Текст книги "The Collectors"
Автор книги: David Baldacci
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
Chapter 47
Annabelle was waiting for her connecting flight out of Atlanta. As she looked over her new itinerary, she inwardly seethed at Leo’s stupid move. How could he have done that? If she had wanted Freddy to know who she was, she would have told him herself.
Her flight was called, but she waited as the passengers lined up. Even though she was in first class and could have boarded early, out of old habit she liked to see who was getting on the plane. As the line thinned, she picked up her carry–on bag. She had dumped most of her clothes back in D.C. She never checked a bag when flying; it was an invitation for someone to snoop on her. She would buy more clothes when she got to her destination.
As she was walking up to the line to get on the plane, she glanced over at an airport TV tuned to CNN and stopped moving. Reuben’s face peered back at her. She hurried over closer to the TV and read the subtitles. Vietnam vet Reuben Rhodes arrested. Defense contractor magnate Cornelius Behan and a woman murdered by shots fired from the home next door. Rhodes being held …
“My God,” Annabelle said to herself.
Over the PA came, “Last call for flight 3457 nonstop to Honolulu. Last call for passengers on flight 3457 nonstop to Honolulu.”
Annabelle looked at the departure gate for her plane. They were about to close the door. She turned to look back at the screen. Shots from the house next door? Behan dead. Reuben arrested. What the hell was going on? She had to find out.
Then her thoughts just as suddenly swung the other way. This is not your concern, Annabelle. You need to go. Jerry Bagger is coming for you. Let the old guys handle it. There was no way Reuben could have murdered Behan, but they’ll figure it out. And if they don’t, it’s not your problem. It’s not.
Still, she stood there frozen. Never before had she been so indecisive.
“Last call, door’s closing for flight 3457.”
She whispered desperately, “Go, Annabelle, damn it, just go. You don’t need this. It’s not your fight. You don’t owe these people anything. You don’t owe Jonathan anything.”
She watched as the door to her flight from Jerry Bagger slammed shut and the ticket–taker marched off to another gate. She watched ten minutes later as the Boeing 777 pulled away from the gate. As it soared into the sky right on schedule, Annabelle was booking another flight north taking her squarely within the vicinity of Jerry Bagger and his wood chipper. And she didn’t even know why. Yet somewhere in her soul maybe she did.
• • •
Albert Trent was finishing up some things at his office at home. He’d gotten a late start after a long night of work and decided to catch up on some things before he drove in. The tasks were all related to his position as the senior staff member on the House Intelligence Committee. It was one he’d held for years now, and he was well grounded in nearly all aspects of the intelligence business, at least the part the agencies shared with their congressional overseers. He smoothed his few strands of hair down, finished his coffee and cheese Danish, packed his briefcase and a few minutes later pulled down the street in his Honda two–door. Five years from now he would be driving something much nicer in, say, Argentina, or he’d heard the South Pacific was truly paradise.
His secret account now contained millions. He should be able to double that in the next half–decade. The secrets Roger Seagraves was selling were at the very top end of the payment scale. It wasn’t like the Cold War where you dropped a package off and picked up twenty thousand bucks in return. The people Seagraves was dealing with operated only in the seven–figure range, but they expected a lot for their money. Trent had never questioned Seagraves either about his sources or the people he was selling to. The man would never have revealed anything, and, in fact, Trent didn’t want to know. His sole but critical piece of the equation was getting the information Seagraves passed to him to the next leg of the journey. His method for doing so was unique and probably foolproof. Indeed, it was the main reason the American intelligence community was currently in shambles.
There were many energetic and skilled counterintelligence agents out in the field trying to ferret out how the secrets were being stolen and then communicated to the enemy. In his official capacity Trent had been privy to some of these investigative efforts. The agents talking to him had no reason to suspect that a mere staffer with a bad hairdo who drove an eight–year–old Honda and lived in a crummy house and labored under the same bills and limited income every other civil servant had was part of a sophisticated espionage crew that was decimating American intelligence efforts.
The authorities had to know by now that the source was deeply buried inside, but with fifteen major intelligence agencies eating up 50 billion in budget dollars a year spread over 120,000 employees, the haystacks were enormous and the needles beyond microscopic. And Roger Seagraves, Trent had found, was chillingly efficient and never missed any of the details, however small and seemingly trivial.
Trent had tried to find out some background on him when they first started talking, yet could discover exactly zero on the man. To an experienced intelligence staffer like Trent, he knew this meant Seagraves had had an entirely covert past professional life. That made him a man you would never want to cross. And Trent never intended to. He would much rather die old and rich far away from this place.
As he puttered along in his dented Honda, he imagined how that new life would look. It would be very different, that was for certain. However, he never dwelled on how many lives had been lost because of his greed. Traitors seldom had such pangs of conscience.
• • •
Stone had just returned from his visit with Marilyn Behan when someone knocked on his cottage door.
“Hello, Oliver,” Annabelle said as he peered out.
He exhibited no surprise at her reappearance, but simply motioned her inside. They sat in front of the fireplace in two rickety chairs.
“How was your trip?” he asked pleasantly.
“Come off it, I didn’t go.”
“Really?”
“Have you told the others I left?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I knew you’d be back.”
She said angrily, “Okay, that really pisses me off. You don’t know me.”
“Obviously, I do, because here you are.”
She stared at him, shaking her head. “You have got to be the most unusual cemetery worker I’ve ever met.”
“You’ve met many, have you?”
“I heard what happened to Reuben.”
“The police are wrong, of course, but they just don’t know it yet.”
“We have to get him out of jail.”
“We’re working on that and Reuben’s doing fine. I don’t think many people will give him trouble in there. I’ve seen him take out five men in a bar fight. In addition to his great physical strength, he is one of the most ruthless and dirtiest fighters I’ve ever seen. I greatly admire that in a person.”
“But somebody got the drop on him at Jonathan’s?”
“Yes, someone did.”
“Why do it? Why kill Behan?”
“Because he found out how Jonathan died. That was enough reason.” Stone explained his conversation with Marilyn Behan.
“So they take out Behan and blame it on Reuben because he was ever so conveniently there?”
“They probably saw him coming and going from the house, figured the attic would be a good shot line, and they executed upon that plan. They may have ascertained that Behan brought women by and that they always spent time in that room.”
“Pretty tough competition we’re up against. So what do we do now?”
“For starters we need to see the tapes of the reading room vault.”
“On the way back I actually thought of how to do that.”
“I had no doubt you would.” He paused. “I don’t think we could have finished this without you. In fact, I’m sure of it.”
“Don’t flatter me too much. We’re still not there yet.”
The pair sat in silence for a few moments.
Annabelle gazed out the window. “You know it is peaceful here.”
“With dead people? I’m starting to find it very depressing.”
She smiled and rose. “I’ll call Caleb about my idea.”
Stone stood too, stretching out his lean, six–foot–two frame. “I’m afraid I’ve reached the age where simply cutting the grass does awful things to my joints.”
“Take some Advil. I’ll give you a call later, once I’m settled back in.”
As she passed Stone on the way out, he said quietly, “I’m glad you’re back.”
If she heard him, Annabelle didn’t react. He watched the lady climb into her car and drive off.
Chapter 48
After his revelation Jerry Bagger had summoned the manager of the hotel across the street to his office and demanded details of every guest who’d taken a room on the twenty–third floor on the side facing his building on a certain day. And in Atlantic City, when Jerry Bagger said to come, you went. As usual, some of Bagger’s men hovered in the background.
The hotel manager, a young, good–looking man who was obviously ambitious and intent on performing his duties to the best of his abilities, was not inclined to let the casino chief see anything.
“Just so you understand the situation, if you don’t give me what I want, you will die,” Bagger said.
The manager had flinched. “Are you threatening me?”
“No. A threat is when there’s a chance it won’t happen. This is what in the trade we call a sure thing.”
The manager paled but bravely said, “The information you’re requesting is confidential. I can’t possibly hand it over to you. Our guests expect their affairs to be kept private, and we have the highest standards at the —”
Bagger cut him off. “Yeah, yeah. Look, I’ll go the easy route first. How much you want for it?”
“You’re trying to bribe me?”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“You can’t possibly be serious —”
“Hundred thou.”
“A hundred thousand dollars!”
Bagger looked at his men. “Boy, this guy’s quick, ain’t he? Maybe I should hire him to run my place. Yeah, a hundred thousand dollars slipped right into your personal account if you let me look at the records.” The man seemed to be considering the offer, but Bagger was quickly growing impatient. “And if you don’t, I tell you what, I’m not gonna kill you. Instead, I’ll break every bone in your body, mess with your brain so you can’t tell anybody what happened to you, and you can spend the rest of your life in a nursing home pissing all over yourself while some freak–offs drill you every night. Now to me there’s no real choice there, but I’m a reasonable man, so I’ll let you make the decision. You got five seconds.”
An hour later Bagger had all the information he’d requested and quickly culled down his list of potential suspects. Next he questioned hotel personnel about some of the guests in question. It didn’t take him long to hit the jackpot because of some extra services one of the guests had taken advantage of during his stay.
“Yeah, I gave him a massage,” the young woman named Cindy said. She was petite and dark–haired with a cute face, alluring curves and a streetwise manner. She popped gum and played with her hair while talking to Bagger in a private room in the hotel’s sumptuous spa area.
He eyed her closely. “You know who I am?”
Cindy nodded. “You’re Jerry Bagger. My mom, Dolores, works a craps table for you at the Pompeii.”
“Right, good old Dolores. You like this spa shit?”
“Pay sucks, but tips are great. The old guys like to feel a young lady’s hands on ‘em. A few get a hard–on while I’m doing it. Pretty disgusting on an eighty–year–old, but like I said, they tip good.”
“This guy you worked on.” Bagger glanced at the name he’d written down. “This Robby Thomas, tell me about him, starting with what he looks like.”
Cindy gave him a physical description. “Good–looking guy but way too cocky. He really thought a lot of himself. I don’t like that in a man. And he was too thin and pretty, if you know what I mean. I could’ve probably taken him in arm wrestling. I like my guys big and rugged.”
“I bet. So this pretty boy, you only give him a massage? Or something extra?”
Cindy crossed her arms and stopped popping her gum. “I’m a licensed professional, Mr. Bagger.”
In response he pulled ten hundred–dollar bills from his wallet. “This enough to buy your license?”
Cindy eyed the money. “I guess what I do on my own time is my business.”
“Can’t argue with that.” He held out the money. “So tell me about it.”
But she hesitated in taking the cash. “I could maybe lose my job if —”
“Cindy, I don’t give a shit if you’re screwing dead people at this two–bit joint, okay?” He pushed the money down the inside of her shirt. “Now talk to me. And don’t lie. Lying to me is a very bad thing.”
She started speaking fast. “Okay, like he was all over me from the get–go. I was massaging him, and all of a sudden I felt his hand against my leg. And then his hand moved way past where it should’ve been.”
“Yeah, a real animal. What happened next?”
“He started coming on to me really hard. At first I blew him off. Then he started talking high–and–mighty. Said he was making a big score and I should be nice to him.”
“A big score, huh? Keep going.”
“He flashed some money, said there was a lot more where that came from. After I finished work, he was waiting for me. We had a couple drinks; I started getting a little looped. I’m not real good with holding my liquor.”
“Yeah, yeah, let’s keep it moving here, Cin,” Bagger said impatiently. “I got serious ADD.”
She went on hurriedly. “So anyway, we ended up in his room. I gave him a mouth job to get things going, but the asshole popped early. Let me tell you I was pissed. I mean, I didn’t even know the jerk. He was really upset, crying like a baby. Guy gave me a hundred bucks. A lousy hundred bucks! Then he was in the bathroom puking for about ten minutes. When he came out, he said he hadn’t had any in a long time and that was the reason he came so freaking fast. Like I gave a crap.”
“What a jerk. What happened next?”
“Well, that was pretty much it. I mean, there wasn’t any reason for me to stay after that, was there? It’s not like we were on a date or nothing.”
“He didn’t say anything else? Where he was from? Where he was going? What the big score was?” She shook her head. He studied her closely and said, “Okay, you look like an enterprising gal. Did you maybe rip off some cash from his wallet while he was puking in the john?”
She said angrily, “I’m not some kind of trash! Who do you think you are accusing me of that?”
“Let’s do a little reality check here, Cin.” He touched his chest. “I’m Jerry Bagger. You’re a lowlife who lets strangers shoot off in her mouth for chump change. So I’m going to ask you one more time: Did you rip off some cash to bump the C–note he gave you?”
“I don’t know, I might have,” she said. “But I don’t feel like talking no more.”
Bagger clamped a hand around her chin and jerked her head around so they were looking eye–to–eye. “Did your old lady ever tell you anything about me?”
A scared Cindy swallowed nervously. “She said you were real good to work for.”
“Anything else?”
“She said anybody ever tries to cross you is one dumb son of a bitch.”
“That’s right. Your mama’s smart.” He squeezed tighter on her chin, and Cindy gave a little yelp. “So if you wanna see mama again, take a real deep breath and tell me what you saw in pretty boy’s wallet.”
“Okay, okay. It was weird because he had a couple of IDs.”
“And?”
“And one was the name he gave me at the spa, Robby Thomas from Michigan. The other one was a driver’s license from California.”
“The name?” Bagger said calmly.
“Tony. Tony Wallace.”
Bagger let go of the woman’s face. “See, that wasn’t so hard. Now, why don’t you go back to rubbing the old farts’ cocks?”
She rose on trembling legs. As she turned to leave, Bagger said, “Hey, Cindy, aren’t you forgetting something?”
She slowly turned back around. “What’s that, Mr. Bagger?” she said nervously.
“I paid you a thousand bucks. Pretty boy gave you a tenth of that, and he got a blow job. You never even asked me if I wanted one. That’s not nice, Cindy. That’s something a guy like me remembers for a long time.” He waited, staring at her.
Her voice quavering, she said, “Do you want me to give you a blow job, Mr. Bagger?” She hastily added, “It’d be an honor.”
“No, I don’t.”
Chapter 49
Annabelle and Caleb were walking down a hallway in the Jefferson Building. Annabelle had on a red knee–length skirt, black jacket and a beige blouse. She appeared professional, confident and inspired. Caleb looked ready to slash his wrists.
“All you have to do,” she said, “is act sad and depressed.”
“Well, that should be easy, since I am sad, and I am depressed,” he snapped.
Before they entered the security office for the library, Annabelle stopped and put on a pair of glasses attached to a chain around her neck.
“Are you sure this will work?” Caleb hissed. He was starting to wheeze a bit.
“You can never be sure a scam will work until it does.”
“Oh, that’s just great!”
A few minutes later they were sitting with the head of security in his office. Caleb sat with his head bowed and his gaze on his shoes while Annabelle talked away.
“So as I explained, Caleb has retained me as his psychologist to help him through the process.”
The chief looked puzzled. “You say he’s having trouble going into the vault?”
“Yes. As you know, he found the body of a dear friend and colleague in there. The vaults are a place that Caleb normally loves. It’s been a part of his life for many years.” She glanced over at Caleb, who, on cue, let out a deep sigh and dabbed at his eyes with a tissue.
“Now the venue that has represented so many positive memories for him has become a place of deep sadness, even horror.”
The chief looked over at Caleb. “I’m sure it was rough on you, Mr. Shaw.”
Caleb’s hands were shaking so badly that finally Annabelle grabbed hold of one of them.
“Please call him Caleb, we’re all friends here,” Annabelle said encouragingly, signaling the chief without Caleb seeing her even as she gave Caleb’s hand a crushing squeeze.
“Oh, right, yes, we are friends, sure,” the chief said awkwardly. “But what does this have to do with my department?”
“My plan is to let Caleb watch the tapes of the reading room, people coming and going from the vault, everything normal, everything as it should be, as a way to empower him to navigate this difficult period and turn the reading room and the vault back into purely a positive experience for him.”
“Well, I don’t know about letting you see the tapes,” the chief said. “It’s a highly unusual request.”
Caleb started to get up in defeat, but a scathing look from Annabelle caused him to freeze in midrise. She said, “Well, it’s an unusual situation. I’m sure that you would do anything within your power to see a fellow employee successfully get on with his life.”
“Well, sure, but —”
“So would now be a good time to see the tapes?” She shot a furious glance at Caleb, who was still halfway out of his chair. “I mean, you can see that he’s desperate.”
Caleb slumped in his chair, his head hanging between his knees.
Annabelle looked back at the chief and eyed his name tag. “Dale, I can call you Dale, can’t I?”
“Well, sure. Okay.”
“Dale, do you see the clothes I have on?”
Dale looked at her attractive figure and said sheepishly, “Yeah, I noticed.”
“You see that my skirt color is red. That’s an empowering, positive color, Dale. But my jacket is black, a negative vibe, and my blouse is beige, a neutral color. This represents that I’m halfway through my goal of helping this man back to a normal, healthy life. But I need your help, Dale, to finish the job. I want to be able to wear all red for Caleb. And I’m sure you want me to as well. I say let’s finish the job, Dale. Let’s just do it.” She ran an appraising eye over him. “I can tell, you’re with me, aren’t you?”
Dale looked at the miserable Caleb and said, “Well, okay, I’ll get the tapes for you.”
After he had left the room, Caleb said, “You handled yourself very professionally.”
“Thank you,” she said tersely.
When she said nothing further, Caleb added, “And I think I did reasonably well.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Do you really?”
• • •
Hours later Annabelle and Caleb sat back after watching the comings and goings in the reading room before and after DeHaven’s murder.
“It’s just the typical flow of traffic,” Caleb said. “There’s nothing there.”
Annabelle ran a tape over again. “Who’s that?”
“Kevin Philips. He’s the acting director after Jonathan died. He came down to ask me about Jonathan’s death. And there’s Oliver dressed as a German scholar.”
“Nice,” Annabelle said admiringly. “He carries it off very well.”
They looked through some more footage. Caleb pointed at one scene. “That’s when I got the notice about becoming Jonathan’s literary executor.” He stared at the screen more closely. “Am I really that chubby?” He pressed a hand to his stomach.
“Who gave you the notice?”
“Kevin Philips.”
Annabelle watched on the tape as Caleb stumbled and broke his glasses.
He said, “I’m not usually that clumsy. I wouldn’t have been able to read the damn thing if Jewell English hadn’t lent me her glasses.”
“Yeah, but why did she do a switch on you?”
“What?”
“She switched out the glasses she was wearing with another pair in her bag.” Annabelle rewound the tape. “See? It’s a pretty first–rate move, actually. She’d make a good mechanic … I mean, she’s very nimble–fingered.”
Caleb watched in surprise as Jewell English palmed the glasses she was wearing and drew out another pair from her bag. It was this pair she gave to Caleb.
“I don’t know, maybe that was a special pair. The ones she gave me worked well enough. I could read the message.”
“Who is this Jewell English?”
“Just an elderly lady who’s a book fanatic and reading room regular.”
“And she has hand moves like a Vegas blackjack dealer,” Annabelle pointed out. “I wonder why that is,” she added thoughtfully.
