Side by Side

“Wait for me,” she whispered.

“Call Clayton. Stay with the car. If I need help, you’ll know it.”

Winter pulled up the hood of his rain jacket and started for the house. He tried to clear his mind of the worry that had invaded it.

The Alexa Keen he knew had never seemed unsure of herself before.

37

Click Smoot reclined in a padded leather chair in front of the twelve-thousand-dollar plasma-screen television set that someone named Dakin T. Wilson had unwittingly bought for him. It was the first time Click had gone into the Advance Capital mainframe, using a code he had purchased from a programmer at the bank. If there was a trail to Click, the programmer would make it a circular track to nowhere.

He was watching a DVD called The Number One Stripper in America Contest, and at that moment he was imagining that he was right there in the club and the girl was stripping just for him. Had he not been engaged in a sexual fantasy, he might have heard the strangers coming in through the back door. He opened his eyes to get another look at a blonde who was doing a series of squat twists, when he noticed the two men standing in his kitchen doorway, looking right at him.

“What the hell!?” Click yelled. The men smiled, and he knew they were smiling at what he was doing to himself under the towel in his lap. “What do you think you’re doing?” he said indignantly.

“Saying hello,” the smaller of the two men said in a foreign accent. “Don’t let us interrupt your beeg show.”

Click was more embarrassed than frightened or angry, but he was plenty scared and pissed off by the intrusion. And he resented being pulled so violently from his engagement with the stripper.

“Get out,” he ordered.

“Sorry we didn’t have an appointment,” the smaller man, who looked like a detective, said. The larger one looked like he might be a plainclothes cop too.

The strangers walked straight into his den like they’d been invited, and the small one sat on the arm of the couch, while the larger one sat in the middle of it. Click’s closest handgun, a loaded Smith amp; Wesson.357, was under the couch cushion beside the larger guy’s right thigh.

Smaller weasel-looking guy took a cigarette out of a fancy red pasteboard box and lit it with what appeared to be a Dunhill lighter. “An excessive semen supply is the curse of youth. I know that as well as anyone.” He made a fist and imitated the deed in the air, leering. Larger guy smiled. “You don’t mind if I smoke, Click,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“You don’t got a search warrant, get out.”

The small man laughed. “We’re not police officers. Of course, you don’t know who we are. How rude of me.”

Click shrugged. “Why would I know you?”

“Maybe your father mentioned me. I am with a company that does some business with your father’s boss, Mr. Laughlin.”

Click chortled. “You don’t know jack. Mr. Laughlin isn’t my father’s boss. He’s his lawyer.”

“Max here is an associate of Hunter Bryce. You know who he is?”

“Yeah, I know who he is. He’s a loser on trial for murdering a Fed. That doesn’t tell me who you are.”

“Has Peanut ever mentioned a Russian he isn’t very fond of?”

“My father hates all foreigners. He hates Russians worse than all the others put together.”

“My name is Serge Sarnov. My associate is Max Randall.” The Russian wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Cool. Now, get the hell out of my house. You know who my daddy is, then you know you don’t want to piss him off.”

“I am not concerned with angering your father,” Sarnov said.

“You ought to be,” Click said. “You sure ought to be.”

Click noticed the Randall guy wasn’t a talker. He was watching the girl on the screen. He had fought back a smile on the tonsil zinger.

Sarnov waved his hand in the air, lit cigarette and all. “Your father is a crude man,” the Russian said. “No worldview. No grasp of current events and how things outside his realm might affect him. If he feels wronged by someone, he has to retaliate physically. He is doomed.”

“He does pretty fine.”

“As long as he is in his environment, so does a red-ass baboon. Does that offend you? You are not like the other people in your family. Not at all.” Sarnov shook his trigger finger at Click like a teacher gently admonishing a student. “You are brilliant, my young friend. I have to wonder if you were adopted. I mean, I have seen your family. I know why you live all alone. You have all of the class they lack. According to Mr. Laughlin, you are a genius about to come into your own. You are the future of the Smoots.”

Click had to smile to hear that Mr. Ross Laughlin talked about him. He felt himself blushing. “So what? Peanut doesn’t allow outside people to mess with his folks, especially not his kids.”

“I didn’t come to mess with you, Click. On the contrary, I came to discuss exploring some mutually profitable opportunities that could make you an extremely rich young man.”

“Like what?”

“Like using your burgeoning skills to make a lot of money. My organization has international reach and influence. And we have intelligence channels you wouldn’t believe.”

Click said, “I can do just fine with my own people, thank you.”

“I know things you wouldn’t think I’d know.”

“About what?”

“You. You can make a little money using your credit card scams, your little computer schemes. I think if we work together, you will end up with far more than you imagine is possible. Think way above your father’s level. Mr. Laughlin is a good boss for your father, but even he is well below where you can go.”

Click wondered if Ross Laughlin was his father’s boss-the mystery moneyman who protected them. If so, this was news. According to Peanut, Ross Laughlin was an extremely powerful lawyer with major government connections. “You know about Mr. Laughlin, then you know we’ve got all the connections we’ll ever need.”

“A lesson in structure, Click. Your father works for Ross Laughlin and Ross Laughlin works as a partner in a domestic syndicate. We are a hundred times stronger in this country than Laughlin’s aging syndicate. If you are as successful as you surely imagine you will be, which you can be, how much will they let you keep?

“You know I’m telling you the truth. You know your father. You put millions of dollars on the table, and Mr. Laughlin and your father will take. .” Serge crushed out the cigarette. “. . ninety-five points, maybe more, because they will see you only as a worker and they are greedy and suspicious. They never even trusted you with the fact that Mr. Laughlin is your daddy’s and therefore your boss. And if this Judge Fondren extortion-by-kidnap scheme doesn’t work as planned, your father is going to have to accept the blame, and he might not live much longer than the woman and her child do. Even if the Fondren thing comes off, your father’s days are numbered. Your only chance at long-term security lies with me, my firm. We will let you be a real partner, and for what we offer we will take but a small percentage. I can get you the things you need to make your plans work, like access codes to accounts to loot with numbers so large you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Like what kinds of accounts and numbers wouldn’t I believe?”

“Antiquated systems controlling accounts with a combined hundred and fifty billion dollars floating around in them gathering cobwebs, with nobody keeping a very close eye on them. A man with the right ability could nibble on them for years before anybody noticed. And there are more like that all over the world.”

“You’re crazy as hell.”

“Is that a no?”

“Damned straight it is. You’re a dead man.”

“Okay.” Sarnov stood and aimed a silenced pistol at Click’s head. “Sorry we couldn’t do business.”