“Yourself,” Rafe said. “At risk.”
I mulled that a moment, then said, “So far today I shot off a redneck’s kneecap, and caught a hitman on the fly with a single shot.” I mock shivered. “Sure would hate to have my afternoon turn risky, all of a sudden.”
Rafe looked at Chic.
Chic looked at Rafe.
“Afternoon, fellas,” I said, and gave them a pleasant nod, and was off down the corridor.
I must have passed Dan without even noticing him, because suddenly I heard his voice behind me, saying to the two cops: “What did I miss?”
“Just your boss going mildly psychotic on us,” Rafe said.
“And?” Dan said.
They didn’t know I’d heard, and didn’t see my smile as I pressed the DOWN button at the elevator.
“Your behavior is starting to show reckless tendencies,” the doctor said.
“Don’t worry, Doc,” I said. “I’m not suicidal.”
“And yet you intended to beard Dominique Muerta in her own den?”
“No. She’d look ridiculous in a beard—okay, bad joke. But, Doc, the one place in this town where I’m not in real danger is Muerta Enterprises HQ.”
“And why is that?”
“They have a reputation to uphold...but then so do I.”
Muerta Enterprises International had its own building, a modern slab of stone and glass and steel on Wacker Drive with a gigantic abstract metal statue out front that might have been a dancer. I stood looking up, trying without any luck to see where the building ended and the sky began.
It took some sneaking around to avoid going through such channels as signing in with the receptionist, or waiting with a roomful of people whose attire was divided fairly evenly between Business Severe and Show Biz Chic.
But on the pretense of needing a ladies’ room, and knowing right where I was going thanks to some intel I squeezed out of Rafe Valer, I managed to enter the outer office of the CEO, without incident.
Within, I found a painfully handsome redheaded young man in a cream-color Armani ensemble with an orange silk tie, seated at an L-shaped blond desk, swiveled to face his keyboard and flat screen. His workstation was barren of any paperwork—he was a keeper of the keys, sentry not secretary.
Whatever the hell he was, he had an office area almost as large as my own at the Tree Agency, though this chamber with its parquet floor and deco-design area rug was home to no chairs other than the young man’s.
This was not a waiting room—by the time you made it this far, you were ready to be ushered in. The light lavender walls were adorned, sparingly, with large, almost poster-size framed photographs of household-name recording artists and actors, all smiling for the camera in a manner that came off collectively as crazed. A blond hutch matching the desk displayed some awards—including Oscars and Emmys—and a similar bookcase was home to annual industry publications.
The redheaded gatekeeper rolled on his brown leather chair from the flat screen to the other wing of his desk to look up at me with polite patience. He had lovely blue eyes and a moist, sensual mouth that a starlet would have killed for, or anyway braved Botox to attain.
“I’m sorry?” he said, in a midrange voice that was somehow simultaneously gentle and accusing.
What “I’m sorry” meant was, if I was standing before him right now, as I seemed to be, he should, he would, have known about it. He’d have been called by someone less important than him but probably more important than me.
“Michael Tree for Dominique Muerta,” I said.
He didn’t even check a book or use the phone. “You don’t have an appointment.”
“No, but she’ll see me.”
He remained polite, if icily so. “I’m afraid it’s impossible for you to see Ms. Muerta without an appointment.”
“Tell her my name. Michael Tree?”
His eyes narrowed. Something was registering inside the lightly freckled skull.
“I’m sorry,” he insisted, and he thought I didn’t see him reach under the desk and press something.
I leaned in, invading his space a little; he smelled at least as good as I did. “Would you do me one small favor? Give her my card before you turn me over to security, would you?”
And I handed him a nine millimeter bullet.
His blue eyes showed white all around as he regarded the object in his palm as if it were radioactive. “Is...is this supposed to be a joke?”
“Ask your boss,” I said. “Maybe she’ll explain it to you.”
He rose.
Gave me a pointing gesture that meant “stay put” —brave boy—and came around from behind his little L-shaped world and ducked in through a black, unmarked door, disappearing.
I went over to the door, open a crack, and listened. What I heard echoed a little, as if the man and woman speaking were on the other side of a lake.
“A woman out there insists on seeing you,” the secretary was saying. “I told her that’s impossible without an appointment. But she’s...”
A silken, almost purring alto responded: “You can’t handle a single unannounced visitor, Dennis? How are you earning those six figures again?”
“She seems sure you’ll want to see her—Michael Tree?”
Silence.
“And,” the redhead continued, “she said to give you her ‘card.’ ”
“Well?”
I smiled to myself as, on the other side of that door, the personal assistant was no doubt passing my bullet on to his boss.
“Droll,” she said. “Very droll.”
“I’ve already summoned security. Question is, should I call 911 as well?”
Like any other respectable company in a crisis would do....
“Hold security in your outer area when they arrive.”
“And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime...show her in.”
I returned to my position at the desk and allowed Dennis to come out and nod with a smile that even he didn’t believe. He ushered me just inside and discreetly exited, closing the door at my back.
Dominique Muerta’s inner office was three times the size of mine, though it had in common a certain masculinity in the dark-wood paneling and furnishings. The ceiling was high, stolen from the floor above, and the parquet floor seemed endless.
At my left was a massive fireplace with an elaborate gilt-framed oil painting of her late father looming over it and everything else, the tall, slender don standing with arms folded, very dignified, attired in a white suit and white tie—all that was lacking was the midget yelling, “Da plane! Da plane!”
To my right was a huge window onto the gray and blue landscape of the Chicago River and the buildings beyond. At the rear was a conference area not unlike my own, with couches and well-stuffed leather chairs (though these were white) around a coffee table, perched on another deco-design area rug.
Dominique Muerta herself sat behind a mahogany desk not unlike mine, but this one was about the size of a sideways BMW, with a flat screen and piles of papers and folders and printouts, not terribly neat, clearly the work area of someone with multiple irons in God-knew-how-many fires.
Impeccable in severe though stylish business attire—gray suit, black silk blouse, by some European designer whose work I could neither recognize nor afford—she was a beautiful woman, no question of it, slender and yet strong and so pretty that the mannish severity of her no-doubt-expensive short hairdo took nothing away. The thin lips were a bright red and the almond-shaped eyes were as richly, deeply mahogany as the desk, softened with a touch of lavender eye shadow.
“Michael Tree,” she said, and smiled as she rose.
I was moving toward her across the parquet floor, footsteps echoing a little, as she came around from behind the desk and met me halfway, extending a graceful hand.
As we shook, she said, “This is a long overdue meeting. We have so much in common.”
“Thanks for seeing me,” I said.
She g
estured to the area of couches and chairs, and took me politely by the arm and walked me over. She did not offer to take, or have taken, my trenchcoat and I left it on, as well as my gloves, purse on its strap over my shoulder.
Indicating the glass coffee table, on which rested a bowl of bottled waters on ice, she said, “Sit, sit.... Cappuccino? Water?...I can have hot or iced tea or regular coffee or a soft drink—”
“No,” I said, sitting on the nearest couch. “Thank you. This won’t take long.”
Dominique sat on the white leather chair across the glass table. Her thin lips formed a razor-edge smile as she opened her hand to display the bullet in her palm.
“Interesting business card,” she said. An eyebrow arched. “Did you mean to scare me, or just get my attention?”
Dominique set the bullet on the coffee table, straight up, as if placing a miniature in a collector’s set. It made a little klik on the glass.
“When I want your attention,” I said with my own smile, “it’ll be traveling faster.”
Her face went blank—didn’t harden exactly. Just lost all expression.
Then she said, “There is no reason, Michael....May I call you Michael?”
“Why not?” I sat back, folded my arms, crossed my legs. “We have so much in common.”
“Michael,” she said, sitting forward, “we need not be adversaries. My late father...and your late husband...” She shrugged somberly. “...they’ve had their war.”
“And that war’s over?”
She nodded, once. “For some time.”
“Question is,” I said, “was my husband a casualty?”
She drew in a breath. Let it out slowly. “My understanding is that Mike Tree’s death was related to an arrest he’d made, once upon a time, of some...” She made a dismissive gesture. “...lowlife scum.”
I ignored that. “What relationship does Muerta Enterprises have—”
“Muerta Enterprises International,” she corrected gently.
“What relationship is there between Muerta Enterprises International and Addwatter Accounting Incorporated?”
She gave me a tiny shrug. “They’re the top firm in town. And we use them. Why, does that surprise you?”
“Did Richard Addwatter’s death ‘surprise’ you... Dominique?”
She shook her head sadly. “Terrible shock. I understand, from what I see in the media, that his wife is as much a victim in this tragedy as he is.”
I managed not to laugh. “Very insightful, Dominique. One never knows when some unexpected... event...out of left field? Can blindside you.”
“I’m afraid I don’t grasp your meaning, Michael.”
“My meaning...my point...is this.” I gestured rather grandly. “If behind all of this polished steel and glass is an entertainment conglomerate involved in corrupting our nation’s youth with hip hop and bad movies and stupid television shows, you and I are cool. No problem.”
“Really.”
I smiled on one side of my face. “If, on the other hand, the woman behind the curtain is peddling prostitution, illegal gambling, drug trafficking and other nasty criminal fun and games...you and I will tangle our pretty asses.”
My hostess’s expression and manner turned colder than the ice in the water-bottle bowl. She leaned forward and pushed a button on the underside of the coffee table.
“We’re done here,” she said. Not purring.
Dominique remained seated as I heard the door open behind me.
Two men—both over six feet, both well over two hundred pounds, and attired in identical sharp dark suits and ties, with short military haircuts—entered. The one in front had a round face with features too small for it, and his cohort had a square-ish head and ordinary features; together they made a peculiar geometry.
Dominique said, “My staff will show you out.”
“I know the way.”
“I must insist.”
The two well-dressed if steroidal security guards lumbered toward us, as I got to my feet and headed out. As I passed them, they fell in with me, one on either side.
When we reached the door, the round-head opened it for me, at my right, while the square-head gestured, on my left, for me to go on through.
“Real gentleman,” I said, and smiled first at the square-head, who nodded, and then back at the roundhead, who was nice enough to return my smile.
Then I shoved the square-head into the open doorway and shut the door on him, hard, catching him in the neck and the side of the head, approximately. As the round-head moved in, I yanked the door back, hard, slamming it into his moon face.
Square-head was staggering around like a drunk looking for a curb and I whapped him good, with my purse.
He went down in a pile and it sounded like a small building collapsing.
Round-head was fumbling for a gun under his shoulder, but the sharp suit’s buttons were slowing him down, and I hit him with the purse, too, a nice smack on the side of his sloping skull, and he went down slower, but he went down all right, kneeling to me for a moment, before flopping onto his face and kissing the parquet floor.
I got in the purse and removed the nine millimeter and, with an extended arm and a nicely steady hand, pointed it across the room...
...at Dominique Muerta.
“When I decide it’s time to show you out, Dominique? I’ll do it, personally....”
I returned the gun to my purse, snapping it shut, stepping delicately around the fallen security guards, saying, “Excuse me, fellas.”
The redheaded gatekeeper had disappeared and, just before I went out into the corridor, I heard one of the security boys behind me mumbling, “What...what the hell?”
I glanced back and saw Dominique in the doorway to her inner sanctum, looking down at her security team with an expression usually reserved for sucking sour lemon balls.
“She hit you with her purse,” Dominique was explaining. “You’re both fired, by the way.”
She’s strict, I thought, and went out.
ELEVEN
“What happened that night at the hospital,” I said, “was the real turning point—a tragic one, in some respects.”
“How so?”
I shifted in the recliner. “I wasn’t there for all of it, Doc, so I’ll give it to you as best I came to understand it....”
A dark-haired, trimly mustached uniformed cop of about thirty, Officer Anthony Clemens was sitting outside Roger Freemont’s room, playing a Nintendo DS handheld. On the other side of the door, Fremont remained unconscious in his hospital bed, IV tube inserted, heart monitor blipping, privacy curtain drawn, the room now being shared.
As Clemens played New Super Mario Bros., a tall, slender, severely attractive Hispanic nurse approached, a clipboard in hand. Her nametag said Garcia, and she wore latex gloves.
Outside Freemont’s room, about to go in, she paused and asked, “Are you Officer Clemens?”
Clemens looked up from his screen, grudgingly. “Yeah.”
She nodded back down the hall. “Call for you at the nurse’s station. A Lt. Valer?”
“Thanks,” Clemens said, and he began juggling the gaming system with the cell phone he was getting out of his pocket. “But I gotta stay at my post. I’ll call him—”
She gripped his arm. “Officer!”
He blinked up at her. “What?”
The woman’s tone was scolding. “Don’t you know you can’t use a cell phone in a hospital? Electronic interference.”
A little confused, Clemens put the cell away—slowly, but away. “What, like on an airplane?”
“That’s right...sorry. Didn’t mean to jump on you.” She smiled at the officer. “Go on and take your call, at the nurse’s station. I’ll stay with the patient till you return.”
He smiled back at her, said thanks, and as Clemens headed down the corridor, tucking away the evidence—his Nintendo DS—into a pants pocket, Nurse Garcia slipped into Freemont’s room.
On entering, the nurse’s
pleasant expression hardened into a blank mask as she studied, in a clinical fashion, her patient, unconscious in his bed, the heart monitor’s blipping providing a percussive undercurrent.
The nurse tossed her clipboard on the foot of the bed and removed from her pocket a hypodermic syringe already filled with a black liquid. She pointed the hypo needle up to check it, giving it a test squirt.
Then she moved in on the unconscious Freemont, needle poised....
“Excuse me for interrupting, Ms. Tree,” Dr. Cassel said, and he was on the edge of his chair. “But how can you know this? Where were you when this was going on?”
I grinned over at him. “Didn’t I mention it, Doc? I was who Roger was sharing the room with....”
I whipped the privacy curtain open.
The empty bed where I’d been sitting and waiting—in slacks and blouse, not a hospital gown (I wasn’t sharing the room to that extent)—was to my back, and I was on my feet, with my nine millimeter in hand...
...and aimed right at the “nurse.”
I gave her a smile at least as nasty as the black remedy in that hypo.
“Maybe,” I said, “it’s time for your shot....”
But she was fast, and didn’t fluster, I’ll give her that: she hurled the hypo at me like a knife, and the damn thing hit me in the arm, hard, hard enough to pierce the blouse and stick in my arm and quiver there and for that matter bump me back against the bed, jarring me so that the gun went flying, clattering to the floor somewhere.
This put me out of commission long enough for Nurse Garcia to book it out of the room, moving quickly, not quite running.
I yanked the damn hypo from my arm—“Fuck!”—and wasted a second or two trying to spot my fumbled nine mil, slipping the hypo in my slacks pocket.
Gun was out of sight, so I said, “Shit,” and took pursuit, anyway.
I could see Garcia up there, nearing where she’d have to turn either left or right, but there were several real nurses in the hall as well; calling out was too risky, because it would encourage Garcia to take a hostage or otherwise misbehave....
Down at the end of the corridor, beyond the fleeing Garcia, came Uniformed Officer Clemens, trundling around the corner, gesturing in confusion. And right on his heels was another nurse, a genuine nurse, pushing a steel cart of meds.
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