The Protégé (32 page)

Gillette took the microphone and smiled calmly at several people in the huge crowd before speaking, trying to focus. So many things were racing through his mind. “Good evening, I’m Christian Gillette,” he began, wondering if someone in the audience was here to kill him. “I’m the chairman of Discount America, and I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. I realize that it’s Saturday evening, so I won’t keep you long. I want you to be able to get home to your families and your televisions and your parties, I really do. I just want to take a few minutes of your time and present you with a few basic facts as you decide whether or not you want our store in your town. We hope you do. We think it’ll be a great partnership.

“First, the store will be built out on Route 212, at least five miles west of the waterfront. Almost a hundred percent of the tourist traffic comes from the east, they’ll never see this store. Second, the store will be huge. You’ll be able to buy almost anything you want, from fresh vegetables to computers. You won’t have to go to Delaware to buy basic stuff anymore. Third, thanks to our ability to buy in bulk, our prices are tremendously low.” Gillette motioned to the crowd. “Can someone please tell me what a four-bar pack of Ivory soap costs at Fletcher’s market on the Chatham waterfront?”

A young woman raised her hand.

“Yes?”

“Five dollars and a quarter,” the woman said, her voice cracking with nerves.

“Five dollars and twenty-five cents,” Gillette said loudly. He shook his head. “You know what it’ll cost at the new DA store? Two fifty at most.”

A rumble ran through the crowd.

“Believe me,” he said, acknowledging the positive response, “you want us here. It’ll be a great store and a fantastic shopping experience. It’ll create jobs and tax revenue. It’ll be—”

“How much money will you make from the store?” Becky interrupted.

Gillete turned. Becky was out of her chair, arms folded firmly over her chest. Obviously, she’d felt the tide turning in his favor and was going to do anything she could to stop the momentum.

“Come on, Mr. Gillette, tell us all what you’re going to make off this store.”

“I don’t have the exact figures yet, but it’s—”

“At least a hundred million!” she shouted.

A murmur rolled through the auditorium.

Gillette smiled calmly and put up his arms. “It’s nowhere near a hundred million.” He glanced at Percy Lundergard, who had his hands over his eyes.

Becky pointed at a man in the second row. “You all know who Fred Jacobs is. The best accountant in the county. Fred looked at this for me. What do you think Mr. Gillette will make on the store, Fred?”

Jacobs stood up. He was a scholarly-looking man with wire-rimmed glasses and a crop of white hair. “I think Becky’s pretty close. About a hundred million a year.”

“Believe me,” Gillette said loudly, “that’s way off.”

“Then how much is it?” an elderly woman in the middle of the crowd shouted in a high-pitched voice.

“I’m not sure right now.”

The crowd groaned.

Gillette saw Lundergard running his finger across his neck.

“Mr. Gillette won’t even help us with a few things we need around here,” Becky spoke up. “His investors just gave him
fifteen billion dollars
and—”

“Actually, it’s
twenty,
” Jacobs corrected from his seat. “I checked the Everest Capital Web site right before I came over. Some rich family from Chicago just gave Mr. Gillette another five billion.”

“Twenty billion dollars!”
Becky shouted, whipping the crowd into a frenzy. “Can you imagine having that much money at your fingertips? I can’t. I asked Mr. Gillette to help us build a new elementary school, and you know what he said? He said he’d build half of it.
Half
a school. Can you imagine that? Now, Mr. Gillette, which half were you thinking about? The top half or the bottom half?”

A loud chorus of cackles and boos arose from the crowd.

“What I said was—”

“I know about you, Mr. Gillette,” Becky said, pointing at him and silencing the crowd as they hung on her every word. “I know there are people who question what you’ve done with some of the money they’ve given you.”

“That’s not true.”

“I understand there’s going to be an investigation,” she said loudly, turning to the crowd. “This is not the kind of man we want in our town, people. Believe me. A man who’d build
half
a school and who’s about to be investigated for fraud!”

GILLETTE AND BECKY ROUSE
stood on a darkened, tree-lined side street a few blocks from the high school. It had been thirty minutes since the scene on the auditorium stage.

“What do you want?” she asked, grinning smugly. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you.”

“Yup.”

“You know I’m not being investigated.”

She pointed back toward the high school. “Yeah, but they don’t.”

Gillette glanced over his shoulder. He’d parked Lundergard’s car back up the street and told the QS agent to stay there. “I want a truce; I want to call off the war,” he said. “I want my store, and I want you to support it.” It had started to drizzle, and he spotted a couple beneath an umbrella walking down the other side of the street. “I’ll give you everything you want. The elementary school, the retirement home, the squad cars. I just want this back-and-forth to be done. There’s no reason for it.”

“You better not go back on this,” she said, her voice rising.

Gillette glanced through the darkness at the couple across the street, their silhouettes outlined by a streetlamp. “Easy,” he urged, trying to calm her down, noticing that the couple had stopped and was looking toward them. “I’m not going back on it. There’s no reason to think I would.”

“There’s
every
reason to think you would. I know your kind, Christian. You think the world revolves around you!”

“Becky, come on, that’s not fair. I’m the one that ought to be upset here. With what you said to the crowd about me being investigated.”

She shrugged and turned away.

“Hey, look,” he said, moving to her side, “I’m just trying to—”

There was a flash and the blast of a gunshot. A bullet tore through Becky’s back and out her chest, grazing Gillette’s arm and hurling her against him. He tried to catch her, but she fell from his arms, dead even before she hit the street.

Another gunshot exploded, closer this time.

Gillette wheeled around and sprinted the other way. Whoever was shooting was trying to hit
him,
not Becky. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the couple standing on the other side of the street dive for cover behind a car, then he cut right, hurdled a waist-high hedge, and darted between two homes. At the back of the house, he scaled a six-foot chain-link fence and dropped into the thick brush on the other side.

He pulled himself to his feet and waded through the raspberry bushes, thorns tugging at his clothes. Finally the bushes gave way to woods, and he raced ahead, wincing as his feet crashed through dried leaves, careful to avoid the trees in the darkness. When he reached the edge of the trees and the next street over, he hesitated, pressed behind a large oak, gazing back into the gloom of the woods, listening carefully for any sound. But there was nothing more than the consistent patter of drops as the rain began to fall more steadily.

Gillette waited ten minutes, then saw a police car cruising slowly down the wet street, lights flashing in the growing fog. A huge stroke of luck. He moved out from behind the oak tree, waving his arms as he stepped into the glare of the headlights.

The police car stopped, and the driver’s-side door opened instantly.

“Down on the ground,” the cop yelled. “Now!”

Gillette put his hand up over his face and squinted against the high beams. He could barely make out the officer kneeling behind the door, aiming a pistol at him over the mirror. “Officer, my name’s Christian Gillette. I was just shot at. I’m not the one you’re looking for.”

“Get down, now! Arms and legs spread.”

Gillette made a snap decision and bolted back for the woods. He heard the
pop, pop, pop
of the policeman’s revolver, but he was quickly back into the cover of the trees, impossible to see in the darkness. As he hid behind another tree, he peered around the side of it.

The policeman was on the radio, calling for backup. Gillette wanted to give himself up, but the flash drive was in his pocket. The officer would have confiscated everything on him, and he wasn’t going to let the flash drive go. Not for anything in the world. It could easily fall into the wrong hands.

Then he heard sirens, several of them, quickly growing louder. He turned and ran as the rain became a downpour.

21

FARADAY RELAXED
into his favorite easy chair, propped his feet up on the ottoman, clicked the television on with the remote, then reached for a heaping bowl of cookie-dough ice cream sitting on the table beside the chair. He’d thought about going out tonight—he had several invitations—but he was dead tired. It had been a long week, and all he wanted to do was relax in his apartment. If the past was any indicator, he’d be asleep in an hour, wake up around midnight, and drag himself to bed.

He watched the last few minutes of
Seinfeld,
finishing the ice cream as the credits rolled and settling in for the news.

When Christian Gillette’s face appeared on the screen over the anchor’s shoulder, Faraday shot out of the chair, dropping the bowl to the floor. The woman relayed that the Everest Capital chairman was a fugitive. That he was wanted for the murder of Becky Rouse, the mayor of a small town in Maryland called Chatham. That there were two witnesses to the shooting. That he had evaded an attempted arrest and was considered extremely dangerous.

GILLETTE FOUND
Percy Lundergard’s cell number on his phone and called. He was somewhere on the east side of Chatham, at the edge of a trailer park and a cornfield. His plan was to get off the Eastern Shore of Maryland as soon as possible—by going either north to Wilmington, Delaware, or east over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge toward Washington, D.C. He pressed his arms close to his body and stomped his feet. It was still raining, and the temperature was dropping fast.

“Hello.”

“Percy?”

“Christian?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you?”

“What in the hell is going on?” he asked, ignoring the question. “Why did a Chatham cop try to arrest me an hour ago?”

“The police think you killed Becky Rouse.”

“What? That’s insane.”

“That’s exactly what I told them.”

“Whoever shot her was trying to kill
me,
” Gillette said.

“The cops say they have two witnesses.”

The couple walking on the other side of the street under the umbrella, Gillette assumed. They’d heard Becky shout his name.

“And,” Lundergard continued, “they’re saying they’ve got the murder weapon with your prints on it.”

Planted, obviously. “What about the guy who was with me?” Gillette asked. “My bodyguard.”

“No one can find him.”

The guy was dead, was helping whoever shot Becky, or was the one who shot her. Gillette patted his shirt pocket, making certain the flash drive was still there. He had a pretty damn good idea of who was responsible for her death. Maybe he didn’t know who’d actually pulled the trigger, but he knew who was pulling the strings.

“Why don’t you come here? To my house?” Lundergard offered. “We’ll figure out what to do next when you get here.”

Gillette thought for a second. “Okay, see you in a little while.”

FARADAY REACHED
for his apartment phone, hoping it was Gillette. It wasn’t. It was Allison.

“Have you heard what’s going on?” she asked excitedly as soon as he picked up.

“You mean about Christian?”

“Of course that’s what I mean.”

“I’m watching the news right now.”

“Nigel, what do you think happened?”

“Somebody’s made a terrible mistake.”

LUNDERGARD PUT DOWN
the phone and glanced up at Jim Cochran, the Chatham chief of police, who was standing in his living room. On either side of Cochran were two men claiming to be federal agents. Lundergard hadn’t seen the big gold badges for long—the agents had flipped them open and shut quickly—but Cochran seemed satisfied.

“So?” Cochran demanded gruffly.

“Gillette says he’ll be here in a little while. You better get all the police cars out of here.”

GILLETTE’S NEXT CALL
was Derrick Walker. He’d thought long and hard about whether or not to make this call. If the agent who’d been with him in the car had turned on him, then Walker could easily have turned, too. Walker wasn’t like Stiles; he didn’t own QS Security—he could be bribed. But in the end, Gillette had no choice. He needed someone’s help.

Walker picked up on the first ring.

“Hello,” he answered fiercely. “Are you all right?”

Obviously, Walker had seen the number on the cell screen. “Where are you?” Gillette asked.

“The Chatham police station.”

“Can you talk?”

“Yeah,” Walker said quietly.

“I didn’t shoot this woman.” It was stupid to have to say it. If it had been Stiles, he wouldn’t have even bothered.

“Of course you didn’t.”

“What happened to your guy?” Gillette asked. “The one who was with me tonight?”

“I’m pretty sure he’s dead. He’s not answering his phone or his pager.”

“Maybe he’s working with whoever shot Becky Rouse. Maybe
he
shot Becky.”

“Not a chance. I’ve known Lionel for seven years. I’d trust my life with him. That’s why I had him with you. Now what the fuck is going on?” Walker asked angrily. “Do you know?”

Gillette hesitated. “I’m pretty sure I do, but I don’t want to say anything on this line.” He watched as a man came out of one of the trailer homes close to where he was standing and stuffed a garbage bag in the trash can, then hurried back inside. “I need to meet up with you.”

“Where?”

“At that place I told you I had that meeting yesterday.”

WALKER HUNG UP
with Gillette, then made another call immediately. It lasted just twenty seconds. After he slipped the cell phone back into his pocket, he stood up from the desk he’d been sitting on and turned around. Jim Cochran was directly in front of him, flanked by several deputies.

“You’re under arrest, Mr. Walker. Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

“For what?”
Walker demanded.

“Aiding and abetting.”

“Aiding and abetting who?”

“Christian Gillette.”

GILLETTE SPRINTED
across the open field toward the rest stop and the idling tractor-trailer. He had no intention of going to Percy Lundergard’s house or anywhere else the authorities might be waiting. He’d watched the truck driver jump down and trot toward the bathrooms through the driving rain. He shivered as he pulled himself up between the cab and the trailer. This was going to be a cold ride.