recording so he wouldn’t have to edit too much later. “Picture the scene. This crazy guy has you locked away in a filthy, dark factory, and he’s trying to put you in a cage. But”-Kleingarten acted out the next part, grunting as he spoke-“you kick him in the nuts and run. You get to his little office and there’s a cell phone, right on the desk, like he wanted you to use it. You got no choice. You pick it up and call your only friend in the world-”
“I got lots of friends.” Her nostrils flared a little.
“Yeah, I know, but nobody else who understands. You know you’ve got less than a minute, tops, and how could you explain it all to anyone else?”
She nodded. “Yeah, in that case, it would be Wendy.”
Kleingarten hit the “Record” button. “So you pick up the phone, punch in her number and-”
“I don’t know her number. Not off the top of my head. I’d have to dig around in my purse. Unless it was my cell phone, then her number would be stored in it.”
“Okay, goddamn it, let’s say it’s your phone on the desk. You pick it up and get through and she answers and you go…” He pointed the recorder toward her face as the cue.
“Wendy, I’m in the Monkey House.”
“Hey, not bad, a little passion, a little fear, a little drama. What movies did you say you were in?”
“Nothing you probably heard of. Tommy Salami, Patti Cake Patti Cake, and Cherry Paradise.”
She’d named them with a perverse kind of pride. Kleingarten had heard of them, and had seen one, and now he knew why she looked familiar. “You did a lot of movies with food in them.”
“Yeah.” She gave him a glassy-eyed smile.
Kleingarten was angry now. He usually didn’t get too worked up over a job, even an enjoyable one, but she’d just shot down one of his little fantasies of how this would play out.
After remembering the disgusting things she’d done with those guys in that video-guys of every color in the rainbow-he wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole. And that was a fucking shame.
“Can I have my pill now?” she asked.
He moved the hand with the vial behind his back. “Okay, now pretend he’s got you again, and you go, ‘Help me, hurry, we’re in the old factory where we killed Susan.’ Except rush the words all together.”
She started and then forgot the line.
“Here, let me help you,” he said, grabbing her wavy blonde hair and yanking.
“Ow.”
“Help me, hurry, we’re in the factory where we killed Susan.” He was getting impatient, and that scared her a little.
“Help me, hurry, we’re in the factory where we killed Susan.”
He clicked the recorder off. That was an Oscar performance. Briggs would be pleased. “Okay, honey, it’s a wrap.”
Kleingarten slid the recorder in his pocket and shook out one of the green pills. He gave it to her and she tossed it in her mouth without looking at it. He figured she put a lot of things in there without looking.
The dose seemed to hit pretty quickly, because she looked around as if realizing she wasn’t in the hospital or her apartment. “What were you making me say?” she asked.
He shook the vial. “These pills. They really help you forget, huh?”
“Forget what?”
“That movie we were talking about.”
“Yeah,” she said. “A movie. Did I get the part?”
“Sure. Didn’t you get the script?”
“No. What happens next?”
“A little reunion. And then you commit suicide.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Mark was startled to find his wife’s office door ajar and the lights off. During scheduled office hours, she kept it wide open. Otherwise, the small room was locked.
He glanced at his watch. He was only twenty minutes late, and she wouldn’t have left knowing he didn’t have a car. He tapped on the door as he opened it.
“Lex?”
He flipped on the light. Her normally neat office was in disarray, books pulled from the shelves, desk drawers open, papers and magazines scattered across the desktop. The computer was turned on its side, the mouse dangling by its cord halfway to the floor. A splintered pencil protruded from the forehead of the Styrofoam mannequin head he’d given her as a present, upon which she’d drawn a crude diagram of the brain’s different lobes.
Scrawled across the foam forehead, in Alexis’s handwriting, were the words “Every 4 hrs. or else.”
Or else what? If you’ve harmed her, you bastard, I’ll gut you like a frog in biology class.
He heard a purring electronic echo. Her phone was in the room. He found her purse upended behind the desk, the makeup compact, tampons, pens, coins, and car keys scattered across the floor, but it had quit ringing before he could answer.
Alexis was never without her phone. He checked the incoming number but it was blocked.
He jammed the phone in his pocket, swept up the keys, and grabbed the note. He locked the door behind him. A janitor’s discovery of the mess might lead to questions.
On the way to the parking deck, he called Burchfield, who answered with a terse greeting. While Mark was part of the inner circle, the senator didn’t like people calling without an appointment.
“Senator, we might have a problem with the trials,” Mark said, making sure no one was in earshot. People seemed wrapped up in their own concerns and the evening rush hour that awaited them.
“No problems, Mark, everything is under control.”
“But is Briggs under control? We knew he would be a big risk factor.”
“It’s only a risk when you have a choice.” Laughter and music leaked from the background, suggesting the senator was at some vitally critical social function. Canapes and Chablis on the taxpayer dole in the name of national security. “Briggs is the only one who can pull it off.”
“He’s not exactly flying under the radar here. Not when he’s dragging in a member of the bioethics council.”
“Your wife?”
“Maybe. I don’t know yet. But he’s playing some kind of game. It’s not just for money anymore.”
“You’re the boots on the ground there, Mark. Control Briggs and control your wife. Do whatever it takes.”
Mark wanted to hurl the phone at the concrete pillars of the parking deck. Instead, he said, “Yes, sir.”
“And Mark?”
“Yeah?”
“Watch your back.”
The senator rang off and Mark took his advice, glancing behind him. After the incident at the airport, he felt exposed and vulnerable. The solid world of company profits, performance bonuses, Washington hobnobbing, and a big house in one of the brain centers of the South had given way to a landscape of ever-shifting horizons and illusory detours.
And a man in a dark jogging suit was now also in that picture.
Mark picked up his pace, wondering where Briggs had taken Alexis. Or if she’d been taken at all.
The man behind him began jogging in his direction. Mark gave one more glance back, and then began running. His hard-soled leather shoes slapped on the concrete, and a young couple eyed him suspiciously as he burst past the rows of cars. He made it to the stairwell before the jogger caught up with him. Mark waited, panting, on the concrete steps.
“Where is she?” Mark asked between gasps.
The jogger wore a stocking cap despite the relatively mild March weather, and it was pulled down to his
