Amanda's Eyes (26 page)

Dennis snorted.  “Before or after he
dumps you in an unmarked grave?”

“He’s not going to lay a finger on
her,” Eagan promised.

Talk about famous last words ….

It was like being in a play, except
I didn’t have a script, and a missed cue could be fatal.

“Thank you for getting back to me,
Conover said.

He was perched on the corner of a
burled-walnut desk, his snowy hair tied back with a leather thong.  He wore a
red turtleneck, stylishly faded blue jeans, loafers sans socks, and an Eagle
Scout’s smile.  I had to admit he was good.  No, better than good.  Looking at
that face, you would never guess the man’s heart was set on death and dismemberment. 
In this case, mine.

The real Conover was nowhere to be
seen.  Either Malcolm wasn’t riled enough for the shields to drop, or my
visions weren’t Cloud compatible.  Apparitions probably don’t digitize well.  But
since this wasn’t the time or place to explore criminal psychology or meditate
on the physics of the paranormal, I let my questions slide and delivered my line.

“Tug Maxwell … my editor … said you
have some information for me.”

“I do.”

He didn’t appear the least bit interested
in my surroundings.  Either he wasn’t scanning for visual clues to my
location—the call itself was untraceable—or having learned about my CIIS
connections from Sadie, he suspected the no-tell-motel room was so much smoke
and mirrors.  In which case, he would have been right.

“Mr. Maxwell said you were out on
assignment.”  Pause.  “By any chance, does this assignment involve the Ferrymen?”

“He tell you that?” I asked. 
Guarded.

“No.”  His lips curved ruefully.  “For
a newsman, he was singularly uninformative.”  The smile faded.  “But you’ve
been crusading against them for a year and a half, and you don’t strike me as
the type to let go of a cause once you sink your teeth into it.”

“Not so far.”

He nodded.  “That tenacity is one of
the qualities I most admire in you.  How close are you to exposing the Ferrymen? 
I have a legitimate reason for asking,” he assured me hastily.

I decided to be blunt.  Hit him with
the truth and see which way he ran with it.  “If I were any closer, I would be
inside.”

Maybe I hoped he would at least bat
an eyelash.  He didn’t.  “What if I could help?” he asked instead.

“Excuse me?”

“I may have stumbled upon some
information about their supply lines.”

“Mr. Conover—”

“Malcolm.”

“Malcolm,” I conceded.  “I don’t mean
to sound cynical, but where would a nice man like you come up with a lead like
that?  Philanthropists and assassins don’t usually move in the same circles.” 
Usually
rolled off my tongue without a hint of irony.  Maybe I should take up acting as
a second career.

“Amanda ….  May I call you Amanda?” 
He waited for my nod before continuing, “Not everyone I deal with is a saint.”

I pretended to consider this pearl
of wisdom.  “All right,” I replied slowly, “given some of the third-world
dictatorships you have to do business with, I can see that.  Not that I’m convinced,”
I quickly added, “but I’m willing to be.  What have you got?”

“I’m not comfortable divulging that
information via UpLink.  Could we meet?  I’m afraid I can’t come to you—my movements
attract far too much attention.  Maybe you could visit Foundation headquarters
in Austin?”

“If that’s what it takes.  When do
you want to do this?”

“The sooner, the better.  Shall we
say tomorrow?”

I paused, a busy woman mentally reviewing
her schedule.  “Tomorrow should work.  What time?”

“Come for lunch, and I’ll take you
on a tour in the afternoon.”

I lifted a brow.  “And I need a tour
because …?”

“Because you’re a well-known crime
reporter, and our staff will wonder why you’re here.  I thought we might
explain your visit as research.  You know, familiarizing yourself with
legitimate not-for-profits as preparation for a piece on fraud involving
charitable organizations?”

Nothing like lifting a page from
your own playbook, Malcolm.

“Sounds plausible,” I said.  “Okay, we’ll
play it your way.  I’ll be at your headquarters at noon tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Amanda.  I promise you
won’t regret your visit.”

Yeah.  I should live so long.

“Let me get this straight,” said
Dennis.  “You’re
going
?”

“No,” Iceman interjected firmly,
“she’s not.”

He was lounging against the counter
again, but his aura had undergone a subtle shift from casual to immovable
.
 
I swallowed the retort that leapt to my lips, because
Back off, Buster!
would only make him dig in his heels, and I hoped to coax him fully on board
for what I had in mind.

“Yes,” I said, also firmly, “I am.  My
gut tells me it’s time we got in this guy’s face.”

“To hell with your gut,” Eagan
decided.  “We’ve got Sidorov.  Justice signed off on the deal this morning.”

“Glad to hear it.  But you know what
they say about putting all your eggs in one basket.”  Especially if said basket
was woven of a long, drawn-out, bureaucracy-heavy investigation with lots of anally
retentive detail obsession.  “What if Sidorov can’t come through with concrete
evidence against Conover?  This guy is connected to all the right people.  More
popular than Santa Claus.  The fact that he’s been so upfront about his
misspent youth only adds luster to his saintly glow.  If it finally boils down
to her word against his, we’re sunk.”

Eagan scowled, tacitly acknowledging
my point.

Dennis said, “And you’re betting you
can string him along and ….  What?  Get him to incriminate himself?”

“Maybe.  It’s happened before.  Guys
who think they’re smarter than the rest of us tend to trip over their pride.  Put
yourself in Conover’s shoes.  He runs the world’s most elite band of assassins. 
They come and go like phantoms. 
Nobody’s
safe.  You know it, I know it,
the neighborhood dogcatcher knows it.  He’s got cops on three continents running
in circles, and VIPs on both sides of the law shaking in their boots, wondering
if they’re next.  Our boy is getting away with murder in spectacular style,
but
he can’t tell anybody!
  I’ll bet he’s dying to brag a little.”

“Fishing for information cuts both
ways,” Jack reminded me.  “Conover wants to get you talking as much as you do
him.  He needs to find out how much you know.”

“Then I’ll have to watch what I say,
won’t I?  It’s not like this will be my first interview with a felon, you know. 
If nothing else, our chat will give me a chance to get him
really
worried
about what I have.  If I can stir him up enough, I can get another peek inside. 
I might pick up information we can use.”

“Could be worth a shot,” Dennis guessed
after two endless minutes of silence.

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to let
her have another look,” Eagan admitted grudgingly.  “But one of us goes with
her.”

“Now hold on,” I said, but they
ignored me.

“Not
one
of us,” Baker
interjected.  “
Me
.  Ito wants you to debrief Sidorov.  As far as he
knows, the housekeeper is our one and only lead, and he wants you to do the
questioning.  So unless you’re ready to chance a mandatory psych evaluation by
briefing him in on A.J.’s visions, you’re stuck.”

Eagan swore softly.  “All right, you
go.  But we take the usual steps.”

“Can I get a word in edgewise here?”
I asked, holding up an index finger.  Seeing I had finally managed to snag
their attention, I said, “Not that I don’t appreciate your concern, but I’ve
been doing this kind of work for years.  I don’t need—”

Iceman severed my verb from my direct
object with an impatient hand-slash.  “Yes, you do, and that’s not negotiable. 
You’ve been lucky so far, but nobody’s lucky forever.  Conover will pull out
all the stops to get you dead,
after
he pumps you about what you know
and where you got the information and who you shared it with.  And he isn’t
into asking nicely.  Or have you forgotten what they did to Sadie?”

“You know I haven’t.”

“Then let us do our job.  Call him
back and tell him you’re bringing your assistant.”

“Sadie told him I left Hobson’s Hope
with CIIS, but he’s going to accept Dennis as my assistant?”

“Not for a minute, but he won’t let
on.”

“Because,” Dennis cut in, “the only
guy who would
expect
you to have a CIIS bodyguard
posing
as your
assistant—”

“—would be the guy who tortured Sadie,”
I finished.

“Make the call,” said Eagan.

Did I have a choice?  No, but I
didn’t have to like it.  “Fine,” I sighed, “have it your way.”

“I usually do.”

Two tiers of traffic crawled
bumper-to-bumper.  We rolled at a snail’s pace between cobblestone sidewalks already
thick with pedestrians—rat racers in three-piece suits, holiday bargain hunters
mobbing early bird door-busters, sleep-deprived college students doing the
zombie shuffle in burnt orange hoodies and flip flops.  Long-necked patrol
droids with lollipop heads and three-sixty perspective drifted through the
crowd, scanning for pickpockets, purse snatchers, and wanteds.  Apparently
oblivious to the fact that the mercury hovered shy of forty, a man wearing
nothing but a matted gray beard, purple thong, and light-up platform shoes had
set up housekeeping on the corner of Sixth and Congress in a fan-backed chair
that put the
rat
in rattan.  He was arguing with a pal only he could see.

At the light we pulled up next to a massive
biker, a regular Goliath.  The red-paisley kerchief around his broad, flat forehead
couldn’t tame the explosion of salt-and-pepper curls that trailed to his
shoulders.  His hog was tricked out with a flames-of-Hell paint job,
hand-tooled-leather saddle bags emblazoned with skull and crossbones, and ape-hanger
handlebars.  When he caught me looking, a
Well, hello, pretty mama!
grin
dawned beneath his greasy Fu-Manchu, revealing the gap where his two front
teeth used to be.  I chuckled as the light turned green and traffic started to
inch forward again.

“What’s funny?” Dennis asked.

Still smiling, I shook my head.  God,
it was good to be back.

“Oh seven thirty,” he announced.  “We
made good time, no thanks to Ellison.”

“I still can’t believe he went off on
us like that.”

Baker and I had decided to fly to
Austin early to get the lay of the land and the local lowdown on Conover before
walking into the lion’s den.  We were on our way out the door when Hank threw a
major conniption fit, all because he had somehow gotten the harebrained idea
he
would be the one going with me.  Him being my
real
assistant and all.

“At least he listened to reason,”
Dennis said.

“Uh-huh.  I must have missed the
page in the thesaurus where
reason
is listed as a synonym for
threats
.”

“More like promises.”  He nosed our
nondescript white van into a parking garage.  “Look, the thought of facing
Conover obviously scared the hell out of him, but he was ready to step up and
do his part.  Got to give him credit for that, even if it was a dumb idea. 
Iceman figured he needed a way to back down without losing face, so he gave him
one.”

He pulled into a vacant slip, we got
out, and the van sank out of sight as the elevator ferried it underground.  We
emerged from the shadowed overhang onto the sidewalk, squinting like a couple
of troglodytes seeing daylight for the first time in a month.

“Is it my imagination, or is the sun
brighter here?”  I slid my shades out of the breast pocket of the black photographer’s
vest I wore over a lilac cowl-neck sweater, and put them on.

“It’s your imagination.”  But he
slipped on his own sunglasses.  The silver frames and narrow mirrored lenses
completed his ensemble for the day:  backward-facing black ball cap, faded
jeans, Steelers jersey, black fleece jacket, well-worn running shoes.  He spread
his arms, palms up.  “Well?  How do I look?”

“Like somebody’s gofer.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” he said,
dropping his arms.  “I do this for a living, you know.”

“Sure.”  I glanced around.  “Okay, where
to?”  My stomach rumbled a suggestion you could hear from three feet away. 
“Breakfast?”

“You’re kidding, right?  We had
breakfast not more than two hours ago.”

“Brunch, then.”

“Nobody actually eats
brunch
.”

“Tell that to my mother.”

The Congress Avenue Café was a weathered-brick
holdout wedged between the smoked-glass façades of the Austin Museum of Art and
the obviously trendy Sushi Lou’s.  Tan shades at half-mast in the café’s two
wide windows complemented a saggy brown awning to give the building a
heavy-lidded, beetle-browed scowl.  Both the craggy exterior and the bake sale flyers
scrolling along the windows suggested this was a hangout for the hometown crowd.
 Dennis’s eyes met mine in unspoken agreement.  Local haunts draw regulars, and
people get talkative when they feel at home and everybody knows everybody else. 
In short, the Congress Avenue Café suited our purposes to a T.

An antique bell jingled when we opened
the door, its anemic tinkle quickly swallowed by the murmurous tide of
overlapping conversations and the rattle of dishes.  The five booths along the
right-hand wall were taken, as were most of the square tables packed in the
room’s center.  There was widespread visiting between tables and some spirited flirting
with waitresses, of which there were two—a middle-aged blond and a sassy,
college-aged redhead.

As near as I could tell, the café was
two-thirds eatery, one-third gift shop specializing in Texas kitsch.  Shelves
covering the far left wall displayed merchandise ranging from pralines packaged
as armadillo droppings to t-shirts sporting sentiments like
I wasn’t born in
Texas, but I got here as fast as I could
, and over the silhouette of a
handgun,
We don’t call 911.
  A waist-high glass display case was filled
with turquoise jewelry and silver belt buckles the size of dinner plates.

Baker spotted an empty table in the back
left corner, and we waded in, threading a course between retirees asking about
the senior special and ranch-hand types shoveling down man-sized helpings of
steak and eggs or beans and breakfast tacos.  I caught a whiff of bacon, and my
mouth started to water.

The red-and-white-check vinyl tablecloth
was still damp from the busboy’s rag when we sat down.  We silently studied a
sprig of silk bluebonnets sprouting from a milky vase and salt and pepper
shakers shaped like cowboy boots.

“Cowboy boots?” said Dennis.

“This is Texas.  They don’t do
subtle here.”

“Or tasteful?”

“Don’t be a snob.  Taste is in the
eye of the beholder.”

“If you say so.”

I slid a hand-printed menu out from between
the Tabasco and Billy Bob’s Liquid Fire Habanero Sauce but barely had time to
glance at it before the older waitress stepped up to take our order.  With her
star-of-Texas earrings, sharply creased jeans and western shirt that resembled
the Texas flag, she was a walking postcard for the Lone Star State.

“Mornin’,” she said, setting two glasses
of ice water on the table as the overloaded silver charm bracelet on her right
wrist dingled musically.  “Y’all ready to order, or you need another minute?”

“Coffee for me,” said Baker.

“How about you, honey?”

“I’d like some hot tea and ….  Hmm. 
I don’t know.”  I quickly scanned the menu.  “It all looks good.  What do you
recommend?”

She didn’t hesitate.  “Hill Country Biscuits
and sausage gravy.  Guaranteed to melt in your mouth and stick to your ribs.”

“Sausage gravy?”  My belly gnarled
enthusiastically.  Dennis cleared his throat and pretended he wasn’t dying to comment. 
I ignored him and told the waitress, “Okay, bring them on.”

“Bless your heart!  You won’t be
sorry,” she assured me and bustled off to place the order.

“She left in a hurry,” I said.

“It’s that low, menacing growl.”

“What low, menacing—”  My belly
rumbled again.  Loudly.  “Oh,
that
low menacing growl.”

“She’s probably afraid you’ll keel
over before she can feed you.”

He must have been right, because the
waitress was back a minute later with Dennis’s coffee, a mug of Earl Grey for
me, and a basket of bite-sized muffins.

Setting the food and drinks on the
table, she said, “You eat up now; these muffins are on the house.”

“Thanks.  That’s very nice of you.”

She folded her arms and eyed me
expectantly.  Realizing she intended to hover until I took nourishment, I chose
a warm poppy seed muffin and popped it into my mouth.  Light, airy.  A delicate
blend of lemon and butter that was practically a religious experience.

“Mmmm,” I said.

“Aren’t they good?”  She waited for my
swallow, then cocked her head.  “This your first time here?  You look familiar
to me.”  She snapped her fingers.  “I know, you’re that murder reporter.  WNN,
right?”

“As rain,” I said, offering my hand. 
“A.J. Gregson.”

“I didn’t recognize you at first;
you’re taller in person.  Thinner, too.  I’m Bobby Mae Tolliver.  I own this
place.”

Judging by the way she cocked her
hip and settled in, Bobby Mae was inclined to chat.  I narrowly resisted the
urge to punch a fist in the air and holler,
Jackpot!
  Her affability made
our job that much easier.  All we had to do was steer her in the right
direction.

“Nice to meet you, Bobby
Mae.  This is my assistant, Denny.”

“Howdy, Denny.  Are you sure you
don’t want somethin’ to eat?”

“I’ll stick with the coffee for now,
thanks.”

“Well, you let me know if you change
your mind.  Leroy—the cook?—he can whip up some huevos rancheros
that’ll
make you swear you’ve died and gone straight to heaven.”

Baker smiled into his cup.  “I’ll
keep that in mind.”

Bobby Mae nodded, then turned back
to me and lowered her voice conspiratorially.  “I don’t mean to pry, but are you
in town to do one of your stories on that Boatmen bunch?  Because if you are,
I’ve got to tell you, I don’t think we have any of that around here.”

Guess again, Bobby Mae. 
But so much for steering her in the
right direction.  She was already going our way.

“I’m working on another story this
trip.”

Her ruby-red lips turned down at the
corners.  “Not one of those Cities with the Lowest Crime Rate pieces, I hope.  Every
time somebody sings Austin’s praises, the damn Yankees come runnin’.  We sure
don’t need more people from up north comin’ down here to tell us what we’re
doin’ wrong.”  She paused, eyes widening as she belatedly noticed Dennis’s
jersey.  “Oh, Lord!  Y’all aren’t from up that way, are you?”

“Nope.  I’m from California, and
he’s from—”

“New Mexico,” Baker finished
smoothly and plucked at his shirt.  “This was a birthday present from an old
girlfriend.”

“Oh.  Well, that’s all right then.  It’s
not that I’m prejudiced, you understand, but Austin hasn’t been the same since
those
people
started movin’ in.  They just can’t leave well enough alone!  Used to
be, you could swim in the Barton Springs pool; now they’ve got the whole place under
a dome.  To protect it, they say.  I say, what good’s a swimmin’ hole if you
can’t swim in it?”

She paused, her gaze expectant, so I
said, “Right,” and earned an approving nod.

“Half the locals are fed up.  Leavin’
town.  Even the bats moved out.  Used to be millions of them under the Congress
Avenue bridge.  Little, bitty brown things no bigger than your thumb?  Folks
would come from miles around to see them whoosh out in a big cloud at dusk. 
Looked like a biblical plague,” she recalled dreamily.

“Well, Austin is safe from me.”

“Thank God for small mercies.  So
why
are
you here?  If you don’t mind my askin’.”

“No big secret.  I’m working on a
piece about fraud involving charities.  Denny and I are meeting Malcolm Conover
this afternoon.  He agreed to provide some background material.”

“Malcolm Conover?”  Judging by her
grimace, Bobby Mae was fonder of the recently departed bats.  “Oh, Lord.”

Dennis and I exchanged a quick
glance.

“You don’t like Conover?” he asked. 
“I’ve seen him on the networks, heard him speak a few times.  Seems like a nice
guy.  Concerned.  Compassionate.”

“When he’s in the limelight, maybe.”

“Are you saying he’s different in
private?”

“Put it this way.  He’s not real
popular around
here
.”

“How come?  The foundation he
started spends billions on charity; they help a lot of people.”

Bobbie Mae nodded once.  “They do
for a fact.”

“Having his headquarters here has to
be good for the local economy,” I added.

“Maybe so, but we don’t set as much
store in that as we do in a man’s character.  The way he treats ordinary folks. 
Mr. High and Mighty Conover looks so far down his nose at the locals, you’d think
he’d go cross-eyed!  Lives way out in the hills up near Drippin’ Springs, miles
away from anybody.  Clamped a force shield over his property, blockin’ traffic
up to fifteen thousand feet!  Acts like that ranch of his was Fort Knox!”

“Could be he’s trying to protect his
privacy,” Baker suggested.  “He must have money-hungry crazies coming out of
the woodwork looking for handouts.”

“Might have, but that’s no reason
for his hired guns to chase away the neighbors.  His security yahoos have been
known to rough up a few of the more persistent ones.”  She sniffed indignantly. 
“Not that the law does anything about it.  Money talks.”