Gina Cresse - Devonie Lace 02 - A Deadly Bargain, Plan C (14 page)

George hummed into the phone.  I could picture him sitting at his desk as he searched through t
he huge rolodex file
.  “Ah!  Here it is!  Got a pen?”

I recorded the number as George recited it to me.

“Thanks, George.  I’ll bring those pictures by just as soon as I get a chance.”

“Can’t wait.
 
Any shots of island natives in bikinis?”

“Just male ones, George.
  You know it was me behind the lens.”

Jason had rolled the windows down in his pickup while I talked with George.  The sidewalks were growing busy with passing pedestrians out to grab a bite to eat or catch a movie.  The scent of a pepperoni pizza wafted into the pickup as a freckle-faced pizza delivery boy
strolled
by.  Jason watched intently until the blue, red, and craft-brown cardboard container disappeared around the corner.

“You hungry?” he asked, almost drooling.

“
I’m starving.  Can we find a place with a salad bar?”

“You
kidding?
  If we can’t find a salad bar in L.A., then we must be idiots.”

“Okay.  Your mission, Mr. Walters, should you agree to accept it, is to find a place to eat where both you an
d I will be happy.  In the mean
time, I’ll put a call through to Captain Huey.”

“Captain Huey?”
Jason questioned.

“Yeah.
  He owns the marina where the
Gigabyte
was kept.”

Jason drove while I punched in the numbers.  Someone picked up on the third ring.

“Bay Marina,” the raspy
voice announced.

“Is Hugo in?” I asked.

“Huey?  Yeah.  Hang on.  He’s out cleaning a fish or something.”

I could hear the man yelling outside for Huey to drop that fish and come to the phone.  I could also hear Jason chanting, “Salad bar…chili dogs.  Come to Papa,” as he drove around the busy streets of L.A
.
with no idea where he was going.

“Yeah.
  This is Huey,” the abrupt voice blurted into my ear.

“Hi
.  My name’s
Devonie
Lace.  Doug Lace is my uncle.”

“Doug?  Sure
!  How the heck is that old far—
codger?”

“He’s having a ball somewhere in Europe right now.  I wonder if you can…I sort of got myself in a…well…I need
some help.
”

“You name it,” Huey broke in before I could finish.

“I understand Gerald Bates’ yacht, the
Gigabyte
, used to be kept at your marina?”

“That’s right.”

“Were you at the marina the morning Gerald Bates left for the Hawaiian Islands?”

“I was here.  I’m here just about every day.”

“Do you remember seeing Bates?” I asked.

“No.  Never saw him.”

“Did he leave before you arrived?”

“Nope.
 
I
was here.  The
Gigabyte
wasn’t. 
Hadn’t been here for about a week.
  I f
igured they took it out to sea—
big storm that night. 
El Niño
, you know.  Whole California coast was beat by that storm.”

My mind raced in circles as it tried to piece together what it had jus
t learned.  “
So you never actually saw Gerald Bates that day?”

“Nope,” he confirmed.

“Well, thanks Huey.  You’ve been a big help.”

Jason’s eyes lit up with excitement.  “There!  Victory!” he announced, pointing to the sign on
the restaurant. 
“Joe’s Jungle—
where carnivores and herbivores can meet and eat.”

I ordered a Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad with the dressing on the side.  Jason ordered prime rib with lots of horseradish sauce and extra butter and sour cream for his potato.  I sipped my water, trying to keep the lemon slice at bay, while I watched Jason guzzle a glass of Diet Coke he’d poured from a can.

“You know the sweetener in th
at
stuff’ll
kill you,
” I commented.  I knew it was a useless effort to try to talk nutrition with Jason, but I always
had
to try.  “And drinking out of aluminum cans is eventually going to cause the end of our civilization, just like the fall of Rome,” I continued.

“How do you figure?” 

“Rome fell because all the people were brain damaged from lead poisoning,” I explained.

“I’m sure I’m going to be sorry I asked, but how did that happen?”

“It was the lead from the pewter cups they drank out of, and the plates they ate off of, and the pots they cooked in
, and the plumbing they used to deliver the water to their homes
.  They were just pumped full of it.  Who knows what kind of damage you’re doing to your body eating and drinking the way you do,” I lectured.

He squinted at me with his skeptical green eyes.  “According to you, everything I
eat’s
gonna
kill me.  Tell you what—
I’ll keep eating this way, and if I die, you can say you told me so.”

“Go ahead.  Make jokes.  Go through life fat, dumb, and happy.”

“I will.  Now, can we change the subject?” 

“Good idea.  What about the
Gigabyte
?  According to the story in the Chronicle, Bates should have boarded it on November fifteenth.  I can’t find anyone who actually saw him or the yacht on that day.”

“He could have been shuttled out to the yacht on a small boat.  Why is this bothering you?”

If I were a character in a comic strip, a light bulb would have flashed over my head at that moment.  “Wait.  That’s it.  November fifteenth doesn’t fit.”

“What?  What’s wrong with the fifteenth?” Jason asked.

“It can’t be.  The
Gigabyte
was already on the bottom on the fifteenth.”  I settled back in the booth as the realization hit me.

“How do you know?” Jason queried.

“Because Roy Hastings recorded the date he found the wreck on his GPS.  I remember reading it.  It was November tenth.  That was the last entry.  Bates couldn’t have boarded the
Gigabyte
on the fifteenth.  It was already sunk.”

“You sure?
  You could have the date wrong.”

How soon they forget.  I’ve explained to Jason a hundred times
—
if my last name
was
Right
, my first name would be Always
—at least when it comes to remembering dates and numbers.  I glared at him.  “You’re birthday is March fourteenth, I graduated from college on June ninth, I was hired at San Tel on August twelfth, I quit San Tel on October elev
enth, your sister’s birthday is
—“

“Okay.  Okay.  I get the picture.  So the yacht sunk on the tenth.  What does it mean?”

“It means someone made up the story about Bates returning to San Francisco on that date.  I bet he wasn’t anywhere near the City.  He wasn’t on his yacht.  He was somewhere in the Middle East when the
Gigabyte
went down.”

“So, where is he now?  How could he just vanish?”

“I bet he had
help
.  Someone went to a lot of trouble to make it look like he’d returned.”

Chapter
Eighteen

I
tapped my fingers on Jason’s kitchen table as I counted the rings over the telephone stuck to my e
ar.  Four rings,
then, “Federal Bureau of Investigation.  How may I direct your call?”

I sat up in the chair.  “Dan Cooper, please.”

“Mr. Cooper’s on vacation—
“

“I know.  Voice mail will be fine.”

I listened to agen
t Cooper’s generic
greetin
g.
“This is agent Cooper.  I’m out of the office until the fifteenth.  Leave me a message.”

I cleared my throat.  “Dan, this is
Devonie
Lace.  You won’t believe it, but I’m in trouble again.  I can’t tell you where I am or how to reach me.  I hope you’re one of those insane people who
checks
his messages daily, even on vacation.  I’ll keep checking with your office.”  I hung up the phone and turned to see Jason searching the refrigerator.

“How much room do you have on your credit card?” I asked as I stood up and began pacing the floor.

“Huh?” he responded, still rifling through the vegetable crisper
—
where he stores his candy bars.

“Enough to get two round-trip tickets to San Francisco?”
I asked.

“Bus?”

“Please!  No! 
Plane tickets.
 
Southwest.
  They’re cheap.”

“What’ve you got in mind?”  He finally turned to look at me while
he took a bite out of
a Mars Bar.

“I
have
to find Spencer.  I just know Stan Parker is involved somehow.”

Jason downed the candy bar in two bites, then reached back in the fridge and pulled a hotdog out of its plastic package and jammed the entire thing in his mouth.  “You’re not thinking of trying any of that Rambo stuff, are you?” he asked, his mouth still full.

I laughed.  “Me? 
No way.”

“Good.”

“That’s why I’m bringing you along.”

Jason choked on his hotdog.  He coughed and wagged his finger at me, unable to speak.

“
How can you still be hungry?”

He patted his chest and swallowed the half-chewed wiener.

I headed for the door.  “Come on.  We’ll need your cell phone.”

The next Southwest flight to San Francisco was scheduled to leave in just a little over an hour.  Jason and I made our way down the long corridors, through the security stop, and to our gate just in time to hear the boarding call.  We obtained our boarding passes and, luckily, found two empty seats next to each other.  Someone had left a newspaper in the seat pocket in front of me.  I snatched it up and leafed through the pages, looking for any
Gigabyte
updates.

I wanted to check my messages before the seatbelt sign came on.  I nudged Jason.  “Let me see your phone.”

He was half asleep.  “Huh?  Oh.  Okay.”  He dug it out of his pocket.  “Here you go.”

I called my number and waited for my answering machine to pick up.  As soon as I heard my voice on the recording, I punched in my secret code and listened to my messages.  The first one was from Craig.

“
Devonie
, are you there?  Please pick up.  Where are you?  I’ve been trying to reach you for days.  Please call me.  I’ll be home tomorrow.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed my forehead.  I knew I should call him, but I didn’t know what I was going to say to him yet.  I shoved that worry to the back of my mind.

I heard a click, then some static, then a brief silence.  The voice was barely audible, just a whisper. 
I could make out the first word.
“
Devonie
.”
  I couldn’t be sure about the rest of the message.  It sounded like a frantic, “Oh man, they’re here,
” and then
the line went dead.  I powered the phone off and handed it back to Jason.  The voice could have been Spencer’s, but I wasn’t sure.  The knot in my stomach grew larger and tenser with each passing minute.  By the end of the ninety-minute flight, the imprint of my fingernails was carved into my palms.

The girl at the car-rental counter pointed through the glass windows at a bright-purple Plymouth Neon parked out front.  I gaped at it.  “No.  We can’t take that car,” I blurted. 
“We need something a little…uh…something more…something less purple
.”

She gazed out the window at the collection of brightly colored cars.  “We have a yellow one.”

I smiled at her. 
“White?
  Do you have white?”

She frowned.  “Not in an economy car.  We have a white Taurus, but it costs more.”

“We’ll take it,” I
said
.

Jason elbowed me.  “Wait a minute!  How much more?” he asked as I took him by the arm and pulled him away from the counter
—
out of earshot of the car-rental agent. 

“I’ll pay you back when this is over.  We can’t be prancing around the Silicon Valley in that…that…Mickey Mouse car.  We’ll stand out like a rodeo clown at a polo match.”

Jason
slumped
his shoulders and trudged back to the counter.  “I guess we’ll take the Taurus.”

The Silicon Valley, an area about twenty-five miles long, ten miles wide, and approximately forty-five miles southeast of San Francisco, is home to some of the wealthiest high-tech companies in the world.  Countless entrepreneurs hitched their wagons to that fortune
-bound horse called “technology
” and Gerald Bates was one of the visionaries who had the stamina, fortitude, intelligence, and incredible good luck to come out on top.  Employees of these companies enjoy the monetary rewards of working for a veritable gold mine. 

As Jason and I sat in our plain white Taurus in the parking lot of the Bates Building, we glanced around at the other cars parked there.  I counted one Ferrari, one Porsche, two Jaguars, six
Benzes
and twice as many BMW’s.  Our
Ford was painfully out of place
—much as I wanted to be inconspicuous.

Jason sat behind the wheel and drooled over the expensive sports cars surrounding us.  I nudged his shoulder.  “Trade me places.”

“What?” he
said
as he squinted at me through those green eyes.  The last time I saw a face like that, Clint Eastwood was on the big screen asking some punk if he felt lucky. 

“You heard me.  I want to drive,” I
said
.

He sneered at me. 
“
No way.
  I want to live to use my return ticket to San Diego.”

“Come on.  I’m not
gonna
do anything crazy.  I just don’t want to lose this guy.”

“I’ve seen
Bullet
.  You’ll
be like Steve McQueen and we’ll be
airborne over the streets of San Francisco,” Jason argued.

“Sissy.
”

“Go ahead.  Insult me.
”

“Okay. 
Fine.”
  I turned back and crossed my arms over my chest.  “You can drive, but you have to swear you’ll stick to him, no matter what.  Spencer’s life may depend on this.”

“Have faith.  I won’t let you down.”

I gave Jason a skeptical glance. 
“Right.
  Let me see your phone.”

I powered on Jason’s cell phone and ran the script through my head one more time.  I punched in the number for Bates Corporation and impatiently navigated my way through the electronic maze designed to direct my call as quickly and efficiently as possible
without any human contact
.  After repeating the sequence three times, be
ing disconnected twice, and
selecting two
wrong
options, I finally reached the voice mail for Stan Parker.  In exasperation, I pressed the zero
button
and waited for a human being to come on the line.

“Hello.  I need to speak to Stan Parker right away.  It’s an emergency.  Can you please page him?  I’ll wait.”

The operator paused briefly. 
“The nature of the emergency?”

I rolled my eyes. 
“A personal emergency.
  Please!”

“Hold please.” 
A flood of elevator music streamed into my ear, causing the opposite reaction than
what
was intended.
  I checked my watch.  Five minutes later, the operator came back on the line.  “I’m sorry.  I can’t seem to locate Mr. Parker.  I can put you through to his voice mail.”

“No. 
Already tried that.
  Page him again.  Tell him it’s Carissa West.”

She didn’t reply.  She shoved me back into the flood of elevator music.  I waited, again.

Jason ogled a burgundy Jaguar parked opposite us.  He looked like a kid paging through the J.C. Penn
e
y’s Christmas catalog.

Finally, a man’s voice barked into my ear.  “Carissa?”

I cleared my throat.  “No, Mr. Parker. 
It’s
Spencer Davis’s assistant.  I’m calling to see how you’re coming with those flow charts.”

He was silent for a moment.  “Flow ch
arts?  But Maggie said you were
—“

“Carissa West?  Yes, I know.  I had to get your attention.”  My heart was racing, but not as fast as my brain was trying to stay one step ahead of
him
.

“Who is this?” he demanded.

“Not until you tell me where Spencer Davis is.”

“What?  How the heck should I know where he is?”

“Come on, Stan.  You and I both know you’re not the network administrator for Bates Corporation.  People are missing and I think you know where they are,” I
said
. 

“You’re
crazy.  I don’t know what you’re
—“

“Oh, really?
  I’ll show you just how crazy I am.  I know for a fact that Gerald Bates wasn’t on the
Gigabyte
when it went down.  I
know it was deliberately
sunk—
someone opened the
seacocks
.  I have pictures to prove it.  I also know that on the day it sank, Bates was in Baghdad, meeting with Mohammed Aziz.  Am I warm, Mr
.
Parker?”  I figured as long as I was going out on a limb, I may as well start with hard facts.

“You don’t kn
ow anything.
”  His
voice took on an arrogant tone—
I had to call his bluff.

“Really
?
  Then
why haven’t you hung-up on me?
”

“Who are you?
”
he demanded again.

“I told you, not until you tell me where Spencer Davis is.  If you don’t, I’m going to the FBI with everything I know.”  I was hoping I wouldn’t have to play all my cards, but this guy wouldn’t budge.

“They’ll laugh you out of their office.  No.  Better
yet, they’ll lock you up in a S
tate hospita
l.  
Men in white jackets.
 
I’m sure
you’re
familiar,” Parker
said
.

“
I know about Harlan and Carissa West.  I know about Kent Morrison.  I know about Roy Hastings.”  I grasped for my last cards.  “I even know about Clancy and Olive
McGreggor
.  I know it all,
Mr. Parker
.”

“What do you know about—
“

“Ever cheat on your wife?  Lie to the IRS?  Steal something valuable?  Because I’m about to find out, and when I do, I’ll tell the world what a lowlife scumbag you are.  Think your wife and kids will want you around after that?”

“You don’t know anything.  You’re crazy.”  Click.  The line went dead. 

I guess I went far enough.  If I’d played my cards right,
Mr. Parker would be on the run
—just where I wanted him.  I
hung up the
phone and handed it back to Jason.  “You ready to rumble?  I expect we’ll see Mr. Parker through those doors any second now.”

Jason turned the key in the ignition.  “You better hope he’s not the owner of that Ferrari or we’ll be in trouble.”

“Only if he knows we’re following him.  Just be cool.”