“Sure. I'll talk to her. Get her a contract, the standard form. She'll hire you.”
“Got one right here. Give it to her.” He handed me a sealed envelope, the kind with the clear window for the addressee. I could see Claire's name and address typed on a form inside.
“Okay, Ed.”
“I'm not like you, Caine. I can't take these kinds of cases just because it feels good. I'm no Don Quixote. I'm a mercenary.”
I found Claire near the hotel pool on the sundeck, one level below the lobby. She was dressed in another cashmere sweat suit, a pink one this time, sprawled on a chaise longue, trying to catch some of the sun's warmth. Huge black sunglasses obscured her face. Her poise surprised me. Out in the open, surrounded by who knows what, after the previous night's events, I'd expected her to stay in her room as I'd requested. But she didn't. I had the feeling she would do as she pleased regardless of the circumstances.
She waved when she saw me. I went down the concrete steps, watching the railings and the entries.
“Everything okay?” she asked casually, as if she were on vacation instead of hiding from people who were trying to kill her. Even with two bodies in her living room, she seemed to have a sense of unreality about the danger she was in.
“Ready to move?”
“You got us a place.” She had a cool, detached manner, with no hint of her earlier playfulness.
“My boat. It's at the San Diego Yacht Club. We can stay there at least a week.”
She looked at me, another appraisal, her head tilted sideways, squinting into the sun. “I'm packed,” she said. “I was just waiting for you. Juanita is upstairs in her room. Last night was hard on her.”
“I know,” I said. Claire told me she knew of Juanita's history. Having a shooting in one's home after something like that can shift the boundaries of how one defines security. For her, the big house on the hill in Point Loma had always been safe haven. Money, the money behind the house, that was
safe, too. Although Juanita was not the owner of the house or the money, she was a part of it, and the safety extended to her. Now the house and her security had been violated. She had to come to grips with it in her own way.
Everybody needed security. And the thought led me to the other question: Ed Thomas's problem.
“Stevenson came to the house last night after we left,” I said. Claire took off her sunglasses and looked at me again, squinting. “He gave Ed a letter, discharging meâand Ed and Farrell, all of usâfrom your service. I decided not to bother you with it last night, and you really weren't conscious this morning, but it's something that has to be dealt with. Something else that has to be dealt with.”
“He fired you and you brought me here?”
“Yes. You are safe here.”
“I understand that. You knew you had been fired? All of you? And still you risked your lives for me?”
“Sometimes it isn't about money,” I said, wondering if maybe Thomas wasn't right again. “And sometimes it is. We don't take an oath to fight to the death. Ed is a little nervous. He'd like a contract. If you'll sign it.”
“You said you wouldn't run away,” she said, “if there was a reason to be here. You meant that.”
“I did.”
She leveled that stare at me again, the challenging one she'd first turned on me in the restaurant. “Do you have a copy of this contract Ed Thomas wants me to sign?”
I pulled it from the pocket of her husband's jacket. She glanced through it and signed it at the bottom. “I guess this means you don't want me communicating with Joe,” she said.
“Not until this is over.”
“You think he has something to do with it.”
“I honestly don't know what to think.”
“I understand why Thomas wanted that signed,” she said. “And I don't blame him. In his shoes, I'd want the same thing. Why aren't you so interested in getting something on paper?”
“A contract is just words, Claire. It's only good if you don't trust the other party.”
“Or if you don't think the other party is going to live long. So you can collect from her estate.”
“Well ⦔
“Don't start bullshitting me now, John. I appreciate honest answers.”
“Those are his feelings, Claire.”
“But they're not yours.”
“No, they're not. To him, this is strictly business.”
She studied my face for a few moments. “There are implications there I find fascinating.”
“Don't worry about me,” I said, searching the surrounding deck. “It's my job to worry about you.”
“That's all you're doing?”
“Sure. Let's get Juanita and get going.”
“Can we stop at the airport?”
“Why?”
She looked at her watch. “Barbara's plane lands in an hour. She insisted after I told her what happened.”
I shrugged. It wasn't unexpected that Claire would call her, nor was it a surprise that Barbara would come. It might even keep Claire off the phone.
“More the merrier,” I said, surprising myself at the thrill of anticipation that went through me at the possibility of seeing the banker again.
We met Barbara at the Southwest terminal at Lindbergh Field. Dressed for traveling in Eddie Bauer's best, carrying a single bag, she seemed to bring the sun out from behind the clouds. Seeing her made me warm inside, a strange feeling I didn't recognize at first until it came back suddenly: happiness. I couldn't explain it. Feelings like that didn't need explanation. Under the circumstances, I sought none; they wouldn't be explored, either.
“Are you sure you're all right?” Barbara kept asking Claire. “Those men were sent to kill you?”
“That's what John said. And Ed Thomas. If it wasn't for Hatley, we'd all be dead now.”
“Then we owe you and your associates a debt of gratitude,” Barbara said, smiling at me the way I could get used to being smiled at.
I shook off that kind of thought. It could only fuzz my thinking, and with two fresh bodies in the picture, fuzzy thinking would inevitably lead to more.
“And how are you, John? You seem to be holding up after all that excitement.”
“I wasn't there,” I said. “It happened while I was in Mexico.”
“Lucky for you,” she said, winking. “I think Mr. Farrell handled things splendidly. You didn't need to be there.”
“But ⦔ I was about to say I wished I could have been there, and that was true, but admitting that in front of someone like Barbara seemed difficult. It was something most women would not understand.
“You were about to say you wished you had been, weren't you?”
“Yes.”
“Can't blame you, considering what you are.” She patted my cheek. “I'm sure you've had your chance.”
I smiled, uncertain as to her reference. How much detail had Claire passed on during their conversation? I mentally shrugged, deciding it didn't much matter. We arrived at the yacht club and I took her bag and two of Claire's and led the way down to the boat.
“I've had my chance,” I said. “Most likely will again.”
“It wouldn't be right, a man like you, if you didn't regret not being there. Still, I'm happy you were in another country when it happened. And Mr. Farrell didn't need your help, now did he?”
“No. He's a legend, I'm told. One of the last of the great gunfighters.”
She nodded. “I'm not surprised. It becomes you, you know. You're the kind of man a woman secretly wants to know. You're different than most other men, all animus, thoroughly existential and elemental. There aren't many men like you and Mr. Farrell and Edâ”
“That's for sure. Here's your bags,” said Thomas, dropping the last load.
“Thanks, Ed,” I said. “I was going to help, but got caught up in the conversation.”
“Sure. You ladies need anything else? No? You're staying put, Caine? You're not going anywhere?”
I nodded.
“Then I'm going home. See you in the morning.”
Ed went home and I spent the rest of the day getting Barbara, Juanita, and Claire settled and exploring my new boat.
It was strange to me, too.
Olympia
was new territory. I was her owner, yet I had no knowledge of her. I felt I was spending my wedding night with a chaperon. A crowd of chaperons. An association with a boat is similar to a relationship with a lover. You have to know her moods, her eccentricities. You need privacy with your lover to establish an intimacy. It's difficult, on that first night, to be with a lover if you share the bed with three other people.
That's what it was like, but we managed. I explored
Olympia
as well as I could while the others bedded down in their staterooms, staying up late to have my private time with her, exploring her hidden places, running my hand over smooth texture, letting my eyes rove wherever they wished. She was beautifully made.
I knew I had found a home.
“Are you sure you can get the address from your computer?” I asked. “Just by typing in the phone number?”
Adrian and I sat at the long table in Petersoft's conference room. We'd taken over the entire room, spreading papers and computer equipment over the table. I felt like an archaeologist invading a lost civilization. It was Saturday morning and corporate headquarters was vacant as a tomb. But some things were better. I was getting more cooperation than I'd received on my first visit.
“That's easy,” said Adrian. “They're a database on CD-ROM. Give me the number and I can access the billing address and the party to whom it's billed. Or do it the other way, give me the address and I can give you the telephone number. It's based on Paul's relational database. Put the information in as lists, or, in this case, import existing data lists, and you can bring it up any way you want.”
I'd finally gone through the material Adrian had given me, including the corporate phone-billing records. If I were looking into the background of anyone other than Peters, I'd have given up. The phones weren't identified to a specific workstation except for Peters's own private line. There were thousands of individual calls. Peters's private phone didn't go through the central computer, so it had a separate bill. Since he was the subject, I'd concentrated on his bills.
The number of calls was still voluminous. Adrian had agreed to meet me at the office to help me sort them out. He'd already eliminated the routine numbers of the company's suppliers and merchants. That left about eighty numbers that weren't identifiable. Quite a list, I thought.
“Tell me the number, I'll see if I can identify it.”
I read the first one, area code first.
Adrian typed it into his laptop. “Taurus Industries,” he read from the screen. “1443 Stanford Street, Denver, Colorado.”
“What do they do?”
“I don't know, but it sounds familiar. They may have been trying to sell us something. How many times does it appear?”
“Twice more. That's all.”
“That would be about right. I don't think there's anything to that one.”
“Okay. Here's another one.” I read him the number from the local 619 area code. It matched one of the numbers I'd found in his Day-Timer.
“It's a pet shop in North Park. I remember that. He was thinking about a puppy or something. It was supposed to be a surprise for Claire for Christmas. Then something happened, and he changed his mind.”
We went through the list, one by one, until we came to the end. We had seven private residences we couldn't identify except as to name, and the names were unfamiliar to Adrian. That included four of the Day-Timer numbers.
“Thank you for coming in on Saturday,” I said. “I'll run these down the old-fashioned way.”
“Go knocking on doors?”
“Yep. It's the only way sometimes. But you've helped. This would have taken me weeks.”
“No problem.” He started packing his computer away. “Anything else you need, just call me. I owe you an apology, anyway.”
“You don't have to.”
“I didn't mean to be rude the other day. There was a lot going on. We've got this terrific new product and we're just that close to getting it on the market, but nobody will take us seriously. It's a combination of hardware and software, something new to the company, but we can't get it off the ground. Suppliers have been stiffed, so they won't give us any more credit. Production's in the toilet.”
He closed and opened his fists, flexing his hands. “If we only had the money to operate, we could make much, much more. This is a winner. But we can't get anyone to talk to us.”
I looked around the room. On the paneled walls were framed software packages Petersoft, Ltd., sold to the public, and commendations from various federal agencies for software sold to the government. Petersoft had been a going concern. Now this young man was trying to hold it together. He was even looking to the future.
“Just tell me,” he said. “Are you going to get the money back from Paul? The rumor is he's still alive, that he ran away with the money.”
“I don't know if there's any money left, and I don't know for sure that Paul has it. But I'll find him if he's still alive. It's what I do. And I'm good at it. People just don't disappear. They leave traces. Everywhere I go, I find tracks.”
“You learn anything today?”
“About computers? Yes. I've never messed with them much before. That stuff's pretty handy. Will you show me how to get into it?”
“Sure. And if you think this stuff is good, wait until you get on the Net.” He shook his head sadly. “If you don't come up with the money pretty fast, I'll have some heavy time on my hands.” Adrian zipped the leather case around his laptop. It made a fairly small package. “I'll be happy to show you. I even think Paul's computer is still here. You want to look through it?”
“Sure.”
“Come on. It should be in his office.”
We went up the fire escape to the third floor and Adrian swore halfway up the stairs and started running. Alarmed, I followed.
“God damn it!”
“What is it?”
“I'm stupid! Paul had everything on his computer! He had a data management program that kept track of everything he did. It worked with his electronic Day-Timer! All the answers to your questions are in there!”
He unlocked the glass door and ran to Peters's desk. He opened all the drawers, but they were empty.
“Oh, shit. Those fucking feds must have taken it.”
“IRS?”
“Whoever. When they were here. They must have taken his laptop”
I nodded. “Well, good try, but no loss. I've still got those addresses.”
“What if the answer's not there?”
“We'll think of something else,” I said, although I didn't know what.
“I'm calling those feds first thing Monday morning, I want that computer back.”
“Don't lose sleep over it.”
“They didn't leave a receipt. Aren't they supposed to leave a receipt?”
“You have a business card?”
“In my desk.”
We jogged back down the stairs to his cubicle. His desk was piled high with papers, stacks leaning one way or the other. He rummaged through his pencil drawer. “I keep all my cards filed here.” Business cards were in no particular order, just thrown into the drawer. He picked up a stack and looked through them. When he couldn't find what he was looking for, he tossed them onto the chaos on his desk and went for another one.
“Here,” he said, after the fourth handful of cards. “I found it.” He handed me a white card with blue printing. It said OFFICE OF AUDIT MANAGEMENT. The great seal of the United States and a Washington, D.C., address and telephone number and the name BRADLEY JACOBY, AUDITOR were also imprinted on the card. I'd never heard of the Office of Audit Management. I had my doubts whether there even was an Office of Audit Management. And I'd never heard of even the most grasping of bureaucrats failing to leave a receipt. I mean, it was one more piece of paper, wasn't it?
“Impressive. I'll bet if you call that number, you'll get the Agriculture Department, or some such. But they'll never
have heard of the Office of Audit Management or Bradley Jacoby, Auditor.”
“You saying it's a phony?”
“Yes.”
“Then who was it?”
“Somebody like me, except smarter and a little more devious. Somebody looking for Paul Peters. And his missing seven million dollars.”
Adrian' suddenly snapped his fingers and said, “Phone Home.”
“What?” I wondered if Adrian was having had delusions of E.T.
“Phone Home. All of the company laptops have the Phone Home program. Laptops are easily stolen. Leave it in your car, set it down in a busy restaurant or airport, look the other way for a heartbeat, and it's gone. These things cost nearly six thousand dollars apiece, the ones we use, and the deductible is way up, so we found this little program and loaded it in all the company laptops.”
“What's it do?”
“The computer automatically calls the monitoring company once a week if it is hooked to a modem. If the telephone system has caller ID blocking, it turns it off, makes the call silently, without the modem noise, without turning on the computer, without alerting anybody. It tells the monitoring company where it is by identifying the telephone number it's using. Then it turns the caller ID blocking back on and shuts down.”
“What will that do?”
“Identifies the phone number it's calling from. You just saw it. From that, we can get the exact address.”
I liked the thought of that, kidnapped computers calling home, turning in their captors.
“I'll call the monitoring company. If whoever-it-is hooks up the modem, we'll know who has it for sure.”
“I'll still use the old-fashioned method, if you don't mind.”
“Go ahead. But if it takes more than three or four days, the computer will beat you.”
“I'm used to it,” I said. “Phone home. âHelp me! I've been kidnapped!'” I pictured a computer late at night sneaking its way through a darkened house to a telephone and whispering into the line. “I like that.”