Vaccine Nation (8 page)

S
TARK WALKED BACK AND FORTH
across the street from McCloskey’s apartment building and waited for the appropriate candidate. Maybe a businessman in a hurry, or an older woman with a cane. He paced near the entrance to the Moonbeam diner for 25 minutes, smelling the damned halal lamb frying from the vendor on the corner, the wind blowing dust into his eyes even with his sunglasses on. The swelling and redness in his eyes was a lot better, but the dust made them burn and water like hell. Finally a 50-ish woman in a designer suit got out of a cab with two suitcases. He waited until she started up the steps, then crossed the street to catch up with her.

“Here, let me help you with those. I’m going in right now myself,” he said, smiling. He’d worn a suit and tie. He reached for her bags.

“Oh, thank you so much. I wish you’d been at the curb at Grand Central. The cabbie wasn’t much help.”

Stark picked up the bags, said, “My pleasure,” and walked in with her. Stark continued chatting while the woman waved to the concierge. They got into the elevator. When she saw he pushed the button for the 24
^th
floor himself, she asked him to deposit her bags outside the elevator on the 21
^st
floor and continue on his way. Stark got off on 24, then took the elevator back down to
17, McCloskey’s floor. He put on his gloves and knocked on the door of 17D.

“I need to speak with you about David Maguire,” Stark said when McCloskey opened the door. Stark flashed a fake police badge.

McCloskey’s eyes were wide, his jaw slack with alarm. “No one called.”

Stark reached into his jacket and pulled out the Ruger. “Inside. Now,” Stark said. McCloskey backed up, his mouth open and his eyes glassy. “Anyone else here?”

McCloskey shook his head.

Stark motioned with his head toward the center of the apartment. McCloskey stumbled over the coffee table and collapsed on his back in front of the sofa. He scrambled up and sat. Stark picked the chair across from him, the gun still pointed at McCloskey’s chest. “Yell, do anything stupid and you’re dead.”

McCloskey nodded.

“What did Maguire tell you he was gonna give the girl?”

“Nothing. I didn’t even know he was meeting with her.” McCloskey licked his lips; his mouth had obviously gone dry. He was right where Stark wanted him to be. Stark took a moment. Then he got up and walked over to McCloskey, the gun pointed at his face.

McCloskey started to shake. “I’m not lying,” he said in a whisper. Stark slapped him across the forehead with the Ruger. The guy went down sideways on the sofa and started sobbing like a scared kid.

“We’ll see,” Stark said, standing over him. “Open your eyes.” Stark slid the Ruger back into his shoulder holster and pulled out his knife. “Sit up and quit blubbering.” McCloskey stayed where he was, but put his hands out to protect his face. Stark grabbed
him by his wrist and slashed the inside of his forearm. The guy let out a scream of pain and grabbed the cut with his other hand. “That’s right. Apply pressure. It’s just a surface wound. You’re not gonna bleed to death. Unless you don’t cooperate.” He stabbed the knife into McCloskey’s other forearm. Another scream, and then the guy pulled his feet up underneath him and curled up sideways in a ball.
He’s ready. Let’s see what he really knows.

“Okay. Open your eyes. Look at me.”

The guy did.

“What else do you have to tell me?”

“Dani,” he stammered. “Dani North was here.”

“And?”

“She had a computer USB flash memory drive.” He winced, panting. “Maguire gave it her. She wanted me to help her look at it. See what was on it.”

“Does she still have it?”

McCloskey nodded again, trembling.

“Did you see what was on it? Did you copy it?”

“No!” he insisted. “I told her I didn’t even want to see it. After she showed it to me I told her I couldn’t help her. I told her to leave, I swear!”

Stark lunged forward and jabbed the knife deep into McCloskey’s thigh. He howled.

“I said don’t lie to me.”

“For God’s sake, I’m not!”

“So that’s it? She left?”

“Yes. I think she may have been going to Washington.”

“Why there?”

“I told her I didn’t think it was a coincidence that Maguire gave her what was on the flash drive just after she won the Tribeca Film Festival.” He’d closed his eyes again. “And immediately
before the Senate vaccine hearings. I don’t think she saw any other way to figure out what was on that flash drive.”

Stark waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, he said, “Is that it?”

McCloskey opened his eyes, nodded, then closed his eyes again. Stark picked up a pillow from the sofa, held it over the muzzle of the Ruger and shot McCloskey three times in the chest. The pillow didn’t muffle the Ruger much, so he got the hell out of the apartment and ran down the stairway.

When he got to the street he pulled out the cell phone and called the client. “McCloskey said the girl had a computer flash drive with her. He thinks she’s headed to Washington.”

“She is. Our people just spotted her boarding an Amtrak train to DC.”

“Get me on it.”

“Too late. It leaves in a few minutes. Get to the 34
^th
Street heliport. I’ll have a chopper waiting for you to get you to Philly. You can board the train there.” He hung up.

Stark hailed a cab. First-class treatment. A chopper to Philly.
This guy doesn’t screw around.

Dani got to the Amtrak train with about ten minutes to spare. She had to walk through two cars before she found an available seat next to a man in a suit, mid-to-late 30s, in good shape, dark hair. A
Wall Street Journal
sat in his lap but he was staring out the window, seemingly at nothing, distracted. Dani sat down and glanced at the man to nod a hello, but he didn’t turn his head.

Richard Blum had just heard an announcement over the PA system that the train was short two cars this morning when a woman—he could see her reflection in the window—sat down next to him. He could smell some shampoo or hair product, like she’d just stepped out of the shower.
What a relief.
She didn’t look like some teenybopper about to spend most of the trip on her cell phone. Today he needed peace and quiet. On the way to the station this morning he’d stopped at his lawyer’s apartment to sign his final divorce papers, and now scenes from the unraveling of his life with Kathy were assaulting him in a way they hadn’t for months.
Should’ve figured.
Mike Bickford, his friend, now a Senior Vice-Chairman at BofA who’d recruited Richard as head of their Healthcare Group and who had been through the process a few years ago, had told him, “You’ll be crazy for about two years. Nothing you can do about it.”

He wanted to read his
Wall Street Journal,
in the hope it would cancel out the images, but he knew better. So he just stared out the window, and watched himself creep into the master bathroom while Kathy was in the shower the morning after she returned from Los Angeles a year ago. The last stop in a fivecity roadshow culminating a six-month process to raise a $1 billion real estate fund for her client, a guy with a Napoleon complex. The arrogant runt with whom she’d undoubtedly spent the night—Richard and Kathy’s anniversary night—in the Beverly Hills Hotel, because she hadn’t answered either the room phone or her cell phone until Richard stopped calling at 5:00 a.m. West Coast time. Now Richard reached the sink in their bathroom, lifted Kathy’s travel toilet kit, still packed from her trip, and carried it out to the bedroom, his throat burning and his heart pounding as he reached in to find her diaphragm case. Then, knowing the answer but needing to have it tattooed onto his psyche, he went
through the sadistic ritual of opening the case to confirm the diaphragm had actually been in it when she was on the road. He mocked himself now:
right, like she just would’ve brought the case and left the diaphragm at home.
He watched himself carry the toilet kit back into the bathroom and place it on top of the sink, then back out and close the door, all the while hearing his pulse pounding in his ears.

He turned back to stare at the
Journal.
“Stop it,” he said under his breath. He saw the woman next to him turn her head as if startled. He looked at her and shrugged. “Not even nine o’clock and I’m already talking to myself. It’s going to be a long day.”

She smiled.

“You want a section of the paper to read?” he said.

“Thanks. I didn’t have time to stop and get one.” Richard slid the
New York Times
out from underneath his
Journal.
The woman looked relieved at seeing the
Times.
“Just the Sports section would be great,” then added, “and the first section, too, if you don’t mind. I like to read their Op-Eds.”

“I’ll swap you in an hour or so.” She was unusual looking. Maybe in her late 20s, early 30s, and petite. Her short haircut didn’t seem to fit her. He turned back to his
Journal.

In a few moments the words on the page dissolved and rematerialized as a newsreel of Kathy and him on the porch of their South Hampton house. Kathy’s face rigid and angular, like some death mask, talking in clipped sentences. “I love you but I can’t live with you.” Richard felt a numbing weight, like someone was standing on his chest as she continued. “I don’t know how else to put it, and I can’t describe to you what I’m going through.” Richard was thinking,
what
you’re
going through?
but remained silent. They’d been married for six years, during which time they’d both left investment banking, she to do a magazine
startup with two friends from Harvard Business school, he to do deals with Harold Milner, the preeminent takeover artist of his generation. Then six months before the South Hampton ambush Kathy left the magazine and went back into investment banking.

Now at last the train was moving and Richard had something to look at out the window. But the pictures were still there.
Dust. Ashes.
“Nuclear waste,” he said aloud. He turned back from the window.

“You’re doing it again,” the woman said. “And it’s not even nine-thirty.” She extended her hand. “I’m Danielle. Danielle Jackson.”

“Richard Blum.” He shook her hand.

“Sounds like your day is starting like mine did yesterday.”

“I’ve had better. I stopped at my lawyer’s apartment on the way to the station to sign my divorce papers. The only reason I didn’t go to her office yesterday was because I was interviewing some kid for a job and learned her uncle was a priest. Turns out he was the one who married us. Go figure. I was afraid I’d get struck by lightning if I went uptown to sign them yesterday.”

Danielle laughed. “Smart man, dodging the wrath of an angry God.”

“Yeah, but I think he’s getting his revenge after all. Scenes from a marriage flashing back. It may take all day to clear out my head.”

“That would account for the comment, ‘nuclear waste.’”

“I must be baring my interior monologue.”

“I’ve been there.”

“Why is it you only remember the bad stuff at times like this?”

“Because at times like this it hurts more to remember the good stuff.” Her eyes searched his face as if trying to read him. She seemed young to have the wisdom to make that statement.

“Was yours recent?”

She shook her head. “Eight years ago.” Her voice was flat. A painful subject, no doubt.

Richard turned back to his newspaper.

Dani dug into the Sports section of the
Times,
got lost in it. A half-hour later she looked over to see that Richard was still engrossed in his
Wall Street Journal.

“Are you ready to swap?” he finally said.

“Please, take your
Times
back, but I’m afraid there’s not much in the
Wall Street Journal
I’d be interested in.”

“Well, I’ll take the front section back. I haven’t read the Editorials or Op-Eds yet. Even for a ‘suit’ I’m interested in their point of view.”

Dani thought back over their initial conversation. “I didn’t call you a ‘suit’ did I?”