Authors: Mortal Fear
“You’ve remembered something of value, Mr. Cole?” he says.
“Where’s Baxter?”
“He’s not available just now.”
“Where are you, Doctor?”
“Is that relevant?”
“Did you go to Minnesota to see Strobekker’s body exhumed?”
“Do you doubt that I did?”
“I think you went straight to New York to try to crack Jan Krislov. Didn’t you?”
“As a matter of fact, I personally observed the postmortem on David Strobekker.”
“Was he missing his pineal gland?”
“Oddly enough, no. Now, what was the purpose of your call?”
“Am I a prime suspect in these murders, Doctor?”
Lenz pauses. “You’re a suspect, yes.”
“Why?”
“You have access to EROS’s master client list. That makes you a member of a very exclusive group.”
“Have you got access to the list yet?”
“No.”
“Maybe I can help you.”
“How?”
“Maybe I have a copy of the list.”
“Do you or don’t you?”
It’s my turn to play coy.
“What do you want?” Lenz asks.
“I want the FBI to stop hassling my wife.”
“Ah. Daniel’s agents can be clumsy on occasion. They are causing you problems?”
“They’re bothering my wife at work.”
“I see.”
“And anybody who bothers my wife de facto pisses me off.”
“Yes.”
“What can you do about that?”
Lenz says nothing for a while.
“You realize I could go public with all this at any time,” I tell him.
“That would only aggravate the very situation you seek to alleviate. The disruption of your wife’s life would increase exponentially.”
He’s right, of course.
“But perhaps I can be of assistance,” he says. “It’s true that the various police departments involved in the case—particularly the Michigan department—are ready to have both you and Mr. Turner arrested. I, however, do not share their enthusiasm.”
“Get to it, Doctor.”
“I think perhaps we can help each other, Mr. Cole. If you will agree to help me in a limited capacity, I think I could have both Bureau and police pressure removed from your life.”
“What kind of capacity?”
“I want the master client list, of course. Can you get it?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
Damn this guy
. “Why take that as a no?”
“If you had a copy of your own, you would have destroyed it by now. And you no longer have access to the accounting database, which you would need to get a new copy.”
How does he know that?
“However, you still have something I want.”
“What’s that?”
“Your thoughts.”
“What?”
And then he tells me. How long he has been planning this, I don’t know. Maybe this was the whole point of putting pressure on Drewe. Of not throwing me to the Michigan police. Because Lenz wants exactly what they want. To fly me up to Washington so he can question me with no one else around. He says something about “an informal version of his standard criminal-profiling technique,” but I don’t really listen. We both know the bottom line. If I want the pressure taken off, I’ve got to play his game.
“How soon do you want to do this?”
“I’ll have a ticket for you waiting in Jackson, Mississippi. It’s ten-fifty. Can you get to the airport by noon?”
“Noon
today
?”
“Of course.”
If I drop everything and walk out the front door without a toothbrush
. Then I remember Drewe’s voice, tight with anxiety. “Yeah, I can get there. You think there’s a flight?”
“If there isn’t a direct flight, you’ll find a connecting ticket. Ask for messages at the American Airlines desk.”
“Okay. I’d better get going.”
“Just a moment. At the meeting in New Orleans, you mentioned that EROS is patronized by many celebrities.”
“I can’t tell you any names.”
“Fine, fine. But what level of celebrities are we talking about?”
“Well . . . Karin Wheat was pretty famous.”
“Yes, but authors don’t get the kind of adulation that Hollywood stars or sports figures do.”
“Not many sports figures on EROS, Doctor. The IQ level tends to run a little higher than that.”
“So what level of star are we talking about?”
“The top of the business. And not just actors. Directors, producers, agents, the works.”
He digests this in silence.
“Aren’t you any different from the paparazzi, Doctor? I thought you were trying to solve these murders, not root up juicy tidbits about Hollywood.”
“In all honesty, I find the whole concept of EROS fascinating. However, there is a point to my questions. Jan Krislov refuses to reveal anything about her clients. Thanks to you, I realize she is not grandstanding but prudently shielding people who have a great vested interest in protecting their public images. People who would not hesitate to sue Ms. Krislov and have the funds to pursue such a lawsuit to its bitter end.”
“No doubt about it. Hell, there are celebrity
lawyers
on that master client list. Jan Krislov is a lot of things, but she’s no fool.”
“Do you have any more EROS session printouts?” Lenz asks.
“No more of the murder victims or Strobekker.”
“I’ll take anything you have. I’m following a rather twisted trail, and I’d like all the signposts I can get.”
“I’ll bring you what I have.”
“Excellent.” Lenz says he’ll fax me directions to his office in case I miss the FBI agents he plans to have waiting at the Washington airport. Then he says, “May I give you some unsolicited advice, Mr. Cole?”
“People do it all the time.”
“You’re an experienced futures trader. However, if I were you, I’d clear my current positions. Dump all contracts until this mess is resolved.”
“You’re not me.”
“Quite. Well . . . I’ll see you this afternoon.”
While Lenz’s fax comes through, I call Drewe in Jackson and explain what I’m about to do and why. She warns me to be careful, then goes back to her patients.
I pack a briefcase with a toothbrush, five hundred dollars in cash, and a few EROS folders from my file cabinet. Before I leave the office, I almost pick up the phone and follow Lenz’s advice. Getting out of the market now would cost me money, but that’s not what keeps me from doing it. The truth is, I feel a simple bullheaded resistance to letting Arthur Lenz tell me what to do. If I lose a few thousand bucks because I’m in a daze, so be it. It’s happened before.
I am almost to the Explorer when I remember Lenz’s fax. Running back inside to get it, I hear the phone. It’s my office line. I debate whether or not to answer, then pick up.
“Hello?”
“Moneypenny? This is Bond.
James
Bond.”
“What is it, Miles? I’m in a hurry.”
“Brahma went back on-line five minutes ago.”
“Have they traced the call?”
“Yes and no. They took a chance and started at the second Jersey line they wound up at last time. AT&T long line. Anyway, the connection twisted all around the country, but they finally tracked it to Wyoming.”
“Wyoming?”
“Yeah. Place called Lake Champion. It’s a tiny little nothing of a town.”
I feel my heart pumping. “So? Are they going to arrest him or what?”
“Not that easy, I’m afraid. You’re not going to believe this. Lake Champion, Wyoming, is one of the last towns in America with electromechanical phone switching. It’s like the Dark Ages. They actually have these complicated metal gizmos that spin around making physical connections, and there are rows and rows of them stacked on top of each other, from floor to ceiling.”
“What does that mean as far as tracing Brahma?”
Miles chuckles softly. “It means it takes an
actual human being
running up and down the aisles between those switches to trace the connections. With digital tracing, you can move through twenty states in a couple of minutes without getting permission from anybody. But to authorize an actual human being to chase down mechanical connections in one of these little towns, you have to have a court order.”
“What?”
Miles is laughing harder. “Here’s the brilliant part. To get that court order, you have to prove that a crime is being committed
in the state where that town is
. It’s one hell of a buffer system, and Brahma knows it. Rather than going higher and higher tech—which is what most hackers do and which is ultimately a no-win game—he goes to the simplest possible solution. He goes
analog
. It’s exactly what I’d do, man.”
Exactly what I’d do
. . . . “So what happens now?”
“Baxter is strong-arming a Wyoming judge as we speak, trying to get permission for a local yokel phone guy to do the trace.”
“How long will that take?”
“Hel-lo.” Miles sighs with almost sexual satisfaction. “Your question just became academic. The Strobekker account just went dead. Brahma’s history.” Miles’s voice rises to the exaggerated bellow of a game show announcer: “The switches in Wyoming are
no longer connec-ted
!”
I picture blue-suited FBI agents in the EROS office staring at Miles with murder in their eyes. “What alias was he using?”
“Kali this time. I haven’t seen that one before.”
“C-A-L-I?”
“No.
K
-A-L-I.”
“Who’s Kali?”
“The Hindu mother goddess, consort of Shiva, which is one of his other aliases. Kali’s an ugly black bitch. Wears a belt of skulls, carries a severed head and a knife, has six arms. She’s the betrayer, the terrible one of many names. Weird that he’d log on with a female alias.”
“Severed head? Christ. Are you an expert in this Eastern stuff or what?”
“I’ve dabbled. Read the Vedas, the Upanishads, some other things. They make a lot more sense than the chickenshit dualism of Christianity. You know, you really should—”
“I don’t have time for it, Miles.”
“Neither do I. Someone just told me the Wise and Wonderful Oz wants me on another line.”
“Oz?”
“Arthur Lenz. He’s the man behind the curtain on this thing, isn’t he?”
“I guess. I’ve got to run, Miles. Keep me posted. But use my answering machine, not e-mail.”
“Don’t sweat it. Nobody reads my e-mail if I don’t want them to. Not even God.”
I tear off Lenz’s fax and run for the Explorer. I believe nobody reads Miles’s e-mail if he doesn’t want them to, but what I’m thinking as I crank the engine is this:
Maybe somebody should.
CHAPTER 15
I am crossing the Washington Beltway in a yellow taxi driven by a black lay preacher. Lenz told me I would be met at Dulles Airport by FBI agents, but none showed, so I took the cab. The driver tries to make conversation—he still knows a lot of people from “down home,” meaning the South—but I am too absorbed in the object of my journey to keep up my end of the exchange.
Lenz’s private office is supposed to be in McLean, Virginia. All I know is that my lay preacher is leading me deep into upscale suburbia. Old money suburbia. Colonial homes, Mercedeses, Beemers (700 series), matched Lexi, tasteful retail and office space. The driver pulls into the redbrick courtyard of a three-story building and stops. You could probably buy five acres of Delta farmland for the monthly rent on Lenz’s office.
The first floor of the building is deserted but for ferns, its walls covered with abstract paintings that look purchased by the square yard. A bronze-lettered notice board directs me to the third floor. When the elevator door opens on three, I am facing a short corridor with a door at the end. No letters on the door.
Beyond the door I find a small, well-appointed waiting room. There’s a lot of indirect light, but the only window faces the billing office. A dark-skinned receptionist sits behind the window. I am not looking at her. I’m looking at a pale, gangly, longhaired young man folded oddly across a wing chair and ottoman. He is snoring.
“Miles?” I say softly.
He does not stir. A Hewlett-Packard notebook computer and a cellular telephone lie on the floor beside him. The computer screen swirls with a psychedelic screen-saver program.
“Miles.”
The snoring stops. Miles Turner flips the hair out of his eyes and looks up at me without surprise. His eyes are the same distant blue they have always been.
“Hello, snitch,” he says. “What’s in the briefcase? The names of everybody who works at EROS?”
“Fresh underwear. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Same as you, I guess. The mad doctor wants to pry open my skull, see what he can find. I hope he’s in the mood for drama. I certainly am.”
“I can’t believe you agreed to come.”
A fleeting smile touches his lips. “Didn’t have any choice, did I? I’ve got an old drug charge hanging over my head. All Lenz has to do is tell his sidekick—Baxter—to push the button, and I go to jail. Do not pass
GO,
et cetera.”
“Jesus.”
Miles leans his angular head back with a theatrical flourish and tries to catch the eye of the receptionist. I take the opportunity to study him more closely. It’s been four years since I saw him in the flesh. Miles long ago vowed never to set foot in Mississippi again. When I saw him last, in New Orleans, he had short hair and wore fairly conservative clothes. No Polo or khakis, of course, but your basic Gap in basic black. He’s wearing black again today, but his hair hangs over his shoulders, his sweater is not only torn but looks cheap, and he is
dirty
. I don’t smell him—yet—but he plainly hasn’t bathed for at least a couple of days.
“Staring is rude,” he says, his eyes still on the window to my left. “Don’t you read your Amy Vanderbilt? Or is it Gloria Vanderbilt?”
“Miles, what the hell is going on? You look terrible. What’s happening with the case?”
He smiles conspiratorially and brings a warning finger to his lips. His eyebrows shimmy up and down as he says in a stage whisper:
“Shhhh. The walls have ears.”
When I stare blankly, he adds, “But then their ears have walls, so perhaps it doesn’t matter.”