She couldn't risk that. She'd found a formula that kept her from tumbling into the abyss: days spent either writing or researching; evenings here at the Pantheon, just a few blocks from her apartment, drinking and kibitzing with the regulars; and nights of exhausted sleep.
Jamie wasn't so sure about the sleep situation tonight, though.
She glanced around, looking for unfamiliar faces. There were always some. No secret that she was writing a derogatory series about the cult—she refused to call it a church—but did they have any idea that she might have discovered something that would embarrass the hell out of them and set their whole organization on its ear?
Might... that was the key word here. She hadn't confirmed her suspicions yet, and so far she'd been stymied in finding a way to do so.
But if the Dementedists knew of her suspicions, no telling what they might do. She'd have to—
She jumped as someone tapped her shoulder. Timmy again. Damn it, she was edgy.
Timmy introduced Schwartz's brother, who looked barely thirty and nothing like Schwartz. After a little small talk Timmy pointed out Jamie's short pinkie and said something about wait till you hear this… You just won't believe it. Schwartz and Cassie and Ralph and the others were gathered in a semicircle around her and Little Brother. She had an audience but no material.
What the hell, she thought. Wing it.
"Well, it was years ago, back in 1988, when I was in the Karakoram to—" She noticed the kid's perplexed expression, mirrored in the other listeners. Christ, was there anyone left who knew their geography? "That's a mountain range. I was in a mountain-climbing situation, preparing to tackle the Abruzzi ridge of K2—which the locals call Chogori—and I was looking for an ice ax…"
14
"I'm gonna get it from ya! Yes, I am! Yes, I am!"
Clancy growled as he gripped the rawhide toy in his sharp little teeth and tried to pull it away from his former master.
Kneeling on the floor, Richie Cordova was amazed that the little terrier still had this much play in him. He had to be ten years old, the equivalent to seventy in a man. Or so they said.
Every so often Richie got this urge to see Clancy and play with him. The divorce agreement granted him visitation rights, but supervised.
Supervised! It still rankled him. What'd the judge think he was going to do, run off with the pooch? Hardly.
The worst part was that he had to visit Clancy in Neva's apartment. She was such a slob. Look at the place. Nothing where it should be and it stank of cigarettes.
A place for everything and everything in its place, Richie always said.
"Neva!" he called.
Her scratchy voice echoed from the kitchen. "Yeah?"
"C'mere a minute, will you?"
She took her sweet time traveling the ten feet or so to the living room. She stood in the archway, wearing a housecoat and puffing a butt.
"What?"
"Don't you ever clean this place? It's a dump."
Her face reddened. "I clean it just fine. I dare you to find a speck of dust."
"I ain't talking about dirt. I'm talking about straightening things up. Everything's tossed every which way. And you've got mail on that table and keys on this table, and—"
"Cram it, Rich. You're allowed to come here to visit Clancy, not bust my chops."
"I don't think Clancy should have to live in all this clutter."
Shit, he loved this little dog! He never should have allowed Neva custody.
"Clancy's doing just fine. Aren't you, baby?" She bent and slapped the side of her leg. Immediately Clancy forgot about Richie and ran over to her. She scratched his head. "Aren't you, snookums?"
"And I don't think the secondhand smoke is good for his health."
Neva glared at him. "Up yours, Rich. Don't you remember why we split? Not some other man or some other woman: you. You and your neatnik ways. You and your need to control. You make Monk look like Oscar Madison. Everything has to be just so, and yet you walk around—or maybe I should say waddle around—looking like the Goodyear blimp."
Richie said nothing. He wanted to kill her. Slowly.
This wasn't the first time. Every goddamn time he came here it was the same thing: He wound up wanting to wring her scrawny neck. He couldn't think of anyone else on earth who could piss him off this way.
"You still studying those horoscopes every day?" she said. "What a laugh. A guy who wants to control everything and everyone around him thinks his life's being controlled by a bunch of stars a zillion miles away. It's a riot."
"You got no idea what you're talking about. I use them for guidance, that's all."
"Stars are pulling your strings. Ha! You believe in flying saucers too?"
Hauling himself to his feet took a lot out of him. He had to lose some weight soon.
"You're pushing it, Neva."
"Yeah, well why not? You pushed me around for five years. About time someone pushed back."
"Neva…"
"I ain't afraid of you, Richie. Not anymore."
"You should be." Feeling like he was about to explode, he took a step toward her. "You really—"
Clancy bared his teeth and growled. The sound pierced him.
You too, Clancy?
"Fuck the both of you."
Richie Cordova turned and left his ex-wife and his ex-dog to wallow in their shit hole.
15
After picking the lock to Cordova's office, Jack slipped a slim, flexible metal ruler between the door and the hinge-side jamb. He held the ruler against the plunger as he pushed the door open. Without letting the plunger pop, he replaced the ruler with the short length of duct tape he'd stuck to his sweatshirt. He let the outer inch of the tape stick out free in the hallway, then closed the door.
Okay. He was in. First thing he did was pull on a pair of latex gloves. Next he flicked on his penlight and stepped through the reception area into the office where he went directly to Cordova's desk. Neat as could be—even the paper clips were lined up like soldiers in review. A single photo on the desk: a terrier of some kind.
A dog… he kept a photo of a dog on his desk.
Jack knelt and found the computer's mini-tower on the floor at the rear of the kneehole. He noticed a CD drive, probably a burner for backup. One CD could hold a ton of blackmail photos. He pulled out Russ's HYRTBU disk, inserted it into the floppy slot, then pressed the on button.
As the computer whirred to life, Jack began exploring the office. Cordova wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but you didn't need an Oxford degree to know to store a valuable backup off premises. Not just to protect against theft, but fire as well.
Jack started with the file cabinets. Just for the hell of it he checked for a folder labeled backup but didn't find one. So he combed through every drawer, every hanging folder in both cabinets but found no backup disk. Unlike the file cache Jack had found in Cordova's home office last September, these contained no blackmail material. Nothing but PI records. So he did a little floor crawling, looking for something taped to the underside of the furniture. Nope.
He thought he'd struck pay dirt when he found a padded envelope be-hind the radiator, but it contained only cash. Money he d squeezed from his victims, no doubt. Jack was tempted to take it, just for spite, but he couldn't let Cordova know someone had been in his office. The success of this whole fix-it depended on that.