Madison's Avenue

by Mike Brogan

  That could not happen.

  * * *

  Madison dead-bolted the door, set the alarm and looked into the apartment’s dark, tomblike silence. She felt the overwhelming, gnawing absence of her father, yet also his presence. Each chair, each room, even the shadowy hallway rekindled a warm memory, like the scent of his pipe tobacco, the shuffle of his slippers, the echo of his laugh.

  Sadness washed over her again and she closed her eyes.

  She kicked off her shoes, padded into the kitchen, poured a glass of Merlot and sipped some. She knew she’d been drinking too much in the last few days, trying to numb the pain. She took the glass into the bathroom, turned the tub faucet to hot, poured in a glop of bubble bath and breathed in its fresh lavender fragrance.

  She removed the rest of her clothes, hung them behind the door and walked back toward the tub. Passing the mirror, she noticed that her stomach was flatter. For good reason. She’d been eating little.

  As she eased herself down into the hot water, the steam warmed her face. She began to relax and soon realized this was the most serene she’d felt in days.

  Sipping more wine, she watched the rich, soapy bubbles rise almost to her neck. She slid deeper into the silky water, exhaled slowly and began to drift into a kind of dreamy calm.

  Moments later, an odd breeze fluttered across her face. Had she left a window open? No. She’d locked them all this morning. And she’d just locked the front door and set the alarm.

  Relax girl, relax....

  * * *

  Eugene P. Smith rode the elevator up to the fourth floor and walked down the hall toward McKean’s apartment.

  At the door, he stopped and listened. He heard nothing. From his tool kit, he removed his new MagnaQuench device. He placed the rare-earth-metal magnet flat against the door, set the dial on “9” and pushed the button. Slowly, the powerful MagnaQuench magnet pulled the deadbolt back into its door slot.

  He then took out his diamond lock pick and inserted it into the simple tumbler lock. Within seconds, the tumblers fell into place.

  Smith eased the door open and stepped inside the apartment. He saw Madison’s purse on a table and her red high heels nearby on the floor. Then he smelled lavender – bath oil, maybe – and heard the gentle trickle of water.

  He pulled the black ski mask down over his face, then fixed the silencer on his Beretta 92FS. He moved the safety to off and stepped silently along the carpeted hallway toward the bathroom.

  This morning, when he’d looked around the apartment for a plausible deadly “accident,” he’d found one. Luckily enough, the “accident” – a hair dryer – was in the very bathroom where she was now cleansing her firm, young body. The hair dryer was perched precariously on a ledge above the bathtub. Hair dryers fall into bathtubs and electrocute people all the time.

  Smith paused and considered the irony of this assignment. The EVP paying him handsomely for this job had no idea that he would have handled Madison for free. Smith had a very personal reason for handling her, one that involved Mark McKean.

  * * *

  Madison’s eyelids grew heavy and she felt herself dozing off in the hot, luxurious water.

  Then she heard something....

  The creak of a floorboard in the hall. Not the creak of dry wood, but a snap. The same snap caused by her father when he stepped on a certain wooden plank down at the end of the hallway.

  Someone was out there.

  She stepped from the tub, locked the bathroom door, threw on her bathrobe and listened.

  Another loud creak. Much closer.

  Someone was on the other side of the door.

  * * *

  Kevin Jordan walked toward the entrance of Turner Advertising, his concern for Madison’s safety growing with each step. When she told the board of directors she would vote against the ComGlobe merger, she’d unintentionally made herself a target of those people who wanted the merger at any cost.

  Like certain directors at Turner and at ComGlobe. After all, billions of dollars were involved. Billions, year after year. And to control that much money, certain individuals would stop at nothing. They would even arrange Mark McKean’s fake suicide – and his daughter’s death if she got in their way. Which is exactly what Madison had done.

  As he entered the agency lobby, he dialed her father’s apartment to warn her, even though she’d probably think he was overreacting. The phone did not ring. He dialed again, but still got nothing. Was his cell phone acting weird again? Or was it her phone? He didn’t know her cell phone number.

  He shrugged and decided to try again later.

  * * *

  Where’s my cell phone?

  In the kitchen, Madison remembered. She looked for something to defend herself with, but saw nothing.

  Someone turned the bathroom door knob and discovered it was locked. The door knob rattled hard. Her heart pounded.

  “I know you’re in there.” Deep, male voice.

  The man lunged against the door and it loosened.

  Then she saw it. The red alarm button next to the tub. Did the old alarm still work? Madison ran over and hit the button.

  Nothing!

  Then, two seconds later, a loud, shrill alarm wailed throughout the apartment.

  The door banged open.

  The hall light cast a man’s shadow onto the white bathroom floor. A tall, thin man wearing a RCN Cable repairman’s uniform and a black ski mask stepped in, holding a gun with a silencer.

  She grabbed a pair of scissors from behind the Kleenex box.

  The man’s black mask bent in a smile, revealing perfect but tiny white teeth. “Well done, Madison. But it’s so noisy, we’ll just have to meet later. Soon. I promise.”

  He hurried away and seconds later, she heard the apartment door slam shut.

  Her heart pounding, she ran into the foyer. She locked the door, dead-bolted it again, and tried to set the alarm, but it wasn’t working. She pulled over a hall chair and wedged it under the door knob.

  Then she grabbed the desk phone and dialed 911.

  The line was dead.

  She hurried over to her father’s desk, grabbed her cell phone and called Detective Loomis. He said he’d be there in minutes.

  After hanging up, she sat in her father’s chair and closed her eyes. An armed man had just broken into the apartment. The man had walked past her purse but taken no money or anything of value. Why hadn’t he simply shot her?

  He’d called her by name and promised to see her again soon. Somehow the man was connected to her father’s death.

  She took several deep breaths, calming herself.

  Minutes later, as she stood to go recheck the front door, she accidentally nudged her father’s hickory pipe stand, causing a pipe to tumble off. She picked it up. The same old briarwood, looking exactly like it did on the night she borrowed it many years ago.

  She thought back to that night. She was seventeen, a chubby, C-minus student, unhappy with her looks and filled with teenage doubts, certain she could never measure up to what her parents expected of her, or match her brainy brother’s high grades. And that afternoon, her boyfriend had asked a tall, shapely blonde, not her, to go to the junior prom.

  Overwhelmed, depressed and fat, she took the briarwood pipe to the basement, stuffed it with the marijuana her friend Marilyn had given her, and started puffing away behind the furnace. Within seconds, the ventilation system carried the sweet, unmistakable scent up to her father’s study. A minute later he was standing beside her.

  “Problems?” he asked.

  “No....”

  “So tell me about them.”

  So she did. For over an hour, she told him. Tearfully, she complained about everything. He listened patiently, asking questions now and then. Finally, he hugged her and confessed that at her age, he too had been a chubby, so-so student, certain he’d never measure up to his demanding father.

  “Obviously, you overcame your doubts. How?”

  “I faked confi
dence. Coach Reiber, my high school baseball coach, taught me how. We had this big game. The opposing pitcher liked to throw 85-90 mph fastballs high and inside. Coach told me to fake confidence, stand in the batter’s box like a .400 hitter.”

  “Were you?”

  “No. I was lousy. Anyway, I stepped up to the plate, stuck my chest out and pointed my bat right at the pitcher – shook it at him!”

  “What happened?”

  “As expected, he threw a fastball high and inside. I hit it for a triple that won the game.” From then on, I started acting confident all the time. Soon it was a habit.”

  Her father’s message hit home. The next day, Madison began faking confidence, reading confidence-building, self-esteem books, listening to tapes, and jogging. Within a year, she’d slimmed down, run a marathon, raised her grade average to A-minus and her confidence level to maybe a B.

  And over the years, her professional confidence had grown with each promotion.

  Her personal life was another story.

  * * *

  Eugene P. Smith was a little embarrassed. He’d noticed the old red alarm buttons earlier that day, but assumed he’d disconnected them when he disabled the main apartment alarm.

  He’d assumed.

  Unforgivable in his line of work.

  He was slipping. Years ago, as a CIA operative, he never would have made the mistake.

  There was a word for operatives who assumed.

  Dead.

  Fourteen

  Madison bolted upright in bed, her heart slamming against her rib cage. She watched the bedroom door, ... knowing her attacker was back ... knowing he’d burst into the room any moment. Seconds passed ... more seconds... then a minute ... she heard nothing.

  Just another nightmare, she realized. Not real. Not like last night.

  Detective Pete Loomis had arrived shortly after she’d been attacked. She told him about the incident and he confirmed that the building surveillance camera showed a tall, ski-masked man in a dark green RCN Cable repairman’s uniform hurrying down her hallway.

  She also told Loomis that her assailant said, “I’ll see you soon.”

  Loomis said he understood her fear, but their precinct was shorthanded and therefore he had no one to guard her. He suggested Secur-US, a private bodyguard company. She phoned them and they sent over a muscular ex-Navy SEAL named Neal Nelson. Neal was outside now, guarding her apartment, and would drive her to work.

  She looked at the bedside clock: 5:32 a.m.

  She rubbed sleep from her eyes, got out of bed, stretched and realized her leg muscles felt as stiff as coiled springs. She needed a good run. But jogging in Central Park was out of the question with her attacker still out there. So she laced up her Nikes, started running in place and turned on the television.

  A silver-haired WNBC anchorman was speaking about a big new corporate merger in which the merger management team got ‘fat cat’ bonuses and thousands of mergees got pink slips.

  Is that ComGlobe’s plan? she wondered. Merge with us, cut jobs, then stuff fat bonuses into their pockets? ComGlobe had done it often before. But not this time, she hoped.

  Thirty minutes later, Neal Nelson drove her toward the office. As they drove, she thought about her day ahead. First, she wanted to ask some directors about whom they thought might be her father’s accuser.

  Then she had to act like a CEO. Hopefully today would be better than yesterday: one client resigned, another was being hotly pursued by another agency, and EVP Dana Williams was holding hands with the CEO of a major competitive agency.

  Neal Nelson’s Chevy TrailBlazer suddenly crawled to a stop in traffic. They were blocked due to road construction. Some people were leaving their taxis and walking.

  “We’re stuck here for a while,” Nelson said.

  “I can walk from here.”

  “Bad idea.”

  “It’s only a block and a half.”

  “Bad idea.”

  “I’ll stay real close to people.”

  “Close to the bad guy maybe!”

  Nelson was right, of course. But looking around, she saw no tall, thin body shapes even remotely similar to her attacker. Then she saw a tall body shape she did recognize. She rolled down her window and shouted, “Kevin!”

  Kevin Jordan, walking down the street with a Starbucks coffee, waved back.

  “He’s going to the agency. I can walk with him.”

  Nelson stared at Kevin, then at the crowds and said, “I’ll walk you both to the agency.” He pulled into a No Parking zone, placed a Homeland Security sign in the windshield and they got out.

  She introduced Kevin to Nelson and they all started walking down Fifth Avenue, Nelson trailing behind them.

  “A bodyguard?” Kevin said.

  “It’s a long story.”

  He nodded. “By the way, I tried to call you last night, but your phone was dead.”

  “Me too ... almost.”

  Kevin stopped walking and stared at her.

  “A man broke into my apartment. He had a gun.”

  “Jesus, Madison....”

  As she explained everything, the color drained from his face.

  “I knew you were in trouble!”

  “Why’d you think that?”

  “The ComGlobe merger. I began to think someone might try to stop you from voting against it. Like they stopped your father.”

  They reached Turner Advertising. Neal Nelson explained he’d be back to drive her home from work and left. She and Kevin walked into the dark, empty lobby of Turner Advertising, greeted the guard, and took an elevator up.

  Kevin exited on the fifth floor and she continued up to the tenth, the executive floor. The elevator doors slid open and she stepped out into almost total darkness. She had no idea where the light switches were.

  Behind her, the elevator hissed shut. She started feeling her way down the long shadowy hall and stopped cold. She was staring at a brochure: RCN Cable News, resting on a table. On the cover was a RCN service man wearing a uniform like her intruder’s!

  She didn’t recall seeing the brochure there yesterday.

  Had her attacker placed it there this morning to frighten her? Did he persuade the lobby guard that he had to check the RCN Internet cables before employees came to work? Was he hiding in the black shadows ahead, or in one of the offices along the hall?

  Panic seized her and she tried to calm herself.

  She knew her imagination was in overdrive. Play it safe, she told herself. Go down and ask the guard to come up and check out the floor.

  She started back toward the elevator and suddenly remembered that Christine told her service personnel had to get a signed work order before they could enter the building. There was no way her attacker could have obtained a work order during the night.

  Steeling herself, she turned around and hurried back down the shadowy hall. She made it to her office alive, flicked on the lights and couldn’t believe her eyes.

  The office was cleared out. Her father’s desk was bare. The walls were stripped of his photos and awards. His desk drawers and large armoire were empty. Even his treasured 1902 Oliver typewriter was gone from the corner.

  Shocked, she slumped down in his chair.

  Then she heard someone behind her.

  Spinning around, she looked into the face of Karla Rasmussen standing a few feet away, staring at her with dark, icy eyes. No, envious eyes, as though she felt she should be sitting where Madison was.

  “You’re in early,” Rasmussen said.

  “Not early enough to stop someone from clearing out my father’s things.”

  “Christine and I thought it would be easier this way for you to decorate. But if you want some things back, just tell Christine.”

  “Just a few things. By the way, do you know where my father kept his recent, active files?”

  “In those cabinets.” Rasmussen pointed toward the small adjoining room filled with tall gray file cabinets.

  “Is that whe
re his ComGlobe file is?”

  Rasmussen’s eyes darkened at the mention of ComGlobe. “Christine keeps all his files in there.”

  “I’d like to read it,” Madison said, standing up.

  “Of course.” Rasmussen seemed caught off guard by the request. They walked into the file room. Rasmussen reached behind a row of thick Advertising Red Books and took out a set of keys. She slid a key into a cabinet labeled Cars – Drug Companies, opened the drawer and gestured for Madison to look.

  As Madison fingered through the files, Rasmussen stood slightly behind her, ramrod straight and silent. Madison reached a file labeled Communications and saw a two-inch gap.

  “The ComGlobe file is not here,” Madison said.

  Rasmussen did not seem the least bit surprised that the file was missing.

  “Where else might he have kept the file?”

  “On his desk.”

  “But wouldn’t Christine have filed it back here?”

  Reamussen gave a slow nod.

  “Let’s ask her.” Madison said, walking back to her desk. She dialed Christine’s home number. Christine answered and explained that she’d placed the ComGlobe file back in the cabinet around four o’clock yesterday afternoon.

  Madison hung up and explained what Christine said.

  Rasmussen shrugged.

  “Well, the file’s missing. Any idea who has it?”

  Karla’s cheek muscle twitched. “No....”

  Madison sensed the woman knew more than she was saying or was flat-out lying.

  “Well, I’m sure you have a lot to do,” Rasmussen said, walking to the door. “So I’ll leave you to it.”

  Madison nodded and watched her go. There was something cold and unsettling about the woman. Why wasn’t she surprised that the ComGlobe file was missing? Was it because she’d taken it? Perhaps because my father wrote something in it that incriminated her?

  What does Kevin think of Rasmussen? Madison wondered. She started to phone him, than realized that Rasmussen might be nearby, listening.

  Madison left her office and walked down to the elevators. Two minutes later she walked into Kevin’s office, carrying two cups of coffee.