Killer Instinct (39 page)

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s nothing I can do.”

“Anyway, I always liked McDonald’s fries. Even after they stopped frying them in beef tallow. You coming tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow night?”

“The softball game. Remember? You haven’t played in two weeks. And now that I’m coach, it’s all on my shoulders. We’re down two players.”

“Festino.”

“Sorry. But we are.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

54

I pulled into the Entronics parking lot at just before five-thirty. A black Mustang pulled in the space beside me with a loud squealing of brakes, and Kurt jumped out.

I sat in the car, waited for him to keep going. But he opened my passenger-side door and got in.

“How goes the battle?” he said.

“Tough day. Weirdest thing happened at home. We found a rattlesnake in our bedroom.”

“That right,” he said. “I didn’t even know there were any rattlesnakes in Massachusetts. Live and learn. But I thought you were going to California.”

“Missed the flight,” I said.

“That’s a bummer.”

“Yeah, well. It happens. So, congratulations on your promotion.”

He nodded, smiled. “It’s good to be king.”

“I’m impressed. Dick Hardy must think highly of you.”

“Dick Hardy wants me to be happy. He’s decided I’m invaluable.”

“You got something on him, huh?” I smiled, nodding, as if I appreciated his cleverness. He could have been a wholesaler bragging to me about some clever way they’d scammed Best Buy into paying for shipping.

“He even invited me on his yacht. Ever been on his yacht?”

“He invited me,” I said. “But I couldn’t make it.”

“It’s an eighty-foot Lazzara, I read. A bargain at 2.3 million. But it sure seemed out of his league, given his salary. So I did a little digging. Turns out Hardy has been doing a little stock trading on the side. Set up a Channel Island trust in the name of something called the Samurai Trust. Samurai being the name of his yacht, you see. And the Samurai Trust has been buying and selling out-of-the-money options on Entronics stock on the Australian Stock Exchange. Every time an Entronics press release goes out, every time there’s another blip of good news, the Samurai Trust cashes in. Making a fortune. Of course, if there’s bad news, he makes money, too, on shorts. Very clever—just about impossible to get caught. And all to pay for his yacht. Man, he could buy ten yachts by now.”

Finally, I understood. Dick Hardy might have been trying to save Entronics a bundle on the Royal Meister deal, but that wasn’t his sole motive. He was lining his own pockets at the same time.

“He’s a clever guy,” I said.

“Clever enough to do his personal banking business using an encrypted Hushmail account. Not clever enough to realize that whenever he did e-mails on the company computer, I could access his hard disk remotely.”

“Wow. Very cool.”

“Everyone’s got a secret. You’ve got your secrets too. I just happen to know them. And there you are, you and your Band of Brothers, working your butts off to try to save your division. When all you’re really doing is paying off his yacht. Or his new house in the Highland Park section of Dallas.”

“Dallas?”

“Choke on that, buddy. Wonder why he’s moving to Dallas.”

“You’re right. I was a pawn.”

He shrugged.

My shoulders sagged. I looked up, shaking my head regretfully. “You were just trying to help me out. And I’ve been taking you for granted. Like an idiot. While Gordy and Hardy were moving me around like a chess piece. You’re my only ally.”

He turned to look at me. I couldn’t read his face.

It was funny to remember how marginal he looked when I’d first met him, like an old hippie, someone who’d fallen off the grid. The goatee, the bandana, the mullet, the ratty T-shirts. Now he was well dressed and successful looking, in a good suit and tie and conservative shoes.

“I mean it,” I said. “I really don’t give a shit what you did to Trevor and Brett. I freaked out, I admit it. I called the cops—I’m not going to lie to you. That was a stupid thing to do.” I sounded so genuinely contrite that I was beginning to believe it myself. “I could say I’m sorry, but that’s inadequate. You’ve been a good friend to me. This whole time. I just didn’t see it.”

He was staring straight ahead out the windshield.

I fell silent. My old sales guru, Mark Simkins, whose CDs I used to play over and over again, was always talking about the strategic pause. The most important skill in closing, he said, is silence.

So I said nothing. And waited for it to sink in.

God, I hoped Kate’s theory was right, that Kurt was a sucker for adulation.

Kurt’s eyes flicked toward me, then back toward the windshield.

I compressed my lips. Stared at the steering wheel.

“You talked with that cop,” Kurt said. His voice was softer. “Kenyon. Did I not warn you to keep your mouth shut?”

“You did. And I did. But the guy showed up at my office. He said he’s talking to everyone who worked with Trevor and Brett. So I gave him a whole lot of blather. He asked about you, and I told him that as far as I knew you had a good relationship with those two. That you played softball with them, and they really admired you.”

Kurt nodded. “That’s good,” he said.

It was working. Thank God
. Relief flooded my body.

“That’s very good. Very smooth. I see why you’re so good at closing deals.” He turned, his face a few inches from mine. “Because you’re a goddamned
liar,
” he shouted. His voice was deafening. His spittle sprayed my face. “I know every goddamned word you said to that cop. ‘He knows lots of clever ways to kill people,’ you said.”

No
. Had Kenyon talked to somebody on the force who knew Kurt?

“‘I have to trust you,’” he went on. “‘Can I?’ No, asshole, you
can’t
trust anyone. You think you can talk anywhere in the building without my knowing?”

Of course. With all the Corporate Security resources he had at his disposal, he had the conference room bugged too.

“Now, I’m not going to say this again. Go behind my back one more time—within the company, to the police, anybody—I will find out. There is nothing you can do that I don’t know about. Nothing. And if you step over the line—one millimeter over the line…”

“Yeah?” My heart was thrumming, fast and loud.

“A little friendly advice? You think you and your wife live in a safe neighborhood. But break-ins happen all the time in that part of town. Home invasions. Bad guys take stuff. Sometimes they even kill innocent people. Happens. You’ve got a wife and unborn child, Jason. You want to be real careful.”

55

Graham Runkel’s apartment still smelled like a bong, and his 1971 VW bug was still in his backyard. It looked like he was working on it.

“How’s the Love Bug?” I said. “El Huevito.”

“I’m hot-rodding it. Turbo rebuild. Wait right here.”

He came back with a Ziploc bag of marijuana buds. “The last of the White Widow. A peace offering. Welcome back.”

“Not for me, thanks. I told you, I don’t do that anymore.” I handed him a wrapped package.

“What’s this?”

“A guilt offering. Because I’m a jerk.”

He tore it open. “A complete set of
The Prisoner
on DVD? Unfreakingbelievable, Steadman.” He admired the picture of Patrick McGoohan on the front of the box. Back in Worcester, Graham used to come over to my house when my parents were at work, and we’d get high and watch old reruns of the classic British spy show. “What’s the occasion? Is it my birthday? I forget.”

“No,” I said. “I’m here to ask for your help, and I feel like such an asshole just showing up after all these months that I figured this might make you feel a little less pissed off at me.”

“It certainly goes a long way,” he said. “But what you really need is the comfort of the White Widow. You’re wound tighter than a…whatever’s wound really tight.” Graham’s brown hair was shoulder length and looked dirty. He was wearing his old red T-shirt with yellow McDonald’s golden arches on it. It said
MARIJUANA
and
OVER
1
BILLION STONED
.

“If you wanted to do something to someone’s car so it wiped out while he drove it, what would you do?”

He looked at me funny. “Wiped out?”

“Crashed.”

“Cut the brake lines? This a quiz?”

“If you cut the brake lines, wouldn’t the brakes feel all mushy as soon as you start driving it?”

“What’s this about, J-man?”

I gave him a quick overview, told him about Kurt and what I thought he’d done. Graham listened with his bloodshot eyes open wide. This was a guy who believed the DEA put transmitters in every copy of
High Times
magazine, so he was inclined to believe my theory.

“It was a Porsche?” he said.

I nodded. “Carrera 911. Brand-new. At most, a year old.”

“Was the driver wasted?”

I shook my head.

“Just lost control? No other car involved?”

“Correct.”

“Hmm. Well, yeah, you wouldn’t cut the brake lines. The driver would know right away. You wouldn’t loosen the lug nuts on the wheels either—the car would start wobbling as soon as it hit the road. But look, man, unless the cops are total bozos, this is the first stuff they’d look for—missing lug nuts, slashed tires, a bolt missing from the steering knuckle, cut brake lines. Shit like that.”

“It’s all going to be fairly obvious,” I said.

“Of course, if somebody screwed with the ball joints…
man
.”

“What?”

“The driver would just lose control.”

“Screwed with the ball joints? How? Like, cut it? Wouldn’t that be obvious?”

“Unless they weren’t cut. Shaved down or filed away or something. Weakened somehow. So when the car—”

“Weakened?” I said. “How do you weaken metal?”

“Shit, I don’t know. Lots of ways, I figure.”

“Weaken metal,” I said aloud, but really to myself. I thought of that story Kurt had once told me about how his team had put something from a tube on parts of a Taliban helicopter in Afghanistan. “I think I know.”

“Okay, man. Good. So why don’t we celebrate?” He reached for the bag of marijuana. “Last call,” he said.

I got home around seven-thirty. Susie and Ethan were finishing up a take-out dinner in the kitchen—I guess they’d found a sushi place that delivered—and Kate was in bed and clicking away in cyberspace.

“Kate, have you been outside at all today?”

“Outside?” She gave me a puzzled look.

“You look like you could use a little fresh air.”

“Fresh air?” Then she saw me putting my index finger over my lips. She nodded. “Good idea,” she said.

She slipped out of bed, and I lifted her up. It was surprisingly easy, probably because of all of Kurt’s strength conditioning. I carried her down the stairs and out of the house. Ethan came out of the kitchen, saw me carrying Kate, and rolled his eyes.

I took her out to our small backyard. “I’m sorry, but I have to assume that Kurt has our bedroom bugged.”

Her eyes widened. “No way!”

“I don’t know. I just have to assume it. Listen, how long does Susie have that rental in Nantucket?”

She cocked her head. “Till the end of September, probably. Why, you’re thinking maybe we could borrow it for a couple of days? I’m not exactly in the best condition to take a vacation.”

“I’m not talking about a vacation. Do you think it’s safe for you to fly over there?”

“Flying’s fine. As long as I don’t exert myself. But what’s this all about?”

“I want Susie and Ethan to go back to Nantucket and take you with them. As soon as possible. Tomorrow morning, first thing.”

She looked at me. A series of expressions played on her face: confusion, skepticism, amusement.

Then realization. “It’s about Kurt, isn’t it?” she said.

Susie and Kate and Ethan got in a cab the next morning for Logan Airport and a flight to Nantucket. I went to the office, and at nine o’clock I grabbed a few minutes between meetings. I returned a call from the CEO of the Red Sox, who turned out to be a supernice guy—I guess I was expecting George Steinbrenner with a Boston accent or something—and wanted me to set up a demo of the PictureScreen and get him some numbers. We agreed to meet in a week.

As soon as I hung up, I took the elevator down to the lobby. Left the Entronics building, drove a few blocks away, took out Sergeant Kenyon’s card, and called him from my cell.

The phone was answered in a gruff voice, a Spanish accent: “State police, Trooper Sanchez.”

Office noise in the background, phones ringing, voices.

I said, “Sergeant Kenyon, please.”

“Who’s calling?”

I paused just a second. “Josh Gibson.”

In a minute, Kenyon picked up. “Mr. Gibson,” he said. “Let me take this in my office.” He put me on hold, then picked up again a few seconds later.

“Well, this is a nice bit of timing,” Kenyon said. “I was going to call you, give you the news.”

“News?”

“Accident Recon found nothing.”

“They found nothing,” I said. That stopped me in my tracks.

“That’s right. No evidence of a crime. No evidence of a crime means no investigation. Means I get assigned to something else.”

“But I know that Kurt—I
know
he did something to the car.”

“If the CARS unit says there’s nothing wrong, there isn’t a lot I can do.”

“They didn’t look hard enough.”

“You may be right. I don’t know. They’re busy. Lots to do.”

“It’s there. He did it. I know it. Did anyone check the ball joints?”

“I don’t know what they checked. All’s I know is, they didn’t find anything.”

“Where’s the wreck?”

“Scrapped, I bet.”

“Scrapped?”

“Processed out of the system, anyway. That’s what they normally do.”

“Who?”

“Tow yard. It’s theirs now. Normally they ask the deceased’s family if they want it, and when it’s totaled like this, the family always says no, so they sell it off for scrap. Why?”