Playing the Game (16 page)

            ‘Get in’, Conway motioned, ‘and bring your things’. By ‘things’, Britland-Jones knew he meant ‘all the dirt you have on me’. He’d been in two minds whether to bring it all, or hold one or two things back, just in case. In truth though, whilst he had a considerable amount of material, he didn’t have quite as much as he suspected Conway thought he did, so he brought it all. Besides, if Conway thought he was holding anything back, he could turn nasty. Up close and personal last night, he’d seemed as much of a frightening proposition as Bobby Hambel, to whom he owed the fifty grand in the first place. Gathering the lose sheets of paper and photographs off his seat into a folder, he made his way cautiously to the Bentley and got in on the passenger side.

            ‘Is it all there?’ Conway wanted to know.

            ‘It’s all there, all I have on you’, he replied, hoping now that Conway believed him.

            ‘If it’s not, and I find out it’s not, the’re will be severe repercussions, you do realise that?’ Conway’s voice was calm; almost unnerving.

            ‘I understand’, he replied. ‘It’s all there. What have you got for me? And why do you want McCrane and Burr out of the picture?’

            ‘The ‘why’ is none of your concern’, laughed the Senator, ‘but what I have got for you is enough to cause some serious questions to be asked of the City Attorney and DA. The deal I’m giving you has got a time limit on it, just so you know’.

            ‘What’s the deal, and how long have I got?’ he questioned.

            ‘I need you to break a story, any story you like, I don’t really give a fuck. There’s enough there. A story that will lead to the arrest of both Jameson Burr and Paul McCrane. I also need your word’, Conway paused, realising the absurdity of asking a journalist for his word, ‘that you will not look to investigate anything that should happen to them subsequent to their arrest’. Conway knew that when they were arrested, even with the increased security their arrests would warrant, he could pay someone to ensure both McCrane and Burr met with an unexpected knife to the throat. In everyday life, as McCrane and Burr went about their business, he wasn’t sure he could get someone close enough to them to carry out his wishes; hence this deal with The Bully.

            ‘I need the story to break within seventy-two hours, but not within the next twenty-four. I will call you, at your office, sometime tomorrow afternoon, so be there! I’ll either give you the green light, or I’ll call the whole thing off’. This news slightly alarmed Britland-Jones.

            ‘If you call the whole thing off, then I’ve got nothing’, he almost stuttered. ‘My silence will have a price, Senator’. Conway stared long and hard at the journalist for several seconds, considering his response.

            He’d thought about this long and hard; most of last night in fact. He still wasn’t sure of McCrane and Burrs’ agenda, if they had one at all. He had needed to act, and act fast though, so decided to get the wheels of this plan in motion now. This way, he would have a day to do some further digging of his own, to see what he could come up with. If his digging unearthed something that needed to be taken care of, like his affair with Burr’s wife being exposed, then he would have this plan in place. If, however, he decided that no further action was needed on his part, he could simply cancel the whole thing.

            ‘Ten grand’, he countered. ‘Non-negotiable’. Ten grand? Well maybe Bobby Hambel would take that as a down payment. Ten grand was better than nothing.

            ‘Ten grand it is’, accepted Britland-Jones. ‘So what have you got for me then?’ Conrad reached into the back seat of the Bentley and picked up a thick file.

            ‘This’, he announced, ‘has details of various illegal activities over the past three years undertaken by McCrane and Burr’. Britland-Jones knew this could be potentially explosive material.

            ‘Like what?’ he asked, almost wanting to snatch the folder from the Senators’ grasp to see for himself.

            ‘I’m sure you will peruse the file at your leisure’, Conway smiled, ‘but just to give you a flavour; bribes given out, bribes received; things of that nature and that’s just for starters’.

            Britland-Jones took the file off him, almost gratefully. ‘What now?’ he questioned.

            ‘What now?’ Conway sneered, ‘Is that you get the fuck out of my car’. He still hadn’t forgotten that this piece of shit had tried to blackmail him in the first place. Maybe, when the threat of McCrane and Burr had been nullified, he’d have to re-visit The Bully. ‘Now!’

            The tone of Conway’s voice suggested that Britland-Jones shouldn’t wait to be asked twice.

            Back in his car, he put the light on and had a preliminary flick through the file he’d just been given. His eyes lit up as he read. The Senator had been right, there was certainly plenty there.

            Conrad Conway merely re-started the engine of the Bentley and drove out of the car park, never looking back to see what Britland-Jones was doing. He had other meetings to attend to today, but he had an important phone call to make first to one of the private investigators he had on his payroll. He’d awoken Nathan Morris in the early hours of the morning with a job for him. Morris, unable to refuse the Senator’s orders due to the fact that Conway knew about his predilection for borderline underage girls but had kept quiet thus far, had asked for nine or ten hours to complete what was asked of him. Conway had replied that nine hours was acceptable and it was now time to ensure that Morris had kept his promise. Given the information he had on Morris, he was sure that Morris would be done by now.

44

            On the morning of the underground meeting between Conway and Britland-Jones, Jameson Burr was working from home, catching up on some paperwork. He’d got rather a lot to do before he made his way to court this afternoon, but he would make time to fit in his business with Paul McCrane later in the morning, no doubt about that.

            Settling in for a long session, overlooking several prepared prosecutions by his junior staff, his mind occasionally wandered to the timetable of events he and McCrane had drawn up regarding Senator Conway’s upcoming murder by ‘The Chemist’. They had initially decided on five days from now but he had a strong feeling, hardly an epiphany but a strong feeling nevertheless, that it should happen sooner than agreed. He would sort that out later. For now, he was otherwise engaged; two of these prosecutions were happening this afternoon; he had meant to look at them last night but time had run away from him and his wife had dragged him to some God-awful charity dinner that had been the absolute pits. All the time, he’d thought about Conway and his wife. He was sure that his wife didn’t suspect he knew anything. Once Conway had been taken care of he would deal with her alright. He didn’t know how yet but she would pay too.

            Looking over the imminent cases, he spotted something that warranted a call to the junior who had prepared it; a relatively new junior Becky Gardener who had joined his staff three months ago. She’d made a promising start.

            Deciding it was definitely too early for a scotch, he refilled his coffee mug and looked up Becky’s cell number. It wasn’t a number he’d committed to memory just yet but he had a feeling he might do soon. Maybe he’d pay his wife back in kind.

            ‘Hello, Mr. Burr’, she answered after a few seconds. She always sounded in awe when she spoke to him, like she couldn’t believe she actually worked for him. He liked that. A couple of one-to-one’s and a vague promise of special career advancement and he had a feeling she would sleep with him without so much as a second thought.

            ‘Ms. Gardener, good morning’, he replied, ‘I just have a couple of ..’. Before Burr could finish his sentence, the phone line went dead. ‘What the hell?’ he muttered to himself. After trying the phone a couple more times, he realised it was fruitless and went to check the phone in the adjoining room; the study. He found that line was also dead. ‘Goddamn telephone company’, he said out loud then shouted at the top of his voice ‘Marcia! Marcia!’

            Before long, his cleaner knocked on the door and was ordered to call the telephone company from her own cell. ‘Tell them I need a line back on ASAP, and don’t take no for an answer!’ he shouted several seconds after she had closed the door.

            After calling Becky back his own cell, he had settled himself back into an undisturbed silence for half an hour or so, when his cleaner reappeared, a scruffy looking engineer standing behind her.

            ‘This gentleman is here from the telephone company’, she announced. Without waiting for an invitation, the engineer strode past her, into the middle of the room.

            ‘We’ve had some problems this morning with the all the telephones in this area’, he confirmed. ‘Most are back on but there are several households that haven’t come back on-line for some reason. Damn company wants us door to door, checking each and every one, so here we are! Got a hell of a day ahead I can tell you, got another thirty house calls after this one’

            ‘I suppose you have some ID?’ Burr enquired, directing his question to neither the engineer, nor Marcia who really should have already checked, in particular.

            ‘Of course’, the engineer offered his ID to Burr. Quickly scanning its credentials, it seemed in order.

            ‘So, what do you need to do?’ Burr wanted to know. ‘Will this take long? I have rather a lot of work to do here’.

            ‘Should only take five minutes or so sir’, the engineer replied. ‘We just have to check the connections on all the phone lines in the houses that aren’t yet back on. Did the original fault occur in here sir?’

            ‘Indeed it did’, said Burr irately, cursing the interruption to his work. ‘Well, as quickly as you can then’, he instructed, waving a cursory hand in the engineers direction and returning his attention back to his work.

            The engineer proceeded to check all the phones in the house, first the three downstairs, followed by the two upstairs. Burr didn’t really pay much attention, immersing himself back in the upcoming court cases. If he had been more vigilant, even then he would have struggled to notice that the engineer slipped a small device no bigger than a sim card on the underside of a table or chair near each phone receiver, a blink of an eye and you would have missed the planting of each device.

            As he made his way back downstairs, the final device discreetly installed, Nathan Morris couldn’t help but be pleased; this had gone extremely smoothly indeed. Each device he laid would enable him to record and monitor all conversations between the caller and receiver. The devices would even pick up the majority of cell conversation, given the right frequency.  ‘All checked sir’, he popped his head back into Burr’s office. ‘Should be back on in about five minutes; just have to re-boot the system downtown!’ Complete fabrication but how would Burr know? Burr didn’t even look up from his work and Marcia showed Morris to the door.

            ‘Thank you for coming so quickly’, she said. ‘He was getting a bit irritable!’

            ‘No problem’, he called back, already half way down the drive way.

            Just as he’d manually restored Burr’s phone lines and was about to climb into his unmarked van a hundred yards or so down from the house, he noticed an AT&T van pull into view and allowed himself a wry smile; that was the actual telephone company responding to the call made by the cleaner. He hoped that Burr and the cleaner would assume that the company had just mistakenly sent two engineers.

            He climbed into the back of the van and fired up his communications set up. The Senator hadn’t told him what exactly he was listening for, but that he would know it when he heard it.

            A couple of hours in, and a few calls made by Burr had confirmed that everything was working. He’d even picked up a call by the cleaner from upstairs telling someone that she would try to fake illness for an early finish. The cheek of it! His cell began to ring. ‘Are we set up?’ a voice asked.

            ‘Indeed we are’, he replied, knowing better than to refer to the caller by name.

            ‘Keep me informed’.

            ‘Of course’. He hoped this favour to Senator Conway would keep him off his back for a few months to come.

45

            Well at least the locker hadn’t exploded, which was something at least. That had been my first thought when we had eased the locker door open and peered inside, wondering what it contained; whether it held the key to Stella’s location or whether it was just another small step towards recovering the poor girl before it was too late. As it turned out, much to my disbelief, it would be both.

            Reaching inside, I pulled out a familiar looking envelope, which I knew would contain our next instructions. There was nothing else in the locker though, and I couldn’t help but feel a little deflated. I was sure that the locker would have contained something else. But who knows? This envelope could contain the information that would lead us to Stella. Or, in reality, we could be just as far from finding her as we were this morning. All I knew was that we only had The Chemist’s word that if we continued to follow the instructions we would find her in time. That was by no means a guarantee though was it?

            Closing the locker door, I handed the envelope to Charlie. ‘Your turn’, I instructed, ‘Go ahead, open it’. My partner took the envelope with a grim look on his face; a look that remained once he’d opened it, albeit combined with a look of puzzlement.

            ‘
11am last Sunday, going deeper underground with a Saint in Batman reversed
’, he read aloud. ‘Well that’s very helpful’, he added. ‘Don’t suppose anything immediately springs to mind?’

            I shook my head, I hadn’t got a clue what that meant. We sat down on one of the benches near the lockers, reading the line over and over, as several children from a school party re-appeared in the locker area, running around excitedly. I’d been stumped several times today, but never more so than now. As much as I hated to admit it, I was completely baffled by that one, and so was Charlie.