by Alice Orr
She was also about to do something illegal, but that seemed to be her stock-in-trade lately. She wasn’t sure if she’d actually broken the law in Mexico. She’d definitely bent it some. Of course, Slater had tried to tell her he was the law. She’d even considered the possibility, until she had to admit what an exercise in grabbing at straws that was. She was forever remarking to herself on how foolish women could be, even very intelligent women. They could make themselves believe anything, including an utterly ridiculous story, as long as it was told by an attractive man. Phoenix wasn’t going to let herself do that now, but she certainly did want to.
Meanwhile, she had to concentrate on not getting caught at her current lawbreaking. She’d taken a subway from her upper East Side apartment to Midtown. She usually didn’t do that after dark. Traveling around night-time Manhattan was much safer when accomplished from the back seat of a cab. Unfortunately, taxi drivers keep records. Tonight, that was a greater risk for Phoenix than whatever denizens of the street she might encounter. Besides, she was on Fifth Avenue with people walking up and down, even at this hour. That gave her another reason to keep her face in her collar. She didn’t want to be noticed in case one of these passersby might be asked to identify her later. How they would do that she couldn’t imagine. She had so many layers of clothes on that she’d added the appearance of many extra pounds, and with her hair tucked inside a wool beret she was virtually unrecognizable. Besides, these were not casual strollers she was encountering. They were hustling along, probably as eager to get out of the cold as she was. Still, she kept her head bent low and her shoulders slouched forward so she’d look not only fatter but shorter as well.
She’d left the subway a full stop away from the one most convenient to Beldon Laurent’s office. That was another evasive maneuver to avoid detection. It was also the reason she had so far to walk in the cold. By the time she reached Laurent’s building, that walk had been upgraded nearly to a jog. She was freezing, but she didn’t hurry into the lobby immediately. Instead, she stopped to compose herself for a moment. She had to get past the night security man who sat at the desk in the lobby between the revolving, polished brass doors onto the street and the elevators that led upstairs. That was going to be tricky. She still had the ID card Laurent had given her but she would have to sign the visitor log and be seen by the guard.
Phoenix was counting on her muffled appearance to pose an identification problem later, if that situation should arise. She would say her ID card and keys were missing, probably stolen or that she’d left them on her desk before her final exit from Laurent’s office and his employ. Anybody could have picked them up and used them, including that person in the bulky jacket and beret who showed up here tonight. She planned to sign her name in the log in handwriting not recognizable as her own. Nonetheless, luck would have to be on her side to pull all of this off. She took a deep breath before pushing through the revolving door. She nearly gasped then to discover that a stroke of the luck she so desperately needed was actually hers.
The security guard’s post was empty. The log book lay there opened on top of his desk, but he was nowhere in sight. She scanned the cavernous foyer to make certain the guard wasn’t lurking behind a column or potted fern. The place was deserted. He must have been called to one of the offices or maybe he was in the men’s room. Whatever had caused him to leave his lobby station, Phoenix thanked heaven for it.
She hurried to the elevator bank that served the block of floors including the forty-fourth. The guard could reappear at any second, and her stroke of good fortune would turn to bad luck then and there. She pulled her keys from the pocket of her parka and located the one for the elevator. She’d punched the up button already. She could feel her breath high in her throat and taste her own fear. She was breaking and entering, and she wasn’t comfortable doing that at all. She could still back out All she had to do was turn around right now, run out of this building and not come back. Why was it her job to put the finger on Beldon Laurent? Why was she doing this anyway?
Phoenix did have an answer to that. She was doing her best to make sure Laurent got put behind bars because, if she didn’t accomplish that, he’d be free to come after her again just as he had in Mexico. He’d managed to find her there. He could probably do the same wherever she might run to. She couldn’t count on the police for protection, either. She’d heard of too many cases where that didn’t work—which made her think of Slater again for some reason and his story about being on the official side of the law. If he could make up a whopper like that, maybe he had also fabricated the part about Laurent’s alleged Latin American connections and what Phoenix had supposedly come close to uncovering in his files. Her whole plan for tonight depended on that being true, but she had no proof it was, other than Slater’s word. Maybe this was yet another exercise in denial, her believing anything he said could be anything but a lie.
Once more, she told herself she could still back out and make a run for it. She shouldn’t put her faith in a man who had so thoroughly demonstrated his capacity for deception. On the other hand, what was her alternative? Slater’s scenario was the only lead she had to what might have happened to set Laurent so viciously on her trail. She could take a chance that Slater might have been telling the truth for once, or she could go back to her apartment and wait for Sax or somebody like him to show up and end her life. She could also run back to Mexico, or maybe to Europe, and deliberately lose herself this time. For some reason, that was the least attractive possibility of all. When an elevator door opened along the bank in front of her, she hurried into the car, turned her key in the lock, and waited as the doors slid shut again. She pushed the button for the forty-fourth floor, and her fate was sealed.
LUCKILY FOR SLATER, Phoenix hadn’t yet put her hat on when she came out of her apartment building. Otherwise, he might not have recognized her. She had on what looked like a jacket she must have borrowed from somebody at least five sizes larger than she was. He supposed that was camouflage, and if he hadn’t been watching her entryway at exactly the moment she came out, he might have been fooled. His heart skipped a beat at the thought of that possibility. The last thing he could let happen was to have Phoenix running around this town on her own right now. There was no telling what might become of her then. As it was, he did recognize her, and she did take the subway. These were both happy occurrences as far as Slater was concerned. Subways are easier for hanging on to a tail. Taxicabs can get snarled up in traffic. Slater couldn’t afford that tonight.
He’d followed her out of the subway at Central Park South and then onto Fifth Avenue. The fact that she’d taken that subway exit threw him off at first. He’d had a hunch she would head for Beldon Laurent’s office. Then she got off the train blocks and blocks away. Nonetheless, Laurent’s building was where she ended up. Slater breezed through the lobby after her, thanks to lax security. He took the service stairs up a few flights where he’d guessed right that the elevators wouldn’t be locked from the hallway side. He elevatored to the forty-second floor then and returned to the stairs for the rest of the trip. Phoenix was outside Laurent’s office with a key in her hand when Slater came up behind her. This was as far as he could let her go on her own.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said.
She swung on him then, leading with the fist that held her keys. If he hadn’t been trained to block shots like this one, she’d have tagged him for sure, probably taken him out long enough for her to get away. He caught her arm just before her fist could connect with his nose.
“I know you won’t believe this, but I’m here to help.”
He’d kept his voice at a whisper, and when she opened her mouth to answer he put his finger to his lips.
“We don’t want anybody to hear us,” he whispered. “Let’s just get out of this hallway. We can argue about what is or isn’t true later on.”
She hesitated for a moment, staring at him with a look he wished he could erase from her eyes. Then, she sighed and tu
rned back toward the office. In less that two minutes more, they were inside and closing the door to Laurent’s reception area behind them. Slater knew immediately that something was wrong. There were lights on farther into the suite. He glanced down the hall and noticed a circle of illumination on the richly designed Persian carpet outside one of the offices. He believed it to be Laurent’s office, but that alone wouldn’t spell trouble. Lights are left on sometimes in buildings like this one at night. What did concern Slater was the music. Someone was playing what sounded like opera, not very loudly but definitely there. Slater guessed that was coming from the same office with the lights on. Phoenix had already backed off against the wall behind the receptionist’s desk. Slater did the same.
“Who do you think it is?” he asked. “Maybe Laurent’s back in town. We made it. He could have, too.”
Phoenix shook her head emphatically. “It’s not Laurent.”
“How do you know?”
They continued to whisper even quieter than the level of the low-decibel music.
“Laurent loves opera. He plays it very loud, especially this one. Aida, is one of his favorites.”
Slater nodded. He wasn’t up on his culture enough to know if she was right or wrong about which opera he heard lilting from down the hall. He’d have to take her word for that. As for Laurent’s habits, she’d worked for him. Maybe Slater should take her word there, too.
“I wonder who it is, then,” Slater mused mostly to himself.
“Let’s find out.”
Before he could stop her, Phoenix had slipped around the corner from the reception area into the hallway and was already headed toward Laurent’s office. Slater would have called out for her to stop or at least to wait, but he didn’t want to be heard. Besides, she probably wouldn’t listen anyway. Slater slipped along the hallway wall behind her, glad that this time he was carrying a weapon. He’d picked it up at the agency apartment where he’d changed his clothes. He pulled the 9 mm semiautomatic from his back waistband. He kept the gun next to his leg with the barrel toward the floor. If he raised it higher Phoenix could turn around and see it pointed in her general direction and react audibly. He didn’t want to risk that now, especially since he had no idea who the music lover in the office just ahead might be.
Slater’s peripheral vision registered a number of plaques along the walls to Laurent’s office. They hadn’t been there when Slater was here before. He glanced closely enough to see that they were in recognition of various acts of public service, big donations probably. Slater was tempted to laugh out loud at the prospect of Beldon Laurent, the philanthropist. This had to be the result of Phoenix’s handiwork. Slater could tell from this wall display that she’d done her job well. Laurent would have no trouble coming across as totally legitimate now. He could probably even make the Mexico charges go away. Who was going to take the word of Citrone Blue in the face of the kind of top-notch legal muscle Laurent would have on his side? The rest was Sax’s doing, with no absolutely verifiable connection to Laurent. Sax had probably continued on to parts even farther south than Mexico by now anyway. He’d be too hot for Laurent to keep around. In the meantime, there’d be no lack of hoodlum types to take his place. Maybe this was one of them, only a few yards away in the office.
Slater caught Phoenix by the arm. When she looked back toward him, he carefully indicated the gun in his hand and motioned for her to let him go ahead. He was pleasantly surprised when she nodded her head for him to do so. Maybe she really did want company on this caper after all. They executed an under-over maneuver as he slid past her while she sidled into his former position, and they managed that without making a sound. Slater crouched down slowly, close as he could get to the floor. He hoped the creaking in his joints, still stiff and resistant from his physical trials in Mexico, wasn’t loud enough for anybody but himself to hear.
He was low enough to risk a peek around the edge of the door frame as long as he was very cautious about it. What he saw made him want to laugh, so much so that he almost did. Maybe that was a desire for tension release here. Having Phoenix in this situation was making him a lot less cool than he liked to be. With that in mind, he motioned for her to move back to the reception area. He straightened partway out of his crouch and followed. Otherwise, she’d have been down this hall like a shot after him again. He was certain of it. Neither of them spoke until they were out of earshot behind the reception area wall again.
“What’s going on?” Phoenix whispered.
“It’s the security guard.”
Once more, Slater had to muffle the urge to laugh.
“What?”
“The night man from downstairs,” Slater said. “He’s in there leaned back in that big chair with his feet up on Laurent’s pink marble desk, smoking one of his cigars and sampling his single malt Scotch.”
Phoenix looked disbelieving. “You’re kidding me,” she said.
Slater couldn’t remember whether to hold up two fingers or three, so he just whispered, “Scout’s honor.”
Merriment danced into Phoenix’s eyes, and she clamped her hand over her mouth obviously to keep her own laughter from spilling forth. Something about that moment made Slater even more deeply aware of how very much he didn’t want to lose her.
“We have to get rid of him,” Phoenix said when she’d composed herself.
Slater nodded. “Any ideas?”
Phoenix was still for a moment. Then she stepped quickly over to the receptionist’s desk, studied the phone console for a moment and pushed a couple of buttons. The responding ring in Laurent’s office was immediate. At that instant, Phoenix gestured toward the wide space under the reception desk, another example of Laurent’s apparent taste for massive office furniture. Phoenix was already scrambling into that cavern. Slater took a few seconds longer to fold his considerable size even into this fairly spacious hiding place. The desk had a solid front and was angled so that anybody passing straight from the inner office hallway to the door of the suite wouldn’t be able to see even two people tucked away here. The opera music had come to an abrupt halt as the phone in Laurent’s office went on ringing. The sound of that incessant jingle did the trick. Slater heard the security guard hurry past, exit through the suite door and close it behind him. Phoenix ducked out from under the desk and pushed a button on the phone console to stop the ringing, then crouched back down next to Slater. Everything was quiet now, while Slater wished he could simply take Phoenix in his arms and get her out of here instead of pressing on to whatever came next
Chapter Twenty-Two
Phoenix found what she was looking for right where she’d left it, behind a cabinet in the office that had been hers during her time with Laurent. She’d put this file here on purpose, in case he decided to clean house. She hadn’t exactly planned to come back here and face Laurent with what she’d found, but she hadn’t exactly planned not to, either. She’d been halfway to Acapulco when she remembered seeing Laurent’s private secretary pass by the open door to his office while Phoenix was researching his personal files. That had to be where he assumed she’d come across incriminating information about him.
She’d been doing research into his background during her last day on the job for him. She’d been given carte blanche to check out his files and assumed that included the cabinet in his office. What she found there turned her off wanting to work even one day longer for Beldon Laurent. She hadn’t noticed anything overtly criminal, but she’d only given the file a quick once-over before stashing it behind the cabinet in her office and leaving for good. There was no telling what a more thorough examination of this folder might produce, not to mention an in-depth perusal of the rest of the office space, Laurent’s pink-and-beige inner sanctum included.
Phoenix began studying the contents of the folder, more carefully this time than she had on her last day working for Laurent. She’d seen the photographs then, with recognizable mob characters and Laurent hanging out together cozy as could be. There were even perso
nal notes attached to some of the shots. That had been enough for Phoenix to figure out he was keeping the kind of company she didn’t care to associate herself with even remotely. Still, Slater was the one who could not only identify Laurent’s companions but also understand the significance of the dates on the backs of the photographs and the places they’d been taken.
“This is just what we’ve been looking for,” Slater exclaimed. “This puts Laurent right where we want him. On the hot seat. When these other hoods find out what we’ve got here, they’ll be singing like birds to save their own hides before you can say federal indictment.”
Meanwhile, Phoenix was shedding yet another layer of apparel. She’d pulled off her beret in the outer office and stuffed it into the pocket of her voluminous jacket Now it was time to get rid of the jacket as well, before the heating system reduced her to a puddle on the office floor. She was pulling apart the last Velcro front closing when Slater called her over to the desk where he’d laid out the contents of the file she’d stashed away.
“Take a look at this,” he said.
Phoenix needed a few more seconds to shed her jacket before joining him. The heat had waved her usually straightish hair around her face and warmed her cheeks to what she knew had to be a bright flush. Slater turned to look at her and stopped still with a sheaf of photographs apparently forgotten in his hand.
“You are so very beautiful,” he said in a deep, tremulous voice that thrilled directly to her heart.
Phoenix ducked her head in response, certain that her own sudden tremulousness must show in her eyes. She didn’t want him to see that, or she didn’t think she wanted him to see it.