had bought the car soon after the sky had fallen. Disinherited, divorced, and a son who refused to even speak his name. Arthur could not afford anything else at the time. After a while he wanted nothing more. A contented man, was how Audrey had described him, touching the photograph where the old man stood beside the car. Audrey claimed to have kept the car as a symbol of all the good that could come from bad. If only one learned the secret formula to a happy life. Another of her wise little sayings.
Val smiled as he took aim down the empty road. Memories were such a grand thing.
The old car was a bit sluggish on takeoff. But by midway down the lane it had built up a full head of steam. Val slid into second, liking the way the motor bellowed up through the revs.
The cops caught sight of him about then. Which Val decided was not all bad. After all, if he was about to do an Evel Knievel of his own, it would be nice to have an appreciative audience.
His last thought before striking the curb was that it’d be just his luck to discover Audrey had been shipped off to Yalta.
The curb had a bit of lip to it, enough to lift the car like a launcher and send him straight for the bowed front windows. Val thought he might have glimpsed an astonished face staring out at him. But it might have been just wishful thinking.
Val took out all three windows and a fair-sized portion of restraining wall before coming to rest in a hail of plaster, brick, and shattered glass. The curtains lay over the fractured front windshield like a shroud to all the miseries of his now-distant past.
The floating dust had the cops coughing so hard they couldn’t place him under arrest as they dragged him from the wreckage. Val, too, found it hard to form the words, and at first nobody paid any attention to what he had to say. But as they dragged him back into the brilliant sunlit afternoon, he managed to form a very hoarse shout, “My fiancée’s chained up in there!”
This, following Gerald’s phone call, got the police’s attention. “Say again?”
“They kidnapped my fiancée! She’s being held in the back room!”
“Get him out of here.” The senior cop pointed at the policeman not holding Val. “You. Come with me.”
The thug in the pleated shorts decided not to hang about. He burst out the back door, leapt the side fence, and started for the hill.
“We’ve got a runner!”
“You there! Police! Halt!”
Val’s view of the proceedings was cut off by the third cop hustling him back to the car. He was planted on the side, legs spread, hands in plain view. All the neighbors were outside by now, gaping at the proceedings. Dillon arrived then, his head turned to the sunlight and smiling broadly. Val grinned in reply. It felt as though his face was trying to recall something from the very distant past.
“Something funny, sir?”
“Just glad you’re here, officer.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Then there was a shout from the house, echoed on the policeman’s radio. The cop thumbed his radio and barked, “Say again?”
Val caught enough of the repeated words to know they had found someone. He set his forehead down on the roof and shut his eyes tight. Just giving thanks. Just getting ready. Because here she came, clearly the worse for wear but walking out on her own two legs. Dillon and the officer helped her clamber through the opening, like Val had carved the way just for her. Which, in a sense, he had.
“Oh, Val.” She rushed up to him and gave him a fierce embrace. “What on earth have you done?”
“Remain as you are, sir.”
Val kept his hands in plain view as she hugged him. “Are you all right?”
“I am now.”
“Madam, I must ask you to step away.”
“Adams,” Val told her softly as the policeman pried her arms from his neck. “The ID in my pocket says I am Jeffrey Adams.”
“Please, madam, you are only making matters worse.”
Val could not stop grinning. Not even as the policeman wheeled him about and ringed his wrists with cold steel.
“Stop that! What on earth do you think you’re doing?”
“We have to follow procedure, madam.”
“But this man just saved my life!” When the policeman continued undeterred, she demanded, “Where are you taking him?”
“Eastbourne, ma’am. He’ll be booked and processed there.”
As Val was guided into the police car’s backseat, he heard other sirens whooping in the background. Val told her, “Dillon’s going to stay with you—”
The door was slammed in his face. Audrey shouted her protest and tried to reopen the door. But the policeman remained adamant and gently but firmly moved her away.
Val smiled out at Audrey. As the car pulled away, he cast a final glance at his handiwork.
Shame about the car.
AS FAR AS ELLEN LAINEYWAS CONCERNED, THESE DAYS INSIGNIA’S head office held all the warmth and congeniality of an open coffin.
The only reason she stuck around at all was, she had inherited Val Haines’s position. The suits upstairs called it a promotion. But Ellen had made it this far by staring facts and figures straight in the eye and calling them as they stood. Her predecessor had been toasted in a bomb blast that had the investigators crawling around the office like roaches in Gucci. The office to her left was home now to a half-dozen pinheads with badges and bad attitudes. The future looked decidedly grim.
Rumors continued to fly. New ones popped up every morning. This morning the coffee cluster had it on best authority that Don Winslow was missing. Which meant nothing, really. At seven the previous evening she had heard the same group talking about alien abduction.
A young accountant knocked on Ellen’s open door. The guy had been on the job for six weeks. Ellen knew what he thought of her. A hard-timer, just punching her ticket and working the corporate treadmill, hiking her way toward an Ocala retirement community with a pink poodle for company. He assumed her flat-panned expression was the product of a thousand fifty-five-hour weeks. What he did not know, what Ellen was keeping all to herself, was how the SEC goons had locked up the pension funds tight as a Wall Street safe. All her fund-related systems were shut down. She could not access anything. Her questions had been answered with blowtorch glares and silence. Ellen was not asleep at the wheel. She knew something was seriously wrong. She also knew her job description included an unwritten order not to fuel the rumor fire. She could play the poker-faced lady and keep what she suspected locked up tight. For the moment.
The new accountant was named Jerry. He was both very smart and very shy. He also had a tendency to stutter slightly when he was nervous. Which he almost always was when he was in the presence of his boss. Any conversation with him could stretch over eons.
Ellen greeted him with, “I do not have time for you today.”
Normally this would have been enough to send Jerry scurrying for his cubicle. But not this morning.
He stepped further inside her office. “We have to talk.”
Ellen started to scream at him. She had not slept at all the previous three nights. When she lay down, she tended to watch the corporate figures dance across her darkened ceiling. What they added up to made for a waking nightmare she could not banish with thoughts of her new title.
But were Ellen to vent the worry-steam in Jerry’s direction, the guy would probably do an implosion right there in her doorway. Which would mean getting buried by more paperwork. Ellen sighed, went back to her file shuffling, and said, “So
talk already.”
“I’ve been doing my weekly check of all the office petty cash accounts, like you ordered.”
Unbelievable. Here she was, imagining a corporate meltdown the papers would call Florida’s very own Enron, and the guy wants to point the finger at somebody overspending on stamps. Ellen did a solid drumbeat on her desk with the stack of folders. “Jerry, this can definitely wait.”
Jerry slipped fully inside her office. And shut the door.
This was enough to halt her next outburst.
Jerry flitted up close to her desk. “I’ve found it.”
“Found what?”
“The money. All of it.”
Something inside the guy’s expression had her heart pounding. Which of course made no sense at all. “What money?”
“At least, I think it’s all. I never saw any figures. Did you?”
Ellen worked at making words. But nothing actually fit the moment. So she shut her face and waited.
“All I’m going on are the rumors.” He cleared his throat. “But I think it’s all there. It’s got to be. As much as it is, it’s the only thing I can figure out.”
She was not aware that she had risen to her feet. “Just how much are we talking about here?”
Jerry revealed a true accountant’s heart in how he reverentially said the numbers. “Four hundred and eighteen million dollars.”
“You’re telling me you found four hundred million dollars in our petty cash account?”
“I called the bank. They confirmed that the transfer came in last night.” His eyes had gone round from the revelation. “It’s just sitting there. Waiting for us.”
THE ISLAND OFFERED THEM A GLORIOUS WELCOME THE DAY THEY laid Arthur d’Arcy to rest. Val stood by the entrance to the stone church on the outskirts of St. Helier and hoped his remaining strength did not let him down. He was drawn as finely as he had ever been, stretched by days and nights of planning and work and worry. Audrey had done little since their arrival save sit the death watch with her father. Bert and Dillon and Gerald had done what they could. But most of the critical issues not related to Arthur’s passage had rested on Val’s shoulders alone.
