The Nicholas Linnear Novels (48 page)

Nicholas rolled up the paper into a tube. “I’m going to see all of these men face to face. Every one’s a candidate for our ninja.”

Russo took him through the labyrinth of the building and, one by one, the men on the list were interviewed and crossed off the list.

The thirteenth name was a Richard Yao. Russo didn’t know precisely where he was working at this time of day, so they sought out his unit foreman. They found him supervising the welding going on in one section of the bottom of the atrium lobby. He was a heavyset man with almost no hair and close-set eyes.

“You just missed him, Abe.” He took a thick cigar stub out of his mouth, used it to point over his shoulder. “He split.”

“What for?” Russo asked.

“Said he was sick.” He put the cold stub back into his mouth. “Didn’t look too good neither.”

“How long ago did this happen?” Nicholas said.

“Oh, I’d say fifteen—maybe twenty minutes ago. Like I said, you just missed him.” He looked at Russo. “Anything wrong? He’s a good worker.”

Russo’s eyes flickered briefly in Nicholas’ direction before he shook his head negatively. “Thanks, Mike. You need another man down here?”

“I could use one.”

“Okay. I’ll see to it then.”

On the way back up to the top of the tower, he said, “What do you think, Mr. Linnear?”

“I think,” Nicholas said, “that we have our man.”

“Well, hey, give me this for a sec—” He took the sheaf of paper from Nicholas’ grasp, leafed through the accordion sheets. “Here!” His forefinger stabbed at the sheet. “Here’s his address, 547—hey, wait a minute! That address is too far west. It’s a phony!”

“I’m not surprised.”

The doors opened and Nicholas sprinted down the corridor, leaving the other behind, staring at him. He pushed past Frank. Tomkin was on the phone, behind his desk. He put a palm over the mouthpiece. “Well,” he said, “what gives? Did you find—”

But Nicholas was already at the verge of the desk, his fingertips moving quickly but surely around the rim of the top.

“What the hell—”

“Hang up,” Nicholas said. He was circling the desk, probing. His fingertips never left the surface of the oiled wood.

Tomkin stared down at Nicholas’ hands as if they were disembodied entities. He lifted the receiver to his ear, mumbled a few words and hung up.

“Good,” Nicholas said, still moving. “I’d like to talk to you—”

“About what happened downstairs. Yeah. Yeah.” His blue eyes were open wide as he watched. Across the room, Russo had come in. He stood quietly next to Frank, looking on.

“Right. About what happened downstairs.” Nicholas knelt, began to search under the desk. He spoke as he worked. “I think we found our man.” Wiring and computer modules. “The thirteenth. A man named Richard Yao. He was transferred here from a Rubin Bros. site in Brooklyn.” Ridged templates: the computer grid. More wiring. “Not too long ago.” As thick as a rat’s nest, color-coded for easy repair. “Quite a good worker, so his foreman says.”

“Yeah, so what?” Tomkin’s deep-set eyes never left Nicholas’ hands. “What’s it to me?”

“He’s our man. He split just after I made the call to Russo requesting the list of oriental male workers here at the tower.” One ridge higher than the other and he backtracked with the tips of his fingers just to make certain. He gave a little pull. “Russo didn’t speak to anyone about this little job and there was no time for anyone to get a peek.” Fingers still in darkness with their minuscule prize. “Just Russo and me and”—he lifted it into the light at last, deposited on the gleaming desk top in front of Tomkin, a bright bit of plastic and metal, thin as a wafer, less than an inch in diameter—“of course, the telephone.”

Tomkin’s face had gone red and his head seemed to tremble somewhat. He reached out one forefinger, pushed hesitantly at the thing as if he thought it might bite him. “Goddamn it!” he cried. “Goddamn it! Under my own nose!” He pounded the table, looked up. “Frank, you sonovabitch! How’d you let that cocksucker in here? I’ll kill you!”

Frank stood rooted to the spot, bewildered.

“It’s not his fault,” Nicholas said quietly. “He couldn’t know what to look for.”

But Tomkin was beyond calming words. He moved out from behind his desk, the forefinger that had touched the electronic bug waving in the air at his bodyguard. “Is this what I pay you for, you asshole? That—that
shit
was in here, prowling around! Where the fuck were you? Tell me that! Where the
fuck
were you?”

“I was here all the time, Mr. Tomkin,” Frank said hastily. “Even when you were out to lunch, I was here. I never left, you gotta believe me. This guy must have busted in here at night, after you and me were gone. I don’t—”

Tomkin soared forward, slammed Frank with the back of his hand. “Nobody broke in here, you schmuck—not without my knowing about it the next day.” He watched the bright red stain on Frank’s cheek; he could almost feel how hot the skin was. “No, he was here all right, under our noses. You were just too stupid to have seen him.”

“But I didn’t even know who to look for,” Frank said.

“Shut up! Just shut up, will you?” Tomkin turned his back on him. “Christ, you sound like a baby crying.”

Nicholas had been moving in a half-crouch outward from the epicenter of the desk in a tight spiral. It took him ten minutes of intensive search but he found a second bug under one section of the chocolate couch. No one said anything until he was finished.

“I think,” Nicholas said, dusting off his hands, “that under the circumstances we’d better go downstairs.”

“What for?” Tomkin looked puzzled. “The room’s secure now, isn’t it?”

Nicholas nodded. He was already moving toward the door to the corridor. “Tell you on the way down, okay?”

Tomkin’s heavy voice broke the whirring silence of their descent. “I don’t mind telling you that was a good piece of work you did up there, Nick. Damned fine. Thanks.” He sighed. “You know I routinely have my office and homes electronically vacuumed every six months to weed out surveillance but, Christ, I haven’t even moved in here officially.” He ran his fingers through his iron-gray brush of hair. “Sweet Jesus, when I think of what he might have overheard over those lines! I’d like to rip his throat out!”

The doors slid open and they stepped out into the atrium.

“You don’t think the bastard’s here somewhere, do you?” His head moved from side to side.

“No chance,” Nicholas said, guiding the other man along the lobby. “He knew security had been broken the minute he overheard my conversation with Russo. He’s split. For the time being.”

They went out into the hot sunshine on Park Avenue. Like stepping out onto the surface of a bloated, slowly turning planet, the burning atmosphere so thick it felt like gravity; locked in a pressure chamber.

As they approached the car, the thin bony chauffeur got out, stood waiting on the broken sidewalk, one hand grasping the door handle.

Nicholas stopped them midway along the plank walkway. The jarring sound of the jackhammers filled the air like a battery of dentists’ drills. Tomkin had to lean close in order to hear what Nicholas was saying. He nodded and they climbed into the dim cool interior of the limo.

They started up immediately, nosing out into the traffic flow. Nicholas began to work. He went to the phone first, unscrewing both ends of the receiver, drew a blank. It had to be a place of easy access, he reasoned. The ninja might have been able to take his time in Tomkin’s office but certainly not here. He looked into the well where the receiver was placed; very little room. He used one finger all around the sides. And came up with it. He depressed a button and an inch of window slid silently down. He threw the bug out. The window sighed up.

“Clear?” Tomkin asked.

He held up a hand, inspected all the obvious places; nothing.

“All right.” He sat back up in the seat. “We’re secure.”

“Good.” Tomkin’s face related visibly. “All of this has given me the creeps because it’s come at the worst time imaginable.” He leaned forward, depressed a hidden stud. A smoked-glass panel slid upward, cutting them off from the front of the car. Nicholas saw the cross-hatching of the wire mesh embedded within the glass. “I’m in the middle of one of the biggest deals I’ve ever made. It takes in corporations on three continents. The amount of money involved, well, it’s incalculable. Christ, what I need now is not to be disturbed, so I get this—asshole—hanging around my neck.” He chuckled, his mood shifting abruptly. “Well, I shouldn’t complain, really. This idea originated with the Japanese. Only they were far too timid; they refused to go all the way with it even after I outlined the perfect methodology. Scared, is all. So we had a falling out—of sorts.” He laughed. “I stole the idea. Shit, they were going to just sit on it for a while, ‘study’ the sampling they already had.” He snorted. “No one’d get rich
that
way. Then they wanted back in after I had it running. Can you imagine? I told them to fuck off. They had lost a lot of face by then—too much, I guess. So they’ve sent the ninja.”

Tomkin settled himself more comfortably against the plush velvet seat. “Might as well go somewhere now that we’re out.” He flicked a switch, gave the chauffeur an address on the West Side. “I’m hungry. How about you?”

“I could eat something.”

“Okay. Good.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I don’t want anything to happen to my girls, understand?”

Nicholas said nothing. He was thinking about what Croaker had told him about this man. He was wondering at the truth.

Tomkin turned his head sharply like a dog at the point. “I’m quite certain you think I don’t give a shit about them. I can imagine the kind of fantasies Justine has told you about me.”

“She really doesn’t talk about you much. Does that surprise you?”

“Don’t be impertinent with me,” Tomkin said coldly. “It won’t get you very far.” His voice softened somewhat. “But, to be quite frank, I
am
surprised she hasn’t told you all about me.” He waved a hand as if in dismissal. “It doesn’t matter, really. I still love them both. I know I’m not the world’s best father but then they leave a lot to be desired as daughters. Let’s just say we’re all at fault.”

“Perhaps if you didn’t use your power with them the way—”

“Ah, then she did talk about me.”

“A bit, yes. Once.”

“My dear boy,” Tomkin said, “I don’t mean to be pompous but money
is
power or, more accurately, it’s the other way around. It amounts to the same thing. That’s my gift, you see. It’s what I excel in. Making decisions, building power, watching the money pour in.” He lifted a knowing forefinger to the side of his nose; absurdly, it made him look like an avuncular character out of a Dickens novel. “It’s also what keeps me alive. I’d be dead tomorrow without that excitement; I can’t give it up for anyone, not even my girls.”

“Would you even want to?”

“To be honest, I don’t know.” He shrugged heavily. “But what possible difference could that make? It’s a moot point. I don’t love them any less for it; I’m merely denied certain things.”

“So are they.”

“Life is tough, huh? I’m glad you figured that out.” He turned his head. “I guess I was right about you. I like the way you work.”

They crossed Fifth Avenue on Fifty-seventh, heading west. Heavy traffic brought them to a standstill midway along the block. Behind them was the white modernistic sweep of Nine West. Fuel exhaust and the heat combined to streak the air as it rose in waves from the asphalt of the street.

“You know,” Tomkin said while they were stalled, “money’s a funny thing. Most people who don’t have it want it very badly. But the ones who have it, if they have any sense at all, know what a fantastic burden it is. There are mornings I don’t want to get up and go to the office, despite the excitement. I feel as if my body weighs tons, as if every breath I take is made painful by pressure.” Up ahead, at Sixth Avenue, the light turned green. No one moved. After a moment, horns started blaring.

“But there are decisions to be made,” he continued. “Decisions involving millions of dollars and the lives of thousands of my employees throughout the world. There’s nobody but me to make them.” His voice turned reflective. “That’s excitement enough, don’t you think? To know you’re performing something in a way no one else can. You know about that as well as I do, eh? You do what you do better than anyone else.”

“And what’s that?”

Tomkin’s eyes narrowed as if he were looking through cigarette smoke. “You’re a very deadly man, Nick. Don’t think I can’t feel it. Even before I saw what you could do to Frank and Whistle. Oh, it was nice to see a graphic example of what had been in my mind’s eye, of course. But I was as certain of you as I have been of anything. To tell you the truth, I’m glad Justine likes you—I think you’ll be good for her. She should get to know what a real man’s like.”

The light had turned red again but the horns hadn’t diminished.

“What’s the problem, Tom?” he said into the grille.

“Bus broken down, Mr. Tomkin,” came the electronically filtered reply. “Won’t be long now.”

“Buses,” Tomkin said, readjusting his position. “Christ, I haven’t been on a bus in over thirty years.”

“Money’ll do that to you,” Nicholas said blandly.

“The only thing that money does,” Tomkin said sharply, “is corrupt.”

Nicholas turned his head. “Does that include you?”

“We’re all susceptible; we all succumb. There’re no exceptions, none at all. In that respect, money’s the great leveler. It makes fools of us all.” He barked a laugh. “All those assholes who tell you that money hasn’t changed ’em are full of shit. Of course it has. They just like to stare at illusions they build for themselves. As for me, I’m a realist. I take the drawbacks and accept them. Everything has its price tag—you just gotta make sure you got enough to pay.

“Now take my late wife, for example. Jesus, there was a woman who knew sure as hell what she wanted only she didn’t have the guts to come to grips with what went along with it. People like her, they piss me off no end, ’cause all they want is to stand and squat in a stream all day long while someone comes and wipes, their asses for them three times a day. You think they ever heard of the word
responsibility
? Not a chance.”