“Jeremy!” she shouted. “You gotta come over here, right now. Somebody’s after me. Or after that disc. You gotta come over.”
“Are you at home?” I asked.
“No. I’m at Marko’s. It’s not far from my place. Can you come right now?”
“I’ll leave right away.”
She gave me the address. I was there in half an hour.
* * *
Marko lived in a surprisingly nice apartment complex. He had a garden apartment with a front-facing patio that had a grill and little picnic table and benches. The drapes were closed over the sliding glass door that led to the patio. When I knocked on the front door, to the left of the patio, Marko opened it with the chain still on. When he saw who it was, he closed the door and took the chain off and let me in.
“Just so you know,” he said. “It wasn’t my idea to call you.”
“I’ll make a note,” I told him. “Where’s Dee-Dee?”
“Right here,” she said, as she walked in from the kitchen. She was wearing white slacks and a yellow pullover, and her face was puffy and red. Someone had been slapping her around, and not too long ago.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Sit down,” she said. She sat on the sofa, and Marko immediately sat beside her. I took one of the chairs on the other side of the coffee table.
“Okay,” she said, “that disc thing? I had the copy all along. Terry gave it to me the last time I saw him, just before he was killed. He stopped by on his way home that night, just for a little while, and before he left, he gave me the disc. I asked him what it was, and he laughed and said it was his passport to a partnership. Anyway, he just told me to keep it for him for a while. He said he’d get it back from me later on.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you had it when I asked?”
“’Cause I didn’t know what was on it. Since you were asking about it, I thought maybe it was valuable, you know? If I turn it over to you, maybe I never see it again. So I decided to wait awhile, try to find out what was on it. I put it in my computer, but I couldn’t get the damn thing to download. Then, last night, I realized that maybe I didn’t have to know what was on it as long as somebody else thought I did. So this morning, I called Terry’s law firm and asked to speak to Mr. Chaney. I knew he was the boss there. When I finally got him, I told him I had a disc that he probably wanted, and I offered to sell it to him.” She looked at me a little defensively and said, “I mean, Terry ain’t got no use for it anymore, right?”
“Right,” I agreed. “Then what happened?”
“That creep Chaney said he had no idea what I was talking about, and he hung up. An hour later, some asshole showed up at my apartment. I thought it was my new refrigerator being delivered. It took me three months to get the super to agree to give me one. When I opened the door, this guy pushed his way in and said he wanted the disc. I said what disc and he started slappin’ me. I tried to scream, but he grabbed me and stuffed a dishcloth in my mouth and threatened to kill me if I wasn’t quiet. He kept asking me where the disc was, and I kept telling him I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then Marko showed up.”
I glanced over at Marko with a quizzical look in my eyes.
“Dee-Dee told me last night that she might need some help with this refrigerator that was supposed to be delivered this morning, and I told her I’d drop by. When I got to her place, I heard some noises inside, so I called her name, and then I heard like a muffled scream, you know, so I tried the door. It wasn’t locked, so I went inside.”
“That’s when the asshole pulled a gun and pointed it at Marko,” Dee-Dee said.
“If he hadn’t had that gun,” said Marko, “I’d’ve reamed his ass for him.”
“Anyway,” continued Dee-Dee, as though Marko hadn’t spoken at all, “this guy didn’t seem to know what to do. He looked at me and he looked at Marko and then he just took off. I grabbed the disc, and Marko and me headed over here to his place, and I called you.”
“You were lucky,” I said.
“How do you figure that?” she asked.
“Your visitor had probably been told to get the disc and, maybe, kill you. Maybe not. But then suddenly here’s Marko. The thug didn’t have the disc yet, and he probably didn’t know if there was a limit on the number of bodies he was allowed to leave behind. Not his fault, really. He was just lower-echelon, almost certainly out of the loop when it comes to decisions about the big picture. So he bolted.”
“But how’d he know who I was or where I lived?”
“Do you have a star-69 block on your phone?” I asked her.
“Un-uh,” she said.
“When you called Elias Chaney, he star-69ed you and got your number, which he then gave to somebody else, who was able to use it to get your address.”
I was pretty sure I knew who the somebody else was.
Dee-Dee reached into her purse and pulled out a disc, which she handed to me over the table.
“Here,” she said, “I don’t know what’s on this thing, and I don’t want to. When people start coming at me with fists and guns, it’s time to get out of the game.”
“Good thinking,” I told her. “Do you have a place where you can stay for a while?”
“She can stay right here,” said Marko.
“Un-uh,” I said. “You work
