“Definitely call Maggie. I’m sorry, Charles, she is just so much quicker at things like this. Did you ask any of your people to see if they can come up with anything?”
“Of course I did. They’re on it, too.”
“Well, there you go! The more people we have working on this, the quicker we’ll get results,” Annie said. “You don’t look to me like you think this is important, Charles. I do for some reason. Whoever compiled those reports must have thought it was important, or they wouldn’t have put it in the file. It might turn out to be nothing, but it’s all we’ve come up with so far. You always told us that small, insignificant details can sometimes turn out to be a rabbit in the hat or that smoking gun everyone just waits for.”
“Oh, by the way, Charles, I’m going to go to Las Vegas this weekend with Annie if we get all this cleared away. I’m not sure how long I’ll be there. You can man the fort with the dogs while I’m gone, can’t you?” Myra asked.
“Of course. It will do you good to get away for a few days. If you think of anything else you need me to do, just call down to the war room. Either way, call me when Nellie and Elias arrive. The girls are stirring,” he said over his shoulder.
Annie made a tsk sound with her tongue. “Your husband is ticked off, Myra.”
“I know, dear, but it’s not because I’m going away. He truly resents outside help, and Maggie has one-upped him a few too many times. Manly pride and all of that.” She giggled to show what she thought of that.
“I’m calling Maggie right now,” Annie said.
Myra gathered up a tray to carry out to the terrace. She stopped for a second to appreciate the promise of a beautiful day, to listen to the birds chirp, and to gaze up at a truly cloudless sky.
She was followed by Annie a moment later, carrying the coffeepot, which she plugged into an outlet on the minibar.
“Maggie has her teeth into it. She promised us something by noon at the latest. I explained about Charles’s calling Ted and Charles’s general attitude. She just laughed. You a betting woman, Myra?”
“Good Lord, no. There is no doubt in my mind that Maggie will cross the finish line first. Do you agree?”
“I do. Especially when she’s pitted against Charles and Ted. We should do something nice for that Abner person.”
“You did do something nice, Annie. That Abner person now owns beachfront property thanks to you.”
“But, Myra, he’s worth every penny of the bonuses Maggie is forced to pay him for his invaluable information. Can you imagine if that boy were to get caught? Whatever would we do?”
“What’s with that we stuff, Annie?” At Annie’s frantic look, Myra hastily added, “I was just teasing, Annie. The young man has truly proved invaluable to us, and we would figure out something if he were to get caught. We would, wouldn’t we, Annie?” There was such anxiety in Myra’s voice, Annie felt her insides start to crumble.
“Of course,” was the best she could mumble in a normal-sounding voice. At least she hoped it sounded normal to Myra, who looked so relieved Annie knew she’d pulled it off.
“Let’s just sit here and enjoy the early morning until the girls and Nellie arrive. There must be something pleasant we can talk about. I do love a bright, sunny summer morning, don’t you, Annie?”
Bright, sunny summer mornings did nothing for Annie. She muttered something to appease her friend and went back to worrying about Maggie and her special hacker friend.
As Annie and Myra sat in silence, struggling to find pleasant things to talk about, Maggie was on her way to a meeting with Abner Tookus at a small café in Georgetown. She arrived first, asked for a table in the very back of the room, and waited for her friend. She’d deliberately chosen this particular café, a favorite of Abner’s, knowing he wouldn’t kick up too much of a fuss in public as opposed to over the phone when she told him what she wanted him to do.
Maggie looked around the rapidly filling café. Obviously no one ate breakfast at home anymore. A truly sad state of affairs, in her opinion. To while away the time until Abner arrived, Maggie spooned eight packets of real sugar into her cup of coffee as she watched most of the patrons flip open their copies of the Post to pore over it while they waited for their food.
When she felt the air stir around her, Maggie looked up and gasped. “Abner! Oh, my God! What happened to you? Are you going to a funeral? You look just like Brad Pitt! You got a haircut. How much did that suit cost?”
Instead of answering her final question, Abner said, “Nothing happened to me. No, I am not going to a funeral. Thank you for the compliment, but I’m much more attractive, and he’s old. Of course I got a haircut, because I had the time to do it since you’ve been leaving me alone. It’s none of your business how much this suit cost, but I will say this, you paid for it. Moving right along here, the answer is no. Absolutely no to whatever this little breakfast meeting is all about. By the way, this shirt is pure Italian silk, and this stunning Hermès tie is one of a kind, as was the price. I’ll have the two-egg pancake special.”
Maggie decided to take a different approach with Abner this morning, remembering how she’d been accused of being so abrasive. “You hate me, don’t you? After all I’ve done for you.”
Abner appeared to be unmoved as he brought his coffee cup to his lips. “That’s not true. I love you. I have always loved you. But you kicked me to the curb and chose that freckled lout with the red hair. I’m almost over you. If you burst into tears, I will be unmoved. You wanna go there, be my guest. Furthermore, I can get any girl I want just by snapping my fingers. I do not think you can say the same thing about men. Whatever, this is pointless, I’m taking the ten o’clock shuttle to New York. The only reason I agreed to meet you is that I was coming here anyway for breakfast. Your turn, Miss EIC.”
“You are so cruel. I do love you. I will always love you, too. When I hear Whitney Houston sing that song, I always cry because I think of you and how it can never be,” Maggie whimpered.
“Cut the bullshit, Maggie; what do you want?”
“Why do you care if you aren’t going to help me?”
“So I can get my jollies off when I say no once again.”
“I want you to find someone. Actually, our mutual benefactor wants you to find someone. The benefactor with the deep pockets, who paid for all that lovely beachfront property she is going to rip right out from under you when I tell her how uncooperative you are being.”
“You’re tearing my heart right out of my chest. You win some, you lose some.”
“I’ll be sure to express your sentiments verbatim, and you can damn well pay for your own breakfast. Did you see how much Canadian bacon is these days, and you ordered a double order? You are a user, Abner Tookus. All she wants is for you to locate someone for her. How hard can that be, you crud?”
“Oh, so one minute I’m Brad Pitt, and now I’m a crud. You are not endearing yourself to me. How much?”
“You are so shameless I am ashamed to admit I know you. Whatever it takes. That’s for the first part. The second part is a little more … ah … delicate.”
“And that would be … what?”
“A little hack job. I’m sure you can handle it. It will pay very well.”
Abner chewed on his Canadian bacon, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Details.”
“Our boss wants you to find out everything you can on a man named Virgil Anders. A long time ago he was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. His name came up in an FBI file. The man disappeared and was never seen or heard from again is what we’re being told. The only other thing I know and was told to tell you was, he was writing a book. When he disappeared, he was in his midtwenties.”
“And the second part?” Abner asked as he calculated the payout versus how much time he would have to spend tracking down Virgil Anders.
“Well, like I said, it’s a little more … I think the right word is ‘delicate.’”
“I don’t do delicate,” Abner sniffed as he watche
d the waitress add more crushed ice to his glass and then fill it with pulpy orange juice.
“I know, but this is … special. We want you to hack into the Witness Protection Program.”
Abner started to choke. Orange juice and pulp flew in all directions as he reached for napkins to sop up the mess, his eyes so wild Maggie grew alarmed. Diners turned to look at what was going on in the back of the café.
“Now look at me! I have to go back home to change my clothes. Were you born crazy, or did you study up on how to be a nut job?”
Maggie ignored him as she slapped down some bills on the table, and hissed, “We need to take this outside. I can’t take you anywhere without you making a scene. What’s wrong with you, Abner?”
His eyes still glazed, Abner followed Maggie out of the café.
“All you had to do was tell me you weren’t capable of doing it. That I would have understood. Instead, you spewed orange juice all over the table, and now you look bedraggled. I told them you weren’t the man for that job, but they thought so highly of the work you’ve done in the past, they insisted I ask. I told them, Abby, that it wouldn’t matter even if they said you could name your price.
“Look, I’m sorry I upset you. I don’t want you to give this another thought. If you don’t want to work on the Virgil Anders case, either, tell me now. I’ll find someone who needs the money more than you do. Listen, thanks for coming. I’ll see you around.”
Still in a daze, Abner Tookus watched Maggie walk away. He knew in his gut her step would falter and she’d turn around for one last go at him. But she didn’t falter, and she didn’t turn around. In fact, she sprinted across the road the moment the light turned green. He watched as she swiped at her eyes.
Maggie Spritzer was crying.
Abner looked down at his Hugo Boss suit and knew he had to get it to the dry cleaners stat. Then he’d head over to the Post building and try to make peace with his unrequited love. Brad Pitt, eh?
Chapter 14
Muttering to himself, Abner Tookus stepped into his private elevator, private because he was the owner of the renovated warehouse, which would take him to the spacious loft that he himself had restored. He had nine hundred square feet of actual living space, a bedroom, a luxurious sitting room, an outrageous bathroom, and a state-of-the-art kitchen that he never used. The remaining three thousand square feet of the loft were used for his business, which had no name. Other than “hacking.”
At a glance, any first-time visitor would have likened the huge room to that of NASA’s mission control. There were computers everywhere. Lights flashed, and muted pinging noises could be heard from all directions. A bank of televisions was mounted on one of the middle walls, each tuned to a different channel. The temperature was a controlled sixty-one degrees and never ever fluctuated.
Abner stomped his way into his bedroom, which resembled a harem gone wild. He did love veils and beads and bright colors. The art that hung on the walls had to do with voodoo, because when all his high-tech equipment failed him, which was hardly ever, he stuck pins in a wide range of voodoo dolls and laughed while he was doing so.
He was aggravated now as he stripped off his Hugo Boss suit and fired off a text to the person he was supposed to meet in New York. “Sorry, Trump, old boy, another time, another place.”
Five minutes later, Abner was in a pair of cutoff khaki shorts, grungy sneakers, and a muscle shirt. He ran his hands through what was left of his hair and spiked it up with some gel. Now he felt like Abner Tookus, hacker extraordinaire.
Abner stumbled when the words Witness Protection rumbled through his brain as he made his way to his workstation. He sat down on his swivel stool, hit buttons, scooted the stool across the room to punch more buttons. He repeated the process so many times in the following fifteen minutes his stool left scorch marks on the shiny wood floors he’d installed himself, all the while the two ominous words ricocheting around and up and down inside his head.
While he waited for results to flow through his computers, he started to text three of his closest friends, hackers almost on his own level. Within seconds, all three colleagues agreed to meet up with him within the hour.
That was good; he’d have Virgil Anders locked up tight, sealed in an envelope by the time they arrived. All he had to do was decide if he was going to hand deliver the envelope or messenger it to the Post. Well, damn, he hadn’t even agreed to do the job on Virgil Anders, and here it was all wrapped up. Well, damn again.
Abner had always prided himself on being nerveless, never allowing himself to get rattled. But he was rattled now, and he admitted it to himself. As soon as his friends got here, he would bounce everything off them and see what they thought. Witness Protection. No one but no one had ever penetrated their program. They’d never lost a witness, either, thanks to their security.
Abner sniffed and stuck his nose high in the air. The only reason the WPP had never been penetrated was because he had never tried. He never failed. Ever. Then why was his big toe itching? He wiggled his toes inside his smelly sneaker, but the itch wouldn’t go away.
Frustrated, he kicked off his sneaker. He watched as it sailed across the room. He really had to get some of those Odor-Eaters and put them in his sneakers. Or, horror of horrors, wash the damn things. He did, after all, have a fancy-dancy washing machine, complete with a rack specially for washing and drying sneakers. Worst-case scenario. Christ he was edgy.
Abner almost jumped out of his skin when the buzzer sounded to indicate his friends had arrived. He walked over to the elevator and sent it downward. He waited while it lumbered back up. He found himself grinning from ear to ear at his friends’ appearance. They all looked and dressed just the way he did. Tim, Bart, and Stella, the seniors of the group, were in their very early thirties, all computer geniuses, all with PhDs. The three younger men trailing Tim, Bart, and Stella were their trainees. All three trainees were in doctoral programs. They were here to observe, to listen, and to keep quiet.
They knuckled one another as they made their way into the climate-controlled work area. Abner fished out stools from under various counters. Everyone took a seat. Refreshments were never served in this area. Six sets of eyes looked at Abner like he was the Messiah ready to lead them … somewhere.
“I have been offered a job, guys. Then a second later the job was withdrawn because the person who offered it said they thought I couldn’t do it.” A gasp went up from the little crowd that clearly stated that was the next thing to blasphemy.
No one asked a question, because Abner was their leader, and disciples never questioned their leader. “We all know there is nothing out there we can’t crack. That’s such a given it doesn’t even bear thinking about, much less discussing. However, this assignment is a little outside the norm. What would you say if I told you my client wanted me to hack into the Witness Protection Program?”
One of the big three said, “I think the question here is, do you want to do it? That then brings a second question, which is how much is it worth? Then the granddaddy of all questions is, if you or we, as the case may be, get caught, and I am not saying that will happen, who takes care of you or us if we all work on this?”
Abner dropped his head to stare at his one bare foot. Did he want to do it? Hell, yes, he did. Cracking the WPP would be like an Olympian’s winning the gold medal. “Yes, I do want to do it. And I’m smart enough to know I need your expertise. This particular job, I think I can say with confidence, is a ‘name your own price’ deal. As to who would come to our aid … the name I was given on past jobs was Miss Lizzie Fox. I would assume that still holds. I will confirm all of this once we all agree that we want to do it. A show of hands will do. Not the trainees, but if they have any input I’d like to hear it. As always, their fee comes out of your share. We still on the same page here?” Six hands shot into the air.
It was never about the money with these guys, Abner knew. The money wasn’t important to him, either. He pretended it was with Maggie beca
use he loved to haggle and walk away the winner. The thrill, the high, came from doing something no one else was capable of doing, then walking away free as the breeze. The cherry on top was laughing all the way to the bank.
“We’re in,” Stella said. Five heads nodded in confirmation. “Is this just a meeting to feel us out or do you want us to start to work? Just tell us what to do.”
“Yeah, yeah, I want you to start on this. I have to go crosstown to deliver a package and talk to our client. I will broker the best deal I can, you all know that. I also have to garner a little more information. This is what I know so far….”
Abner was almost to the door when one of the trainees tossed him his sneaker. Abner caught it, made another mental note to buy some Odor-Eaters, and was in the elevator, his heart pumping like a racehorse.
Abner arrived at the Post on the stroke of noon. The security guard frowned at his attire as he handed over a visitor’s pass on a lanyard. His face grim, Abner stalked to the elevator and rode it to Maggie’s floor. When he exited the elevator, he could see her getting up from her chair the moment she spotted him. She had the strangest look on her face, one that he’d never seen. He stomped his way to her office, slapped the envelope down on her desk, and said, “It’s three million dollars. Take it or leave it.”
Maggie almost broke her hand signing a chit for him to take to the accounting office. She tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. She waited.
Abner leaned over her desk. Maggie rolled her chair backward so she could see him better. “I’ll take the job. Give it to me in five sentences.” Maggie did in such a shaky, so-unlike-her voice that Abner felt pleased. He was doubly pleased to see that her hands were shaking.
“Three million bucks, and Lizzie Fox defends me and whoever else I might involve in this. I want it in writing right now, and I want half the money up front, like in now. Before you agree”— he leaned even farther across the desk—“I want you to know I hate your guts!”
Deja Vu Page 12
