Shoofly Pie & Chop Shop (59 page)

“Hey, Bob,” he called to a man at a computer screen, snatching the appellation from a desktop nameplate.

“Hi, Jenny. Great sweater,” he smiled at a passing woman. If you can’t look familiar to them, he thought, make them think they look familiar to you. Nick could fake it with the best of them, but he knew this is where his eyes worked against him; the guy with the funny glasses never blends in. It was only a matter of time before someone called his bluff.

He moved quickly through the maze of cubicles and file cabinets, seeking the nerve center of the office, following his instincts like a blowfly tracing the scent of blood in the air. The CEO of PharmaGen would not have a cubicle; he would enjoy the privilege of an enclosed office. Tucker Truett would have a window; not just a window, a corner window; and not just any corner window, but the window with the best panorama of downtown Pittsburgh. Nick headed directly for the opposite corner, where a break in the surrounding buildings allowed an impressive overlook of the Allegheny River and PNC Park. He stopped at the administrative assistant’s desk directly in front of the closed door.

“Is he in?” Nick said casually.

The young man cocked his head and squinted at Nick. “And you would be—”

“Just a quick question. I know he’s busy today.”

At that moment, a security guard hustled up behind Nick, with an anxious Kelli following a safe distance behind. Inquisitive coworkers began to fill in behind them, seeking the source of the disturbance. The security guard stepped squarely in front of Nick, then craned his neck backward to get the full effect of Nick’s imposing spectacles.

“Can I help you
sir,
” he said, the last word dropping like a flatiron. It wasn’t a question at all; it was a shot across the bow.

“I’m a potential investor,” Nick said. “I had a couple of questions Kelli couldn’t answer, so she suggested I take them up with Mr. Truett.”

The guard glanced over Nick’s shoulder; Kelli vigorously shook her head.

“I only need a minute,” Nick said. “What’s the big deal?”

“Do you have an appointment?” the guard said, folding his arms.

“For one simple question? He said if I ever had a question, I should just drop by.”

“You’re acquainted with Mr. Truett?”

“With Tuck? I’ve known him for years.”

There was a long pause.

“No one calls him ‘Tuck,’ ” the guard growled. “No one. Ever.”

Nick nodded. “I thought that was probably over the top—but it was worth a try. Are you required to throw me out, or can I walk?”

The guard pointed firmly to the door. Nick turned to the crowd of onlookers and handed one of them the coffee mug. “If you people can find a variant in thirty thousand genes, why can’t you make a decent cup of coffee?”

The crowd shuffled aside as he passed through.

“I’ll be out of the office today, Bob,” he called back. “Tell Jenny I meant what I said about the sweater.”

This isn’t how I thought I’d be spending the Fourth of July,” Riley said.

Nick pulled hard on the oars, urging the skiff silently forward on the black waters of the Allegheny River. Each time he leaned back and pulled, Riley watched the lights of the city flash blue or white or yellow off the face of his glasses. The Boardwalk Marina disappeared into the shadows behind them, and they passed under the lights of the Sixth Street Bridge and out into the darkness of the river.

“Where
did
you expect to be on the Fourth of July?”

Riley shrugged. “Not on a rowboat in the middle of the Allegheny, that’s for sure. Maybe up on Mount Washington, standing on the platform at the top of the incline, watching the fireworks at the Point.”

“Then this is a definite improvement. You’re going to have the best view of the fireworks you’ve ever seen.”

Two hundred yards downstream, a fleet of boats large and small basked in the afterglow of the Bucs-Astros game earlier that day at PNC Park, dotting the river like a gaggle of geese. Within the hour the lights would die entirely, and the annual Fourth of July fireworks display would erupt from a series of barges opposite the Point at the mouth of the Ohio River. Nick pulled for the shadowy flotilla.

“That platform on top of Mount Washington,” Nick said. “Did you expect to be there alone, or with someone else?”

“What?”

“You know, to watch the fireworks.”

“With someone else, of course.”

Nick said nothing for a minute. “Someone else like a boyfriend, or someone else like a family member?”

“Yes,” she said. “Those would be the options.”

Riley looked down at her feet. A half-inch of water puddled in the bottom of the boat, sloshing toward her shoes each time the oars caught the water and the boat dipped forward. She lifted her feet; they were her newest shoes, patent-leather slides, and she was not about to get them wet. She smoothed the front of her black silk spaghetti-strap dress, straightened her pearls, and shifted to the exact center of the bench. She picked up her beaded purse and set it on her lap, glancing over the side of the boat at the inky water.

“Nick, why this fixation on PharmaGen? Why are we going to so much trouble just to meet Tucker Truett?”

“You said you were interested in anomalies. As far as we know, PharmaGen is the only other anomaly in Lassiter’s life. A quarter of a million invested in one company in a single year—don’t you find that interesting?”

“So he’s a lousy investor. What does that have to do with PharmaGen?”

“I can see why Lassiter might be interested in PharmaGen—but why is PharmaGen interested in Lassiter? A quarter of a million is a lot of money to your boss, but it’s chump change to a group like PharmaGen. This is a high-stakes game; you don’t sit down at this table unless you’ve got
millions.
Yet PharmaGen is letting Lassiter in on the ground floor. I’d like to know why. Besides,” he said, filling his lungs with the night air, “this is a lot more fun than waiting for something to show up on the spyware.”

“Is this your idea of fun?”

“Cheer up,” Nick said. “You could have been stuck with some loser up on Mount Washington.”

Riley turned and peered down the river. “Where is this yacht?”

“We can’t miss it. It’s seventy feet long, and it says
PharmaGen
across the stern. They say it’s the biggest thing on the river from here to Cincinnati. Truett keeps it up at the Fox Chapel Yacht Club.”

“Why couldn’t we meet them at Fox Chapel and sail down together? I feel like an idiot rowing around in this little dinghy.”

Nick said nothing.

Riley narrowed her eyes. “Nick—if there’s something you haven’t told me, this would be a good time.”

“Did you know that it’s exactly 443 feet, 4 inches from home plate to the river? A strong left-hander can reach the water on the fly—Daryle Ward did it just last year. If we had come earlier, and if we were in just the right spot—”

“Nick.”

“You’re a very suspicious person,” Nick said. “It’s very unflattering.”

“I’m a pathologist. I’m paid to be suspicious. You’re
here
because I’m suspicious.”

“You have a point there.”

They were approaching the rust-yellow trusses of the Roberto Clemente Bridge now, and the stadium loomed large on their right. Just past the bridge was the first circle of boats, the smaller craft dotting the perimeter of the flotilla like cruisers around ships of war. They could hear the rising sound of music and laughter now, and they could make out individual forms against the glowing deck lights.

“You told me we would spend the evening on Tucker Truett’s corporate yacht,” Riley said. “You told me you had arranged a
meeting with Truett, and that we would get the chance to ask some questions about PharmaGen, and maybe get some insight into Dr. Lassiter’s involvement.”

“All true. The rest is just details.”

“I want to hear the details.”

Nick let out a heavy sigh. “OK,” he said, “I arranged a meeting with Truett, but … he didn’t exactly arrange a meeting with me.”

“Oh, Nick. Oh, Nick, please … don’t tell me that Truett doesn’t know we’re coming.”

“What’s a party without a few unexpected guests?”

Riley’s jaw dropped. “You lied to me! You said we were invited to spend the evening on his yacht!”

“Actually, I said that we were
going
to spend the evening on his yacht. And we are—we just have to figure out how to get on his yacht.”

They passed the first of the boats now, and Nick nodded a friendly “Evening” to the captain and his crew of one. He rowed a little closer than necessary to the next boat, hoping to keep Riley’s temper in check. Like a lighthouse, her expression flashed between forced smiles at fellow seafarers and furious glances at Nick.

“Turn the boat around. Turn it around
right now!
”

“After we’ve come all this way? Come on, the hard part’s over. We’re almost there. See?”

As they passed the last row of medium-sized sport cruisers, they saw it. There, a respectful distance away, the gleaming hull of the
PharmaGen
stabbed up through the dark water like a white bowie knife. Its hull was so sleek and angular that it appeared to be in motion even at rest. A shining stainless steel railing outlined the contour of the deck from the tip of the bow to the stern. Three elliptical portholes poured orange light from the staterooms below deck, and a half-dozen extremely well-styled figures held champagne flutes and chatted on the sun pad and aft deck.

“Nick, we can’t just row up and knock on the side of the boat!”

“That would be silly, now, wouldn’t it?”

“You must have
some
kind of plan.”

“Of course I have a plan. I wouldn’t row all the way out here without a plan.”

She waited for him to continue, but he said nothing. They
were almost alongside the boat now. Riley looked up at the yacht towering above them; she saw cream-colored skin showing through the draped back of a scarlet evening gown. She turned back to Nick.

“You’re going to humiliate me, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to get you on the boat,” Nick said. “Whether or not you’re humiliated is up to you.”

She gave him a searing stare.

“Let’s look at this thing logically,” he said. “As you pointed out, we can’t just knock on the side of the boat. And we can’t very well throw grappling hooks over the side and climb aboard either. One way or the other, they have to invite us to join them. Now I asked myself, what would make them do that? There are boats all around here, and no one’s inviting them to join the party. And then it occurred to me: What if we were in distress? It’s the first rule of the sea: Boaters always stop to help others in distress.”

“What kind of distress? You mean like losing an oar?”

“That hardly qualifies as ‘distress.’ They could just hand us a spare oar.”

“What are we supposed to do, set the boat on fire?”

“A fire? On a boat with no engine? That makes sense. ‘Excuse me, can you help us out? We seem to have spontaneously combusted here.’”

“Then what?”

“It has to be genuine
distress.
Our situation has to be desperate, immediate, irreversible.”

“Nick—are you suggesting that we jump in the water?”

“Of course not—If we fell in the water, we could climb right back into the boat again. Unless, of course, the boat wasn’t here anymore.”

Riley looked at him in horror. “Nick, do you know what you’re saying?”

He nodded. “You’re going to lose your fifty-dollar deposit at the marina.”

For the first time, Riley looked at Nick’s clothing. He wore a beaten pair of loafers broken down toward the insteps, and he had no socks. He wore a crumpled pair of khakis and a faded navy sports coat that showed white threads around the sleeves and collar.

“Look at you! The water would
improve
that outfit! But look at me—I’m wearing silk! Do you have any idea what this thing would look like wet?”

“It’ll give us just the right touch of pathos. After all, who would help us if we fell in in our swimsuits? It’s only fifty yards to shore.”

“Turn the boat around,” she demanded.

Nick released the oars, folded his arms across his chest, and cocked his head to one side. “I think it’s time for my ‘Commitment’ speech,” he said. “Whose cause is this anyway? Who’s helping who here? How is it that I seem to be more committed to your cause than you are?”

“I am committed—but not like this. There must be other options.”

“I’m all ears.”

“We can meet with Truett some other way.”

“How? I tried to make an actual appointment—not a chance, unless you’ve got an extra million dollars in your back pocket. I tried to drop in on him yesterday morning—he’s got tighter security than the governor. We have to catch him when he’s standing still, and a man like that is rarely standing still—except when he’s on this boat, where he was certain to be on the Fourth of July. So here we are, and there he is. What do you want to do, Riley? It’s your call.”

She said nothing.

“OK,” Nick said, “I didn’t want to have to resort to this, but you leave me no choice. I
dare
you, Riley. You gutless pretender, I double-dog
dare
you.”