The Trail to Buddha's Mirror (10 page)

“Dr. Robert Pendleton, please.”

“One moment.”

Here we go again.

Another voice, a harsh male voice, came on the line. “Who is this?”

“Who is
this?”

“Why are you inquiring about Dr. Pendleton?”

“Why are you inquiring why I’m inquiring?”

“Please identify yourself or I will have to terminate this call.”

Terminate this call?!
What the hell is going on with this stupid case? Who says stuff like “terminate this call”?Security types, that’s who.

“This is the assistant manager at the Chinatown Holiday Inn,” Neal said. “Dr. Pendleton left some medication behind when he checked out, and I wanted to know if I should FedEx it, or whether regular mail would do.”

“One moment.”

They must all go to the same school, Neal thought.

“Dr. Pendleton says that regular mail will be sufficient.”

“May I confirm that with him personally, please? Company rules.”

“He’s very busy at the moment.”

“I’m sure he is. Thank you.”

Neal packed in a hurry. Suddenly he didn’t want to be in the hotel, where anyone could find him. There were too many contradictions. Joe Graham never takes vacations and hates Ireland, but he’s on vacation in Ireland. Ed Levine says that Bob Pendleton is back at work, but he isn’t, because AgriTech security relays a message from him about medication that doesn’t exist. And someone tries to kill me because I found Pendleton.

Whoever was diddling the door was doing it well, because it barely made a sound. But Neal Carey had done a lot of doors and he heard it like it was an alarm bell. Which it was.

Someone had picked up his trail and was planning something nasty in the ever-so-nice Mark Hopkins, and there was no way out of the tiny room.

Which was maybe okay, he thought.

Neal grabbed the letter opener off the desk and waited behind the door. He was scared as hell, but he was also getting a little tired of being jerked around, and whoever was coming through the door was going to get a little surprise in the form of a letter opener swung fast and hard.

Neal’s heart raced like the ball on a roulette wheel as he heard the lock click and watched the door handle come up. If the guy had a gun, he had to beat him to the punch, so to speak—put him down hard and keep him down so he could ask him a few questions.

The door came open slowly and Neal let loose. The point of the opener stuck into the intruder’s arm and quivered.

“What’s the matter? You got a babe in there, you don’t want me to come in?”

Joe Graham was staring at him curiously.

“Come in.”

Graham plucked the letter opener from his rubber arm. He looked disgustedly at the sleeve of his shirt. “This is a new shirt, Neal. I just bought it.”

Neal’s heart slowed to a mere gallop. He slammed the door shut behind Graham. Looking at the purple shirt, he said, “I did you a favor.”

Neal plunked himself down on the bed and let out a long sigh.

“You’re not happy to see me,” said Graham.

“I thought you were on vacation in Ireland.”

“Funny thing about that, son. I finished prying you out of your cave and called in. All of a sudden, Levine is nagging me about all this vacation time I got built up. Says I have to take it right now. I say okay, but then get to thinking maybe there’s a reason they don’t want me around just when they send you on a job. I get thinking maybe I should come back on the sly and check on my dearly beloved son, who might fuck up and get himself hurt without his dear old dad there to help him out. So, son, how have you fucked up and what kind of trouble are you in?”

Neal started at the top and told Graham the whole story, taking him through the search of Room 1016, his dance with Benchpress, the trip to Mill Valley, dinner at the Kendalls, Li Lan’s seductive offer, and the shot that nearly killed him. Graham sat silent for the whole monologue, except for a few tongue-cluckings and mutterings of “Shame” at some of Neal’s more egregious errors.

When Neal finished the long story, Graham asked, “So what did she look like naked?”

“What?”

“The babe. The China doll. What did she look like in the flesh?”

“Jesus, Graham.”

Graham went over to the courtesy bar and removed two of the little bottles of scotch. He wiped the hotel’s glass with a handkerchief, poured himself a double, and sipped contentedly.

“Tell me again. From the hot-tub part.”

“Graham, if you think I’m going to sit here and indulge your prurient—

“Indulge
this,”
Graham said, showing him precisely. “Now tell your old dad. And don’t skip a single juicy detail.”

When Neal had finished the reprise, Graham smiled, shook his head, and said, “She never was going to do you, you idiot. She was just stalling you so Pendleton could get in the car without your getting wise. She doesn’t know you like I do.”

“What do you mean?”

“She told you to wait, remember? Then, when you weren’t buying—you’re an asshole, by the way—she gave you something to keep your, uh, mind on until everyone got nice and comfy in the car. Then she ran off, leaving you holding, shall I say, the bag?”

Neal wondered if he looked as stupid as he felt.

“You don’t think she really wanted to have sex with me?”

“Well, you were naked. She probably got a good look at you.”

“What about the shot? She was setting me up!”

Graham went back to the refrigerator, found a six-dollar can of smoked almonds, and poured them on a plate. He popped the nuts in his mouth as he talked.

“Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t. Could be none of them knew anything about any shot.”

“She ran away!”

“Good idea when shooting breaks out. What did you want her to do, cover you with her body? Oh, that’s right, that’s exactly what you wanted her to do.”

“Pass me an almond.”

“Get your own food.”

“That
is
my food.”

“Not anymore.”

Neal found a Swiss chocolate bar priced like a silver ingot.

Graham continued, “You ask me, I don’t think she even heard the shot. I think she was just running from you because that was part of the plan. Get you all hot and bothered so you weren’t thinking straight—again, they don’t know you like I do—and leave you wet and naked in the tub. No clothes, no towel. Very bright of you, by the way, son. You also ask me, I don’t think the bullet was meant for you, as appealing an idea as that might be.”

“Why not?” Neal asked, realizing he sounded almost indignant, as if suddenly he wasn’t important enough to be shot at.

“They could have whacked you anytime. The broad didn’t have to show you her stuff to do that. They could have popped you when you first got in the tub.”

“So who—” Neal started, but stopped because he couldn’t talk and think at the same time. Why had AgriTech told him Pendleton was there when he wasn’t? Maybe because they thought Pendleton was dead?

“I called Ed,” Neal said. “He told me Pendleton came back and told me to do the same.”

“So?”

“So I called AgriTech and they told me the same thing.”

“So Ed is right for a change. These things happen.”

“But Pendleton isn’t there, Dad.” He related his ruse involving the medication, then sat silently while Graham rubbed his rubber fist into his palm.

“I think,” Graham said finally, “we have to find out a little more about AgriTech.”

Something about AgriTech was wrong.

The library said so. One of the things that Neal loved about libraries was that they were all the same—not the layout or the architecture or the carpeting, of course, but the system. Once you learned the system, every library was known ground. Hunting ground.

He started with the usual suspects—
Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s, Dun & Bradstreet
—and found out that AgriTech was a much smaller company than he thought it would be, a lowly sixteenth ranking in the agrichemical category.

The bigger surprise, though, was that it was privately held. That didn’t make sense. Companies engaging in large, long-term research projects usually need the capital they can get on the public market. They’re attractive investments, and the initial investors usually like to roll them over early.

But private firms are just that—private. Harder to get data on, less responsible to watchdog agencies. Neal found a copy of
Ward’s Directory,
which specialized in private companies. He found out that AgriTech employed 317 people—not many for a research company—and had a narrow market base, mostly in the development of pesticides for the tobacco industry.

Pesticides? Neal thought. What happened to fertilizer? To the old chickenshit?

He took a look at the directors and principal officers. The president was one Leslie P. Little, Ph.D. Chemistry degrees from Nebraska, Illinois, and MIT. Impressive resume of employment at several large agrichemical firms. Vice-President Harold D. Innes very similar. Dull stuff. But Secretary/Treasurer Paul R. Knox—even the title was an anomaly—was a little more interesting. Pretty standard management education, including a Columbia M.B.A. and a long list of prior employment—but it looked fuzzy, out of focus. Knox had worked for Trans Pax, an import-export firm in San Diego, before moving to something called the Council for Swedish-American Trade. He had stayed there for two years and then taken a position in Stockholm with Sverigenet, an American computer consulting firm. After three years at Internet he had split for Hong Kong as executive director of a telecommunications equipment importer called Dawson and Sons, Ltd. Two years there, and he’d left for Directions in Social Inquiry, apparently a polling operation, in Silver Springs, Maryland. Then on to the board of AgriTech, where he was also the comptroller.

By the record, Neal thought, this guy knows less about chemicals than any junior high school student on the West Side.

Neal scanned the board of directors. None of the names meant anything to him until he came to the fourth entry: Ethan Kitteredge, the Man himself. So the Bank had come across with the big loan and bought itself a seat on the board. But for what?

Follow the money. Or, in this case, the money man. Somewhere along the line, Ethan Kitteredge had handed a packet of bucks to Paul Knox, who had a pinball background.

Neal went across the street, grabbed a quick cup of coffee and a toasted bagel, and headed back into the library. It was already noon, and he would have to repeat the process he had used in AgriTech with all of Knox’s former companies. He figured it would take him at least another three hours. It didn’t; none of the companies existed.

He looked in every source that he knew, but couldn’t find any entry for Trans Pax, Internet International, or Directions in Social Inquiry. Dawson and Sons wouldn’t have been listed anyway, but Neal suspected it was another cardboard company.

So how about the Council for Swedish-American Trade? Was it a nonprofit agency to stimulate business, a government-sponsored agency, or a private concern that put itself in the middle of any potential deal and took its ten points?

Neal found the Washington, D.C., phone book on microfilm, but couldn’t find any listing for the Council. Ditto when he called information. He got the number for the Department of Commerce, and a half-dozen transfers and holds got him to somebody at the International Trade Administration’s Export Counseling Center who at least pretended to be interested in Neal’s brilliant plan to market high-efficiency electric space heaters to the Swedish consumer. This helpful person forwarded Neal’s call to the Administration’s desk officer for Sweden, who politely feigned fascination and advised Neal to contact the Swedish consulate, board of trade, and interior affairs bureau, but who never mentioned the Council for Swedish-American Trade.

“What about the Council for Swedish-American Trade?” Neal asked finally.

He could almost hear the chuckle that preceded the answer, “They’re not really in your field.”

“How come?”

“They tend to handle more high-tech, larger-volume sorts of things.”

“I’m planning real high volume,” Neal said with a trace of belligerence.

“And when you get there, I’m sure they’ll be glad to talk to you. In the meantime, I really recommend you give the consulate a call….”

Okay, okay, Neal thought. What do we have here? A guy on the board of an agrichemical company who has no background or education in agriculture or chemistry. The same guy has worked for a bunch of companies that can’t be traced and for a council on Swedish-American trade that isn’t interested in talking to someone about trade between America and Sweden.

We have a company that should be public that’s private—a company that makes pesticides and is desperate to get back a biochemist whose specialty is fertilizer. We have the Bank writing a big loan to this company to develop not a new pesticide, but a new fertilizer, and then taking a seat on the board of the company. And we have the Man at the Bank sending me to get the scientist back. Then someone tries to shoot me when I do.

We have Levine lying about Pendleton’s return, and AgriTech security backing up the lie. We have Levine telling me to come home and forget about it. Why would they say Pendleton’s back when he isn’t? Why isn’t Levine jumping up and down and screaming at me to do my fucking job and bring him back?

Unless all of a sudden they don’t want him back.

Unless they want to make sure he doesn’t come back.

Ever.

Paranoia is like a seatbelt—it’s when you don’t put it on that you get in an accident.

So thought Neal Carey as professional paranoia gripped him around the middle. Graham would never let anything happen to me while he’s on the job, so they take him off. They make a big show out of sending their golden boy retriever, me, to find the absent professor. Good old dog that I am, I go on point, and someone shoots … not me, but what they think is Pendleton. Dark night, dimly lit deck, the back of my head to the hill, where the shot came from. It’s possible.

So someone goes out and picks up my poor corpse and makes the sad announcement that Robert Pendleton is dead. Murdered. The investigation fizzles and is forgotten.