Memory Lapse: A Slater Vance Novel (7 page)

He was sitting on top of
Bennie’s desk nursing a sore head, sore ribs, and a double-malt scotch when the
police arrived. The rent-a-cop was sitting in Bennie’s chair holding an
ice-filled glass (sans the scotch) against the knot on his forehead. Outside of
a big mess, there was nothing for the police to find. They wanted Slater to go
to the hospital to be checked out, but he’d spent enough time in hospitals. He
waited until the building’s maintenance department sent someone to board up his
door before dragging his body, along with an ice-pack, over to the office couch
to lie down.

Slater groaned at the
disastrous mess left behind by his attacker. He wondered what they’d been
looking for. He would have shaken his head – if it wouldn’t have hurt so much –
in disbelief that anyone in this day and age would think everything wasn’t
stored electronically. He’d seen where they’d tried to get into his safe, but
the safe did what it was designed to do; withstand break-ins. Tomorrow, he’d
take a look at the security tapes to see if he could identify his attacker(s).
Slater groaned again when he thought about Bennie’s temper tomorrow when she
came into the office. That scared him much more than anybody with a gun.

◊◊◊

“What the hell happened
in my office? What have you been up to?”

Slater’s head seem to
throb with each word that passed through Bennie’s lips. Through very bleary
eyes, he spied Bennie at the door with what looked like a cotton-candy rinse in
her hair today. But his head really hurt, so he could be mistaken. But whatever
color it was, it clashed horribly with the magenta polka-dotted top.

Wincing, Slater murmured,
“Big party; strippers; the works… sorry you missed it.”

“I don’t have time for
your sass. Who’s going to clean up this mess? I’m not cleaning it up.” Bennie
ranted but stopped short when she saw his black, blue, and swollen eye.

Covering up her concern
with bluster, she said, “Well what happened to your face? Forget to tip the
stripper?”

Slater lifted a hand to
gently touch his face. “Yeah, something
like
that.”

“Well, Slick, tell me
what really happened?” Bennie asked, which let Slater know she’d ripped the
Band-Aid off the situation, passing the knee-jerk blasting, and was now ready
to deal with it in her efficient and capable manner.

“Someone broke in last
night and it set my alarm off at home. When I got here, they’d knocked out the
rent-a-cop, shot out my damn door, and then knocked me on the head for good
measure.”

“The
bastards!
Did
they get anything? Did you get a look at the creep… or was it creeps?”

Slater winced as he sat
up. “Well of course, there were at least a dozen big, burly men here. How else
could they have gotten the drop on me? What a seriously silly question.”

“If you don’t quit being
a smartass, I’m not going to make you any coffee.”

“That’s right, kick a man
while he’s down. What? Do they teach women that at Man-Haters Anonymous?” Slater
quirked while placing a hand against his heart.

“Listen, Slick, do you
think this has anything to do with the Senator?” Bennie asked in a more serious
tone.

“I don’t know. I guess
his wife could have told him where the photos came from. But until we figure
who it was and what they wanted, I’m having additional security installed. I
need you to call Mike Denison and tell him we need additional cameras at the
door as well as the door alarm replaced… once we get a door, that is. Then call
the building super and let him know he needs to hire better security or we’re
pulling out,” Slater directed.

“Well, look who’s feeling
better. Good, then you can go out there and clean up that mess,” Bennie
grumbled at him.

Once Slater had two cups
of Bennie’s high-octane coffee, he went home for a quick shower. With a towel
wrapped around his waist, Slater stood in front of the mirror and took in his
swollen eye. A half-inch lower, and he’d have lost his eye. The gash above his
eye was surely going to leave a scar. Not that he was vain that way; which was
a good thing considering the number of scars covering his body. There were
angry scratches across his torso and arms where he’d crawled through the broken
glass. With gentle fingers, he pressed against the black and blue mark on the
bottom of his ribcage. He was sure the bottom rib was cracked. Reaching into
the vanity drawer, he retrieved an Ace bandage and winced as he wrapped it
tightly around his ribs. Running water into a cup, he tossed back two pain
tablets and stood grasping the edge of the vanity while drawing swallow
breaths.

Slater walked into his
bedroom and forced himself to stop a minute to enjoy the garden he designed in
his backyard. As a teenager, he’d gotten a summer job at one of the nearby
plantations working in the gardens. He’d brought his experience from that job
and sculpted his yard into a private sanctuary.
 
Anne always said he never stopped to enjoy these types of simple things.
Now, he made himself stop, even if just for a moment.

After carefully, slowly,
and painfully dressing, he grabbed his cell phone and called his brother.

“Father Vance.”

“Hey, Tuck, it’s Slater.
Listen, I’ve got something going on today that I need to look into. I’m afraid
I’ll need to place Honey
Luscious’s
case on hold, at
least for today. Okay?”

The silence on the other
end of the phone had Slater groaning on the inside.

“Okay, I’m sure you’re
doing the best you can,” Tucker finally said.

“Look, I’m sorry. But I
don’t have a choice. How did things work out yesterday after I left?” Slater
asked.

With a heavy sigh, Tucker
answered, “This is a hard time for her. She doesn’t know what to feel bad about
exactly. Which guilt carries the most pain do you think… forgetting you’ve had
a child or not knowing what happened to your child? This is what plagues her.
It’s the uncertainty that kills her. Guilt is a terrible thing. It will eat a
person’s soul clean away… like a cancer.” After a few seconds, he continued,
“But look who I’m telling that to.”

Slater refused to have
this particular conversation with his brother again.

“I’ll try to get back on
your case by the weekend, okay?”

“Slate, I know you’ll do
the right thing,” Tucker responded.

Slater rolled his eyes at
the obvious guilt trip being provided to him by the travel master.

“Bye, Tuck.”

Gingerly, Slater climbed
into his SUV and returned to his office building. The building itself was one
that had recently replaced a condemned building, which had been imploded in the
midst of surrounding buildings. The bronze glass and orange-brown slate panels
of the building made it appear organic and earthy.

Slater nodded to
Nicko
at the front desk before heading to the elevators. He
was pleasantly surprised to not only see the glass doors replaced already, but
also to see
Exposed, Inc.
being
stenciled onto the glass.

Slater whistled as he
entered the office, “Wow, you certainly don’t let any grass grow under your
feet, do you? I’m impressed; you’re not just a pretty face,” he said to Bennie.

Bennie was sitting at her
desk, cigarette dangling from her lips, phone pressed to her ear, while filing
the nails of one hand. Without breaking her conversation, she arched her
eyebrow at him and pointed a finger in the direction of his office. With a
smirk on his lips, he bent on his way to his office and placed a kiss on her
forehead. She swatted him and he flinched at her contact to his sore ribs. She
frowned at his reaction.

Strolling to his safe, he
pressed his thumb into the recognition panel and it popped open. He opened a
panel on the side and ejected a compact disc and took it to his desk. Sliding
it into the player and picking up the remote, he turned on the wide-screen
television. Skipping the disc to last night, once he got to the hour before his
alarm had gone off, he saw that while the disc wasn’t blank, it was snowy. This
meant one of two things; either there was a power outage and the backup
generator hadn’t kicked on, or someone had disabled the cameras.

Slater leaned back in his
chair, tapping the remote against his lips and staring unseeingly at the
screen. Bennie walked in, glanced at the snowy screen, and then back to Slater.

“That’s some really bad
porn, Slick.”

“They disabled my
cameras, “he said slowly and thoughtfully.

“Yeah,
so?”

“How’d they know where they
were? This wasn’t done by your run-of-the-mill cat burglars.”

“What do you mean?”
Bennie asked perplexed.

“Experience.
They knew where and what to look
for. That comes from experience…
Special Forces; FBI; CIA; or
whatever.
They disabled the system, and as such didn’t have to worry
about the cameras themselves.” Slater continued tapping the remote against his
lips.

“How’d they know where to
turn the system off?” Bennie asked.

Pointing the remote at
her, he replied, “Now that… is the sixty-four thousand dollar question.”

“What’s wrong with your
ribs?” Bennie asked, cocking her head to the side.

“Something you’re
familiar with… kicking a man while he’s down,” he smirked at her.

Bennie ignored his
flippant response. “How bad is it? Did you get it x-rayed?”

“No need, they’d only
wrap it, which is what I did. It’ll heal.”

“Stupid son-of-a-bitch,”
Bennie murmured under her breath in disbelief. Turning quickly, she departed
his office.

Slater lifted his phone
and dialed the soon-to-be ex-Mrs. Senator Baldwin.

“Hi,
Sylvia, Slater Vance.”

Slater listened to the
birds and crickets chirping at the other end of the phone.

Finally Sylvia Baldwin
responded, “Mr. Vance, this is a… surprise. How can I help you?”

“Sylvia, my office was
broken into last night and someone shot out my door, trying to kill me.”

There was brief pause and
then, “Oh no, are you okay?” Sylvia gushed.

“I’m fine. Did you happen
to mention to Senator Baldwin where you obtained the photos?”

“Of
course not.
I
showed him the pictures, he apologized, promised fidelity, and that was the end
of it,” she replied as if from a script.

Slater didn’t know how to
respond to her comment. He guessed he shouldn’t be surprised, but he was. The
things the Senator had done to his ‘date’ were… well, nasty – and not to judge,
very un-senatorial.

He heard her let out a
deep breath on the other end of the phone. “He’s on track for the presidency.
It’s important that his family stays… intact. I have no choice.”

Slater hesitated before
responding, “Everyone has a choice, Sylvia.”

He heard a bitter laugh
on the other end. “Grow up, Slater. We are all controlled by something or
someone… even you, Slater, even you.” Slater heard a soft click as the phone
was disconnected.

Slater jumped when Bennie
yelled from her office, “Line one.”

After pushing the button
for line one, Slater leaned back in his seat, “Slater Vance.”

“Hey, Slate. Why didn’t
you tell me you’d been hurt? I’d never pushed you on Honey’s case if I’d known
you’d been hurt. Why didn’t you go get checked out?” Tucker admonished.

“Bennie has an extremely
big mouth,” Slater said loud enough for Bennie to hear him.

“Are you okay, do you
need me to come by and drive you to the hospital?” Tucker asked, concerned.

“I’m fine, Tuck. There’s
nothing they can do. I’ve taped my ribs. That’s all they’d do. I just took out
the middle man,” Slater responded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?
I’m your brother… you big brother. It’s my job to take care of you.”

“It’s nothing and I
didn’t want you to worry,” Slater assured him.

“Please promise you’ll
take it easy and that you’ll call me if you need me.”

“Will do,” Slater
promised, knowing he never would as he hung up.

Slater yelled towards
Bennie’s office, “That was sneaky and underhanded, calling my brother like
that…” then he added more softly and sincerely, “Thanks, Bennie.”

Leaning back in his chair
and closing his eyes against the nagging, persistent pain in both his head and
ribs, Slater let his mind wander over the events of the night before. His eyes
flashed open as a thought crossed his mind. With as little use of his stomach
muscles as he could manage, he raised himself out of the chair and lumbered
into Bennie’s office. Ignoring her, he walked to where he’d ended up in front
of her desk and slowly turned in the direction of the newly replaced glass
doors. His eyes darted over the interior paneling and wood trim, but found
nothing.

From behind him, he heard
Bennie ask gruffly, “What are you doing?”