He rubbed his chin with a napkin. “Maybe Felder was holding back. With the dancer dead, they may think the roommate knows where the rest of the money or coke is, or maybe they figured out the coke was bad and are trying to find out why.”
“Possible, a lot of maybes,” the other man said. “We’re still checking on the name of the Abu woman. I think this ‘Andrews’ is another cover. The Latino runs the computer company that Felder worked for. They go in and debug programs.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Ferenzi, ignoring the other’s skepticism. “The whole computer thing could be a front. Look into the company’s finances. What did you find on that physicist Felder did the job for?
“You’ve probably heard of him—Dr. Fast. He’s the guy in the wheelchair, did those television shows. Owns Ordor Chemicals, and word is they’re hot on something worth a lot of money.”
“Interesting. Wonder how that fits? Check that one with Cee at the agency,” Ferenzi said and looked out the restaurant’s window at the cars riding up Buford Highway. “Make sure Jerry finds those two.”
“Right. One last thing, Mr. Ferenzi.”
“Yes?”
“You know that cop that died in the dancer’s apartment?”
“Sure.”
“Jerry killed him.”
“What?” Ferenzi bolted forward in his chair.
“Jerry was coming up the steps with the girl’s gun in his hand when the cop came running down and tried to jump him. They got in a struggle, and the gun went off and killed the cop.”
“Shit. Did he wipe his prints off the weapon?”
“Had gloves on. The cops are looking for the stripper. She must have come back to her place after she left Georgia State, picked up the gun, found the cop, freaked, and left, dropping the gun. Stupid.”
Ferenzi leaned back in his chair. “See if you can find some way to divert them. I don’t want them after her—could stop her from making contact. You’ve got her schedule from State, don’t you?”
“Sure, what good does that do?”
“Leak it to the cops, and let them know she’s a student. She was down there at the time, right? Check her schedule; she was probably in class.”
“OK.”
“Probably, in fact, she’s signed in on some class roll. That would give her an alibi. The cops will still be looking hard for her, but not quite so hard. I don’t want them interfering before we find her contacts. Then we’ll take care of her.”
Ten
Rendon squinted into the glaring lights. The room was in chaos—reporters everywhere. Questions came from every angle. For a moment, he thought about the times as a little child he had stood beside his father as his father fired the questions. The tables had turned.
“Would you call this an epidemic, Dr. Rendon?”
It was the pretty blonde from one of the local network affiliates. Rendon tried not to glare at her. He had just finished reading a prepared statement that said quite plainly the CDC thought this was an epidemic. He ignored the rest of the questions that flew at him and raised his hands, palms outward in supplication.
“Please. One at a time. I will answer all of your questions.”
“Doctor,” said the blonde as she shoved a fellow reporter out of the way with her elbow. “We’re feeding live into the 5:00 p.m. CBS news segment. Would you please repeat your statement.”
“Yes.” He stared into the blue eyes of the blonde as he had been taught in the hastily given minicourse on media relations. Growing up with his father, the premier news-magazine editor of the nineties, had been a course by itself. Personally, Rendon still thought he’d been thrown to the lions. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
He cleared his throat. “Working with local and state authorities, the CDC has been investigating a series of deaths. The initial symptoms may be similar to the flu with accompanying chest pains and shortness of breath. We have asked doctors and hospitals in the metropolitan Atlanta area to screen all possible cases with an EKG and a chest X-ray. This will result in additional costs to the patient and the insurer, but we feel it should result in the prevention of unnecessary loss of life.” He put the news briefing down on the table in front of him.
The meeting room had been hastily reset to handle the media. Rows of chairs faced the table, but no one was sitting. The cameraman brushed beads of sweat off his forehead.
The news anchorwoman smirked at Rendon briefly, tossed her hair, and as the camera man angled around, she spoke. “Is there any particular group of people that are at risk for this disease, Dr.…Render?”
Rendon ignored the provocation. “Generally, the victims have been young, healthy people.”
“And how did these people die?”
“Most of them were engaged in some type of exercise activity when they died of a…heart attack.” Rendon felt his neck stiffen. He wiped the hair and sweat out of his eyes, wishing he could leave.
The cameraman moved around to be squarely facing the reporter. She took on a grim face, staring directly into the lens.
“There you have it,” she said in a resigned voice. “The CDC is stumped by a disease that’s killing athletes in Atlanta. With only months until the athletes for the Georgia Games begin to arrive en masse, the question has to be asked: will the games be canceled? The answer remains to be seen.”
With that, the cameraman swung his equipment down, and with a swish of her gray wool skirt, the reporter left. The remaining journalists joined their voices into a howl. Rendon raised his hands again, though it took five minutes before they realized he would not answer until there was quiet. The tables were all pushed out of alignment.
A large man with a round face managed to get his hand up fast, and Rendon pointed to him. “Has the CDC been working with the planning committee for the games?”
Rendon frowned. They had not covered this in the briefing. “We have, uh, not yet determined that there is in fact a risk to athletes who are entering the city.”
“Then, you know how it is spread?”
“Well, we have some preliminary ideas.”
“Like what?”
“Well…”
“Then, you don’t know for sure whether it’s a risk or not?”
“At this moment, we have an entire team of investigators working and hope to find—”
“So you’re saying that all these athletes could come to Atlanta and die?”
“Well, I guess that is possible—”
The noise again became intolerable. Several of the print and all the television crews scrambled for the door, while Rendon tried to regain order and make himself be heard. It was too late. Questions blurred into each other. Rendon answered, but his mind swirled. Yes, he had thought of the connection with the games. They had no evidence that in fact the virus would spread to the athletes or to anyone else for that matter. To the journalists, it was enough that they did not have evidence to the contrary.
By the time the press briefing ended, Rendon was exhausted and sat staring at the empty room. Rich, one of the senior CDC investigators, came by and sympathized with him, patting him on the back. The reporter was known for making mincemeat, but such knowledge didn’t help Rendon feel better. He felt used and finally retired to the office that he’d been assigned and started rereading his notebook. Now he recognized the look that he’d often seen on people’s faces when they’d seen his father coming. A lamb in a trap that somebody’d forgot to set. Howdy, Mr. Wolf.
An hour later, he was having difficulty concentrating on the hand-written notes.
Why had he been assigned the press conference? He was the most junior member of the team. Did that make him expendable, or was it because of his father? The phone rang, startling him out of his anxious thoughts.
“Rendon?”
“Yes.”
“This is Cougher. The president just called Director St
renger, and the director is flying back here, posthaste. The president was in a rage. We’re to meet with Strenger in four hours and have a plan for protecting the athletes from the contagion. Have something to me by eight tonight.”
The phone clicked dead. Rendon wondered why he’d given up his private practice.
Small towns, pine trees, and black standing water—the swamps of Georgia. Harry took his eyes off the road long enough to look at Ree. She smiled. On impulse, he reached over and took her hand. For a moment she did nothing; then she squeezed his hand with her own and placed them both in her lap. The leggings felt scratchy.
He contented himself with that small gesture of affection and drove, speeding down the narrow two-lane road. Finding a road map in the glove compartment, he had plotted a course to Saint Mary’s. It was an old, small Georgia town on the coast, or at least it had been until the navy sub base had located there. Now the place swarmed with military. A new face would hardly be noticed, and he remembered an old hotel on the waterfront that had been pleasant one time when he and his ex had come down to wait for the ferry to take them to Cumberland Island. The thought brought a sharp pain in his chest. He felt Ree’s hand in his and forced himself to change to another line of thought. Who was chasing them? Why?
“Ree?”
She looked at him.
“Can you think of anything, any reason why these men would be after you?”
She shook her head.
“Then we’ve got to presume this has something to do with your roommate’s death. Was she into drugs?”
“A little, I guess. Every now and then Denny would bring over some coke. But it wasn’t that often. I think she probably would have done a little bit of anything. She was just like that, you know. Didn’t care. But I don’t think she was ever hung up on anything.”
“OK, then. What did Denny do for a living?”
“He worked for some kind of computer company.”
“Was he doing anything illegal other than the coke?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know. I tried to stay away from him. He kept trying to get me into bed whenever Susie wasn’t around to watch him. Kept telling me how he and I could get it on without Susie knowing and how rich he was.”
“Maybe it’s the coke then. That can be big money if you’re in the right position,” Harry said.
“He was a sleaze,” she said, wrinkling up her nose.
“Could he have been dealing?”
“I don’t think so, but I don’t know. He always did have money. Maybe he was. He said he had the money ’cause he got paid so well for programming stuff. I think he went in and solved problems with these specialized application programs—debugged stuff.”
Harry scratched his jaw and then tightened his grip on the wheel. They had to figure this out. “Debugging could pay pretty well. He might have been telling the truth. What about Susie—could she have been dealing?”
“No, I don’t think she could have done anything like that without me knowing. There weren’t that many people going in and out of the house. I’d have seen them if there were. Besides, she wasn’t like that. She spent other people’s money, Denny’s or whoever wanted to give it to her.”
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “Nothing makes sense. There’s nothing here.”
Ree twisted around to face him. “You know, the other night when you picked me up at State wasn’t the first time they’d tried to go after me.”
“Oh yeah? What happened before?”
“One of the thugs tried to grab me, and he asked me…He wanted to know ‘where it was.’”
“Where what was?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say. I got away from the bastard. Ran. That’s when I called you to meet me at the mall. When they…”
“Well, OK. They’re looking for something, then. Something Susie presumably had and probably got from Denny. That’s what I’d guess.” He paused and thought for a moment. “It’s got to be drugs. He must have ripped off some from somebody, and they’re after him. Want it back. He had her hide it for him. But why wouldn’t he know where it was? You wouldn’t think he’d have her hide it and not tell him where she’d put it. That doesn’t make sense,” Harry said.
“Maybe,” Ree said, “it was so if they got to him, he wouldn’t be able to tell.”
Harry thought about that a moment. “I don’t think so. But…maybe. Perhaps he had a deal that if he got caught, she’d disappear. He could say he didn’t know where it was, and they’d have to let him go, or she would keep it hidden. An insurance policy.” He shook his head. “Still sounds thin. But I guess it’s the best we’ve got. Where would Susie hide something?”
“Around the apartment somewhere?” Ree said.
“Don’t think that’s it. Didn’t you say it had been searched?”
She nodded. “It was before they came after me. Before you dropped me off the first night. I don’t know where else she might hide something.”
“Did she go anywhere strange in the last couple of weeks?”
“She was the one with the car. I don’t know where she went. I was either at the club or college. When I was at home, I studied. Didn’t have time to go wandering around with her. She didn’t stay there that much, anyway.”
Harry slumped in his seat. Dead end. “Did she have any other friends?”
“She had a couple of guys that used to come over pretty regularly and some of the other girls from the club. And there was that older guy that used to come in and pay her big bucks for table dances. I can’t remember his name.”
“Could you call the others and talk to—”
Harry slammed on the brakes to keep from flying over a railroad intersection. He hadn’t even seen it until it was on them. He cursed as the car took off into the air and then bounced back down with a thump. “If you call them,” he said, the car back in control, “ask them where she’d been lately. If we could find the stuff, we could tell those thugs where it was and get them off of us.”
“I’ll call.”
Her voice had a sound of doubt to it that made Harry wonder. Still, she answered his questions easily. It wasn’t like he was having to pry the information from her anymore. Her hand was in his now, and at night, she cuddled up next to him, her body a small, slim heat radiator.
If they had lost the tail, this trip might turn out all right, he decided. He yawned and rubbed at his ribs. They still hurt, especially when he laughed.
Other than getting lost in a tangle of new highways going into Saint Mary’s, the rest of the trip was uneventful and quiet. Ree was not a talkative person, and Harry was busy trying to digest what he had learned.
What didn’t fit with the pattern was the man at the motel in Jesup. If he worked for Denny, why hadn’t he tried to grab them instead of listening in on their conversations? Had they suddenly changed tactics? Why?
Harry pulled the car up in front of the door to the hotel, and they walked in together. The lobby had the smell of antiques and grandmothers’ houses—respectable dust. The ceilings were high and looked to be embossed metal. An open stairway led to the second floor. There was no one at the registration desk. Harry read a small hand-printed sign and rang a bell.
Several minutes later a woman dressed in jeans and a T-shirt popped through a door behind the desk. “You want to stay with us tonight?” she asked.
“Yes, room for the night.”
“Reservations?”
“No.” Harry looked around. The place was deserted.
The woman smiled. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve got plenty of room. The restaurant’s just right over there when you want to eat.” She pointed to the left. “The bar’s over there.” She pointed in the opposite direction. “You going over on the ferry tomorrow?”
Harry said they were thinking about it and provided a credit card. The woman seemed friendly. After getting a key,
they went to the car for Ree’s bag and then up the steps to the room. The stairs squeaked. The room was small but overlooked the bay, or whatever it was. Probably a river, he decided. Right across from the hotel, supported by pylons, was a large, covered pavilion. Small waves rippled the water.
Their room was on the corner, and the other window looked out onto a large porch with cane rockers. The walls were plaster and looked sturdy. This building would not fall down. The paintings on the wall depicted local scenes and looked of actual paint. The bed had a real comforter on it, one that looked warm and was done in a pastel design that matched the curtains on the window. Harry walked over and patted the comforter. It was soft, the material smooth to his touch.
The room felt comfortable, relaxing, neither ostentatiously luxurious nor the standard fare of interstate exit boxes. He smiled, enjoying the well-done simplicity of it. Ree closed all the curtains and then made a disgusted sound when she turned on the water in the bathroom. “It smells like rotten eggs.”
Harry laughed and came up behind her. “All the water down here’s like that. Sulfur in it.”
“Yech.” She turned around, stood in front of him a moment, hesitating, and then slipped by him, touching him briefly on the stomach. She liked to do that. Just a little touch. Pacing, she went to her bag, pulled out his spare T-shirt and her clothes, and put them in the bureau drawer. It was large and dark with six drawers.
That night, Ree slept close to him again. Her breathing did not slow as she lay in his arms. She’d taken off the leggings. He wondered if she wanted him…and decided not to try anything. Her trust seemed fragile, like an orchid that you could grow with ease but would only bloom in just the right circumstances. The move would have to be hers. Besides, he was getting the story. That was what he’d wanted from her, wasn’t it?
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