Killer Instinct

by Joseph Finder

  While Franny set to work on getting me a flight, I canceled my next day’s appointments, and called Kate to tell her my change in plans. I told her I’d fly back home tomorrow, after the big presentation. Then I started crunching numbers and composing a rough draft of my PowerPoint slides for Franny to make up.

  A little while later she stopped in. “This is a tough one. It’s too late to make the six or seven o’clock flights tonight,” she said. “There’s an 8:20 P.M. to San Jose, but that’s full. Overbooked, in fact. San Francisco, Oakland, same thing.”

  “How about the corporate jet?”

  “In your dreams, honey.” The corporate jet lived in New York or Tokyo and wasn’t for the likes of me. She knew I was kidding.

  “What about flying out in the morning?”

  “There’s only one flight that’ll get you there with enough time. U.S. Air’s six-thirty into San Francisco. Arrives nine fifty-two. It’ll be close. Santa Clara is thirty-one miles away, so I’ll rent you a car. The usual Rolls-Royce?”

  The woman was developing a sense of humor. “I think a Bentley this time.”

  She went back out to her cubicle to call our corporate travel company, while I went out, the corporate hunter-gatherer, in search of numbers to crunch.

  When I got back, twenty minutes or so later, Franny said, “Kurt was here.”

  “Oh?”

  “Put something on your desk. He said he’ll stop by later. He had something important to discuss, he said.”

  I felt a prickle of tension. Kurt had no business-related reason to come by. It couldn’t be good.

  There was nothing on my desk.

  My cell phone rang. I looked around my desk for it, couldn’t find it. It rang again, sounding muffled and distant. It was coming from my fancy English briefcase. I didn’t remember leaving it in my briefcase, but I was a little scattered these days.

  I lifted the briefcase from the floor next to my desk, opened it—

  And something exploded.

  There was a loud pop, a great whoosh, and something hit my face, a whole scattering of something, momentarily blinding me. I leapt backwards and out of the way.

  “Jesus!” I shouted.

  I swept small, hard particles off my face, out of my eyes. Looked at what came off in my hands: tiny, colorful bits of plastic and silver foil in the shape of parasols and stars. My desk was covered with the stuff.

  Confetti.

  I heard low, hoarse laughter. Kurt was standing there, laughing helplessly. Franny had run in, her hands to her face, terrified.

  “Happy birthday,” Kurt said. “Excuse me.”

  He nudged Franny out of the door and closed the door behind her.

  “It’s not my birthday,” I said.

  “Had this been an actual emergency, you’d be pink mist.”

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Look for yourself. Hobby store stuff. Model rocket motor, electrically initiated. A microswitch from Radio Shack. A clothespin, a couple of thumbtacks, some rosin-core solder, and a nine-volt battery. Fortunately for you, the rocket motor was stuck in a bag of confetti. But let’s say instead of a rocket motor, I used an electric blasting cap. And let’s say instead of a bag of confetti I used some C-4 plastic explosive. Granted, can’t get that stuff at Radio Shack, but some of us know where to get it, right?” He winked. “My point getting through here? One day you open the trunk of your car, maybe. Kablooey. And it’s not going to be confetti.”

  “What do you want, Kurt?”

  “I got a heads-up from a buddy of mine on the state police.”

  I shrugged.

  “Said someone called in with an anonymous tip. About the death of Trevor Allard. From a pay phone. The one off the cafeteria.”

  Jesus. I blinked, shrugged again.

  “The caller mentioned my name.”

  I prayed nothing in my face gave me away.

  “My buddy said, ‘What the hell’s going on, you piss someone off, Kurt? Someone trying to smear dirt on you?’”

  “What are you talking to me for?”

  Kurt drew close. “Let me tell you something,” he said, almost under his breath. “I’ve got a lot of friends in a lot of places. Anyone you talk to in the cops, guaranteed I’ll hear about it within a couple hours. Who the hell you think you’re playing with?”

  I tried to look right into his eyes, but they were too intense, too menacing. I looked down at my desk, shook my head.

  “You don’t want to be my enemy, bro. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  “Because you kill your enemies. Right? Why haven’t you killed me yet? I don’t understand.”

  “You’re not my enemy, Jason. If you were, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “So I guess that makes me your friend.”

  “Has anyone ever done more for you than me?”

  I was struck speechless for a few seconds. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “I hope you don’t think you got where you are today on your own. You owe it all to me. We both know that.”

  “Yep,” I said. “I really have no talents or intelligence of my own. I’m just your puppet.”

  “Talent without drive gets you nowhere, friend. I changed your life.”

  “You were just willing to play dirty, Kurt. I should have cut you off long ago, but I was weak. I’m not weak anymore.”

  “Because you think you don’t need me. That’s all. But we were a team. Look at how well we worked together. Anything in your way—any obstacles—they just vanished, didn’t they?”

  “You were out of control,” I said.

  “And you don’t know what a pawn you are. You have no idea. ‘Save the division’? That’s a laugh. Ask the merger integration team from McKinsey if they’re here to save the Framingham office or sell the building. Amazing what you can find if you look. I found job security. Just by uncovering Dick Hardy’s Hushmail account. Interesting stuff there.”

  I shook my head. What was he getting at? What did he have on Dick Hardy?

  “Gordy was just waiting for the right opportunity to get rid of you, you know. You were a threat to him.”

  “So you got him drunk, that it?”

  “Drunk? That wasn’t just booze, friend. Roofies, for one thing.”

  “Roofies?”

  “Rohypnol. The forget-me drug. Betcha Gordy didn’t remember any of it the next day. A cocktail. A drop of DMT—Dimethyltryptamine, a psychedelic. Plus a little upper. And he lost his inhibitions. Showed his true colors. Like Napoleon said, ‘Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.’”

  “You’re a goddamned lunatic.”

  “Does this mean you’re not going to make me your kid’s godfather? Don’t tell me you didn’t know what I was doing. You knew all along. You wanted me to do what I did. You just didn’t want to acknowledge it. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Where’s your gratitude?”

  “You didn’t kill Trevor and Gleason because of me. You killed them because they were uncovering what you’d done. They could have landed you in serious trouble.”

  “I could have handled it,” Kurt said. “Everything I did, I did for you. Aren’t you the guy who’s always talking about killing the competition?” He chuckled. “Hey, it’s like your books say. The Take No Prisoners Guide to Business? What do you think ‘take no prisoners’ means? You don’t take any enemy prisoners because you kill them instead. No Havahart traps in the field, Jason. What part of this do you not understand? So my advice to you is to keep your goddamned mouth shut. Because everything you do, I’m watching. Everywhere you go. Every call you make. It’s like that Police song, right? ‘Every breath you take’? I’m listening. I’m watching. There is nothing”—he bared his lower teeth like some sort of rabid animal—“nothing you can do that I won’t find out about. You’ve got a lot to lose.”

  He winked. “You know who I mean.”

  The bottom of my stomach dropped. I knew he meant Kate.

  “And after all I’ve d
one for you,” he said, and turned. “You disappoint me.”

  “Any idea when I can get started on the PowerPoint slides?” Franny asked. “I’ve got three teenage sons who’ll burn down the house if I don’t get dinner on the table.”

  “You’d better tell ’em to get takeout,” I said. “Gonna be a late night.”

  I could barely concentrate on the PowerPoint slides. Next to Kurt’s threat, they seemed a pointless distraction.

  I didn’t get out of the office until almost nine, but before I left I did a quick search for the Special Forces website that Trevor had mentioned. The one where he’d posted a question about Kurt, and someone had answered.

  The search didn’t take long. I just put “Kurt Semko” and “Special Forces” in Google and immediately found it. It was a Special Forces “teamhouse,” some kind of a Listserv for former members of the Special Forces and their friends and family. In one area of the site was the “guest book,” where Trevor had posted his question, and I found the reply, from someone named Scolaro with a Hotmail address.

  I clicked on the address and wrote Scolaro an e-mail. “What kind of ‘sick shit’ did he get into?” I wrote. “Guy lives next door and I want to know.” I put down an AOL address I rarely used, the initials of my college and year of graduation. No name.

  It felt like putting a message into a bottle and hurling it into the ocean. Who knew what I’d get back, if anything—and when, if ever.

  My phone had been ringing, but I’d shut off the ringer so I could concentrate, and asked Franny to answer, and only put the call through if it was Kate or Dick Hardy. She didn’t put any calls through.

  I closed my office door and said good night to Franny, who was eating a grilled chicken Caesar salad she’d had delivered. A PowerPoint slide was on her big Entronics monitor.

  “You like?” she said. “I can do a Teal Taffy double fade, if you want.”

  “Nothing fancy,” I said. “Bare bones. Nakamura is probably a ‘just-the-facts, ma’am’ kind of guy.”

  “Flash? Swish? Wipes?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Oh, and you got a call, but I didn’t disturb you for it. Well, you got a bunch of calls, but one I thought you should know about. From the state police. An investigator named, let me see here, Ray Kenyon. He wanted to talk to you. I said you’d gone home for the day.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  An investigator.

  “Did he say what it’s about?”

  “Just left his name and number.” She handed me a message slip. “You want me to put the call through for you?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. I put the message in my pocket. “I’ve got to get home. It’s late.”

  “That’s right,” Franny said. “You have a pregnant wife to buy pickles and ice cream for. I’ll e-mail you the presentation when I finish. Good luck tomorrow.”

  “I’ll need it.”

  “You? Why do you think Hardy wants you out there? You’re a star.”

  “Did I ever tell you I like you, Franny?”

  “No, I don’t think you ever have.”

  “Oh. Franny?”

  “Yes?”

  “Could you do me a favor?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Could you take down all those military posters from my office walls? I’m tired of looking at them.”

  49

  I got to the airport at 4:45 A.M., almost two hours before my flight was supposed to leave. I left my car in the Terminal B garage and went to one of the E-ticket kiosks. The terminal was dark, almost deserted. I found the one open coffee place, got a large coffee and a bagel and sat down on a plastic bucket seat. I took my laptop out of my old nylon briefcase—I’d left the English briefcase, the one Kurt had tampered with, back in my office—ponied up the eight bucks for WiFi Internet access, and checked my e-mail. Went over the PowerPoint presentation. Rehearsed it silently, although I think a cleaning lady looked at me funny when she heard me talking to myself.

  I tried to keep my mind on my presentation and Nakamura-san, not on Kurt’s threats. Or on the police detective who’d left a message. Which, if I allowed myself to think about it, would make me far more nervous than presenting to Nakamura-san.

  You’ve got a lot to lose.

  You know who I mean.

  When I’d arrived home last night, everyone in the house was asleep.

  They were all still asleep, naturally, when I left the house at four-thirty in the morning. That was just as well; I might have been tempted to talk to Kate, tell her about Kurt’s threats. Which I most definitely didn’t want to do.

  Because I had no doubt that Kurt had somehow rigged Trevor’s car to make it crash.

  And I knew he was an extremely dangerous man. Who was no longer my friend.

  He’d warned me not to tell anybody my suspicions about Trevor’s car. Not in so many words, but he’d made that clear. He knew I’d tried to get him fired.

  No, I couldn’t prove anything, but his threats alone told me he was guilty. Yet what was I supposed to do when the police detective asked me questions about the car crash? Probably the safe thing to do was to say nothing. To tell the detective I knew nothing about it. Strictly speaking, that was true. I had only suspicions. I knew nothing.

  Because I didn’t doubt that if I talked to the cops, Kurt would find out.

  I’ve got a lot of friends in a lot of places.

  An hour later I got into the security line. There were other people already in line, probably all flying to San Francisco. Some businessmen and businesswomen, probably going to Silicon Valley via San Francisco because they wanted to arrive earlier than the flights to San Jose. Or maybe they didn’t want to change planes in Phoenix or Atlanta or Houston. Since I travel a lot, I’ve got it down to almost a science—BlackBerry and cell phone in my briefcase, the slip-on shoes with no steel shank, all my metal objects in one pocket for quick removal.

  The line moved slowly. Most people in line were half-asleep anyway. I felt like a sheep being herded into the pen. Ever since 9/11, traveling has been a nightmare of taking off shoes and putting stuff on moving belts and getting wanded. There was a time when I loved to travel, but no longer, and it wasn’t just salesman burnout. It was all the security, which didn’t make us any more secure.

  I took my laptop out of my briefcase and put it on the conveyor belt, put the briefcase on the belt after it, slipped off my shoes—the lace-up ones were in my overnight bag, since the slip-on ones weren’t dressy enough for Nakamura-san—and put them in the gray Rubbermaid tray. I put my keys and coins in the little coin tray, and shuffled through the metal detector. Passed with flying colors, and smiled at the somber guy standing there. A woman asked me to turn my computer on, which I did.

  I padded over to the next portal, one of the new explosives detectors they’d just installed. Stood there while I was hit with a blast of air. An electronic voice told me to move on.

  And then, a few seconds later, a high-pitched alarm went off.

  One of the TSA security agents grabbed my overnight bag as it emerged from the explosives detector. For some reason, my overnight bag had set off the alarm. Another one took me by the elbow, and said, “Sir, please come with us.”

  I was no longer half-awake. The adrenaline had kicked in. “What’s going on?” I said. “There some kind of problem here?”

  “This way, sir.”

  People in line stared as I was pulled off to the side, behind a tall panel. “Hands in front of you, sir,” one of them said.

  I put my hands out. “What is it?” I asked.

  No one answered. The other agent passed a metal-detector wand up and down my chest, up the inside of my legs to my crotch and back down the other leg. When he was done, a third guy—a supervisor, I guessed, a thick-necked man with a bad comb-over and oversized glasses, said, “Follow me, sir.”

  “I have a flight to catch,” I said.

  He led me to a small, harshly lit, glassed-in room. “Sit here, please.”r />
  “Where’s my briefcase?” I said.

  He asked for my ticket and boarding pass. He wanted to know what my final destination was, and why I was flying to California and back in one day.

  Ah. Maybe it was the one-day trip to California that had aroused suspicion in their pea brains. Or the fact that I’d booked the flight the night before. Something like that.

  “Am I on some kind of no-fly list?” I said.

  The TSA man didn’t answer.

  “Did you pack your bags yourself?” the man asked, not exactly answering my question.

  “No, my valet did. Yes, of course I did.”

  “Was your suitcase out of your possession at any time?”

  “My overnight bag? What do you mean, out of my possession? Here at the airport, this morning? At any time?”

  “At any time.”

  “I keep it in my office. I travel a lot. Sometimes I leave my office to go home. What’s the problem? Was there something in it?”

  He didn’t answer. I looked at my watch. “I’m going to miss my flight,” I said. “Where’s my cell phone?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” the TSA man said. “You’re not going to be on that flight.”

  I wondered how often this man got to really bully passengers around, really scare the shit out of them. Less and less often, I figured, as we moved farther and farther away from 9/11, when traveling in the United States was sort of like moving around Albania.

  “Look, I have a really important business meeting. With the chairman of the board of my corporation. The Entronics Corporation.” I looked at my watch, remembered that Franny had said only one flight would get me there in time for Nakamura-san’s arrival. “I need my cell phone.”

  “Not possible, sir. All the contents of your briefcase are being swabbed and inspected.”

  “Swabbed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Swabbed for what?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Are you at least going to get me on the next flight out?”

  “We don’t have anything to do with the airlines, sir. I would have no idea what other flights there are or when they leave or which flights have availability, if any.”