No Way Back (14 page)

‘There’s someone who wants to see you.’

‘Now?’ I have no appointments scheduled. It must be a salesman – someone selling printer toner or payroll services. ‘I don’t have time. Just take a card and tell
him I’ll be in touch.’

‘Jim,’ Amanda says, and I realize now that her voice sounds urgent. ‘His name is Tom Mitchell. He’s from the police. He wants to ask you some questions.’

I meet Tom Mitchell in the boardroom. He’s a handsome man – broad-shouldered and trim. His hair is the colour of pewter, like old, heavy silverware your grandmother
leaves you when she dies. In contrast, his eyebrows are jet black, and they arch theatrically, as if Tom Mitchell hasn’t believed a word
anyone
has said since 1992.

He is not, technically, ‘from the police’, as Amanda claimed, but rather (I learn this from his impressive business card) an agent from the Special Crimes Unit of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, Tampa Field Office.

We sit across from each other at the long black conference table. After he hands me his card, he says, ‘Thank you for meeting with me. I know you must be up to your eyeballs in
work.’ He has a Panhandle accent –
ah-balls
for eyeballs – and his honeyed lilt makes each word sound like a gentle caress.

‘Not a problem.’

‘So.’ He smiles at me. ‘You’re the new guy in town.’

‘I suppose.’

‘When did you arrive?’

‘Two days ago.’

‘And how do you like Florida, Mr Thane?’

‘Well, to be honest, it’s very hot.’

‘Ain’t it though.’ He places his hands on the surface of the table, drums his fingers, and stares at me for what feels like a long time. Finally, he says: ‘You probably
know why I’m here.’

‘You code in Java, and you’re looking for a programming job.’

‘Ha,’ he says, in a tone that does not sound much like laughter. But then again, it wasn’t much of a joke. ‘Not exactly. No. You may have heard that I’m looking
into the Charles Adams case. Did they tell you about him – about what happened?’

‘Just that he disappeared.’

‘That sums it up perfectly,’ he says, and smiles. He sounds strangely upbeat, considering he’s talking about a man’s disappearance. Maybe he’s happy that he
doesn’t have to explain any intricacies of the case to me, since there are no intricacies – the case being exactly this:
Man walks out of front door of house. Man vanishes.

I wait for Tom Mitchell to say more about Charles Adams. But he doesn’t. Instead, he looks at me, smiling, as if inviting me to volunteer my own information. I have no idea what he’s
waiting for. That I’ll rise from my chair and shout, ‘It was me! I did it’?

But I don’t. Instead I look down at his business card. ‘Special Crimes Unit,’ I say, reading the title under the embossed logo. ‘What is that – some kind of super
investigative agency?’

‘Yes,’ Mitchell says. ‘A super agency. I work closely with Aquaman and Green Lantern. They’re waiting for me in the car.’

Now it’s my turn to laugh.

‘Seriously,’ Mitchell says, ‘it’s not very glamorous. The way I describe my little group is that we investigate the things that fall between the cracks. Crimes that
don’t quite belong anywhere else.’

‘Oh?’ I say, trying to sound interested.

‘For example, crimes that cross jurisdictions. Crimes that are politically sensitive. Things that politicians want to seem upset about. Things like gambling, racketeering, child
pornography, that sort of thing.’

‘And missing CEOs?’

Do I see a flash of anger on his face – for just an instant? As if he’s not sure why he’s on the Adams case, either? If I did see it, it’s gone in a moment, and
he’s a good soldier again. He shrugs. ‘Well, now, not all our cases are high profile. Sometimes we just look into things that don’t belong anywhere else. Charles Adams being a
good example.’

I lean back in my chair, make a show of glancing at my watch. ‘So how can I help you, Agent Mitchell?’

‘Well I’m not sure,’ he says. He thinks about it, as if he truly is trying to figure out how I might help him. After a moment of this theatrical pondering, he says: ‘I
guess I’d like to know if you’ve noticed anything since you’ve been here.’

‘Noticed anything?’

‘Anything
unsavoury
?’

I am suddenly conscious of the sheet of paper in my pants pocket, the note with the sharp crease digging into my thigh like a guilty memory. On this paper is scribbled an address: 56 Windmere
Avenue, Sanibel. And at this address, I will find the person who has embezzled millions of dollars from Tao Software. Yet despite my awareness of this paper, and despite its digging insistently
into my thigh, I hear myself say to Tom Mitchell: ‘No. I can’t think of anything worth mentioning.’

‘The reason I ask,’ Mitchell says, and he leans forward, as if confiding a secret, ‘is that we suspect Mr Adams was mixed up in some unpleasantness. He knew some very nasty
people.’

‘Venture capitalists?’

‘No,’ he says. He doesn’t crack a smile. He stares at me. Then, quite suddenly, he asks: ‘Have you ever heard of Ghol Gedrosian?’

I shake my head. ‘Is that some kind of... some kind of lamb dish?’

‘It’s a person, Mr Thane. He’s a person. A person of interest.’

‘Whose interest?’

‘That’s an expression. It means he’s someone we’d like to talk to.’

‘What’s stopping you?’

‘Just the fact that we don’t know where he is.’

‘You have two missing people, then.’

He spreads his palms in a small gesture, something between an admission of failure and a plea for forgiveness. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘I wish I could help you,’ I say. ‘But I’ve never heard of him.’

‘No,’ Mitchell says. ‘I wouldn’t expect that you had. He’s not exactly part of your milieu.’ He lingers on the word milieu, insinuating that I’m the
kind of man who might just use such a word, maybe over lunch at the country club. I want to tell him that no one at AA uses the word milieu, unless it’s a kind of French liqueur I
haven’t yet discovered.

Mitchell rises from his seat. ‘I won’t take any more of your time, Mr Thane. I came mostly as a courtesy, to let you know we haven’t given up on Charles Adams. We’re
going to keep looking for him.’

‘That’s very reassuring, Agent Mitchell. Thank you.’

‘Do me a favour, though, will you? If you notice anything – anything at all – I want you to give me a call. My number’s on that card.’ He leans over, taps his own
business card, which is lying on the table in front of me.

I look at the card, dumbfounded. ‘Is
that
what these things are for?’

He smiles and wags his finger at me. ‘You’re a funny man, Mr Thane.’

‘That’s what they tell me. Would you believe it hasn’t helped me in my life at all – not a single bit?’

‘I
do
believe it. No one likes funny people. We think you’re hiding something.’

‘Maybe we’re hiding the fact that we’re not really funny.’

‘See?’ he says. ‘There you go again.’ He points and shakes his head. ‘You’re like a nightclub act.’

A nightclub with a ten-drink minimum, I want to say.

But I merely rise from my chair and shake his hand.

‘I promise to keep you informed, Agent Mitchell,’ I say. ‘If I notice anything at all.’

Ten minutes later I’m driving West on Route 867, over the Sanibel Causeway, to the island of the same name off the Florida coast. I lied to Agent Mitchell when I told him
I hadn’t noticed anything ‘unsavoury’ at Tao. In fact I’ve noticed three million unsavoury things – those dollars stolen from my company’s bank account and
delivered to an imaginary firm called ITS.

Of course there’s no mystery behind the missing money. The culprit was Charles Adams. I knew it even before Agent Mitchell showed up and told me that the former CEO was mixed up with
dangerous people. All the evidence pointed to Charles Adams. No one else at Tao – no one other than the CEO – had the authority to sign cheques for such large amounts. Joan Leggett
could find no paperwork supporting the ITS cheques – no invoices, no receipts – because there was no paperwork.

Charles Adams skulked into his office late at night, or early in the morning, entered bills into the corporate accounting system, and printed and signed the cheques himself. The cheques that
came out of his laser printer travelled through the US mail, to a Naples post office box, and then into the hands of...
someone
. Who? Charles Adams himself? More likely, one of his
mysterious associates – one of those ‘dangerous men’ that Joan Leggett had seen waiting for him at Tao.

Why didn’t I tell Agent Mitchell any of this? Partly it was because of Tad Billups’s warning to me, to ‘protect’ him, and to protect his investment. But there’s
something else too. I feel a peculiar closeness to Charles Adams – a man I’ve never met, a man who’s likely dead. I’ve walked in his shoes: owed money to frightening men,
felt the walls closing in around me. I understand men like him. Because I am one.

Sanibel Island is – despite the best efforts of its Chamber of Commerce and its Rotary Club to portray it as a young person’s paradise – really just a large
retirement community floating in the middle of the ocean. It sits there, in the Gulf of Mexico, stocked with old people at varying levels of decrepitude.

As far as retirement cities go, it’s an odd one. You notice it as soon as you cross the Causeway. What you notice is: it’s not quite rich, and it’s not quite poor. Looking at
the houses, I can’t decide whether the island is an aspiration, or a cautionary tale. Maybe it’s a little of both – a place where people travelling in opposite directions meet in
the last years of their lives.

It’s no Nantucket, no Sea Island. There are no estates, no rolling lawns. It was built too long ago for that, in an age before air conditioning, and so the houses are crowded and small,
from a different era – the era before McMansions and three-car garages. It’s a snowbird community, filled with people who flee brutal winters or needy grandchildren. It’s crowded
in December, packed in January. But today, in the middle of July, it’s hot – very hot – and most of the houses I pass are deserted and shuttered.

The house where I finally arrive – 56 Windmere – is about what I expected: a run-down ranch-style box, aluminium siding, a screened-in side porch, and brown, overgrown grass that
hasn’t been mowed in many weeks. How many weeks? I try to estimate. Maybe six – maybe the same period of time that Charles Adams has been missing.

I drive past the house, turn the corner, and park a block away. I’m not sure what I’m going to do at 56 Windmere, or who I’m going to find there, but I don’t want anyone
to see my car, or find me snooping around.

I leave my car unlocked. I trudge through stultifying heat, listening to cicadas scratching out mating cries in the grass. How the hell do insects have the energy to screw when it’s this
hot? No wonder there are so many bugs.

I approach the house. There are no cars in the driveway, and the windows are dark. I ring the doorbell.

No answer. I wait, ring it again, knock loudly.

A minute goes by, then two – enough time for even an elderly person to make his way off the crapper and come to the door. But no one does. Either the elderly occupant is physically stuck
to the seat, perhaps due to an unfortunate suction accident, or there is no one home.

I try the knob. It’s locked. I retreat down the steps and wander through overgrown lawn, around the perimeter of the house, my shoes swishing through dry grass, nettles catching on my
chinos. I circle the screened-in porch. If someone approaches me, and asks what I’m doing here, I still have a plausible excuse: Why, I’m just checking to see if my friend is at home,
napping on the porch. Of course, if anyone bothered to quiz me about my friend’s name, I’d soon be led away in handcuffs. Not for the first time, mind you.

But the porch is dark and empty. My friend is not napping on it. In fact, I doubt my friend, or anyone else, has slept in this house for a long time. It has a forlorn, abandoned look.

I circle to the backyard. Now I’ve crossed a line. If someone confronts me, I will have no excuse. Even friends don’t peek through their friends’ rear windows.

Florida doesn’t have basements, because you can’t dig a cellar in a swamp. So most houses are built on raised concrete platforms. I stand on my tiptoes and peer into a double-hung
window.

I see a small, dark bedroom. I know it’s a bedroom because there’s exactly one item that is bedroom-like within it: a thin scraggly futon on the floor. No sheets, no blankets, no box
spring. The carpet is water-stained and threadbare. A cheap desk is pushed up against the far wall.

My investigation would probably end here – really
should
end here – except that I notice that the window’s sash lock is unfastened. I’m no expert at home
intrusion, but it doesn’t take much to see it: the top and bottom windows are misaligned by half an inch, almost as if someone is inviting me in. Anyone standing this close could see the
window was unlocked. Anyone would be tempted to enter. Anyone.

So I tug the window upward. I expect an alarm to blare, but it stays quiet. The window rises smoothly in its track, opening wide enough to allow entry even to my portly frame.

I give one more glance behind me, making sure that no nosy neighbour watches, then I hoist myself up. I fall inward, onto the floor, and wheelbarrow with my hands onto the carpet. I pull myself
into the house. My feet land with a thump. I’m in.

I’ve made a lot of stupid choices in my life. Most of them were made under the influence of alcohol, or pills, or crystal meth, or just sheer desperation. But at least my
stupid choices have, until this point, been based on some kind of reasoning. It’s true that my reasoning may have been degraded and flawed – you can’t parse constitutional law
when you’re jacked up on Wild Turkey and coke – but at least I
had
reasons – misguided ones, drug-induced ones – but they were still reasons.

In contrast, standing in this dark bedroom at 56 Windmere, I can’t for the life of me come up with one plausible excuse as to why I’m here. I have just broken into someone’s
house. How in the world can I justify that? And then the reason comes to me, and it’s worse than having no reason at all. I’m doing the thing that I always do: I’m fucking
everything up. I’m destroying my own life.