The Price of Malice (17 page)

Joe shook his head. “Let’s go on the assumption that Brandhorst is dirty and that he sent a team to check you out. Why would he do that? You dropped in on him out of the blue, told him a wild story he claimed he knew nothing about, and told him you’d be back. So why go through your things? He could’ve just waited. It could be he wanted to see if you were a cop or a competitor. But maybe you did shake something up. Whoever went through your room might’ve been after something specific.”

“What?” she asked, nonplussed.

“If we’re right, that’s what we need to find out, by turning the tables on him a little.”

“How?” she said next.

He laughed. “This is where it can start being fun. I think we should let him stew for a while. He’s got your cell number?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Don’t show up at his office in the morning. He’ll send his people to the motel and find your car there and your stuff gone. Maybe they’ll even find the toilet seat up and have a dope-slap moment, realizing they goofed. In any case, that cell number’s going to start burning a hole in his pocket. It’ll push him to call you, which means the next meeting will be ours to arrange.”

She frowned at him. “What’s the advantage there? If we still don’t know anything about him?”

“His meeting you on your terms,” Joe explained, “confirms you’ve got something he wants. It’s subtle, but a valuable next step. Also, he won’t know about me, which means I can photograph him and whoever he brings along—that could come in handy later.”

She sat back and studied him for a moment, her excitement shadowed by anxiety. “Sounds like a spy movie.”

He smiled encouragingly. “Where do you think they get their ideas?”

A brief lull fell between them as they contemplated the near future.

Joe saw her face cloud with sadness. He came around the small table and took her into his arms. She turned toward him and held on tight, speaking into his chest. “I feel like an idiot—totally lied to.”

She paused and added, “And I passed all those lies on to Coryn—lock, stock, and barrel.”

“You passed more than that to your daughter. You know that,” he challenged her, breaking her grip to look her in the eyes.

She didn’t answer.

“You gave her your own example. That counts for a lot more than a few glowing memories of a dead grandfather. Look at what you’re doing now, Lyn—searching for the truth, regardless of the consequences. That means something to a kid as bright as her.”

She stretched up and kissed him, long and passionately, her face wet and her nose dripping. They both started laughing partway through and broke apart to wipe their upper lips.

“Jesus,” she said. “What a mess.”

He laughed and leaned in for more. “Hell. A minor obstacle.”

They didn’t have long to wait for Dick Brandhorst’s phone call. By noon, barely ten hours later, while they were eating at a local restaurant, Lyn’s cell buzzed on the tabletop. She studied the number on the small screen and gave Joe a meaningful glance. “We’re on,” she said, turned on the small recorder he’d set up for her, and answered it.

Listening to her end of the conversation, Joe could tell things were lining up as they’d hoped. In extremely short order, she asked Brandhorst, “You know where Bucksport is? Head down there at three o’clock this afternoon, park downtown, and wait for me to call you. Give me a cell-phone number.”

She wrote it down on a napkin, hung up, and killed the recorder.

They looked at each other for a couple of seconds.

“He sound okay?” Joe asked.

“Far as I could tell. Why did you want him parked in the street? Why not send him straight to the meeting place?”

“ ’Cause then he’d send his goons there immediately and stake it out. Plus, I like him dangling a bit.”

She reached out and took up one of his hands. “I’m worried about what to say when we meet.”

Joe shrugged. “You don’t have to say much of anything. He called you, after all. Let him worry about it. My guess is he’ll try to play you.”

“How?” she asked.

“By giving you some bogus contact. Without meaning to, that’s what you asked for when you came to his office. He’s never had the upper hand with you. The first time you showed up, it was straight out of the blue; the second time, he would’ve been ready, but you never appeared. Now, you’re calling the shots. I’m betting he’ll just give you a name and a place where all your questions will supposedly be answered, but they’ll really be the equivalent of a dark alley somewhere.”

“But why?” she asked, not for the first time. “I don’t have anything for him.”

Joe turned both palms to the ceiling. “He thinks you do, which is what makes this interesting.”

He reached for his coffee, taking advantage of the moment to reconsider all she’d told him so far.

“Did you ever tell him Steve’s got
The Silva Lining
, or where it is? He did ask you about it a couple of times, didn’t he?”

“I don’t call it that,” she said, thinking back. “No,” she then said confidently. “I remember thinking I’d tell him only what he needed to know—José’s name, my father’s; I mentioned the
Maria
, but not
The Silva Lining
. And I definitely didn’t bring Steve into it, or where he had it moored.”

“But you let it slip that you got it back,” Joe pressed.

She acknowledged as much, if mournfully. “Kind of.”

Joe touched the back of her hand. “Not to worry—perfectly reasonable. It’s interesting that he cares, though.”

“What?” she asked him as he furrowed his brow.

“Well,” he explained, “you said they were paying off José’s debt, implying they had more to go. If Brandhorst got hold of the boat and sold it, he’d probably see that as helping to balance the books.”

She nodded. “Right.”

Joe then gave her a lopsided smile, hoping to lift her spirits. “It is amazing, though, you know? In two days, you may end up popping the lid off of something the local cops’re going to love. We’re not there yet, but I got to hand it to you—you do good work.”

Her response was rueful at best. “Even if I did scare myself half to death?”

The meeting spot Joe chose was both practical and an homage to more than a few cinematic forebears. The Penobscot Narrows Observatory is a two-story glass cube atop one of the towers distinguishing the new bridge. Access is via an elevator, where a ticket taker lets
you on, and another employee meets you some four hundred feet higher up. From the observatory, which Joe and Lyn visited earlier, the view was absolute—of both the beautiful surrounding countryside, and the roads and parking lot servicing the tower. When Brandhorst made his approach, he knew he’d be under surveillance; just as he knew that this spot, with its restricted access, would be an awkward place to try anything violent or off script.

Lyn was in place early on, caught between earth and sky, feeling like a captive bird within the floor-to-ceiling glass walls, when her cell phone went off two hours later. Of Joe, she had no clue. Somewhere far below, he’d placed himself to wait and watch.

“Hello?” she said, feeling this would be the perfect time for a phone marketer to mess everything up. At the last moment, she remembered to turn on Joe’s recorder.

“Ms. Silva?” came the unctuous reply, paradoxically setting her at ease. “I just got to Bucksport. There are a couple of good restaurants in town, especially if you like seafood.”

“I’m not hungry,” she answered. “Can you see the modern bridge from where you’re parked? Over the Penobscot Narrows?”

He sounded quizzical. “Sure. The side-by-side bridges?”

“Right. The tower on the right has a glass top.”

There was a pause. “Okay. I see that.”

“Drive to the base of that tower and buy a ticket to the observatory at the top. That’s where I am. And come alone.”

“I am alone, Ms. . . .” He was still talking when she hung up.

She crossed the small, exposed room, now feeling as if she were hanging from a string in midair, and looked down at the narrow span of the bridge far below. The massive cables stringing the two towers together ran in a single line down its middle, like a knife blade, rather than in the more traditional double row along the outsides, as
with the smaller, rusting suspension bridge alongside. The result was to give her a totally unobstructed view of the road from Bucksport, and thus of Brandhorst’s vehicle when it came. But she stared in vain at car after car scurrying along the bridge like bugs running for cover, before she finally gave up and moved to the window above the parking lot.

She was aware of nearby Fort Knox, the steam-spewing paper plant across from it, and the widening of the river, the mirrored image of picturesque Bucksport reflected in its waters. But just barely. At the moment, the charms of the observatory were more irritating than impressive.

This was taking forever. Joe hadn’t given her any tricks about how to wait. In her real life, Lyn was prone to action and noise, at least while she was working. This stillness was driving her nuts. The observatory had been empty since her arrival, being a little unusual as tourist stops went, and she was beginning to crave a diversion—even a busload of busybodies.

She suddenly froze. A car had glided to a stop between the white lines of a slot near the walkway to the tower’s base. She knew it was Brandhorst, even before he emerged and stared straight up at her roost.

He waved cheerfully, although she was obviously not visible to him. Still, she stepped back, as if caught in the open with stolen goods in hand. Unlike when she’d walked into his office the day before, she was now sweating and nervous, her brain teeming with possible mishaps. Innocent and headstrong then, now she knew too much, thanks to Joe.

It seemed like half an hour before the elevator doors hissed open on the first floor of the two-story cube, and footsteps climbed the
stairs to the observation deck. Again, she readied the recorder, now in her pocket.

Dick Brandhorst was all smiles as he floated into view. “Ms. Silva. What a great idea. You had me going with all the cloak and dagger, but I never would’ve discovered this, otherwise.” He paused on the top step to take in the panorama.

“My God,” he continued, passing by her to press up against one of the glass walls. “It’s incredible. You can see everything.”

It occurred to her only then that he was probably still in role—playacting that he was doing her a favor by looking into her father’s disappearance.

This was odd, given that at their last encounter, he’d called her a tough little bitch, but then she thought that being half a chameleon was probably an asset to a financial planner who was also a bookie—or whatever he was.

“So,” he said suddenly, twisting on his heel to put the view abruptly behind him, reinforcing the personality sketch she’d just completed. “What’s on your mind?”

She played it along the lines she’d discussed with Joe. “Same as last time—I want to know what happened to my family.”

He looked pleasantly bewildered. “You couldn’t have asked that on the phone, or by coming by the office, as agreed?”

“You or your goons dropping by my motel room made me leery,” she told him.

“Really?” he asked. “Whatever that means, of course.”

“Right. Whatever.”

He moved right along. “Well,” he said, “it so happens I might’ve found someone to help you out.”

He reached into his pocket and extracted a slip of paper, handing
it to her. “This is the cell number of a contact. I don’t actually know much about him, but a friend of a friend recommended him as the go-to guy for such things.”

She took the slip and glanced at it. “That’s it? You don’t even have a name?”

Brandhorst shrugged. “That’s all I got.”

She shoved the information dismissively into her other pocket. “I seriously doubt that.”

“Believe what you will, Ms. Silva. I’m the one doing you a favor, though, so don’t get too bitchy. Speaking of which,” he added, as if as an afterthought, “I ran the
Maria
through maritime registrations. They have it as lost at sea.”

“So?”

He smiled. “I was just wondering what her new name was. I’m assuming you reregistered her.”

She shook her head. “Decided not to. Too expensive, and not my area of interest. I put her in storage. Probably sell her eventually. I don’t know . . .” She waved her hand as if the whole topic was a hassle.

Then she stared at him, eyes slightly narrowed. “Why? You want to buy her?”

Brandhorst actually took a half step back. “Not personally,” he told her. “But you know, I keep an eye out for things like that. It’s not bad money for a middleman—you can get a couple of hundred thousand for a halfway decent boat, even now.”

“Right,” she said, still watching him. “I’ll remember that when the time comes—if it does. How much money did they still owe you?”

He smiled, heading toward the staircase. “Not a dime, Ms. Silva. I didn’t even know them. Good luck.”

She stood alone, listening to his retreat fading back toward the elevator below. Joe had been right. She pulled the slip of paper from her pocket and studied it again.

There was a sudden upwelling of noise from below, and she realized that at long last, a surge of tourists had finally discovered the observatory. She waited where she was, at the window, watching for Brandhorst to appear below, while a small mob of photo-taking, gasping newcomers joined her.

Finally, seeing him cross the tarmac, enter his car, and drive away, she eased through the crowd to the elevator and followed his example.

As previously arranged with Joe, she drove only a few hundred yards to the parking area servicing Fort Knox, before abandoning her car again, passing through the gift shop and museum, and climbing the grassy incline to the entrance of the fort itself.

Filing through a thin collection of other visitors, she made her way past several photogenically placed cannons, down a narrow staircase, along a darkened corridor—lighted only via whatever sunshine could squeeze through a row of rifle slits—until she reached a cool, black corner room, perhaps once an ammunition dump.

There, alone, she waited for about ten minutes before Joe joined her.