by Dale Wiley
“Claudette,” I said, trying to think of a name that was far away from Tabitha, “I don’t know what we’re going to do with our little unexpected guest.”
“Please don’t kill me,” the man said softly, his eyes as big as golf balls. “I’ll …”
At this point, I realized the chances were good that this guy might pee all over himself and really smell up Tabitha’s car. I needed to calm him down.
“You’re safe,” I assured him. “You’re in the presence of …” I needed something exotic-sounding to further throw investigators off the track for when he would turn up with his wild story linked to me. “You’re in the presence of Le Renard.” That’s French for “The Fox.” I probably didn’t pronounce it right. I had seen it on Remington Steele.
Where could we stash this guy long enough for us to get back to the Watergate? Anywhere we put him he was going to blab to the first person that he saw, and I really didn’t want another person to worry about sneaking into the hotel. Besides, this guy didn’t look like he would last that long. He truly believed we were going to rub him out, and he might do something stupid and drastic that we would all regret in the very near future.
I told Tabitha to drive into Virginia. I told both of them what I intended to do, although only Tabitha believed me. She drove about ten more minutes—it seemed like fifty—until we were far enough from the city for me to do what I wanted. We took an exit, and I ordered the guard out of the car, while I grabbed the pair of handcuffs from his holster. I asked Tabitha if I could use the old blanket on the floor. She nodded.
The guard’s knees buckled as I moved him forward. Cars whizzed by and I wondered what he was thinking. I’m sure when he heard me ask about the blanket, he was quite certain it was to keep the blood from splattering all over me. I kept talking to him calmly, but he was whimpering like a three-year-old. “Please don’t kill me,” he said again, and I kept him marching. I got far enough away that he wouldn’t be spotted overnight and found a maple tree thick enough that I knew he couldn’t possibly get away. I thought for a second about what the most comfortable position might be and finally positioned him on his butt with his hands behind him around the tree. I cuffed him, grabbed the blanket, and covered him up. “So you won’t get cold,” I told him, and, for the first time, he believed me.
“Thank you,” he said. “What made you spare me?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t killed anyone. I’m just trying to clear my name. You can tell them what you want when they find you, but just treat me the way I treated you.” I thought about the two smacks across the back of the head and almost regretted saying it. “And remember,” I said as I started back to the car, “tell them Le Renard says hello.”
We made it back to the hotel fine, and, although we had to wait in the hall for a few minutes until a middle-aged drunk couple decided to quit making out in the hall and take it inside, it wasn’t very stressful—comparatively, anyway. I was dead-tired and thought more than once about calling the police to tell them where the security guard was, afraid he would die of exposure. But I checked The Weather Channel, and it was only going to be in the mid-50s for a low, and I figured he could tough that out; I wanted as much lead time as I could possibly get.
I climbed into bed next to Tabitha. “Because you were so busy making fun of me,” I chided her, “I never got to ask you what you thought about seeing Stephanie on TV.”
“She didn’t tell me she was going to talk to the press.”
“Does that bother you?”
“No. It’s her life. But I could tell she regretted doing it.”
“How?”
“She kept her head down. Stephanie always looks right at you when she talks. I didn’t see her look at the camera once.”
“What does that mean?”
“It just reminds me of how sad all of this is.” Tabitha shook her head and turned out the light. She squeezed my hand for a second, then rolled away, and went to sleep. I was so tired that I did the same almost instantly.
Friday
Chapter
* * *
Twenty-Two
Tabitha called her computer hacker client the first thing the next morning. She asked if he could come and give her a hand, and it didn’t take much convincing. He said he’d be there in an hour, but knowing hacker-time, I knew it might be a little longer.
I turned on the TV, wondering what I had done now. I was just in time to catch the press conference of Dan Morris, the security guard I had left in the woods the night before. It didn’t take him long to make it back. A police spokesman started the conference by saying Morris had yelled at two early-morning bike riders passing on the side of the road, and they had contacted the Virginia State Police. A spokeswoman from the FBI pointed out that since I had transported Morris into a different state, I had opened up a shit-load of other crimes.
After all the formalities were taken care of, Morris got up, flanked by two FBI guys. He was wearing the same uniform he had worn the night before, now wrinkled and dirty. His eyes drooped and his hands shook as he read from a piece of paper.
“A man who I believe to be Trent Norris broke into the Reavis-Kline Office Building last night. He and a female helper, who he called Claudette, tried to knock me out and when they couldn’t”—he puffed out his chest—“they took me into the woods and left me. I was afraid that he might kill me. But he seemed very nice and said he just wanted to get away. I thanked him, and he told me he was innocent. He called himself Leonard.”
Leonard, I thought. I said Le Renard—the fox—and he had heard Leonard. I needed a press agent in the worst way. Morris fielded some questions from reporters who must not have been listening to his spiel very well. He repeated what he had said and refused to paint me as the clear-cut bad guy they wanted. I smiled and forgave him for “Leonard.” This, after all, was the first quasi-positive press I had received.
I turned off the TV and started checking about Daedalus Travel. I pulled out the sheets I had printed at the McHolland and found the Daedalus address—a post office box in Arlington, Virginia, no physical address—was listed on every payment line. I knew their number by heart, because I called in all of our department’s ticket requests. You never spoke to a real person at Daedalus, just an automated answering service, which had never before struck me as unusual. About three days after calling it in, we’d receive confirmation, and that was all I really cared about.
Now, as I listened to the various options on the message, it began to sound fishy. If you were a foundation or government entity, you pressed one. If you wanted an address to send your payments, you pressed two. And if you wanted to speak to an operator, you pressed zero. I pressed zero and waited. And waited. And listened to modern little messages of hope—“Your call is important to us” and “Please stay on the line. An operator will be with you shortly.” But I knew no operator was coming. This was part of the set-up. There was no operator, I was willing to bet. There was probably nothing but a post office box and a lot of profits. I told Tabitha all about it, had her listen to the message, and she agreed. We had another lead.
It was almost noon when Dennis the computer guy came. Tabitha met him at the door and half-explained things, and he greeted me like I was a movie star. He was … misshapen, probably five or six years older than me but well on his way to developing his own set of breasts. He wore a too-tight green polo and a pair of jeans, belted very high, which accentuated his hourglass figure. The only flat part on his entire body was his butt, which looked like it had been surgically removed. He had short, black hair, a constant tight smile, which looked as if it probably hurt, and extremely bright eyes. “I’ll do my best,” he said, putting emphasis on each word like someone who doesn’t know the meaning of the word doubt.
Tabitha showed Dennis what she had been doing, and he produced a disk and put it in the computer.
“This is a password program I’ve been working on, and I think it may be very helpful,” Dennis said, typing as he spok
e, his voice alive with that supreme cockiness which can only belong to computer geeks, guitar salesmen, and rare book dealers. But within ten minutes he was in the bank’s computer, and I wasn’t going to argue with results.
He called Tabitha over, and the two of them stared gravely at the screen. Tabitha told him what she needed. She waited at the computer, and Dennis used the keyboard and mouse like they were a part of his own body.
With Tabitha standing so close to him, I couldn’t help but think of the physical relationship that obviously existed between them. A hint for the general public: If you’re trusting your life to someone, don’t try to picture them committing vile sex acts with a computer geek whose body resembles Miss Piggy’s; it can turn a relationship cold. I couldn’t decide whether I was more repulsed or sympathetic, but, even after considering it, I was still willing to trust her, so I guess I had my answer.
And besides, I was very glad at that moment that Dennis was on the planet. As he worked, he told me how much he hated all of the FBI and CIA-types, probably to allay my fears that he would turn me in. He hated big computer companies and often broke into their systems and did nasty things while he was there. He had done it enough, he said, to discover he was very good at it, and he now got paid large sums of money to break in and steal things and not get caught. But he genuinely hated the people he worked for because they were almost always other big companies that wanted to become bigger than the ones from which he was stealing.
He hated both political parties and didn’t seem too fond of the media or organized religion. I imagined that he liked Star Trek, video games, any food that was fried, and little else. But as long as he liked Tabitha and was at least lukewarm about me, he was fine. He printed out several documents, and Tabitha examined them. I was basically twiddling my thumbs and thinking about what else I could do to clear myself.
“This is an irrevocable trust,” Tabitha said, thumping the paper.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means that whoever puts money into it can’t get it back out.” She saw I still wasn’t getting it. “If you set up a revocable trust and just say you can put in and take out anything you want, you’re still taxed for it, because, if push came to shove, you could get that money and use it. But if you set up an account and say whatever money you put in there stays in there forever and goes to someone else and you can’t ever get it out, then they tax the account and not you, because you’re not going to be benefiting from it.”
I motioned for her to keep going. “And Helper is not only the trust beneficiary—the guy who gets the money—but he’s the trustee as well, which means he writes the checks. This explains why the amounts aren’t always the same.”
“And this got Timmons killed how?”
“All it means is the money could’ve come from anywhere, and it’s very unlikely the government would’ve ever looked hard enough to determine the source.”
“The IRS wouldn’t catch it,” I said, proud I had at least caught on before Dennis, “because they’d be getting their tax money, so they wouldn’t care.”
“Exactly.” She told Dennis to search the account number where the money was coming from. It was an offshore account, registered to a Kat Spellman. Dennis logged off the banking software and onto the Internet. He spent the next quarter of an hour tracking down Katherine Spellmans until we found one who might have been Helper’s aunt.
Problem was she died in 1967 at the age of twenty-one, and the trust hadn’t appeared until two years ago. Dennis printed this info, and I began a file, putting the information right next to the accounting sheets dealing with Daedalus Travel. I asked him to run a quick Internet search on my favorite travel agency; it turned up nothing.
This wasn’t as sexy as Dennis had imagined, and I honestly didn’t want him to be around forever. I figured it was time to show him the door—politely, of course. “Dennis,” I said, “Thanks a lot for your help.” I moved to shake his hand. “We really appreciate it and …”
Tabitha leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, which stopped me cold and embarrassed Dennis too. He probably didn’t like the idea of Tabitha staying in the Watergate with me anymore than I liked the mental pictures I had been forming. For a second, he looked as if he were trying to develop an excuse for staying, but he couldn’t think of one, so he tightened up his smile even more and shook my hand.
“Your secret’s safe with me.” He winked conspiratorially.
I wondered for a second if it really was. If he wound up feeling jealous about Tabitha and me—not knowing I was hot for her best friend—he might, government phobia or not, decide that jail was the right place for me after all.
Tabitha sensed this too. “Dennis, next weekend let’s have a little get-together. On me.” I caught the double entendre even if he didn’t. He was probably too busy staring at her boobs. His look changed, he shook my hand again—this time happily rather than sullenly—and turned, practically stumbling out of the door.
I looked at Tabitha, trying to keep all of the twelve very confused emotions I was feeling out of my face. It apparently didn’t work. She turned away and walked to the far side of the bed.
“That’s what I do,” Tabitha said. “Dennis is a cocky, fat, well-paid saboteur, who doesn’t have an ethical bone in his body, and I screw his brains out at least once a week.”
My stomach tightened. Once a week? I chose my words carefully. “If it’s any consolation,” I said, having no idea if it was the right thing to say, “he really likes you. I could tell immediately.”
“Of course he does. I’m the only woman in Washington DC who would let that goon within a mile of me.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed, close enough she could touch me if she wanted to, but still giving her some room. She was just as confused as I was, and I realized I had put her in just as much danger. That realization—that I had now risked more than my own worthless neck—was almost enough to bring tears. God, I had become so weepy! Despite Dennis, despite all the other logical reasons why I should get the hell away, I was beginning to like Tabitha as a human being, and I had put her in a position to be exposed, jailed, or killed. I turned slightly away from her, really feeling low.
“What?” Tabitha said immediately.
“I don’t know … Everything. You. This.”
She straightened her back and her eyes narrowed. “I don’t need any …”
“No,” I said quickly. “Not that. I’ve put you in an extremely vulnerable position.”
Her face softened, and she looked down at her hands. “I’m okay … I’ve kind of enjoyed it.”
I chuckled. I started to speak, probably destined to say something silly, then stopped and just looked at her.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“I was thinking while you were working with Dennis. We have Daedalus, the post office box, and Helper’s mysterious trust. Now we’ve gotta tell somebody.”
“But not the police,” Tabitha said in a tone which said she still thought I ought to talk to them.
I shook my head. “They’ll give me the Rodney King treatment for sure. And anyway, they’ve taken all of their leads in this case from the press. We need somebody to write our story. I don’t think at this point I trust anybody to call them up and invite them over; that’s too risky. We’ve gotta catch them off-guard and make them believe us.
“The guy we ought to get is Greer, since he’s writing the Post’s stories, but …” My mind took off, and Tabitha just stared at me, so I filled her in. I told her about Gerald Greer, about his arts column, and, most importantly, about the rumor concerning him and his proclivity for chasing ass at the Hawk and Dove. “As hot as you are,” I said, praying my flattery would work, “it won’t be any trouble for you to get him back here.”
She smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear. “And what if he’s not there?”
“We make sure he is. I’ll call the Post, get a hold of Greer, tell him I’ve got a lead, and have him
meet us someplace. When I don’t show up, you close the deal and bring him back.”
Tabitha twirled her hair and considered this. “What if he won’t come?”
I shrugged my shoulders and glanced at her again. “I really think he’ll come with you. And if not, we’re no worse off than we are now.”
Tabitha agreed.
There was one other thing. “Is there anything we can do about Stephanie?” I asked, trying to keep my face blank.
She smiled. “I knew you were going to ask about that … I don’t know.”
“But we don’t want her out with the police helping them catch me …”
“But …”
“And we do want her to realize I’m innocent …” I tried the sad puppy-dog look that worked on occasion with my mom.
“I don’t want to drag her into this.”
“You also don’t want her to foil our plans.”
“No, Trent. She’ll find out the truth when it’s over.”
She wasn’t going to budge.
This made me sad but not sad enough not to start looking for something we could use to tie up Greer.
Tabitha stopped me. “Don’t go slitting bed sheets. I’ll just call the office and have them send something over.”
I probably looked like my eyes were crossed.
“Bondage equipment,” said Tabitha. “Some people like it.”
I shrugged and decided not to prod further.
Tabitha made several phone calls—first to her office to get the bondage stuff and then room service for some Chinese food for dinner. While she was talking, my mind was racing faster than my stomach.
One of my greatest flaws is that, with very little prodding, I will plan some event or project well into the next century. So while Tabitha lay down on the bed and rested, I was planning the seduction of Gerald Greer. He would come, he wouldn’t take much coaxing, and he would agree to help us. No, he would resist, and we would have to point the gun at him and tie him up. Somewhere in between? I didn’t know, but I ran all of the scenarios while watching the beginnings of rush hour and wishing no one wanted me dead.