One Rule - No Rules

by Lawrence Ambrose

  Thalma thought through the possibilities and consequences as she massaged the back of Socrates' thick neck.

  "If I tell you I'll get that to him, you'd be satisfied?" she asked.

  "Yup. If there was ever any question that he was served, we'd come to you, of course."

  Thalma held out her hand. The sheriff advanced, but halted in mid-step when Socrates growled and coiled his body.

  "Shut up," she said. Socrates made a muffled mmmphh, and relaxed under her restraining hand.

  Sheriff Martson's hand inched up on his pistol again. "Has he ever attacked anyone?"

  "No. But he doesn't know anything about the law or police, so when someone comes on with a threatening attitude, he responds accordingly."

  "As long as you can restrain him, I don't have a problem with that," said Sheriff Martson. He continued forward, one wary eye on the dog, and handed the envelope to Thalma under Socrates' baleful gaze. "What I do have a problem with, Miss Engstrom, is someone who aids and abets a felony by lying to the police. That's not something I'm going to forget."

  He walked away, pausing to tip his hat at the SUV's driver's side door.

  "Have a nice day, Ms. Engstrom."

  When the sheriff's car was out of sight, Thalma slid out a tiny plastic box from a squirrel hole in one of the oak trees – one of three memory sticks hidden on the property. This stick held a small but important fraction of her business network.

  She sprinted away, envelope in hand, leaving Socrates chugging along a hundred yard behind by the time she reached the house. In the kitchen, Thalma removed four sheets of paper from the unsealed envelope. One was a summons for Louis's debt to the Breton Hospital – some thirty-two thousand – while the other was from Citywide Card for just over fifteen thousand. Thalma smiled and shook her head. Fortunately, she carried her medical insurance in her own super-healing body. She dropped the papers on the kitchen table.

  Upstairs, Thalma inserted the stick into her computer and booted up. After entering the required passwords, an assortment of files and emails appeared. The files contained financial and contact information – the names and numbers of the directors of her various shell companies and other personnel, earning statements of her stocks, banks, corporations, and other investments – and usually ten to fifteen emails per day. Most of the emails were impersonal announcements from a bank or a brokerage account (she employed several), but once or twice a week someone had a question.

  Today, she had two personal emails: one from Peter Ulbright, the director of Land Trust Investments, and one from Semper Fi, - AKA, Randall. Thalma opened the Ulbright one.

  Dear Mr. THX:

  Mr. Ulbright is presently unavailable. I am Mr. Murphy. I am representing the owners of the product you stole.

  You have twenty-four hours to return our product. You may choose the location. We understand that you did not know what you were taking when you removed the case from Mr. Ellis's home. Because of this, we are willing to guarantee your safety as long as you return the product undamaged and unused. If you have consumed or sold a portion of the product, further negotiations will be necessary.

  If you are unwilling or unable to return the product within the twenty-four period, we will do the following: 1) Kill your director; 2) seize control of all assets belonging to your front corporation; 3) find you and kill you and anyone associated with you.

  You may doubt we can find you. You would be wrong. We are an international organization that possesses the resources to peel away all the layers – business and otherwise – that you and possibly your associates have erected around you. We have the capability of tracking your communications to their source.

  I have been tasked with settling your account. Be assured that my preference is to achieve this in a swift and professional matter - without bloodshed, should you choose to cooperate fully. Be further assured that should you decline to return my organization's product, no expense will be spared in locating and terminating you and everyone associated with your business activities.

  I am enclosing my cell number for your convenience.

  Hoping to hear from you soon,

  Mr. Murphy

  Thalma had been around some very intimidating people and organizations in life-threatening circumstances, but she couldn't deny the chills this letter sent through her. Ten years of wrapping herself up in a cloak of invulnerability seemed to evaporate like a morning mist. Thalma didn't question its veracity; she could think of two or three international organizations that could, if sufficiently motivated, track her down. She'd never worried much about that because such organizations – including the U.S. Government – had a lot of higher priorities. Most of her adult life had been committed to not only cloaking herself but making sure she didn't become any powerful institution's priority. Now, it seemed, she had.

  Thalma let out a long breath, and opened Randall's email, bracing for the worst.

  Mark, I think we just stirred up a hornet's nest. Judging from the people that came to visit me (people who are no longer living, by the way), a nest with some damn big hornets. My advice to you is to make yourself very scarce for a while, perhaps a long while. That's what I'm going to do. I will be out of touch for the foreseeable future, so I'm afraid you won't be able to wire me the balance of whatever you owe me. I wish you luck, Mark. We're both gonna need it. Hopefully, we will reconnect in the future.

  Thalma rubbed her face, torn between relief that he was okay and guilt that she'd seriously fucked up his life. At least he had the skills to make it work. That wouldn't be true of Peter Albright. She'd never met him, but she knew he was fifty-one years old and an accountant. He was divorced, with two adult children. Right now he was probably living through the worst nightmare of his life. Assuming he was still living.

  Thalma grimaced. This is it, she thought – the sword of Damocles that had been hanging over her for the last decade. Rich beyond anything she'd ever dreamed, creator of a mini-world where she was the sole ruler, the possibility of violence – extreme, Biblical violence - had always been there.

  And yet, if "Mr. Murphy" was being sincere, which she suspected he was, then she had a clear way out: just give back the damn drugs and – as they said so often in South Dakota – "be done with it."

  But wait, she thought. When exactly did Mr. Murphy send that email? Shit, the twenty-four hours might already be up. She checked the date on the Mr. Murphy email, and released a ragged breath of relief when she saw that it had been sent just two hours ago.

  Steeling herself, she opened her phone program, which camouflaged her voice while routing her call through the same system that masked the origins of her emails. She tapped in the number Mr. Murphy had provided.

  "Yes?" a cultured male voice answered.

  "Mr. Murphy?"

  "I am. To whom am I speaking?" The voice sounded more like a college professor's than a hoodlum's.

  "I'm THX. I just received your email."

  "Ah. Good. I'm glad you called."

  "I have no interest in keeping your product. As you said, I didn't know what I was getting when we took the case."

  "I understand."

  "When you say 'product,' you're only referring to the powder, correct?"

  "Correct. I understand there were other items, which we have no interest in. You're welcome to keep them. Sadly, their former owner is deceased, so he won't be needing them."

  Thalma dipped her head. As much of a piece of shit as Sam Ellis no doubt was, he didn't deserve death.

  "You will release Mr. Ulbright unharmed," she said, in a heavy voice.

  "We will. As well as leave your business operation unharmed. You may carry on as you were."

  "Okay. I'll have one of my employees take it to a secure place. Then I'll tell you where to pick it up."

  "That sounds fine. I look forward to hearing from you."

  Thalma hung up, frowning. The guy spoke as if they were discussing a hair appointment. She supposed she should be grateful he was keeping it
so low key.

  She walked down to the basement and then into her grow area. Louis was hard at work planting new plants in the clone room. His smile of greeting fell flat when he noted her expression.

  "What's going on?" he asked.

  "For starters, our sheriff friend just showed up to serve papers on you," she said. "The hospital that treated you and a credit card are looking to get a judgment against you."

  "Oh, shit." Louis shoved back his long locks. "How did he know I was here?"

  "When you didn't leave a forwarding address, he followed a hunch, apparently."

  "Crap. Did you happen to check out how much it was?"

  "Around Forty-seven thousand."

  Louis slumped against the steel wall. "Man. Wow. I didn't think it was that much. Probably the interest and penalties."

  "I wouldn't worry about it. It's not as if you have anything they can take."

  "Yeah, well, I hope so."

  "We have more important things to worry about." Thalma strode past him, sliding the magnetic handle off the wall and slapping it down on the near-invisible floor panel. She wrenched off the panel and hoisted the plastic case. "The owners contacted me, and want this back."

  Louis gripped his beard, and then gave a slow nod. "Not too surprising, I guess. So you're going to do that?"

  "Yes. I have the feeling these aren't people I'd want to mess with. I'm going to take the drugs someplace a fair distance from here, and then let them know where to pick it up."

  "Anywhere particular in mind?"

  "Somewhere not too far and not too close. While I think about that, I'm going to prep my truck for transport. I want to get going as soon as possible."

  "You want me to come with you?"

  "No." Thalma smiled at his concerned expression. "Wherever I go, it should only be a few hours from here."

  She dumped the cash and coins back into the floor compartment and replaced the panel.

  "They didn't want the cash and coins back?" Louis asked.

  "No." Thalma decided not to mention Sam Ellis' demise. "Keep doing your checkup. I'll be back sometime in the evening."

  "Are you going to be in danger?"

  No more than always, Thalma thought, but she gave him a reassuring smile. "They won't know where I'm dropping the drugs until I'm back here."

  "Well, be careful."

  "That's my middle name."

  Louis just watched her with a glum frown as she carried out the blue case. Everything was so unsettled all of a sudden, she thought. She'd flown, they'd had sex, she'd revealed her 'other side' – and now some mysterious crime syndicate had killed a man because of her and was threatening to do the same to Peter Albright and her. I think I need a hug.

  She smiled at herself, but at the same time part of her wanted to go back and get one from her warmhearted business partner. But no. This was not the time to be soft.

  Outside at her truck, Thalma unbolted the dummy reserve tank and stuffed in the blue case with the mystery powder. She slipped on her "gunshirt," a lightly armored tank top with a sewn-in pistol holster, and a short-sleeved work shirt over that. Standard travel-ware for her on any away mission.

  By the time she was "locked and loaded," Thalma had chosen a site: a small, abandoned steel fabrication factory just outside of Fargo, North Dakota. She'd purchased it for less than pennies on the dollar years ago with the idea of using it to build various projects, but had yet to do anything with it. It was surrounded by a ten foot chain-link fence with a barbed wire top, which Thalma had liked for security purposes.

  She obtained the location of the key lockboxes for the gate and inner doors from her computer before withdrawing the memory stick and initiating Total Delete to clean the hard drive. As a final thought, she dabbed a tiny amount of the hallucinogenic powder on a sheet of paper, and folded it into an envelope, which she addressed to her chemist in California. She'd mail that somewhere along the way.

  Outside, she patted Socrates on the head, ordering him to look after the place (including Louis), and rumbled out in her pickup toward Highway 29.

  Chapter 5

  THALMA COULD NEVER DRIVE into Fargo without hearing the sheriff in Fargo telling the murderer "and it's a beautiful day." It was as beautiful as it probably ever got here, she thought as she departed the highway and headed west. Spotless blue skies, nudging eighty degrees, a mild wind – a day as crisp and clearly defined as the city itself. To Thalma, it was as if an architect with a level and a T-square had arranged all the houses and buildings in neat straight lines across the mirror-flat land. The place was immaculately bland.

  A few miles outside town, Thalma approached the former steel manufacturing/fabrication factory. Unburdened by city maintenance codes, the grass grew long and ragged around the ten foot fence, and weeds poked through cracks in the parking lot asphalt.

  Thalma parked by the gate, and climbed out. The lock box was where it was supposed to be – under a large rock at the base of a pine tree a few yards removed from the fence. She punched in the combination, and retrieved three keys.

  Back at the main gate, she attempted to insert the key labeled "G," but it wasn't even a close match. Neither were the other two keys. Huh? she thought. Such screw-ups weren't unheard of in the tangled branches of her business network, but the odd and somewhat disturbing thing was that the heavy padlock looked shiny and near-brand new, though she had personally purchased and installed it over five years ago. She wasn't sure she trusted her memory, but she also thought the one she'd purchased was all black, while this one had silver-colored sides.

  As she pondered this odd development, a rust-bucket pickup entered the parking lot and rattled to a stop next to hers, expelling two ratty-looking men.

  "What you lookin' for, sweetbuns?" one of them hailed her. "This here is private property, in case you didn't know."

  She moved to meet them as they approached, gears clinking in her head as she tried to add it all up. New lock, men acting proprietorial. Is someone squatting on the place?

  They stopped a few feet from each other, the men giving her weasely grins, their eyes shining with a hard light. Thalma noted the camo jackets hanging on their gaunt frames, their missing and damaged teeth, dilated pupils, and the fidgeting of their hands at their sides – as though they longed to reach for or hold something. One wore a Fu Manchu beard that ended in a spear shape, while the other clean-shaven dude's pockmarked face cried out for a beard. Their grins contracted as they noticed that she was studying them back.

  "Could you tell me who the owner is?" she asked.

  The men exchanged a half-glance, and the bearded man spoke. "Why you asking?"

  Thalma tried not to wince as his breath reached her face. It was like morning breath squared mixed with rotting garbage. Meth heads. The gears in her head clinked into place. Her factory had been hijacked for meth production. She was already thinking ahead to the next possible drop-off place. She'd deal with these people at another time. Today was about getting the mystery hallucinogens to a safe place, and time was ticking.

  "Just curious," she said, starting around them to her truck. "Thanks."

  "Hold on."

  Fu Manchu grabbed her arm. Thalma exerted every fiber of her will not to break that grip with extreme prejudice. She made herself stop and hold as still and unresisting as a mannequin.

  "Who are you?" he demanded.

  Thalma shook off his hand. "Just someone wondering if it might be for sale."

  "Right," snorted his clean-shaven companion. "Like some twenty-something girl is going to buy a fucking factory."

  Thalma marched past him to her pickup. Her nearest property that could work was two hundred miles away, in Bismarck. A storage unit facility, it lacked the assurance of privacy afforded by some of her other sites, but it would have to do. It was time to go.

  "Jase, Dorian," a voice called from behind her. "What's goin' on? Who's your friend?"

  Thalma continued to her truck. This had always been her default strat
egy: leave a situation before it got violent.

  "Hey, I want to talk to you! Stop her!"

  The bearded guy grabbed for her as she reached for the door handle. She dropped him to the asphalt with a sharp kick to his left knee. The pockmarked face dude jerked out a handgun. Thalma was already on him, wrenching the gun out of his hand and turning it on him. He stumbled back, clasping his wrist. She pointed the gun at the men behind the gate, who held up their hands and backed away. She jumped in her truck and ripped out of the parking lot, tossing the gun in the grass by the road on the way.

  Now it was a matter of getting out of Dodge quickly, and in a way that would put the tweakers off her trail, if they decided to pursue. With any luck, a couple of left turns and she'd reach Highway 94 and be on her way unmolested to Bismarck.

  She drove just over the speed limit – not racing, but not dawdling, either – as she circled the factory a few streets removed. Coming back around, the highway was in sight. Once on it, she would be just another white pickup in a state that seemed to breed such vehicles. Even if the meth people who'd hijacked her factory felt motivated enough to pursue – and she didn't see why they would be – they'd have no idea what direction she'd gone. Freedom was only a few blocks away.

  The police cruiser that popped out of the intersection behind her, lights flashing, was like a slap in the face of her foolish optimism. She didn't have time to consider the possibilities before another police car and a van bearing the DEA logo shot out of another intersection and blocked the road in front of her. No! No way! Her stomach seized and her hearts thundered. She felt her body gearing up even as she acknowledged to herself that she could never escape these people in her pickup. One of her special vans – no problem, but her pickup wasn't designed for that.

  With heavy hands she guided her truck to the side of the road. No need for panic, yet. The police here almost certainly knew nothing about her special cargo. They pulled her over for something else. As officers from both sets of cars converged on her, weapons drawn, she formed a quick hypothesis: it had to do with the meth lab at her factory. Why else would the DEA be here? They must be observing the place, and saw me there. They have no idea who I am.