“Yeah? One of those monster firms you always read about? Long hours, grinding away, no life.”
“Not anymore, no. She tried that for a while. After the loss, though, she left her firm and switched to government service.”
Rufus couldn’t think of a better way so he came right out with it. “What loss was that, John?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name.”
“Dennis,” he lied without any hesitation. “Dennis Miller.”
John’s eyes narrowed and he began inspecting Rufus more closely, roving from his scuffed black running shoes up his worn sweatpants, stopping at the torn T-shirt. Naming himself after a famous comedian was probably a mistake, but he’d seen him on TV the night before and it was the first and only thing that popped into his mind. Plus it might’ve been a good idea to dress a little fancier, Rufus realized, a little belatedly. He looked like exactly what he was, street scum looking to make a fast score.
“Sorry,” John said, sounding very final. “I don’t discuss family business with strangers.”
Rufus could hear, could almost feel the ten grand slipping out of his fingers. “Hey, it’s not like that, John. I’m no stranger. See, Mia and me, well, we were real close. I was just, you know, wondering what she lost.”
“Who are you meeting with down the hall?”
“Uh… my lawyer.”
John leaned forward and suddenly grabbed him firmly by the shirt collar. “You’re lying. There are no lawyers on this floor.”
“Hey, let me go. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The grip tightened and Rufus ended up on his tiptoes. “Who are you and what’s this about?” John hissed, showing his teeth.
It was time to scrap Plan A. Only Rufus didn’t have a Plan B. He shoved John as hard as he could and made a mad dash for the stairwell. He never looked back, never even glanced as he bolted eleven floors back down to ground level, then slipped out a side entrance of the building.
After three hours of riffling through old files in the city morgue, and another two in the library scrounging through death notices in the local papers, Rufus placed a call to O’Neal in D.C.
He quickly summarized his encounter with Mia’s oldest brother, as if the day had been an unmitigated success, worth the whole ten grand, if not more. Then he said, “Point is, something happened. Some severe loss that drove her out of her big firm and into government service.”
“So you figure she was looking for a new purpose in life. Serving some higher cause, that kind of gushy crap?”
“That’s what I heard in his voice, yeah.”
“What kind of loss would do that? She was making damn good dough.”
Rufus pondered the question. Probably a ninety percent cut in pay-why would anybody even consider something so damaging, so stupid? Made no sense to him. “Hell, I dunno,” he admitted emphatically.
“And you found nothing at the morgue?”
“Nope. Her parents are still kicking, all the brothers and a sister are still sucking oxygen. You sure she was never married, right? No kids, not even a bastard.”
“Never,” O’Neal answered, sounding deeply unsettled.
There was something here, O’Neal was sure, and he was even more desperate to find it. He was being paid for his instincts in these matters-and right now his gut was screaming that the key to Mia Jenson was that mysterious loss, whatever it was.
He wished he had more time to think about it, but things were coming unhinged fast. The morning had become a nightmare. Castile was supposed to call in about the break-in to Jenson’s house, but the call never came. Repeated attempts to reach Castile, both at his house and on his cell, went unanswered.
O’Neal had a team out now trying to hunt down the missing burglars; unfortunately, it was a ridiculously small team, two men, a pair of sad losers he ordinarily wouldn’t have dispatched to the deli for a sandwich.
Problem was, O’Neal had everybody with the slightest tinge of competence working overdrive to find someone much more important.
Jack Wiley had fallen off the face of the earth.
O’Neal hadn’t yet informed Walters that Wiley had slipped his net.
He prayed he would never have to.
Martie’s prayer went unanswered. The call he dreaded came at six that evening in the form of Mitch Walters in a foul mood, demanding an update.
He started with Mia. Martie explained about the meeting with her big brother in Chicago, about the mysterious “loss,” and reassured Walters that TFAC was deploying as many resources as possible to unearth the story. In this case, “as many resources as possible” equaled a sorry louse whose total PI experience was hunting down lost cats and peeking into bedrooms. But he didn’t admit that, of course.
“What about her home?” Walters asked. “Your boys pay her a visit yet?”
“Last night,” O’Neal answered, hoping that was the end of it.
“Did they leave her a little gift?”
“I think so.”
“You
“We’re, uh, having a slight glitch getting in contact with our contractors.”
“A glitch?”
“Nothing to worry about, Mitch. They went in last night and disappeared for a while. These boys are pros. They don’t bring no ID, they don’t bring cell phones. We’ll get it sorted out. Like I said, don’t worry.”
He almost laughed with relief when Walters asked, “What about Jenson’s office?”
“Working on it. I warned you it would take preparation and time. Won’t be long,” he promised.
There was a pause. Martie closed his eyes and hoped Walters was finished.
Finally Walters asked the question O’Neal desperately didn’t want to hear. “Where’s Wiley right now?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just say that Wiley wasn’t as cooperative as we hoped. We’re worried about Jenson making contact with him again. Tell me you’re keeping a good eye on him.”
Another long pause, this one on O’Neal’s part. He pinched his nose and confessed, “He, uh, well, he seems to have slipped away.”
“Tell me I didn’t hear that.”
“Sorry, Mitch. Yesterday, after he left your building, he went downtown, parked in a public garage, and disappeared.”
“This better be a joke, O’Neal. But I’m not laughing.”
“No, it’s quite true, Mitch.” He paused and struggled to keep his voice level. “Seemed innocent at the time, a momentary slip-up in coverage. But we reconsidered. Wiley obviously planned this escape a while ago.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s not complicated. We have his charge card numbers, his phone accounts, his bank account numbers, all of which we acquired seven months ago. He’s not using any of them. His bank accounts were electronically emptied out yesterday. He’s gone totally underground.”
Walters began cursing at O’Neal, unleashing a world of anger and fury. O’Neal held the phone away from his ear until Walters’s well ran dry. It took a while.
“That’s not helping anything,” he said to Walters.
“You’re fired,” Walters replied back.
“Don’t be stupid, Mitch. You can’t fire me right now. You need me more than ever, to put this thing back together.”
He could hear Walters breathing heavily on the other end. A few more scattered curses and threats flew across the line, but they lacked any semblance of conviction, just empty shots fired after the surrender to an ugly reality. “Find Wiley,” he barked in his most menacing tone. “Do whatever it takes, find him.”
“That’s not so easy. He’s a smart guy, and like I said, he prepared for this. But I have a suggestion.”
“What is it?”
O’Neal explained his plan-it was a great idea-and Walters quickly agreed to do his part.
It was impossible to sleep or nap.
