Payoff (7 page)

The drugs. The senator. The roommate talking about Raymond’s horrific course load and money troubles. Blackmail—blackmail that had succeeded, and yet the pictures had been sent to the judge anyway. And a speech from a drug dealer that sounded an awful lot like a description of what had really happened to the guy-who-was-not-Raymond, the guy in the dumpster.

I’d been working on the assumption that Oden was behind all of this or that the drug dealers had done it to Raymond because he’d tried to pay them off or something. But if it wasn’t Raymond dead . . .

* * *

“And
rew,” I said, to Cherabino’s next-door cubicle neighbor.

He looked up. “Yes?”

“Could I possibly beg ten minutes’ help for a case?” I asked. “It really is, literally, ten minutes.”

He rubbed his eyes. “I’m not supposed to help you unless you’re on the schedule.”

I held up the dozen donuts I’d collected from the small shop down the street. “They’re powdered sugar and real cinnamon,” I said, coaxingly. Just for the cinnamon they’d cost me a fortune, but they were his favorite. “And it really is ten minutes.”

His eyes lit up and he stood to take the box. “Just this once,” he said, and dove in. “What’s going on?” he mumbled around a mouthful of fried dough.

“Could we get to the student database from your machine?” I asked. “George Babel’s information should be in there. He’s Raymond Datini’s roommate if that helps.” We got a new database every six months or so and George had been in the school long enough to show up.

Andrew turned around and started typing on his computer; he was one of a short list of people—including Cherabino—who went through the twice-yearly deep background checks to have a personal machine, and even his usage was recorded, and his data Quarantined periodically. The world hadn’t crumbled in the Tech Wars sixty years ago just for everyone to be careless now.

Andrew typed some more and turned around. “Sorry, Adam, I’m not going to be able to get to that info without a lot of hoops and a lot of waiting. Have you tried calling the registrar’s office? They might even be able to tell you if he banks at the university. Legally, because the state pays half the tuition even at private universities, the financial records are open to investigation with reasonable suspicion. And since the registrar handles tuition payments he’ll have access to that information.”

“What about privacy laws?” I asked.

Andrew tilted his head. “Those only matter as much as the individual institution wants to push them. There’s precedence in the courts for financials; it’s something that can go either way depending on interpretation. And historically, college students don’t end up with as much privacy support as you’d expect, especially if they’re taking state funds and not paying independent taxes.”

My head was spinning from the new information, but Andrew would know; he was the money guy in the department. But he really did need to get back to work. “Thanks,” I said, and left the donuts there.

I went over to Cherabino’s cubicle, still empty, and borrowed her phone book and phone. I was not too proud to make phone calls if that’s what this took, and it was still early enough that I had the energy to process whatever new information I had. This hunch of mine . . . well, I was going to follow it all the way through before I screwed up Kubrick’s case. I owed him that much at least, but I also owed the judge an answer.

The phone rang on the other end of the line. Maybe if Raymond wasn’t dead, I could find him and pay back the judge that way. Good news was good for me, and good for my old convictions. Maybe I’d get away from this with no jail time after all.

“Hello, can I speak to the registrar?” I asked, and waited while they got the person, for the first time in a long time actually singing a little tune under my breath.

“Hello?” a man’s voice came over the phone. “Who is this?”

I introduced myself and said I was with the DeKalb County Police Department, which wasn’t technically a lie. “Would you be able to fax me over your records on George Babel?”

“Do you have a warrant?” the man asked, cautiously.

“He’s been connected with an open murder case,” I said, also not technically a lie. “And my colleagues tell me that if the student receives financial support from the state, privacy laws do not normally apply.”

The man sighed. “Let me go look this up.”

Happy little hold music came over the line, and I hummed along.

With a heavy
click,
the guy came back on. “George doesn’t receive financial backing,” he said.

My face fell.

“But he’s also a month late on his rent to the college, and your number matches the police directory I have. So, what do you need to know?”

“Late? Why doesn’t he get financial help?” I asked.

“His roommate is two months late. The crazy thing is George’s father is the CEO at Coca-Cola. He’s loaded. There’s no reason to be late on payments, and when we called the father, he said he’d put plenty of money in George’s account. Irresponsible, if you ask me, for the student not to be paying, but we can’t kick him out mid-semester either. This is why I’ve been pushing to go back to the semester payment system. Teaching responsibility is not our job and the college has bills to pay too. Why—”

“Thank you,” I interrupted. “Could you fax over the record? Raymond Datini’s as well?” I wanted to see how long they’d been rooming together, if George had been lying about that, or if there was anything else about the records that stood out. I had a suspicion George was covering for Raymond; he’d been way too nervous over the questions, and I wanted to have information in hand to confront him with.

I finished up with the registrar—who actually agreed to send the records, no further proof required, as Andrew had said, and hung up the phone. Then I wandered over to stand in front of the public fax machine and waited. And waited.

And waited.

Just when I was about to go for a chair to sit down on, the fax machine warmed up and started printing, all too slowly.

When the first page—a summary page, with a black and white picture—dropped into the tray, I picked it up. And stared. George looked . . . like he had more weight on him in this picture, and the acne scarring was on his left side. Left.

The acne had been on the right when I’d interviewed him.

I left the rest of the record where it sat and went to find Paulsen. I needed backup and a driver, and I needed them now.

* * *

I knocked
on the dorm room door, Bellury and another beat cop—Phillips—behind me with guns at the ready.

“Just a second!” came a muffled call. The sounds of rustling clothes and a few clanks came through the door.

I knocked again.

“Just a—”

I gestured at the beat cop to open the door. He tried the knob—it was locked—so he kicked it open.

I poked my head through the doorway, saw a thin college student with a dark complexion and a shaved head, and smeared stage makeup on the right side of his face. He was standing next to the open window currently throwing a draft throughout the room, the half-packed suitcase on the bed in front of him filled with clothes and at least two large wads of ROCs, the shimmering rectangles of paper money rustling in the breeze.

“Hello, Raymond,” I said.

He stared, his expression like a deer in headlights as his mind caught up with reality. Next to me, Bellury and Phillips tensed, ready for a rush.

With a push, Raymond overturned the suitcase at us, money flying in a huge cloud. He threw himself through the open window—and hit the bushes three feet below with a curse. He was down and sprinting away within a few seconds, pace smooth and fast like he’d done this a hundred times before.

Phillips had dashed after—but he slipped on an old pizza box, landing firmly on his butt. Bellury, more cautiously, lowered himself through the window.

I turned around and hustled back through the front door of the building. With as much as I smoked, there was no way I’d catch up to a runner before the other guys anyway. As I trotted down the front steps, I panted.

* * *

I finally
caught up with them in the construction site from earlier, at the foot of the huge orange crane. They were standing at its concrete base, necks cricked up, looking up the side of the towering monolith.

Raymond was climbing the crane, the metal bars making up its side close enough together to provide him with good hand and footholds. He was two stories up and moving fast, clearly heading for the operator’s box halfway up.

“What are we waiting for?” I asked.

“I don’t do heights,” Phillips said.

“I’m sixty-five years and four months old,” Bellury said. “If you think I’m climbing a crane straight up you’ve got another think coming.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re going to make the consultant climb up three stories while you guys watch?”

“That’s about it,” Bellury said. He was already covered in sweat and looked tired.

Phillips looked very embarrassed, an embarrassment I wished I could feel firsthand. He took his gun out and pointed it at the ground. “I’ll cover you. If he comes back down, I’ve got him. I have no problem running as long as it takes. I do half-marathons.”

“And I’ll go find a phone and get the campus PD here,” Bellury said. “Just hold him long enough for us to handle it.”

“Okay.” I took a breath, looked up, and told myself it wouldn’t be that bad. Why had I been lifting all those weights, after all? My lungs might be shot from the cigarettes and my mind crazy tired, but I hadn’t run into a doorframe in awhile. It was just after noon. I wasn’t afraid of heights, not really. I should have it in me to do this.

I reached out, got a good grip on a bar over my head, and pulled up, finding that first, critical foothold. Then I did it again, and again. Raymond overhead was almost to the box, so I had to speed up. The huge anti-gravity accelerator in the base of the tower was making me nervous; the long line upwards for anti-gravitons had to mess with the gravity around here if the crane wasn’t completely powered down. If Raymond turned it on too soon—well, I’d either be crushed up against the bars I was climbing, or forced off and end up a smear on the rapidly-shrinking ground below.

It doesn’t matter,
I told myself.
Nothing you can do about it now. Keep climbing
. So I pulled and placed the foot, pushed and grabbed the bar, over and over again. The orange-painted metal felt cold and rough in my hands, and the wind was already picking up.

My foot slipped—

And I caught myself with my left hand, my right gripping hard, splitting the weight. My heart beat a hundred miles an hour. I tensed my core and found the bar again with my foot.

Again and again.
Don’t look down, don’t think,
I told myself.
Especially don’t think.
I was panting again, panting hard, in real pain as my body struggled to get enough oxygen. I wouldn’t be able to keep this up forever; I took a breath, panting, and looked up again.

Raymond had made it to the box.

My heart beat a hundred miles an hour and I stopped to take three deep breaths. Time to climb. I pushed up to the next bar, climbing. The wind pushed hard at me, threatening to push me off the bars. Was it really just the wind?

* * *

“It needs
a key,” Raymond said, in the hurt-and-disappointed tone of a much younger guy.

Finally at the operator’s box, I grabbed the handhold and placed my feet down, ducking in. The box was only four feet deep and four wide, a very large walk-in closet with one side currently open to the elements—with a safety rail I’d just climbed over—and the other with a mostly-shut door and safety rail beyond.

Ahead was Raymond, poking at the instrument panel, buttons and knobs galore set into a long gray countertop thing in front of a small built-in chair. A dial that read “
ANTI-GRAV
” was still safely off, I was glad to see. Raymond slumped in the operator’s chair, his body language dejected.

“They all need keys,” I said, gently, not because I had any clue in hell what to do with an oversized construction crane, but because interrogations were all about building rapport with the suspect, and that meant knowing things. Knowing things and being nice. “What did you expect would happen?” I asked. No matter how much relief I felt, I had to work. I had to make this work.

“I have a gun,” he said.

I stood up straighter and went for the telepathy—which wasn’t there. The world threw itself sideways as I pushed at it too hard, too fast, and lights exploded in my vision. I breathed, and breathed, and when my vision returned, Raymond was pointing a revolver at me—a .38 revolver, and I was betting it was the gun that killed his roommate.

My heart beat, really, really fast, but I was very tired and it was hard to get excited about it. “If you kill me, there’s nowhere to go,” I said, as calmly as possible. “Every cop in the area is convening on our location as we speak.”

“I don’t hear any sirens,” he said, eyes frustrated and angry. He pulled back the lever on the gun, which made an ominous
click.
Then he paused, as if waiting.

“I asked them to turn off the sirens,” I lied smoothly. “We didn’t want to startle you. Killing me is not good for your exit strategy here. And there’s no way we can get down the crane again with you holding me hostage.”

“There’s a small elevator higher up,” Raymond said, but then let the muzzle of the gun lower a bit. “It’s locked too, it’s all locked. I didn’t think anybody would bother with it being so high up.”

I looked through the front window and saw the tall flyer deck for the college, all those cars with powerful anti-grav engines, several brightly-colored sports vehicles on the top floor, the fourth floor. “You have George’s flyer keys,” I guessed. “That’s where you were going next. It’s strong enough to get you halfway to the west coast before we could begin to follow. But the crane is locked and you can’t get there. It won’t extend that far without the anti-grav, and you can’t make it move without the key.”

The muzzle of the gun raised back up again, square to my face. My brain informed me that most people were accurate with a revolver even without training. Especially at a three-foot distance, just far enough for me not to think I could get the gun before he fired. It was a .38. Of course.