Three Classic Thrillers (44 page)

“When can I expect little nieces and nephews?” Ray asked.

“Maybe in a few years. Abby wants one of each, and she would start now if I would. I’m not ready.”

The guard walked behind Ray, but did not look. They stared at each other, trying to read each other’s eyes.

“¿Adónde voy?”
Ray asked quickly. Where am I going?

“Perdido Beach Hilton. We went to the Cayman Islands last month, Abby and I. Had a beautiful vacation.”

“Never heard of the place. Where is it?”

“In the Caribbean, below Cuba.”

“¿Que es mi nombre?”
What is my name?

“Lee Stevens. Did some snorkeling. The water is warm and gorgeous. The firm owns two condos right on Seven Mile Beach. All I paid for was the airfare. It was great.”

“Get me a book. I’d like to read about it.
¿Pasaporte?
”

Mitch nodded with a smile. The guard walked behind Ray and stopped. They talked of old times in Kentucky.

At dusk he parked the BMW on the dark side of a suburban mall in Nashville. He left the keys in the ignition and locked the door. He had a spare in his pocket. A busy crowd of Easter shoppers moved en masse through the Sears doors. He joined them. Inside he ducked into the men’s clothing department and studied socks and underwear while watching the door. Nobody suspicious. He left Sears and walked quickly through the crowd down the mall. A black cotton sweater in the window of a men’s store caught his attention. He found one inside, tried it on and decided to wear it out of there, he liked it so much. As the clerk laid his change on the counter, he scanned the yellow pages for the number of a cab. Back into the mall, he rode the escalator to the first floor, where he found a pay phone. The cab would be there in ten minutes.

It was dark now, the cool early dark of spring in the South. He watched the mall entrance from inside a singles bar. He was certain he had not been followed through the mall. He walked casually to the cab. “Brentwood,” he said to the driver, and disappeared into the back seat.

Brentwood was twenty minutes away. “Savannah
Creek Apartments,” he said. The cab searched through the sprawling complex and found number 480E. He threw a twenty over the seat and slammed the door. Behind an outside stairwell he found the door to 480E. It was locked.

“Who is it?” a nervous female voice asked from within. He heard the voice and felt weak.

“Barry Abanks,” he said.

Abby pulled the door open and attacked. They kissed violently as he lifted her, walked inside and slammed the door with his foot. His hands were wild. In less than two seconds, he pulled her sweater over her head, unsnapped her bra and slid the rather loose-fitting skirt to her knees. They continued kissing. With one eye, he glanced apprehensively at the cheap, flimsy rented fold-a-bed that was waiting. Either that or the floor. He laid her gently on it and took off his clothes.

The bed was too short, and it squeaked. The mattress was two inches of foam rubber wrapped in a sheet. The metal braces underneath jutted upward and were dangerous.

But the McDeeres did not notice.

When it was good and dark, and the crowd of shoppers at the mall thinned for a moment, a shiny black Chevrolet Silverado pickup pulled behind the BMW and stopped. A small man with a neat haircut and sideburns jumped out, looked around and stuck a pointed screwdriver into the door lock of the BMW. Months later when he was sentenced, he would tell the judge that he had stolen over three hundred cars and pickups in eight states, and that he could break into a car and start the engine faster than the judge
could with the keys. Said his average time was twenty-eight seconds. The judge was not impressed.

Occasionally, on a very lucky day, an idiot would leave the keys in the car, and the average time was reduced dramatically. A scout had found this car with the keys. He smiled and turned them. The Silverado raced away, followed by the BMW.

The Nordic jumped from the van and watched. It was too fast. He was too late. The pickup just pulled up, blocked his vision for an instant, then wham!, the BMW was gone. Stolen! Before his very eyes. He kicked the van. Now, how would he explain this?

He crawled back into the van and waited for McDeere.

After an hour on the couch, the pain of loneliness had been forgotten. They walked through the small apartment holding hands and kissing. In the bedroom, Mitch had his first viewing of what had become known among the three as the Bendini Papers. He had seen Tammy’s notes and summaries, but not the actual documents. The room was like a chessboard with rows of neat stacks of papers. On two of the walls, Tammy had tacked sheets of white poster board, then covered them with the notes and lists and flowcharts.

One day soon he would spend hours in the room, studying the papers and preparing his case. But not tonight. In a few minutes, he would leave her and return to the mall.

She led him back to the couch.

T
he hall on the tenth floor, Madison Wing, of the Baptist Hospital was empty except for an orderly and a male nurse writing on his clipboard. Visiting hours had ended at nine, and it was ten-thirty. He eased down the hall, spoke to the orderly, was ignored by the nurse and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” a strong voice said.

He pushed the heavy door open and stood by the bed.

“Hello, Mitch,” Avery said. “Can you believe this?”

“What happened?”

“I woke up at six this morning with stomach cramps, I thought. I took a shower and felt a sharp pain right here, on my shoulder. My breathing got heavy, and I started sweating. I thought no, not me. Hell, I’m forty-four, in great shape, work out all the time, eat pretty good, drink a little too much, maybe, but not me. I called my doctor, and he said to meet him here at the hospital. He thinks it was a slight heart attack. Nothing serious, he hopes, but they’re running tests for the next few days.”

“A heart attack.”

“That’s what he said.”

“I’m not surprised, Avery. It’s a wonder any lawyer in that firm lives past fifty.”

“Capps did it to me, Mitch. Sonny Capps. This is his heart attack. He called Friday and said he’d found a new tax firm in Washington. Wants all his records. That’s my biggest client. I billed him almost four hundred thousand last year, about what he paid in taxes. He’s not mad about the attorney’s fees, but he’s furious about the taxes. It doesn’t make sense, Mitch.”

“He’s not worth dying for.” Mitch looked for an IV, but did not see one. There were no tubes or wires. He sat in the only chair and laid his feet on the bed.

“Jean filed for divorce, you know.”

“I heard. That’s no surprise, is it?”

“Surprised she didn’t do it last year. I’ve offered her a small fortune as a settlement. I hope she takes it. I don’t need a nasty divorce.”

Who does? thought Mitch. “What did Lambert say?”

“It was kind of fun, really. In nineteen years I’ve never seen him lose his cool, but he lost it. He told me I was drinking too much, chasing women and who knows what else. Said I had embarrassed the firm. Suggested I see a psychiatrist.”

Avery spoke slowly, deliberately, and at times with a raspy, weak voice. It seemed phony. A sentence later he would forget about it and return to his normal voice. He lay perfectly still like a corpse, with the sheets tucked neatly around him. His color was good.

“I think you need a psychiatrist. Maybe two.”

“Thanks. I need a month in the sun. Doc said he would discharge me in three or four days, and that I couldn’t work for two months. Sixty days, Mitch.
Said I cannot, under any circumstances, go near the office for sixty days.”

“What a blessing. I think I’ll have a slight heart attack.”

“At your pace, it’s guaranteed.”

“What are you, a doctor now?”

“No. Just scared. You get a scare like this, and you start thinking about things. Today is the first time in my life I’ve ever thought about dying. And if you don’t think about death, you don’t appreciate life.”

“This is getting pretty heavy.”

“Yeah, I know. How’s Abby?”

“Okay. I guess. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“You’d better go see her and bring her home. And get her happy. Sixty hours a week is plenty, Mitch. You’ll ruin your marriage and kill yourself if you work more. She wants babies, then get them. I wish I had done things differently.”

“Damn, Avery. When’s the funeral? You’re forty-four, and you had a slight heart attack. You’re not exactly a vegetable.”

The male nurse glided in and glared at Mitch. “Visiting hours are over, sir. You need to leave.”

Mitch jumped to his feet. “Yeah, sure.” He slapped Avery’s feet and walked out. “See you in a couple of days.”

“Thanks for coming. Tell Abby I said hello.”

The elevator was empty. Mitch pushed the button to the sixteenth floor and seconds later got off. He ran two flights of stairs to the eighteenth, caught his breath and opened the door. Down the hall, away from the elevators, Rick Acklin watched and whispered into a dead telephone receiver. He nodded at Mitch, who walked toward him. Acklin pointed, and Mitch stepped into a small area used as a waiting
room by worried relatives. It was dark and empty, with two rows of folding chairs and a television that did not work. A Coke machine provided the only light. Tarrance sat next to it and flipped through an old magazine. He wore a sweat suit, headband, navy socks and white canvas sneakers. Tarrance the jogger.

Mitch sat next to him, facing the hall.

“You’re clean. They followed you from the office to the parking lot, then left. Acklin’s in the hall. Laney’s around somewhere. Relax.”

“I like the headband.”

“Thanks.”

“I see you got the message.”

“Obviously. Real clever, McDeere. I’m sitting at my desk this afternoon, minding my own business, trying to work on something other than the Bendini case. I’ve got others, you know. And my secretary comes in and says there’s a woman on the phone who wants to talk about a man named Marty Kozinski. I jump from my chair, grab the phone, and of course it’s your girl. She says it’s urgent, as always. So I say okay, let’s talk. No, she don’t play it. She makes me drop everything I’m doing, run over to the Peabody, go to the lounge—what’s the name of it? Mallards—and have a seat. So I’m sitting there, thinking about how stupid this is because our phones are clean. Dammit, Mitch, I know our phones are clean. We can talk on our phones! I’m drinking coffee and the bartender walks over and asks if my name is Kozinski. Kozinski who? I ask. Just for fun. Since we’re having a ball, right? Marty Kozinski, he says with a puzzled look on his face. I say yeah, that’s me. I felt stupid, Mitch. And he says I have a call. I walk over to the bar, and it’s your girl. Tolar’s had a heart attack or something. And you’ll be here around eleven. Real clever.”

“Worked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, and it would work just as easily if she would talk to me on my phone in my office.”

“I like it better my way. It’s safer. Besides, it gets you out of the office.”

“Damned right, it does. Me and three others.”

“Look, Tarrance, we’ll do it my way, okay? It’s my neck on the line, not yours.”

“Yeah, yeah. What the hell are you driving?”

“A rented Celebrity. Nice, huh?”

“What happened to the little black lawyer’s car?”

“It had an insect problem. Full of bugs. I parked it at a mall Saturday night in Nashville and left the keys in it. Someone borrowed it. I love to sing, but I have a terrible voice. Ever since I could drive I’ve done my singing in the car, alone. But with the bugs and all, I was too embarrassed to sing. I just got tired of it.”

Tarrance could not resist a smile. “That’s pretty good, McDeere. Pretty good.”

“You should’ve seen Oliver Lambert this morning when I walked in and laid the police report on his desk. He stuttered and stammered and told me how sorry he was. I acted like I was real sad. Insurance will cover it, so old Oliver says they’ll get me another one. Then he says they’ll go get me a rental car for the meantime. I told him I already had one. Got it in Nashville Saturday night. He didn’t like this, because he knew it was insect-free. He calls the BMW dealer himself, while I’m standing there, to check on a new one for me. He asked me what color I wanted. I said I was tired of black and wanted a burgundy one with tan interior. I drove to the BMW place yesterday and looked around. I didn’t see a burgundy of any model. He told the guy on the phone what I wanted, and then he tells him they don’t have it. How about black, or
navy, or gray, or red, or white? No, no, no, I want a burgundy one. They’ll have to order it, he reports. Fine, I said. He hung up the phone and asked me if I was sure I couldn’t use another color. Burgundy, I said. He wanted to argue, but realized it would seem foolish. So, for the first time in ten months, I can sing in my car.”

“But a Celebrity. For a hotshot tax lawyer. That’s got to hurt.”

“I can deal with it.”

Tarrance was still smiling, obviously impressed. “I wonder what the boys in the chop shop will do when they strip it down and find all those bugs.”

“Probably sell it to a pawnshop as stereo equipment. How much was it worth?”

“Our boys said it was the best. Ten, fifteen thousand. I don’t know. That’s funny.”

Two nurses walked by talking loudly. They turned a corner, and the hall was quiet. Acklin pretended to place another phone call.

“How’s Tolar?” Tarrance asked.

“Superb. I hope my heart attack is as easy as his. He’ll be here for a few days, then off for two months. Nothing serious.”

“Can you get in his office?”

“Why should I? I’ve already copied everything in it.”

Tarrance leaned closer and waited for more.

“No, I cannot get in his office. They’ve changed the locks on the third and fourth floors. And the basement.”

“How do you know this?”

“The girl, Tarrance. In the last week, she’s been in every office in the building, including the basement. She’s checked every door, pulled on every drawer,
looked in every closet. She’s read mail, looked at files and rummaged through the garbage. There’s not much garbage, really. The building has ten paper shredders in it. Four in the basement. Did you know that?”