Damaged Goods (21 page)

Hannibal sat back farther from the glow of the screen. He knew that the collar signified ownership, but apparently it did not suspend all rights. Had Anita or Marquita established limits? That seemed unlikely. Perhaps Rod had only shown them one side of this life. And maybe this whole thing wasn't as black and white as Hannibal had assumed.

“Your limits don't include his beating you?”

“As i said, Sir, Master would not punish me unless i deserved to be punished.”

“But it's up to him how much of a beating you deserve,” Hannibal said. “He could injure you, brutalize you.” At this point his thoughts flowed directly into the keyboard, almost like thinking aloud.

“Are You purposely testing me, Sir?” charmer asked. “You can tell Master that I have no fear. He is not a brute. I have never needed to use my safe word, nor do I ever expect to.”

Hannibal's eyebrows rose at another new concept. He realized that just observing one evening had not taught him
all of the code. “Please explain safe word,” he typed. This time he stared hard at the screen, watching the words pop up with even greater interest.

“This is the word Master has given me as proof that he will protect me, even from Himself. If I feel that He may hurt me more than He intends, or order me to do something that will be harmful to me in the long term, then I say my safeword and He will stop what He is doing.”

Hannibal wondered if Marquita would have taken other men if she felt she had a choice. Did she have a safeword to defend herself from actions that would destroy her spirit? His mind burned with more questions than before.

“Sir.” The word drew him back to the screen. “May i please go now? This conversation is becoming a little uncomfortable.”

He was no closer to understanding why a woman would volunteer for degradation this way, but he now knew that there were layers and shades to this “lifestyle” beyond his immediate grasp. That in itself was insight.

“Of course, you can leave whenever you want,” Hannibal typed. “I don't own you. And thank you. You have been very helpful.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Tell your master that I said he should be very proud of you.”

“Thank You, Sir.” was the final line she posted. Hannibal shut down the Internet connection, gulped more coffee, and sat back in the dark for a long while. He sipped the dark liquid, smiling both at its flavor and a sudden thought about Anita. She may have been just like this charmer at one time, but no longer. As angry as he was about her confronting Mantooth, he was proud of her courage. She had managed to strike one blow for womankind. She didn't scar him, but she hurt his favorite possession.

“Whoa!” The thought hit him so hard he splashed coffee on his desk. He realized that there was a reason no one had seen the car, and it had nothing to do with Mantooth leaving town. Hannibal snatched the phone off the desk, pulled a card out of his jacket pocket and punched in a phone number. He was more anxious than he wanted to admit to himself while the
phone rang, and was grinning like a fool when it was answered.

“Clarence Nash,” he said, sounding as giddy as a game show host. “Thank God you're still at the shop. This is Hannibal Jones.”

“Hannibal? Oh, yeah, I remember now. The guy in the black suit. Hey, funny you should call. You'll never guess who was in here this morning.”

“Please tell me that bastard Rod Mantooth brought that custom car back to you.”

“You got it,” the mechanic said. “Man, he was fixing to bust. Somebody done keyed the driver's door bad. He brought it straight to me, wouldn't let nobody else touch it.”

“I knew it!” Hannibal was pacing the office, too excited to sit. “How long will you have it there?”

“Couple days,” Nash said. “Had to order the paint. Not much call for this particular mix today. Then there's a couple day's work after I pull the door off.”

“Pull the door?” Hannibal asked. “It's a scratch, right? You fill in the paint and buff it out.”

Nash's laugh roared out of the phone. “You sure don't know much about cars, son, at least not this kind of car. The whole body's dipped in chrome and airbrushed with twelve coats of paint. Each of those layers has got to dry before the next one goes on. It won't be ready too soon.”

“Okay, Clarence,” Hannibal was calmer now, and sat on his desk, leaning against the computer to share its comforting warmth. “Can I get you to call me when it's ready so I can meet Mr. Mantooth over there?”

“Don't see why not, as long as you meet him after he's paid me and left,” Nash said. “Can't promise I'll remember, but I'll try.”

“Uh-huh. Do you suppose a C-note would be a memory aid?”

“A hundred dollars?” Nash said. “Why, that's better for the memory than that ginko Balboa stuff.”

Hannibal hung up with a new outlook on life. Now he was certain he would catch up with Rod Mantooth, finally meet
him face to face in a few days and learn what he had done, if anything, with Vernon Cooper's miracle drug. He had a lot of good news, but he would brief the clients in the morning. Right then he would call Cindy and see if she could tear herself away from business long enough to join him for a late dinner at that little Thai place she loved so much.

A smaller voice at the back of his mind hoped he wasn't celebrating too soon.

Morning phone calls brought Hannibal a number of surprises. First he learned that Anita was recuperating at Blair's house. Blair had decided that she shouldn't be alone, and this way Henry could keep an eye on her. Then he learned that Blair had taken the morning off to work from home. That would save Hannibal some driving time, since he had originally intended to meet with both Angela and Blair. Henry met Hannibal at the door of Blair's vertical mansion.

“Good morning sir. Very good to see you again. Please come in.”

“I'll make you a deal, Henry,” Hannibal said, stepping across the threshold. “If you'll stop calling me sir, I'll stop treating you like some servant who shouldn't stick his nose into Ms. Cooper's business. What do you think?”

Henry pursed his lips, weighing his options for a moment before choosing one. “Very good, Mr. Jones,” he said after a pause, but his smile seemed more genuine and Hannibal accepted the small step.

They climbed a long flight of stairs and walked down a hallway under a small cut-glass chandelier toward what Hannibal assumed was a guest room. Henry raised his hand to tap at the door when they heard a scratching noise from the bathroom beyond. The door stood open and Hannibal walked
past Henry to look inside. He found Anita kneeling in front of the bathtub, scrubbing it out.

“That can't be good for those ribs,” Hannibal said.

Henry was behind him a second later. “Ms. Cooper. Really!”

She turned and stood, straightening her short apron in front of her. “Really yourself, Henry. I can't just lie here all day and let this place fall farther and farther behind.”

Hannibal didn't even know how to describe the absurdity of the scene, but his smile seemed to break through their conversation. “Ahh, domestic discord,” he said, not realizing the pun until he had said it. “Could you take a little break so I can fill you in on the news?”

“Have you found my father's prize?” Anita's face brightened like a child's on Christmas morning as the men trailed her to her temporary room. To Hannibal's surprise the room held two comfortable chairs in addition to the full size bed and dresser. The scent of jasmine filled the room, and he wondered if that was always the case or if its present occupant had introduced it. Anita bounced onto the bed, not looking at all like a woman who had been beaten badly enough to be hospitalized. Hannibal sat in one chair. Henry chose to stand.

“Tea?” Henry asked the room.

“Oh, please,” Anita said.

“And coffee,” Henry added, nodding toward Hannibal.

“Uh, sure.”

Henry wafted away without a sound, and Anita stared at Hannibal until he realized he shouldn't wait for Henry to return.

“Well, to directly address your question, no, I haven't found what was stolen from you. But I do now know what it was.”

“Oh, I've had such childish fantasies,” Anita said. “Like it was a treasure map to hidden gold, or a ton of stock in the pharmaceutical company, or even the deed to some island he bought over the years.” In her glowing eyes Hannibal could
see the innocent youth that Rod Mantooth could not resist dominating.

“In fact, it was nothing so exotic, but perhaps something even more valuable and certainly it was way more important. Your father apparently discovered the formulation for a drug, or maybe a vaccine, that would actually enable a cure for drug addiction.”

“You mean like methadone?” Anita asked.

“No, not a substitute, but something that would make an addict not need his drug any more. I've consulted an expert who tells me that the value of such a discovery could be astronomical.”

“An actual cure?” Anita asked. “You mean like if you've been using crack every day you could take this stuff and you could kick crack just like that? Why, that would be a Godsend to all of humanity! Henry, did you hear?”

Henry had just placed a tray on the table beside the bed. He handed Anita her cup, then offered a second to Hannibal. “Just that your father is a hero, Ms. Cooper. I expected no less.”

“There's more,” Hannibal said, sipping his coffee. “I don't know where Mantooth is, but I do know how to find him soon. He'll be returning to the repair shop where he got the crazy car built in a few days. I'll be there to greet him.”

Anita's reaction was a curious combination of fear and elation. Her mouth formed the “O” of stunned surprise, but her eyes reflected a reluctance to even consider the possibility that Rod might be captured or hurt.

Standing to the side, Henry stayed silent, standing with a saucer in one hand and the handle of a cup in the other. Hannibal knew that he was fully engaged, but his face was as passive as a tax investigator at an audit. Hannibal considered recommending him to the Treasury Department for secret service work. He was very good at being present but somehow remaining invisible.

Anita's eyes suddenly focused like a laser on Hannibal's glasses, as if to center her mind on one thought and blot out
all others. “My father did something no one else was able to do.”

“That appears to be the case,” Hannibal said. “Everyone I've interviewed has told me that he was a brilliant man.”

“He was a genius,” Anita said, her smile spreading to envelope her face again. “The best pharmaceutical biochemist in the world. Mr. Blair was right. His discovery will change the world. You will get it back, right?”

“I'm certainly going to do my best,” Hannibal said, not sharing her smile. “Meanwhile, I think I need to go brief Mr. Blair himself. After all, he's paying the bills.”

Ben Blair's home office was both smaller and simpler than Hannibal expected. The cherry wood desk appeared to take up most of the space, with three tiers of open shelves in place of a traditional hutch. The phrase “organized disorder” came to Hannibal's mind as he stepped in. Papers and computer discs covered the desk and all three shelves, even crowding the flat screen monitor, but Hannibal suspected that Blair knew what each was, and that every sheet of paper was exactly where it belonged. An acoustic guitar standing in the far corner struck him as the one incongruous note.

Hannibal stood quiet while Blair tapped at a keyboard with steady intensity, like a virtuoso charging through the end of a Dvorak sonata. When he reached the finale, he released a big breath and turned his easy, boyish smile on Hannibal. The straw thatch on his head was uncombed and one could hardly guess that seconds ago this man in a faded Planet Hollywood tee shirt and shorts was directing a billion dollar empire through his simple Dell computer.

“So, Mr. Jones, what do we know that we didn't know forty-eight hours ago?”

“Well, as I just told Anita, I've caught a break in the search for Rod Mantooth. He left his car at a shop for repair and I'll be alerted when he returns for it.”

Blair waved Hannibal to a chair. Not until he sat did he realize that Blair was burning incense in the room. He wasn't sure, but he thought the scent was called chamomile. Hannibal got a mental picture of Blair, relaxing like a sixties hippie, strumming a tune in his incense fogged room, maybe getting high.

“That's not catching a break,” Blair said, crossing his right ankle over his left knee. “That's due diligence. I knew you were the right man for this job.”

“Thanks. I think it will do a lot for Anita's self-esteem if this man is made to pay for hurting her.”

Blair nodded. “Unfortunately, it might be impossible to prove that he's committed a crime. What about the property he stole? Do you think you'll be able to recover it? Or is there any evidence that he's already sold it?” Blair maintained his usual casual attitude, but the fingers of his left hand drummed a rhythm on the desk and his right foot, shook frantically in space.