by G. M. Ford
“As I’ve told you…the Bureau has forbidden me to talk about anything that happened while I was at Harmony House.”
“The FBI has no right to—”
“They’re citing national security.”
“They always cite national security,” Gill bellowed.
“As a citizen, I believe it is my obligation to—”
“Don’t start that shit with me.”
“Language, please.”
He rocked back on his heels. “I expect a complete—”
“If you want to know what the bureau knows…”—she leaned forward in her chair—“give ’em a jingle.”
He put both hands on her desk and leaned in so close she could smell the Tic Tacs on his breath. “You damn well better decide whose side you’re on here, missy.”
“Trust me…I’ve already decided.”
“So be it,” he said.
She kept her eyes glued to his. “So be it,” she echoed.
“I only work with team players,” he said.
“Team players?” Her voice rose. “Team players…are you kidding me? You’re talking to me about team players?” She tried to modulate her tone but couldn’t manage it. Instead she got to her feet. “The guy who went sneaking through my phone logs—”
“I don’t have to sneak. I was fully within my rights to—”
“—sneaking through my phone logs in order to violate a confidence…”
“I guaranteed nothing,” Gill insisted at full volume.
“But I did!” she shouted. “I guaranteed those people anonymity and you crapped all over me, so don’t you dare speak of team players, or of loyalty or of ethics or of any of the finer points of professional people working together.”
Outside in the office, people were standing up in their cubicles, hands covering phone mouthpieces, jaws hanging. Had to be like thirty people standing there aghast, eyes wide, chins on chests, just in time to witness Bruce Gill as he stormed from her office, slamming the glass door for all he was worth, sixty bulging eyes looking in horror as the door disintegrated into a thousand shards of glass, sliding from the frame the way an avalanche comes loose from a landslide, with a low rumble at first, then the earsplitting crash, and finally an irregular series of smaller tinkles. Kirsten stood in silence, waiting for the last of the glass to fall onto the carpet. Took all her resolve not to laugh.
When Kirsten looked up, Gene Connor was walking her way. The sight of Gene Connor with a scowl on her face sent the gawkers scurrying back into their cubicles. The click click of keyboards began anew.
“Maintenance is on the way,” Gene said. “In the meantime, let’s get you set up in conference room three until the mess gets cleaned up.”
Kirsten allowed herself a small smile. “Thanks, Gene.”
The older woman waved her off as if to say, Think nothing of it.
Kirsten began to gather her case files.
“You’ve got a call holding on line five,” Gene said.
Kirsten raised an eyebrow.
“He says his name is Jonny Dobbs.”
RANDY HUNG UP the phone and started across the street, mid-block and against the light, ignoring outraged horns, dodging traffic like a bullfighter until he reached the far curb. The Vintage Gate Hotel had seen better days. What had once been a sumptuous lobby had been renovated into a dozen cheap rooms, leaving only a registration desk, a pair of elevators, and enough room to turn around.
Randy pulled the bright red envelope from his pocket as he approached the desk. He couldn’t remember the title, but he was sure he’d seen Humphrey Bogart pull this trick in a movie sometime. The desk clerk looked up from a girlie magazine. Randy held the envelope out. “For Mr. Landis.”
The guy eyed him. “Which Mr. Landis is that?” He sneered.
“Mr. Gavin Landis,” Randy replied.
The guy plucked the envelope from his fingers. “I’ll see to it he gets it.”
Randy turned and walked back out the door.
No hurry, he kept telling himself. Mr. Landis won’t be coming back.
When he ambled back into the lobby two hours later, the desk was being operated by an older woman whose graying, tangled hair looked like it may never have been cut. Like it may have been longer than she was. Her blue eyes were filigreed red, red as the envelope waiting in the mail slot numbered 916.
“You guys have a parking garage?” he inquired.
She shook her head. “Not no more,” she said.
He thanked her and crossed to the elevators. He pushed nine and then leaned back against the wall of the elevator car with a smile threatening to break out on his lips.
The ninth-floor hallway smelled of cabbage and dirty socks. Nine-sixteen was the last door on the left. No cabbage. No socks. Nothing anywhere in the room. He pulled the wallet from his pants pocket, sat down on the edge of the bed, and went through it again. California driver’s license in the name of Gavin Landis. Social Security card. Folded-up copy of his birth certificate. MasterCard. Visa. That was it. Except for the ticket. Number one, nine, seven, three, three, nine. Didn’t say what it was for. Just that whoever it was wasn’t responsible for theft or damage. He walked to the window and looked down. The street was a shambles. Filled with heavy equipment and men standing around. Looked like new sewer lines were being installed. Half a block down, a blue-and-white neon sign blinked on and off and on again: PUBLIC PARKING.
Took Randy the better part of five minutes, leafing through the torn and tattered phone book, to come up with the number. “Downtown Valet,” the voice answered.
“Would you please bring up one, nine, seven, three, three, nine,” he said into the mouthpiece.
“Five minutes,” the voice answered.
Blue Ford Taurus. Avis. Randy kept driving until he was out of the downtown core. Two blocks west of the rooming house he was calling home these days, he pulled to the curb on a run-down residential street and got out. He went through the car. Nothing whatsoever. Not so much as a pop top in between the seats. He popped the trunk. Two attaché cases, one bigger than the other. Eeeny meeny. He opened the one on the left. A trust deed lay faceup on the top of the contents. A hundred eighty-four acres and the buildings, someplace called Marlboro, Vermont. Randy pulled the deed aside. Gavin Landis’s face peered up at him. Several trimmed photos. One of another guy. Landis’s passport. The dates were valid. The physical data much like his own. And…oh, by the way…filling the lion’s share of the case…what must have been something like several hundred thou in hundred-dollar bills. He closed the lid and reached for the second case. More money, he figured.
Wrong. More head shots of Gavin Landis. Scraps of plastic. What at first looked like a laptop turned out to be a little laminating machine. Nestled next to it was a set of X-Acto knives and next to that a Leica digital camera no bigger than a credit card. The kit explained the power-company ID Gavin Landis had been wearing on his chest.
Randy replaced the deed, closed the cases, and set them in the street before slamming the trunk and walking away. He left the keys in the ignition.
49
Half a block west of Keith’s Lunch, Kirsten looked to her right and, for the first time since leaving the office, caught a glimpse of her reflection in a store window. The sight stopped her in her tracks. She brought the back of her hand to her mouth and laughed into her own flesh. She looked like Jackie Kennedy in mourning, black silk scarf covering her hair, sunglasses the size of hubcaps, a costume destined to attract considerably more attention than it could ever be hoped to avert.
She sighed, pulled the scarf from her head, removed the sunglasses, and pocketed both. She’d chosen Keith’s as a meeting place because it was about as far from the courthouse as a body could get and remain within the city limits, and because it was the social centerpiece of the neighborhood where she’d lived when she first moved to the city nine years before.
As usual, the place was jumping. Not only were all the tables occupied, but another dozen or s
o people circled the dining room like vultures, eyeing one another warily and waiting for a sign, any sign, that somebody was maybe giving up a table.
Randy…Adrian…her brain refused to give him a name…was over against the wall with his nose stuck in the menu. Behind the counter, Keith gave her a mock salute.
“Long time no see, girlie,” he called.
From most other people, being called girlie would have been unacceptable, but that’s what Keith called women under a hundred. It was part of his charm. She smiled and waved as she sidled among the tables and sat down in the yellow Naugahyde booth.
He looked up from the menu and said, “Hi.”
She leaned across the table. “Are you crazy?”
He didn’t answer.
“Calling me at the office?”
“It was the only number I had.”
“God knows who might have been listening.”
“That’s why I didn’t use my own name.”
She pulled a business card from her raincoat pocket, patted herself down until she came up with a fancy-looking fountain pen, and began to write. She passed it across the table to him. “That’s my home number,” she said. “Use that.”
The waitress arrived at the table. Kirsten ordered a Cobb salad and iced tea, Randy a bacon cheeseburger and a Diet Coke. They sat in silence as the woman made her way back behind the counter and hung their order on the silver carousel over the grill.
“There’s been nothing in the paper,” he whispered.
“No kidding.”
“The cops…”
“The cops never got there,” she said. “After you left, I ran up the street like you said. The FBI was sitting there big as life. They just took over the whole thing. Kept everybody out of the house except their own people. Threatened me with every kind of federal crime imaginable if I said a word.”
“Could they make it stick?”
“Who knows?” she said. “With this administration, anything is possible. The idea of civil rights doesn’t seem to matter much to them. They could lock me up and not even have to meet habeas corpus standards.”
“Scary.”
She waved a manicured hand. “Heck, they’ve still got Harmony House padlocked. What is it…”—she checked her watch—“three days now.”
“Four,” he said.
She dropped her hand to the table with a smack. “So they’re sitting on it, and there isn’t a damn thing anybody can do about it.”
“Any idea why?”
She stuck out her lower lip and shook her head. “It’s completely out of character. Usually the Bureau sweeps in, scoops up any glory that might be lying around, and then disappears before anything has time to go wrong. That’s the only kind of behavior I’ve ever seen from them. I don’t know what to say about sitting on something like this.”
“You been following that Washington Post stor—”
“Walter Hybridge,” she interrupted.
“Yeah.”
“Maybe it’s got something to do with that.”
“How can that be?”
“I don’t know…maybe it’s—”
“The timing makes me nervous,” he said.
“That’s it. It’s like…like something Gill would do. Have a fallback plan. Something in his pocket that would divert everyone’s attention away from him.”
He smirked. “We’re getting pretty conspiratorial here.”
Lunch arrived. They fell into silence for several minutes, munching away at their meals as the buzz of the café whirred around them.
“I want you to set up a meeting between me and the FBI,” he said.
She lifted half a dozen fries from his plate and dropped them onto hers.
“First off, they’ll take you into custody as a material witness.” She devoured a french fry in two bites. “Secondly, they’ll know what you look like.”
“Let me worry about the second part.”
“What do they get out of this meeting?”
“I’ll tell them everything I know,” he said. “I’ll give them her diary.”
She ate another fry. “What’s in it for you?”
“I want them satisfied I had nothing to do with any of this. I want to be left alone.” He held up a restraining hand. “But I want to make sure you don’t get yourself into any trouble here. You already went out on a limb for me.”
She laughed and waved him off. “I’m already in a world of hurt. Don’t worry about it.” She put down her fork and told him about that morning’s confrontation with her boss. “Either I’m going to quit, or Gill’s going to fire me.”
“It’ll be okay,” he said.
“No, it won’t,” she said quickly.
Again, they ate in silence for a couple of minutes.
“They’re going to want to know about Adrian Hope,” she said.
“I’ll tell them what I know.”
“Which is zip.”
“Not quite,” he said. He leaned closer and told her what the killer had said in the moments before Eunice worked her magic with the fire ax.
“No kidding.”
“That’s what he said.”
“You’re saying he was hired to kill Howard.”
“Uh-huh,” he grunted around a mouthful of cheeseburger.
“So you want what?”
“I want to meet one on one at a location of my choice and I want a guarantee that I’m not going to be detained in any fashion. And…” He waggled a finger. “It’s got to be tomorrow.” He tore off the bottom half of the business card on which she’d written her home number. He wrote a phone number on it and passed it to her.
“Call me there,” he said. “Leave a message if you have to.”
“Why tomorrow? Not much lead time there.”
“It’s gotta be tomorrow,” he insisted. “Middle of the day.”
She shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said, liberating another handful of fries from his plate. She read the look on his face. “They’re not as fattening if I don’t order them myself,” she said.
50
Randy watched as the cab pulled to the curb. The driver reached over the seat and popped open the door. Before slipping into the backseat, Kirsten looked his way and smiled. “I’ll let you know,” she said.
“Thanks.”
The clouds had rolled in while they were at lunch. The air smelled of salt water. The slate-gray sky roiled like a cauldron as he hurried north toward the bus stop, three blocks down on Blundred Avenue. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets, turned up his collar, and bent into the breeze.
A block down, he suddenly felt as if he was having some kind of neurological incident. He slowed his gait. His fingers came into contact with something hard and he knew for sure. They weren’t numb. They were vibrating. It was the disposable cell phone he’d taken from the man calling himself Gavin Landis. It was vibrating. He held his breath and eased his hand up and out as if the phone were a snake. The vibrating stopped. He took a deep breath. Waited.
The impending rain had cleared the street. Randy had the sidewalk to himself as he hurried on. The Plexiglas bus kiosk had been tagged and vandalized until it was little more than a stall for urban livestock. He sat on the cleanest section of bench available. Waited.
The phone began to buzz again. He held his breath. The sound of the killer’s voice bounced around his memory. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the phone, and raised it to his ear. Silence.
“Yeah,” he intoned in as close an approximation to the killer’s voice as he could manage. He held his breath again. Again, nothing. He waited a full minute and then he used his thumb to break the connection. Another minute passed. The vibrating started again.
“Third time’s the chaaam,” he said.
“I had expected to hear,” an electronic voice said.
“Things went a little haywhya.”
“Oh?”
“It’s unda control.”
“You’re sure?”
&nbs
p; “I’m heea.”
A chuckle. “So you are.”
“What can I do for ya?”
“Another job.”
“I’m retiyad.”
“Five times the going rate.”
Randy swallowed his tongue. Waited. “I’m done,” he said finally.
“Half a million. Nonsequential bills. A little kicker for your retirement fund.”
A longer silence ensued.
“Who?”
The voice on the other end mentioned a name.
“That’s a wicked famous name. Access is going to be a problem.”
“I’ll bring him to you,” the voice said.
“Tell me about it.”
The voice held forth in great detail. He finished with, “…and, as per usual, I’ll wire your fee to—”
“No,” Randy interrupted. “I’ve closed down alla my regula channels.” He felt the tension from the other end of the telephone. “Bring the money with you,” he said.
The voice cleared its throat. “Nothing personal, but I had hoped we would never have occasion to meet again.”
“I undastand. You want the job done, then bring the money when you bring me the subject.”
After a prolonged silence, “I’ll be in touch with the details.”
Randy closed the connection.
THE MESS HAD been cleaned up. The shattered glass panel had been replaced. Took Kirsten a second to figure out why the scene seemed so odd. The glass was blank and shiny. Her name and job title were nowhere to be found. She’d watched the changeover process many times before. The painters usually arrived about five seconds after the glass was replaced. A not-so-subtle message.
Kirsten checked her messages. She had returned the phone to its cradle when the shuffle of shoes brought her eyes to the hallway, where Gene Connor was showing off a new suit, something-or-other rose the designer probably would have called it. “He’s at a deposition up at the Federal Building,” Gene said. “He wants to see you at four-thirty.”
“Thanks, Gene,” Kirsten said. “Tell him I’m leaving town for the weekend. If he’d like to chat, we can do it on Monday,” she said, gathering papers from her desktop and stuffing them into her briefcase. When she looked up, Gene was still standing there. Her eyes were telling Kirsten how poorly her message was likely to be received.
