by Jake Needham
Goodnight-Jones chewed that over for a bit. “What do you want, Tay?”
“I want to know why you killed Tyler Bartlett and Emma Lazar.”
“Why do you think I killed them?”
“Maybe you had somebody else kill them. Maybe even those two goons you have searching my bedroom. What difference does that make?”
Goodnight-Jones said nothing.
“You’re the one who knows why they were killed. That’s what I want you to tell me.”
“And if I do tell you?”
“You and your men walk out of here.”
“Somehow I think we’re going to do that anyway.”
“Maybe,” Tay shrugged. “Maybe not. At least this way it’s a sure thing.”
There was a silence and in it Tay could almost hear Goodnight-Jones weighing up his alternatives. When he came to a decision, he took a deep breath and then let it out again.
“We made a mistake,” he said. “What we did caused something of a stir, and it would mean all kinds of grief for us if anyone knew we were responsible.”
“This mistake didn’t have anything to do with driverless cars, did it?”
Goodnight-Jones said nothing, but then Tay hadn’t expected him to say anything.
“Was Tyler responsible for this mistake?”
“It had nothing to do with him. He just found out about it somehow. He told me he felt responsible. That’s why he quit.”
“Responsible? How?”
“I don’t know. He wasn’t responsible, not in any way. But seemed to feel… well, guilty, I guess.”
“So you killed him. Just to make sure he didn’t let that guilt lead him to seek absolution by telling someone else what you had done.”
Tay watched Goodnight-Jones’s shoulders rise and fall in a shrug.
“What was this mistake?”
“If you’ve read the data on the drive, you already know. If you haven’t, I’m not going to tell you.”
Tay wondered if perhaps he did already know without understanding he did. But of course he didn’t say that.
“Why did you try to make Tyler’s murder look like a suicide?” he asked instead.
“Tyler was too young for a natural death to be believable. It was either suicide or homicide, and we certainly didn’t want a homicide investigation so the choice was obvious.”
“The suicide set up was thin.”
“It was good enough until that damn woman came along.”
“And by that damn woman, I assume you’re referring to Emma Lazar.”
“I don’t think she knew what Tyler knew, but she was getting close and she wouldn’t let it go. You wouldn’t let it go. If you had, she would still be alive.”
“You piece of shit. You murdered Emma and now you’re claiming it was her own fault she was murdered. Maybe even my fault.”
“You asked a question, Tay. I didn’t expect you to like the answer.”
Goodnight-Jones cleared his throat.
“So are we all done here now?” he asked. “Can I get my guys and go?”
“I don’t know. I’m thinking about it.”
“You think too fucking much, Tay. I’ll tell you what. I’m going to count to three, and then I’m going to stand up, walk to the bottom of the stairs, call my guys down, and then we’re going to leave. If you have the balls to shoot me in the back, go ahead and do it. But I don’t think you do.”
“Maybe he doesn’t,” another man’s voice said, “but I do.”
Tay was so startled he jerked and pulled the revolver out of Goodnight-Jones’s ear. Goodnight-Jones started to rise, but a hand appeared from Tay’s left, clamped onto Goodnight-Jones’s shoulder, and held him where he was.
Tay’s head swiveled around.
John August was standing right there next to him behind the loveseat. It was like a magic trick. One second August wasn’t there, and the next second he was.
August held a big semi-automatic pistol that looked like a Glock. It had a short black cylinder screwed into the muzzle that Tay assumed was a noise suppresser.
“Call your men downstairs,” August told Goodnight-Jones. “Tell them to come down with their hands empty or I’ll kill them and then I’ll kill you.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Trust me, friend. You really don’t want to know.”
“You honestly think you can get all three of us before we get you?”
“No doubt about it. Slide over a bit to your right, Sam. It sounds like I may need a little room to work here.”
Goodnight-Jones raised his hands to shoulder level and held them there, fingers spread. “All right, mate, just calm down.”
“I’m very calm. Don’t you think I’m calm, Sam? Tell your buddy whether I look calm or not.”
“I think you look very calm,” Tay said.
“A couple of real comedians, aren’t you?” Goodnight-Jones said. “Look, I’m going to turn around very slowly and then we’re going to talk. No need for anybody to get killed here. We’re all just doing our jobs.”
Goodnight-Jones moved deliberately, each part of his body rotating and settling before the next part began to rotate. It was the way a man handling a live bomb might move, which in a manner of speaking was exactly what Goodnight-Jones was doing.
“May I put my hands down?” he asked when he was facing August and Tay.
“No,” August said.
“You’re a real charming guy, aren’t you, pal?”
“No,” August said again.
“You’re not a local cop. Are you ISD?”
“No,” August said for the third time.
“This isn’t much of a conversation we’re having, is it?”
Before August could answer, Goodnight-Jones wiggled his open hands side to side. “Don’t bother to say no again. It was a purely rhetorical question.”
“What do you want me to do with them?” August asked Tay.
“Why are you asking me? I can’t even figure out where the fuck you came from.”
“It’s your house, Sam. It ought to be your decision what we do with them.”
“Just get them out of here. I can find them again when I want them.”
“Then I guess it’s your lucky day, friend,” August said to Goodnight-Jones. “Call your pals and take off.”
“That’s it?”
“I could shoot you if you really want me to. Would that make you feel better?”
Goodnight-Jones said nothing. He simply turned his back on August and Tay and walked across the living room to the foot of the stairs.
“Both of you get down here,” he shouted.
A few seconds later, the two men who were searching upstairs obediently trotted down. They gaped when they saw Tay and August with their guns pointed at Goodnight-Jones.
“Don’t worry about it,” Goodnight-Jones snapped at them.
Then he opened Tay’s front door and gestured his men through it with his head.
“I want that disk drive,” Goodnight-Jones said to Tay.
“Everybody wants something.”
“I haven’t finished with you,” Goodnight-Jones said.
“Take your best shot.”
Goodnight-Jones glared at Tay, then he closed the front door behind him and was gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
TAY FOUND A package of Marlboros and a box of matches, and he went out into his garden and sat down at the teak table. August followed and took the chair opposite him.
For a while, neither spoke. Tay busied himself lighting a cigarette. He shielded the flame of the match from the warm evening breeze by cupping his hand around it. Then he shook out the match, dumped it into the ashtray, and exhaled in a long, steady stream.
August did nothing at all. He just sat and waited.
“You’ve had me under surveillance,” Tay said. It was a statement, not a question.
August shifted in his chair. “Not really. I asked our guys to keep an eye on your house. I was worried about you.”
“Look, Sam, there’s a game being played here that you don’t understand. Hell, I’m not even sure I understand. You’re trying to find out something that a lot of people don’t want you to know. Look what happened to the last two people who found out.”
“So you started watching my house?”
“Yes.”
“How are you doing it? Do you keep watchers out there somewhere twenty-four hours a day?”
August chuckled. “We don’t do things that way anymore, Sam.”
“Then you’re using cameras.”
“Would you believe me if I told you I had parked a spy satellite right over your house to keep an eye on you?”
“No.”
August shrugged and spread his hands, palms up. “Well… there you go. You probably wouldn’t believe me no matter what I told you.”
Tay smoked quietly for a moment. August offered nothing more.
“I gather you were sitting somewhere tonight watching the front of my house on a television screen,” Tay went on after a while, “and you saw those three guys letting themselves in.”
“Sam, whether you believe me or not, I’m not spending every waking moment watching you. I ask for limited video surveillance on your house for your own safety. As it turns out, my concerns were obviously justified.”
“Then if you’re not watching that television screen, who is?”
“Nobody is watching any television screen. The technology works on the basis of motion detection. When your front gate moves, a video clip is sent to my phone.”
August reached into his trouser pocket and fished out what looked to Tay like an ordinary Apple iPhone, although it probably wasn’t. He held it up so Tay could see it.
“When I saw those three guys going into your house, I thought I’d come over and have a look. I was concerned they might be waiting inside for you to come back.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I thought another suicide might be on the schedule. I didn’t realize you had that boy’s backup drive. If I had, I would have realized they were searching for it.”
“How do you know I have Tyler Bartlett’s disk drive? I never told you that.”
August shrugged and pointed to Tay’s French doors. “I could hear most of the conversation you and your pal were having.”
“It’s a shame I didn’t get a chance to watch you climbing over my back fence. I would have paid admission to see that.”
“It wasn’t my first choice for a dignified arrival, but I figured walking up to your gate and ringing the bell wasn’t going to help much.”
Tay nodded and went back to his cigarette.
August waited a bit, then he asked, “Did you have the kid’s backup drive when you came to Pattaya?”
“Yes.”
“And yet you didn’t tell me about it.”
“I never got the chance. You cut off our conversation right after I told you that Tyler Bartlett was designing security protocols for The Future. You ran out of that bar like your ass was on fire.”
“What’s on it?” August asked.
“Tyler’s backup drive?”
August nodded.
“No idea.”
“You haven’t looked at it?”
“I thought you overheard what I told Goodnight-Jones.”
“Not that part.”
Tay nodded and thought about that.
“What do I know about computer stuff, John?” he continued after a pause.
“You know enough to plug in a disk drive.”
“I asked somebody else to—”
“Who?” August interrupted.
“I gave it to my Sergeant, Robbie Kang. He knows quite a lot about computers and such.”
“So what did he tell you about the drive?”
“He said it was encrypted.”
“Did he decrypt any of it?”
“Why are you so interested in this backup drive, John?”
“I told you. We have an interest in Goodnight-Jones. If this kid was backing up data related to The Future, it might be helpful to us.”
Tay took a final puff and dumped his cigarette butt in the ashtray.
“Are you ever going to tell me who this we you’re always talking about really is, John?”
August smiled and said nothing, which was pretty much what Tay expected him to do.
“I can’t be of much help to you, John. Like I said, the drive is encrypted. I don’t know what’s on it.”
“Where is it now?”
Something made Tay hesitate. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust August. He supposed he did, at least mostly. But August worked for somebody. Although he didn’t know for sure who that was, he could guess, at least more or less.
The Wangster and Julie had been willing to help him by trying to decrypt Tyler’s drive when there was nothing in it for them to offer their help. Hanging them out now to the people August worked for hardly seemed fair. So Tay decided to offer August a slightly modified version of the truth.
“Sergeant Kang gave the drive to a computer nerd he knows. Somebody thought he might be able to decrypt it.”
“Who did he give it to?”
“I don’t know,” Tay shrugged. “I never asked him.”
August looked skeptical, and Tay didn’t blame him, but he didn’t challenge Tay’s claim of ignorance.
“Has this nerd decrypted any of the drive?” August asked instead.
Tay hesitated for the second time. The laptop was lying on the chair right between them, but the chair was pushed beneath the table. All Tay had to do was pick up the laptop, open it, and show August the four decrypted files. Maybe August could even tell him what they meant.
But he didn’t do that.
“No, I don’t think he’s decrypted anything,” Tay said. “No one’s told me if he has.”
Tay busied himself lighting another Marlboro. He didn’t particularly want another cigarette, but he needed something to do with his hands and his eyes. He didn’t dare look at August and he didn’t want to try to hold his hands still. He knew August was watching him for any clue that he was lying about the drive not being decrypted. He didn’t want to do anything to give him one.
“How about a drink, John?”
Tay shook out the match and tossed it into the ashtray.
“I’ve got a couple of pretty decent single malts inside. I think we’ve both earned a taste of something good.”
After August left, Tay took their empty glasses in the kitchen and rinsed them out. He stood there for a while thinking about having another cigarette, but he decided not to. Instead, he walked around the house shutting off the lights, and then went upstairs to bed.
Tay had hardly closed his eyes when he felt the mattress at the foot of his bed compress with the weight of someone sitting down on it. How was it possible, he asked himself, to feel the weight of his mother’s spirit sitting on his bed? Weren’t spirits supposed to be ephemeral things, weightless and gauzy? Hadn’t the great painters depicted spirits as winged seraphim afloat in the heavens? Of course, in his case such a rendering would require him to picture his mother as an angel. That was far beyond the power of his imagination.
“Wake up, Samuel! I don’t have all night, you know. I have things to do, places to be.”
She had things to do and places to be? Did that mean the spirits had spiritual smartphones running spiritual calendars so they could keep up with everything they had to do? The philosophical implications of that were like trying to imagine infinity. Tay quickly gave up thinking about it and cracked one eye open.
Sure enough, there was his mother seated on the end of his bed. She was wearing a yellow silk suit with the jacket buttoned and a straight skirt that modestly covered her knees. Her hair looked freshly done. Perhaps she really was going somewhere, Tay thought. If she had existed. Which she didn’t.
“I suppose it’s too much for me to expect you to thank me.”
<
br /> “Thank you for what, Mother?”
“For reminding you to carry your gun, Samuel. What else?”
“But I didn’t need my gun, Mother. I didn’t shoot anybody.”
“Maybe you should have. That part is beyond my control. All I can do is tell you to have it. I can’t make you use it.”
“Are you saying I should have shot Goodnight-Jones?”
“Why not? You would have saved yourself the trouble that’s coming.”
“What trouble?”
“You don’t really expect me to tell you that now, do you? You know I’m not going to just hand you everything on a platter. I’ll give you a nudge in the right direction from time to time, like reminding you to carry your gun, but that’s it. You’re on your own from there. A mother can’t do everything.”
Tay watched his mother turn toward him and cross her legs. He felt her weight shift on his mattress just as if she were really there. Which she wasn’t, of course.
“Now pay attention, Samuel. I have a message for you.”
“Another one, Mother?”
“Be more respectful, Samuel. The last message I had for you was awfully useful, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Are you paying attention to me, Samuel?”
“Yes, Mother. I am paying attention to you.”
“Good.”
His mother abruptly lifted her right hand. Until then it had been folded neatly in her lap together with her left hand. She pointed her index finger at Tay.
“You must be very careful right now. Things are not as you think they are.”
Tay nodded and waited for the rest, but his mother said nothing more. She just shook her finger at him and then folded her hands back in her lap.
“That’s it?” Tay asked.
His mother looked genuinely puzzled. “Isn’t that enough?”
“No, Mother, it’s not enough. You sound like a fucking fortune cookie.”
Tay’s mother made a clucking sound with her tongue. “Such language, Samuel. I didn’t raise you to use language like that.”
“You hardly raised me at all, Mother. Mostly, I raised myself.”
“Samuel, that is so cruel. Hearing you say that would probably kill me if I weren’t already dead.”
“It’s the truth, Mother.”
