Find Virgil (A Novel of Revenge)

by Frank Freudberg

  “And what of all the children who are orphaned by your products every day, Mr. Pratt? Do you feel for them, too?”

  Northrup gasped and stepped between Pratt and the camera and deftly pulled his client out of the interview with muttered apologies and a quick tap on his watch.

  The boiling CEO ducked inside his waiting black limo and slid onto the leather seat. Northrup attempted to get in, but Pratt waved him away. Pratt signaled to an assistant outside.

  “Get Rhoads.” Then Pratt made a quick telephone call to check on how the Old Carolina common stock opened.

  A minute later, a piece of paper appeared in the fax machine on the seat next to the driver. He opened the window that separated him from the passengers and handed the page to Pratt.

  Old Carolina Tobacco, Inc. Common Stock

  Last, 206 –1 1/4, Volume 6,880,000

  Third most active stock

  Rhoads appeared a few seconds later and got into the limo, perching on the jump seat facing Pratt. He lit an Easy and took a drag. He liked Camels better, but he was with Pratt. It was the kind of petty thing Pratt noticed and didn’t forget.

  “Did you see the interview? That Northrup’s incompetent.” Pratt took a quick breath, a master at the quick change of mood. “Anyway, here we are alone at last. Fill me in, T.R.”

  The limo moved away from the curb near the gravesite, snaked through the hills of the cemetery, and pulled out into traffic.

  “Like I told you when I called from D.C., the FBI is playing it pretty close to the vest. They keep asking me about Midas, even though I’ve told them I don’t know anything about it.”

  Pratt remained expressionless, but his eyes flashed interest. “Do they have any idea when they’re going to apprehend this gentleman? Or are they thinking they’ll just bumble about and wait for him to die?”

  “I don’t know, Nick.”

  “But that’s what I’m paying you two thousand dollars a day for, TR., and that seventy-five-thousand dollar bonus you talked me into, if he’s caught in thirty days. And that’s a big if, the progress you’re making. I need to know what the FBI is thinking.”

  “My guess is they’ll start to open up a little more once we satisfy them about the Midas-Benedict thing. Half of them think it’s Benedict, and for all we know, it could be. When we give them the files that will show them we’re not holding anything back. Trichina’s people find it yet?”

  “Trichina’s digging all the project-related information out of the archives.”

  38

  Newark, New Jersey

  Muntor knew from Who’s Who that W. Nicholas Pratt had grown up in Newark, New Jersey.

  Between nine and ten o’clock, while glaring at the television screen, he had made up twelve trick-packs on the TV tray in his living room. He talked to himself the entire time.

  That son of a bitch… If I didn’t have to keep a low profile, I’d short Old Carolina stock first thing tomorrow… Mr. Limo… I’ll say the magic word and—bingo—it’ll be a hearse.

  Muntor put on his coat and made the trip in little more than an hour, hitting only normal traffic on the Jersey Turnpike.

  While driving, he used a flashlight and peered at the Newark street map on the seat next to him. He lost his way after exiting the turnpike and ended up driving around inner city Newark for twenty minutes. He erred in assuming that the map’s points of interest legend would include public schools. Finding a phone booth with a telephone book intact proved no easy matter. He finally did outside a supermarket. He looked up the schools in the city government blue pages and tore out the section with the addresses of the schools in the Newark Public School System.

  He arrived at the first one, West Side High School, on Sorrell Street, just after midnight.

  Under the map on the passenger seat, the twelve trick-packs sat in his open eel skin briefcase. Should the police ever stop him and examine the briefcase, the jig would, doubtlessly, be up. C’est la vie. Muntor believed he would never be in that situation. He was prepared with his delivery service decoy props—clipboard with pencil tethered by a piece of dirty string, a receipt book, a counterfeit delivery-request slip lifted from the inquiry desk of Fast and Faster, a Philadelphia courier service, and a suitable destination, Newark General Hospital.

  The maps scattered on the passenger seat added just the right insinuation. As such, the props were more than adequate. If drawn into interaction with police as a result of a minor accident, mechanical trouble, or other unforeseeable incident, he would have a reason to be in Newark. A cop would think, Here’s some sorry old sap, confused, driving all the way from Philadelphia to make some stinking delivery for probably six bucks an hour and no benefits. Muntor knew with a grimace that he could cut a convincingly pathetic figure.

  On Sorrell Street, on his left, a line of row houses sat in the dark on raised tiers of lawn opposite the school’s main entrance. On his right, the junior high school. Inadequate street lighting was his ally. He slowed to a halt at the stop sign in the block before the school. He picked up two trick-packs. He intended to make only one pass, hit or miss. He looked up the street and, in his rearview mirror, down it. A quick scan of the houses. Most were dark. No dog-walkers in sight. He lowered the passenger-side window and drove by the school slowly, but not too slowly.

  When he reached the approximate halfway point between the corner and the wide cement steps that led up to the school’s entrance, he winged the two packs at once through the open window, flicking his wrist in a Frisbee-like toss, aiming them to land at the base of the wrought-iron spiked fence that separated the sidewalk from the school’s lawn.

  Muntor had intended to repeat the operation at three more schools, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He knew that most American kids would end up like their parents—fat, unhealthy, addicted to cigarettes or alcohol or drugs, but this was a lesson, not revenge. Some would have to die, but just some. He didn’t have to kill dozens of children to make his point. Chances are, the ones who would find the trick-packs and smoke the cigarettes were already compromised. A good kid, a smart and healthy kid, would never do it. And if some children had to die, it was only the ones that would grow up to be the sick sacks of meat he passed walking down the street every day.

  39

  From the front page of the New York Post:

  Retribution for Failing to Make

  Televised Announcement?

  Tainted cigarettes found in schoolyard

  “Virgil” Targets Tobacco Exec’s Hometown

  Muntor was pleased that the trick cigarettes were found by an alert student and turned into the school principal, who immediately contacted the police. There’s one worth saving, one who will understand my lesson, he thought. It was just enough to send a panic throughout Pratt’s hometown. Muntor hoped that it would be enough to scare Pratt into making his televised announcement.

  After reading the front-page story three times, Muntor closed his eyes, weary from a sleepless night. Since beginning his conquest, his mind had been racing nearly non-stop with thoughts of his next move, what he had accomplished, and, of course, thoughts of being caught. Sure, the day would come when his terrorism would end, but he wanted it to end his way, on his terms. And not until his lesson had been delivered and understood—the body was a temple. Ignore that at your own peril.

  As Muntor lay still, his mind wandered to the past. How perfect a scenario. He could accomplish two goals with one act. The tobacco companies would lose millions at the least, and if Rhoads was who Muntor thought he was, they might lose everything. Pratt and his posse would suffer, and Americans would wake up to the poisonous lifestyle people like Pratt had been selling them.

  Muntor read the papers and clipped stories about his work and put them in his scrapbook. That would be part of the documentation he would leave for the ones who would study him, the ones who would spread his name and his message after he was
gone.

  He also cut out two articles about Rhoads. Rhoads is almost as much of a hero as I am. Muntor was a good judge of people. He had always had that talent, and being a reporter had honed it. Even having never met Rhoads, Muntor knew he was a man who wouldn’t be turned aside. Muntor read the title of an article about Rhoads from years before that he had found on microfiche at the library and printed. The headline was “The Last Honest Cop in Philly?” Muntor knew the story by heart. Rhoads had refused to take bribes, and he had gone after those who did. In the end, the machine had kept Rhoads from bringing down the corruption in the department, but Muntor thought that now Rhoads had much less to lose. He had quit working for Old Carolina for a reason, and perhaps working with the FBI would give him the chance to bring Pratt down this time.

  40

  Every now and then during Muntor’s travels, the wind would blow up, fall leaves would swirl, and the sky would darken before a storm. These scenes filled him with a profound homesickness, such an ache to be with his daughters, to see them giggle and hear them argue. And that longing counterbalanced with the dead weight of emptiness and the knowledge that he would probably never see them again. Visions so emotionally overpowering that he’d have to pull off the road to cry, to watch the rain if it came. He wanted to see them, but he feared the possibility too. Who knew how his wife had influenced them. By now they were probably overweight, nicotine and alcohol abusers just like her. The thought brought rage. He had failed to teach his own daughters the most important lessons. He would not fail again. He would make up for it by teaching the entire nation. Scratch that. The world.

  The end was near. Coughing and working for breath, Muntor hadn’t been able to sleep well.

  He splashed cold water on his face and took a videocassette from his briefcase and slid it into the VCR at the swank motel he had been staying at since the time he made the call.

  He lay down on the bed and watched.

  After a flurry of video static, Muntor saw a moving shot of a deserted business office. When the sound of the voice-over came on, too loud, he rushed to find the remote to lower the volume. The camera panned a bleak room, lingering on objects as he mentioned them.

  “Act One”

  Muntor’s voice came out of the television solemnly. He loved watching the parts of the documentary for which he’d already done the voice-over recording. It made it so real.

  “Scene Nine. Crimes Against Martin Muntor. The End of a Career. His good deeds always misinterpreted, slighted, undermined by the jealousy of others. Martin Muntor was a Pulitzer nominee and recipient of two National Society of News Editors awards—the only true talent in an insignificant office of a second-rate news service. All of his power and intellect was anchored to this battered desk… this backbreaking chair… and this file cabinet, the drawers of which refused to open… His only confidant, a Mr. Coffee that never quit, could heat water, but the water never reached the temperature of his scorn for what the nation had become… slaves to poisonous appetites, hardly more than animals seeking death. This bulb-eating light fixture… And finally, this telephone. The telephone he used during eleven years of caring about the stories, eleven years of dedication, eleven years of unpaid overtime—until he was flippantly dismissed by a New York yuppie… And, told he no longer had healthcare benefits.”

  Next came some jerky camera work and static intervals between shots. The next image to appear was a moving shot of a medical office building, photographed through a car window.

  “Act One. Crimes Against Martin Muntor. Scene Ten. The End of a Life.”

  On the video, Muntor switched to a mincing, nasal voice.

  “I have your X-rays here, Mr. Muntor. It’s not just emphysema. It’s cancer, I’m afraid. Lung cancer, Stage 4, inoperable. Now, tell me again the name of your insurance carrier.”

  Another interval of static.

  The exterior of a suburban Philadelphia hospital complex. Also, another moving shot through a car window. At the lower left-hand corner of frame, a cat’s tail swept briefly against the window.

  “Act One. Crimes Against Martin Muntor. Scene Eleven. Why?”

  There was a genuinely pathetic puzzlement in his tone. This wasn’t contrived emotion for the narration.

  “A mother who shouldn’t have died. A father who never missed a chance to have something else to do. A child without a chance, you could say. Fifty-six years of misery that ends with the death of Martin Muntor. But out of his dying body is born his avenger. Out of his dying body rises… Virgil. A new man, a man with a lesson to teach.”

  41

  Friday, October 6

  Anna Maria Trichina, on the bed in the white-carpeted bedroom of her condo, sat cross-legged, in jeans and a T-shirt, flipping through a stack of Midas Project files. Her reading glasses had slipped low on her nose. She pushed them back into place and focused intently on something she had just discovered.

  Her hand trembled slightly as she held a document captioned, “Post-Allocation Budget Request.” Her finger ran down a column of entries until it landed on “Amount: $200,000.” Then her finger slid across the page and stopped at the words “Approved by W.N. Pratt.”

  Trichina pulled herself upright and looked in the mirror. She shook her head to tousle her hair. She knew she could look good even after a long, besieged day, and for the first time in quite a while, she smiled. She rose and padded into the kitchen, poured herself a full goblet of Amarone and returned to her bed. She sipped the wine while thinking about what she would do with what she had discovered.

  Several minutes later, an idea hit her. She sat up, gulped the rest of the wine, turned the light back up, found her three-year-old edition of the Confidential Employee Directory in another drawer and dialed Mary Dallaness’s home telephone number.

  “We think—no, we know—there’s a leak,” Trichina said. “Mr. Pratt personally told me that you were the only one in the company who I could trust. Someone in the treasurer’s office, we’re not sure, may be working with a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. Corporate Security’s looking into it, of course, but in the meantime, we —“

  Mary didn’t try to mask her suspicion. “Who’s ‘we’?” I need to get in touch with T.R. He’d help me sort this out.

  “Me and Mr. Pratt,” Trichina said. “What we need you to do is this. Under the strictest of security, with only me or Mr. Pratt present, you are to make one, and only one, paper copy of every Midas-related document. Then permanently erase all the computer files. All of them.

  “Then we’re going to cause the computer system to crash, only for a few minutes. That way, if the Times or who knows who comes looking for the documents, there’ll be a record that the system crashed. We’ll be able to say that the files were actually destroyed, lost forever, and no one can prove otherwise. Those are proprietary company records. No one else’s business. Old Carolina has every right to protect them.”

  A moment of quiet on the line.

  “Ms. Trichina, our system was designed by Metro Computer Consultants in Princeton. They’re the best in the world. You were on the contract-award committee. You should know. The system’s been designed to back up everything. Something like what you’re describing can’t ever happen. Never.”

  “Do you want to tell that to Mr. Pratt and his attorneys? This is the plan they devised, so if you…”

  Mary shivered at the thought of being in the same room with Mr. Pratt.

  “No, Ms. Trichina,” she said in a small voice. “I’m sorry. It’s just that we worked so damned hard to build a computer system that was fail-safe, that would never…”

  “Mary. Relax. No problem. Tomorrow morning, even though it’s Saturday, a courier’s going to deliver to your home a copy of the memo to me from Mr. Pratt. Call him directly, if you really feel you need to disturb him at a time like this. That’d be okay with me, if you’re uncomfortable with the… the validity of the memo. It spells out all the de
tails. But time counts. We both have to drop everything and get this done first thing tomorrow. I have a meeting I can’t get out of, but I’ll be free by ten. Okay?”

  “I understand,” Mary said.

  “Good,” Trichina said, stabbing the word into her. “Good.”

  42

  The telephone rang late, and Rhoads answered it.

  “T.R.?” the voice said.

  “Mary?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Listen. I need to talk to you.”

  He sat up in bed and turned on the lamp. Light filled the room, and he noticed one of the ficus trees had dropped a lot of brown leaves. It needed more sun. “Go ahead, Mary.”

  “No. In person.”

  She can’t mean now, he hoped. It’s not a come-on, not Mary, while Anthony is still alive. He wanted her, but clean, legit. After Anthony was gone. “Okay,” he said. “First thing in the morning? You usually go into work Saturday mornings. Meet you for coffee before. Name the place.”

  “No. Now.”

  “Now? Can’t you tell me what this is about?” Please don’t invite yourself over here to tell me your troubles, he thought.

  “About halfway between your building and where I live is a little pizza joint called Slice O’Heaven. On Cadwalader near the movie theater. I don’t care if you have a girl there in bed with you. It’s important.”

  “Okay… okay,” he said. “And I’m alone.”

  Thirty-five minutes later, Mary had told him half the story and started on the first of two slices of pizza and a small Pepsi in front of her. Rhoads played with a plastic cup of lousy coffee. God, she was perfect. Not beautiful, not even pretty. Just some primal attraction. Magnetic. That’s what it was. It was like the force you feel when you hold two powerful magnets apart. It reached out and seized him and it wouldn’t let go, and he didn’t know what to do with it. She was the only woman he had looked at that way since his wife died, but he knew he couldn’t have her.