by R. J. Jagger
“This isn’t a New Mexico case,” Shade said. “The man was from Denver. Visible Moon’s being kept somewhere in this area.”
“How do you know?”
She exhaled.
Then she took an envelope out of her purse and put it in his hand.
“That’s five hundred dollars to get you started. Money isn’t the issue. If you run out there’s more. Can I start at the beginning and tell you everything I know.”
Wilde fiddled with the envelope.
Then he topped his coffee cup off and said, “If I take the case and actually find this guy, what are you going to do?”
“You mean, am I going to kill him?”
Wilde took a slurp and nodded.
“My main goal is to get Visible Moon back home alive.”
“Then what? Kill who took her?”
“We’ll see.”
“I would,” he said. “I’d kill him deader than dead if he really did what you say he did. But first I’d be damn sure I had the right man.”
“That will be your job.”
He sat on the edge of his desk.
“That’s a lot of pressure.”
“Not really,” Shade said. “He’ll have two things that will give him away. One is Visible Moon. The other is the scalp. He took it with him. It’s his little souvenir.”
Wilde grabbed a pen and paper.
Then a tangent thought struck him.
“Is Visible Moon a beautiful woman?”
Shade pulled a picture out of her purse and handed it to him.
“This is her.”
She wasn’t beautiful.
She was average.
“Why?”
“Nothing,” Wilde said. “Another case I have involves women who are pinup quality. I was wondering if there was a connection.”
“Visible Moon was average.”
“Got it,” Wilde said. “Okay, let’s start at the beginning.” Before the woman could speak, Wilde had another thought. “What about Tehya?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was she average too?”
“No, she was way above average,” Shade said.
“Way above?”
“Right, she was attractive, very attractive. I can get you a picture if you want.”
Wilde shrugged.
“Go ahead,” he said. “It can’t hurt.”
31
F allon got stationed in the office next to Trench and loved every inch of it, especially the window. Fifteen miles to the west, the mountains jutted out of the plains with a jagged edge. Down below, Denver buzzed.
This was her first real job.
It was her first real office.
Yesterday she was a waitress.
Now, this.
She tossed her hair back and got to work.
Trench was in the early stages of looking at potential office space—grade A, strategically positioned in the heart of the matter. He’d flown down to Mexico City two weeks ago, surveyed several potential buildings, and returned with copies of proposed leases.
All of them were in Spanish.
Fallon’s job was to translate them into English, typewritten. Later, after the firm chose one, Fallon’s job would be to take modifications fed to her by Trench and draft them into Spanish for negotiation.
The going was slow.
She was a two-finger typer.
She was in the thick of it, focused with intensity, when she realized someone was in the doorway.
It was Trench.
“Can I bother you a minute?”
Sure.
Of course.
“I forgot to ask before if you’ve had any college.”
Her heart pounded.
She was a nobody.
A waitress.
He was about to find out.
“No,” she said.
“That’s fine,” he said. “That’s not a problem. The only reason I mention it is that after you’re around here for a while, you might outgrow what you’re doing. You might want to be a lawyer instead of someone on the staff.”
“I couldn’t even imagine being a lawyer.”
“Maybe not now,” Trench said. “I have to be honest, though, I see lawyer material in you. I see ambition. If you ever feel you want to go to college and give it a try, let me know. We’ll work something out, on the firm.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
“Settle in first for the next three or four or five months,” he said. “Then if it seems like the right thing to do, we’ll put a plan together.”
Her head spun.
“Can I do something?”
Trench tilted his head.
“Sure.”
She stood up, walked over and gave him a tight hug.
“Thank you.”
“No thanks necessary,” he said. “Just keep in mind it’s not set in stone. You’d have to want it and you’d have to earn it. It’s something to think about though.”
“I feel like I’m in a dream.”
Trench smiled.
“Good. That’s the way life is supposed to be.”
Jundee swung by at 11:45 and took her to lunch at an upscale place a few blocks down the street called the Paramount Café. They ended up in a nice booth and ordered chicken salads.
She told him about the college conversation with Trench.
“Is he trying to get in my pants?”
Jundee laughed.
“Trench?”
Right.
Trench.
“I don’t know, I can only speak for myself,” Jundee said.
She took a sip of tea.
“Then do it.”
“Do what?”
“Speak for yourself.”
He smiled.
“As for me the answer is, of course. The question though is whether it’s working or not.”
She ran a finger across his hand.
“It might be.”
She chewed, debating one last time about whether she should say what she was about to say, then decided to just say it.
“A briefcase full of papers came into my possession,” she said. “I don’t know what they are but they’re valuable. People are killing other people to try to get them. They even tried to kill me.”
Jundee halted a fork midway to his mouth.
“Say again?”
32
W ilde was the right man for the job. That should have made Shade feel better but it didn’t, primarily because of Wilde’s warning—“I don’t have much to go on, you appreciate that I hope.” She did, she did indeed, but hearing the words out loud from the mouth of another person forced the hopelessness of the situation deeper into her brain.
From Wilde’s office, she headed over to Market to see if Mojag marked the mailbox.
He hadn’t.
Now what?
She headed back to her hotel, not sure whether to check out or not. Someone on behalf of the CIA would be showing up sometime today, possibly as early as noon. They’d want to take her alive if possible for interrogation.
What information did she give up?
Where did she get that information?
Who did she give it to?
How much was she paid?
How did she keep everything so secret?
Was anyone else in the company working with her?
Getting her alive was more important than revenge.
That didn’t mean killing her was out of the equation. It was very much in. If they saw her, say from a distance or in a passing car—in a situation where capture wasn’t readily available—they might well take the opportunity to just put her away right then and there, especially if there was any indication that she was going deep.
What to do?
Hotels were too dangerous.
She should find a man.
Stay with him.
Shade called Wilde from a payphone and said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said ever since you left; namely, the chance o
f you finding this guy based on the limited information that you know about him is almost negligible.”
“That’s true.”
“There’s an option, though.”
“As in, what?’
“Okay, here it goes,” she said. “It’s doubtful that we can find him. It might be possible, though, to have him find us. To be more precise, me.”
Wilde heard the words.
He didn’t understand them.
“I don’t get it.”
“It goes like this. I start to get visible, talking to people, frequenting the bars and brothels and things like that, making it clear I’m in town looking for him. I tell people I have information on him—I tell them I saw him from a distance, something like that. He ends up hearing about it and seeing me as a threat. Then he comes to take me out.”
“So you turn myself into bait.”
Right.
Bait.
Good word for it.
“I’m going to do it,” Shade said.
Wilde exhaled. “Bait usually ends up getting eaten; that’s why they call it bait.”
“Not this time. You’ll be there in the shadows when he comes for me.”
“I can’t guarantee that will happen.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Shade hung up and smiled.
She felt better.
This might actually work.
Then the smile washed off her face. Getting visible to the mystery man meant getting visible to the company.
33
W ilde tossed his hat at the rack and missed. It went to the left, always to the left. He needed to pretend the rack was eight inches to the right—shoot for that, then it should hit. He picked it up, walked back to the door and tossed it again, aiming to the right. It actually hit this time, ricocheting off and falling to the floor.
He smiled.
Closer.
Okay, aim a full foot to the right.
Keep the hat more level, too.
He picked it up, walked back to the door and aimed to the right. Just as he threw, the door opened and knocked into his arm. The hat flew to the right, way to the right, and disappeared out the window.
Alabama came the rest of the way through the door and said, “Did I do that?”
Wilde kissed her on the lips.
“Never come in when I’m shooting.”
“How am I supposed to know—”
“I thought we agreed on that.”
He bounded down the stairs before some transient ended up having some luck he shouldn’t. When he got down, the hat was disappearing up the street on the head of a teenager.
Wilde snatched it off.
The kid turned, startled.
Wilde put it on his head, dipped it over his left eye and said, “Always dip it.”
When he got back up to the office, Alabama had moved the rack away from the window.
“There,” she said. “Problem solved. Hat safe.”
Wilde moved it back.
Alabama put her hands on her hips.
“Why’d you do that?”
“It’s more risky that way,” Wilde said. “It’s a reminder.”
“A reminder of what?”
“That things can go wrong,” he said. “The more you can remember that, the less likely it is to happen.”
Alabama rolled her eyes.
“You’re weird sometimes.”
“Right, weird like a fox.”
“You just proved my point.”
“How so?”
“Because foxes aren’t weird,” she said. “The fact that you inferred that they’re weird is in itself weird.”
Wilde tried to think of a clever retort, got nothing, then put a serious expression on his face. “We’re going to be doing something that’s going to take a lot of concentration and coordination to make sure nothing goes wrong.”
“Yeah, what?”
Suddenly the door opened and a woman stepped in.
Shade de Laurent.
Wilde introduced the two women to each other and said, “Okay, here’s the plan.”
The plan was simple.
The Kenmark Hotel had an exterior fire escape on the backside where the alley was. It was designed with a central stairway that went from the ground up to the roof. At each floor, the escape branched out horizontal down a walkway that ran in both directions. The walkway was accessible by climbing out the windows of the rooms.
“What you two do is find two rooms at the end of a floor that are currently available for rent,” Wilde said. “You, Shade, rent the room at the very end. Do it under a fake name. In fact, choose one now.”
She retreated in thought.
“Marilyn Striker.”
“Fine, Marilyn Striker.”
To Alabama, “You rent the room next to Shade’s. You’ll use a fake name too.”
“Brenda Belle,” she said.
“Fine, Brenda Belle.” To Shade, “You know the guy’s a white man, right?”
She nodded.
“Correct.”
Wilde frowned.
“If I say right, and it is right, your answer should be right, not correct,” he said. “Correct upsets the balance of the universe.”
She smiled.
“Right,” she said.
Wilde nodded.
“You’re going to go visit a friend of mine named Michael Baxter,” Wilde said. “He’s a sax player but dabbles a little in drawing. He’s actually pretty good. He’s going to draw you a sketch of a white man.”
Shade frowned.
“Remember,” she said, “I don’t really know what the guy looks like. A sketch won’t do any good.”
“I doesn’t matter if it looks like the guy or not,” Wilde said. “What you’re going to do is start taking that sketch all over town—bars, restaurants, flophouses, clubs, you name it. You tell people you’re looking for the guy in the sketch. You tell them he killed a woman named Tehya and abducted another one named Visible Moon. You tell them you’re looking for him. They’ll say they’ve never seen him. Now, here’s the important part. You tell them you’re staying at the Kenmark in room 418 or whatever it turns out to be. You tell them that if they see the guy, they should contact you there.”
Shade nodded.
“Okay.”
“If things go as planned,” Wilde said, “our friend will get a whiff of the fact that someone’s in Denver looking for him. He’ll get the word that you’ve actually seen him somehow and even have a composite drawing of him. He’ll get the word that you’re staying in the Kenmark. Sooner or later he’ll show up there to take you out.”
“Brilliant.”
Wilde lit two Camels and handed one to Shade.
He took a long drag and held it in.
“Here’s the important thing,” he said. “You never, ever go to that room unless I’m with you.” To Alabama, “What you’re going to do, Alabama, is stay in your room and keep an eye on that fire escape because that’s how our friend will come to get Shade. Get a look at him but don’t be a hero.”
“Should I follow him?”
Wilde hesitated.
Alabama added, “It won’t do much good for me to only get a look at him. We need to get his license plate number or find out where he goes or something like that.”
Wilde blew smoke.
“Okay, you can follow him but only if you can do it safely.”
“That won’t be a problem.”
“We don’t know that,” Wilde said. “It might be a problem and it might not. If it’s a problem or has any potential to become a problem, you abort. If he ever looks at you even once, you drop off and disappear. It ends right there and then, that second. Deal?”
“Sure.”
“I’m serious, Alabama. Deal?”
“Okay.”
“I mean it,” Wilde said. “No hero stuff.”
“I heard you.”
Wilde set a book of matches on fire and watched the flames as he tried to deci
de whether there was anything else to discuss. Then he said to Shade, “I’m going way out on a limb here, potentially putting Alabama in harm’s way. I’ve never done that before. Be sure you don’t do anything to increase the risk to her.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Whatever.”
She hugged him.
“If Visible Moon ends up living, it will be because of you.”
He grunted.
“You and Alabama are going to be the ones in the crosshairs,” he said. “I’m just the guy putting you there.”
34
J undee was intrigued by the mysterious briefcase, so much so that he wanted to see it right now during the lunch hour before they went back to the firm. At the hotel room Fallon dragged it out from under the bed and tossed it on the sheets.
Jundee made a face.
“What happened to it?”
“I had to shoot it open.”
“All I can say is, I hope you never have to shoot me open.”
He studied the papers, keeping them in order, particularly the one on top, which was the folded paper Fallon found in the man’s wallet, the one with the numbers on it.
“They’re some combination of math, physics, mechanics and engineering,” he said. “None of it makes any sense, though. It’s almost as if someone copied five or six lines from a source document, then did the same from a second source document, etc. It’s all scrambled. None of it flows.”
Fallon frowned.
“Weird.”
“Very.”
Suddenly Jundee put a grin on his face.
“This first page,” he said, “the one on top, the one you found in the man’s wallet.”
“What about it?”
“I’ll bet it’s a key.”
“A key to what?”
“A key to unscrambling the mess.”
He studied the document closer, turned two or three pages and flipped onto his back.
“What’s going on?
He sat up and tapped the document. “This first number is the page number,” he said. “The numbers right behind it refer to the lines on that page. When you put them all together, you get an unscrambled document.”
Fallon checked the first few lines.
It made sense.
When she kept going, however, it didn’t. She must have had confusion on her face because Jundee said, “What’s wrong?”