“And offered to play Junior Detective.” Mort took another sip of coffee and grimaced. “This is cold. I’ll get us more.”
Lydia watched him return from the bar with the coffee pot. A fantasy of a loving father sharing coffee with his daughter on a winter’s afternoon danced through her mind.
“Listen up, Liddy.” Mort set the coffee pot down and took his seat. “Maybe you won’t be so eager to play Lois Lane after I bring you up to speed.”
Lydia listened as Mort told her the facts as he knew them. She feigned surprise when he told her about the voice synthesizer they found at Buchner’s apartment. Her distress was genuine when he explained what the police were able to pull off the device’s memory.
“So Fred Bastian was murdered?” she asked. “How?”
“Drug injected into his neck. Tough to trace, but we found it.” Mort gave Lydia a broad smile. “We really are good at what we do.”
Lydia’s stomach tightened. “And you’re confident Savannah killed him?”
Mort nodded. “Remember when I asked you if Savannah used the word ‘fix’ when she came to you?”
Lydia held her face in a bewildered pose. “Several times at each visit. I think I noted her obsessive use of the word in my chart.”
Mort related what he and his son had discovered about The Fixer. She struggled to control her mounting panic in response to his accurate, though incomplete, description of her assignments through the years. Her contact and payment methods had been exposed. They knew about her disguises. Dampness gathered at the roots of her hair as he described Martin’s cooperation with the police.
She was out of business. For that she was glad.
The question was, could she survive?
“This Fixer? You’re thinking it’s Savannah?”
“Maybe.” Mort pushed his mug aside. “I got two detectives running a background on her right now.”
Lydia leaned back in disbelief. Could it be this simple? Would Savannah’s suicide offer her a way out? She turned to Mort and allowed herself another fantasy. Maybe they’d have coffee again. She dug her fingernails deep into her palms and forced the pleasant thought out of her mind. She still had to find Private Number.
“What’s our next move?” she asked.
Mort shook his head and sighed. “I want you out of this. You’re forgetting something.”
She swallowed hard. “What’s that?”
“Savannah may be The Fixer.” He leaned forward and tapped his index finger on her wrist. “But I’m not buying for one minute that Wally was the brains behind this whole thing. It wasn’t those professors in Neuroscience, either. They’d never go so far as to have him murdered. My money says Buchner was used as a stooge. Until we find out by whom I don’t want you anywhere near Seattle. Remember, whoever hired Savannah knows you were her shrink.”
Lydia focused on Mort’s finger and wondered when the last time another human being touched her. Many put their hands on The Fixer; that was part of the job. But Mort’s touch was different. A worried father driving home an important point to a daughter he adored.
She shook her head clear. “I hope you’ll keep me posted.”
Mort’s smile was warm and wide. “I’ll let you know when the coast is clear. Oh, I almost forgot.” He fumbled in his pants pocket and pulled out a long strip of leather with a wooden whistle attached. “I made this for you.”
Lydia hesitated before reaching out for the gift. She felt her throat closing. She turned the small trinket over in her hands, examining the first gift she’d received in years.
“You made this?” The tightness in her voice was genuine. “For me?”
Mort leaned forward and pointed to the slot of the whistle. “See that little ball in there? It makes the whistle loud. You blow this baby and people will come running.”
“How’d you get it in there?” Lydia looked closely for a glued seam.
Mort shrugged. “Used to be all one piece. I just freed it. Bit by bit, whittling away until it broke free. Now it dances on its own.” His pride brought a smile to her face. “Go ahead. Try it.”
She touched the whistle to her lips and tasted the sweetness in the grain. She gave a furtive glance around the bar. He winked and nodded his encouragement. Lydia drew in a deep breath and blew.
It was louder than she expected. She dropped it from her mouth and Mort laughed as every head in the restaurant turned their way.
“You find yourself in trouble, Liddy, you blow that.” Mort’s voice was soft. “If there’s a way for me to get to you I will.”
Lydia felt the sting of tears rising. She stumbled for words, but none came.
“You know, I made one of these for my daughter years ago. Her name’s Allie.” Mort laid his hands on the table and kept his eyes down. “She’s about your age.”
Lydia watched Mort drift back to another time.
“Allie was a beautiful baby.” Mort smiled, lost in memory. “Smart, too.” He glanced up at Lydia. “Started taking piano at four and by the time she was seven she was playing Gershwin like she was born in a concert hall. She turned twenty-one two days after she graduated from college.”
Mort stared into middle space. “She was our shining jewel. But she was restless. No job could hold her interest. No man could, either. She was always looking for the next big thrill. It was like watching a Formula One racecar speeding straight for a cliff.”
He fidgeted in his seat and Lydia sensed a shame come over him. “A couple of years ago a buddy of mine from the department, Dave Frinell’s his name, heads the drug unit. He’s at our place having dinner with me and Edie when he gets a call that a house they’d been watching just received a major shipment. Heroin and cocaine both. Snitch looking for a get-out-of-jail-free card tells the cops the head of the west coast drug cartel will be there to oversee distribution. Needless to say Dave’s on his way out the door and I ask if I can tag along.” Mort gave a sad grimace to no one in particular. “I guess homicide’s not enough for me. Gotta be the big guy on the drug bust, too.
“Anyway, we leave Edie with the lasagna and head out.” Mort’s eyes glazed over. “We got there just behind the narcotics team. Everyone in the house was cuffed. All we had to do was go in and make sure the drugs were tagged and send the bad guys downtown for processing. But I needed to meet the head guy. I wanted a good story to tell Edie.”
Mort rubbed the base of this palm over his eyes. “You should have seen this dump, Liddy. Strung out junkies lying on couches smellier than a cat’s litter box. Tough guy assholes in handcuffs, making like they’re Al Pacino in ‘Scarface’. But then I see The Man.” Mort shook his head. “Looked like a San Francisco politician. Suit probably cost more than I make in a month. Standing in the middle of the room saying nothing except how he wants his lawyer. I shake my head and walk past him.”
Mort’s gaze returned to nowhere. “Maybe three steps behind Mr. High and Mighty Drug Czar is my Allie. Looking like a million dollars in some fancy dress I don’t know where the hell she got. She doesn’t see me at first and she’s got this scared look on her face. I’m standing there, stunned, and she finally turns.” Tears glazed Mort’s eyes. “For a second she looks glad to see me. Like she knows I’m there to help. But then her look changes. Maybe something she sees on my face, I don’t know. But she gets this look of shame. I can see it like it was yesterday.”
Mort cleared his throat. “So I play the by-the-book tough cop. Hope to scare some sense into her. Don’t even acknowledge I know her. Let the uniforms process her like she was any other drug whore.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “But she was my daughter.”
Mort shifted his weight in the booth. “I get home and tell Edie what’s happened and she loses it. Demands I go to the station and get her daughter. I hold firm. Tell Edie a night in jail may be just what Allie needs to realize you don’t go to drug dens looking for kicks.” He nodded his head three slow times. “Biggest fight my wife and I ever had. But I stood my ground. Yes sir, I won that battle.”
Lydia knew when someone needed to tell their story. She sat silently beside him.
“Next day I take my time getting to the precinct. Figure I’d let Allie get a taste of the jail’s cold toast and milk before I sign her out.” Mort looked Lydia in the eyes. “But when I got there, she was gone. Drug King’s lawyer bailed them both out an hour earlier.” Mort seemed unaware of where he was. “I haven’t seen her since. My Edie died without seeing her daughter again.”
Lydia let him be still in the memory. A few minutes of silence passed before she spoke.
“Why are you telling me this, Mort?”
He reached for a paper napkin and blew his nose. He gave a tentative smile. “Two reasons, I guess. First of all, to even the score.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What score?”
“Your file, Liddy. That should have been your story to tell, but I went digging and now I know something about you that you probably wish I didn’t.” Regret poured from his eyes. “You oughta know the same about me. We’re even.”
Lydia wondered if they were. “What’s the second reason?”
Mort reached out to touch the leather strap of the whistle Lydia held in her hand. “I let my daughter down when she needed me most. No one’s ever had your back. You blow that whistle, Liddy, and don’t ever doubt I’ll be there.”
Lydia sat at her kitchen table holding Mort’s whistle and tried to make sense of the day. Mort believed Savannah was The Fixer. After so many solitary years of self-protection, could she walk away? Was the normal life she fantasized about a possibility for her? Could that life include a friend like Mort? She looked out into the black night and brought her hand to her reflection in the window. She saw the fatigue in her face and the whisper of hope in her eyes.
“What about it, Liddy?” She tried out Mort’s nickname and found it comforting. “Should we join a book club?” A short giggle escaped into the empty kitchen.
She’d just turned on the flame beneath the tea kettle when her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. Lydia smiled as she reached for it, hoping it was Mort calling to say goodnight. She glanced at the screen and was jolted back to the reality she knew was hers alone.
Private Number was calling.
Lydia slid the phone open and waited for the synthesized menace to begin speaking.
“Time’s a-wasting, there Fixer.” The voice was George W. Bush, flawlessly reproduced, right down to the iconoclastic snicker. “Just called to say tick-tock, tick-tock. Heh heh heh. Y’all have a good evening and know that I’m working real hard watching over you.”
Lydia slid the phone closed without a response. She stared at the flame under the tea kettle and felt the heat of her foolish dreams climb up her spine. She’d been absurd to think things could be different. She was who she was and if she wanted to survive her fantasies needed to die.
The Fixer had an assignment.
Mort thanked the enthusiastic undergraduate who escorted him through the maze of hallways that led to Meredith Thornton’s office.
“No problem.” The boy who’d introduced himself as Bodie smiled and snapped a salute. “If you need anything, just look for a purple blazer. We’re The Ambassadors and we’re here to help.”
Mort watched the young man bounce down the hall and weighed whether Bodie was on medication or needed to be. He turned toward Thornton’s office just in time to have the door pulled open in front of him. A skinny man with a wealth of red hair grinned.
“Detective Grant. Nice to see you again.” The man waved him in to a large reception room. “I’m Carl Snelling? Executive Vice Provost? We met at Fred Bastian’s? President Thornton and I were with Bradley Wells?”
Mort experienced the same jolt of disgust he had upon their first meeting. “Will you be joining our discussion, Mr. Snelling?”
Snelling’s smile melted. “Actually, it’s Dr. Snelling. Or Executive Provost Snelling if you want a mouthful. And of course I’ll be joining you.” Snelling turned to a gray-haired woman sitting behind a desk tucked a discrete distance away. “Angela, let President Thornton know our guest is here.” He turned back to Mort. “Can I have Angela fetch you anything, Detective? Coffee? Mineral water?”
Mort held Snelling’s gaze for several heartbeats before turning a warm smile to the grandmotherly woman in the corner. “I require no fetching, Angela. Thanks, though.” He returned his focus to Snelling, said nothing, and enjoyed the bureaucrat’s discomfort so much he was disappointed when Meredith Thornton opened her office door and asked them both to come in.
Mort settled into a chair opposite the sofa where the university president sat. Snelling rested his backside against her enormous hand carved desk and tried to look relaxed.
“I appreciate you coming, Detective.” Thornton wore a navy blue dress with matching shoes. She rearranged an intricately patterned shawl over her shoulders and brushed her hair behind her left ear. “I trust you have an update on Professor Bastian’s death. We’d of course be interested in hearing any leads you have before the media does.”
Mort watched Snelling’s slow nod and assumed he was trying to look useful.
“I didn’t come here to update you,” Mort paused. “What should I call you, by the way? Folks around here seem to be touchy about titles.”
He was happy to see the first genuine smile of the morning. “Yes, Detective.” Her grey eyes twinkled and Mort saw ten years disappear from her face. “A university runs on its hierarchy, I’m afraid. Please, call me Meredith.” She tilted her head to the man leaning against her desk. “And this is Carl. Let me know if he says anything different.”
Mort gave Snelling a wink and a grin. “Old Carl and I are off to a fine start, Meredith.” He crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair. “What can you tell me about Bastian’s research?”
Meredith focused immediately. “You think his work with animals led to his death?”
“Bastian worked with monkeys and dogs, I understand?” Mort watched her face.
Meredith nodded. “And rats, of course. Animal research is a necessary piece of meaningful advancement, Detective. His labs were overseen by both university and federal regulatory agencies. I can assure you any animal in Bastian’s lab was treated properly.”