First Drop

Twenty

Livingston Brown III was the first one to move. The old boy had some nerve, I’ll give him that. Without taking his eyes off me he said into the receiver, “Something’s come up. I’ll call you back,” and put the phone down slowly and carefully. Then he straightened up and sat forwards, linking his long bony fingers together on the desk top. He kept his movements deliberate so as not to alarm me.

I wasn’t alarmed but I couldn’t say the same for Gerri Raybourn. She tried to scramble further back in her chair, the effort knocking loose one of those white shoes. It dropped to the floor and lay on its side next to a lavender handbag that was a perfect match to the suit.

“Charlie! What are you doing?” she said, her voice harsh with fright. “Have you lost your mind?”

Brown frowned at her, as though he considered making such an accusation to someone with their finger on the trigger was not a sensible move. He wasn’t to know it wasn’t going to make any difference.

I was planning on shooting her anyway.

“You must have known I’d come for you,” I said and the rusty voice that came out of my mouth didn’t seem to belong to me. It didn’t even seem to be in the same room. “As soon as you had your men kill Sean, you must have known I’d come.”

“Kill Sean? What the hell are you talking about?” Gerri demanded blankly, still doing her best to look like she hadn’t the first idea what was going on here. “Meyer’s with you.”

“If Sean was with me, I wouldn’t be here,” I said with a softness that did little to reassure her. The buzzing inside my head had reached a roar now, enormous and unstoppable like a flight of rapids after the rains. I moved closer, still keeping the SIG out in front of me. The end of the barrel never wavered.

“What was it you said to me back at the motel? That I was just going to have to let him go?” I laughed, a travesty of the sound. “Well you were right about that, weren’t you, Gerri? They pulled what was left of him out of a swamp yesterday.” The ravening alligators I couldn’t reproduce, but I could certainly make sure I shot her somewhere so that she’d die slowly and painfully. I motioned with the SIG. “Stand up.”

Gerri clutched at the arms of her chair with those jewel-encrusted taloned claws like I couldn’t kill her if I couldn’t get her to her feet.

“For God’s sake,” she said, pale and very shaken now. “You have to listen to me! I didn’t kill Sean.” Her eyes skittered sideways imploringly to Brown, who was still sitting motionless behind the desk, looking shocked and grey as he listened to the exchange.

“Of course you didn’t,” I said, almost soothing. “You wouldn’t sully your own hands with something like that. You got Whitmarsh to do it for you. Or Haines.”

She reacted at the mention of the names of her accomplices. She couldn’t help herself. “Haines?” she said and she’d started to sweat now. I could see beads of it pearling along her hairline. “What the hell’s he got to do with this?”

“You know,” I said. With a bitter irony I added, “He should have killed me at the theme park, when he had his chance.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she said, louder like that was going to convince me. She glanced at Brown again. “She’s delusional. On something.”

I didn’t respond to that. I just stared at her coldly, watching as her bewilderment turned to anger, stoked by fear into iridescence. Her temper finally snapped.

“What the hell is it you want?” she shouted.

Even if I’d had an answer to that, I didn’t get the chance to utter it. At that moment the door was rammed open hard enough to embed the handle into the plasterboard wall alongside it.

I started to turn as soon as I caught the first sound but it was travelling slower than they were and I was already too late.

Two bulky figures came through the doorway in quick succession, moving hard. One bounced into a crouch, sweeping the room for additional threats with a big silvered Colt semiautomatic clasped in both hands, up and ready.

At the same time the other man simply kept running and hit me with all the ease of a truck taking down a deer that’s foolish enough to stand in the middle of the road. I was smacked straight off my feet and bowled over, crashing on top of the chair opposite Gerri’s and through the glass-topped occasional table alongside. The table, and the lamp that was sitting on it, both shattered as they hit the floor.

My bag went flying and I lost my grip on the SIG but didn’t see where either of them landed. The man was brutal and proficient in his efforts to subdue me without a prolonged fight, and surprise as well as weight was on his side. I never stood a chance.

It was over sooner than he was happy with and I caught a couple of unnecessary extra blows to compensate for his disappointment in that respect. It took a moment after he’d quit hitting me for my head to stop swimming.

When it did I found both the two men who’d burst into the room were standing over me. The one who’d knocked me down had picked up the SIG and was handling it with approval. The other had his own gun firmly trained on me.

They were big men with thick necks and biceps that strained the elasticity of their company polo shirt sleeves. The one with the Colt had rich dark skin and slightly flattened down features – part genetic, part boxer. The other was blond and had a pencil moustache nesting on his upper lip. They looked like thugs who’d scrubbed up well and weren’t entirely comfortable with smart casual attire. I didn’t recognise either of them.

I heard a chair go back and looked sideways to see Brown’s feet appear from round the other side of the desk. He was wearing suit trousers with turn-ups and shiny black shoes, and he walked like his feet hurt in them. He stopped a short distance away and looked at the two men.

“You boys took your goddamn time,” he growled.

“Sorry sir,” one of them rapped smartly, although sounding unrepentant. They’d arrived soon enough, his attitude clearly said, so what was the problem? “What do you want us to do with her?”

My scalp prickled at the prospect of a bullet in the stomach and a ride out to the swamp. More than that I tasted the sour tang of defeat, of failure. Gerri had been stalling me and I’d let her do it. I should have pulled the trigger the moment I’d walked into the office and I berated myself for the weakness of my hesitation. Even without Walt’s tape recorder running I realised I’d needed to hear her admit her guilt before I’d done it.

“Get her up,” Brown said now and I was hauled roughly to my feet. One of the men produced a set of plasticuffs from his back pocket and used it to yank my wrists together behind my back. I was a good six inches shorter than either of them but they kept a firm hold on my arms, just in case. I don’t know quite what they expected I was going to try and do, restrained and groggy. They started to push me towards the door.

“Now wait just a minute,” Gerri Raybourn said sharply, smoothing down her suit and retrieving her fallen shoe along with her dignity. “That little bitch was going to kill me. She’s not going anywhere until I’ve got some answers out of her.”

The men exchanged a brief glance that hinted they thought the only talking that anyone should be doing with me ought to involve a pair of steel-toecap boots. But they did as they were ordered, swivelling me back towards the desk and bracing me in front of it. It was like being forcibly stood to attention and I’d been through too much of that before.

Brown had moved back to his own side of the desk by this time. He sat down, letting out a slight grunt as his knees bent so far and then dropped him the rest of the way into his seat. For a moment he regarded me, his expression one of bemused perplexity. I tried to keep my own thoughts guarded, even though all I wanted to do was fall to my knees and weep.

“There’s nothing to be said,” I said, weary when I was trying for defiant. “Just get on with it.”

Gerri was on her feet and prowling. “Oh no, you don’t get away that easy,” she said, her voice tight and vicious now the threat was over. “You can’t just come barging in here and accuse me of murder when you’re the one who’s a goddamn murdering bitch.”

When I still didn’t speak she took a couple of quick steps forwards and backhanded me across the face. I wasn’t ready for it and my vision momentarily disintegrated into jagged cracks of dark and light.

For someone so slight she packed quite a punch. The force of the blow sent me staggering sideways into the man who’d originally knocked me down. He shoved me upright again with as much care as if I was an unstable piece of cheap furniture. I noticed he was smiling.

“Cut that out!” Brown barked, half rising to lean on the desk. “Goddamn it, Gerri, I won’t have that kinda behaviour in my office. Get a grip on yourself, y’hear me?”

Gerri had been watching the effect of her strike with narrowed, glittering eyes. Now she turned away and sat down again, tucking her feet underneath her chair almost daintily. She even checked to see that she hadn’t broken a nail.

I shook my head to clear it. I had been right in my first assessment of Gerri’s rings, I realised. The stones in them had gouged a lump out of the flesh across my cheekbone that felt an inch wide. I could feel a small trickle of blood already running down the line of my jaw.

“Thank you,” Brown said, more quietly. He waved a hand towards the plasticuffs. “Now get those damned things off of her and leave her be. She’s not much more than a kid herself. Let’s try and be civilized about this, huh?”

The moustached man did as he was ordered while the one with the Colt kept me covered, then they both stepped back. I rubbed reflectively at my wrists and looked at Brown.

“Where was your panic button, by the way?” I asked idly. “I was watching your hands and never saw them move. Or did good old Randy raise the alarm?”

Brown scowled a little at the mention of his employee’s name. “No, looks like he don’t even have the wit for that,” he said readily enough, regaining his own seat. His eyes were bright and filled with a deep intelligence that the rest of his easygoing, slightly crumpled features had a tendency to disguise. “I have a switch down here on the floor. All I had to do was put my foot on it.”

“Nice touch,” I said.

Gerri let out a gusty sigh. “If you’ve quite finished exchanging pleasantries,” she said, voice dripping with sarcasm, “I’d like some answers out of her before we hand her over to the cops.”

Brown nodded and looked over my shoulder to where his security men were skulking. “Mason, get the lady a chair and then go see if you can rustle up some coffee,” he said.

The one who’d knocked me down brought forwards another chair like the one we’d broken in the struggle. His feet crackled over the shards of broken glass and pottery as he moved across the carpet. He plonked the chair down facing Gerri’s, keeping his attitude just a sliver this side of resentful at being asked to play the waiter. Then he went out, disengaging the handle of the door from the wall panel with a stiff jerk and closing it behind him.

The other man stayed in the background but he kept the Colt out and his attention firmly fixed on me. As I sat down I could almost feel his eyes boring into the back of my skull.

“So, Charlie, you wanna tell us what’s going on?” Brown asked then. His tone was calm and reasonable and almost kindly, and maybe because of that I felt much more inclined to answer him than Gerri.

“Keith Pelzner’s been kidnapped by Gerri and her boys because they want to get their hands on the finance program he was working on,” I said. “They tried to get Trey, too, but—”

“What?” Gerri cut in, strident now. “You and Meyer must be mad if you think anyone’s going to go for that fucking crap!”

Brown held up a placatory hand, old-fashioned enough to look faintly embarrassed at the profanity. “Now, now, Gerri, let’s hear her out,” he said.

“Sean’s dead,” I said coldly. And I wish you were, too. I turned back to Brown. “You remember you told me you’d seen Keith Pelzner packing up and leaving of his own accord on Thursday morning?” I said. “Well I now know he’s been kidnapped.”

Gerri’s brows came together. She, too, turned to the old man. “You saw Keith the morning he vanished?” she said to him, the rising inflection making it a question. She sounded annoyed and puzzled at the same time. “You sure never mentioned that to me.”

“Didn’t I?” the old man said, his smiling fading. “I coulda swore I told you all about it. Maybe it was that Whitmarsh feller.” He thought a moment longer, then brightened. “Yes, I do believe it was.”

Before Gerri could respond to that the door opened again and the security man, Mason, returned with three cups of coffee, and a little bowl containing three straws and packets of powdered creamer and sugar, on a brown plastic canteen-type tray. He put the tray down on the desk to one side of his boss.

He’d put my SIG into his right-hand trouser pocket in order to carry the tray. I could see the end of the pistol grip sticking out by his hip as he unloaded the contents and just for a second I considered making a grab for it.

Then I flicked my eyes up to Mason’s face and found he was watching me out of the corner of his eye with a sneaky little half smile lifting the edge of his mouth, making the moustache wrinkle upwards. I didn’t want to make his day any more than I had done already so I sat still and kept my hands in my lap. As he moved back to join his mate I contented myself instead with the rudeness of not saying thank you.

Gerri was still apparently frowning over Brown’s last remark, making a big performance out of it. The action produced two deep grooves between her carefully plucked eyebrows.

“She and Meyer took them both,” she said now, talking firmly to Brown, as though I wasn’t there. “I admit I kinda got the feeling Meyer was the ringleader and she was having second thoughts, or she wouldn’t have called me from the motel. But maybe he found out what she’d done. By the time my people got down there, they’d already killed a couple who’d gotten in their way and lit out.”

I flashed her a dirty look but followed suit, speaking to Brown like he was judge and jury. “I told her we were in a different room,” I said. “Partly deliberately, partly by accident. But when Whitmarsh and Chris turned up, they burst straight in there and shot the people inside without giving them a chance.” I glanced at Gerri but she was keeping her face devoid of emotion, a smooth, cosmetic facade. “That’s when Trey and I did a runner.”

She turned to me. “You really are delusional, aren’t you?” she said with something approaching a sneer. “Why the hell would Jim Whitmarsh kill those people?”

“You tell me,” I said softly. “Why would he and Haines be all fired-up for killing the pair of us – until they found out how vital Trey was to your precious program?”

“Now, now, ladies,” Brown interrupted, pushing a cup of coffee towards each of us, as though a hit of caffeine might calm us down. He rummaged through the little bowl, picking out four packets of Sweet ‘n’ Low which he emptied into his cup along with two packets of creamer. Then he stirred the resultant muddy-coloured gloop with one of the straws. Maybe it was a ploy to induce unity. Both Gerri and I eyed the concoction with measures of distaste.

I took my coffee black. It was out of a machine and it hit my stomach thin and sharp and greasy. It was also hotter than hell. I pushed it away.

“So, Charlie, what’s all this about them trying to kill the boy?” Brown asked then.

“Between them they’ve made three attempts so far,” I said, ignoring Gerri’s impatient gesture which I just caught out of the corner of my eye. “Four, if you count the initial attack by Haines in the amusement park.”

“Who’s this Haines character?”

“He’s a cop down in Fort Lauderdale but he freelances as a security consultant. Last year he did some work for Ms Raybourn here when she was with a company in Miami that made car parts. Looks like he’s working for her again now.”

Gerri was frowning again. “A cop?” she said, sounding artfully distracted. “Wait a minute. I remember – he was one of the guys who brought Trey back to the house after he was caught at the Galleria. I knew I knew him from somewhere.”

I tried not to grind my teeth at her refusal to admit defeat. “Nice to see the myth of the dumb blonde lives on,” I said conversationally. “What do you hope to gain by keeping up this act?”

“I’m not the one who needs a new act, Charlie,” she shot back, lip curling. “Maybe you’ll have time to think on that while you’re rotting in a penitentiary somewhere serving your life sentence.”

“If anyone’s going to prison, Gerri,” I said, giving it a little more bite this time, “that will be you.”

“Ladies, please,” Brown said, starting to look nervous. “Quiet down, huh? I don’t want no cat-fight in here.”

“Quite,” I drawled, pointedly dabbing my fingertips against my cheek. It had stopped bleeding and was starting to scab over.

Gerri’s gaze ran over me briefly, lingering on the wound she’d inflicted as if next time she’d like to rip my throat out and spit down the hole.

Not if I get to you first . . .

Brown took a slurp of his coffee and swallowed before he turned to me. “So what was it you said about Trey being part of some program?”

“Keith was writing a program that would accurately predict the stock market,” I explained. “He was having problems getting part of it to work but Trey has apparently solved the problem. Something to do with the neural network, I believe. I don’t understand the technicalities.”

Brown’s eyebrows went up, matching the wispy scraps of hair on his high domed head. “Young Trey?” he said, sounding doubtful. “I mean, I know he’s a bright kid an’ all, but you really reckon he’s done something his dad couldn’t?”

“No, of course he couldn’t,” Gerri snapped. “It’s ridiculous to think for a moment that he could. Keith’s a highly talented programmer, otherwise the company we work for wouldn’t be basing just about their entire future on his work.”

“So why was Whitmarsh trying to kill Trey right up to the point where he found out that the kid might be involved with the program? Then, all of a sudden, Whitmarsh has a chance to shoot the pair of us but he lets us get away because he’s afraid of damaging him.”

“How did he find out that Trey was involved?” Brown asked.

“Trey went to a guy he knew called Henry for help,” I said, not adding my own feelings on the subject. “But Henry contacted Whitmarsh to sell us to the highest bidder. After he’d tried to up the price by telling Whitmarsh what the boy was really worth, Henry attempted to lure us into a trap and when it didn’t quite go according to plan he got a bullet in the brain from Haines for his trouble.”

Brown went silent, his placid face troubled. “So where’s the boy now?”

“He’s safe,” I said, thinking of Xander and Aimee who were standing guard over him. And Walt, ready to take over if anything went wrong. Not to mention Special Agent in Charge Till, and all that he represented.

“Oh I get it,” Gerri said with contempt. “You don’t make a phone call by a certain time and he and Keith both get it. Am I right?”

“Something like that,” I agreed, wondering why I hadn’t thought of telling them something along those lines in the first place.

“Well,” she said, smiling nastily at me as she blew that one out of the water, “I’m sure the cops will sweat it out of you in plenty of time to retrieve them both.”

She finished her coffee and got to her feet, like this conversation was over. I studied her but couldn’t find the faintest sign of panic.

Why on earth had her men killed to prevent Trey and me falling into police hands if she was so eager to see me put there now? It didn’t make sense. Unless she was just trying to get me out of here, to get me somewhere quieter and with less witnesses.

“Don’t you think it might be an idea to check out what she says, even just a little?” Brown asked and I could have cheered at the cool note that had crept into his voice when he spoke to her.

Gerri gave a short laugh. “Why?” The laugh died when she caught the solemn expression on his face. “Oh come on, Livingston! How long have we known each other? You surely can’t believe a word this lying little bitch tells you?”

Brown made a ‘maybe, maybe not’ gesture with his hand. “Don’t do no harm to check it out, even so,” he said easily.

“And how do you propose to do that?”

“Let her call your feller Whitmarsh and offer to make a deal with him for the boy,” Brown said. “If he’s as crooked as she reckons, he’ll go for it.” He smiled at me and those bright, clever eyes stared out from beneath their droopy lids like he was a young man inside a geriatric costume mask. “And if he does, well I guess we’ll just take things from there.”

***

Gerri didn’t like it. In fact if she’d liked it any less she would have been wailing but clearly she wasn’t in charge here. Brown pushed the heavy cream telephone he’d been using when I’d first burst into his office across the desk towards me. Then he opened one of the drawers and began pawing through the contents.

“My late wife, God rest her, used to love those gadget catalogues,” he said while he searched. “You know the ones? A thousand answers to questions you never needed to ask? She was always buying me stuff I never had the heart to send back. Ah, here we are.”

He pulled out a small tape recorder, similar to the one that Walt had given me. It jogged my memory and I slid my eyes sideways and spotted the strap of my bag, just poking out from underneath the broken chair.

Brown, meanwhile, was untangling the wires that came with his recorder, which had knotted themselves together the way wire or string has a tendency to do when it’s left to its own devices and gets bored. When he’d unravelled these they separated out to reveal a set of headphones at the end of one, and a small sucker at the end of the other.

“You kinda stick that to the receiver, then you can tape your phone conversations,” Brown said, checking the batteries were still working in the recorder. “I used it once or twice, just for fun. Can’t remember the last time.”

He attached the sucker to the side of the handset and pressed the record buttons, then Gerri stabbed in the number of Whitmarsh’s mobile phone. Her movements were impatient, her lips compressed. Would her man betray her, I wondered, or was he too canny for that?

She and Brown shared the headphones, putting their heads together awkwardly so they could have one earpiece each. The phone rang out four or five times before Jim Whitmarsh picked up. I don’t know what number appeared on the display at his end, but his voice was wary.

“Yeah?”

“Whitmarsh,” I said. “It’s Charlie Fox.”

Gerri Raybourn and I silently locked gazes while I spoke. She sat with her body rigid, as though she was being made to listen to an obscene phone call.

There was a pause at the other end of the line, then I heard Whitmarsh let his breath out in a long rush, close to a sigh with a soft laugh at the end of it.

“Well now, Charlie,” he said, voice rich with satisfaction like he’d always known I wouldn’t be able to resist him for long. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Cut the crap,” I said. “Do you still want the kid?”

“Trey?” Whether it was the abrupt tone or the offer, I felt his surprise. His interest quickened. “You bet.”

“Dead? Or alive?”

He laughed again. He had a slightly wheezy laugh, as though he was a heavy smoker. “If I’d wanted him dead, neither one of you would have walked away from us yesterday,” he said, coldly matter-of-fact.

“Well, I’m offering him to you now,” I said. “What’s it worth to you?”

“I don’t think you’re in any position to start dictating terms, lady,” Whitmarsh said but he spoke just a little too fast, his voice just a little too tense. It gave the lie to his confident words.

“Oh really?” I said. “OK, let me phrase that slightly differently for you, Jim. What’s it worth to you to get hold of him when he’s still alive and kicking, rather than shot in the stomach and dropped into a swamp?”

Another long pause. “News travels fast, huh?” Whitmarsh said then. He laughed again, dustier this time, with more strain showing through it. “Thought it might make you lose your nerve and wanna throw in the towel.”

I thought of how close I’d come to doing just that, on the beach after we’d left Walt’s place this morning. The memory of my own misery and helplessness hardened something inside me. I would see this through and I would bring them down, whatever it took.

“Well you thought wrong, didn’t you,” I said.

“So what do you want?”

“What do I want?” I repeated, letting my voice slip, introducing the rough note of someone pushed close to the edge. It didn’t take much faking. “I want to get out of this fucking country and go home,” I said, flat. “But I can’t do that unless I have something to bargain with. Give me Keith. You don’t need him any more.”

“Who says we have Keith?”

“Oh come on, Whitmarsh,” I snapped. “You took him from the house Thursday morning and you’ve had him ever since. You must have had plenty of time to copy all his files and notes. Long enough to realise the program isn’t complete. And I know Henry told you about Trey’s work on the neural net. You need the kid and you don’t need Keith. Let me have him.”

Whitmarsh didn’t say anything immediately. Gerri started to react but I waved her to silence with a curt gesture and added, “Come on, this is a one-time-only deal. Make a decision.”

“OK, Charlie,” he said and I could tell by his voice that I wouldn’t be able to trust him. “I guess we can do that. When and where you wanna make the exchange?”

For a second my mind went blank, then I remembered the Ocean Center complex. Above the main hall where the show itself was taking place were rows of deserted seating, all fed by corridors and walkways.

“Meet me upstairs at the Ocean Center on Atlantic Avenue,” I said. I checked my watch. “You’ve got an hour.” And with that I cut the connection, not giving him a chance to argue.

As I put the phone down both Brown and Gerri Raybourn peeled their earpieces out and put them down on the desk top. I raised an eyebrow at the pair of them. Well?

Gerri dipped into the lavender handbag and produced a pack of Kools. She picked one out and lit it with hands that didn’t look quite as steady as they had done before I’d made my phone call. She inhaled deeply with all the fervour of a lapsed quitter, closing her eyes briefly.

Brown looked pained but too polite to ask her not to smoke in his office. Instead he shifted his empty coffee cup back onto the tray and put the saucer in front of her. She distractedly flicked her first buildup of ash onto his carpet anyway. Then she looked up, her eyes skating from one to the other of us in turn, hunted.

“Jim was just leading her on, trying to recover the boy,” she said but even she didn’t sound like she entirely believed it. The references to Sean were conveniently overlooked altogether. She took another drag on the cigarette and the nicotine seemed to build her tattered confidence. I could see it swelling like a reinflating doll until her skin seemed tight with it. “Of course he doesn’t have Keith to trade. It’s ridiculous.”

Brown cleared his throat. “Well,” he said slowly. “I guess there’s one way to find out.” He looked over the top of us to where the two heavies who’d come to his rescue were still loitering. “Tool up, Mason, and grab another couple of the boys,” he said to them. “We’ve got less than fifty-five minutes to get up to Daytona Beach.”