All Through the Night (11 page)

Wayne looked up at his house. Somebody had applied a new coat of varnish to his front door. It gleamed like congealed honey. Hilda had scraped the front porch down to the nubs. He could smell the disinfectant from where he stood.

Tatyana said, “I am talking to you.”

“No. No monkey suit.”

Foster said, “Two of the ladies came by and left you dinner. Pot roast and potatoes and vegetables. I put the dishes in your fridge.”

Wayne reached up and massaged the area above his aching heart.

SEVENTEEN

P
ulling up in front of Vero Beach’s most exclusive men’s store with a beautiful woman at the wheel of a Ferrari caused no more uproar than a Brazilian soccer riot. The manager himself bustled out to bow and scrape them into the shop.

Tatyana said, “I need a full makeover.”

The manager’s double-breasted jacket bore gold buttons with crests. A sky-blue handkerchief peeked from his pocket. He wore a thin gold chain over his tie, and another around the wrist that also bore an oversized gold watch. “Is madame seeking to go butch or is she referring to her gentleman gardener?”

“I want him ready for the boardroom.”

The manager’s hair was shellacked into a helmet that shivered with the rest of him. “Who did your hair, sir. Lawnmower man?”

“The army.”

“Oh, this really is too much. Derek, phone next door and tell Mimi she has to cancel whatever comes next.” To Tatyana, “Your Samson has the shoulders of an ox and no waist at all. We can either fit him with suspenders or do some serious tailoring.”

Wayne said, “No suspenders.”

“Excuse me. Who is the payee here?”

“That would be me,” Tatyana said.

“Then the gentleman will kindly permit his betters to sort out his future. Pretend you’re Eliza and dream in silence.”

“Who?”

Derek hung up the phone. “Mimi says for you, she’s ready.”

“Excellent.” The manager plied his tape measure. “Did madame have anything special in mind? Navy serge, pinstripe, desert camouflage?”

“Expensive. Something with a label that will flash across the conference table.”

The manager sighed with genuine pleasure. “I do so love a customer who knows why they invented the platinum card.”

By the time they reached downtown Orlando, the sky had gone leaden, the day’s humidity so great it coalesced overhead. Wayne redirected the Ferrari’s AC away from his face and down where the suit jacket and tie and fancy striped shirt congealed around his chest. Tatyana pulled into a multistory parking garage, ignoring the bearded attendant who stepped from his guardhouse to grin and wave her through. She rumbled into a slot with her name, the engine a thunderous roar in the concrete cave.

Tatyana cut off the motor and said, “I can trust you to act like a true professional inside the company.”

“Sure.”

“No comments about anything we have discussed.” Tatyana spoke like she already knew the answer, but being a lawyer, she needed to say it anyway. “Everything must remain totally confidential.”

Wayne asked, “How many others are there?”

“Others?”

“If I was in your position, I’d have a couple of in-house dudes set up to run the same check. Allies who might know at least a part of what’s happened. Not the bit about an angel. But that the boss might be under attack from within or without.”

She just turned and looked at him, her cat’s eyes unblinking and unreadable.

“I assume that means they don’t know about me.”

In response, Tatyana opened her door and climbed out.

Wayne followed her across the lot to the elevators. “I need to know anything they discover.”

“Clip this to your jacket pocket.” She handed him a guest badge, then used a mini-card attached to her key ring to signal the elevator. When the doors shut she said, “From now on, you must assume everything you say can be overheard.”

The garage elevator opened in the corner of the main lobby. The lobby was marble and five stories tall. The building was full of tense people rushing around on self-absorbing duties. A crystal sign the size of an SUV hung above the guard station. The sign was etched with one word,
Grey
. They joined the polite push into the next elevator that opened. Tatyana said, “Twenty-seven, please.”

When Tatyana’s floor pinged, Wayne followed her through an open-plan office of ringing phones and quiet urgency. She led him into a corner conference room. A laptop was open by the front chair. Bound computer-generated ledgers were stacked along the sides like two leather-bound arms. Yellow legal pads and pens sat before three of the empty chairs.

Tatyana scouted the empty room, checked her watch, and said, “I told him twelve o’clock.”

“Looks like I’ve got enough here to make a start.”

“Do you want me to walk you through it?”

“Let me have a look.”

She watched him settle into the chair at the head of the table. Tatyana stood in the doorway as he turned on the laptop. Wayne saw that the user had already logged in and thus opened the door to the company’s books. He slid the computer to one side and opened the closest ledger. As expected, it contained the latest overview and summary of everything to be found stacked on either side. Wayne looked up then and said, “I’m good to go. Why don’t you go find your guy, I’ll try and make myself useful.”

She remained where she was for a moment, then said, “That is what I like about you, Wayne Grusza. You speak to me only about what is required, and do so with a respect for our time and the value of words.”

Wayne sat as he was for a while after she had left and shut the door. Tasting the aftereffects of a compliment from the ice queen.

Numbers had a language all their own. Rules of grammar and speech and strength and resonance. These rules had to be mastered before the language could be understood. A student needed to learn how to tell lies from truth and the makers of both. Wayne’s sister had said it all that day in his cottage. He had always had a gift with numbers and guns. It was people who gave him an itch.

An hour later, he rose from his chair and stretched. Beyond the inward facing glass wall, life swept past him but he remained utterly isolated. The place was so soundproofed he might as well have been inside an air-conditioned crypt. He returned to the table, took a deep breath, and dove back in.

The next time he rose, his watch read half past four. The numbers he had been examining swarmed before his eyes. Wayne took a slow turn around the table, gradually digesting what he had found, wondering what had happened to Tatyana. But not sorry she had left him alone. The hunger pangs he had been sensing for the past couple of hours were stronger now. But Wayne had years of experience pushing discomfort to one side. In fact, moments like now he could use the internal friction to hunker down, focus more tightly, almost like using anger as a fuel. Staring out at the afternoon vista and seeing numbers race by in a crystal-clear stream.

“What’s going on here?”

Wayne turned in stages. His body moved slowly so as to give his brain time to let it all go and return to the glass-walled room. “Excuse me?”

A stranger with a wisp of dark hair encircling a bald bullet of a head stood in the doorway. He stared at the ledgers and the legal pad now full of Wayne’s notes. “Who authorized this?”

“Obviously somebody who didn’t feel any need to tell you about it.”

The top of the stranger’s skull was the first portion to go red. “I asked you a question, mister.”

The office beyond the interior glass wall had entered the afternoon wind-down. People were watching without actually turning in their direction. Wayne said, “I’m here on a specific brief and I don’t recall any mention of a need to answer your questions.”

“We’ll see about that.” He was a bull in a suit, tall and big-boned. He had twenty years and fifty pounds on Wayne. He was also used to shoving his way forward. He stalked around the table and made a grab for Wayne’s arm. “You’re coming with me.”

Wayne moved without conscious thought. A quick slap of the hand, a slight turn of the body. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

The guy had a boxer’s attitude, short punchy actions, the voice to match. “I said let’s go!”

Wayne slapped the hand harder this time. “Last warning.”

“I’m executive vice-president!”

“Go execute somewhere else.”

The bullish man might have backed off then. But he made the mistake of glancing back to where a crowd now clustered beyond the window.

The guy had never known the dance routine, never been warned about reaching into a sniper’s space. When he reached out, Wayne’s response was automatic. He gripped the man’s wrist just where it connected to the palm. He hit the pressure point, saw the red-hot pain register, heard the grunt. He should have stopped then. But he had never had time for bullies.

Impulse control. A serious drawback, Sergeant Grusza
.
Somebody short-circuited that breaker switch. Get it repaired or you’ll never advance.

Wayne thought the words loud enough to have almost said them out loud. Just breaking my heart, sir.

He flipped the guy’s arm around, carrying the body along with it, using the man’s own anger and force to slip him about to where the other pressure point was exposed. The one between his shoulder blade and his armpit. Wayne knuckled him a lot harder than was required.

“Ow!”

Wayne just kept pushing the point, driving the guy over until his face met the table. Smack.

“Ow!”

“Name?”

“Let
go
!”

“I asked you a question. Give me your name.”

“Jim.”

“We’re halfway there. Jim what?”

“Jim Berkind. Let me up!”

“Okay, Jim. What are you going to do when I release you?” When the guy responded by heaving back, Wayne applied a trace more pressure to the knuckle. The guy grunted and went limp. “We’re a long way from max here, Jim. Answer the question. What are you gonna do?”

His mashed face muffled the word. “Leave.”

“Right answer.” Wayne let go and stepped back.

The guy huffed his way up, massaged his wrist, made it to the door in record time, then turned back and said, “I’m calling security.”

“Whatever.” Wayne went back to his ledgers. “Shut the door on your way out, Jim.”

The pneumatic hinge kept him from slamming the door. But he punched the glass wall and shouted at Wayne as he stomped down the hall. Wayne didn’t look up until the bull had departed. When he did, two young ladies gave him discreet applause.

He walked around and opened the door. “You know him?”

“Sure. Berkind,” one said. “He’s awful.”

“He said he was a VP. Is that true?”

“I have no idea. Probably.” This from the other lady.

“In this department?”

They both made a face. “Not a chance. I’d move to Nome before I worked for that man.”

“Do you know where his office is?”

“Far away,” one lady said.

“Not far enough,” the other said.

Wayne nodded. “Do either of you know Tatyana Kuchik?”

“Sure. In legal.”

“Could you call her and say the guy she left down here in the conference room is done?”

“No problem.” The lady reached for her phone. “What name should I give her?”

“Ask Tatyana.”

“Oh. It’s like that.”

“Afraid so.” Wayne let the door sigh shut and returned to his chair.

But the numbers did not come together again. They just lay there on the page, a text without a voice. He had enough experience with the aftereffects of wrongdoing to know he would make no more progress that day.

Then he looked up. And froze.

A man stood by the door.

Wayne was supposed to be a hotshot at noticing things, so how come the guy had made it inside the room and Wayne had not heard a thing?

This was one seriously black man. He stood where the door blocked him from view of anyone passing the conference room. He was as tall as Wayne and had him by maybe twenty pounds. All muscle. The guy was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, dark monochrome tie. But there was no masking his warrior’s build. He emanated a force—not a danger, just a raw power. Standing there and staring at Wayne, filling the room with his presence.

Wayne could come up with absolutely nothing to say.

The guy said, “James Berkind’s question was right. His motive was wrong. Who are you, Wayne Grusza?”

Wayne remained silent.

“Who do you serve? The question is hard only if you wish to make it so.”

Wayne could not speak.

“You must find this answer for yourself before the real issue can be addressed. You are being called, Wayne Grusza. A hero is required. A hero for the Most High God.” The guy opened the door, took a half step out, then said, “You are not responsible for the deaths of your two friends.”

Fifteen minutes or six hours later, Tatyana opened the same door and found him seated in the same position, staring at the same point of empty space. “What is wrong?”

EIGHTEEN

W
ho do you think it was?”

“I have no idea.” Wayne knew Tatyana didn’t want to believe him. Which wasn’t comfortable, but there was nothing he could do about it. If she had come to him and told him she’d been confronted by a man who
might
be the same guy as hit on Grey …

No. Scratch that and rewind.

Might as well say it, at least in his head.

The same
angel.

If she had done that, he would have been suggesting she switch her ride for something both stationary and padded.

Tatyana shut the conference room door and stood there, as far from him as the room’s confines would permit. He had not actually said the word. He had not needed to. The thought hung there in the space between them.

She used the phone on the side table to call downstairs and ask security if they had passed in a man by the description Wayne supplied. Security took her seriously enough to check and phone back. No, no one. Tatyana reported it as a possible security breach, asked them to report back to her on her cell phone, and gave them the number.

Tatyana said nothing more until they were downstairs in the garage and she was firing up the car. “Are you hungry?”

“I missed lunch.”

“I thought about that. But something happened after I left you.”

“You got sidetracked.”

She did not race out of the garage so much as ignore her speed. “I got pulled before the disciplinary board that questioned my
ability
and my
record
.” She stopped for a light, jammed in the clutch, and pressed the gas pedal hard enough for her next words to be lost. When the engine whined down, what Wayne heard was, “—questioned my handling of a case two
years
ago. They said there had been a complaint brought against me that potentially tarnished the entire corporation. Then they wouldn’t tell me what it was!”

“Green,” Wayne said.

“What?”

“The light. It’s gone green.”

Somebody beeped from the left-turn lane behind them. Tatyana slapped the lever into first. Gunned the motor. Eased off the clutch. The engine roared, jerked the car forward, and died.

Tatyana sat there as the light went red again. “I
hate
this car.”

It was only then Wayne realized the woman was close to tears.

“Easy does it,” he said. “Deep breath. Okay. Start the car. Good. Ready now, the light’s about to go green again.” Walking her through like a new grunt on the firing range. “Is your blinker on? It’s important to breathe. Okay, green light. Steady on the gas. Ease off the clutch.”

“I’m okay now.”

“I know you are.” But he remained poised to reach over and take control as she navigated the turn. “Okay, there’s a bus stop coming up. Why don’t you slip over into the right-hand lane. Good. Might be a good idea to stop here and sort through things.”

He thought she would probably snap at him. Instead, she pulled over, braked, cut the motor, and said, “Would you drive?”

“No problem.” Calm as ice. Like he was asked to drive a beautiful woman’s Ferrari every day of the week.

Before she could take it back, Wayne sprang from the car. He hurried around and was there to offer a hand as she rose in unsteady stages. He didn’t need to ask if she was okay. A woman who made a profession of being in total control did not ask a guy to drive unless the day was seriously fractured.

The seat was so far forward he had to wrestle himself behind the wheel, then thought he might become asphyxiated before he found the seat controls, which were on the door. Even with the seat all the way back, he could feel his hair graze the roof, and testing the clutch brought his knee in contact with the steering wheel.

Not that he was complaining the least tiny bit.

The clutch resembled that of an aging Humvee, one eaten up by highland desert driving and guys who treated military equipment as toys they were paid to destroy. He had to bunch his entire leg to get the thing down to the floor. He started the engine. Punched the gas. Just sat there a second and listened to the lady sing.

He knew it was an awfully macho act. Even before he gunned the motor and checked his mirror and slapped the gearshift into first. Long before he spun the wheel, he knew he was acting like a fourteen-year-old in a stolen vehicle.

He laid a smoking track down the entire block. Had a trio of youths shout a warning or a cheer or maybe just a shout in time to the engine. Redlined it through the caution light and slapped it into second. Burned a second streak of smoking tires.

Hit ninety-three miles an hour. In second gear. In downtown Orlando. In rush hour traffic.

Impulse control, Sergeant Grusza. It will kill you one of these days
.

He caught a glimpse of his idiotic grin in the rearview mirror and silently replied, So sue me.

“Take the next right.” Tatyana had to almost shout the words over the engine’s bellow.

The Ferrari was the most perfectly balanced machine he had ever experienced. All he had to do was
think
, and the car was already halfway through the turn. He wasn’t suspended upon tires, but claws.

He
owned
this road.

He let the traffic slow him. A miniature airspace invited him to slip over two lanes and cannonball through the intersection. But just as he was preparing to downshift, he glanced to his right.

Tatyana looked so utterly unhappy.

He resisted the car’s rumbling urge to let go and release the power and fly. He sat there. Idled between an SUV and a pickup. Ignored the stares flung at him from all sides. And said, “Sorry.”

She shook her head. “Take a left through the stone gates.”

He did as he was told, calm and slow. Which was easier said than done. The Ferrari resisted his hand upon the reins. It lived to buck and roar and leap. The tiniest punch upon the gas, and he would be ten miles beyond sheer abandon.

Ten feet beyond the open gates, Wayne left behind all the weary stress and entered a world of gentility and old wealth. Trees that had been planted long before the first white footsteps graced a perfect lawn. A manor of peaked corners and Victorian foppery rose in the distance. “Where are we?”

“Easton’s club.”

Wayne parked in what was probably the guest lot, given its distance from the clubhouse. He cut the motor and sorted through a number of things to say before settling upon a simple repetition of what she had said. “You hate this car.”

“I have to fight it all the time.” The ice woman sounded about six inches from tears. “I can’t go slow. I can’t take it easy. I don’t …”

He twisted in his seat as much as the car’s confines allowed. And waited. Either she would tell him or she wouldn’t.

She looked at him then. For the first time since they had left the company. Her eyes matched the sky overhead, a grey so dark it could be mistaken for sheer night. “It was my husband’s.”

Wayne nodded. Like he understood.

Which, in a very strange way, he probably did.

She seemed to want to speak, but couldn’t.

So he said the words. “You drive it around his town for revenge.”

He did not notice the tear until she wiped it away. “I caught him with …”

He did not let the laugh out, except for the tight punching of his chest and the quick breaths through his nostrils. It did not matter who she had caught the guy with. “Your husband,” he said, “is a loon.”

“My ex,” she corrected.

“How long?”

“Nineteen months.”

He gave a slow nod, as though the number required deep thought. Gave her time to come up with the next thought herself. “But you hate the car.”

“Yes, but he loved it. Sometimes I think …”

“Nineteen months, Tatyana.” He gave it another moment. “I’m assuming you didn’t marry a guy dumb as an oil stain. Which means the guy has definitely gotten the message.”

She took an easier breath. And nodded to the gathering gloom. “You’re saying I should sell it and move on.”

“I’d be the wrong fellow to offer you advice. Seeing as how I’ve got all the experience in the world at not being able to let go. But I can tell you this.” A shard of his own pain sliced at his voice. “That knife you’re carrying stabs you a hundred times worse than it ever will him.”