All of them be assigned permanent sections. An’ his section includes the top executive suites.”
Ricci exchanged glances with him.
“No shit,” he said.
There was more silence in the room.
“I think we ought to give him a call,” Ricci said.
Lathrop exited the CNN Web site after finding no updated headlines about Roger Gordian’s condition and then restored the Profiler application to his computer screen.
Blondie’s luscious face reappeared in front of him, enlarged and enhanced from the digital video he’d taken near the carousel in Balboa Park. None to his surprise, the program still hadn’t made her. The only reason he’d bothered running her image through it again was that he’d procured a handful of new investigative files from one of his infoworms — although for some reason this particular worm wasn’t penetrating very deep inside the apple lately and soon would be worthless as an informant. It was part of the natural order of things, Lathrop thought. The ebb and flow. They rose to grace, they fell. They gained access, they lost it. But he had other sources at his disposal in a lot of different places. And there were always prospects to be cultivated among the greedy and disenchanted.
Leaving his desktop on, he swiveled around in his comfortable leather office chair and reclined to watch his coon cat toy with a favorite ball of yarn. She prodded it with her front paws to set it rolling and then crouched in readiness to pounce, her tail flicking back and forth on the floor.
“Okay, Missus Frakes,” he said in a fond tone. “Let’s see you go for it.”
The cat cooed at the sound of his voice. Then she sprang upon the wound-up yarn and twisted onto her back, holding the ball against her middle with her forelegs, kicking and raking at it with her sharp rear claws.
Lathrop smiled a little. She would work the thing till it became unraveled and spread loosely across the carpet. Just as he was working his own ball of yarn. The biggest he’d ever chanced upon.
He sat thinking about what he actually knew, what further information he’d been able to surmise from it, and what choices and opportunities the sum total presented to him.
His surveillances at Balboa and the harbor parking lot combined to tell a pretty amazing story. Whatever her identity might be, it was certain Blondie was a courier for El Tio. And her purpose in meeting Enrique Quiros had been to deliver the jewelry box for the obscure narco distributer and instruct Enrique to pass it along to the guy he’d then arranged to meet harborside. His name was Palardy. A member of the security or countersnoop team at UpLink International whose gambling jones had gotten him in over his head with some serious operators, and who’d paid off a piece of his debt by turning over classified information about the defense systems of UpLink’s manufacturing compound in Brazil. El Tio’s involvement in the terrorist raid on that base was unclear to Lathrop, but it probably didn’t have much importance at this stage, and he hadn’t concerned himself with it.
The main thing for him was to keep on top of what was happening now. Because events were already moving fast, and he had the sense they were about to kick up to a breathless pace.
It was interesting how sellout dupes like Palardy could be so utterly blind to the traps being set for them. How they never realized that the type of men who were using them would keep their hooks in until every bit of usefulness was exhausted. At the harbor, Palardy and his current user had talked about genetic blueprints, disease triggers, stuff Lathrop had needed to research afterward. And there was enough he still had to check out. But despite a lingering question mark or two, he’d gotten the gist of their encounter… and stripped to the bone, it all came down to blackmail and murder. Palardy had been given some kind of biological agent, something new under the sun, and been ordered to take out Roger Gordian with it.
Lathrop tilted a little farther back in his chair, continuing to watch Missus Frakes relentlessly pull apart the yarn with her teeth and claws.
In the Safe Car — ha — ha — Palardy had understandably squawked with resistance. Quiros’s errand would bounce him from the role of informant to killer, and he’d never planned for things to escalate that far. But Quiros pushed, bringing up what dirt he had on him, and that made him shut his mouth and agree to cooperate. It was a variation of a theme Lathrop had seen repeated time and again in the territory he chose to prowl, though one notable distinction about the enactment featuring Quiros and Palardy was that neither had been inclined to get mixed up in Gordian’s assassination. That Quiros was himself muscled into it. This had become apparent from his protestations to Blondie and a couple of indirect comments he’d made to Palardy — the latter being moments of commiseration and empathy that hadn’t exactly caused Lathrop’s eyes to mist. But he supposed he was a cynical audience, having maybe seen the basic plot unfold once too often.
After that night at the harbor, Lathrop had concentrated on the script he’d drafted for Quiros and Lucio Salazar without their knowledge. It had netted him a sweet take, and the blowout climax promised to be refreshing fun. But in another twenty-four hours, it would be time to move beyond it. Turn a bend, head on out toward virgin soil.
If he’d needed any incentive to urge him along, nothing could have been better than the news reports about Gordian’s hospitalization.
Lathrop glanced around at the pretty lady on his computer screen and remembered the afternoon he’d followed Enrique to his rendezvous with her. Remembered watching the carousel make its slow rotations with the “Blue Danube” piping in the background, the rowdy, stoned-out teenagers on the lead horses rising from their saddles, stretching their arms to reach for the silver and brass rings above them, only the gleaming brass worth a prize.
A smile ghosted at the corners of Lathrop’s mouth again.
The brass ring.
He’d gotten hold of it. Without ever climbing aboard the platform, stalking the periphery on his ceaseless, solitary hunt, he’d been the one who caught hold. And that left him having to make two major decisions.
Namely when to claim his prize and how best to trade on its indescribable value.
“Third time I’ve called, and still no answer except from his machine,” Ricci said. “Where the hell is Palardy?”
“Who knows? Maybe he went out for some groceries.”
“He’s supposed to be sick.”
“Doesn’t have to mean he’s bedridden. A person has to eat, no matter how lousy he feels. If there’s no food in the house, you live alone, you go buy some.”
“Third time in an
“Whoa,” Megan said, putting up her hand. “I think you two are getting way ahead of yourselves.”
They looked at her from their chairs in Nimec’s office.
“How so?” Nimec said.
“It could be that he’s turned off the ringer on his phone to get some sleep, or doesn’t hear it, or just doesn’t want to answer.”
“Or maybe he was feeling better and went out for fresh air,” Scull said. “For all we know, the guy had a stomach bug and is already back to normal.”
“If that’s the case, why wasn’t he at work today?”
Scull shrugged. “He might not have felt normal till earlier tonight. I’m only agreeing with Meg that—”
“You see me phone his section chief ten minutes ago? You remember our conversation?”
“Sure I do—”
“What he told me, this section chief, was that the last time anybody heard from Palardy was when he phoned in yesterday, and that the guy sounded sick as a dog, and he was supposed to call back today to report how he was doing. And never did.”
“I said I remembered—”
“The section chief, his name’s Hernandez, also said he thought it was very odd that Palardy didn’t call. In fact, I’m pretty sure he started to use the word irresponsible, too, but checked himself.”
