A Bridge to Treachery From Extortion to Terror (13 page)

And from then on, there’s the account; no more cold calls and sweating out the next month. There was still the chance that it would all just evaporate. Maybe he’d misunderstood them. He stood for a long time before the glass panel of his office, mesmerized by the ticker numbers sliding across the wall in the front of the room.

He walked to the pneumatic tube station, crammed the tickets home, pushed hard on the button, and then all the indecision vanished.
Whoosh!
It was done.

The bogus relief didn’t last long. He’d gone up to the lounge to grab another cup of coffee, but before he’d even carried it back to his desk, he felt the grip of panic rising in his throat. He was kidding himself if he thought the situation was just going to evaporate. They had meant every word. He had tacitly taken the first step in their direction on his own. His first act of free will in the matter was on the record. Now he wanted to take it back.

He jogged lightly over the carpet of the board room, flushing at the odd glances coming from the tape watchers. He leaned in the cashier’s window and caught the attention of the LAN gal.

“Peggy! Is the system up and running right?”

Unperturbed, Peggy looked up from her keyboard, tapped a couple of keys, and then said, “You’re okay. Three hundred IBM, 2000 JWC?”

“That’s mine.” He winced.

“Something wrong with the order, Lou? Give me a ticket and I’ll cancel.”

“Naw, it’s too late. Let it go,” he said, turning away. It didn’t have to mean that he was going along, not yet. He knew what he had to do. Patricia Buck was on the ground floor of it all. He had to go right at her. Terri Garr, in New York, answered on the second ring.

“Yes, this is Lou Christopher out in Paramus. Is she there?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Christopher. Ms. Buck is completely occupied by the weekly investment committee meeting. If it’s really important.”

“No, never mind. I’ll call back.”

“She should be available sometime close to the end of the day.”

Surprisingly, the rest of the day was fairly busy. Hal Grossbeek actually called and opened an account. Lou had been calling him for six months after Grossbeek returned a mailer, asking for information about municipal bonds. The bonds weren’t really what he was interested in, though. It turned out to be the cheapies, the less than ten-dollar stocks that he could sink all of his twenty-five hundred into all at once. He’d put in an order for 200 Humanistic Systems and got a price of nine and three-quarters.

Lou made a couple of calls on a lucrative secondary. Late in the day, two of his old accounts called back and signed on for 100 shares each.

After the close, around 4:30, Sherm Wellington’s sister, Janice, came into the office and sat down in Lou’s side chair. She’d brought the payment for her latest purchase. She had been one of his first accounts, thanks to Sherm, and actually turned out to be one of his better customers.

She always came into the office with cash for her transactions. And every time she came in, they’d sit and talk about everything
but
the stock market. He’d had a little trouble getting used to the relationship with her. He didn’t like being involved with a friend’s finances. And he felt in his guts the same way about her as he felt about Patricia Buck: there would always be a fundamental lack of understanding between them.

He’d gradually tried to overcome his unease with Janice as he got to know her and came to understand that her account was just Sherm’s toy anyway. Janice couldn’t have cared less what happened to it.

They engaged in small talk. She’d been to the club with the ladies and finished a round of golf just before coming over. She wasn’t worth a damn on the links, but she liked getting out in the sun. It was absurd, but as he sat there talking to Sherm’s sister, Lou was only half concentrating on what she was saying. The thought had entered his mind that Sherm might be playing games with him again. It was just like Sherm to conceive of practical jokes, elaborate beyond any hapless dupe’s imagination. Lou could imagine him at the kitchen table with Virg, plotting this silly military thing, calling friends, enlisting them in the scheme.

Yes, Sherm
would
do this. After all, why had Janice come in today of all days? Was she here to see how he was reacting? Sherm liked to give everyone a part in his schemes. Lou searched Janice’s face for a smirk, an evasive glance, but found nothing. Naw, it was a stupid thought.

Now she had to go. Lou walked with her over to the door and, as she exited, glanced at the spot in the parking lot, under the mercury lamp, where he’d parked the Lexus. No other car was around.

Back in his office, Lou picked up the phone. “Lou? This is Patricia Buck. Winnie told me you had something on your mind.”

“Oh hi, Patricia! I was going to call you back. I called earlier.”

“Yes, Winnie told me.”

“The account seems to be working out well from this end. Barry seems well pleased. I...”

“Yes, Louis, that’s fine. I knew you’d handle it perfectly.”

“Uh, I guess I was just wondering if maybe there was something more about the account that you could pass on to me.”

“No, everything’s just fine so far. I’ve been watching the stats from the branch and I’ve noticed that the account is having quite an effect down there. I’d say it’s probably made things a little easier for you and Calvin, both.” He could almost see the flash in Patricia’s eye.

“Oh, it’s been real fine,” Lou said.

“I guess if you keep taking care of things down there like you are, there’s no reason why the account couldn’t swing over to you permanently, Lou.”

“Patricia, a couple of men came to see me yesterday. They.”

“It’s amazing, Lou, the transformation down there since you came up to see me. I know Calvin’s very pleased.”

“I understand, Patricia.”

“Take care of business. Goodbye, Louis. Bye.”

“Patricia...”

“Lou, I’m glad you called. It tells me that you’re really on top of the situation.”

“Who are the certain people?”

“Now, if anything comes up...”

“What does this accomplish?”

“... that you think I can help out with, don’t hesitate.”

“Tell me what this is all about.”

“We’ve got a terrible connection here. I’m sorry. As I say, Louis, take care of business and everything will be fine.”
Click
.

Just before six o’clock, Lou called Maggie and told her he was going to be late again tonight, not to hold up supper. He sensed that she thought he was lying, but she didn’t say anything.

In the early, confident days, Mag would’ve been in his face straight away; but the last three months, she’d created a momentum in both of them that she wasn’t about to jeopardize over some little doubt she may have.

The black Audi—the same one he’d noticed at the inn—was occupied by Stanfield and Copeland and parked just where they’d said it would be. He got in the back seat without saying a word. The car slid slowly out of the parking lot and headed north on Route 17. It wasn’t a long ride. They got off at the Ramsey overpass, swung around and over the highway, and into a space in front of the Holiday Inn. Neither of the two men in the front seat made any attempt to make conversation all the way to the motel.

Once in the parking lot, Stanfield cut the engine and said, “This is it, number twenty-three, in the inner court. You go ahead, Christopher. We’ll be with you in a second. Here are the keys. There might already be someone in there. Make yourself at home.”

There
was
somebody in the room when he opened the door. She sat in one of the overstuffed chairs in what looked like a large living room. She looked up when Lou came in, and he very nearly turned and walked back out. But it was number twenty-three. This was the inner court. If they were going to have a meeting, they’d certainly have to have a room this big to hold it in. He threw his overcoat on the couch and sat down opposite the girl without looking at her.

Chapter Twelve

She was very young, no more than twenty-two. She wore jeans, loafers, and a loose-fitting, long-sleeved sweater. Long, ebony-colored hair, parted in the middle, hung down over her face so that she had to read her
Vanity Fair
magazine through a cascade of black. Except for the upturned corners of her mouth, she wore the solemn look of a convent novice: a look that seemed to say, ‘whatever comes, I’ll handle it.’

“They said we could drink. It’s over there, if you’re thirsty,” she said, not looking up from her reading.

Lou’s immediate reaction was to say, no, he didn’t want anything, but he changed his mind in mid-thought. On a table against the wall sat an ice bucket and a quart each of McCullough’s scotch and Old Crow bourbon whiskeys.

“The beer’s in the fridge,” he heard her say behind him. “It’s through the doorway over there. I wouldn’t turn down a scotch.”

She looked up from her
Vanity Fair
as he approached with an inch of McCullough’s for her and a Molson Golden for him. Her eyebrows were a shade too thick, her mouth small and firm, and she kept her lips pressed.

“I’m Sydney. But maybe I’m not supposed to be telling you my name. What do you think?”

Lou took her in without moving his eyes. “I’ll let them do the introductions. I don’t know much about this little escapade. I think I’ll just sit back and find out what’s happening before I get too involved.”

She pushed a dismissive puff of breath through her lips. “Brother, if you’re here tonight, you’re already in knee deep.”

“You know all about it, of course.”

“No. But I know that I’m involved. I know that if you know enough to be here, you are too.”

“Okay, what is this thing?”

“You’re asking me? I figure I’m the lowest totem on this pole.”

She drained her glass in one quick swallow, and then went back to her
Vanity Fair
No pretense, no self-consciousness, this girl invited scrutiny with not a hint of doubt about her ability to stand up to it. She was obviously unimpressed with him.
Good for her
. Lou settled into his chair, eyed the ceiling and the walls, and read the label on his bottle of Molson.

The traffic on the highway outside buzzed, and as the seconds and minutes passed, the sound grew as if a swarm of angry wasps was gathering somewhere in a dark corner of the room. Finally, Stanfield, Copeland, and another man came through the door like a marching band.

All three wore slacks and sport shirts. Stanfield introduced the new guy simply as Red and indicated that Sydney was to be known as Tasha and Lou, Cook. “We all know that the names are wrong, but that’s the way we want it. There’s no need for anybody knowing anyone else’s name. It’s better that way.”

Copeland claimed the biggest soft chair in the room and pushed it into a dark corner. Seated, he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and watched silently from around a tepee formed with his hands against his face.

Sydney brought her feet up under her, Indian-style, on the couch and leaned into the light from the table lamp, her elbows on her knees. Red dropped into an armless side chair turned backwards, his arms resting across the seat back.

“As an introduction to this, let me say that we have, at this moment, begun the creation of an illusion.” It was theater. As he spoke, Stanfield sat at the edge of the writing table before them, his eyes roaming the room, and then locking in on each of them in turn.

“The action that you take in the contact area will be carried out in a very precise manner, exactly as we outline it here tonight. There will be no ad-libbing or failure to follow orders. By the time we leave this room, everyone will know exactly what we’re trying to accomplish.”

From behind him, Lou heard the snap of a Zippo lighter and smelled cigarette smoke, even before it drifted past his ear and hung in the dim light from Sydney’s table lamp.

“I’ve got a question,” said the man, Red, raising his hand like a fourth grader. He stood up, still astride the chair, hands on his hips. “Where is this operation taking place? And how can we know that everything is going to work so well that we won’t have to wind up winging it?”