The Anything Goes Girl (A Brenda Contay Novel Of Suspense Book 1)

by Barry Knister

  “You’re losing it,” Ehrlich said, but she saw he was considering it. Moser just might be his own kind of company man. Having made a significant find, if he decided Gene 2 had lied to him, no one could say what he might do.

  “What about the radio?”

  “I told you, they took it.”

  “What’s up there?”

  “The compass. Nautical charts, the tape deck. I found these.” He brought out a bottle of salt tablets.

  They might turn out to be very important, and Ehrlich had not kept them for himself. He was a prick, but not a monster.

  They went down to the galley and swallowed several tablets with water. Topside, Ehrlich said they should check the crews’ quarters. The next hour produced nothing but cheesecake calendars and posters for Kirin beer. The air still held the smell of sweat.

  “Let’s check the engine room,” she said. “There may be flares.”

  They moved along the narrow passageway to the stern stairway and went down. The bulkhead door to the engine room hung open. Brenda ducked in and found the light switch. Bright, grimy and hot, the small room stank of diesel fumes. As Ehrlich entered, she looked down at the floor’s heavy metal grate. Glistening underfoot, water and oil sloshed in the bilge.

  They searched behind the engines and generators, turning up cans of oil and solvent, heavy wrenches, and a crowbar. Ehrlich found a string of lights for working at night, but no flares. As Brenda reached for a greasy rag, the automatic bilge pump began to whine. Seconds later, water splashed outside the stern. She wiped her hands, flanked by the two engines.

  “You say the compass is up there.” She tossed the rag to Ehrlich.

  He caught it and wiped his hands. “So what?”

  “Let’s run it to Mokil,” she said. “We have charts, the compass. With two engines we don’t need a rudder. If we alternate engines, we can maintain course.”

  Ehrlich finished with the rag and dropped it. “That might work if we could use both,” he said. “When we got her free, she caught a swell and clipped the reef. It damaged one of the props. They took it ashore. That’s why it stinks down here.” He pointed to one of the fuel tanks. Along the bottom, a seal had broken, and brown liquid was trickling into the bilge.

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  By late afternoon, they had checked every inch of the ship. The fuel and water tanks were full, a few small fish still in the hold. Ehrlich tore a piece of metal molding off the edge of the map table and cleaned them. They ate under the tarp. Hungry, hoping they were only a day or two from safety, Brenda ate the raw meat, swallowed without chewing, and gagged.

  The tropical storm appeared to have blown itself out. The sky had cleared and it was hot, the ocean perfectly flat like molten metal or glazed china. It looked dead.

  Ehrlich wiped his mouth with a hand towel from the galley. That’s all they had, plenty of towels. He had spread one over his knees and kept wiping his hands and mouth. Everything he did filled her with contempt.

  “None of this would be happening if the FDA had its shit together,” he said, gazing over her shoulder.

  “The Food and Drug Administration,” she said. “Very good, Ehrlich. Food and Drug is responsible for you and me being here.”

  “In a way, that’s true,” he said. “What they do is screw up great ideas. Over a year, that’s what the turnaround time is. You complete a study, they sit on it over a year. Staffing problems, they tell you. Every time you ask, they’re restructuring, replacing personnel.”

  She said nothing, sure he was getting ready to justify whatever GENE 2 had done.

  “You do all the pre-clinical animal studies,” he said. “Biologic action, toxicity. They require acute tox studies to establish what dosage kills fifty percent of your test animals. That’s a good four, five months. Plus organ damage, that’s fourteen days. Tests to see if the compound has mitogenic properties. We ran much longer tox studies. They weren’t required, but we wanted absolute certainty before going to clinical trials. Phase One we did on a prison population in upstate New York. Some side effects, no question. We knew that right away, but no mortality, and no permanent damage.”

  Ehrlich gave her his this-is-no-bullshit look. “None,” he said. “Disorientation, yes. That’s not unusual when you’re working with viruses. Nothing we couldn’t modify. But we knew the FDA would say go back and do the tox studies over. Here we’re seeing amazing evidence, on the threshold of a breakthrough that’ll help millions. And knowing FDA will tell us too bad, repeat the animal tox studies, come back in a year. Bullshit.”

  He balled up what was left of the fish in the towel, carried it to the railing and dropped it. Wiping pink hands on his shorts, he turned back to her.

  “You spend years and tens of millions on research. In the end, you have to make a choice. You can play by FDA’s rules and watch a million deaths occur, or you take a chance and go offshore for Phase 2. That’s what we chose to do. But of course people like you will always say it’s just money, a shortcut for profit. Wrong. We did it for the public as much as for ourselves. We took it offshore and it’s completely legal, because Micronesia’s independent. If the people here decide it’s in their interest to participate in a project that means college for their kids and a secure source of income, show me what’s wrong—”

  The taste of raw fish still strong in her mouth, Brenda listened, thinking how all PR pitches sounded the same. The independent Micronesian people securing reliable income and college for their kids.

  “Let’s see if I get this,” she said. “You came up with a cure for aging, AIDS and death all at once. It cures the common cold, too. It doubles the IQ of lab rats. Phase One confirms all this with convicts. Except for minor side effects, like insanity and homicidal tendencies.”

  “We thought—”

  “Let me guess. So a few inmates go nuts, big deal. They’re lifers, they volunteered, no problem. Back to the drawing board. You thought you worked out all the bugs in your magic elixir before you came out here. You looked around for a nice discreet offshore population not subject to FDA regs. Isolated. Poor, docile. Distant enough so if anything went wrong, you could contain the problem. Tell me you didn’t say ‘contain.’ But you didn’t work out all the bugs, so you and I are here now, in the name of medical history.”

  “If you knew what’s involved, you wouldn’t—”

  “I wouldn’t what?”

  “Act so superior. People like you would fall apart if you spent one day in the real world.”

  “Tell me about this real world!” Brenda shouted. “Come on, Ehrlich, give me everything. Tell me just what’s going to save millions of lives. That is, once you figure out what to do with people screaming and drowning and shooting up their stateside good buddies they’re so tight with.”

  Ehrlich smiled. “Not a chance. When we’re picked up, say anything you want. It won’t matter. This is legal and documented. Pirim’s leadership knows exactly what’s going on.”

  MONDAY, AUGUST 10

  NEFF INDUSTRIES TOWER, PHOENIX

  11:10 A.M.

  Betsy McIntosh stepped into the crowded elevator, followed by a man. Both of them faced forward. “I still don’t see why you have to deal with him,” the man said as the doors closed. “Just have security throw him out.”

  “Insurance. I want a record for the people who recommended him.”

  “What did he do for us?”

  “Surveillance.”

  “Uh oh.” The man shook his head. “I don’t know, Bets. In-house is always the safe way to go on that.”

  “Skip the Monday-morning quarterbacking, there were reasons. No one was qualified.”

  In the back of the elevator, Lindbergh watched as McIntosh’s buddy realized she wasn’t going to offer more details and turned back to the door.

  She looked different from what he’d expected. Blonde, petite. With the slight trace of the Celtic accent Freddy Song had remembered from a business conference. On the phone last night, her voice had been
bitchy and abrupt.

  Earlier that morning, Lindbergh had pulled a plastic ID from a suit jacket on a coat tree in the Neff lobby coffee shop. The badge pinned to his own lapel had freed him to move through the tower’s thirty-two levels and study the layout. All the holding company’s divisions were represented, but the building security was very poor. GENE 2’s PR department occupied offices on the twentieth floor, next to Mergers and Acquisitions.

  On the third floor, the pair exited and turned left. Lindbergh followed and turned right, passing a glass-walled reception room with the sign DATA SYSTEMS. That was where Song had worked. Inside, banks of servers formed a low wall between the slate-gray dividers of perhaps forty workstations. Terminals flickered. To the right, a projection TV displayed a split screen showing two groups seated at tables—a teleconference. In the second before he passed, the big screen filled with a bar graph.

  Lindbergh glanced back to confirm McIntosh and the man with her were gone. He retraced his steps, moving beyond the elevators and passing doors of more glass-walled outer offices. The third door was labeled FOCUS GROUPS. He spotted them inside, talking to the receptionist. They nodded to her and moved beyond the counter to an open doorway.

  It would have better furniture and some art on the walls, but the focus-group room where he was supposed to meet her would be just like those used for police interrogations, with a one-way mirror. Behind it, video equipment would tape his interview with Betsy McIntosh. The tape was for her Reno contact, to prove their hire for Neff was off the reservation.

  He moved quickly back along the corridor, and took the stairs down to the massive Neff lobby. It spread before him in a mottled, polished expanse of granite. Blocks of sun lay in glossy order for the length of a city block. People were entering from the street through a series of bronze revolving doors. Before them stood a chrome-and-marble information desk, the guard surrounded by monitors. Thirty feet behind him, house phones rested under the office tower’s directories. Lindbergh moved to them, took up a receiver and tapped out McIntosh’s extension.

  “My name is Lindbergh,” he said. “I have an appointment with your boss. Call her right now. Tell her to come alone to the information desk in the lobby. Yes, I know, call her now.”

  He hung up and walked toward the south end of the building, past a wine store, cards and gifts and the barber, stopping at the magazine shop. He bought a roll of breath mints. As the clerk turned back to a small TV, he unwrapped the mints and popped in two. He lingered a moment longer, then walked to the entrance and eyed the information desk.

  Bernie had come through. He had phoned McIntosh on Friday, insisting nothing was wrong, that her contract employee had further information. At first, McIntosh had refused the meeting, demanding certain original documents be forwarded. The documents are safe, Bernie told her, but you have to take the meeting. At last, she agreed. Lindbergh had flown from Las Vegas, checked into the Hilton on Sunday evening, and gotten Betsy McIntosh’s extension number. He had left a voicemail message, requesting instructions. She had called an hour later.

  She strode into view on his left, crossing with her elevator buddy to the information desk. Lindbergh sighed. No can do, he thought and took a flip phone from his coat pocket. He punched the security-desk number printed on the back of the stolen nametag, and watched the guard pick up his receiver.

  “Please put Ms. McIntosh on.”

  The guard handed it to her as Lindbergh stepped back from the entrance. “Alone means alone,” he said. “Tell your friend I’m calling Data Systems on three in two minutes. If he isn’t there, you will have a problem.”

  He waited long enough for them to look around the huge lobby, from the house phones to the rows of shops, then outside to the street. When they failed to see him, Jeff or Jim or whoever the fuck it was with her would do as she told him, and go up to level three.

  Lindbergh counted to ten, and stepped again to the entrance.

  McIntosh was alone. He pocketed the phone and walked swiftly toward the south set of revolving doors. Passing out to the street, he turned left and moved to the center doors. Reentering, he confirmed McIntosh’s partner was gone and approached.

  She had no purse or briefcase, and looked annoyed. Clearly she didn’t like losing, not even on chicken shit details. As he neared, her gaze fell on him and she straightened. Small-featured, very well turned out, she wore and needed little makeup. It pleased him to see she was surprised. He had on the new Brooks pinstripe. She had expected Mustache Pete, or somebody named Vito. He smiled and stopped in front of her.

  “Betsy McIntosh?” He put out his hand. “Charles Lindbergh.”

  Surprised at first, she frowned but remembered the guard behind her, and shook hands.

  “Crazy, I know, but that’s my name,” he added, maintaining the handshake as he took a business card from his breast pocket and offered it. She pulled free and hesitated before taking the card and studying it.

  “Get my fax?” he asked.

  “A fax won’t work,” she said. “What I need is the original.”

  “I mean my transcript.” She frowned again, not understanding. “Never mind, it’ll come sometime today. Let’s take a walk.”

  “No, we’re not going anywhere until you produce the report you were asked to forward. Once I have that, we can talk.”

  The guard at the desk was watching them, curious.

  “The report,” Lindbergh said. “You mean Freddy Song’s dentist? Okay, no problem. I called there this morning, to make sure no one tries to access his records. What some lawyers will do for a fee, it’s a real shame. Not to worry.”

  She glanced to the desk, but Lindbergh saw she was not frightened. It pleased him. He had no wish to scare her, and started for the exit. She followed him through the revolving doors.

  Outside, he pointed north. “Guillermo’s looked nice,” he said. “I checked the menu on my way here. Let’s get some lunch.”

  He started walking, stopped and turned. She was thinking about it, making up her mind. Come on, he thought. How often do you get to do lunch with a hit man?

  Decision made, she moved to him, and they walked in the pre-noon pedestrian flow on West Jefferson Street.

  “That’s a nice pin,” he said of the brooch on her beige suit. “May I see it?”

  McIntosh stopped again and Lindbergh turned to face her, hands in his pockets.

  “I know you want a record, but I don’t,” he said. She gave him a bored look and reached up to unpin the brooch. He smiled. “Never mind, good enough.”

  “What’s next, a strip search?” she demanded. “I’m not in your business, Mr. Lindbergh. I’m in PR. If we’re going to have lunch, I’d like a little more background.”

  “On what, Freddy? All right. I asked him to recommend a dentist in Phoenix. He gave me his. Song’s dental records would identify him. Send the dentist’s name to Gary, Indiana. Tell authorities they can tie up loose ends by contacting Fred Song at GENE2. Send that information to Ann Arbor. Remember the law student, Bennett Fox? Then suggest another friend of Vince Soublik’s had a mishap in Baton Rouge. Provide the name, suggest a pattern. Is that enough background?”

  No, she wasn’t scared. It impressed him.

  “Why would you do it?” she asked. “You’d either have an accident yourself, or never work again. You’ve been very well paid, and you were never told to do what you’ve done. All we asked was that potential litigation or embarrassment be avoided. Now you’re blackmailing us. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It will, and this isn’t blackmail,” he said. “It’s mutual self-interest. I happen to be in a matured industry. Time to make a change.”

  He saw she didn’t get it. Why would she? But he felt exposed talking out on the street with people passing. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll have a glass of wine and some bouillabaisse. That’s Guillermo’s Monday special. This is all going to fall in place for you.”

  Curious, thrown off by his manner, she stepped forward and
they resumed walking.

  “What’s this about a transcript?” she asked. “We have Brenda Contay’s. It’s in the photocopy.”

  “I mean mine. From Goetchler State. Goetchler’s in Bayonne, New Jersey. I took a BA there, class of ’90. Criminal Justice. Three-point-two average. That’s not usually good enough for Bureau training, but they cut some slack to veterans’ kids. My father died in Vietnam the year I was born.”

  He glanced at her to see if she understood. “Maybe it made her a little crazy,” he said. “My mother. She’s preggers and gets the news. This is right after she finished reading a book about Charles Lindbergh. Anyway, that’s what she told me. When I was twelve, she zigged when she should’ve zagged on the Merritt Parkway. Social Security paid for my degree. I’m not from a minority, but neither are you. Except for that, I figure I fit the profile Freddy described.”

  “What profile?”

  “Minot’s Marines,” he said, watching comprehension dawn. “Neff’s fast-trackers.”

  She shook her head, not smiling. “I don’t believe this.”

  “I took the complete legal aspects sequence at Goetschler,” he said. “Fundamentals of criminal investigation, evidence and proof, Con law. Municipal government and metropolitan problems. I got As in those. Public administration, criminal law. Not so hot there. My senior thesis was on surveillance methods as related to admissible evidence in the New Jersey court system. I got a little plaque from Judge Nederlander.”

  They walked in silence to Guillermo’s, beating the lunchtime crowd. Inside, McIntosh asked for a table away from the window and they were led to a leather banquette. When the waitress came, McIntosh said no to a drink and ordered black coffee and salad. Lindbergh did the same.

  She took up her coffee and sipped until the waitress walked away. “A transcript,” she said. “If I’m following this, you want a job. You’re applying for work.”

  “There’s an opening.”

  She stared at him for several seconds. “I don’t find that funny,” she said. “I find it disgusting. Fred Song was an intelligent, ambitious young man.”