Mr. And Miss Anonymous

by Fern Michaels

  The old man seemed to shrivel in front of his son’s eyes. “How did this happen, Hudson? It was foolproof. We covered all the bases.”

  Hudson sat down on a hassock. He wrapped his arms around his pudgy knees. “It happened when you ordered a wholesale slaughter of all those children. That’s what happened. I told you to just let them go off on their own once they turned eighteen, but you wouldn’t listen. None of this would have happened if you had listened to me. Now you are going to be hounded unmercifully, and you’ll go to jail, where you will die, but only after you, after we, become a media circus. Your whole life will be aired and dissected, and you will get to the point where you want to kill yourself, which you might well do. Even in death, they’ll pick at your bones.”

  “Then do something about it, Hudson. Make it all go away.”

  “You must be senile, Father. Tell me how I could do that. Under the guise of conducting research at the fertility lab, they created human guinea pigs, children with no families and no parents…who could be secreted away to become the ongoing clinical-testing subjects for the drugs our firm manufactured. You said no regulations to worry about. No government interference, no concerned parents. You said other drug companies would have to spend decades developing and testing on animals before they could even think about giving them to a human subject, but that our company could test them immediately. When they start their probe, they’ll see how Preston Pharmaceuticals recovered from the crapper we were in, and the sudden megagrowth will attest to the diabolical genius of your plan. There you have it, Father Dearest. Chew on it, and I hope to hell you choke on it.”

  “How dare you speak to me in such a manner?” the old man sputtered.

  “How dare I? How dare I not speak to you like this? You can do whatever the hell you want, but I’m getting out of here as soon as I can. I have no desire to participate in the free fall that is just around the corner. I simply came here to warn you. Do what you want. Tell me you understand what I’ve just told you.”

  “What I understand is that you’re a traitor to this family. Get out of my sight. I never want to see you again. Do you hear me, Hudson?”

  “Oh, I hear you, all right. But that’s my line, Pater. I wish to God I had turned you in to the authorities myself before I ever agreed to help you try to hide this by killing those children.” Without another word, Hudson struggled to his feet and left the room. Even before he closed the door he could hear the tennis match come to life on the big-screen TV set.

  Hudson Preston suffered through the short ride to his California home. He wasn’t the least surprised to find the house empty. He wasn’t sure, but he rather thought his wife was in Europe. He vaguely remembered hearing something about fashion shows. Thank God. He headed straight for the bar, where he poured himself a tumbler of hundred-year-old cognac. He downed it in three swallows, his throat burning from the searing liquor. He looked at the empty glass and poured another.

  When he felt loose as a goose, he made his way back to his office, where he sat down to contemplate what could very well be a very dim future. He’d always known deep in his gut that this day would come. Well, he’d set up things for this eventuality, so he might as well get cracking on it.

  Hudson opened the wall safe and stared at the contents. There was no money inside, nothing valuable, not even his wife’s jewelry. He reached for the only thing in it: a plain brown envelope given to him and all the others that made up the consortium. His father had one, too, but Hudson doubted he’d ever use it. Well, he wasn’t his father.

  Hudson spilled the contents onto his desk as he did his best to remember all the instructions that had been drilled into his head. First, he needed to insert the special battery, kept charged at all times, into the phone. He did so. The instructions for using the high-tech encrypted phone were seared into his brain. All he had to do was make one phone call, then wait six hours, at which point he was to leave and pretend he was going for a walk. He was to dress down, which meant casually. He wasn’t to take his wallet, his ID, or anything personal, just his keys. At some point during his walking route he would be whisked away to a safe haven, where others would take charge. He looked down at his watch. In six hours it would be five thirty. A short stroll before dinner wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for someone like him. Or, would it?

  He’d certainly find out at five thirty. He wondered which banana republic he’d end up in. Or would they simply kill him? He had no way of knowing.

  With nothing else to occupy his time, Hudson took a shower and dressed in a running out-fit. The last time he’d run or jogged was when he was seven years old. He slicked back his hair, shaved, and went to the kitchen in search of food.

  As Hudson bit into his ham-and-cheese sandwich, he wondered if it would literally be his last meal.

  Chapter 26

  It was a little after four when Charlie Garrison pronounced the TracFone sufficiently charged to start making calls. He felt excited for the boy and hoped something good would come of everything. He was going to miss the youngster when he left, but there was no need to fool himself—the boy would leave.

  For some reason Charlie felt close to him, almost paternal where the young man was concerned. He could be my grandson, he told himself. He asked me to be his grandfather. It would be nice to be able to spend time with him, to watch him through his college years, maybe visit him on campus, go to dinner with him, send e-mails back and forth. Maybe play a game of chess once in a while, confer about the Times’ crossword puzzles. Maybe just to love him because no one else did. The bottom line was, Charlie realized just how lonely he really was. In less than twenty-four hours he realized something else: he loved this kid with the curly hair and dark eyes and quaintly old-fashioned way of looking at things.

  He wanted to take Josh to ball games, to get a pizza, to buy him a dog that would love him to death. All the things he never got to do with his own kids or grandkids.

  Josh stunned the old man when he asked, “Charlie, why can’t I work at your hot dog place and stay here with you? I can sleep on the couch. I won’t bother you. I need to get a job so I can go to college. I was going to ask you if I could go online to apply for aid. Maybe you could help me. I’d really like to continue my education here at Berkeley.”

  “Youngster, I don’t know if that’s a good idea until all this mess is sorted out. You can work at Hotdog Haven if you want, and, yes, you can stay with me, but you deserve more than this. Don’t worry, we’re going to work it all out.” Charlie’s voice turned ferocious and yet proud-sounding when he said, “If I have anything to say about it, your running days are over. I might be old, but I learned a thing or two in the navy I can use to protect you.”

  The boy was nervous, Charlie could tell. “Have you…uh, talked to Tom lately?”

  “As a matter of fact I haven’t. The last time I talked to Tom, he said I have you now to help me, and he’d go into a wait-and-see mode. He’s like that. If I need him, I just call his name, and he’s right there. I miss him a lot. Sheila, too. I bet Tom or I would have married Sheila someday. She said she wanted us to fight over her. Tom and I said we wouldn’t fight each other over her, and she didn’t speak to us for a whole week, so we said okay, we’d fight over her, but she had to marry someone else.” This was all said in one breathless burst of words.

  Charlie laughed. “Women are at the root of all evil. You have a whole life ahead of you before you can think about marrying. Eventually you’ll meet some nice girl in college who will blow your socks off, and that will be it. Love comes around when you least expect it. First things first, you have to get a fine education so you can take care of a wife and kids and probably her mother. Girls always come with a mother, for some strange reason.”

  “No, the first thing I have to do is save enough money to buy a tombstone for all my friends. I’m thinking just one with all their names on it. What do you think, Charlie? How long will it take me to earn enough money at your hot dog place to do that?”

/>   Charlie’s eyes started to burn. “Not that long,” he said gruffly.

  “Then that’s what we’ll do. You’ll help me with that, won’t you, Charlie?”

  “I will, youngster, I will. Are you ready to make the call?”

  Josh disconnected the charger and turned on the TracFone. He turned around to look at the kitchen clock. It was four thirty. “Let’s go over it one more time so I don’t foul things up. Jeez, this is like debating class. I was never good at that. Sheila was a whiz. She always won.”

  “You’re going to call and ask for Mr. Kelly. Tell them who you are and say you saw Mr. Kelly on television. Tell them your number. If you want, tell them about your book. Ask why Mr. Kelly is looking for you. Then you hang up. If you want them to return your call, you’ll have to give them the TracFone number. Or tell them you’ll call back in a half hour to get a number where he can be reached. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, Josh. We can just throw the phone away.”

  “No, I have to do this, Charlie. I have to do it for Tom, Sheila, Jesse, all the others, too, as well as Mr. Dickey and Miss Carmody. Okay, here goes.”

  Charlie sat back in his chair and watched the boy as he punched in the numbers to PAK Industries. He wished he was clairvoyant.

  Josh listened to the operator say, “PAK Industries, how may I direct your call?”

  “Hello. My name is Josh Baer, and I’d like to speak to Mr. Kelly, please.”

  “Mr. Kelly isn’t in the office. Can I put you through to his assistant, Marty Bronson, sir?”

  Josh smiled and mouthed the words, “She called me ‘sir.’ ”

  “No…. Wait a minute. Okay, I can talk tohim.”

  “Just a minute, sir.”

  “Marty Bronson.”

  “Hi, Mr. Bronson. Can you tell me how I can get in touch with Mr. Kelly? My name is Josh Baer. I also have a number that is 8446. I saw him on television, and he said he was looking for 8446.”

  The voice on the other end of the phone was smooth as silk and didn’t miss a beat. “Mr. Kelly is in California but I can have him call you, Josh. Is it okay to call you Josh?”

  “Sure. I know Mr. Kelly is in California. Do you know why he’s trying to find me?”

  “I’m sorry, Josh, I don’t know the answer to your question. I’m assuming it’s personal. If you give me your phone number, I will try and reach Mr. Kelly. I’m sure he’ll return your call as soon as I reach him. He’s a prompt kind of guy, if you know what I mean.” When Josh didn’t respond, Marty Bronson said, “Josh, are you there? Did you hear what I just said?”

  “I heard what you said, and I’m still here. I’m thinking. Why don’t you give me his cell phone number? In the interest of expediency. Are you still there, Mr. Bronson? Did you hear me?”

  Josh was rewarded with a chuckle on the other end of the phone. “Touché, Josh.”

  “Hang up now, Josh.”

  Josh whirled around. “Tom! Why?” he mouthed the question.

  “Towers. He’s trying to track your location.”

  “Oh, shit!” Josh broke the connection as he struggled to take a deep breath.

  “What happened?” Charlie demanded.

  “Tom told me to hang up. Something about the towers the cell phone signals go through. They can find me that way.”

  “He’s right, son. I’m sorry, I didn’t think about that. Maybe I’m not the right person to be helping you. Guess that means I have to relocate you. That’s not going to be a problem. I’ll just call Dorothy and tell her she’s going to have a few guests for a while. Get your stuff together. We should leave now. I have a key to her house.”

  “I don’t have any stuff, Charlie. Just the book, and it’s stuck in my pants. Why do you have a key to Dorothy’s house? Won’t she mind if we go there?”

  Charlie put his hands on his hips. “Now why do you think I have a key to her house?”

  “I thought…maybe she had a cat or a dog or something.”

  “Sometimes you are so slow you make me crazy. Try the birds and the bees, buddy. Remember that sex education class when Mr. Dickey said there could be snow on the roof and fire in the chimney. It took us five days to figure out what he was talking about, and even then it was Sheila who got the answer,” Tom said.

  Josh turned pink. “I get it. Dorothy is your sweetheart.”

  “Among other things,” Charlie muttered, as he started throwing things into a bag.

  “Will we be safe at Dorothy’s house?”

  “Youngster, when you meet Dorothy, you’ll know nothing is going to happen to you. She can be a one-man, er, one-woman army. Matter of fact, she was in the army once. She’s a crack shot, too. Wears combat boots all the time. If she decides to kick ass and take names later, that person is never seen or heard of again. She cooks like an angel. She has two dogs and two cats, and her place still smells like Ivory Soap. You ready?”

  “Yeah, I’m ready.”

  “Then let’s hit the road.”

  The time was five ten.

  Hudson Preston checked to make sure he had his keys deep in his pockets. He took a last look around the house he knew he would never see again. His gaze raked the photos on the mantel and then the huge painting of his father over the mantel. “Rot in hell, you bastard!”

  He was almost to the door when he turned around and headed back to the bar, where he poured one last drink of the vintage cognac. As he gulped the fiery liquid, he realized he was too nervous to enjoy it. Another time, another place, he told himself as he walked back through the rooms and out the kitchen door. If he didn’t make a sound and walked through his neighbor’s yard and exited on the cross street, his security detail would never know he’d left the house. He’d eluded this particular bunch in the past, so he saw no cause for worry this time.

  His heart thundering in his chest, Hudson played the instructions over and over in his mind as he trotted along. Don’t make eye contact with anyone, don’t look to the right or the left. Don’t speak to anyone. A car will stop, the door will open, and you get in. Even an idiot could follow those simple instructions.

  Five minutes later, Hudson heard the sound of a car behind him. His feet picked up speed, but he didn’t look up. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the black nose of the car slow and pull to the curb. When he heard the sound of the door sliding open, he stepped to the curb and climbed in. The automatic lock slammed home.

  Safe.

  Twenty minutes later, the privacy partition slid open. The driver turned slightly. “Are you comfortable, Senator?”

  There was something familiar about the voice asking the polite question, but Hudson couldn’t place it. “Yes,” he said curtly.

  Another twenty minutes went by before the driver made a sudden stop and pulled to the curb in front of an identical-looking car. “I’ll just be a moment, sir. I have to speak to a colleague.”

  Hudson watched as the driver climbed out of the car and walked around to the back so that he could approach the parked vehicle behind him. He opened the door, looked in, and turned to face Hudson Preston at the same time the automatic doors slid open.

  “How’s it going, old chum?” Diesel Morgan asked.

  “You!”

  “Well, not exactly. I’m the new you from here on in. See that car? That was supposed to be your getaway car, but now it’s my getaway car. Like I said, I’m the new you. And don’t you worry that fat little head of yours, I’m going to pop your old man as soon as I get done with you. Any last words, Senator?”

  “It was all my father’s idea. He’s to blame for all this. Go on, shoot me, get it over with.”

  Morgan obliged.

  Pete Kelly pounced on his cell phone like it was a lost contact lens. “What the hell do you mean he hung up on you? Marty…”

  “Pete, I told him I’d have you call, and then the kid asked for your cell number when all of a sudden I could feel this intake of breath, and he froze on me. I think he was with someone. Just like that he cut me off
. I did hear him say, ‘Oh, shit!’ before he hung up. I’m sorry, boss.”

  “No caller ID?” Pete asked.

  “No, a TracFone, I assume. You know how those things work. The kid is smart, but I can guarantee you he’s got some help. He knows you’re in California. And he saw you on television. He also said he’s Number 8446. That’s it, boss.”

  Pete broke the connection. He felt like crying. “We lost him again. He called. Marty thinks he has help now. That’s probably a good thing if it’s the right kind of help. We need to think about that. Up until last night the boy was flying blind. Now, where in this short span of time did he come up with help? You wanna know what I think, Lily? I think that old guy at the Castle Gate Apartments is helping him. He snookered us. And we damn well fell for it. Son of a bitch!” Pete seethed as he banged his fist into the wall.

  “The best part is this. He said he was 8446. That’s all I needed to hear. He’s my kid! He’s mine, Lily! No more guessing. He’s mine!”

  Lily ran to him and put her arms around him. “Tell me, Pete, what’s it feel like?” she whispered.

  Pete looked down into Lily’s questioning eyes. “Like a thousand Christmas mornings all rolled into one. It’s a high and a low all at the same time. I want to tell the world I have a son. Although he probably hates my guts or will if he doesn’t already. I don’t even care about that. It’s the same overwhelming feeling as the one I had when I realized I loved you. Your turn is coming. I promise. I never break a promise, just so you know, Lily.”

  “I know that, Pete. I’m a patient person. Now, let’s put our heads together and see what we come up with.”

  Pete nodded. “First I have to call Marty and tell him to run an extensive check on that old guy. While he’s doing that, I think we should go back to the Castle Gate Apartments as soon as it gets dark. My gut tells me the boy is with him.”