Faces of the Gone: A Mystery (29 page)

don’t know how long I stood there, ficus in hand, waiting for the end. I was keeping myself so still, so quiet, so alert for any tiny noise that when I finally did hear a sound—a series of loud and thunderous ones—I nearly dropped my plant.

It was a door slamming open and dozens of men rushing onto the floor. There was shouting and struggling and grunting. There were loud orders being barked in rapid succession. Then there was just one voice, and it was asking for me.

“Mr. Ross? This is the Tactical Response Team. Mr. Ross, can you hear me?”
I almost emerged from my hiding spot, but stopped myself. Did I really know who the good guys were? Was this just a ploy by the Director to flush me out? Did he have a Tactical Response Team—or guys who could
pretend
to be a Tactical Response Team—at his disposal?
“Mr. Ross? Mr. Ross? Can you hear me?”
Staying put. I was staying put. And staying quiet.
“I don’t know if he’s up here. Maybe he’s hiding somewhere.”
Then I heard a radio squawk and a sweet, squelchy response poured out of it.
“Tell him if he doesn’t come out, he’s not getting any nooky to night,” Tina Thompson said.
“I surrender,” I yelled. “Tell her I surrender.”
I walked out of the office to find the hallway filled with men in riot gear. Director Randall Meyers was lying facedown on the floor, his hands and legs bound, his mouth shut. Monty was also bound, but he was whimpering softly.
“Are you okay, Mr. Ross?” one of the riot cops asked me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Sound as a pound.”
“Is there any reason you’re carrying that tree, sir?” he asked.
I still had a death grip on the ficus.
“This tree and I have been through a lot,” I said. “I think I’d like to keep it.”
The guy nodded. “Fine by me, sir. You have some friends downstairs who would like to see you.”
I rode down the elevator with six heavily armed men, enjoying the knowledge that none of them wanted to shoot me. When I stepped out in the lobby, I was able to put my tree down just in time before Tina and Tommy pounced on me.
“You’re an idiot,” Tina murmured as she nestled her face in my neck. The three of us stood there for a long minute, clutching each other. I released them when I saw a tall man with a thick head of white hair reaching out to shake my hand.
“Hello, Carter,” he said. “Irving Wallace.”
I grasped his hand and pumped, still bewildered.
“You? So . . . how . . . what . . . I don’t know where to start,” I said.
“How about: How did we find you?” Tina suggested.
“Yes. Right. How
did
you find me?”
“I followed you,” Tina said, delighted by her own cleverness. “I’ve been following you all day long. I was sitting five booths behind you at the I-HOP and you didn’t even notice. You’d make a crummy spy.”
“Okay, but how did you know I was in trouble up there?”
“That’s where Tommy and I come in,” Irving said. “You’re lucky that he’s a crummy spy, too.”
“Aww, come on,” Tommy complained. “I wasn’t
that
bad.”
“I saw him sitting on my street, not looking at anything but my house,” Irving said. “I figured he was casing my place to rob it and I wanted to have a little chat with him.”
Tommy jumped in.
“I was starting to hightail it out of there, but as Irving got closer he took his hat off,” Tommy said. “Suddenly I could tell he wasn’t the man from the sketch. Way too much hair. Not nearly enough neck. And he obviously didn’t weigh three hundred pounds.”
Sure enough, Irving Wallace looked to be two hundred, tops, with a runner’s build.
“So I slowed down and talked to him. After I proved to him I wasn’t a crook, and he proved to me he wasn’t a crook, we started talking like normal law-abiding people,” Tommy said. “I told him what I knew. He told me what he knew. And it kind of fell in place.”
“I had been suspicious for months,” Irving said. “Remember how I told you every sample of heroin comes with its own unique fingerprint? I started noticing that we were getting street samples that looked identical to what the National Drug Bureau had been seizing at the airport.”
“And a light went on in your head,” I said.
“No, not at first,” Wallace said. “I thought it was some strange coincidence or had some kind of benign explanation. But it kept happening. So I started paying careful attention, asking questions, keeping records, that sort of thing. The clincher was actually those samples of ‘The Stuff’ you gave me. I
knew
I had seen that signature on a shipment that had been seized by the NDB three months ago.
“Anyway,” Wallace continued. “I had a guy do some snooping for me and I found out that particu lar stash was supposed to be in the Newark Field Office’s confiscation vault. There’s only one person in an NDB field office with free access to the vault: the field director. My snoop called me on Saturday morning to confirm it all. That’s when I started calling you.”
“A nd here I thought you were only inviting me to your house for brunch so you could kill me,” I said.
The elevator opened and we moved aside to make way for a phalanx of riot police escorting a manacled Randall Meyers, still stoic, out the door. Monty/Pete, still sniveling, was right behind him, also in handcuffs. The lobby filled with the sound of the cops’ rubber- soled shoes squeaking on the highly polished marble floor.
“God, I’m glad we nailed him,” Irving said. “To think of how that man violated the trust in . . . don’t get me started. Anyway, where were we?”
“I was accusing you of wanting to kill me,” I said helpfully.
“Oh, right,” Irving said. “The real reason we needed to talk in person was so I could show you how exact the match was on those heroin samples. I ended up showing it to Tommy instead.”
“I tried to call you and tell you what was going on,” Tommy said as they exited. “But your cell phone just kept ringing through to voice mail.”
“It had been confiscated,” I said.
“Oh. Well, then I called Tina,” Tommy said. “I told her ‘the Director’ from the memo was the field director of the National Drug Bureau’s Newark Office and she was like, ‘Oh, my God, Carter is there right now.’ ”
“Actually, I think I said something slightly stronger than that,” Tina interjected, snaking her arm around my waist and holding it there.
“That’s when Irving called his people and made things happen,” Tommy finished.
“Yeah, who
are
those people, anyway?” I asked.
“No comment,” Wallace said, smiling. “I just hope the U.S. Attorney is going to be able to put a case together.”
“I don’t know if it would be considered admissible, but you think a taped confession would help?” I said, drawing the recorder out of my pocket.
Wallace grinned and clapped me on the shoulder. Tina released her grip on me, giving me another kiss on the cheek. “Not to be the bossy editor,” she said sweetly, “but you’ve got a story to write. So stop gabbing with us girls and get your ass in gear.”
“There’s more of that enlightened management,” I said. “Let me collect my things and I’ll be out of here.”
I grabbed my ficus, aware that I had a houseplant but no house. It was a situation I would have to rectify, if only because I didn’t want to go around being so obviously ironic. I had just retrieved my phone from one of the square-jaw boys when it started ringing.
“Carter Ross,” I answered.
“Hi, Carter, it’s Mrs. Scalabrine from next door,” she said.
“Oh, hi.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but you said to call if anyone saw your cat.”
“You found Deadline?” I said, feeling my heart lift.
“He’s out on the sidewalk right now, pacing back and forth,” she said. “I think he’s hungry. Want me to feed him?”
“I’m sure he’d like that,” I said. “Tell him I’ll be home soon.”