Gus could feel himself starting to panic. Under the table his knees were beginning to tremble. In another couple of seconds, he’d begin to do something he was sure no one else at this table had ever done: sweat.
Fortunately one of the lawyers who had been staring at him-a man whose white-blond hair, golden skin, and muscled physique would have led Gus to nickname him Doc Savage if he’d gotten the chance-turned to Rushton, a look of disapproval momentarily exposing his brilliant white teeth.
“We have a binding contract with InterTec and are obligated to continue paying them through the end of the year,” Savage said. “If you want to terminate that relationship and bring in our own in-house investigators, we should at least wait until that commitment has been fulfilled so we’re not paying twice for the same service.”
Gus understood now why everyone had been staring at him. Rushton had finally gotten around to the second item of business on today’s agenda, the one he had laid out for Shawn and Gus in his office. Shawn had wanted to be able to come and go at the firm at will, and he suggested that Rushton give him and Gus some kind of official cover that would entitle them to talk to the attorneys there. They could be auditors, Shawn suggested, or personnel consultants, or famous war correspondents who had taken time away from their vital service to the country risking their lives covering the global fight for freedom to write Rushton’s biography. Or caterers, if that was easier.
But Rushton had an idea that was far simpler and more audacious than anything even Shawn would have come up with. He would hire Psych to be the firm’s in-house investigative arm. That way Shawn and Gus could be entirely truthful about what they were doing at Rushton, Morelock, while still working undercover.
“The services are not identical, but complementary,” Rushton said. “InterTec is a fine firm and essential to our growing international business. But Psych has ways of doing things that can only be called unique.”
“I can think of another word for it.” It was Kiri, who was glaring at Shawn with those eyes as if she really could shoot ice bullets out of them.
“And what word would that be?” Gus heard the warning in Rushton’s voice. The dolphins frolicking in the ocean outside the window must have heard it. But either Kiri didn’t hear, or she was so angry she didn’t care.
Gus knew what the word was going to be. He’d heard it enough from people who refused to believe that his partner actually had the ability to read minds, sense auras, commune with the dead, or whatever new trick Shawn invented when it suited the situation. The word was “fraud,” and Gus couldn’t have resented it any more if it hadn’t been true.
Gus could see the letter f forming on Kiri’s lips. But before she could finish the epithet, she seemed to wither under Rushton’s cold stare.
“Fabulous,” she muttered. “And I hope that their first assignment is to uncover the truth about what happened to Archie Kane.”
Good for Kiri, Gus thought. Just like her namesake, this one was clearly no mere slave girl fit only to have her clothes stolen by ferrets, but a trained warrior. In one sentence she had not only put herself directly behind Rushton, but had also managed to deflect any suspicion away from herself. Gus didn’t know if she would turn out to be the one who’d killed the mime, but if she had, he now knew she would also turn out to be a formidable opponent.
“Is there anything you won’t lie about, Gwendolyn?” It was Shatner, and he was looking right at Kiri. So now Gus knew her real name. “We all know what you felt about Archie, and we all know that you are as disgusted as any of us at the idea of bringing these two frauds into this firm.”
There was a long moment of silence. Gus could see the various lawyers weighing the sides here and trying to choose between following Shatner’s lead and saying what everyone was thinking or falling in line behind the boss. Captain Hook in particular seemed to be taking the match out at least a dozen moves and still hadn’t found a convincing end game.
Shawn didn’t look concerned. He stood up casually and greeted the blank faces with a cheerful smile.
“First, I want to thank you all for your warm welcome,” Shawn said. “I want to thank Mr. Rushton for hiring us. And I’d particularly like to thank the gentleman who just spoke up. Because there’s nothing like being called a fraud by a man who dines on human flesh.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gus felt an odd pounding in his feet. After a second he realized it was his heart, which had plummeted all the way down there at Shawn’s words and was looking for a way to break out of his body through his toes. When Rushton hired them he hadn’t made any explicit threats about what would happen if they besmirched his firm, but Gus had little doubt that his retribution would be swift and horrible.
There was a stunned silence at the table. Then Shatner jumped up angrily.
“You are all witnesses to this outrageous accusation,” he roared. “I demand a full retraction and an immediate apology.”
“Wait a minute,” Shawn said. He touched his index fingers to his temples and fluttered his eyelids; then his eyes snapped open. “Sorry, sometimes the visions come to me as metaphors, and apparently whoever is in charge of sending out vibrations today is a frustrated writer-and a bad one, too, if we can judge by the originality of his imagery. When I saw you as a man-eating killer, that was only meant to be a representation of your ferocity in the courtroom. You are widely known as a shark, aren’t you?”
Gus could feel his heart abandon its efforts to bore a hole in his big toe and begin to travel back up towards his ankle. But even if Shawn had momentarily saved the day, or at least kept it from turning into a complete disaster, Shatner didn’t seem mollified.
“Is this the level of insight we can expect from our new so-called psychic?” he demanded.
“ ‘The Psych agency has a nearly unbroken string of successful cases.’ ” It was Tinkerbell, who was trying to look like she wasn’t reading this information from the screen of her iPhone. “ ‘They’ve solved multiple murders that have baffled the police, recovered items owners thought were gone for good, and made believers out of even the most dubious skeptics.’ ”
Gus forced himself to suppress a grin. He had just learned two valuable pieces of information. One was that Shawn had been absolutely right to pay ten-year-old Hank Stenberg to write and submit the Wikipedia page he’d just heard read back to him. More important, he now knew that Tinkerbell was no feisty rebel like her namesake. She was a calculating corporate suck-up who would say anything as long as she was sure it was what the boss wanted to hear. Gus had met plenty of this type in his other career as a pharmaceutical sales rep, and he’d had plenty of practice getting them to do what he needed. This job just had just gotten a little easier.
“Is that from the same trusted reference work that claims Jade Greenway is ‘one of America’s greatest lawyers’ and that her annoying affectation of dressing all in green is not a pathetic plea for attention but actually ‘a powerful tool in her ongoing battle for justice’?” Captain Hook sneered. “Because I read in the same entry that she admitted she dressed in green only because she couldn’t remember her own name otherwise.”
“That was cyber-vandalism,” said Tinkerbell, who was apparently also called Jade Greenway. “I made them change that the instant it went up.”
“You know she’s right,” Gwendolyn said. “The way she Googles herself, there’s no way there’s anything about her online for more than five seconds before she sees it.”
This was another valuable lesson. The lawyers were bickering like schoolchildren, and Rushton wasn’t doing anything to stop them. Gus was pretty sure the old man was waiting to see how Shawn and he would handle them. But it also told him a lot about Rushton’s management style. It seemed to be to drop a bunch of snakes into a pit and let them fight it out among themselves.
Gus glanced at Shawn to see if he’d realized Rushton was waiting for him to prove himself. It was hard to tell, because Shawn was bent over double, his hands pressed against h
is forehead. It was possible he was about to utter one of his psychic pronouncements, but given the bickering around the table, it was just as possible he’d developed a terrible headache.
Then Shawn straightened up and stared at Shatner. Stared and saw. Saw the ragged line of white flesh near his hairline. Saw the sharp edge of the leather watchband of his Patek Philippe. Saw the puckered spot on his silk tie and the dull spots on his nails where the clear polish had chipped off.
“The wrong ocean,” Shawn moaned. “It’s the wrong ocean.”
The lawyers snapped out of their argument and wheeled to face Shawn, who was clutching his head as if in pain.
“What is he doing?” Shatner snapped.
“I believe the metaphor has returned,” Gus said.
“I see a shark,” Shawn said. “He’s a happy shark, although it’s kind of hard to tell, since they always look like they’re smiling. Anyway, he’s king of his neighborhood, snacking on all the other fishes. Then one day he’s scooped up in a net. When he wakes up, he’s still the same shark he always was. Got the same instincts and appetites. But he’s been dumped in a different ocean. All the nooks and crannies he used to hide in to wait for his prey are gone. And the waters are filled with other sharks who are just as tough as he is, but they know the place so much better. Now every mouthful is a fight for him. Every time he spots a target, one of the other sharks swoops in and steals it from him. He’s getting hungry-starving, actually. And every day that goes by without a meal makes him weaker. If he doesn’t find a big school of fish soon, he’ll be so feeble he won’t even be able to swim fast anymore. And you know what happens then? The other sharks stop preying on the local fish and turn on him.”
Gus noticed that Shatner had gone pale under his tan. He sank slowly down into his seat.
“But why am I still talking about seafood?” Shawn said cheerily. “I think someone had an objection?”
“No objection,” Shatner said, staring down at the table.
“In that case, I believe our business is concluded,” Rushton said. “Let’s take an hour to finish up last-minute details. The chopper departs precisely at noon.”
Rushton waited until the other lawyers had left the conference room before clapping Shawn on the back. “I won’t ask how you knew Morton Mathis was a recent transfer from the Detroit District Attorney’s Office, but I will congratulate you on silencing him,” Rushton said. “It gives me great confidence that I made the right decision in hiring you.”
“Yes, you did,” Shawn said.
Something was troubling Gus. “But I don’t see what we’re going to be able to accomplish here if everyone else is leaving.”
“That’s all taken care of,” Rushton said. “There’s room on the chopper for the two of you as well. This week is our corporate retreat, a time I set aside every year so that the lawyers can bond together into a family.”
“I can see how well that’s working,” Shawn said. “They’re just like every family I’ve ever known.”
“It’s a perfect time for you to get to know them, ferret out their secrets, and report it all back to me,” Rushton said. “I want to know who killed Archie Kane.” He touched a lever on his armrest and his wheelchair glided back from the table.
“We didn’t really pack for a retreat,” Shawn said. “Unless by ‘retreat’ you mean staying at home eating Funyuns.”
“I do not,” Rushton said. “But you don’t need to worry about packing. Everything you could possibly want will be provided for you.”
“I don’t know,” Shawn said. “I can want some pretty strange things.”
“Of that I have no doubt.” Rushton reached into the leather satchel that hung from his chair and pulled out a large manila envelope, which he placed carefully on the table. “Background information on the lawyers, and a little brochure about the retreat. And if you need to make any arrangements for your sudden absence, just dial nine on that phone. I’m afraid I block all electronic signals in my conference room, so you can’t use your cells-it’s the only way I can keep anyone’s attention during meetings.”
Rushton wheeled silently to the rear door, which opened automatically as he approached it, then closed behind him. Gus reached for the envelope, but Shawn snatched it out of his hands.
“You won’t be needing any background information,” Shawn said. “I’ve already solved the case.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
When Shawn was little, Henry had a recurring fantasy that one day the two of them would partner up on the Santa Barbara Police Department. There wasn’t much of a chance it would ever happen, of course. The department had strict rules against relatives working closely together. But there was nothing that made Henry happier than imagining himself and Shawn, father and son, cracking case after case together.
Then Shawn started to talk, and Henry gave up on the fantasy. But sitting in the generic accounting office that served as the mailing address for the Fluffy Foundation and watching Officer Rasmussen interview the skinny little dweeb who administered the charity, Henry felt those old feelings stirring for the first time in decades.
This is what he had always dreamed of, the relationship he’d thought possible only with blood kin. The dance between partners who could coordinate their strategy without a word. Rasmussen ran the interrogation, but Henry was able to direct him with nothing more than the slightest of looks. It was like telepathy-the real thing, not the phony version Shawn practiced.
Within minutes of their arrival in the one-man office nestled between a convenience store and a Laundromat in a down-market strip mall, Rasmussen started getting the information they needed. The Fluffy Foundation had been in operation for five years, and while it had recently begun to attract some new donors, almost all its money came from the anonymous angel who had set up the fund. That person had started the charity with a donation of fifty thousand dollars, and similar amounts came in at irregular intervals. The dweeb had been alerted to expect another gift shortly.
This sent Henry’s internal radar tingling. If Ellen Svaco was indeed the anonymous donor behind the foundation, there was no trace of it in any of her financial records. And if she was about to have fifty thousand untraceable dollars to give away, that would have given someone fifty thousand good reasons to kill her. Their entire case could depend on the answer to Rasmussen’s next question: Who is the anonymous donor?
Henry gave Rasmussen the nod, and the officer sat forward in his chair. “It’s very important that you tell us the identity of your donor.”
The dweeb pushed his horn-rims up the bridge of his nose with the tip of a pencil and cleared his throat nervously. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that,” he said.
“Not even if I told you it was a matter of life and death?” Rasmussen said.
“Not without a court order,” the dweeb said. “I’m just not at liberty to divulge that information.”
Rasmussen hesitated for a moment, then got up. “Thank you for your time,” he said. “We’ll come back when we have a warrant.”
It took Henry a couple of seconds to realize that Rasmussen was actually walking towards the door. Henry leaped up out of his chair and grabbed the officer before he could reach the knob. “What are you doing?” he whispered furiously.
“ ‘If the law doesn’t respect the law, then no one will,’ ” Rasmussen said proudly. “ ‘The police officer must act with complete fidelity to the rules, or the force is nothing but a mob.’ You taught me all that.”
If Henry had had more hair, he would have pulled it out. For a moment he considered pulling out Rasmussen’s. Instead he moved the officer back towards the dweeb’s desk.
“I’m thrilled you remember my lessons so well,” Henry said. “But that was a classroom situation. This is real life.”
“ ‘If our principles can’t stand up in the face of an adverse reality, they aren’t principles, they’re just whims,’ ” Rasmussen said. “I’ve lived my life by that.”
“And I’m real
ly flattered,” Henry said. “But you might want to cover your ears right now.”
“Why?”
Henry marched up to the dweeb and pounded his fist on the desk. “Listen, pal,” he barked, “we’ve got reason to believe this entire charity is a front set up to launder drug money. And that makes you a kingpin. So unless you want to spend the rest of your pathetic life in supermax, you will give us the name of your donor.”
The dweeb looked like he was about to cry. Rasmussen rushed up to the desk. “That’s not exactly true,” he said. “What Detective Spencer means-”
“-is that you’ll be lucky to get life,” Henry said. “If we find evidence that some of this drug money is going to support terrorists, we’ll go for the death penalty.”
“It’s not drug money!” the dweeb said feebly.
“We do know that,” Rasmussen said.
Henry pushed him out of the way and pounded on the table. “The name! It’s Svaco, isn’t it?”
The dweeb gulped so hard his Adam’s apple nearly tore through his throat. “Yes, the donor’s name is Svaco.”
Henry turned to Rasmussen and gave him a tight smile. “Here’s one I probably forgot to mention in class: Make the case first; make it pretty later.”
“It’s no good,” Rasmussen said. “We can’t use that information. It’s tainted.”
“Except we’re not putting Ellen Svaco on trial,” Henry said. “We’re trying to solve her murder. And this man has just given us the vital clue we need.”
He patted Rasmussen on the shoulder and stalked to the door. Rasmussen stayed at the desk and handed the dweeb a business card. “Thank you so much for your cooperation. I assure you, we will arrange for a warrant so that you will not have violated your fiduciary duty to your client. Do you have any questions?”
“Yes. One,” the dweeb said. “Did he say, ‘Ellen’?”
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