“And the boat?”
“Park Service would also like to talk to you, find out what you have in mind and how you plan on paying for it. The number is on the Post-it there.”
“Let me ask you something, Marta. You ever wanted to just vanish, start over as somebody else?”
“Are you kidding? Who doesn’t?”
“How would you do it?”
“Save up till I had forty thousand, enough to last six months, get new ID, new Social, a bus ticket to California, find a job cutting hair.”
“You’ve thought this out.”
“Haven’t you?”
“Not in such detail.”
“So is that helpful?”
“Would you consider staging your own death?”
She grimaced.
“Does that mean you wouldn’t?”
“Well, it would be kinder. So your loved ones didn’t have all those unanswered questions. Your spouse wasn’t out driving around all day and night looking for you. My way would be easier to pull off, less likely to fail, but staging a death, it’s actually the more considerate thing.”
“Yeah,” he said. “More considerate.”
“That’s all?”
Frank’s eyes strayed to his window, afternoon clouds building over the Everglades. Ivan had moved away into the Gulf. Juanita was heading their way. They were in the cone of probability. “I need that background stuff on Leslie Levine. In particular, any relatives, loved ones, friends she had. The kind of person she might be trying to spare some emotional pain.”
Marta left. Frank read the files. She was right, nothing much on Wally Chee, except some medical issues. A birth defect with his legs, which some pediatrician in New Mexico blamed on contaminated drinking water on the Navajo res where his people had lived for generations.
He and his brother had been raised by a single mom. As Marta had said, Pauly’s military history was too light to be real. Heavily blue-penciled. Something worth checking.
Claude Sellers, now that shithead was intriguing.
Sellers had been with the power company all his working life. Started as a lineman, worked his way up to district supervisor of field maintenance, then jumped over to security, an odd zigzag that seemed to have no basis in new training.
Divorced four times. No children. Second marriage only lasted three months with a messy finale. A restraining order from the ex. No abuse charges filed, but there had to be some kind of harassment to get the restraining order. Claude, the bully, probably didn’t take rejection well. Wife three and four survived a year with Claude before they bailed. Cycling through women. Fucking up, then fucking up again.
Sellers had a concealed-weapons permit, a mail-order college degree from some no-name place in Arizona. Never been arrested, rented a starter condo out in Kendall, where the young marrieds and recently divorced lived.
The thing that must’ve caught Marta’s eye was his credit history. His score was so low, Claude couldn’t have bought a toaster on layaway. The guy filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy seven years ago, then filed under Chapter 13 last year. Wiping his debt slate clean twice. Frank double-checked and saw from the court records there was alimony in all four divorces.
Money problems. His salary from the power company was damn good, within a few thousand of what Frank made, the prick. But all that alimony was eating him alive.
Frank got out his legal pad, started jotting down the things that jumped out. Claude’s money issues, the empty military record of Pauly Chee, the gel on the ladder, an informant dead, the video of an unlikely croc attack, Prince Key.
Marta buzzed and told him Angie Stevens was waiting to see him, their top cybersleuth. Nice young woman, blond with a perky smile. Not a single tattoo showing anywhere, zero piercings, normal shoulder-length haircut. Nothing like the movies. More debutante than hacker.
Frank sketched out the situation, gave her the cyber-attack analysis sheet that Sheen had faxed over, and asked Angie if she could find some time this weekend to drive down to Turkey Point and check over the current security status of its computer network.
“If you don’t have some kind of scheduling conflict,” he said.
“You mean other than the big one-day sale at Macy’s?” It sat there for a few seconds, then she beamed at him, a jokester. “Happy to do it, boss.”
He was about to tell her to call him Frank, but Angie Stevens had already turned and walked out of his office without a good-bye. Frank thinking, There it was, the computer-nerd thing, the klutzy lack of social skills.
He buzzed Marta, told her to call their FBI liaison at the Pentagon, see if there was any more on Pauly Chee they could shake loose.
“Bottom of my list or top?”
“Tippy top,” Frank said. “Try hard, stamp your feet if you have to.”
He worked through the afternoon, running his own computer searches on the principals, hours slumped at the screen but finding nothing.
He killed his computer, shut his door, called Nicole’s cell, and it rang three times. Frank, expecting the goddamn robot again, was about to slap the receiver down when he heard her voice, husky, different.
“I catch you at a bad time?” Frank said.
She cleared her throat, sounding almost normal when she said, “Hey, Frank. How’s it going?”
Sheffield brushed aside the weirdness and asked what she was doing later.
TWENTY-THREE
“MY CALENDAR’S CLEAR,” NICOLE SAID. “What do you have in mind?”
From the foot of the bed Claude Sellers shook his head. He wanted her to stay the night, finish what they’d started. The idiot had a few more gallons of horny juice stored up.
But, no, Nicole went on and made a date with Frank, while Claude, feeling snubbed, began to massage her right foot, then her left, working her toes, digging into the meat of her arches.
Ignoring him, Nicole was saying uh-huh and no and okay, but mainly listening, as Claude finished with her feet and started working up her right leg, kneading the knots in her calf muscles, then sliding his hand up farther, above her right knee, across the slick inner thighs, going to give her a little thrill while she listened to Sheffield.
Claude only made it a few inches before Nicole kicked him in the shoulder with her right foot, knocking him away, squinching up her pissed-off face, saying to Sheffield, “Okay, that’s strange. They’re not man-eaters?”
Claude slid off the bed and stood in her line of sight, swinging his wiener from side to side like a caveman with his club, playing around, making a pucker with his lips, trying to get Nicole to grin, but she looked at his dick and watched it going back and forth and said to Sheffield, “Sure, the Boater’s Grill at six. No, no, make it six thirty, that’s better. I have a couple of things to sort out.… Good, yeah, see you then.”
She clicked off, set the phone aside, and said to Claude, “Okay, tell me, idiot child, why the hell did you smear the goddamn ladder with gel?”
Claude stopped swinging his wiener. “Just to be sure. Probably would’ve worked without it, but, you know, electricity can be unpredictable, so I went the extra mile.”
“Jesus Christ. Conducting gel. That’s blood in the water for Sheffield. He’ll have a forensic hard-on until he has the serial number of the tube it came from.”
“Speaking of which, tell me about Sheffield’s pecker.”
She stared at him as he climbed into the broken-open sheets beside her. “Christ, I should’ve seen what a moron you were from the first.”
“But my pheromones overwhelmed you. You couldn’t help yourself.”
She pulled the sheet up to her neck, staring at the ceiling, trying to think, weigh the danger. Frank had confided in her about the gel and what he’d learned about the docile nature of crocs, his doubts about the video. Which meant he was still keeping her in the loop. Unless this was his ploy. Playing her, stringing her along until he had all the evidence he needed to come after her. She wasn’t sure. She’d thought she had a good read on hi
m, that he was under her influence. Now not so sure.
“Listen, sweet stuff,” Claude said. “Let me remind you. You seem to have forgotten a few things about our personal interconnectivity.
“You came to me because I’m the guy with the keys to the locks. The secret codes. I’m Mr. Open Sesame who can make everything happen you want. I can plant the eco-freaks’ flash drive, I can get everyone worked up about that screen saver. I can let that guy, Wally whatever, have remote access so he can poke around the system. It was me, me and me alone, sweetheart, who set this deal in motion because that’s what you wanted.
“And sure enough, the force-on-force drill is going down. A week from today, exactly the time frame you asked for. Me, Claude Sellers, the inside guy you needed so you could score the biggest takedown of a terrorist cell in US history. So you could be a hero, strap a booster rocket on your stalled-out career. You used me and you’re still using me, which, by the way, puts me at serious risk of incarceration, but am I complaining? No, because the quid pro quo, sweet cheeks, the tit for tat, is that I get to use your sweet, tight body for my gratification. Which, I got to admit, so far is worth putting my life in serious jeopardy.
“And the gel, hey, that’s nothing. I used it because I wanted to be a hundred percent sure Bendell got zapped. So what if special asshole in charge Sheffield is suspicious? Big fucking whoop. We knew from the get-go that would happen.
“The logical deduction is the ELF guys found out they had a snitch in their midst, so they exterminated his ass. So what if there was gel? It’s ELF gel. It’s on them. Does that help explain it to you, sweetness? Does that help put your fears to rest?”
She hated to admit it, but Claude was right. Right about everything. She felt her body relax. Still anxious, still needing to sort it through one more time, make sure she had it all set perfectly in place, but not now. Later. When she was alone, when she could think. Not with this meathead grinning at her.
“Okay, good, we got that settled,” he said. “Now tell me about Sheffield’s cock.”
“You’re fourteen years old.”
“So?”
“Not even that. You’re twelve.”
“How big is it? Go on, tell me. I can take it.”
“I warned you from the beginning, Claude. I told you I’d already been with Frank once, and if things worked out, we were going to be intimate again. You said fine. You didn’t mind. So cut the jealousy shit.”
“It’s bigger, isn’t it? That’s why you don’t want to talk about it.”
“I didn’t notice his dick.”
“You were with him all night and didn’t notice the thing sliding in and out of you? The thing you had in your mouth when he was busting a nut?”
“It was normal. Average, nothing unique about it.”
“Fatter or skinnier or identical to me?”
“I’m not doing this.”
“’Cause I’m pretty thick myself, right? Fatter is better than longer. I never met a woman thought otherwise.”
“He’s a pencil dick. Okay, Claude? A pencil dick.”
“Number two pencil?”
“Yes, that’s right, superskinny. Kind you can break in one hand. And you’re thick as a German salami. Okay, you happy now?”
“Tell me you’re not sweet on him.”
“What matters is, he’s sweet on me.”
“Is he?”
“Most definitely.”
“Okay, then, I’m not jealous anymore. I’m over it. I was, but now I’m okay. I’m totally secure. I know you’re sacrificing your sexual dignity for the plan, to get the big advancement, office with a view. I know that. So I’m not jealous.”
As he cuddled beside her, pressed his cheek against her left breast, Nicole stifled a shudder, took a long breath, forced herself to stay loose because he was right, damn it, right about her needing him, even if it meant she had to endure his bungling sex, his juvenile insecurities, his rancid Old Spice smell. She’d become a pro at swallowing her disgust.
Reminding herself, as she did so often, that this degradation would be purified later. She would absolve herself, isolate these hours with Claude, keep them compartmentalized. A skill she’d begun to develop a decade earlier, on her first job out of college.
Assistant to the senior special agent at GAO, a step above a flunky. Herbert Marshall, an investigator of white-collar crimes, waste, fraud, abuse, government corruption. Less than a year into that first job, off in Las Vegas at the yearly GAO convention, she’d joined Herbert in the hotel bar. She’d expected the whole gang, but it was just the two of them. Nicole sipped a martini. She wasn’t a drinker, never had been. But after two sips the night was an ugly whirl of violent colors and music and noisy voices, and she woke in her hotel bed at ten the next morning in agony.
Remembering nothing after the second swallow, but feeling the ripping ache between her legs. She touched herself, screamed at the blood, screamed when the hotel doctor touched her, screamed again at the hospital. Herbert showed up, acting horrified, telling the female police detective that he’d helped her back to her room the night before, that she was drunk. There’d been no sex. None at all. He claimed Nicole had tried to kiss him, said she wanted to party, do the town, but he refused. A happily married man.
Her urine test was positive for roofies. Drugged and raped, the physician said, multiple times. Bruised cervix, a tear in the posterior fourchette. Injuries that would take months to heal. Others that never would.
The detective urged her to press charges against Herbert, but she didn’t want to expose herself to the public shit that was sure to follow, that would dog her forever, stain her career.
She stayed on the job, applied for promotions, transfers, but was passed over and passed over again. Her workload increased. Herbert ignored her. For a year she hung on, and then 9/11 came, the Twin Towers went down. Overnight new federal agencies were born, new opportunities. She moved to NIPC, a demotion, a pay cut. But it was work.
A month on the job, her new boss hit on her. She was aloof, simmering with fury but hiding it. When he persisted, she made a decision that altered her trajectory.
She flirted back, discreetly at first, bedroom eyes, keeping a tantalizing distance. A mirage, a temptress, beguiling insinuations that were never kept. The false promise of promiscuity. She kept him in a low-grade swoon and won a small upgrade and another.
She shifted departments. Repeated the process. The alluring word, the dangled bait, the fleeting smile, beckoning but withholding. Same thing again after that. Seduction became work. Work became seduction.
Cold inside, fueled by hate and hurt, cunning, aloof, moving ahead step by bewitching step. The look that hinted more, the quick touch on hand and arm that was almost a caress, the touch that seemed certain to lead to sex. But never did.
Her power grew. GS-9, GS-10, working up the pay grades. Her own titillating revenge. Making her giddy, a little crazy, her one and only goal was to rise so high that she was invulnerable, that she could lift her foot and grind them under her heel, any of them. All of them.
When she crossed the line, let one of them into her bed, she remained two steps removed, watching from afar. Keeping her true self sober and safe. Sex was only to close the deal, to set the hook deeper, to move up and up again. She thought of her vagina as a wound that never healed.
What shame she felt she put into boxes. She assembled one for Herbert, one for each who followed. She stacked the boxes neatly, edge to edge, shelved them in the far back corner of her history where they gathered the dust of forgetfulness. Claude now had a box. When it was time, she would seal it, set it beside the others, perfectly aligned in the airless vault. The archives of her humiliations and her triumphs.
Someday soon, Sheffield would have his, too, take his place on the shelf.
She turned to Claude. “Frank’s suspicious about the video, about Leslie Levine. He’s consulted with some croc expert. He thinks she could still be alive, the whole croc attack was st
aged. This isn’t good.”
“Let him be suspicious. Not a problem. What’s he going to do?”
“He could send SWAT out to Prince Key. Take down the operation.”
“I could intervene,” Claude said.
“What?”
“Distract him. I’m good at distracting.”
His lips grazed her nipple, a damp nibble. Again she suppressed a cringe, looked down at his slick scalp. She touched it with her fingertips. Knowing he liked that, stroking with her palm against the bristles.
“Distract him how?”
“Put a hurt on him. Go to his place, bash him around, send him to the emergency room. Knock that probable-cause shit right out of his head.”
Her hand stopped moving against his head.
“What do you say, Nicky? Can I do it? Bust him up?”
“We need Frank. You can’t put him out of action. Absolutely not.”
“I can modulate my behavior. I can be very nuanced.”
She considered it, then went back to stroking his head.
“So come on, Nicky, give me the green light.”
“I’m thinking.”
They lay still for a while. Nicole listening to the white noise of traffic out on Kendall Drive. Television chatter coming from the apartment above.
She nudged Claude away, reached over to the side table, and retrieved her phone and purse. She propped herself up against a pillow. Claude drawing back, watching her.
“What’re you doing?”
“Bendell told you there was another snitch on Prince Key. We need to find out who it is and remove him.”
“How you going to manage that?”
She dug through her purse, found the index card where she’d scribbled the numbers, and dialed the first one.
Got an old Cuban lady, hung up.
Dialed the second. A pizza place on Key Biscayne.
The third was a department at the FBI. She disconnected quickly. That same number appeared twelve times. Frank’s office.
“These are Sheffield’s recent calls. One of these is his guy. Bendell said the guy called Frank from out on the island, so it wasn’t long ago. I’ve got every number for the last week. Incoming and outgoing. Twenty-two of them.”
Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries) Page 15