He nodded, and I watched to make sure it was a phone that emerged from his slicker pocket. I'm not sure I would have been fast enough had it been a pistol grip. Without a word, he walked off toward the parking lot.
"What happened there?" Dale said.
"Is he armed?"
"No, only the night supervisor packs at this job."
"Move the car out of the way, please. Then come in here and call your lieutenant to post another man on the gate. After that, have Beljour drag someone away from the snack machines to replace Hurley for the day."
As he made the calls, I thought back to my own return from overseas, the KA-BAR and the derringer I had hung on to for a while, and the revolver I'd carried off-duty during my first few years on patrol.
A shiny red mustang came down from the lot. The bar was still up, so Hurley had no reason to even slow down much. Instinct interposed me between Dale and the open doorway, which made me doubly stupid, for, if anything, it would be his avuncular presence that protected us.
The car shushed by, disappearing into the slashing rain at the foot of the drive.
While we waited for the new guard, Dale said, "We ought to bring those papers back inside."
"No, I need to wave them under their noses tomorrow. I'm sure they're copies, but we'll put off destroying them until after we're satisfied no one's detected the replication."
"But . . ."
"This is their current R&D status report."
"Dang."
"Our situation's kind of like GlobalSoft's, isn't it?"
"Yeah, them two's like kin to me. You think they had a hand in the other thing?"
"Maybe we can establish our exposure tomorrow. They're done one way or the other. I just can't believe they were so blatant about this little heist. There's a floppy in the envelope, too, so printing it out was stupid. By the way, let me guess the kind of business Hercules does."
He looked sick. "They bid on some of the same contracts as GlobalSoft."
"And how long has Fontel been wooing them?"
"Too long, I suppose."
The evening had grown so quiet that Difile's voice had only a tinkling buoy to contend with. The wan radiance off the tin reflectors of the old-fashioned dock lamps barely touched us. The restaurants flanking the marina with their beckoning lights and the quaint shops uphill had siphoned off most of the pedestrians. The humidor and the strangely named Scotch were passed around again.
"Connections are always a complication," said a bitter voice in the stern. "There's such a thing as corporate inbreeding."
"Speaking of connections," said one who sat on a number of boards. "Who was it that actually hired you?"
Difile, silhouetted by soft light from below, sat very still in his canvas-back chair. "The Old Man," he said after a moment. "While he was still in charge and anxious to know how Junior would handle the transition."
"So your first loyalty was to Senior."
"How shall I answer that?" Difile said.
We drove back toward the city in premature twilight. Dale's misery was counterproductive, so I said, "Like anything, we have to look at this as an opportunity, not a setback."
"How's that?"
"As an exercise, make believe I'm an existing or prospective client. Play back the stuff I fed Timmons in light of our experiences today. Let's hear you make it into a power pitch."
"I don't know as I'm in the mood for it right now, Rocky. By the way, since when do we have all this counterintelligence stuff up and running?"
"Hey, your job is to create a perceived need. Don't worry about the details. Believe me, all the new goods and services getting rolled out nowadays are way behind their marketing images. Sometimes they never catch up. Now, give it a go. I always heard you were a salesman first. Sales is sales, right?"
And sure enough, even the drenched gloom and the cowed traffic could not prevent Dale's revival. There's nothing like a solid set of sales points to bring down the tongue of fire that supersedes all personal problems. So, it was a productive ride, and it made me hopeful that we would not only retain but also expand our clientele in the Neuse River Basin—and beyond, of course.
I let him wax a while on how good a spiel we'd worked up, and then I said, "I'm going to want a good steak and a beer tonight, but first we need to talk about how we're going to usher out your two pseudo-relatives without creating a self-defeating scandal of our own."
"You sure know how to puncture the pigskin, Rocky."
We left the office a little after five and drove to a huge barnlike structure out on Route 70. There was plenty of parking; the weather was starting to make its inroads on the dining public.
My cell phone rang as we were shaking ourselves off in the lobby. I looked at the caller ID and said, "I gotta take this. I'll join you at the table."
Dale went off obediently in tow of a chic brunette in black and white. Standing by a wall filled with enough single-action Colts to supply a spaghetti western, I said hello to the Old Man.
"Rocco, where you at?"
Aside from my late dad, Senior was the only person who had ever stuck with my given name, meticulously avoiding the wordplay that surely occurred to him.
"Me? I'm workin' the sunny South."
"Yeah, so I heard." From someone besides Junior? "Looks like Fran may be changing her mind about where she makes her beachhead, my friend. Stay away from windows."
"I do that anyhow, but we're a long way from the beach. Where are you at, by the way?"
"I am a voice in the desert."
"Arizona, huh? I wish I was there. At least I'd be able to use my clubs."
"How's my friend Dale bearing up under your scrutiny?"
His voice sounded as arid as the desolation outside of Scottsdale.
"We're having a steak together. He'll survive."
"I insist on that. In what capacity, though? I heard my son already has a short list of candidates to take over the Raleigh office."
"We're going to show one of his captains the door. That'll create a vacancy."
"Captain Lassiter?"
"Well, maybe we'll generate a new rank, like Major or Colonel."
"In the Confederate tradition? Well, what about his pay? He's got some obligations."
"We'll work something out with a commission structure."
"You were prepared to pull the plug on him, weren't you?"
"I was counseled not to rush to judgment." I'm glad he didn't probe into the origin of that advice.
"Good, I'm glad that the company's going to keep faith with him. A business has to peek around the blinders every now and then, Rocco. Well, you enjoy your dinner. Say hello to Dale for me and stay hep to that changeable storm out there."
When I was sure he was finished, I hit the end button. Too many weathermen were telling me which way the wind was blowing.
The next time my cell phone rang, I had to grope for it through profound darkness because the bedside light switch didn't work. The LED was gone from the radio alarm too.
"Are you all right?" my wife said. "Your mother called to see if you were still alive." And then I felt the tremors hitting the tall building, like something hungry and taller was trying to shake its way in. The shriek of an enraged multitude filled the air for a second and then was whisked away.
"Whoa!" I said. "What time is it?"
"Three-ish."
I got up and opened the window curtains, standing well to the side. Looking down, I saw one avenue still had live traffic lights bouncing like baby jumpers in the scudding rain. The rest of the city was totally dark. The headlights and whirling colors of emergency vehicles moved through streets that ran like gutters beneath the thrashing shadows of roadside trees.
"I told you to watch the weather."
"Let me go. I'm fine. I have to check in with Lassiter."
He was at the office fielding anxious calls on cell phone and radio from both clients and stranded personnel. Fallen trees and flooding had effectively isolated some of the prote
cted facilities.
"I'm coming down there," I said.
"How you gettin' here? Canoe?"
"I'll walk."
"Like hell. I'll send Beljour to getcha. He can drive the company SUV. It's got official lookin' whirly lights and a lotta freeboard."
"How long you two been there?"
"Beljour never left. Said he had one of his big-gut feelin's. I swung by after I dropped you off and been here ever since. He spooked me."
"Send him along if you think it's safe."
"One place is as safe as another tonight."
I knocked over my clubs searching for the flashlight I kept stowed in the bag. I dressed by its light and took the stairs down to the lobby where guests had gathered and candles were burning like votives and a maintenance guy was belatedly taping the windows. I wondered why such a big chain hadn't invested in an emergency generator, and put it down to the "charmed life" syndrome that was one of our national ills. The night manager seemed to think everything would be back on as soon as the wind died down some.
I didn't see the images until later, but the hurricane had made a radical change in course. After surging across the barrier islands, it charged undeflected into the interior, killing and maiming as it came up I-40 from Cape Fear like a howling and murderous avenger.
Beljour was forced into a few detours, but he persisted, stolidly backing and filling amidst fallen trees and wires, and within half an hour, I was standing before candlelit whiteboards, writing up situational notes coming in from the field. As we worked, the room took on the confusing scent of warring perfumes from the candles scrounged from Miz Jessica's extensive assortment at the reception desk.
Over at GlobalSoft, the emergency generators had never kicked in. Floodwater had overflowed the culvert and ran like an unbridged moat below the property. Trees were also down across the road approaches. We got the plant engineer in touch with the sergeant, who had some mechanical ability, and eventually they got the power up so that their database was preserved. There were a number of similar situations that, as luck would have it, we or our creative on-site guards solved after a fashion.
Dale broke out a bottle of bourbon, at last revealing his poison, and I downed a few shots that set like fishhooks in my gut.
A tree came down in the parking lot just before dawn. It sheared off the little overhang sheltering the rear door and crushed the dumpster. Beljour was dozing on his creaky throne and never heard a thing, but I didn't begrudge him his exhaustion.
"The cell phone and radio batteries are 'bout run down," Dale said. "We're not gonna be able to palaver with anyone pretty soon."
"I think we got marching orders out to everybody. All the major clients are in the picture. I don't like the fact that we're in the dark here, though. There's no way the utility company's going to solve this mess in a hurry. And we're going to lose all our own data when Pal's batteries go dead."
"Speakin' of pals, Beljour got holda one, who's headin' over here with a portable generator that we can hook up to power the servers and maybe spark a string of lights through here. It'll be noisy and another tree might fall down on it, but we gotta try."
My watch said it should have been daylight, but it wasn't. The walls shuddered with the wet shrouds of sound slapping against them. I heard glass break upstairs.
"Dale, this is one more thing we can add to the template to grab their hearts and minds."
"Beg pardon?"
"Now you can throw nature into the mix of potential security risks. And make a metaphor out of it, too—like the kind the Old Man was fond of using. The bad guys will be coming up the pike just like this hurricane. Get it out there while it's still fresh in everybody's mind."
"Is that sour mash doin' your talkin', Rocky?"
I looked at him amidst the moving shadows, thinking that if he couldn't make use of all this chaos and perfidy, then we'd find someone who could. A more urbane someone at that, just as soon as the Old Man's arthritic grasp had loosened a little more.
It was too bad Jeff Hurley had turned rogue. Junior had some other plans that could definitely maximize a gung-ho kid with weapons training or make better use, for that matter, of Captain Langley's familiarity with explosives—and pay them a wage that might even secure their loyalty.
Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe not, but a panoramic vision swooping from suburban households to distant pipelines rushed through me as I climbed to see what had gusted into the upper room.
Difile must have felt his anecdote had ended less tidily than intended. He offered an epilogue.
"Junior had done the right thing by concentrating on his marketing department first. They did a brilliant job getting in on the ground floor of fear, so to speak. I like to think I was the one who brought them the original grist for their mill."
"What about the Old Man?" said the banker, rising to leave.
"Is that disapproval in your voice—you, of all people? Well, that's another story, for another night."
Difile's cigar butt hissed in the quiet rush of the outbound tide.
Copyright © 2012 Chris Muessig
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FICTION
FRANK
STEVE HOCKENSMITH
Art by Linda Weatherly
A Sunny Day
The old lady was talking to him about toothpaste, and he didn't know why.
"I always buy Colgate. Always. I'm very loyal," she said. "And I get it in the big tubes. Economy size. It's just me here, Perry passed five years ago, but still—you know you'll use it all eventually, right? A penny saved, that's my way. But would you look at this?"
The woman held up a small, half-flattened tube of toothpaste. It looked strangely familiar.
"This was in my medicine cabinet this morning," she said. "A dinky little tube of Crest. Now I have to ask you: Have I ever bought Crest? Ever?"
She really seemed to expect an answer.
He had no idea who she was. He looked around the room, searching for clues.
They seemed to be in an apartment. It was small but tidy, with few furnishings. A TV. A bookshelf. A table. The recliner he was sitting in. The couch the lady was on. Sunlight streamed in through the windows, but all he could see outside was a green-blue blur. The pictures on the walls were hovering smudges.
"Have I?" the woman asked.
"Have you what?" he said.
She didn't seem to hear him.
"The same thing happened with my dishwashing liquid. Joy. That's what I've used for fifty years. And what do I find when I go to do the dishes last night? A teeny little Dawn. Dawn!"
"Oh," he said. He didn't know what else to say.
"They come in the night and switch things. Leave small for big, cheap for expensive. Because they think we won't notice. But I do! I'm going to talk to Barbara about it right now!"
He nodded. "That's a good idea."
The name "Barbara" meant nothing to him.
The woman started to stand. It was a long, laborious process, with much grunting and wobbling. He felt as though he should help her, but he could barely scoot to the edge of his chair himself. So he merely held a hand out uselessly.
I can't help, the gesture said, but I haven't forgotten that I should try.
When the woman was finally steady on her feet, she began shuffling away.
"She probably won't believe me. I'm just another crazy old lady to her. Or maybe she's in on it! She's always smiling smiling smiling, but you never know. People."
She spat that last word out like a curse.
When she reached the door, she paused, her hand on the knob.
"You should catch them, Frank. You used to be a detective."
And then he remembered. A little, anyway.
Frank. That was him. And yes—he'd been a policeman once. He lived here now. This was his room.
"Okay," he said. "Goodbye."
After the woman left, he ju
st sat in his recliner for a while, doing nothing, thinking nothing. Eventually, his hand found the remote control on the armrest. He turned on the TV and immediately found himself in a world he understood perfectly.
Jim Rockford was getting beat up for the thousandth time, and when it was done he dusted himself off and made his ten-thousandth wisecrack. Then he got in his souped-up car and drove off to catch the killer. It was silly and sloppy and predictable, and Frank was, for a time, utterly content.
Much later, when he was getting ready for bed, he found a new tube of toothpaste by the bathroom sink.
Colgate. Economy size.
A Tuesday (according to the paper)
Frank was hunched over his tiny dining-room table reading the Times with a magnifying glass. It was hard work, and for what? He didn't understand half of what he read. Who were these people? What were they doing? Why should he care?
There was a knock.
"Come in."
The door opened, and a small, smiling man leaned into the room.
"Good morning, Demetrius," said Frank.
He knew the man was Demetrius Something and that he hadn't been working at Buena Vista Independent Living very long and that he was nice. He knew all this because it was that kind of day. A good day. Or a better day, anyway.
"You mean afternoon, Frank," Demetrius said. "It's almost two. I noticed you didn't come down for lunch again. You hungry?"
It took Frank a while to answer. It was as though he had to ask his body first, and his body took its own sweet time deciding.
"No. I'll just make myself a hot dog in a while."
"All right. Don't forget your pills, now."
Demetrius left.
Frank ate his lunch two hours later. Campbell's chicken and rice soup and Club crackers. He warmed the soup in the microwave because the stovetop confused and scared him. Something had happened. Something had burned, hurt. That was all he remembered. But it was enough.
When he went to wash his bowl and spoon and plate, the bottle of Joy by the sink reminded him of a crumpled note he'd found in his pocket that morning.
Large Colgate—Joy—Julie's???
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 10/01/12 Page 7