Sometimes Quickly

by Anne Laughlin

  “You realize how vulnerable we are, don’t you?” Tim asked. “Peg and Allison will probably turn Braddock in for the blackmail attempt. I don’t doubt for a second that he’ll try for some leverage by giving us up.”

  Camille thought that he would have been more accurate to say that Braddock would give Tim up. He didn’t know anything about Camille. But how loyal would Tim stay when facing a prison term? Probably not that loyal.

  “You’re right, of course,” she said. “I’ll call Sam.”

  “I don’t think we need to go that far. Couldn’t we pay him off?”

  “You think he’ll take money for a prison term? I don’t think so.” Camille was back in front of the TV, watching the sex scene with the volume muted. She’d have to rewind and see it again. “Don’t worry about it, Tim. You’re officially off this now. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  She disconnected and poured more wine. She spent all of a minute and a half contemplating what orders to give Sam. Her mind made up, she punched a button to call him. His to do list was Braddock first and then Peg Ryan.

  *

  Peg woke in her hospital bed, confused, in pain, and cranky. Her shoulder was bound tightly to her. She couldn’t move it an inch. Attached to the other side of her chest was a morphine drip. She didn’t hesitate to activate it, and she undoubtedly would have considered pumping in more if the device allowed. The designers were well aware of people like her. Peg was thankful she was prevented from going over the doctor-prescribed dose. She was nearly eighteen years sober, but on this day she felt extremely vulnerable.

  When Allison arrived the evening before, she immediately went into high fussing mode. Peg couldn’t remember the last time someone fussed over her. Irritating as it was, it made her feel loved. Now she watched Allison as she slept in the chair next to the bed. Her head lolled to one side, and her jaw was slack. She’d probably be mortified to be seen like that. Peg thought she was beautiful.

  She was well enough that they discharged her that afternoon. She and Allison went straight to The Fitzpatrick, her hotel when she traveled to New York on business. They got a suite and settled in. Peg was still doped up and in pain. They weren’t going anywhere for a while. The front desk rang to say Morgan O’Reilly was there to see them. Allison opened the door for her and handed her a beer from the mini fridge. She took her by the hand and pushed her into a chair next to Peg, and then she gave her a kiss on both cheeks.

  “You’re my hero for being here for Peg when I couldn’t. It helped so much to have you here until I could fly in.”

  “No problem.” Morgan looked at Peg. “You look a hell of a lot better than yesterday. How’re you feeling?”

  “Like I’ve been shot in the shoulder.”

  Morgan smiled. “Good. Everything’s as it should be.”

  “I really appreciate you being with me when the cops interviewed me. I don’t think I was mentally competent to answer questions,” Peg said.

  “They didn’t seem all that anxious to get answers from the way I saw it.” She turned to Allison. “There were two detectives in for a routine interview. They had no interest in hearing the whole story about the protected witness and Braddock and all that crap. All they needed to know was Peg was unarmed, a drunk shot her, and then said drunk shot herself. End of story.”

  “That’s very good news,” said Allison. She sat on the couch holding Peg’s feet in her lap. “I’ve arranged to meet Braddock tomorrow.”

  Morgan looked appalled. “Are you crazy? You can’t meet that man alone. You’re not going anywhere near him unless I’m with you.”

  Peg was relieved. She’d been unable to talk Allison out of meeting Braddock to put an end to the blackmail threat.

  Allison smiled. “I won’t argue. It would make me feel safer.”

  “Peg would kill me if I didn’t keep you safe,” Morgan said, as if Peg weren’t in the room.

  Allison got up and came back with some medication and a glass of water. “What’s the reason you came to New York in the first place? How’s Laura?”

  Morgan tilted her beer bottle and finished it off. “I wish I knew. She’s still not answering her phone. Her office is completely cleared out. I really don’t have the faintest idea where to find her.”

  “Can’t you triangulate her? Or whatever it is you detectives do to locate people,” Allison said. She helped Peg take her pills and lowered her slowly back against the armrest.

  “I did try that. I think she’s ditched her phone.” She paused and looked at her hands clasped together at her knees. Her knuckles were white. “I’m afraid if this isn’t resolved somehow, Laura’s going to be destroyed. And then she won’t be able to love me. That probably sounds selfish.”

  Peg was surprised. She wasn’t used to Morgan being so open about her feelings. Allison leaned over to take one of Morgan’s hands. “It sounds to me like someone who’s in love.”

  “What’s supposed to happen here in Manhattan?” Peg asked.

  “I have almost nothing to go on, but I’m looking for the saboteurs, and I’m going to find them. I know that a company called West Line has been developing software similar to Laura’s, and that’s where I’m going to start looking. The thing is, I don’t even know who to talk to there. I was hoping to at least make it up to the receptionist in their office space, but I haven’t been able to get past the Nazi doorman. I didn’t know what else to do, so I hung out watching for people entering or leaving who may work for West Line.”

  Peg and Allison stared at her.

  “I know it sounds pretty lame, but I’ve worked with less before. Of course, I’m not going to see much of anyone coming or going from the building on a weekend. I’ll stay through Monday and see what I can see.”

  Allison stood and Morgan followed suit. “My appointment with Braddock is sometime midday tomorrow, so keep your cell phone ringer on. I’m going to rent a car in the morning to drive out to Jersey City. I’ll swing by and pick you up.”

  “I’m in the East Village, slumming it.”

  Peg watched Allison see Morgan out the door and then hurry back to her side. If it weren’t that it hurt like hell, she wouldn’t half mind being injured.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sunday, January 14

  Morgan knew she was wasting time. It was Sunday and she was watching for workers to enter an office building. The odds were slim she’d accomplish anything until business resumed on Monday. Still, she sat in a cafe adjacent to the office building’s plaza and kept her eyes peeled.

  There were a few people coming and going. Employees of the main tenant of the building wore bright orange passes on lanyards around their necks. There was no missing them. She’d not seen anyone who wasn’t wearing the orange pass.

  The weather was good for January—temperatures in the upper forties and the sky a brilliant blue. Morgan gathered her things to go hang around outside for a while. She walked across the plaza toward a low wall where people sat, scanning the area as she went. A young man entered the plaza from the Fifty-third Street side and walked toward the entrance to the building. Morgan nearly did a double take when she saw it was Jeremy from Laura’s company, the one who’d first told her how the FDA meetings had imploded. She trotted up behind him.

  “It’s Jeremy, isn’t it?” She was still behind him by a few feet. He didn’t turn around. She called his name again, and when he didn’t respond, she got closer and put a hand on his coat sleeve. He whipped around to face her. She saw an employee pass hanging around his neck from West Line.

  “What the hell are you doing?” He shrugged off her hand and took a step back.

  “You remember me, don’t you? I talked to you the other day at Laura Daniels’s office. Where you work.”

  Jeremy started walking again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Morgan clamped a hand on his thin upper arm. She knew she was much stronger than him.

  “Listen, Jeremy,” she said as she steered him toward the coff
ee shop. “Your name is Jeremy, isn’t it?” She peered at the name badge that said Henry Sidrovec. “But I see that you use a different name when you’re working for West Line. Isn’t it tough to hold down two jobs in two different cities with two different names, Jeremy/Henry? And working for two direct competitors, too. I don’t know how you do it.”

  He struggled half-heartedly. She sat him down in the coffee shop at the same table she’d just vacated. She picked up her unfinished cup of coffee and drank. Henry looked scared.

  “Here’s the situation you’re in, Jeremy/Henry. You were or are an employee of Laura Daniels, directly involved in the project that failed not once, but twice. It appears you’re also an employee of a rival company working on their own version of the software Laura’s developed. I may be a simple homicide detective, but even I can see that something stinks here.”

  Henry’s eyes moved side to side. He looked slightly frantic. He didn’t speak.

  “It won’t take much at all to collect the evidence we need to charge you with some kind of corporate sabotage. Espionage. Whatever it’s called that made Laura’s software program fail. I’m guessing there’s a hefty sentence involved.” Henry still didn’t say anything.

  “It also doesn’t take much to figure out that you’re not in this solo. You’re probably reporting directly to the person or persons who want to see Laura’s product fail. That puts you in an interesting position. You know how this works. You’ve seen it on TV. You let me know who’s behind this, and I get the prosecutors to lessen or eliminate the charges against you.”

  “I want them dropped. Or not even brought, I mean.” He was sitting with his bag on his lap, holding it close.

  “I don’t think that’s out of the question, but I can’t speak for the prosecutors. They’ll want to get to the people above you.”

  Henry moved his chair back as if he were about to run. “I wouldn’t even try that,” Morgan said, amused. “I’d tackle you in a heartbeat. I’d pound your head on the ground. And then the New York cops would show up, and this will no longer be between you and me. I don’t think you want that.”

  Henry scootched up to the table again. He now looked more resigned than scared. Her cell phone rang, and she put a hand on Henry’s arm as she answered.

  “Morgan, it’s Allison.” Allison’s normally velvety voice sounded strained.

  “What is it? Is Peg okay?”

  “She’s fine. All she does is sleep. But I can’t get hold of Braddock. We were supposed to meet, and I can’t get hold of him to confirm a time.”

  “What do you want to do about it?” Morgan asked.

  “Let’s head to New Jersey as planned. Can you be ready in a few minutes?”

  “I’m ready now. I’ll have to bring along a new friend, though. A West Line employee I’ve just been chatting with.”

  “Great. You interrogate him. I’ll take Braddock. I’ll bring the thumbscrews.”

  Morgan told her where to pick her up. Before hustling Henry out to the plaza again, Morgan pulled out a strip of plastic and fastened one end on Henry’s wrist, the other on hers.

  “Now we’re going steady, Jeremy/Henry, and soon you’ll tell your new girlfriend everything you know.”

  *

  Allison pulled up to Braddock’s office building. There was plenty of parking out front, since half the buildings were boarded up. She looked at Morgan and Henry in the backseat.

  “Do we have to bring him in?” she asked.

  “Afraid so. Just think of him as a shield should anything go haywire in there. We’ll jump behind Jeremy/Henry.” Morgan was amused.

  “It’s Henry, for God’s sake. Stop calling me that!” He was seething.

  “Henry it is.” Morgan opened her door and turned to look at Allison. “I don’t think we’re going to face anything violent in there. Not from a down on his luck, blackmailing lawyer. He’s probably going to be angling for a deal of some sort. But let me take the lead, okay?”

  Allison nodded and they walked through the door of the building. Allison located the suite number and they turned toward the stairs. The building was quiet. Morgan dragged Henry behind her, and Allison brought up the rear. As they reached the landing before the second section of stairs, they heard a door close in the hallway above them and the sound of steps moving quickly toward them. Morgan flipped the safety on her gun. A man appeared at the top of the stairs and trotted down, squeezing by them on the landing. Henry turned his head.

  “Sam?”

  A silenced gun appeared in the man’s hand and as he turned he raised it toward Henry. Morgan dropped her shoulder and tackled him, sending Sam down the marble steps. His hand locked onto Henry as he fell, pulling him and Morgan down the stairs with him. Sam’s gun clattered free and skidded across the slick floor, exactly what Morgan wanted to happen, but without herself tangled up with him.

  She twisted herself free before Sam could, her wrist throbbing from Henry pulling on it as they fell. She jumped on top of Sam and brought Henry with her. She covered the top of his body, Henry the bottom. With her free right hand, Morgan lifted Sam’s head up and then slammed it back on the floor. Twice. He struggled beneath them.

  “Allison, get the gun!”

  Allison hurried to the gun, a few feet beyond them. She picked up the nine millimeter and trained it on Sam.

  “Okay, Sam, we’ve got one gun pointed at you,” Morgan said, pulling her own gun out of its holster, “and now two.” She stood up, pulling Henry with her. “Get up slowly and face the wall, hands behind your head.”

  Sam did as he was told, as if he’d done it many times before. His face was unreadable.

  “I’m a police officer,” Morgan told him, “and I’ll not hesitate to shoot you.” She searched him, pulling a backup gun out of his boot. She grabbed his cell phone out of his pocket. Then she asked Allison to pull another plastic handcuff out of her left jacket pocket and she secured his wrists.

  Allison looked at Henry. “How do you know this guy?”

  Henry remained silent, as did Sam. Morgan took a pocketknife out of her jeans pocket and had Allison cut her loose from Henry. “Don’t disappoint me, Henry. If you run I’ll have to shoot you.”

  Morgan herded the group back up the stairs and down the hallway toward Braddock’s office. She knew what she’d probably find. Sam didn’t appear to have been making a social call. They walked into the outer office, and she put Sam and Henry in a corner, facing the wall. Allison held Sam’s gun on them while Morgan slipped into the inner office, her weapon drawn.

  She nearly tripped over a pair of legs stretched across the entrance. Braddock lay on his back, arms to his side, as if he were ready for his own funeral. A bullet hole was centered on his forehead, leaving minimal gore. The file cabinet was open and papers were strewn all over the room, as if they’d been tossed in the air to fall where they may. She walked back into the outer office.

  “Braddock’s dead, which will come as no surprise to you, Sam.” Morgan turned to Henry. “Things are getting pretty serious here, Henry. Are you sure you don’t want to tell me how you know Sam?”

  Henry turned to look at her. He was shaken, his face pale, his breathing shallow. “He works for my boss,” he said. Sam looked sharply at him but said and did nothing.

  “Your boss? You mean Laura Daniels?” Allison said.

  “No. I never worked for Laura. I work for Bardon Systems and so does Sam. I was planted in Laura’s company a long time ago, so I only saw Sam a couple times at Bardon’s downtown offices.”

  Allison blanched. “Bardon Systems? As in Camille Bardon?”

  He looked hopelessly at Morgan and Allison. “I don’t understand this. It was never supposed to be like this. No one was supposed to get hurt.”

  Morgan grabbed Henry by the elbow and plunked him in a chair. “Okay, Henry. We’ll be getting the full story from you. But we’ve got to deal with this dead body first.” She called 911 and stood closer to Allison.

  “They’re
working for Camille?” Allison said. “Who has her own hit man? Jesus.”

  “It looks like your mess and my mess just collided.” Morgan said. “Let’s get this sorted out so we can go home.”

  Allison was shaken, but relieved. “Yes, please.”

  *

  Morgan, Allison, and Henry sat in a sea of pea green walls and gunmetal gray desks, working with the Jersey City police as they processed the murder of Jim Braddock. They had Sam in a lockup and no intention of turning him over to the FBI or anyone else. They didn’t care about Henry or conspiracies or corporate espionage. They cared about a man being murdered in their town. They questioned Allison, Morgan, and Henry and then let them go. They were considered witnesses in a murder case and nothing more.

  She and Allison dragged Henry across the river into Manhattan. Allison went back to her hotel to be with Peg. Morgan took Henry to the FBI field office. With Henry answering questions and Morgan filling in details, the feds took Henry into custody and put in motion the machinery to locate and arrest Camille in Chicago. She left one more message for Laura and flew home. She’d been leaving messages for her all weekend, reporting on her progress, and hadn’t received a single call back. There wasn’t much of a future in a one-sided relationship.

  When she got home that evening and parked in front of her building, she saw Laura sitting on the front stairs. She was huddled in a puffy down coat with a knit cap on her head. She stood as soon as Morgan got out of her car. Morgan walked up the steps and stood facing her. Her heart was racing at seeing Laura again, but she kept a cool demeanor. She wouldn’t act like a slobbering puppy. She needed something back from Laura.

  “Morgan. I’m so glad you’re here,” Laura said. She looked very earnest.

  “You’re the last person I’d expected on my doorstep,” Morgan said, moving past her to unlock the front door. “I thought you’d fled town to somewhere without any cell service. I thought that would explain why you didn’t return any of my messages.”