Small Bytes

by Robert Germaux

  On my way home, I thought about whether we should have called the cops about the attack. There didn’t seem to be much reason to, since we had no idea who Dee-Dee’s attacker was, and there was no hard evidence connecting him to Manny or Elias, although I was certain that the two of them were behind this.

  So I was back to waiting for Irv to get inside the disc.

  Meanwhile, I had to get ready to party-hearty.

  Chapter 42

  At precisely seven o’clock that evening, I buzzed Laura Fleming’s apartment from the lobby of her building. Her voice drifted down to me along the electronic pathways.

  “I like a punctual partygoer,” she said, as she buzzed me in.

  I had chosen to wear navy casual slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt with a button-down collar, along with Rockport soft leather walking shoes in a neutral shade. When Laura opened her door, I suddenly felt very underdressed. At first glance, she appeared to be wearing the same outfit she’d worn to the Frick the previous Saturday.

  “Geez, I’m sorry, Laura,” I said. “I thought this was a casual affair.”

  “It is,” she said, “and you look great. C’mon in.”

  She stepped back to allow me to enter. As I walked into her apartment, I saw that the only lights came from a number of candles spaced around the living room, and I heard soft piano music coming from her CD unit.

  “Why don’t you have a seat on the sofa, Jeremy?” she said, so I did.

  She stood in front of me. It was the same tan outfit she’d worn to the Frick. The short skirt and fitted jacket, the matching high-heeled pumps. Tonight, though, she didn’t seem to be wearing the ivory shell under the jacket, although she did have the thin strand of pearls around her neck.

  “Last Saturday night didn’t end exactly the way it should have,” she said, “so I thought we’d sort of recreate the situation and see if we could do a little better. Are you, uh, up for that?”

  There was a sexy lilt to her voice, and there was something about her eyes, too, a kind of merriment, as though she knew something the rest of us hadn’t quite figured out yet.

  “I’ve always been big on revisionist history,” I told her.

  “Good,” she said. “Would you like some champagne?”

  I said I would, and she turned and walked over to her dining room table, where I saw she had a bottle of champagne chilling in an ice bucket. I enjoyed watching her walk around, and I was pretty sure that was her intent. She expertly opened the bottle, poured two glasses, and then sashayed back over to me. She stood right in front of me again, this time a little closer, so that only a few inches separated us. She handed me some champagne and said, “Let’s see now, the last time you saw me in this outfit, I believe I took off the jacket. Why don’t we begin our revising by changing that routine just a bit.”

  She handed me her glass to hold and then unzipped her skirt and let it drop to the floor. She bent over and picked up the skirt and tossed it aside. Then she straightened up again and put her hands on her hips. The sight of her in the short, fitted jacket, high heels, and sheer pantyhose had quite an effect on me.

  “How am I doing so far?” she asked.

  I tried to say something like “Great,” but the sound that came out of my mouth was more akin to some sort of croaking noise.

  Laura laughed and said, “I’ll take that to be an indication of approval.”

  “Definitely,” I said. “Absolutely, positively, definitely.”

  “Well,” she said, “since I’ve taken off the skirt, I might as well . . .” And she unbuttoned the jacket and took it off and tossed it on top of the skirt. She stood there with the pearls falling down around her breasts, which were being held in place, barely, by a very lacy-looking flowered bra. Then she leaned forward, with her hands on the sofa on either side of me, her hair, which wasn’t swept back tonight, cascading down around my face. I could smell her perfume, the same fragrance she’d had on last Saturday night. It was a good scent for her.

  “Last Saturday,” she said, “I think I was sitting next to you, so perhaps that’s the next thing we should revise.” She leaned all the way forward and straddled me, one leg on either side. Her face was almost touching mine now.

  “Is this better?” she asked.

  “Absolutely, positively, definitely,” I said.

  “You know what?” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “Perhaps we can hold off on the champagne until a little later. What do you think?” And here her tongue flicked out and grazed my lips. Then she moved even closer to me, so that there was no space between our bodies at all. Her tongue flicked again, this time into my right ear.

  “If you’d do something with these glasses,” I told her, “I could get into the game, as it were.”

  She laughed again, sat up just a little, and took the glasses from my hands. Then she twisted around slightly and placed them on the end table next to the sofa. The twisting motion went over very big with me.

  She leaned back into me and we kissed. It was one of those long, lingering kisses, full of the promise of many more to come. When we finally broke apart, those eyes were staring right at mine.

  “Jeremy, I just thought of something else we didn’t do on Saturday night.”

  I smiled.

  “Besides that, I mean,” she grinned. “You haven’t seen my bedroom.” She snuggled even closer to me, and her lips caressed mine as she continued. “Would you like to see my bedroom? There’s a bed in there.”

  Enough is enough.

  I stood up, holding her as I did. She giggled as I turned her around so that I was carrying her in both arms. Then I walked down the hallway to her bedroom. When we got there, I saw that it, too, was lighted by several candles, and the same piano music was playing softly from speakers in the corners of the room.

  In a very soft voice, almost a purr, she pointed and said, “There’s the bed.”

  Two minutes later, we were in that bed, lying side by side, naked.

  “You know,” she said, “at the end of each week, if the children in my kindergarten class have been good, I give them stickers.”

  Then, after a pause, during which her body began to press up against mine, she asked, “Have you been good this week, Jeremy?”

  “I certainly hope so,” I replied.

  “Wonderful,” she said. “Now, with the children, I put the stickers on the backs of their hands. I was thinking that you deserve a sticker this week, but your hands . . . umm . . . seem to be occupied at the moment . . . oh, my, yes . . . so maybe I could find somewhere else to put your sticker.”

  The fingers of her right hand touched my cheek and drifted slowly down across my lips.

  “Let’s see,” she said. “I could put a sticker here.”

  “Hm-mmm.”

  Then her hand moved further and began tracing lazy circles on my chest.

  “Or perhaps here.”

  “Hm-mmm.”

  “Or,” she murmured as her hand went even further down my body, “maybe . . . here.”

  Apparently, I had been very good that week.

  Chapter 43

  Some time later, we fell asleep in each other’s arms. There was no question or awkwardness about my spending the night. We both knew we’d be together the next morning. I woke up around one o’clock and went into the bathroom, and when I climbed back into bed, Laura turned so that her back was to me and she moved closer and we spooned. I don’t know if she was even fully awake at the time. Her eyes never opened, but the way we fit together seemed more natural to me than anything else I’d ever experienced in my life. I awoke once more, this time at five, and when I opened my eyes, Laura was lying on her side facing me, those eyes staring into mine with an intensity that was almost overpowering.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi. Been awake long?” I asked.

  “Just a little while. I’ve been watching you.”

  “Really? See anything interesting?”

  “
Mostly you were just lying there, although a minute ago, I put my hand on you, and that seemed to provoke a response.”

  “That probably explains the rather naughty dream I had just before I woke up.”

  “Probably,” she said. Her face was very close to mine, and as I looked at her, for the first time in my life, I fully understood what it meant to lose oneself in another person’s eyes.

  “Jeremy,” she said, “I’m only going to say this once. I don’t think I could go through another situation like the one with David . . .”

  I put a finger up to her lips to quiet her.

  “Somebody recently told me that I wasn’t this David person, and that somebody never said anything truer in her life.”

  She smiled then, and nodded.

  “Where did you say you touched me?” I asked.

  “I didn’t,” she said, and her smile got wider. “But I believe a little demonstration might be arranged.” Her hand glided over to me. “Or,” she said, “perhaps not so little.” Then, seemingly without effort, suddenly she was on top of me, our bodies touching everywhere. And now that smile had just a touch of wicked to it.

  * * *

  Laura had an extra toothbrush she gave me, and she also let me use her deodorant. I applied it quickly and without looking at the colorful collection of lilies on the container, so I’m pretty sure I didn’t take too big a drop on the machometer. I had to put on the same clothes I’d worn the night before, but then I hadn’t had them on all that long.

  We drove to Monroeville Mall and held hands as we walked around and window-shopped. A little after noon, we had lunch at a place called the American Café. It was nice. Of course, with Laura sitting across from me, I’d have thought a place called Barf It Up was nice.

  After lunch, we walked some more until she said she had to go home because a friend of hers was dropping her four-year-old off for Laura to babysit that night. When we got to the lobby of her building, I put my arms around her.

  “I’ll call you,” I said. “Soon.”

  “I know,” she said. Then she stretched up and kissed me lightly on the lips, smiled that smile, turned and walked up to the elevator. I watched her all the way, and when the elevator door closed, I finally exhaled.

  * * *

  When I got home, there were three messages on my machine. One from Dennis, telling me they still hadn’t found Manny, one from an earnest young woman who apparently believed the world would be a much better place if only I would switch to Sprint, and one from Irv, telling me he had cracked Terry Pendleton’s password.

  “Legal Eagle,” Irv said, as he settled into the overstuffed chair in my living room. When I called him, he’d offered to stop by on his way to Starbucks. He was working the late shift. “Sorry I took so long, but I had a lot of senior theses to grade. God, these kids don’t know an adverb from their assholes. Anyway, I finally sat down yesterday morning at the Monster and got serious with your disc. By the way, how come you didn’t call me back until this afternoon?”

  “I was otherwise occupied last night,” I said.

  “A sleepover, huh?” he grinned. “Good for you, JB.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “What’s the Monster?”

  “Oh, that’s what we call the main computer at the lab. Sometimes, the folks at NASA call the university to ask for some time on it.”

  “How’d you come up with Legal Eagle?”

  “JB, do you really want me to sit here and spout technical gobbledygook at you for the next sixty minutes, or do you wanna know what was on that disc?”

  “Right,” I said. “What was on it?”

  He pulled several sheets of computer paper out of his briefcase and handed them to me, along with the disc.

  “Mostly numbers,” he said.

  I looked at the papers, each of which had three columns of figures, along with the names of companies and corporations, none of which I recognized. There were also the names of several banks, all apparently headquartered in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands.

  “Near as I can figure,” said Irv, “the numbers on the left are the annual retainers paid to Chaney and Cox by those other companies. The figures in the middle are the amounts actually charged by Chaney and Cox for services rendered that year, and I’m guessing the last column shows refund checks from Chaney and Cox to their clients.”

  “Um-hmmm,” I said. “That’s about it.”

  The figures in the last column on each page were all fairly sizable.

  “Lotta bucks being moved around,” said Irv. “You know what, JB? I think this is some kind of major money-laundering scheme.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Know what else it is?”

  “What?”

  “The smoking gun.”

  Chapter 44

  After Irv left, I sat and looked at the computer printouts for a while. Okay, so now I had an idea, at least in part, about what was going on here. Chaney and Cox appeared to be doing some financial dry-cleaning for somebody, and my guess was that Manny was involved in some way, too. With the information on the disc, I could probably help the police build that case. The cops had the resources and the expertise to root around far deeper into this mess than I could, and they would eventually get enough evidence of wrongdoing to bring some kind of charges against Elias, et al. But what about Terry Pendleton’s murder? Would there be any evidence concerning why he was killed and by whom? I was certain that his death was hooked into the money-laundering scheme, and Manny was at the top of my list of suspects for that death, but I doubted that the district attorney would agree to go to trial based on my word alone. No, I had to figure out a way to get more evidence, something that would directly link Elias and Manny to Terry’s death.

  It was almost dinnertime, so I got up and walked into my kitchen. I can think in there, too. In fact, over the years, some of my best thinking has been done in close proximity to various foodstuffs. As I prepared a chipped-ham sandwich with lettuce and tomato and mayonnaise, I decided to stir things up a little. I took my sandwich and some chips and Coke back to the living room and sat down again on the sofa. While I ate, I thought some more, and when I had finished my dinner, I started the stirring process by calling Elias at his home number. A woman whom I took to be his wife answered the phone and said Elias would be right there. When he came on, I didn’t waste any time.

  “Elias, this is Jeremy Barnes. I need to speak to Manny, and I’m betting that you can get in touch with him.”

  “Manny?” he said. “I’m afraid I don’t know any Manny.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “you do. Look, I don’t have time to play around here, but do you know what I do have? A disc full of very interesting numbers, and if I don’t hear from Manny on my cell phone within one hour, the disc goes to the cops. Oh, and Elias, be sure you tell Manny that I’m not going to be at my place, so there’s no need for him to pay me a visit. Sixty minutes, Elias. Don’t screw around here, okay?”

  I gave him my cell phone number and then sat back and waited for Manny to call. I wasn’t going to leave my townhouse, because I assumed Manny would believe the lie about my not being there. When he called, I had a couple of ideas about ways to get him into situations where I could trick him into revealing the information I needed. By the time the hour was up, I had decided on one particular scenario that seemed promising. I’d need Denny’s help, though, but before I could place the call, my cell phone rang.

  It was Rachel Pendleton, and she was terrified.

  “Jeremy,” she said. “This is Rachel Pendleton. A man just came to my house, and when I opened the door, he put a gun in my face and told me to call you. He says he’ll kill me if I don’t do as he says.”

  Damn! I’d made sure that Dee-Dee was safe, but I hadn’t thought about Rachel. I’d assumed that since I’d told Elias that Rachel had neither the disc nor any idea what was on it, she’d be okay. But I hadn’t factored Manny into the equation. He didn’t care about whether Rachel knew anything about the disc. He wanted me, and he did
n’t know where I was, and he didn’t want to waste time looking for me. So he snatched Rachel, because he saw her as a way to get me to go to him. And he was right. I should have seen that coming.

  “Barnes.” Manny was on the line. “You got somethin’ I want, and I got somethin’ to trade for it.”

  “I’m listening, Manny,” I said.

  “You know where Shit Creek is?”

  He was talking about the creek that ran along part of the Hollow, the lower area of Frick Park. When I was a kid, we all called the creek Shit Creek because of the smell of the water. I never found out what caused the odor, which was cleaned up years ago, and I never really knew the actual name of the creek, either.

  “Yeah, I know where it is,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “Be there in thirty minutes, down by that parking lot next to the old ball field. Bring the disc and nothin’ and nobody else. When I get there, I wanna see you standin’ next to your car, hands in the air, one of them holdin’ that disc. I see anything don’t look kosher, the broad’s dead.” Then he hung up.

  * * *

  On the drive over to the park, I spent a couple of minutes berating myself for not thinking about Rachel, but then I stopped. Getting mad at myself wasn’t going to help Rachel Pendleton. Instead, I concentrated on Manny and our upcoming get-together at Shit Creek. There were all kinds of flaws in his plan, but this was Manny. Straight and direct. Right at ya. Right now, he wanted two things: the disc, and me dead. Getting me somewhere where he could get the disc and kill me was all that mattered to him. Once we were all at the park, he’d kill me and then Rachel. If he could.

  I planned to resist.

  Chapter 45

  The place where Manny intended to kill me was perfect for that purpose. The area called the Hollow is over a mile long and more than three-hundred feet wide at most places. At one end of the Hollow is a softball field that hasn’t been used for at least a decade, since the city installed several new fields in another section of the park. When I got there at a little before seven that evening, there was no one around. People used to picnic down here, but after a spate of muggings and sexual attacks and one murder a few years back, all of the picnic areas were relocated to the upper level of the park, which is more accessible, anyway. I parked the 4Runner near one side of the parking lot, which was filled with cracks and potholes and bunches of weeds growing here and there. I got out and leaned on the front fender of my Toyota and waited for Manny.