Payback (22 page)

“What’s a little food between friends? Sorry I haven’t been able to get over here more during your waking hours. You were out like a light when I stopped by last night. You look a little better today.” All this was said as the FBI agent took out cartons and plastic silverware from the shopping bag that oozed the scent of garlic and parmesan cheese and set everything up on the oversized coffee table. Napkins, little packets of salt, pepper, and a plastic container of grated cheese followed. Mark trotted off to get two fresh bottles of beer. He uncapped both of them. “Dig in, buddy, because this is the best spaghetti and meatballs in the state of Virginia.”

As they gobbled their food, they talked baseball and fly fishing. When they were done, Mark tossed everything into the shopping bag along with the empty beer bottles and carried them out to the trash chute in the hallway. The apartment still smelled like garlic and cheese.

The FBI agent and the ADA eyeballed each other from their respective positions. Mark took the initiative and spoke first. “Are you ready to hear about what’s going on in the outside world?”

Jack swigged from his bottle. He shrugged. “Not unless it directly affects me. I’m about ready to go back to work. I have a meeting with my boss in two days. Figure if I wear dark glasses, don’t smile and try to walk normally, I can pull it off. The truth is, Mark, the job has lost its luster. If it doesn’t go well then I’ll start looking for a job in the private sector where the pay is a hell of a lot better plus you get a sign-on bonus. How’re you doing, buddy?”

“I gave my notice last week. I told you but I guess you don’t remember. You were pretty high on pain pills that night. After that visit from those…those
shields
, I started looking at things a lot differently. I just couldn’t get back into the swing of it. Then they farmed me out to the DOJ and somehow, I screwed up the program. They chewed my ass out and it was the last straw. These last few days I’ve been busy
correcting
some of the programs I wrote and installed for the Bureau.”

“What’s that mean?” Jack asked.

“What that means, buddy, is I can access all those programs and no one would ever be the wiser. Same goes for Department of Justice. My codes, my own private back doors, my own fire walls, that kind of thing.”

“You sly devil!” Jack said in awe. “Does that mean you’re going
private?
”

“What it really means is,
we’re
going private. Wait till you hear this. I put up a quickie Web site about ten days ago. I called it the Justice Agency and added a little blurb about righting wrongs, etcetera, etcetera. I applied for grants all over the place under that name and within two days I got a hundred-thousand-dollar-grant from some spinoff of that Monarch HMO setup. Of course you haven’t been reading the papers or listening to the news so you might not know about that. I got the check today. Just like that — a hundred grand. Say something, Jack.”

Jack hoisted himself up to a better sitting position. He winced, pain flashing across his face. “Are you telling me Monarch went belly up? If that’s the case, how’d you get money out of them?”

“No, no, they didn’t go belly up. If you’d read the papers you’d know all about this. It happened a day or so after that armory shindig, after those shields paid us a visit. It was on the front page, above the fold, for about four days. Monarch was private so they could do whatever they wanted. They returned premiums, paid off people whose claims were originally denied. They even printed a list in the paper of the recipients along with apologies. A legal firm in D.C. handled the payouts.”

“Which firm?” Jack asked, although he already knew the answer. His hands started to shake.

“Nikki’s firm, Jack. Man, think of all those billable hours. Damn, that was a plum for her. There’s more. The Monarchs dropped off the face of the earth. No one is looking for them, if that’s your next question. And, why should they? They disbanded, got religion, whatever, and decided to right the wrongs the company was responsible for. I have to file reports but that’s no big deal. We can keep tabs on Nikki and her firm as well as the others and no one will be the wiser. With my expertise I can hack into her computers anytime I want. Win win, Jack. End of story.”

“Why do I feel there’s more?” Jack asked uneasily. Dropped off the face of the earth.
Just the way Marie Llewellyn dropped off the face of the earth
.

“Because there is more. Senator Webster and his wife disappeared at the same time. Somehow or other, according to the press, the doctor and the senator got into the wrong limousine and no one has seen them since that night at the armory. The weather was a bitch that night and the senator’s detail ended up guarding some elderly Republican couple instead of the Websters. There were some pretty red faces come Sunday morning. The Bureau is on it. Mrs. Webster is gone, too. Seems she had earlier resigned her position at the hospital citing family obligations. As far as I know, no one, and that includes the Bureau, is linking the two together. All five of them literally dropped off the face of the earth. Doesn’t say much for the Secret Service, now does it?”

Jack rubbed at the stubble on his bruised and battered face. “I’ll be damned.”

“So are you in with me or not?”

“That hundred grand isn’t going to last very long, Mark.”

“Oh, did I forget to tell you, the grant runs for ten years? Ten years, Jack. It will pay us a modest salary, pay the rent on an office plus utilities. We can share an apartment in the beginning to cut down on our personal rent. We’re bound to get some clients if we advertise. We can do this, Jack. I can freelance on the side. You gotta resign, though. Can you do that?”

Could he? ‘Yeah, I can do that. That means we…”

“Yeah, that’s what it means, Jack. If we go private we don’t have to answer to our bosses and we can play detective all day and all night, twenty-four-seven. And remember this, the mightiest weapon of all is the written word. All we have to do is find some gung ho seasoned reporter who will listen to us, and wait to print the story we give him. When we have a story to give him, that is. I even think I know the right guy, Bob Lyon. They call him The Lion.”

“I’m going home now. I suggest your start reading those newspapers on your kitchen counter and then prepare your resignation letter. You OK?”

“I think I just crossed the threshold to well-ness. I expect my recovery to be short of immediate. Should I thank you, kiss your feet, what?”

Mark laughed. “Buy dinner tomorrow night. That means you go out and pick it up. We’re gonna get them, Jack.”

“Yeah, Mark, we’re gonna get
them
.” If they don’t get us first.

Less than twenty-five miles away, Myra and Charles walked out into the velvet darkness, crystal goblets of wine in hand. They sat down next to one another. Myra reached for his hand and squeezed it before she placed her head on his shoulder.

“It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it, Charles? It’s so quiet. Even the Dobermans are quiet.”

“That’s because it’s midnight,” Charles said.

“So it is. We should make a toast, Charles.”

“Not yet, dear.”

Myra sat up and placed her wine on a rattan table next to the swing she and Charles were sitting in. “Charles, we never speak about…about your grief where Barbara is concerned. It’s always me wailing. Do you…?”

“No, Myra, I don’t. I know you aren’t going to understand this and sometimes I don’t understand it myself but I just can’t…I don’t know how…it’s all locked up deep inside me.”

Myra patted Charles’s hand. “I understand. I didn’t think it would ever be possible to love another human being the way I loved Barbara. It’s not the same yet it is the same. I think I would lie down and die if anything happened to
our girls
. I pray every night for Julia. I pray for all of them. I hope at some point they can all find happiness. I want so much for all of them. I want Alexis to be able to take her birth name back at some point. I want them all to be whole.

“I wish, Charles, that we could find a way to bring Nikki and Jack together. They were meant for each other. Oh, look, Charles, a shooting star! Quick, make a wish!”

Charles squeezed his eyes shut as did Myra.

“That was me, Mom. How’d you like that?”

Myra’s eyes flew open.

Charles bolted off his chair, his eyes wild.

“Whatcha think, Charles? Was that nifty or what?”

“Darling, time to go in, it’s getting late.”

Myra laughed, the sound ringing across the lawn. “That was the most spectacular shooting star I’ve ever seen.”

“Beyond spectacular,” Charles said.

The gorgeous, orange ball in the sky slowly dipped beyond the horizon as the sisters leaned on the railing to watch it disappear.

They were dining by candlelight on the terrace this evening. Even though the table, the retractable, bright colored awning, and the crocks of brilliant flowers were cheerful, the mood was somber. There was no sparkling repartee, no poking one another in fun, no jostling. Even Murphy was subdued, lying on the top step of the stairs that led to the lawn that was greener than any golf course.

The table was set for six instead of the usual eight place settings. The French doors opened as Charles pushed a heavily laden serving cart onto the terrace. He tried to be cheerful when he rattled off the food he would be serving he knew no one was going to eat. He could have served dry shoe leather with ketchup and no one would have noticed or complained. He felt sick to his stomach and there was a knot in his throat as he ladled out food onto the fine china.

Charles watched as the women stirred and mashed and then stirred some more. He was right, no one was eating. Murphy looked up and then ignored what was going on.

“It was a beautiful day today, wasn’t it, girls?” Myra said. The others nodded.

Myra tried again. “You all look so beautiful in your summer finery. I do love flower patterned dresses. I think they just make a person feel good.” The others nodded.

Myra tried one more time. “Let’s all have some cigarettes and beer.”

“Now you’re talking, Myra,” Kathryn said as she got up and beelined for the kitchen. When she came back with a twelve-pack of Corona beer she said, “With a few of these under our belts we’ll be able to handle…maybe we’ll be able…shit, never mind.”

“I hate beer,” Yoko said, as she squeezed lime on the rim of the bottle then upended it. “Where are the cigarettes? I never smoked before.”

“And you won’t be smoking after tonight either. This is a special occasion. Actually, it’s beyond special,” Kathryn said fiercely. “Just puff and blow the smoke.”

A lot of coughing and sputtering went on to Charles’s amusement as he fired up his pipe and leaned back in the springy chair he was sitting on. He didn’t know when he’d ever felt this sad, this melancholy. The truth was, he wanted to cry for what was about to happen.

The cicadas sang their song and the night birds chimed in. The old oaks overhead whispered their own song. A faint quarter moon could be seen riding high in a sky sprinkled with millions of stars. The night was deliciously warm but no one seemed to notice.

“I’ll have another one of these,” Yoko said. “Beer is nothing like tea. I think I like it. Is it mandatory to smoke cigarettes when you drink beer?”

“Yeah, it is,” Kathryn said, clapping her on the back. “Drink up. We have another hour to wait.”

Twenty-four bottles of beer and two packs of cigarettes later, the women jumped as one when they saw headlights at the security gates. Murphy reared up and then leaped down the steps, raced across the lawn and howled a greeting to Alexis and Julia. Alexis stopped long enough to open the door for Murphy to climb in before she barreled up the drive to come to a screeching halt.

The occupants clustered into a tight knot on the terrace as they watched the two women follow Murphy. Alexis moved off to the side of the little group to watch the reaction of her sisters.

It was Julia Webster but it wasn’t Julia Webster. The woman standing in front of them appeared to be in her late sixties with stooped shoulders, snow white hair and bright blue eyes. She was dressed for traveling in a cream colored suit. Wire rim glasses perched on her nose. She smiled and she was suddenly Julia Webster again. “What do you think? Even I didn’t recognize myself when Alexis got through with me. Can I have a beer? I’ll take a cigarette, too. By the way, I am now Penelope Tremaine. I have a driver’s license, a Visa card, a Master Card, an American Express card and a passport to attest to my new identity, thanks to Charles.”

Yoko stumbled all over herself and then giggled as she rushed into the house for more beer and cigarettes. She handed them over with a flourish. “Down the hatch!”

“Don’t mind her, she’s tipsy,” Kathryn said.

“It’s a nice memory to take with me.” Julia smiled. “Listen, do all of you mind if I take a walk through the house one last time. Alone.”

Heads bobbed up and down. Julia moved off, gliding across the terrace and through the open French doors.

Nikki chewed on her lower lip. Kathryn puffed furiously on a cigarette dangling from her lips. Yoko cried openly as Isabelle blew her nose. Myra clung to Charles’s arm, her whole body shaking. Charles stared off into the distance as Murphy prowled the terrace from end to end.

“Is she going to be all right or not?” Kathryn growled.

“I don’t know, Kathryn. I can’t lie to you. The treatment is experimental. It’s the only chance she has. We’ll know in time.”

“She doesn’t have time, Charles,” Nikki whispered.

“Yes, she does. How much, I can’t say. She’ll fly through the night and when she arrives in Switzerland, she’ll be met by the best team of doctors and nurses in the world. Thanks to Her Majesty. Listen to me now. Even if it kills you, I want smiles. I want cheerful words. I want happiness. I want Julia to leave here with that memory. Do you understand?”