The Answer Man (4 page)

Rogers was ambitious. Cocky. Glib. Like so many men she knew. Like Tim.

Stop it, she told herself. Tim didn't matter anymore.

She caught sight of a padded envelope protruding from her briefcase. She had almost forgotten. It had been given to her on her way inside the courthouse.

She checked to see if there was anyone she knew in the immediate vicinity. All clear.

She stopped at a bench, pulled out the envelope, and tore it open. There were several black-and-white five-by-seven photographs, still damp from the lab. They all showed Ken Parker.

Arguing with a tow truck driver.

Walking to his office building.

Holding a paper with
NOTICE OF EVICTION
printed in large red letters.

An audiocassette tape was also enclosed, labeled
K
.
PARKER PHONE CALLS
5/11–5/14.

A handwritten note said simply “So far, so good.”

Myth stuffed the items back into her briefcase and walked down the corridor.

Ken spent the rest of the afternoon trying to come up with a way out of his mess, but each avenue dead-ended into a stone wall. His credit cards were maxed, his friends were tapped, and he had no equity to borrow against.

Of course, there was one thing he could still do.

It was an option he wouldn't even consider if it weren't for Bobby. Ken wasn't afraid of being broke; it wasn't pleasant, but he knew he could survive.

If only he could say the same about his brother.

Dammit.

At 7:02
P
.
M
. he found himself walking down Piedmont Road, adjacent to the west end of the park. It wouldn't hurt to talk, he decided. His options were dwindling by the moment.

He scanned the park. It was dusk, and wicked shadows jabbed at the few kids left on the playground. A few parents and nannies stood on the sidelines. Over a hundred yards away, two figures sat on a bench—Myth and Sabini.

Myth called out as soon as he was within earshot. “Glad you could make it.”

She rose to meet him, but Sabini remained seated, watching the playground intently. Then he glanced at Ken with tired eyes. “Thanks for coming.”

Ken shook his hand. Sabini's attention immediately turned back toward the playground. He gestured to a small boy, about ten, playing on the monkey bars.

“That's my son,” he said.

Ken looked at the boy. There was no resemblance between him and Sabini, but that was to the kid's advantage.

“He's here with his baby-sitter,” Sabini said wearily. “I haven't been with him in over four months. My wife and I
are separated. She doesn't want me seeing him until the trial is over. It's been rough on him.”

Ken could see that it had been rough on Sabini too. The man's eyes were bloodshot and his face was ashen.

Sabini let out a long, tired sigh. “I don't like all this shady stuff any more than you probably do, Ken. But I want it all done with, and Ms. Daniels tells me passing the test might be the quickest way. Can you teach me to beat that machine?”

Sabini looked back at his son. Ken remembered his own father watching him play on the rocket-ship slide at Herman Park in Houston. Sabini looked at his kid with the same pride and wonder.

Ken realized that Sabini reminded him of his father. Dad never complained about anything, but as the years wore on, the stress of his job as foreman at a marble quarry took its toll. His posture slumped and he was always tired, but still he didn't complain.

Ken studied Sabini. He wanted to believe the guy was innocent, if for no other reason than he loved his kid.

Myth held up the roll of bills. “Do you want this?”

The moment of truth.

All that money.

What would Bobby tell him to do? Forget it, probably.

Not probably. Definitely. But after all those years of getting screwed for doing the right thing, this one act could make everything okay again. He could take care of Bobby and get his own life back on track.

He could feel his heart pounding faster. Was he really going to do it?

“How much time would I have?” Ken asked.

“Twelve days.”

“It'll take some long hours and a lot of practice, but it can be done.”

Myth handed him the cash and a manila envelope.

“What's this?” he asked.

“Everything you need to know about the case. Newspaper clippings, briefs, photos, miscellaneous documents.”

The deal was done.

He was committed.

He felt sick.

Ken crammed the money into his pants pocket. His hands were sweating.

Sabini smiled. “Thank you, Ken. When do we start?”

“I'll need the weekend to get ready. How about Monday night?”

“Fine.”

“Meet me at my office around nine. The building should be cleared out by then.”

“I'll be there,” Sabini said.

“Strictly confidential, right?” Myth said.

“I wouldn't have it any other way.”

Ken turned down Myth's offer of a ride home, electing to ride the MARTA train. It probably wasn't the brightest move to walk around town with ten grand in his pocket, but he needed time alone to convince himself he hadn't just sold his soul to the devil.

It wasn't as though he was hurting anyone. If Sabini was innocent, he wouldn't know where the money was anyway. If he was guilty, chances were he would ride out a short jail term, then pick up where he left off with the fortune he'd stolen. The result would be the same. Vikkers Industries was out of luck.

Nice rationalization, Ken thought. He was almost as good at this game as his customers.

Vikkers Industries had outgrown its one-story complex several times in its twenty-six-year history, and rather than move to more spacious quarters, the company had merely built onto its existing structure, resulting in a sprawling, confusing labyrinth of corridors and offices. Employees who had worked there for weeks still got lost, and an extra
receptionist was on the payroll just to guide visitors to their destinations.

Company president Herbert Decker felt it was his duty to walk through the corridors like a leader, his chest out and shoulders back. It was a habit he practiced even at night, when all the employees had gone home. His patchy beard didn't quite hide his weak chin, and he wore his hair in a comb-over that only accentuated his balding head.

He wished things would get back to normal. The Vikkers employees were already nervous and afraid for their jobs in the wake of the recent merger with Lyceum Metals, and Burton Sabini had only added to the chaos.

That ungrateful little prick. Decker had chosen him over younger, flashier candidates for the CFO job because Sabini seemed like the type who would stay put. The others would have bolted as soon as they were able to trade up to higher-paying positions at other firms. Who knew that the Milquetoast would perpetrate the biggest crime in the company's history?

That bastard.

Decker stepped into his office to see Ted Michaelson reclining on the sofa. Michaelson was a free-lance private investigator Vikkers often hired.

“Make yourself comfortable, Ted.”

Michaelson laughed and sat up. “Don't mind if I do.” The investigator was plump, fiftyish, and sported thick stubble on his chin.

“Thanks for meeting me so late.” Decker sat at his desk. “Things are crazy here during the day.”

Michaelson pointed to a collection of plaques on the wall, each commemorating a new metal formulation. “Busy putting more of those up there, huh?”

“Yeah.” Decker patted his comb-over. “What do you have for me?”

“I'm covering all the bases. By the time I'm through, there's nothing about Burton Sabini we won't know.”

Decker's eyes narrowed. “There's only one thing I want to know. Where's our goddamned money?”

“I'm working on it.”

“So you keep telling me. What do you think of the D.A. offering him a stipulated polygraph test?”

“It shows they have even less of a case than we think they do. They're not even close to getting that money back, which is why you were smart to hire me. I'm sure Myth Daniels won't agree to the exam. She's smarter than that.”

“Maybe.”

“Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“No, not really. Something else has come up.”

“When it rains, it pours, huh?”

“A federal agent has approached one of our vice presidents about turning evidence against us.”

“For what?”

“They've been rather vague. Some bogus charge, probably.”

“Do they have proof?”

“I doubt it. They've been bugging the hell out of Matt Lansing in Finance. They want him to spy on us.”

“Lansing told you this?”

“Yes.”

“I should talk to him.” Michaelson jotted down Lansing's name in his pocket notebook. “I'll put him under surveillance.”

“Why?”

“To make sure he doesn't start talking to the feds any more than he admits to. He may be straight with you now, but once they start putting pressure on him, your boy could turn on you in a heartbeat. Do you know the agent's name?”

Decker handed Michaelson a small piece of paper. “It's here, along with his office number. Steven Lars. Heard of him?”

“No, but there's no reason I would have. I'll check him out.” Michaelson flashed a toothy smile. “Are you sure there's nothing you want to tell me?”

“Positive. I want
you
to enlighten
me.
What are they looking for? How much do they know? Where are they headed with this?”

Michaelson nodded as he pocketed the slip of paper. “You may not like the answers to those questions.”

“Don't worry.” Decker leaned back in his chair. “I have some ideas about how to deal with that when the time comes.”

K
en wiped his brow as he stood over the engine of Bill's '55 Corvette. The perennial weekend project had consumed hundreds, perhaps thousands of man-hours since Bill had “rescued” it from the local scrap yard three years before. The car sat on concrete blocks in the garage of Bill and Margot's suburban home, and it was in no immediate danger of moving anywhere under its own power.

Ken and another of Bill's friends, Colby Lassen, spent many a Saturday helping him with the car. Each week another part of the engine was tackled, but every repair seemed to reveal yet another problem. Today they were installing new pistons.

“My ideal woman…She's gotta be small,” Colby said. “Tiny. Not
dwarf
tiny, but petite. A lotta guys, they like the tall ones. Not me. I don't want a woman I can lose myself in.”

Ken snorted. “I've seen you in the locker room, Colby. You could lose yourself in a tiny woman too.”

“Blow me.”

Bill looked at Ken. “What about
your
ideal woman?”

Ken paused with his pliers. “She burns bright.”

Colby snickered. “Oooh, yeah.”

“No, I mean…everything she does, she does full throttle.
All out. She never doubts herself. She always knows exactly what she wants and how to get it.”

Ken leaned against the car. “She's beautiful, and maybe she even knows it. But deep down, she's scared.”

“Scared of what?” Bill asked.

“Life. She's not neurotic or anything. But it's just enough to melt the ‘ice queen' image she tries to put on. People like that need to feel they're in control. It's the only way they can keep their grip.”

Bill and Colby stared at Ken, dumbfounded.

“Who are we talking about?” Colby asked.

“Yeah, who is she?” Bill was smiling.

“No one.”

Bill stepped closer. “Come on. Who?”

“Nobody. Really. We're talking hypothetical here, right?”

Bill gave his friend a doubtful look. “I was gonna say my ideal woman is blond with big tits. I guess now I'll have to do better.”

Ken stared into the engine compartment. He didn't know if he was describing Myth or merely an elaborate fantasy of who she might be. It wouldn't be the first time someone projected their soul mate behind a pretty face.

Don't get off track, man. Do her job, take the money, and run. That's what this is all about.

The money had already made a huge difference in his life. He had paid off his car, gotten the most persistent bill collectors off his back, and slipped five thousand dollars into his brother's mail slot. If only he didn't still feel guilty about the way he was accomplishing it.

He bent over and tried to look as if he was working. “This car of yours is gonna be on the blocks for
another
three years.”

Bill laughed. He opened a mini-refrigerator and grabbed a cold Bud. “Hell, this car isn't for driving. It's for dreaming. It's for standing around, drinking beer,
and having conversations just like this. Haven't you figured that out by now?”

At the end of the afternoon Ken turned down Bill's offer to stay for dinner. There was work to do.

He drove to the Emory University library, where he hoped to find some background material on the various methods of defeating polygraphs. There was a surprising amount of literature on the subject, detailed in books, magazine articles, and scientific journals. Many studies in the area were commissioned by the CIA and branches of the armed services, but their methodology and results were classified. Everyone knew the common-wisdom tricks: biting your tongue, putting a tack in your shoe, and so on. Examiners, however, were hip to these methods, rendering any such attempts worthless. It wasn't enough for Sabini to pass the test; he had to do it with no evidence of trickery.

Ken put down the last article. There wasn't a lot there that he didn't already know, but he was sure he had enough to get Sabini through the D.A.'s test.

And then, with an extra forty thousand dollars to his name, he could stop worrying for a change.

A helicopter crash, a dead convenience-store clerk, and a warehouse fire. A good night by any standards.

Hound Dog Barrett squeezed off four quick pictures of the fire, finishing off her roll. Way to go. Things had been quiet lately, but a night like this made it all worthwhile. She flipped back her short brown hair as two other scanner geeks drove up. Weirdos.

Like she was any better, Hound Dog thought ruefully. She and the new arrivals spent their nights roaming the streets, listening for broadcast crime and accident scene info on a portable scanner. They would often get to the scene before the police, snapping away with their cameras. Though
scanner geeks occasionally made the leap to professional photojournalists, they generally preferred to keep their photos to themselves, showing them only to interested friends, relatives, and other scanner geeks.

At twenty-one, Hound Dog had seen more than most people would see in a lifetime. Decapitated corpses, mangled automobiles, and exploding buildings greeted her in her nightly adventures. She could only imagine what her parents would say if they knew she did this until at least dawn every morning.

She wound the exposed roll as she walked back to her motorcycle. Time to leave. She didn't like to be around other scanner geeks; seeing the socially awkward young men only reminded her that others saw her the same way.

She zipped her camera into its bag and kick-started her Harley-Davidson motorcycle. She adjusted the scanner headphones beneath her helmet and roared away, leaving the burning warehouse behind her.

One-ten
A
.
M
. If she went home now, it still would have been a good night. But she wasn't tired. And besides, she was on a major roll. Who knew what the rest of the night would hold for her?

Scanner geek.

Sometimes she felt like a geek, without a real life. In some ways, her hobby did isolate her from the rest of the world. Except for the time she spent with her live-in boyfriend, Mark, she had almost no social life. She spent most of her days at PhotoSmith Studios, one of the best-known photography houses in the city. There she made her living by retouching models' portfolio shots, and she had a standing offer to shoot as a studio photographer whenever she felt so inclined. But she just couldn't get enthused about telling snotty fifteen-year-olds how to pout.

She usually arrived home from work at four
P
.
M
., spent some quality time with Mark, then slept for a few hours. At around eleven she set out on her motorcycle, scanner on,
searching for those photo opportunities. The time she spent alone, riding the city streets, was her favorite; these nights defined who she was.

She pulled into the parking lot of a Kroger supermarket, nicknamed by locals the “disco Kroger” for its proximity to a popular dance club. She went inside, bought a croissant and a pint of chocolate milk, and consumed them on the sidewalk outside. She flipped through a newspaper as she ate, reading up on the crime and accident scenes she had visited the evening before. As always, the reporters got many of the facts wrong. How could they be such screwups?

She was about to trash the paper, when a photo caught her eye. It was on page one of the business section, a beautiful woman with a middle-aged man. Hound Dog studied the woman's face. She had seen it before.

But where?

The caption told her that the woman was an attorney named Myth Daniels, and she was walking with Burton Sabini, her client in an embezzling case.

The woman's neck was arched and her face was tense, turned away from the camera in a three-quarter shot, accented with the tiniest hint of motion blur. Hound Dog had seen that pose many times before. It was the classic “avoidance reflex,” the posture people adopt when trying not to have their picture taken. She saw it in her photos almost every night, so she considered herself an expert on the subject.

She wasn't used to seeing it from attorneys though. They
wanted
to see themselves plastered all over page one. But not this woman.

She looked familiar.

Hound Dog was sure she had never seen her in person. It had been a photo. Probably a black-and-white shot.

Not a newspaper picture, she didn't think. It was somewhere else.

Damn. She knew it would bug the hell out of her until she remembered where she had seen this woman.

She had to find out.

It was after one-thirty
A
.
M
. when Ken whipped into his parking space. He had been at Winston's bar, watching a Braves night game in Los Angeles. He was feeling good, both because his team had won and because it was nice to park in front of his home again.

He had just climbed out, when a blow sent him back against the door. He whirled around to see a familiar face.

The man was unshaven, and sweat dripped from his messy hair.

He leaned into Ken's face and screamed, “You son of a bitch! You screwed me. You fucked me over, man.”

Before Ken could reply, the man landed a boulder punch to his stomach. The wind whistled as the fist flew into him.

Ken tried to double over, but a pair of arms locked under his armpits and pulled him up. He looked back at this second man. He hadn't seen him before. He would have remembered the brown tooth.

“Look at me. I said,
look
at me!”

Ken looked back at the first man. Then he remembered. One of the people he had tested…

Valez. Carlos Valez.

Whumppp!

This punch landed higher on his torso, near his rib cage.

Ken closed his eyes, momentarily losing himself in hallucinatory flashes of bright, white-hot light. His insides were exploding.

He opened his eyes. Carlos was still in his face.

“Remember me? Do you?”

Ken nodded.

“You said I was a thief. A goddamned thief!”

Ken grunted out, “I only—only said—”

“Shut up!” Carlos delivered what felt like a sledgehammer to his lower jaw.

Ken's teeth gnashed. His face throbbed.

“You wrecked my life. My wife, my baby, and I were living with my dad. He threw me out after I got fired. Now I got no job, no home, no family. All because you said I lied. You're the liar.
You
are!”

Ken tried to form some words, but his mouth wouldn't cooperate. A thin string of drool escaped from his lower lip.

It was getting harder to breathe.

“Make a phone call. Tell the bitch you made a mistake.”

His face still throbbing, Ken swung his legs and kicked outward. He aimed for Carlos's chest.

Contact.

Ken pushed himself back, slammed Brown Tooth against his car, and spun around with a punch to the man's stomach.

Brown Tooth tried to strike back. A miss.

Ken dodged a second punch. Another miss.

His whole body was killing him. How much longer could he keep this up?

Answer: Not long.

Because in the next instant Ken felt as if a truck had smashed into his back.

His legs buckled beneath him. His head struck the warm pavement.

He rolled to see Carlos standing over him.

The man had given him a kung-fu kick with his black-heeled cowboy boots.

Ken wondered if he was paralyzed. No. He wouldn't feel the spasms of pain shooting from every nerve ending.

He prepared for more, but at that moment two neighbors drove into the parking lot. College guys.

Carlos and his friend backed off. “Make the call,” Carlos warned, “or you're dead.”

Carlos and Brown Tooth ran from the parking lot.

Ken's neighbors climbed out of their car and looked at him lying on the pavement. The college guys whispered to
each other for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Ken waved them on.

Hell, he
always
took naps here in the parking lot.

After a minute, he pulled himself to his feet, grimacing. He staggered to the stairs and slowly climbed toward his third-floor apartment. Each step was like another blow.

To his stomach.

To his chest.

To his back.

Carlos gave the gift that keeps on giving.

Ken's hands shook as he tried to put his key into the lock. Slowly, patiently…There. Finally.

He opened the door, stumbled inside, and made his way to the bedroom. His futon was on the floor. It hurt to bend at the waist, so he kneeled on the futon's edge and gently lowered himself down.

He stroked his jawline. He didn't think it was broken, but he could feel it swelling up. He wondered if he should see a doctor before going to sleep. But the thought of a four-hundred-dollar emergency room tab didn't appeal to him.

He also thought briefly of calling the police. Nah. Maybe he deserved it. Maybe he
was
wrong about Carlos's exam.

The uncertainty.

It was the worst part of his profession. Even when he followed the rules and tried to play fair, he could never be sure how accurate he was. How many careers had he ruined? How many families had he torn apart?

How many?

He had no idea.

Over the next few hours, he tried to sleep, waking whenever he turned or rolled over. He still hurt like hell.

He played a game with himself. Where would he be
if
…

If he hadn't done “the right thing.”

If he hadn't screwed up his life.

He wouldn't be nursing bruises in this shitty apartment, he knew that. And he wouldn't be making a living from a gadget that might be about as accurate as a coin toss.

He had to get a real life.

Maybe, just maybe, Myth Daniels and Burton Sabini held his ticket to that life.