by David Lender
But the primary reason he’d kept Stiles all these years was because he could keep his mouth shut.
“I’m under a lot of pressure from the board,” Madsen said. “Earnings have been flat for two quarters, and the Street isn’t happy. And none of us is going to get rich on our stock options that way. With fifty percent pretax margins, the Vaccine Division is the Great White Hope. Gary’s gotta step up for us all.”
Stiles was giving Madsen his accountant’s blank-eyed stare. The one that said, “What else is bothering you?”
Madsen said, “McKean has subpoenaed me to testify at his vaccine hearings in his Senate committee on Monday.”
“So? You’re a rock star. You can talk circles around any of those guys. Consider it a chance for some prime-time sound bites.”
Madsen nodded. If only Stiles knew, but Madsen couldn’t share it with him. He squeezed his palms together under the table.
Madsen didn’t get the phone call from Xavier until a halfhour into being briefed on his script for the earnings conference call. When he heard his private line ring, he asked everyone to excuse him for a few minutes and walked into his office.
“Our man succeeded.”
Madsen exhaled.
“But we don’t know if he handed off anything first.”
“To the girl?” That little tree-hugging, self-righteous bitch.
“If anyone, yes.”
“What about the follow-up team.”
“They talked to her, but were interrupted when the police arrived.”
“Next steps?”
“Our man proceeds directly to the girl.”
Madsen paused. “Anything else?”
“No.”
Madsen wished he’d set this up directly, so he didn’t have to hear it secondhand and interpret anything. But Xavier gave him an extra buffer for deniability if it ever came to that. And yet, if his information was correct, this was one situation where it was worth taking that risk to deal firsthand. He couldn’t imagine having more riding on it than he did now.
Dani’s next three hours were consumed by the plainclothes detectives. At least they allowed her to go wash up first. When she came back, she had to ask them to open a window; the smell of blood and that other odor—they called it cordite—from the gun was making her sick. She gave them a description of the killer—blue eyes, acne scars, curly blond hair—the background on how she’d pursued Maguire for an interview and how he’d set up the meeting. They asked her most of the same questions the FBI men had, only less in her face. Near the end of her interview, the lead one, Nolan, asked her if she’d ever seen the two plainclothes men who’d arrived on the scene first. She noted that he didn’t refer to them as FBI.
“You mean the FBI guys?”
Nolan didn’t answer. Dani debated telling Nolan about the USB flash memory drive. Finally he said, “We’re checking them out.” When she heard that she was sure she didn’t want to tell him about the USB memory drive. Dani said she was going home as soon as they finished with her; she wouldn’t be able to get any work done today. Nolan said they wanted to see her emails back and forth with Maguire on her laptop as well as her office computer; they’d send someone over to her apartment to pick it up. She gave him the address.
Dani walked up to her apartment building on 88th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam. It was a bedraggled place with narrow hallways, yellowed paint and 100-watt bulbs. Good for security or not, she hated that sterile glare. Something in the building always needed repair. The hallways were perpetually dusty. Mrs. Jenkins, the landlord, didn’t return phone calls for at least a week. Dani had taken to sweeping and mopping the hallway on her own floor because she didn’t want Gabe thinking he lived in a total dump. She wished she could do better for Gabe. James had offered. That wasn’t the answer.
She checked the time: 12:30. She had plenty of time to take a hot bath before Francesca would be picking up Gabe from school and bringing him home. Then she remembered Gabe’s audition for a TV commercial that afternoon; he wouldn’t be home until around six. She started feeling claustrophobic and opened a window, then sat down, fingering the USB flash memory drive in her blazer pocket. She was anxious to see what was on it. Someone buzzed her from downstairs. The sound jolted her. She glanced instinctively into the kitchenette at the can of wasp spray on the countertop; better than pepper spray—it shot 25 feet, Mom had told her when she gave it to Dani as a New York housewarming gift.
Dani walked over to the intercom. The security camera showed a cop outside the lobby door.
“Police.”
Dani buzzed him in.
Stark, wearing an NYPD uniform, pulled open the lobby door. He’d seen the girl go inside a few minutes earlier and he wanted to get this over with. He glanced back at the street as he stepped inside, noticing a police car inching up the street, as though the driver was looking for an address.
Dani sat down to wait for the cop. A minute later someone buzzed at the security system again. She looked at the screen to see the cop still standing at the lobby door. What’s with this guy? She buzzed him in a second time.
When Stark got off the elevator on the 5th floor, he checked the hallway. Only six apartments per floor. If she screamed, it was possible no one was around to hear her. No screwing around, he told himself. He slid out the Ruger and held it down at his side. He’d do her, check her body, and turn the place upside down to see if Maguire gave her anything. When he knocked she pulled the door open immediately, surprising him for a moment. He saw her mouth drop open and her eyes go wide. He pulled the gun up as she slammed the door, wedging the Ruger between the door and the doorjamb until he got his shoulder into the door and flung it open. He slammed the door behind him and saw her run across the apartment to the kitchen area. She grabbed a can of bug spray and stood with her chest heaving, glaring at him with her eyes ablaze. Like that’s supposed to do anything with me standing here with the Ruger. He told himself to take his time and checked the silencer. It’d taken a helluva shot in the door. It looked a little offkilter so he decided to remove it; no sense taking the chance of a round getting jammed if it was kinked where it screwed into the Ruger. “Where is it?” he said unscrewing the silencer.
The girl started screaming, “Help! HELP!”
Enough. Finish this. Stark looked up—Fuck!—a jet of spray shot across the room into his face. “Ahhhhh!” he yelled. His eyes were on fire. He couldn’t see. He rushed toward where he’d last seen her, then heard a grunt and a thump behind him, the sound of the door opening.
Stark knew she’d gotten past him and out the door. But right now all he gave a shit about was stopping his eyes from melting out of his head. He found the sink and turned on the water, started flushing his eyes. He kept blinking, and now could see shapes in the room from his left eye. He rubbed both eyes with his hands. Shapes in the right and blurry vision in the left, but both eyes still burned like the bitch had stuck hot pokers in them. He heard footsteps in the hall and then someone walked into the room. He looked, a cop.
“You okay?” the cop said. Stark remembered he was wearing the NYPD uniform. “Man, what the hell happened?” The cop crossed the room to him.
Stark didn’t need some cop blundering into him. He saw a block of kitchen knives on the counter, grabbed one, turned and swiped the blade across the cop’s throat. As the cop went to his knees, gagged and bled out, Stark jammed the knife into the cop’s heart. He found the Ruger on the floor where he’d dropped it and ran out. He took the elevator down to the basement, located the service door near the Dumpster and ran out the back of the building into the alley.
What a mess. He was afraid to take the subway without knowing what he looked like, so he hailed a cab. He slumped in the back out of sight of the driver and told him to drive to Grand Central. His heart was pumping, but not from exertion. He was pissed beyond belief. This girl was trouble. Even if the client wouldn’t pay for it, she was toast. Fuck. His eyes still burned like open sores.
&nbs
p; Dani opened the ground level door to see if anyone was in the entry hall. Nobody. Her heart was knocking against her ribs, her breath coming in gasps. She walked through the entry hall to the lobby door, pushed it open and saw a police car double-parked in front of the building. The killer’s accomplice or a real cop? Or were the cops the killers? She descended the stairs and walked across 88th Street, lowered her head and scratched the side of her face, covering it. When she reached the corner at Broadway she glanced back to see the police car was still sitting there, no one moving near it. She started counting, “One, two, three…,” forcing herself to walk normally, stay calm until she was certain she was out of sight of the police car. Then she broke into a run.
Cindy Jackson waited to be the last to leave the chapel adjacent to the main sanctuary at Holy Trinity in Hackensack, where the noon mass in honor of her husband, Ray, just ended. She wasn’t waiting because she felt particularly full of the Holy Spirit, or penitent, even though she’d carried one of the offerings to the altar for communion. In fact, she was angry, as she always was on this day. Angry at God for taking Ray. It wasn’t fair, and no matter how she looked at it, prayed over it, talked to Father Alain about it, it would never be fair, and she’d never get over it. Even now, with Ray gone, that God was the major anchor in her life, Cindy believed it was okay to be a little pissed off at God on this one day every year, good Catholic or not.
She leaned back in the first pew, imagining she would look to others as if she were praying. But she was thinking. Thinking about Ray, a big, vibrant man of 50, a battleship of a man. A former New York Giants left tackle—with one Super Bowl ring, for beating the Broncos in ‘81—who died in a dentist chair from the anesthesia while having a wisdom tooth pulled. What an irony. And what a waste.
She’d had four great kids, a loving man who didn’t mess around even on the road as a Giant, or afterward as a sportscaster. Okay, she never got the Moonstruck brownstone in Brooklyn Heights she’d always wanted, but so what? That was a teenage dream of a French-Canadian baker’s daughter from Cobble Hill in Brooklyn. Thinking that made her smile. The scent of the incense from the Mass now rose in her nostrils, the quiet of the chapel enveloping her in calm. She slid her feet out of her pumps and rested them on the cool granite floor, like she’d done as a girl in Cobble Hill. It brought a pang of nostalgia, then sadness. Her own father had died young, too. And as the oldest, she’d been the one to step in and help raise Mary Claire and Brenda while Mom ran the bakery. It was no different from the way she’d stepped into Ray’s shoes to finish raising their kids. She’d done the best she could, and her only major heartache was Jack, with his drug and alcohol problems.
Cindy turned to see the last few worshipers leaving. She sighed, then summoned the gratitude of a good Christian for the bounty in her life, got up and walked back to thank Father Alain.
Afterward in the parking lot, she wiped a tear from her eye. She appraised her reflection in the tinted windows of her Cadillac; she still cut a pretty impressive figure for a babe of 51. Her trim blazer showed off her 36Ds, always her best attribute, and slim waist. It made her think that Ray would be proud, and she felt the faint taste of a thrill at remembering how he used to put his hands on her—his magical hands. But those days were gone. She opened the door and got into the Caddy.
When Dani opened the door to Brasserie 38 at 97th and Broadway, she was still hyperventilating, even though she’d slowed to a walk five minutes earlier. She took a bistro table in a corner in front, nestled in below the bar with its rows of taps. The place smelled like stale beer—the floor was sticky from it—but it was dark and she was out of view of the windows and the front door. She clasped her hands in front of her on the table, not sure whether or not they were shaking, while she ordered a green tea from the waitress and tried not to look like she’d just escaped being murdered. That blueeyed guy had a gun as long as her forearm, at least with that thing on the front of it that must’ve been a silencer. Some silencer. She remembered the noise it made when he’d shot Maguire. It sounded like when her older brother George was a kid and put M-80 firecrackers in the neighbor’s plastic garbage can, clamped the top on it and watched the M-80 blow the top 10 feet in the air. If she hadn’t remembered the wasp spray she’d be as dead as Maguire. And thank God for coach Stevens being such a disciplinarian on mechanics during her three hours of daily gymnastics training in high school. If not for that, she’d never have been able to execute that floor exercise leap, tuck and roll over the armchair and out of the way of the guy’s arms flailing at her.
She unclasped her hands. They weren’t shaking, but she could still feel her adrenaline flowing. She’d seen a man murdered in front of her this morning, and she’d almost been killed herself. The killer was the same man who came to her apartment, but the second time dressed as a cop. How did he find out where she lived? Did the cops tell him? Was he a cop? Was the cop sitting in the police car in front of her building real or the killer’s accomplice? She had to decide what to do, and for the moment, going to the cops wasn’t the right answer. Not until she figured a few things out.
Who ordered Maguire killed, and who were those fake FBI guys? What had Maguire given her? Was that why he was killed, to stop him from giving it to her? It seemed logical. And who would have a reason to want to kill Maguire, and now her, too? Was the killer after her simply because she’d seen him? Or was it because his bosses knew what she had and wanted it back?
Her mind wasn’t even clear enough to be thinking of the right questions, let alone figuring out answers to any of them. She checked the time on her BlackBerry—at least she hadn’t left it behind. 12:40. She looked down at her clothing: knee-length leather Ralph Lauren riding boots—her first purchase with her employee discount from her former Polo job—with jeans tucked into them and a shirt with a blazer. In her pocket were only two credit cards, her bank ATM card, some cash and her driver’s license with a rubber band holding them together. She pulled out the bundle and counted the cash. $37. More than usual. Her other pocket held her keys, some loose change and a lip smoothee.
The waitress showed up with her tea. Dani sipped, closed her eyes and inhaled. After a minute or so she was calmer. Okay. Now think. What to do?
Her first priority was Gabe. Francesca wouldn’t be bringing him back to the apartment after his audition until around 6:00 p.m. Terror seized her. That can’t happen. The killer might be staking it out. She had to reach Francesca to have her bring him someplace else. At least until she could figure out her next steps. What about the cops? She shook her head. Not now. Not with some phony FBI guys buzzing around and not with a guy in a cop uniform trying to kill her.
Where could she go? She thought about James. Given their current situation it would be a rotten thing for her to call him and ask for help. But of course he’d let her stay at his place, do whatever he could to help her. He still loved her, which was why she didn’t want to take advantage of him. Not unless she couldn’t think of anything else. My God. Some nut was running around out there trying to kill her. James would understand. She didn’t need to be such a Girl Scout about it.
But the more important thing was to figure out what was going on. Where could she even start? She put her hand in her blazer pocket and felt the USB flash memory drive. If she could get to a computer she could see what was on it and find some answers. It made sense that was why Maguire was killed. And understanding what was there might explain who wouldn’t want it revealed.
She thought of John McCloskey, Maguire’s friend, who introduced him to Dani. A man who blew the whistle on his employer. And he introduced his friend to the woman who helped get his story out. She didn’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to put it together. Maguire was trying to blow the whistle on his own company but they silenced him first. Yet, was it really possible that Pharma International, one of the biggest drug companies in the world, would have one of its own employees murdered to keep him from exposing a secret? She knew most of her friends—who believed
all the nutty conspiracy theories on the Internet—would buy that theory. But she wasn’t sure she did.
She saw a camera shot on the TV screen over the bar. It was the front of Dr. O’s office. She moved closer to the TV so she could hear. The newscaster was talking about a bizarre series of events on the Upper West Side. It all began with the murder of Dr. Robert Maguire, a biologist for Pharma International, in the offices of Dr. Yuri Orlovski on 79th Street and Broadway at 9:00 a.m. Then, within hours, a few blocks away on 88th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam, a policeman was killed in the apartment of Dani North, an employee of Dr. Orlovski who witnessed the murder of Dr. Maguire.
A photograph of the young cop appeared on the screen. It wasn’t the guy she’d encountered in her apartment. What the hell? The newscaster went on. Police were looking for Ms. North—at that moment Dani felt a burst of panic as she saw her own photograph flash up on the screen—and were considering her a person of interest in the case.
Dani lowered her head, shielding her face from the bartender. She went back to her table, dropped three dollars on it, turned and walked out. She didn’t know where she was going, but she was certain it wasn’t to the police. She knew what “person of interest” meant. And given the events of the day, it seemed logical she was being framed to make it appear she was involved in the murder of the cop, and maybe even Maguire. She felt like people on the street were watching her. She pulled out her BlackBerry and hit the speed dial to call Mom.
THREE
DANI WALKED up BROADWAY HOLDING her BlackBerry to her ear, a knot twisting in her stomach. Her muscles felt shaky and twitchy after repeated jolts of adrenaline during the day. Normally the aromas of ethnic cooking from the shops north of 100th Street, the sounds of Latin music and rapid-fire Spanish from groups on the street corners were a welcome balm when she was out of sorts. Now it was suffocating. Mom picked up on the first ring. “I’m so glad you called, sweetie. I just got back from your father’s Mass. It was so nice, and I’ve been thinking about all of you kids—”