Killer Instinct

by Joseph Finder

  A bitter taste in my mouth. I felt something acidic rise.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kurt said.

  I lunged for the kitchen sink and vomited.

  Heaved, retched until there was nothing left in my stomach, and then kept going. The taste of acid and copper pennies in my mouth. Pinpoints of light hovered around my head. I felt as if I was going to pass out.

  I could see Kurt standing beside me, his face looming grotesquely large. “You okay?”

  Another wave of nausea hit me, propelling my head forward, down toward the sink. Nothing left in my stomach. Dry heaves.

  I gripped the edge of the counter, the tile cold in my hands. Slowly I turned to face him, my face hot, everything around me too bright, tiny lights dancing in my peripheral vision. The stench of vomit rose up to assault my nostrils. I could smell undigested pad thai.

  “You killed them,” I said. “You goddamn killed them.”

  Something hardened in Kurt’s expression.

  “You’re upset,” he said. “Lot of pressure on you, obviously. Now this.”

  “You killed them. You did something to Trevor’s Porsche. You knew they’d both be in it on their basketball night. You knew he likes to drive it hard. My God.”

  Kurt’s eyes went flat, dead. “That’s enough,” he said. “You’ve crossed the line there, buddy. Throwing wild accusations around like that. The only people who talk to me like that—”

  “Are you denying it?” I shouted.

  “Will you chill, please? Throttle back, huh? And keep your voice down. Now, you’re going to have to stop with the crazy shit. I don’t like to be accused of something I didn’t do. Upset or not, I don’t care. You’re going to have to hold it together. Calm down. Get hold of yourself. Because you don’t want to be talking to me like that. I really don’t like it.”

  I just looked at him, didn’t know what to say.

  “Friends don’t talk to me like that,” he said, an opaque look in his eyes. “And you don’t want me as your enemy. Believe me. You don’t want me as an enemy.”

  Then he turned around slowly, and without saying another word he walked out of the house.

  46

  Should I have told Kate right then and there?

  Maybe so. But I knew how upset she’d be when I told her my suspicions.

  Neither one of us wanted to jeopardize the pregnancy. Maybe it was too late in the pregnancy for stress to cause her to lose the baby—I had no idea—but I wasn’t going to take that chance.

  Kurt had denied it, of course. But I knew.

  At some point soon I’d have to tell her. Or she’d find it out. But I wanted to get myself together, tell her in the right way. Calmly, reasoned. Having thought everything through. Sounding in control, a protector.

  “Was that you throwing up?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you think the food was bad?” Susie said. “Like the chicken or something? I thought it might have tasted funny.”

  “No, the food’s fine. Just a case of nerves, I guess.”

  “Stress,” Susie said. “Craig throws up every time he has to present a pilot to the network execs.”

  “Yeah?” I said, wishing she’d leave already.

  “Where’s Kurt?” Kate asked.

  “He had to take off.”

  “Did you guys have a fight or something? I thought I heard an argument.” She looked at me closely.

  “No big deal. Yeah, we sort of had it out on something at work. Nothing important. Can I put the food away?”

  “Jason, you look really upset. What happened? Who was that on the phone?”

  “Really,” I said. “Nothing important.”

  “Well, in the meantime, I just called Marie and told her about the gallery. And do you know what she said to me? She said something in Creole, I don’t really remember how it goes, but it means something like, You must remember the rain that made your corn grow. That was her way of saying she owed it all to me. Isn’t that just the sweetest?”

  “I’m proud of you, baby. You did a good thing.”

  “You don’t look right, Jason,” she said. “Are you sure everything’s all right?”

  “Everything’s fine,” I said.

  I barely slept.

  I got up at my usual, ridiculously early, five in the morning, my body trained to grab a cup of coffee and head out to Kurt’s gym. But then, as I slipped silently out of bed, I remembered.

  I made coffee and checked e-mail in my study. Wrote an e-mail to all employees of the Framingham office telling them the news. Was it “sad” news or “tragic”? I finally decided to open with “It is my sad duty this morning to tell you of the tragic deaths of Trevor Allard and Brett Gleason…”

  At around six, I went down to get the Herald and the Globe from the front porch. I scanned them quickly, looking for articles on the accident, but I found nothing. The Herald lived to report that sort of thing—the print equivalent of “if it bleeds, it leads”: two young men, top employees of one of the largest corporations in the world. A Porsche spinning out of control, both occupants killed. But the news hadn’t made it into either paper yet.

  I drove to the office in silence—no books on tape, no General Patton, no music, no talk radio—and thought.

  When I got to the office—the first one there—I opened my Internet browser and Googled “Massachusetts State Police” and “homicide” and seeing if any of the names that turned up were familiar. The first thing that came up was the Massachusetts State Police web page with a welcome message from a scary-looking dude in full state trooper dress uniform, a colonel who I guessed was the superintendent of the state police. On the right was a column of “News & Updates,” and the first line jumped out at me: WALTHAM FATAL. I clicked on the hyperlink. A press release came right up, headed, “State Police Respond to a Single-Car Fatal Crash in Waltham.”

  Trevor’s name in boldface, and Gleason’s. Phrases: “pronounced deceased at the scene” and “traveling north on Interstate 95 in Waltham south of Exit 26.”

  It said, “Preliminary information collected in the investigation by Trooper Sean McAfee indicates that a 2005 Porsche 911 Carrera 4S veered off the road into the median and struck the guardrail and an abutment before rolling over. The vehicle was towed by J & A Towing.” It said, “The cause of the crash remains under investigation with the assistance of the State Police Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Section and the State Police Crime Scene Services Section.” And: “Though the crash remains under investigation, speed is believed to be a factor in the crash.” And: “No further information is available for public disclosure. Please do not contact the barracks directly.”

  Man, everything and everyone has a website these days. I was amazed that the news was already public. When I Googled Trooper Sean McAfee, nothing came up. But it wouldn’t be hard to find his phone number by calling the state police.

  And then what? What did I have besides suspicion? Was I going to call Trooper McAfee and tell him that I thought my colleague and friend Kurt Semko had done something to the Porsche to cause the crash? He’d ask why I thought so, what reason I had to suspect Mr. Semko.

  No, that would be stupid. The crash was under investigation. Maybe they’d find something in the wreck of the Porsche that would tell them what really happened. Until I had something concrete, though, there was no sense in dropping the dime.

  I didn’t know what Kurt would do if he heard that I’d reported my suspicions to the cops, but I could imagine it wouldn’t be good.

  Still, I had to do something. I’d come to my senses. It had taken me too long to realize that Kurt was a dangerous man, that he was out of control, that I had to stop him. He’d helped me in all sorts of ways, big and small. Maybe in ways I wasn’t even aware of. And I’d silently gone along with the things he’d done for me, even though I knew they were wrong.

  Ambition only went so far, though. Should only go so far, anyway. I’d crossed a line, yes
. I wanted to do the right thing.

  But what?

  47

  The guys started gathering in my office around nine—first Letasky, then Festino and Forsythe, until I had a small crowd. Whether or not they liked Trevor Allard or Brett Gleason, they’d worked with the two, seen them every day, bantered with them in the break room, talked sports and women and cars and business, and they were all in shock. They spoke quietly, trying to puzzle out what had happened. Letasky told them what he’d heard from the basketball team member who’d been driving behind the Porsche—how the highway curved to the right but the Porsche drove straight into the guardrail and then a concrete bridge-support column, and then the car had flipped over. The emergency medical technicians who arrived and realized that no ambulance was needed: Both men were dead. How the left lane was closed down for hours.

  “Was Trevor drunk or something?” Forsythe asked. “I don’t remember Trevor as a big drinker.”

  No one knew, of course.

  “The pathologist usually tests for blood alcohol,” Festino said. “That’s what you see on, like, CSI, anyway.”

  “I doubt it,” Letasky said. “I mean, I didn’t know Trevor as well as you guys, and I barely knew Gleason at all, but they were on their way to play basketball. They weren’t going to get plowed before a game. After, maybe. Not before.”

  “Gleason was a big drinker,” Festino said. “Big party animal.”

  “But still,” said Letasky.

  There was nodding all around. Allard couldn’t have been drunk; it didn’t figure.

  “I know he drove fast,” Forsythe said. “Really fast. But he knew how to drive. How could he lose control of the car? It didn’t rain last night, right?”

  Letasky shook his head.

  “An oil slick or something?” Forsythe asked.

  “I took 95,” Letasky said, “and there wasn’t any kind of oil slick that I saw.”

  “Ever meet his wife?” asked the youngest sales rep, Detwiler.

  “A real hot babe,” Festino said. “Blonde, big tits. What you’d expect Trevor to marry.” He looked around, saw the disapproving looks. “Sorry.”

  “They didn’t have any kids, thank God,” Letasky said.

  “Thank God,” I said. I’d been listening, not talking. I didn’t want to risk letting them know my suspicions.

  “Mechanical defect or something?” said Detwiler.

  Letasky inhaled. “I suppose anything’s possible.”

  “Mrs. Allard’s going to have one hell of a lawsuit against Porsche,” Festino said.

  As the guys filed out a few minutes later—everyone had calls to make—Festino lingered behind.

  “Say,” he said tentatively. “About Trevor?”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but I hated the asshole. You know that. I assume you did, too.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “But—I don’t know—maybe he wasn’t so bad. Gleason, too. Though he was even harder to like.”

  I just nodded.

  “And, well—I know it’s probably in bad taste, but have you decided who you’re going to assign their accounts to?”

  News travels fast in the age of e-mail. Just before lunchtime I got an e-mail from Joan Tureck in Dallas:

  I’m so sorry to hear about Trevor Allard and Brett Gleason. I can scarcely believe it. If I were at all superstitious, I’d say Entronics is cursed.

  Maybe she had a point.

  At lunchtime, I found a pay phone in the employee cafeteria. It’s hardly ever used—not in an office building where everyone has desk phones and cell phones.

  I’d decided to call the cops.

  What I really wanted to do was to call some anonymous crime tip line. But amazingly enough, the Massachusetts State Police didn’t seem to have one. On their website I found tip lines for terrorism, arson, fugitives from justice, auto theft, charity scams. Even an Oxycontin tip line. But nothing for plain old murder.

  So I called the state trooper whose name was on the online press release. Trooper Sean McAfee, the one who was in charge of investigating the collision, was out of the Concord barracks of the state police. Troop A headquarters. Though I doubted he was doing anything but the most pro forma investigation.

  I didn’t want this call tracked back to me, though. The police, I assumed, can trace just about any call these days, including cell phones. If they were going to trace the call, at least they’d get no further than a pay phone in the employee cafeteria of the Entronics building in Framingham.

  “This is Sergeant McAfee,” said a rough voice, Southie vowels.

  No one was anywhere nearby—this was an alcove off the cafeteria by a service door—but I still didn’t dare speak loudly. Yet I wanted to sound confident, sure of myself. “Sergeant McAfee,” I said in my best cold-calling voice, “you’re investigating a collision that took place last night on I-95 in Waltham? The Porsche?”

  Suspicious: “Yeah?”

  “I have some information about it.”

  “Who’s this?”

  I was prepared for that. “I’m a friend of the driver’s.”

  “Name?”

  My name? Name of the driver? “I’m afraid I can’t give my name.”

  “What’s your information?”

  “I think something might have been done to the Porsche.”

  Long pause. “Why do you think that?”

  “Because the driver had an enemy.”

  “An enemy. You think someone forced him off the road, that it?”

  “No.”

  “Then you think someone monkeyed around with the car?”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “Sir, if you have information that might be material to this investigation, you should do yourself and the deceased a favor and come in to talk to me.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “I’m happy to come out to Framingham,” he said.

  He knew where the call was coming from.

  “I can’t meet with you.”

  The cop began to sound exasperated. He raised his voice. “Sir, without more information, like a name of this ‘enemy’ you’re talking about, I don’t have enough to work with. The crime scene techs did a whole investigation of the scene last night, the forensic mapping, the whole nine yards. And there’s no tire marks, no skid marks or yaw marks, nothing that tells us anything except the driver drove straight into the guardrail. Far as we’re concerned, it’s a single-car fatal, driver error. Now, if you got something that’ll change our minds, you should give us what you got. Otherwise, forget it.”

  I wasn’t expecting the cop to get belligerent on me. I wondered whether he was trying to shame me into cooperating, or whether he really just didn’t give a shit.

  “I just think,” I said very quietly, “that you should have your guys look very closely at the car. I’ll bet you find evidence of sabotage.”

  “Look closely at the car?” the cop shot back. “Sir, the car was totaled, and then it caught fire. There’s not a hell of a lot left of the car, okay? I doubt anyone’s going to find anything.”

  “His name’s Kurt Semko,” I said quickly, and I hung up the phone.

  As I walked out of the alcove and back to the cafeteria, I saw Kurt, sitting with a couple of guys from Security. They were talking loudly, and laughing, but Kurt was watching me.

  48

  The intercom buzzed, and Franny said, “It’s Mr. Hardy.”

  “Jason,” came the big mellifluous voice, “please forgive this short notice, but I need you to fly out to L.A. tomorrow. I’ve set up a meeting, and I want you there.”

  He paused. I groaned inwardly, said, “Gotcha.”

  “With Nakamura-san,” he added.

  “Nakamura-san? Hideo Nakamura?” Did I misunderstand him? Hideo Nakamura was the chairman of the board of the Entronics Corporation. He was like the great Oz. No one had ever seen him. Just Gordy, once.

  “You g
ot it. The great man himself. He’s flying in from New York, en route to Tokyo. I persuaded him to make a quick stopover in Santa Clara, receive a personal briefing from my best-and-brightest. See for himself how you’ve turned around sales.”

  “Just—me?”

  “You and two of the other top VPs. I want to knock his socks off.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Can do.”

  “I had to do a good deal of arm-twisting to get him to make a stop. He comes to the U.S. once or twice a year, if that, you know.”

  “Wow.”

  “I think he’ll be impressed with you. I know he’ll be impressed with what you’ve done.”

  “Should I prepare an agenda?”

  “Of course. Nakamura-san loves PowerPoint. Do a brief PowerPoint presentation. Five or six bullet points, no more. Very macro. The ten-thousand-foot view. Performance of your division, key achievements, key struggles. He always likes his employees to acknowledge their struggles.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Arrive by ten-thirty at the boardroom here at Santa Clara. I’ll go over your PowerPoint first. Nakamura-san and his entourage will arrive at precisely eleven o’clock, and will leave at precisely twelve o’clock. One hour. Chop chop.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Leave plenty of time for delays. It is imperative that you be on time. Imperative. Nakamura-san is extraordinarily punctual.”

  “Gotcha. It’s too late to make an evening flight, but I’m sure there are plenty of early-morning ones.”

  “Remember to bring your business cards. Your meishi, as they call it. Present it to him with both hands, holding it at the corners. When he gives you yours, accept it with both hands and study it carefully. And whatever you do, don’t put it in your pocket.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I know the rituals. I’ll be there.”

  “On time,” Hardy said.

  “Early,” I said.

  “And afterward, if you have time, come out for a sail with me on the Samurai.”

  “The Samurai?”

  “My new eighty-foot Lazzara. It’s a real beauty. You’ll love it.”