Tarnished Image (32 page)

Without a word, with a casual economy of motion, Aldo opened the bottle and raised it to his nose. It was sickeningly sweet with a hint of pungency, the latter a result of the alcohol base.

“Ahh,” the ugly man sneered, “did I knock your precious little perfume bottle on the floor?”

Aldo looked at the man and cocked his head to the side. “You know, mister,” Aldo had said, “the problem with stupid people is that they’re always the last to know just how stupid they are.”

“You little—”

“It’s also true for ugly people. It’s about time you knew that.”

The man’s eyes widened and his jaw clamped shut as if to dam up the fury inside. Grabbing the loose end of his belt, the man pulled it free of his pants, grasped the metal buckle, and slowly began to wrap the leather band around his hand. “I’m gonna make you wish you never saw me.”

Aldo laughed. “Just seeing you was enough to do that.”

The man raised his leather-clad fist and charged Aldo, screaming each step of the way. Aldo didn’t budge. Instead, with a quick motion, he threw perfume in his assailant’s eyes. There was another scream, this one of unbridled agony as the alcohol-based perfume permeated the tender tissue. The man crumpled to his knees.

Casually, Aldo removed a drawer from the dresser, emptied its contents of sweaters on the floor, and then swung it as hard as he could. It struck the cursing man in the side of the head. The screaming stopped as the obese assailant fell first to his side, then limply rolled to his back. A trickle of blood oozed from his right ear.

“Aldo!” his mother cried in shock.

Aldo crossed to the man, straddled his limp form, and then dropped his full weight on his chest. A rush of air raced from the man’s lungs, accompanied by the cracking of bone. Aldo raised a fist and brought it down on the fleshy face of the man. He hit him again. And again. It felt good, liberating, invigorating.

He hit the man for his mother. He hit him for himself. He hit him for each time he had been teased and tormented at school, for each time he had taken a beating for being smaller than the other kids. He hit the man because Aldo’s father had deserted them. He struck him for each man his mother had brought home over the years. He pummeled him for every night he had cried himself to sleep.

When it was over, the man who dared attack his mother and insult him lay motionless on the floor. Dead.

The courts were gracious, taking into account his legal standing as a minor and the fact that he had never been in trouble before. The court-appointed defense attorney had reminded the jury on several occasions that Aldo had done a brave thing in coming to the defense of his mother. He may have carried that defense too far, but in the heat and confusion of the moment, who can tell when the threat had passed?

Aldo was found guilty of manslaughter. The court sentenced him to five years in the juvenile detention system in the hopes of rehabilitating him. Aldo showed no emotion, no regret, no remorse, no sense of loss. Somehow, in a fashion yet unknown to him, Aldo had killed not only his mother’s attacker, but he had murdered his own soul.

The state provided for his education while he was incarcerated. He proved an excellent student, able to grasp difficult
concepts without effort. He excelled in chemistry and literature, but he learned more than the basics during his days behind the tall, chain-link fence. He learned how to pick a lock, turn off an alarm, build a small bomb, steal a car, and fence stolen goods. When he was released from his captivity, he left with far more knowledge than he had learned in the classroom.

He had also established a persona as a loner. The leader of a gang of inmates had attempted to show his dominance by making Aldo cower before the others. Aldo played the part for the moment. Two weeks later, the gang leader was found dead in the exercise yard, a strand of barbed wire encircling his neck. Aldo was never bothered again.

Aldo did not alienate everyone. Those inmates who had fathers entrenched in crime circles were courted. After all, Aldo would need work when he was released. And his line of work was in demand.

One didn’t need a business degree to know that the first rule of marketing was image. Aldo made a name for himself by identifying the most infamous hit man in the business and killing him. Aldo was never out of work after that.

Now Aldo had been freed to do the work for which he had so assiduously trained himself. It was time to review his plans, but unlike others who made notes or even used a computer to keep track of details, Aldo used only his mind. With a near perfect photographic memory, he began to recall the plans of the Barringston Tower. They had been easy to obtain. All it took was a small bribe to a small-minded government employee with a big drug problem.

Stripped of all his clothing, Aldo sat in the middle of his hotel bed, legs crossed in the lotus position, his hands resting
on his knees. His eyes were closed. Had there been an observer present, he would have seen a man motionless, barely breathing. But inside Aldo’s head, every page of the architectural plans were present.

He reviewed them. In his mind he ran up the floors in the stairwell, traveled the elevator system, walked the subterranean parking garages, and strolled the rooftops.

There were still unknowns. He didn’t know what furnishings were in the offices except those he saw while disguised as a deliveryman. But those were the things that made his work interesting—that and the people. They were always unpredictable, but none had ever been a problem.

If he had a problem it was that he was too punctilious, too exacting. He never prepared just one plan; he prepared a set of them. For this job, he had formulated five approaches. They were all workable, all flawless, all creative, and all designed to do one thing: Kill Dr. David O’Neal.

“So why do you put up with it?” Archer asked. He was leaning back in his desk chair chewing on a red coffee stirrer. Behind him several television monitors cast a light tinted by the image they held—an image of David O’Neal.

“Put up with what?” Jack snapped back. He was seated in a nearby folding chair.

“With her and her games,” Archer answered harshly. “She yanks your leash and you bark. It’s pathetic really.”

“Is it? What about you. I don’t see you telling her off.”

“I have a valid reason,” Archer said. “She keeps me alive. She provides me with the only thing that may cure me. That’s a pretty good reason, don’t you think?”

Jack was quiet, morose.

“Let’s see,” Archer said, raising a finger to his chin and striking a scholarly pose. “If life doesn’t motivate you, then love must. Is that it, Jack? Are you in love with the Mosquito Queen?”

“Mosquitoes don’t have queens, you idiot,” Jack snapped.

“It’s a metaphor, Jack-man. A simple literary device. Still, I disagree. She
is
the queen bug. At least for those critters in her lab.”

“Don’t be disrespectful.”

“Don’t be disrespectful?” Archer laughed loudly. “Yup, it’s love all right, and you got it bad.”

“Shut up!”

“Why? You going to sick your mad-dog assassin on me? Have him kill me? I’m a dead man already, Jack. All that’s left is the dying.”

“Not if you don’t do something stupid and mouth off to Aberdene.”

“Oh, right. Do you think this is the end of it? What happens after your dog kills O’Neal? We’re accessories, Jack. Heavy jail time. And do you really think that her majesty Aberdene is going to keep giving me the medication? Once this is done, my usefulness is over and she will cut me off.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Don’t be stupid, Jack. Of course I know it. And if you ever get in her way, she’ll replace you and have dead flowers sent to your grave.”

“She’s not like that. She’s a passionate researcher, a scientist who is willing to stretch the limits in order to find new cures to benefit mankind.”

Archer guffawed. “Jack, you are in love, and love has
turned your brain to mush. Benefit mankind?” Archer laughed uncontrollably.

“Shut up, you stupid computer jockey.” He cursed and stood to his feet. “Don’t make me—”

Archer sprang to his feet and stood face-to-face with Jack. “What?” he shouted. “Don’t make you do what? Hit me? Beat me? Kill me? Look at me, Jack. I’m a sick man. I’m over the edge. I have had only a little sleep in the last week, and I’ve crossed the line. I no longer care, Jack. I no longer care. You wanna hit me? Then hit me. Go ahead. But don’t expect me to just take it. I may be a skinny computer geek, but I’m a highly manic and motivated geek. Do you understand me? Am I getting through to your hazy, love-saturated brain?”

Jack took a step back, stunned by Archer’s atypical outburst. “I didn’t come here for all this. I came here to tell you the other video is out. Destroy it. And get rid of any other material you may have that could prove compromising. That includes whatever may be on your hard disk.”

“That’s a lot of work to be flushing, Jack. And once I do, there’s no getting it back.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Jack replied. Archer could hear the tension in Jack’s voice. But there was more than mere tension. There was also apprehension and weariness.

“What’s going on, Jack?” Archer asked firmly.

“Nothing you need or want to know about.”

“She’s sending him in, isn’t she?”

“Who?”

“You know who—that killer.”

“Just destroy the master tape and any copies you may have. I want the deck clean. Do you understand?”

“This is going too far, Jack. Way too far. It’s out of control.”

“Nothing is out of control. Just do as I say, and everything will be fine.”

“Something must have happened to shake you up like this. A lot of time and money were put into that second tape. Aberdene wouldn’t trash it unless she had to or no longer needed it. My guess is that it’s the latter. What did O’Neal do?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re a liar,” Archer spat.

Jack sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes. “This doesn’t concern you. Just do as I say.”

“It all concerns me, Jack.” Archer was screaming, stabbing at the air with his thin index finger. “Haven’t you been listening? We are accessories. Whatever happens now will just add to our guilt. I don’t plan to die in jail, Jack. Maybe you’re willing to pine away behind bars dreaming of your beautiful Aberdene, but I’m not.”

Jack narrowed his eyes. “You will do exactly as I say, Archer. Exactly. You will not deviate from my instructions by as much as a millimeter, or you may find yourself the next in line after O’Neal. She can have you killed as easily as anyone else.”

“There’s got to be a way out of this, Jack. There must be some way we can be free.”

“There’s not. This is the hand life dealt us. We will stay with it.”

“Jack—”

“No! No more talk. No more discussion. No more speculation. Just destroy the tapes and electronic evidence. Burn this place down if you have to, but get rid of it.”

“We’ve gone too far—”

Jack swore loudly, harshly. His face filled with red. Archer watched as he glanced around the room. His eyes fell on a glass paperweight. Seizing the heavy semispherical object, Jack swore again and hurled it like a baseball at the computer monitor that bore the image of David. Glass shattered, sparks erupted, and the monitor fell over onto the desk with an ear-pounding thud.

Archer cowered from the implosion and took two steps away from Jack. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Do what I say!” Jack began searching for something else to throw.

“OK, OK. You win.” Archer continued to back away. “Just get a grip on yourself.”

Jack stormed toward the door, then turned to face Archer. “I’ll be back in two hours. I want everything taken care of by then. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”

“Make sure that you do, Archer. I have lost my last shred of patience with you.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Jack yanked open the door and charged through, slamming it hard behind him.

Archer stood in stunned silence and stared at the door. He wondered what he should do now. He knew whatever he did would come with a high price for someone, most likely himself.

With slow and gentle motions, David eased himself off the couch, taking care not to awaken Kristen, who had fallen asleep with her head on his lap. He slowly lowered her head onto a throw pillow, and she mumbled softly in her sleep.