Whirlpool

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “What about Jamie?” she asked.

  “He’ll be dead by the time Bill brings the limousine around.”

  52

  Los Angeles

  Wednesday night

  In the taut silence of the house, the ringing of the telephone was like a gunshot. Cruz grabbed the phone before Laurel did.

  “Hello,” he said curtly.

  At first the connection was hollow, silent. Then he heard faint sounds, like labored breathing.

  “Hello,” Cruz said again.

  No response came but more hoarse breathing. He wondered if it was some wacko looking for a cheap sexual thrill.

  “Who is it?” Laurel asked, coming up behind him.

  He shook his head. “Hello.”

  Still nothing.

  He was about to hang up when he heard a strangled gasp. There was no pleasure in that sound, just anguish and urgency.

  “I can’t understand you,” Cruz said.

  A sound came that was almost understandable, like a single letter, the letter “L,” spoken in a man’s deep voice.

  Cruz shot Laurel a quick glance. She was watching him anxiously. The fear and violence of the last few days had etched lines of tension and pain around her full mouth, thinning it. He had a cold certainty that nothing had improved with this call.

  “I still can’t understand you,” he said into the telephone. “Are you in trouble? Do you need help?”

  An almost exultant sound, half grunt, half groan.

  Contact.

  It took no sixth sense for Cruz to guess who was trying so desperately to talk to him. Only one deep-voiced man would be calling this number if he was in extreme trouble, and the man on the line was clearly at the end of his strength.

  “Easy, Jamie,” Cruz said.

  Laurel came alert at her father’s name. She moved closer to Cruz but didn’t reach for the phone.

  “You got through to us,” Cruz said. “This is Cruz Rowan. Laurel is safe with me. What’s wrong, Jamie? Are you hurt?”

  “Poi…pois…”

  Swann’s words were choked off, like someone was tightening a noose around his neck and then relaxing it.

  “Try it again, slower,” Cruz said, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket as he spoke. “Hang in there, man. We’ll get to you.”

  The confidence in Cruz’s voice seemed to help Swann. He drew a deep, gasping breath.

  Cruz hit redial. Risk Ltd. answered instantly. He turned aside and spoke into the cell phone in a low tone without removing the house phone’s receiver from his other ear.

  “This is John Smith the Second. I’m in the clear. Did you get a trace set up on the phone at my present location?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Activate it.”

  “Affirmative,” came the crisp response.

  “Poisoned,” Swann said in Cruz’s other ear.

  Swann’s voice had cleared, as if making connection with Cruz had calmed him.

  “Do you know what kind?” Cruz asked.

  “No matter,” Swann gasped. “Dying. Dead. They went to get—” The explosion of words exhausted him.

  Cruz heard him panting, trying to catch his breath. “Slow down,” Cruz said firmly, calmly. “Where are you?”

  “—to get Laurel.”

  The message exploded from Swann’s chest in a harsh groan. No more sounds followed. He’d done what he had to do. His battle was over. Laurel was as safe as he could make her.

  Cruz heard a heavy crashing sound and knew that Swann had collapsed. The telephone at the other end of the line banged and jangled against something solid, floor or furniture.

  Then there was no sound but the open line.

  “Jamie,” Cruz said urgently. Then, very loudly, “Jamie Swann. Talk to me. Where are you?”

  Nothing answered but a faint groan, the sound of a man in deep pain, a man near death.

  Cruz lowered the receiver and looked into Laurel’s anxious golden eyes. He wished there was a way to spare her, but there wasn’t.

  “Your father has been poisoned,” Cruz said. “He’s in rough shape. If he doesn’t have something to hang on to, we’ll lose him. We may lose him anyway.”

  She grabbed the receiver. “Dad! Dad! Talk to me! It’s Laurel, Dad. Can you hear me?”

  Cruz watched intently.

  Silently she shook her head.

  “Try to get him to talk,” Cruz said. “I’ve got someone tracing the call now.”

  “Dad. Dad. I know you can hear me. Give me some signal that you’re still there.”

  At the other end of the connection, Jamie Swann heard his daughter’s voice through a gray fog that was tinged with red blood, his own blood racing through his body like the wave from a broken dam.

  Faint yet distinct, compelling, Laurel’s voice was a fixed point in Swann’s disintegrating universe.

  “Laurie?”

  The name was slurred but unmistakable.

  She felt a stab of fear mixed with hope. Swann’s voice was weak, so desperately thin and faint.

  “Yes, Dad. I’m here,” she said loudly. “You have to help us. You have to tell us where you are.”

  She listened in horrified pity to the rambling, incoherent noises that poured out of her father’s mouth. For an instant she was back at her mother’s deathbed, listening to the last breaths of a proud woman still furious at having to quit life so soon.

  But there was a difference this time. Swann seemed more conscious, more aware of the process, more able to fight against it. His strangled sounds were distinctly defiant, as if he’d managed to focus what remained of his will and energy.

  “Beh…Behhh…”

  The sounds were agonizing to Laurel. She pressed the receiver against her ear so hard that both her hand and head ached.

  “Again, Dad. Please. Talk to me. I love you. Let me help.”

  “Behhh…Hiiil…

  “Beverly Hills?” Laurel guessed.

  The sound that came back could have meant anything.

  “Beverly Hills?” she repeated loudly. “Is that where you are?”

  Swann made a sound that would have been horrifying in other circumstances, but Laurel understood it. She turned and spoke urgently to Cruz.

  “Beverly Hills,” she said.

  “It’s a big town. Narrow it down.”

  “Where in Beverly Hills, Dad?” Laurel asked loudly. “Talk to me. Help me.”

  Cruz was speaking in a low yet distinct voice into the cellular. “Swann is in Beverly Hills.”

  “Affirmative. Still tracing.”

  “Dad. Dad!”

  Cruz closed his eyes and balled his left hand into a fist. The agony in Laurel’s voice was like a whip laid across his conscience. He couldn’t stop remembering how she’d looked when he stepped out of the shadows after her father left.

  Even worse, Cruz remembered exactly what Laurel had said.

  You were here. You could have stopped him!

  And Cruz’s own answer, correct for getting the job done…savage in the context of a girl’s fear for her father.

  He didn’t have the egg. Not in his hands. Not in the car parked down the block.

  If Swann died, Cruz knew who Laurel would blame. No surprise there. Cruz would be blaming himself too.

  “Come on, come on,” Cruz snarled into the cellular. “We don’t pay that son of a bitch at the phone company a thousand a month for nothing. Tell him a man’s life is at stake.”

  In the background, in ragged counterpoint to Cruz’s words, Laurel cried her hope and fear and love into the telephone, trying to touch her father in the only way she could.

  Cruz wanted to wrap her in his arms and hold her, tell her that everything was all right, he would take care of her. But everything wasn’t all right. He shouldn’t even hold her, because taking care of her meant being more ruthless and murderous than the people who were stalking her.

  Gently he touched her on the shoulder.

  If she noticed the sile
nt encouragement, she didn’t respond. She didn’t even look at him. Everything she had was being poured into the phone.

  For Cruz, listening to her was like opening a vein and feeling blood pump away, taking light and warmth with it.

  Abruptly he turned and went to his black aluminum briefcase. Although the pistol was still in its loop at the small of his back, he felt uneasy. He had a better weapon in the briefcase. He pulled out the Uzi and checked it over with swift efficiency. Satisfied, he pulled a slim, pencil-beam flashlight from the case.

  Flashlight in one hand, Uzi in the other, Cruz glided from room to room, snapping off lights as he went, leaving everything in darkness but the exterior grounds of the house. When the house was secure, he spoke into the cellular with clipped urgency, directing the search for Swann while checking the front yard of the house for intruders.

  Nothing had changed since his last check.

  Cruz went on to his next observation post, a window that gave him a view of the street and part of the driveway.

  Nothing moved.

  Turning swiftly, he strode to the rear of the house. In the background Laurel’s voice rose and fell in a litany whose only meaning was to hold her father to life. Distantly Cruz wondered what it would be like to be loved like that, no holds barred, nothing held back, just an emotion as complex, powerful, and unquenchable as the sun.

  At the end, when all else had been stripped away, it had been love that ruled Swann, love that had driven him to give Laurel a chance to live. Swann had seen men die close up. He’d killed. He must have known how close to death he was himself, yet he’d used the last of his strength to warn his daughter rather than calling to get help for himself.

  I salute you, Jamie Swann, Cruz thought. I hope when my time comes I have half your guts.

  It was still outside the house, nothing moving, not even the wind. All the security lights in the yard were working. All lights in the house were off.

  “Anything yet?” Cruz growled into the cellular.

  “Still tracing.”

  “Shit!”

  He went to stand by Laurel. In the vague illumination of the exterior floodlights, her skin was ghostly and her eyes were black.

  “Dad, you have to help me,” she said hoarsely. “Where exactly are you?”

  Her hand wrapped around Cruz’s wrist. Against her icy fingers, his skin burned with life. The sheer animal heat of him went through her in a shock wave, heightening each one of her senses.

  The noises her father was making were ghastly. She listened as if they were beautiful, vibrating with the intensity of her concentration.

  “‘Hotel’?” she asked suddenly. “Are you trying to say ‘hotel’?”

  A rasping, gurgling noise was Swann’s answer.

  She’d learned that sound meant agreement. “Which hotel, Dad? There are so many.”

  Hoarse, erratic breathing was Swann’s only reply.

  Frantically Laurel searched her memory for the names of hotels in the area. Only one came. “The Beverly Hills Hotel?”

  A harsh grunt came. Negative.

  Cruz leaned forward and spoke loudly into the phone. “The Beverly Wilshire?”

  The sound of agreement was faint but understandable.

  “It’s the Beverly Wilshire,” she said to Cruz. “What room, Dad?”

  The rasping, strangling breathing seemed fainter.

  “Beverly Wilshire hotel,” Cruz said into his cell phone. “I’m calling in the police.” He rang off and punched the emergency number into his cellular. As soon as someone picked up, he said, “Get me the duty commander.”

  His tone was clipped, aggressive, confident. The person on the other end responded automatically. In ten seconds Cruz was talking to the police lieutenant who was in charge of emergency services.

  “Dad, help is coming,” Laurel said into the phone. “Hang on. We’ll be with you soon.”

  She repeated the message again and again.

  There was no answer.

  “Hurry,” she said hoarsely to Cruz. “He’s not talking anymore.”

  “It’s poison, maybe something very exotic,” Cruz said into the cell phone. “Roll paramedics. Get a link immediately with UCLA Medical Center’s emergency room.”

  With half of her attention, Laurel listened to Cruz explain the situation and request aid. She prayed no one would argue or demand more explanations.

  “I have a few contacts in FBI Forensics who may have some ideas,” Cruz said, “but they’ll need physiological data and symptoms to work with.”

  She watched Cruz with haunted eyes. Tears flowed silently down her cheeks. She didn’t even feel them.

  “Yes, I’ll handle that and get back to you,” Cruz said. “It takes too much time to explain.”

  He rang off and began punching in more numbers, a special sequence that would put him through to Cassandra Redpath’s personal phone.

  “Are they—” began Laurel.

  “They’re rolling right now.”

  Redpath picked up on the first ring.

  “This is Cruz. I’m in the clear. Laurel is safe. Swann is down but not out. Medics are on the way.”

  “What do you need?” Redpath asked.

  “Forensics,” he said succinctly. “We need the best database on poisons in the world and we need it now.”

  “You’ll have it. Any way to narrow the possibilities?”

  “Given the players, start with exotic synthetics, Soviet style. Ricin, maybe. Something that would mimic a heart attack.”

  “Hold.”

  He turned to Laurel. “Keep talking to him, honey. Take the flashlight and read the phone book to him if you have to. Keep him with us.”

  53

  Los Angeles

  Wednesday night

  Laurel talked into the phone without stopping, drawing from her well of favorite childhood memories, sharing them with her father like shiny agates plucked from a beach where storm waves raged.

  Hearing her tore at Cruz until he could barely breathe.

  “Repeat,” he said to Redpath.

  “Three chemists. One of them used to do a lot of work for Langley.”

  “Call in a favor. We’re on a terminally short clock at this end.”

  “Understood.”

  While Laurel’s voice rose and fell in vivid memory, Cruz gave Redpath the phone number of the Beverly Hills police lieutenant he’d talked to.

  “If your chemist has any bright ideas,” Cruz said, “the lieutenant has a direct radio link to the paramedics in the hotel.”

  “Anything else?” Redpath asked.

  “How are you at prayer?”

  “Better than you might think.”

  “Then go down on your knees. There’s too much riding on this to let pride get in the way.”

  Cruz broke the connection, pocketed the phone, and reached around to the small of his back for his pistol. He pulled it out and put it on the table next to the telephone Laurel was using.

  “It’s cocked and ready to go,” Cruz said in a soft voice. “The safety is on. If you see anyone but me, shoot.”

  She shifted the telephone receiver to her left ear. She didn’t pick up the gun. She just put her hand on it, ready to lift it at the first sign of trouble.

  “I’m going to check the yard,” he murmured. “I’ll come back in through the kitchen and I’ll make a lot of noise. Got it?”

  Without breaking the flow of her words, she nodded. “Dad, Dad, listen to my voice, hold on to it. You did what you had to do. You warned me. Now let us help you. Stay with me, Dad. Help is coming.”

  No answer came but the faint, ragged sound of Swann’s breathing.

  It was the only answer Laurel needed. It told her that he was still alive.

  For what seemed like an eternity she kept repeating her childhood memories, her hope, and her love. In between phrases, she listened to the sounds at the other end of the line.

  They were fainter, farther apart, fading.

  “
Daddy, don’t leave me.”

  Suddenly she heard a muffled crash, followed by the harsh sound of voices. Then came the clipped, near-code words of paramedics hard at work. The voices were quickly replaced by a woman speaking into the phone.

  “This is the fire department. We have the patient now. Who am I talking to?”

  “His daughter. Is he still alive?”

  “Yes,” the paramedic said. “We’re taking him to the UCLA emergency room.”

  There was a curt order, an urgent request for aid.

  The woman hung up, leaving Laurel alone. She fought off a rising sense of panic and fear. Her eyes filled with tears as bitter as poison.

  “Laurel. I’m coming in.”

  The soft, low voice was Cruz’s. It carried no farther than her ears.

  “Dad is—”

  “Quiet,” Cruz cut in.

  Fear washed coolly over her. She’d heard that tone of voice from him only once before, when assassins had fled out into the night and he’d waited, listening for them to return.

  “All right,” he said when he was within inches of her. “Your father?”

  “Still alive when the paramedics came.”

  She tried to pitch her voice as softly as his. It was nearly impossible. Her throat was raw from tension and fear and talking to a father who was dying.

  Cruz started to speak, then hesitated, looking at her in a way he hadn’t before.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “You didn’t pull the trigger on me back in Cambria. Will you pull the trigger on someone to save your own life?”

  “Dad asked me the same thing when he gave me the gun.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Still feel that way?” Cruz pressed.

  She thought of her father, dying. “Yes.”

  “Then pick up the pistol and come with me. Quietly.”

  He led her to the front room of the house.

  “Take a peek,” he said. “But don’t touch the shutters. Don’t even brush against them.”

  Carefully she leaned forward and looked through the crack. She saw nothing but her own tears. It was the first time she’d been aware of them. Impatiently she brushed them aside and leaned forward again. All she saw was an unhappy neighbor across the street.