Exit Strategy

by Charlton Pettus

  The next message was from his father. Second unsolicited call from the paterfamilias in a decade.

  “Hi, Alex. It’s...your father. Ah, just got a message from your friend, said he was meeting you here this afternoon. I, uh, must have missed your call. Delighted to have you, of course. Just let us know when you’re coming. Shanisse can whip up a little lunch or something. Okay, talk soon.”

  Shit. What did that mean? Could Vanessa have already made a move? Or Sam... The call had come in almost an hour ago. Alex called back.

  “Hello, you’ve reached the Prenns. You know what to do.” Her voice.

  “Hey, Dad. This is important. You may be in danger. Get out of there. Whoever called you is not my friend. Get out and call me.” He took a deep breath. “I’m really sorry.”

  He clicked off. He called back again and hung up when the machine answered.

  * * *

  The manager of the branch stood and shook her hand. His suit had a thin, forlorn quality.

  His grip was weak and clammy.

  “Miss Rosales tells me you want to close your account, Mrs. Parrish.” Stephanie nodded. “I can absolutely take care of that for you.” He motioned her to a seat facing his desk.

  “Has our service been lacking in some way? You’ve been an excellent customer and we’d love to keep your business if we can. Perhaps you’d like to speak with one of our Diamond Group wealth managers. They can provide a range of services for higher net worth individuals like yourself.”

  Scripted. He reminded her of a character from The Office. GED, scrapes with the law, community college, one foot still in the gutter, she thought; then, with the next breath, yeah, but look where all the Ivy League bullshit’s gotten us.

  “No, the service has been fine. Just moving.”

  “We have branches in twenty-seven states, ma’am,” he offered eagerly.

  “No, thank you,” she said and folded her hands on her lap, hopefully indicating the end of the conversation.

  “Okay.” He shrugged. “Where would you like me to transfer the funds?”

  “I’d like a cashier’s check. Made out to cash, please.”

  He stopped typing. “Mrs. Parrish, I’m sorry, there’s over a hundred thousand dollars in this account. That seems like a very large amount to be carrying around.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll put it somewhere safe.” She smiled at him.

  As she left the branch with the check folded in her purse she wondered if the manager was already on the phone to his friends. This would not be the day to get mugged.

  77

  NAUGHTY

  Alex made the drive to Concord in forty-seven minutes. It would have been faster but traffic sucked.

  The car skidded on the gravel driveway. Martin’s ridiculous Ferrari was in the garage next to a brand-new, forest green Range Rover. Alex assumed that was Shanisse’s. So, both home, no other cars.

  He walked quickly around the outside of the house. No sign of forced entry. The dogwoods were just starting to bud and Alex could hear the little stream that ran behind the stone wall babbling brightly, flush with meltwater flowing down from Gold Hill.

  The front door was unlocked. Alex pushed it open. The house was still. It had a peaceful drowsiness. Sunlight shafted in at a low, late-afternoon angle.

  “Hello?” His voice sounded small and hollow. He found his father in the living room.

  Martin Prenn’s pants were pulled down to his ankles. He was kneeling, shirtless, bent over the arm of the sofa. He looked like he was praying. His backside was covered in straight, thin red weals and a trickle of blood had dried on his inner thigh. His hands were tied behind his back with a cable tie, the plastic kind the police use in lieu of handcuffs.

  His eyes were bulging, wide-open, and something bright red was in his mouth. With his leathery tan he looked for a moment like a Damien Hirst riff on roast suckling pig complete with apple. As he got closer Alex could see that the apple was really the fat end of an absurdly large red rubber dildo, the rest of which was responsible for the odd distortion of Martin’s throat. A red-flecked studded leather strap lay on the floor beside the couch. The sharp edge of the strap’s buckle was stained red. It had probably been used to carve the crude block letters on Martin’s back. NAUGHTY. There was almost no blood where the word had been cut. Then Alex saw the other side of his father’s head and understood why.

  There was a small hole in the middle of his forehead and the right side was completely blown away. The sofa cushion was soaked in blood and salted with bits of bone and brain tissue. The gun lay on the coffee table beside the sofa. He picked it up. Alex found he didn’t have any feelings for this brutalized thing that had been his father. He felt neither sorrow nor horror. His senses seemed heightened and everything moved with a stately clarity as if he were walking on the ocean floor in an old-fashioned diver’s gear, tether and air hose snaking lazily to the surface.

  He held his breath and strained to hear any movement in the house. Nothing. He walked as silently as he could down the hallway to his father’s bedroom.

  * * *

  “Just sign here, and here, Mrs. Levine,” the Citizen’s bank manager said, indicating two Xs on the account docs. “Great. You’re all set. We’ll issue you a temporary debit card now and you should receive your permanent card in a couple of weeks.”

  “Thank you,” Stephanie said. The fake license had been accepted without question. She had deposited the cashier’s check for $137,684.19 in a brand-new account under the name of Jessica Levine. There was a packed suitcase with clothes for her and the kids in the trunk of the car. And a new pay-as-you-go cell. It was time to go. Somewhere he’d never find her.

  * * *

  Herron pulled in behind Prenn’s sleek Audi. He eased open the front door. All quiet on the western front. Then something red caught his eye in the living room.

  He stood over the body, clenching his jaw, shaking his head. Prenn was one sick, fucked-up puppy. Herron pulled his gun and moved softly toward the back of the house.

  Shanisse’s wrists were tied to the bedposts with black stockings. She was naked save a pair of suede fringed boots. She had been tortured just like the hooker; the burn marks looked like bruises against her unnaturally tanned skin. Her body was completely hairless except for a tiny strip of singed stubble on the pubis. Herron searched the rest of the house; Prenn was gone.

  78

  LONDON

  The Comfort Inn at O’Hare was a dump. The room sported a queen bed with a fuchsia-and-lavender floral bedspread and a pair of greenish-brown armchairs in front of cream blackout curtains. Stephanie had ordered up a cot for Sophie but it had never come. The kids were watching TV while Stephanie scanned the internet for information on phosphorus.

  P33 was the name of the isotope Simon had found. It was also the name of a state road called Jaunpiebalga in Latvia. That seemed like a stretch. There was no free-occurring phosphorus anywhere, too reactive. It was used in explosives. Could she be on the completely wrong track? She glanced at her children laughing on the bed at something in the show they were watching. They hadn’t questioned anything when she’d told them they were leaving for spring break early. They had dutifully given their fake names to the TSA guy at the airport. She’d only told them she didn’t want to be bothered and they’d nodded solemnly and done what she asked. It was a game. Spy versus spy.

  Phosphorus was discovered by Hennig Brand in Hamburg, Germany. That was promising.

  * * *

  She wrote Hamburg on the Comfort Inn pad. Commercial phosphorus is derived from apatite. The homonym would have appealed to Jordan. She scribbled it down. Apatite is mined in China, Russia, Morocco, Florida, Idaho, Tennessee and Utah. An area in Central Florida called Bone Valley is the largest producer. She added Bone Valley to her list and sat back with a sigh.

  “Momma, look!”
Haden cried suddenly. “Uncle Alex is on TV.” Stephanie froze.

  Alex’s mug shot was in a box in the upper left corner of the screen. The reporter was standing outside his father’s house in Concord. The front door was blocked off with yellow police tape and uniformed officers were swarming like ants in the background. He’d killed them both. Massive manhunt. Police were confident they’d make the arrest within hours.

  * * *

  The pain in Jordan’s belly was unrelenting. It eclipsed for the moment the dozens of other pains that clamored for his attention. He felt weak and his belly was distended. It occurred to him he could be simply starving. He didn’t recognize his own reflection in shop windows. His face was gaunt and his hair and beard were wild and matted. People on the street gave him a wide berth and avoided making eye contact.

  He found a treasure trove in the trash behind an off-license in Bromley. A cardboard box full of wrapped Cornish pasties. Their sell-by date had come and gone, but when he opened one it smelled okay. He wolfed it down, filling his pockets with several more. The dense meat pie felt heavy in his stomach but the needle-sharp pain retreated. He felt new energy as he studied the posted bus map. He was close.

  Karmic payback, he thought. A lifetime ago when he and Alex had just opened the lab on Dunster Street, they used to toss the leftover donuts from their Friday morning meetings in the trash behind the building. Alex would always argue for a reduced order but Jordan would insist on the full double dozen, saying, “The bums gotta eat, too.”

  He crossed the Thames at Tower Bridge. Tourists scattered as he passed the Tower of London and a Fabergé football of an office building called the Gherkin. The sun set as he turned from Great Eastern onto Curtain Road. A few blocks up he passed the Hoxton Pony and crossed Old Street. He was there.

  There was a single security camera over the outer door. Jordan sat on the steps of the building across and down the street. The sun set at 7:44 p.m. In three hours no one went in or out. Foot traffic on the street was light. A lone woman with a small boxer wove delicately up the block. The dog came over to sniff at Jordan but his owner, a proper, fashionably dressed matron, tugged him back with a sharp jerk on the leash and crossed the street.

  Jordan shook his head. He’d come this far and had no plan for the last twenty feet. He could hardly stroll across the street and ring the buzzer. Jordan watched couples return home, flushed from a night on the town, voices a little too loud and confident. And later still, single people returned, most with a hunch of disappointment in their unsteady carriage. The streetlights cast long shadows and he hugged himself against the chill. He opened another meat pie but this one smelled decidedly off.

  By three it sounded like the city had finally downed its last blowsy nightcap and stumbled off to bed. Except for the low drone of distant motorway traffic, the urban version of cosmic background radiation, it was utterly still. He heard a lone car approach from blocks away. There was something not quite right in the rhythm of the engine, as if there was a murmur, a hiccup in the simple two-stroke syncopation. The green Vauxhall parked in an open spot just before the Exit Strategy building. Two women got out; each had a large green bucket with rags and cleaning supplies. West Indian, maybe. They were in the middle of a conversation; one was laughing brightly in a tone that suggested her merriment was at another’s expense. Across the street Jordan stiffly pulled himself to his feet. Cleaning ladies. Could be going into any of the buildings, but maybe... He moved to the curb.

  They bypassed the lower gate and walked up the steps of the main entrance to number thirty-four.

  Jordan affected the lurching roll of a drunk and swayed down the middle of the street. In his peripheral vision he saw the cleaning ladies enter the code on the keypad at the door and heard the buzz as the lock opened. Laughter rang in the night air and breath wreathed their heads as they pushed the door open wide and walked in. Jordan had managed to weave as close as he dared and now he ran and took the stairs in two, lunging for the closing door. He got two fingers in before it could shut. Cold steel pressed against his knuckles. He held his breath and counted to ten. He was lying across the top step with his fingers in the bottom of the door. He was probably visible in the security camera but what were the odds anyone was looking at this hour. He heard the cleaning ladies’ voices from several rooms away. He slid noiselessly in, allowing the door to click shut behind him.

  79

  IN IT

  Holding his breath, he listened. The cleaning ladies were upstairs, still laughing and chatting. Clearly they weren’t worried about disturbing anyone. It was warm. He scanned the ground floor. There were three large offices coming off the central foyer. They were done in a tasteful Edwardian style, perhaps too tasteful. It felt professionally decorated; there was no individual personality to any of it. It all seemed neutral and expensive, reassuring for the clientele, Jordan imagined.

  The stairway curved slightly to the left. Jordan went up the first few steps and saw a hallway upstairs with more offices, smaller but equally well-appointed. He remembered references in Terry’s email to “the basement.” He looked for stairs leading down. He walked down the hall that ran down the center of the building toward the back. The left side was taken up by a long conference room, done, surprisingly, in mid-’90s hotel-business-center teal melamine. The right side had a washroom, a coat closet, a kitchenette and, finally, a locked steel door with another keypad.

  That would be the one. Jordan grabbed a chair from the conference room. Standing on the chair, he was able to loosen the hallway and kitchen light bulbs. He replaced the chair and crouched just inside the kitchen between the wall and the microwave rack and settled in to wait.

  He heard the cleaning ladies work their way methodically through the upstairs offices before coming back downstairs where they split up and quickly dusted and vacuumed the three front rooms. One of the girls came to the back and flicked the light switch. She let out a small grunt of irritation when nothing happened, then crossed to the conference room. Jordan saw her run a damp cloth cursorily over the table and straighten a chair before she clicked off the light and closed the door. He held his breath and pressed himself deeper into the shadows but she went back toward the foyer and, minutes later, he heard the front door open and then shut. He was alone.

  He opened the small refrigerator. Somewhere between urban office and bachelor apartment. A few bottles of Veuve Clicquot, a six of Stella and a solitary take-out container. He opened the white box and sniffed tentatively. Some kind of curry. He hungrily shoveled it into his mouth with his fingers.

  He heard the front door and pressed back into the shadows. Heavier footsteps. One person, almost certainly male. Feet mounted the stairs. Jordan watched the ceiling as the footsteps made their way almost directly above him, then stopped. He didn’t dare move. The man was on the stairs, and then footsteps were coming down the hall toward him. Jordan pressed deeper into the shadows but it was no use; he thought his stench must have given him away. Then he heard the light switch click once and again. There was an exasperated sigh and suddenly a man came into sight, framed by the light from the foyer. His face was in shadow but Jordan recognized him immediately and his heart started hammering as his eyes went wide. Sam. The familiar sweep of gray over horn-rims, tan slacks and sensible shoes. He was looking down, reading something on his phone. He walked right past the open doorway to the kitchen. He stopped at the keypad to the basement door and just stood there reading. Sam was so close he could reach out and touch him.

  Suddenly Sam clicked off the phone and entered a code on the keypad. There was a metallic sliding sound and he pulled the door open. As Sam reached in to turn on the lights Jordan stepped out of the shadows. Sam looked at him with a puzzled expression as if he’d just materialized out of thin air. For a split second no one moved. Sam stood with his right hand still near the keypad and his left reaching through the doorway. Jordan grabbed the edge of the door and
slammed it as hard as he could on Sam’s arm. He heard the phone clatter down the stairs and Sam groaned. Before he could pull his arm back Jordan threw all his weight against the door. He was rewarded with a strangled cry. Jordan stepped back as Sam’s right arm swung around to block him. He pulled out the knife and stood across the hallway. “Parrish?” Sam said incredulously.

  Jordan didn’t say anything. He saw Sam studying his face, glancing at the scarred right hand, confirming.

  “It is you.” Then his eyes lit up. “The fire in the tunnel.”

  “Not my fault,” Jordan said. “Let’s continue this downstairs, please.”

  Sam pushed the door open and gestured with his right hand. “After you.” His left arm hung limply by his side.

  “No, you first, I insist,” Jordan said, switching his grip on the knife. “And please don’t make me kill you. I will if I have to.”

  Sam studied him for a moment and nodded. “I believe you might.”

  80

  EXIT STRATEGY

  The basement level at 34 Hoxton Square seemed smaller than the upper floors. There was a long central room with a conference table ringed by smaller offices. The desks and fixtures looked like they’d all been bought at a Pentagon garage sale. Gray metal with tan accents. Jordan had appropriated an office in the middle, equidistant from the stairs they had come down and the front entrance. He stood hunched over the terminal. Sam sat. His arms and legs were tightly duct-taped to the chair. His left arm was noticeably swollen and his glasses were askew on his nose.

  “What’s the plan, Jordan? What are you going to do? This can’t end well, you must know that,” Sam was saying.

  Jordan didn’t respond.

  “You know what will happen. To your family. And it will be your fault. You aren’t leaving us any choice.”

  “Shut up,” Jordan snapped.

  The log-in screen had no separate field for username or password, just a single blank space with a blinking cursor.