by Alan Hruska
“Indeed, Julian Althus is a likely suspect,” Teddy says.
“Isn’t he though!”
“So I’ll get going on this.”
“We don’t need that much,” Lowell points out.
“The merest suspicion….”
“Would do nicely, yes.”
“And the timing?” asks Teddy.
“Yes, timing is key. Assemble the information as quickly as possible. And the ability to use it, of course—witnesses and so forth.”
“The ability to strike when we need to.”
“Exactly,” Jockery says. “When we know he’s in and in favor of the acquisition.”
“Oh, LJ, this is brilliant.” Teddy rises from the chair, which has the peculiar effect of diminishing his height—at least any appearance of it. But his broad face takes on the smile of the practiced flatterer. “If I might just say, LJ—”
“Don’t, Teddy. No need.”
As Teddy bows himself from the room, Lowell’s secretary puts through a call.
“Rex, darling,” gushes a female voice. “You left this morning without planting a single kiss on my glorious bod!”
THIRTEEN
So this is how it’s going down,” says Roy, having pulled over on a back road in the middle of miles of cornfields. He twists around to fish a laptop from behind his seat. “Either me dumping you on your asses in this godforsaken spot, then calling the cops on the tail end of my bye-byes, or you emailing your banker right now, wire transferring the twelve five, I of course giving you my account number, etcetera.”
Elena says, “That is pretty high tech of you, Roy.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Trouble is,” says Elena, “I don’t have the money.”
“You’re a fucking billionaire!”
“See, people make that mistake about me. It’s my father who’s got all the money. Had, anyway. I don’t take from him. I’m a writer. I don’t have a dime.”
“This is total bullshit!” says Roy.
“No, I believe her,” says Tom.
“You shut the fuck up.”
“Calm down,” Tom says. “I have the money.”
“Do you?”
“I do. But how can we trust you?”
“Me? Easy. What fucking incentive do I have to turn you in? In fact, I tell on you, then you tell on me, the money incriminates me—it’s a lose-lose.”
Tom looks at Elena. She shakes her head. He says, “Okay. Let me have the laptop.”
“You’ll do it?” Roy says, a little surprised.
“Just watch me.”
Roy, looking skeptical, nonetheless hands it over.
Tom’s fingers flash.
“You need the transfer info,” Roy says.
“Just a sec.” Tom types some more, clicks on “send,” then hands the laptop back to Roy, who retrieves the sent message.
“Who the hell’s Perry Rauschenberg?”
“My lawyer,” says Tom.
“I thought you were a lawyer.”
“I am. But lawyers need lawyers. You know what they say. A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.”
“Oh yeah?”
“That’s the fact.”
“And what the hell’s this?” Roy says with considerable outrage.
“That’s me telling my lawyer to charge you with attempted extortion, which is a felony, if you do what you’re threatening.”
Roy, with the face of a sullen child, says, “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know. I could have just given you the money. But Roy, you were beginning to piss me off. So y’know what? Now it’s lose-lose for you.”
“Get the fuck outta my car.”
“You got it, man,” Tom says, reaching over Elena to open the cab door. Then to her, “Go, go!” And they scamper.
Revving the motor of an eighteen-wheeler can make a horrible groaning noise, with the gravel kicking up like a sandstorm. Tom and Elena dive out of range, but as Roy’s truck barrels out of sight, she seems wistful.
“Maybe we should have given him the money,” she says.
“Don’t think so.”
‘We’re in the middle of nowhere again.”
“Not quite.”
She points at the bleak horizon of corn. “So your point being what? There are working farms here? Big deal. We’re escaped cons! What are we going to do? Walk into some house and say, Hi folks, can we please use your telephone?”
“No, I think we should get out of the area, probably out of Ohio.”
“Terrific idea,” she says. “Your helicopter or mine?”
“I thought we might take the train,” he says.
“The train,” she repeats dully.
“About a mile back, there was a crossing. We drove over some tracks.”
“You’ve some reason to believe that trains still run on those tracks?”
“Only one way to find out,” he says.
“We stand there and wait.”
“Exactly,” he says.
“A passenger train, no doubt, will come right along. With a dining car. Maybe we can get business class.”
“I wouldn’t count on that, no.”
“So you want us to hop a freight,” she says.
“That’s what I’m suggesting, yes.”
“Assuming one actually arrives.”
He shrugs.
“And is moving slowly,” she says, “with a door open.”
“That would be convenient, yes.”
“With no desperate characters hovering inside.”
“We’re pretty desperate ourselves,” he says, “if you think about it.”
“I don’t have to think about it.”
“So, let’s go?”
“We have an alternative?”
FOURTEEN
Yasim is lunching with Birdie O’Shane in a suite at the Sherry-Netherland on Fifth Avenue. Both wear hotel terry-cloth robes; they have just bathed after indulging in an hour of voluptuous sex. Birdie is one of the reasons Yasim wants to stay in New York. For a UAE official in high power, she is acceptable, barely, as an occasional trophy escort in Manhattan but would be impossible as an openly kept mistress in Dubai.
Yasim spreads a slice of duck pâté onto a toast wedge and hands it to Birdie, then admiringly watches her eat. She has fine, white, even teeth, conferred by genes, not orthodontists. She is also tall—half a head taller than he—slender and blond. Arabic women of high birth aren’t slender; few are tall; and none, of course, blond, by nature or otherwise. Birdie, he thinks, isn’t terribly bright, but to Yasim this is also a virtue. He has little idea, long term, what he will do with her. He knows only he would regret losing her now.
Birdie works at the consulate. Yasim hired her. That’s how they met. At the time, he felt a need to have a young Western woman of statuesque beauty in the building to enhance the cosmopolitan aura he was attempting to create. He preferred a British accent, and mentioned in the interview that his ad had required this.
“But it didn’t say,” she noted, “that I had to be English. I’m an actress. I can do any accent you please.”
Not very well, as it turned out. But in the end, it didn’t matter. She spent a week slaughtering BBC posh, until Yasim said, “Just be your own dear natural self.” By that time she’d already taken her clothes off for him.
Yasim dips an outlandishly large shrimp into cocktail sauce and bites off a bit of it. His mobile gyrates in his bathrobe pocket. He sneaks a peek. No one from the Emirates, for whom he’s on call 24/7. “I’ll have to go to Dubai for a while,” he says.
Birdie’s role, played flawlessly, is that she’s built a life around Yasim, which is far better than the dodgy sort of jobless existence she’d been leading before. “How long is a while?”
“Not very long.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Only one I have, sorry.”
“So take me with you.”
“You wouldn’t like it.”
“Re
ally?” she says. “The pictures look great.”
“They’re for the tourists.”
“Oh, I know. But we could stay in those parts.”
Yasim laughs at her innocence.
“You have a home there?” she asks, as if the thought had just come to her.
“I keep a flat.”
“Oh yeah, what’s it like?”
“Very functional.”
“How many bedrooms?”
“One plus a spare.”
“So you’re married, after all? Is that why I can’t come with you?”
“I’m not married, and I’m not going over there for pleasure. I’m going there so that I may stay here. And I plan to be there for as little time as I need to in order to ensure that.”
“They want you to leave the consulate?” she says with alarm.
“There’s at least one person with that idea. And he’s now here. I’m going back to find out whether anyone over there is actually entertaining the same notion. And if they are, to stop it from going any further. Do you understand, darling?”
“Of course. So maybe I could help.”
“You can. But here.”
“You want me to work on that guy?”
“I want you to watch him for me. And one more thing. You remember three nights ago?”
“Sure.”
“Where were we?”
She looks mystified as to why he’s asking. “At the Hotel Du Pont. In Wilmington, Delaware.”
“Working late, right. Did I have any phone calls, or did I make any?”
She shakes her head, now looking a little frightened. “I can’t remember.”
“I want you to remember. I didn’t. Remember that.”
“Okay,” she says uncertainly.
“And two nights ago?”
“Two nights ago?” she repeats. “I wasn’t with—”
“Same place, same answer.”
“Okay.”
“You may be asked those questions while I’m gone.”
“What’s this about, Yassy? Who’s gonna ask?”
“Anybody. Cops, anyone.”
“Cops?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Why would cops … what the fuck happened two nights ago, Yassy?”
“A man got killed, someone who loaned lots of money to the Emirate of Dubai and was about to call the loan.”
“How much money?”
“What difference does it make? Several billions.”
“So they think you killed him?” she says. “Is that really why you’re going back?”
“On the contrary. They don’t think I had anything to do with it. That’s why I have to stay here. That and you, my darling.”
“So why would the cops be coming around? To me?”
“Routine. You work for me. But I’m not sure they will. I simply want you prepared.”
“Prepared is good, but I’m smarter than you think, y’know.”
“I think you’re very smart.”
“No, you don’t,” she says. “You’ve got me down as a ditz. For example, if the cops asked about your getting calls in Delaware, I’d have said, ‘Oh, no. He always turns his phone off when he’s with me.’”
“You know, sweet, what you tell the cops can be made public.”
“So?”
“You like your job?”
“I could lose my job?”
“Going public with our affair—”
“Oh, I get it.”
“So….”
“I am a ditz.”
“Of course you’re not. I simply want you to know, I’m striving for both of us.”
“I see, Yassy, I do. I’d say or do anything for you!”
“I know you would,” he says, and almost believes it.
FIFTEEN
Tom and Elena, sitting on the north side of the tracks, watch yet another long train speeding past. The line is in use, which is the good news. But the cars going by are neither open nor sufficiently sluggish for them to attempt climbing on. They’ve chosen a relatively straight stretch of track, giving them a view due east of about a fifth of a mile until the track bends into a tunnel of foliage.
“Great idea you had,” Elena says.
“You mean the one about catching a slow-moving freight train?”
“That’s the one, yes.”
“It would seem to require,” he says, “a bit more patience than you have.”
“More than you’d expect from my condition.”
“You’re pregnant?”
“Very funny,” she says.
“Hungry?”
“Starving, on the edge of extinction.”
“In that case….”
“What?” she says. “You’re hoarding food?”
“Hoarding?”
“Tom, do you have food?”
“I can see you’re desperate,” he says, retrieving a sandwich from the right side pocket of his suit jacket.
She stares at it with disbelief. “Where’d you get that?”
“It’s Seymour’s.”
“You stole Seymour’s lunch?”
“I did,” he says, handing it to her.
“Did he have only the one sandwich?”
“No, there’s another.”
“Well, eat it!”
“I’m not close to death.”
“You eat that damn sandwich,” she says, “or I’m not eating mine, and I am close to death.”
Laughing, he pulls the other sandwich from his left side pocket, but then scrambles to his feet. “What’s that?”
Elena also stands, listening.
Then, plainly, there’s rumbling on the tracks.
“It’s moving slowly,” she says in almost a whisper, at the same time rewrapping and handing back her sandwich. He stuffs both back into the pockets from which they came.
Then the train emerges on the bend, indeed moving slowly and, indeed, with several doors wide open.
The train approaches. “Which car?” she calls, starting to run alongside the tracks.
“Just pick one,” he says, following.
They position themselves for the leap.
“You go first,” he says, running faster, “and I’ll kind of push you up.”
“Okay, but you damn well better get on the same car!”
“Okay. This one!” he yells over the din and clattering of the train. “There’s a handlebar at the side!” Elena grabs hold, and there appears in the doorway of the car a grizzled geezer who reaches down to yank her up. Then, as Tom hoists himself onto the train, the old man flashes a knife at both of them.
SIXTEEN
Julian Althus’s secretary signals her boss. “Sir, there’s a Mr. Theodore Stamos on line one. Are you available?”
He has to think about that.
“Sir?”
“Tell him … never mind, I’ll pick up.” He does. And says curtly, “Yes?”
“Mr. Althus?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Theodore Stamos.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Stamos?”
“I run a private—”
“I know who you are. Why the call?”
“I’d very much like to talk to you.”
“We seem to be in the process of doing that.”
“About Mr. Riles’s death.”
“Who are you working for, Mr. Stamos?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”
“Then I don’t see why I should continue this conversation.”
“Because—and you should believe this—it can only be to your advantage.”
“Oh, yes?” Julian says skeptically. “How so?”
“Well, the DA’s people will be upon you quite soon.”
“Upon me? And how do you know such a thing?”
“That’s my business, Mr. Althus, knowing things.”
“And the questions they’ll ask me? You know those too?”
“The important ones, I do.”
<
br /> Julian, rising, carries the phone to the window. “Where are you now?” he says, looking down.
“In the lobby of your building, sir.”
“Perhaps …” Julian reflects on the people scurrying about on the streets. “No, wait. There’s a diner, near the corner of Fifty-Second and Ninth Avenue. I’ll meet you there.”
“You’ll recognize me?”
“I told you. I know who you are.”
“And I you, sir.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“It’s my way of learning things,” Teddy says. “To know that you recognize my face as well as my name—that’s a useful bit, sir.”
“You’re a dealer in bits?”
“Oh, I am, sir. Most definitely. The bits do add up.”
Teddy is seated facing the door in the farthest booth from it. There’s a full cup of coffee in front of him. His hand rises slightly at the wrist in a coy little wave as Julian enters. The executive sits across from the private detective and observes him, as if studying a specimen beneath glass. “Pretty brash of you, calling me,” Julian says.
“I suppose. But the shortest distance between two points—”
“Is a straight line, to be sure. But what is the point of your points, Mr. Stamos?”
“Teddy. Please.”
“Very well.” Julian’s mouth twists in distaste. “Teddy.”
“I know you’ll soon be visited by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office; I know why, and I know what they’ll ask you. You’d like to know what I know. I’d like to know what you know about the killing of Robbie Riles. I’m of course suggesting we barter the information, a simple quid pro quo.”
“All right … Teddy. You go first.”
“I spill everything I know, then trust that you will too?”
“Precisely.”
“It’s not how we do it.”
“No?” Julian says. “Why not?”
“We haven’t established trust.”
“And how do we do that?”
“It’s a sort of striptease,” says Teddy.
“Oh, yes?”
“I give you a bit, you give me a bit, then I give a bit more, and so on.”
“I see.”
“I’ve done this before, you know.”
“I’ll bet you have.”
Teddy laughs. “The DA wants to know what you know about how and why Robbie Riles got killed.”
