Foursome (20 page)

“What does Tyrone Xavier expect?”

“Tyrone?”

“What’s his negotiated compensation?”

Davison didn’t have to look out the window this time. “He steps into Steve’s shoes on the work, he steps into Steve’s shoes on the deal.”

“Half a million to one-point-two.”

“Oh, I won’t leave Steve out in the cold. But Tyrone will have earned it, and I can’t pay it twice.”

“Generous of you to give Xavier the same deal.”

Davison’s voice got hard. “Nothing generous about it. That’s what was negotiated.”

“After Shea was arrested?”

“That’s right.”

“In other words, Xavier came in to you and said, you want the sale, I get the commission.”

Same hard voice. “In other words.”

“How soon after the killings?”

“Monday after.”

“First business day after the Friday killings.”

Davison said, “I was on a fishing trip. It was my first day back.”

“Where was the trip?”

“Maine, way north of Shea’s place, though. Hundred, hundred fifty miles.”

“How’d you get there?”

Davison bridled. “You’re thinking something, say it.”

“I already did. How’d you get there?”

Davison gave it five seconds. “I have a seaplane I use from time to time.”

“Land on water, take off from it, too?”

“That’s right.”

“You ever been to Shea’s lake place?”

“Once. We all went up for a weekend last August.”

“We?”

“Anna-Pia, Dwight, Tyrone, me.”

“And Steve?”

“Naturally. And his wife, Sandy, too.”

“How about the Vandemeers?”

“Not that time. Met them once at his house in Calem.”

“Anybody go fishing with you?”

“The weekend of the killings, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“No. Just a getaway, relaxing kind of thing.”

I thought about what Ralph Paine had told me about black flies. “What about the bugs?”

“Bugs?”

“The black flies?”

“Oh, they’re on the wing, all right, but long’s you stay out in the middle of the water, they’re not so bad.”

I stopped for a while, Davison waiting me out, seeing if he needed to stay alert.

I said, “What about Dwight Schoonmaker?”

“What about him?”

“How’d you get him?”

“Dwight used to be in security at my former employer. After I got this operation going strong, he come over to join me.”

“Military?”

Davison gave me a chilly smile. “Dwight did some checking on you, son. MP, Saigon, Tet, and then some. You’re as good as I think you are, I’d be disappointed if you haven’t guessed about old Dwight.”

“That he used to work for another ‘company’ with three initials as its name.”

“You’ve restored my faith in you. Very helpful to have a man like him around.”

“And Anna-Pia Antonelli?”

“Shrewd, smart, and a good teacher.”

“Teacher?”

“She’s taught me how I offend without intending to. But she taught me quietlike, velvet glove.”

Davison allowed me time to ask a stupid question if I wanted to. Instead I said, “Any office relationships I should know about before I ‘stomp’ on them?”

“Well, well. I do believe somebody’s taught you how not to offend, too. That doesn’t just restore my faith in you, it increases it.”

“About the relationships?”

“None I know of.”

Preserving deniability. “Keck, while my stock’s so high in your book, let me ask you two more questions.”

“Two. Go ahead.”

“If Shea didn’t commit these killings, who do you think did?”

“My hand on the Bible, I couldn’t even guess about it.”

I nodded.

“What’s your other question, son?”

“In terms of priorities, what do you want to see happen here?”

Davison went back to the earlobe. “I want to see my customer close the deal, and Steve be out of jail to shake on it.”

“In that order.”

His turn to nod.

“M
R.
C
UDDY. C’MON IN.”

If the conference room had been bright and airy, Tyrone Xavier’s office was more like a reinforced bunker. The feeling of whitewashed cinder blocks was hard to avoid, and the wall decorations managed to bring out the starkness of the background even more. He did have a window two feet high by nine feet long above his Plexiglas desktop, the three-quarter-inch material seeming to be general issue at DRM.

Xavier came from behind his desk to shake hands again. He’d taken off the blue blazer, a well-developed physique on about six feet under the dress shirt.

“Mr. Xavier.”

“Please, call me Ty, all right?”

“All right.”

Xavier smiled again, too, showing about as many teeth as a case has beer cans. “A lot of people are put off a little when I introduce myself. You know, I say, ‘Hi, I’m Tyrone Xavier’ and they keep leaning in, expecting a last name to complete things.”

“Why not add one, then?”

Xavier’s smile wavered, then came back as he bade me take an admiral’s chair, more general issue at DRM. “I kind of like putting them a little off balance at first. Also, the name’s memorable the way it is, and a memorable name helps you cut through when you make a callback.”

“Calling back a potential customer?”

“Right.”

“How do you like sales?”

The smile wavered again, for only half as long. “It’s fine, fine. Lots of freedom, lots of chances to meet new people, make contacts that could help later on. Downside is, the travel’s not what they say it used to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, used to be, everybody for an outfit like this would get to go first-class on the airlines, best hotels. Image, you know? Customers want to deal with the company that looks like it’s doing the best, because that’s where the best product likely is. Now, though, we’ve got a ‘corporate travel manager.’ Coach instead of first-class—which is really torture, you’re anything over five-five—caps on your hotel per diem. You still get to go to some great restaurants, because now you impress the customer with food and wine. But you’ve got to account for everything, and it’s kind of a pain.”

“Any other downsides?”

Xavier made his smile go coy. “Well, you heard how traveling salesmen do just fine in the lady department? That’s still true. Only thing is, you really got to ask yourself, you get my meaning?”

“AIDS?”

“That’s it. That’s it exactly. I mean, I’m in a bar, some nice hotel. Lady sidles up, looks nice, talks nice, I got to ask myself first, is she a pro? If not, I still got to ask myself, lady’s so hot to trot with me, how many other guys she had the last year? You see what I’m saying here?”

“The best you could hope for might be the worst that could happen.”

“That’s it. Exactly, again.” The big smile, again.

I said, “You don’t get tired, cozying up to people you might not like?”

“Hey, the price you pay, right? I mean, there’s a reason it’s pronounced ‘suck-cess,’ you know?”

“You ever get tired of Steven Shea?”

The smile went back to coy. “I was wondering why we were going all around the mulberry bush. Figured it was part of the ritual, what a private eye has to go through.”

“How about you and Shea?”

“Aw, man. Steve, he was—
is
—an all right guy. I was recruited out of the service to come on board here after Mr. Davison got Steve away from some computer company.”

“How were you recruited?”

“I was nearing the end of my hitch. Spent some time up here, kind of liked the area.”

“Where’d you spend your time?”

“Harvard.”

“The school, not the town.”

“That’s right.”

“Go on.”

“Well, like I said, I was short-timing, so I sent for information on companies up here, papered them with resumes, and got a nibble from DRM.”

“From who here?”

“Mr. Davison himself.”

“Not Shea?”

“No. At least, not initially.”

“Then what?”

“Pretty typical, I think. They flew me into an airport conference center—Continental’s, down at Newark—and I met Mr. Davison and Steve there.”

“Why an airport?”

“Usually they’d do that if there was some hush-hush about things. You know, you’re Company A, and you want a guy from Company B, but don’t want Company B to wonder why he’s all of a sudden going to Boston one day. For me, I remember it was just that Mr. Davison and Steve were flying somewhere, and Newark was a good spot for everybody to meet.”

“Sounds kind of noisy.”

“No, no. These conference centers, they’re like little offices away from home. I use them all the time, now. An airline will have this club you join, a hundred, maybe a hundred-fifty a year for a fee. Then you get to use their center, with phones, faxes, photocopiers, even personal computers. It’s a great deal.”

“Why were you recruited?”

“Why?”

“If Steve’s such an all right guy on his own.”

Xavier moved his tongue around inside his mouth, maybe trying to assess how much his boss would have told me about his employees. “Steve has a great touch with a lot of people, but I guess Mr. Davison felt I might be an asset with some of the customers out there.”

“Because Shea hadn’t been in the military?”

“Partly. But hell, I was a Marine captain, a ground-pounder, not an electronics jock. Mostly it was because DRM was trying to appeal to some countries run by people of color, and I was a nice addition to the team.”

After seeing Shea’s living room, I could understand that. “You work pretty closely with Shea?”

“You could say that.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well—you know much about how our business works?”

“Just a little.”

“Okay. Say we’ve done some presentations here and there around this world of ours. Say I’ve helped out with some, but not with others. A potential calls in, wants some more facts, but Steve’s on a layover or the middle leg of a long trip. I get the request, coordinate with our tech people, try to get the customer back an answer.”

“So you’ve seen Shea in action?”

“Many times.”

“Any reason he’d have drawn somebody’s anger?”

“Anger? You’re saying, like enough to do the thing up in Maine?”

“Right.”

“Lord, no. We deal with heads of major government departments, sometimes the brother of the president for some country you never heard of that’s the new name for a country you barely heard of. But by the time we’re talking to them, they’re past the gangster stage, you know what I’m saying?”

“You don’t see any of your potential customers doing something like this.”

“Absolutely not.”

“How about a competitor?”

“You’re going to have to talk with Dwight about that.”

“How about the names of the competitors?”

“Same.”

I sat back a bit. “I don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“I can see you guys being tight with the names of your customers. But why the names of your competitors?”

“Because that’s the way it is.”

“Meaning Mr. Davison’s way is the way it is.”

A shrug

I said, “Meaning Schoonmaker isn’t going to give me anything on the competitors, either.”

“That would be up to him.”

I nodded. “You know much about Shea’s private life?”

“You mean away from DRM?”

“Right.”

“No. We worked together, but we weren’t really social buddies. We had a drink, it was for business reasons.”

“You ever been up to Shea’s lake place?”

Xavier rearranged himself in his desk chair. “Jumping around like this, it works for you?”

“Sometimes, when people don’t try to buy themselves time by asking a question back.”

The coy smile. “I’ve been up there. Once. Kind of a company outing.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Mr. Davison, Dwight, Anna-Pia. Steve and his wife, Sandy. Me. Friday night to Sunday afternoon. Too much booze, too much barbecue, too much forced laughter. But, hey, like I said, that’s why it’s pronounced that way.”

Success. “What kinds of things did you all do up there?”

“Do?”

“Activities.”

“Let’s see. We swam, went for a ride around the lake in Steve’s boat, some water-skiing. I begged off for an hour, took a little canoe paddle, felt good.”

When Xavier didn’t continue, I said, “You play with the crossbow?”

“Yeah. Saturday afternoon, Steve hauled it out for a while. It got old pretty fast.”

“Where’d he keep it?”

The eyes closed. “I’d bet my next commission you already know the answer to that one.”

“Everybody give it a try?”

Xavier opened his eyes. “Everybody except Anna-Pia and Sandy. Mr. Davison was good, I wasn’t too bad.”

“And Schoonmaker?”

“Like he was William Tell. Bull’s-eye or close to it, every time. The reason it got old so fast.”

“You have any idea why Schoonmaker was so good?”

“He’s got certificates in his office on weapons proficiency.”

“Suitable for framing?”

“Suitable for flaunting, more like it. They’re off to the side of his desk, where you can’t help but see them when you’re sitting in his visitor’s chair.”

“You don’t think all that much of Schoonmaker.”

“Hard to hide it.”

“Why don’t you like him?”

“I get the feeling he thinks people of color make good Indians but bad chiefs.”

“And he sees you as a chief now?”

Xavier started to say something, then kept it back behind the big smile. “You’re right, there. The jumping around, it does make a man want to jump back at you. Fact is, Steve got himself in a load of shit. Fact is, that made me kind of indispensable. Fact is, Schoonmaker resented me before and twice as much now.”

“Now that you stand to pull down around a million for the deal.”

“Your numbers are off.”

“How’s a range of half a million to one-point-two sound?”

Xavier’s smile wavered some more. “Sure, I sat down with Mr. Davison. Told him he wanted me to close for Steve, I get Steve’s package. Nothing wrong with that.”

“And you figure you’re close to closing?”

“That’s why I’m here instead of on the road. Waiting for the little phone to ring. Or bleat, which is how they sound now.”