Downfall

by Jeff Abbott

  In his right hand was a glass of bourbon.

  “It’s no easy thing to poison a man in front of two hundred witnesses,” Mila said. “I admire the nerve.”

  I picked up Daniel and sat next to her. He squirmed a little on my lap, eager to watch the red dot, like it was a game. Leonie stretched out on Daniel’s blanket and began to sketch in a pad aimlessly.

  “Two hundred people, but it gets pared down pretty fast,” I said. “Look. He has a bodyguard near him. Maybe five admirers in a knot around him. Beyond that, a few people watching him directly, angling for their chance to talk to him. Maybe fifteen, at any given second, looking at him. And looking at that same moment at the poisoner.”

  She accelerated the feed; forty minutes into the video, Dalton Monroe stumbled badly, clearly ill. He dropped the bourbon glass. The bodyguard hurried him out, Monroe smiling, waving off concerns from the other guests. He had then been taken to a private medical clinic, where it was diagnosed that he’d ingested a nonfatal dose of digitalis. The press were told he’d simply become ill at the party and had to leave. Dalton Monroe was worth a billion dollars and did not care to have it known that someone tried to poison him at a reception celebrating his latest business acquisition, a local software company he’d bought to fold into his empire.

  “He’s Round Table, right?” I asked Mila. The Round Table. My secret benefactors. A network of resource-rich and powerful people who want to be a force for good in the world, behind the scenes. They have Mila as their face to me; they gave me the bars to run, a web of safe houses around the world.

  They helped me get back my son. I know little about them, except that they started off as a CIA experiment that finally broke free to pursue their own agenda.

  “Yes,” Mila said. “Someone tried to kill a Round Table member. I want you to find out who.”

  “I said I’d run the bars for you all. Nothing more.” I settled Daniel on my knee.

  “Sam, perhaps Leonie wouldn’t mind taking Daniel for a walk,” Mila said. “The day is so lovely.”

  “I don’t mind.” Leonie was normally chatty with me, but always quiet around Mila.

  “No, would you leave him, please?” I got down on the blanket with him, wriggled fingers at him. I felt like I never got to see him enough, even when he was traveling with me.

  “Fine,” Leonie said. “I’ll go get an iced coffee.” I thought she already had the ice in her voice. She left. Mila stood at the window while I played and made bubbling noises at Daniel, and I figured she waited until she saw Leonie on the street below.

  “You need to be nicer to her,” I said. “You can trust her to keep her mouth shut about the Round Table.” And I knew we could—we’d given Leonie a far safer, brighter new life.

  “I will never trust her.”

  “I do, end of discussion.”

  “I understand you want to be with your son,” Mila said. “I do. But the bars, a very good livelihood for you, were not free. There was a price attached.”

  “I’m not ungrateful. But I’m also not a police detective.”

  “The Round Table never wants the police involved. If this poisoning attempt on Monroe was because he is a member of the Table, then we must know without involving the police. Felix will help you.” Felix was the manager of The Select. The senior managers of my bars know about the Round Table and were recruited to help with their work.

  “What about you?”

  Daniel grabbed my wiggling fingers and laughed. Sweetest sound ever.

  “I have to return to Los Angeles tomorrow on other business. I’m sure you can handle this.”

  “And what do I do when I find out who tried to poison Monroe?”

  “Give me their name. Then the Round Table will decide how to proceed.” She got up from the laptop, gave me a smile dimmer than her fake bridal one. “Don’t pretend you’re not itching for some action. A man like you doesn’t like to sit and play with a baby on a blanket for long.”

  “Actually, I like nothing better.” I made a face at Daniel. “Don’t we? Don’t we like playing on the blanket?” Daniel concurred with laughter but then gave me a rather serious frown, as though a more detailed answer required thought.

  Mila didn’t smile. “I know you love Daniel. But I also know you, Sam. You cannot sit at a desk; you cannot play on a floor. You need something more.”

  I looked up at her. “No, I don’t.”

  “Sam. Send Leonie and Daniel home to New Orleans. They’ve been traveling with you for two weeks; a baby needs routine and order, not bars and airplanes. I’ll even give Leonie and Daniel a ride to the airport, get them their tickets. Then you go home when you’ve cleared up this little case for me, yes?”

  I was a former undercover CIA agent, not a detective, but I nodded. Anything to get her to go. If I found Monroe’s poisoner, fine. If I didn’t, then maybe I could make a new deal with the Round Table. One that kept me out of trouble. One that let me play on blankets. Then I could go home to New Orleans for a while. I had to find a way to make this balance work.

  “That planner will be so disappointed that we’re not getting married there,” I said. I don’t even know why I mentioned it. The words felt odd in my mouth, and I was glad Leonie wasn’t there, even though we were just friends now.

  Mila crooked a smile at me. “Maybe if you find our poisoner,” she said, “I’ll throw you a big party.”

  3

  Wednesday, November 3, afternoon

  DIANA STOOD ALONE in her mother’s town house, trying to decide, Do I search on her computer? Go through her mail, what? Listen to her messages?

  She went to the cordless phone, neat in its cradle. She pressed the message button. Heard first her own voice calling two days ago, then the failed pitch of a telemarketer trying to upgrade Mom’s cable TV package, a friend from an art museum calling to ask if Mom would serve on a committee for a fund-raiser. A man’s voice, smoky and a bit gruff: “Janice? It’s Felix. Just calling to see if you’d like to have a drink tomorrow night at The Select after the meeting. Let me know. Okay, good night.” Then nothing.

  Felix, oh yes. Mom’s new friend. A bartender down in the Haight, she’d met him once. An odd friend for Mom to have, he wasn’t exactly the corporate suit type. She wondered what meeting he meant.

  A stack of mail by the computer. Diana flipped through it, feeling more and more like a thief. No letters from secret lovers, no flyers from the Cell Phone–Free Yoga Hippie Institute, either. Just bills and invitations, mostly to charity events. People wanted Mom involved. She was connected; she got things done.

  And what “thing” is she doing for the next two weeks? Because it’s not yoga.

  The cordless phone rang. Diana reached for it, then stopped. Let the machine pick up. Her open hand, reaching for the cordless nestled in its cradle, clenched into a fist.

  Three rings, and the machine clicked on.

  “Ms. Keene? This is Inez with the San Francisco Bay Cancer Center. You had canceled your meetings with Dr. Devendra to discuss your treatment options, and we wanted to see if we could reschedule. You can call me at 555-9896. Thank you.” The message ended.

  Diana sat still as stone. She replayed the message.

  “No,” she said while Inez repeated the words of doom. “No.”

  Cancer. Treatment options.

  Maybe she’d gone some place for treatment. But why lie about it?

  She dialed the phone, trying to stifle the shaking in her hands.

  “San Francisco Bay Cancer Center.”

  “Inez in Dr. Devendra’s office, please.”

  She waited and the chirpy voice came on the line.

  “This is Janice Keene.” Diana closed her eyes, tried to make her voice a shade lower, like Mom’s. “Returning your call.”

  “Okay, Ms. Keene, thanks, your appointment…”

  “Uh, yes, I was going to be in and out of town over the next two weeks…”

  “I think he very much wanted to see you before the
n, Ms. Keene. I have some cancellations next Monday.”

  Diana felt she might shove her fist into her mouth to stifle the scream.

  “I have 2:00 p.m. available.”

  “Okay.” Get tricky, Diana thought. “Listen, can I bring my daughter with me? I want her to understand what I’m facing.”

  “Of course.”

  “And…” Diana decided to press her luck. “Dr. Devendra told me the technical name of my cancer, but I was forgetful, I didn’t write it down…Can you tell me?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t. I only make the appointments. E-mail Dr. Devendra if you like.”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you.” Diana clicked off the phone, and then she dropped it to the floor, where it clattered and the battery cover sprung loose and skittered under the table. The grief was sudden, an earthquake to her core. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.

  If her mother was so sick, where had she gone? So sick the doctor didn’t want to wait two weeks to see her. Good Lord, Diana thought, maybe Mom was chewing on apricot seeds in Mexico or had gone to a holistic healer or something else way too alternative when she needed a doctor…

  She started to dial the number for Keene Global, the giant public relations firm her mother had built from nothing. She paused. What was she going to say? I know my mother—I mean, your CEO—has cancer; tell me where she is? She was halfway through keying in the number when she thought, What if Mom hadn’t told the senior management at Keene Global? In trying to help, she might do more damage to Mom’s business relationships.

  She clicked the phone off. The tears came—tears of shuddering grief for the mom she loved beyond all reason. She cried herself out. It took a long while.

  Then she sat up, dried her face. Her mother kept a home office; she hurried down the hallway to it. An old, elegant desk, bookshelves behind. Under the shelves were drawers that disguised file cabinets.

  Diana tried the cabinets. Locked. She couldn’t find a key in the desk. She found a small toolbox beneath the kitchen sink, fished out a screwdriver and a hammer. Every blow of the blunt end into the lock scored and splintered the clean cherrywood.

  The doctor doesn’t want to wait two weeks.

  The lock broke with a satisfying clunk. Diana yanked out the tray, heavy with a neat, tidy rainbow of hanging files.

  She found the papers in a manila file marked MEDICAL. She read the records of the initial visits and the amassed tests. Breast cancer, aggressive. Spreading into lymph nodes, lungs.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked the empty room. She looked up at the walls. Framed articles about her mother as a mover and shaker in the public relations world, pictures of her mom with famous people at her New York office, her Washington office, her Los Angeles office. A perfect life, and now it might end.

  She felt an odd shape, taped in the back of the heavy manila folder.

  A brown envelope. Marked in her mother’s blocky handwriting TO BE OPENED IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH BY MY DAUGHTER ONLY.

  ONLY was underlined three times, in thick black ink.

  Through the envelope, Diana could feel a cylindrical object inside. She sat back down among the stacked files on the floor and the wood splinters and the dented and broken lock.

  Weighing the envelope in her hand. Open. Don’t open.

  BY MY DAUGHTER ONLY.

  She tore open the envelope. If Mom complained, she could say, Well, you didn’t tell me about the cancer, so don’t be mad I stuck my nose in your business.

  Into her hand fell a silver, ornate cylinder.

  Diana stared in disbelief.

  It was a lipstick case.

  Why…why would Mom leave her a lipstick case?

  Diana opened it.

  It didn’t contain lipstick. It was a memory stick, the kind you slot into a computer port. She went to her mother’s computer and inserted it. On the screen it showed up as a drive marked FOR DIANA ONLY. The sole file on the drive was a video. She clicked it.

  Her mother appeared on the screen. Not smiling. Looking serious.

  “My darling Diana. If you are seeing this, I have died. I’ve spent my life making sure you had the best life I could give you. And now that I am gone, you must understand what I’ve done. I have to explain a difficult choice I made. I must trust you with my greatest secret…”

  The neighbors were all at work or out enjoying the gorgeous day, so no one heard Diana’s loud screams of anguish, of denial, of shock. Or her soft moan of “This can’t be true.”

  Part Two

  Thursday,

  November 4

  4

  Thursday, November 4, early evening

  San Francisco, the Haight

  HELP ME.”

  At first, over the noise of the bar I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly. I was filling in for a bartender who hadn’t bothered to show, and I was sick with missing my son, Daniel. Mila had taken him and Leonie to the airport an hour ago.

  “Help me,” she said again.

  She’d hurried into the bar as if she was late for a meeting, panic bright in her eyes. Noise—conversations, the swirling beats of the chill electronica/Asian fusion music, the clink of glasses—washed over us. It was a Thursday night, when most bars like The Select got more groups and fewer quiet drinkers, the start of the weekend.

  I blinked and leaned forward, turning my ear toward her to catch her words over the pluck of the electric sitar, rising violins, and thrumming drums from the speakers. Other customers weren’t crowding the young woman at the bar; most of The Select’s crowd lounged at tables scattered around the back. Most bars in the Haight are small and narrow, but mine is one of the roomier ones. Couples or small groups sat at the tables, drinking beers or cocktails or wine kept in coolers in the centers of the tables. A lot of the artistic crowd in the neighborhood, a smattering of tourists come to see the Haight hippies (but not getting too close), a few people who thought casual Friday at work meant a little bit of a hangover.

  “What would you like?” I said, thinking she wanted service, not assistance.

  Then her eyes widened, looking past my shoulder into the depths of the mirrored bar, and she turned and she ran, hurrying past the crowd getting drinks, past the clumps of people chatting about the post-workday.

  Bars are a magnet for odd behavior. But a woman whispering a plea for help and then fleeing, that was a new one. I glanced over my right shoulder toward the entrance, where the woman’s gaze had gone, and saw two men entering, hurrying, walking with purpose, pushing past a clump of young homeless dudes sitting on the sidewalk. One was a broad-shouldered man, wearing eyeglasses, in his late thirties, short haired. Wearing a blazer and jeans. The other was a mobile mountain, heavy with muscle, head shaved bald, ice eyed, and I saw this mountain assessing the room with the same measuring gaze I would have taken back in my CIA days, evaluating where the dangers were, gauging who was a threat, finding an escape route.

  Daniel was on my mind and my first thought was I don’t want trouble. But I couldn’t ignore the situation, so I went to deal with the threat. I stepped down the bar to the mountain, who had stepped much closer to the bar as he surveyed the room, my gaze locked on his hands. His hands would give away more than his eyes did. His stare was flat and cold.

  “Drink, sir?” I asked loudly, thinking, Look at me. Not the woman. Look me in the eyes and let me see what kind of trouble you are.

  The mountain turned to glance at me. He shook his head no and then stormed out onto the floor. The young woman—pretty, African American, hair cut short, tall and dressed in a black shirt and jeans—had hidden in a corner behind a pair of chatting women and was now bolting toward the back door, under the red glow of the EXIT sign. She had her hand in a small, dark purse, clutching it close to her chest.

  The mountain started barreling through the crowd, shoving a few people. Making a beeline for the woman.

  I vaulted over the bar, surprising a woman sitting on a stool, sipping her Dos Equis. The dance pulse of
the Bombay Dub Orchestra tune was loud and booming enough to cover the sound of my feet hitting the hardwood floor, so the two men did not turn around.

  They hurried toward the back of the bar, free of the restraints of the crowd in the front.

  The young woman screamed.

  They each grabbed one of her arms, and she tried to wrench free and bolt. They manhandled her back toward the one red EXIT sign.

  Four steps and I grabbed for the older guy’s shoulder; he looked to me like a suburban dad type. He tried to shrug free of me, but I’m stronger than I look. He sneered at me—navy suit, my normally short hair styled into a fauxhawk (being a bar owner, I thought I’d try to look a little more hip than I actually am), an inch shorter than he was.

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  The woman broke away from the mountain. She stumbled into a couple who’d risen from their small table, wanting to avoid being drawn into the confrontation. They stepped back from her like she might be a wayward drunk.

  “She’s a thief,” the mountain said loudly. I could hear the Russian accent in his voice.

  “Then we’ll call the police—” My innocent choice of words acted like a lit fuse.

  “No police,” the woman said. “None!” She held the purse up, close to her chest again.

  The men turned to me, the suburban dad raising an eyebrow as if to say, See? I let the dad type go and the mountain said, “Back off.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “Back off. We’re leaving your bar—we don’t want trouble—but she’s coming with us. She stole something of mine, and I just want it back.”

  The woman’s gaze met mine, and the plea again: “Help me.”

  I grabbed the mountain’s shoulder just as the suburban dad again closed a grip on the woman’s arm and her purse as she tried to pull away from him. “We just want it back. No one wants to hurt you. Best for you and your mom,” I heard the suburban dad say.