The Pandora Directive: A Tex Murphy Novel (15 page)

In the meantime, I had other pressing business. I thanked Louie for his advice and French toast, not necessarily in that order, then reminded him about the things Chelsee had left for me. We went up to his apartment. I put Malloy’s things back into the suitcase and closed it up. The two Paperbacks, the photos, and the computer disk were in my coat. When I finished, Louie handed me a bank card, Lucas Pernell’s business card, and a Pez dispenser.

“Thank God. I thought I’d lost this.” I held up by Spiderman Pez shooter.

Louie admired it. “Good Thing she found it.”

I pocketed the items. “Are you sure this is all? I mean, there wasn’t a box of any kind, was there?”

Louie shook his head. “No That’s all of it.”

“All right. I’ve got to get a move on. Do you mind if I leave my suitcase here?”

“Of course not, Murph. You can leave your things and stay as long as you like.”

“I appreciate it. So long, Louie.”

I left through the back door in the kitchen. It was fairly early in the evening, but it was already quite dark. I walked up the alley behind the Brew & Stew to the back of the Ritz. I had to get into my office for several reasons, even if the place was being staked out by the NSA. As long as no one was actually inside my office, I was pretty sure I could in and out without being seen. I peeked into the alley that ran alongside the Ritz and out to Chandler Avenue. There was no one in sight. I hurried across to the back of the Ritz and climbed a pipe that ran down from the roof. It was familiar and sturdy and ran right by the window at the back of my apartment. I peered through my window. It was pitch black inside. Holding onto the pipe precariously with the one hand, I was able to slide the window open.

Seconds later, despite a likely hernia, I was in my apartment. Closing the window behind me, I limped across the room. Suddenly, a glimmer of light swept under the door to my office. I froze. For at least a full minute I stood like a post, ears straining. Apparently the intruder hadn’t heard me enter. The light flashed again past the door. I moved quietly, until my hand wrapped around the doorknob. Tensing my muscles and ignoring a painful hernial twinge, I threw open the door. to

A masked figure whirled around, and immediately the flashlight went out. I lunged in the direction of the trespasser, but moved too slowly. Hitting what must have been one of my chairs, I stumbled and fell to the floor. To my right, the door to the fire escape flew open, and the intruder was gone like a shadow. By the time I limped to the door, no one was in sight.

I closed the door and waited for my eyes to readjust to the darkness. Whoever had been in my office, it probably wasn’t the NSA. The Feds had no reason to be secretive. Besides, an NSA agent would have just shot me, not run away. So who was it? This was a rough part of town, but I doubted that it had been a run-of-the-mill breakin. My office just wasn’t the kind of place someone would want to rob. Whoever had broken in had to be connected to the Malloy case. The only thing I knew for sure was that, even though the thief probably wasn’t NSA, the agency was watching. And they had one eye on me and one eye on the clock. It was a little after 8pm — I had less than fourteen hours left… and counting. I decided to leave the lights off.

The office was already trashed from before. I didn’t get a good look at the intruder, but I hadn’t seen anything except a flashlight in his hands. Regardless, there was nothing relevant to be found here. The box was either still at Chelsee’s apartment, or she’d taken it with her. I was inclined to believe that she’d left it. Otherwise she probably would have mentioned in her note that she had taken it. Now I’d have to search her place to find the box. Why did I have to do everything the hard way?

My first priority was to look at the disk I found in Malloy’s suitcase. I crept to my computer and turned it on. When it finished booting, I stuck the disk in and ran it. A message appeared on the screen: CONTENTS ENCRYPTED. PLEASE ENTER AUTHORISATION CODE. I wasn’t surprised, but it certainly was a pain. Without a hope in the world, I began typing in possible passwords. THOMAS, MALLOY, REGAN, ROSWELL, FITZPATRICK, BLUE BOOK, BLUEPRINT, PEKING, SPACESHIP, 1984, ORWELL. Everything possible that I could think of. Nothing worked. Frustrated, I popped the disk out and shut down the computer.

As I slid the disk into my coat pocket, I felt the paperback books and remembered the e-mail address. I crossed the room to my modem. To my horror, it was now in three easy to carry pieces, undoubtedly courtesy of the NSA thugs. How could they? What had this little gadget ever done to them? Now I was going to have to borrow someone else’s modem.

The voice messaging unit had a short message from Regan Madsen, asking me to call her as soon as possible. The second message was from my broker, telling me he had some bad news about my 401K dividends. The last thing I needed to hear about. The third message was from Chelsee, telling me she had arrived and asked me if I’d gotten the note. She left a number, which I jotted down in a notebook.

The final thing I needed to do was purely hygienic. I changed my clothes and grabbed my toothbrush, a bottle of aftershave, and my deodorant. Being manly doesn’t mean you have to smell like it. I left the way I came in.

I had one more visit to pay before leaving Chandler Avenue. Not wanting to risk going in the front, I walked to the side door of the Fuchsia Flamingo and knocked. After knocking again, the door opened a crack. A large, ugly bouncer, not Leach, stared down at me.

“This ain’t the entrance, pal. Go around front.”

I smiled pleasantly. “I don’t want to come in. I need to speak to Gus Leach, please.”

“Mr Leach is working up front. Go around and talk to him there.”

“I need to talk to him here.”

The trolls voice went up a notch. “You tryin’ to be stupid? Go around front.”

“Look, friend. I don’t want to make trouble, but I have something extremely important to tell Gus. It’s a private matter, and we need to discuss it here. If you don’t mind.”

The bouncer opened the door and moved his massive frame into the just slightly larger door frame. “I say you can’t come in. You wanna make trouble?” took a step back, smiling pleasantly. “I’d rather not, but I really have to see Gus. I’d be happy to pay you for your efforts.”

With startling quickness, the giant troll grabbed the lapel of my overcoat. “Okay, that does it.”

The bouncer’s fist came at me. I jerked my head, causing his punch to glance off. It was like being hit in the face by a baseball instead of a bowling ball. I struggled like a gazelle in the jaws of a lion.

After the third punch, I was about to go limp and play dead when I heard Leach’s voice. “Let go of him, Hoss.”

The pavement slammed into my head. Through the birds, stars, and other metaphorical light flashes, I made out Leach pulling me to my feet.

“You sure have a way with people, don’t you Murphy?”

I was too busy focusing to respond.

“So what are you doing trying to get in the side door?”

Slowly, my speech returned to normal. I recounted to Leach what had happened with Malloy. Leach’s reaction was subdued, but I could see that the news of Malloy’s death affected him deeply. I want to find out more about what their relationship had been, but time was golden. I’d come to deliver the news and the cash I’d found, no more. After a moment of silence, Leach thanked me for letting him know. He took the money from me and said he would tell Emily later. I asked if I could come back at another time and ask a few more questions. Leach nodded and went back into the club.

Still woozy, I bent down and brushed gravel off my trousers and overcoat. There was a neat little tear on the side of my left pant leg. Damn it. I’d just changed.

I walked back down the alley, behind the Ritz, the Electronics Shop, and the Brew & Stew, to my speeder. As I stepped out of the shadows and into the parking lot, my nose caught a familiar scent, and voice startled me.

“A lovely evening.”

Gordon Fitzpatrick was leaning against a brick wall, a Cubana nestled flavourfully between his index and middle fingers.

“It certainly is.”

Fitzpatrick took a puff of his cigar. “I believe it’s time we had a talk, Mr Murphy.”

“It’s an unfortunate turn of events.”

I sat quietly, smoking and watching Fitzpatrick’s furrowed face. He looked off, someplace far away, and played absently with a ring on his right hand. “Extremely unfortunate.”

I flicked an ash off my Cubana and surveyed Fitzpatrick’s hotel suite. I’d heard that the Savoy was deluxe, but seeing was believing.

Fitzpatrick swung his gaze around to me and mustered a meagre smile. “Well, I suppose that brings our partnership to an end. What do I owe you?”

“I think you owe me some details.”

The old man kept his eyes on me, but turned his head slightly and threw me a quizzical look. “Details?”

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “Look, Mr Fitzpatrick, Malloy was on to something big. And he was gonna spill the details to me just before someone popped in and turned him into corkboard. Not only am I interested in finding out what Malloy was going to tell me, but I also feel like I owe it to him to find out who killed him and why.”

I leaned back in my chair and prepared to take another puff. “I’m going to stay on the case for a while longer, and, to be honest, I think you can give me some helpful information.”

I seemed to have taken Fitzpatrick by surprise. His eyes were fixed on me. “There is no reason for you to get involved. As you saw, just being around Malloy was perilous. Being entangled in his business would undoubtedly prove to be just as treacherous. A word of advice, Mr Murphy: take the money and walk away.”

He was sincere, but it was a wasted effort.

“It’s too late. I’m already involved.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, counting last night, I’ve had three little incidents in the past week that could have left me collecting dust on a cold slab.” I detected a hint of bitterness in my own voice. Talking about my own death always made me testy. “It may be my quintessential male ‘screw it or kill it’ mentality, but I have a hard time turning the other cheek.”

“If you’re looking for revenge, I think it likely that you’ll end up on that cold slab after all.”

“It’s not revenge. It’s the… thrill of the hunt.”

“You located Malloy. The hunt is over. Let me pay you, then go back to your life.”

“I’m not talking about Malloy. I’m talking about the boxes.”

Fitzpatrick was taken aback. It wasn’t clear whether he was startled or just confused. I wanted to know which one it was. He turned his face away and examined the dark corners of the room. Like someone breaking a new year’s resolution, he reached for his ring and began fiddling with it again. After some time, he moved his eyes back to me, then to the glass sitting on the arm rest of my chair. “More bourbon?”

I nodded and handed him the empty glass. Fitzpatrick rose slowly and walked to the table on the far side of the room. He spoke over his shoulder. “If you insist on becoming involved, I must be certain that you can be trusted and relied upon. If my suspicions are confirmed, we will be up against formidable opposition.”

Fitzpatrick turned to face me and replaced the stopper in the bourbon decanter. “This is not something you can dabble in. If you want him, I must insist on complete commitment.”

“I’ve never had trouble committing — except, of course, to women. Count me in, one hundred per cent.”

He returned with a healthy serving of straight bourbon. “I’ll warn you at the outset: I don’t know more than I’ve told you about Malloy’s recent activities. I knew him quite well many years ago, but as I told you, we didn’t stay in touch. I received an anonymous message some time ago, which led me to believe that he might be in danger.”

“You don’t know who would have sent the message?”

Fitzpatrick shrugged. My bet was that he had a few guesses. “It may have been Malloy himself, though I don’t know how he would have located me. But that’s beside the point. All I have to go on is a vague theory as to why Malloy’s life was in jeopardy, based on what I knew about his work years ago.”

“Malloy told me a little about his work of the Blueprint project.”

“Good. That will save some explaining, though you may then already know a lot of what I know.”

“Well, go ahead. I’ll stop you if I’ve heard anything before.”

He took a sip of tea and cleared his throat. “I met Thomas Malloy in China, during the winter of 2002. He was doing translation work for the Government. I happened to be living in Peking at the time. The two of us became friends. After several years, Malloy began to confide in me about some of his confidential interests, especially Project Blueprint. Did he mention his work with the alien symbols?”

I nodded. “I think that some of the stuff I recovered is related to his research with the symbols.”

“I’m eager to see what you found.” Fitzpatrick’s eyes gleamed.

“We’ll examine that as soon as possible. At any rate, Malloy showed me some of the work he’d done. He felt confident that he’d deciphered some of the hieroglyphics, but he was still far from a significant breakthrough. What little he believed he had translated, however, was fascinating. His interpretation of one section seemed to refer to another spacecraft. Whether the second ship had come before the one in the Roswell crash, or was to follow, Malloy didn’t know.”

“Pardon my ignorance, but that doesn’t sound like the kind of information that would get someone killed.”

Fitzpatrick considered for a moment. “He was at the very beginning of the deciphering process. Who knows what else he might have discovered. Maybe the notebooks will help us follow his trail. Now, I’ve told you what I know. Tell me what you’ve learned. You mentioned something about a box.”

Starting from the beginning, I explained what happened with Emily Sue Patterson, then my run in with Jackson Cross. At the mention of the NSA, a concerned look passed over Fitzpatrick’s face. I then told him about finding the box. For the time being, I left out Regan Madsen and the fact that she said she had a box like the one I’d recovered. I finished the story and drained the bourbon.