“Uh-huh. Do you suppose a C-note would be a memory aid?”
“A hundred dollars?” Nash said. “Why, that’s better for the memory than that ginko Balboa stuff.”
Hannibal hung up with a new outlook on life. Now he was certain he would catch up with Rod Mantooth, finally meet him face to face in a few days and learn what he had done, if anything, with Vernon Cooper’s miracle drug. He had a lot of good news, but he would brief the clients in the morning. Right then he would call Cindy and see if she could tear herself away from business long enough to join him for a late dinner at that little Thai place she loved so much.
A smaller voice at the back of his mind hoped he wasn’t celebrating too soon.
13
Morning phone calls brought Hannibal a number of surprises. First he learned that Anita was recuperating at Blair’s house. Blair had decided that she shouldn’t be alone, and this way Henry could keep an eye on her. Then he learned that Blair had taken the morning off to work from home. That would save Hannibal some driving time, since he had originally intended to meet with both Angela and Blair. Henry met Hannibal at the door of Blair’s vertical mansion.
“Good morning sir. Very good to see you again. Please come in.”
“I’ll make you a deal, Henry,” Hannibal said, stepping across the threshold. “If you’ll stop calling me sir, I’ll stop treating you like some servant who shouldn’t stick his nose into Ms. Cooper’s business. What do you think?”
Henry pursed his lips, weighing his options for a moment before choosing one. “Very good, Mr. Jones,” he said after a pause, but his smile seemed more genuine and Hannibal accepted the small step.
They climbed a long flight of stairs and walked down a hallway under a small cut-glass chandelier toward what Hannibal assumed was a guest room. Henry raised his hand to tap at the door when they heard a scratching noise from the bathroom beyond. The door stood open and Hannibal walked past Henry to look inside. He found Anita kneeling in front of the bathtub, scrubbing it out.
“That can’t be good for those ribs,” Hannibal said.
Henry was behind him a second later. “Ms. Cooper. Really!”
She turned and stood, straightening her short apron in front of her. “Really yourself, Henry. I can’t just lie here all day and let this place fall farther and farther behind.”
Hannibal didn’t even know how to describe the absurdity of the scene, but his smile seemed to break through their conversation. “Ahh, domestic discord,” he said, not realizing the pun until he had said it. “Could you take a little break so I can fill you in on the news?”
“Have you found my father’s prize?” Anita’s face brightened like a child’s on Christmas morning as the men trailed her to her temporary room. To Hannibal’s surprise the room held two comfortable chairs in addition to the full size bed and dresser. The scent of jasmine filled the room, and he wondered if that was always the case or if its present occupant had introduced it. Anita bounced onto the bed, not looking at all like a woman who had been beaten badly enough to be hospitalized. Hannibal sat in one chair. Henry chose to stand.
“Tea?” Henry asked the room.
“Oh, please,” Anita said.
“And coffee,” Henry added, nodding toward Hannibal.
“Uh, sure.”
Henry wafted away without a sound, and Anita stared at Hannibal until he realized he shouldn’t wait for Henry to return.
“Well, to directly address your question, no, I haven’t found what was stolen from you. But I do now know what it was.”
“Oh, I’ve had such childish fantasies,” Anita said. “Like it was a treasure map to hidden gold, or a ton of stock in the pharmaceutical company, or even the deed to some island he bought over the years.” In her glowing eyes Hannibal could see the innocent youth that Rod Mantooth could not resist dominating.
“In fact, it was nothing so exotic, but perhaps something even more valuable and certainly it was way more important. Your father apparently discovered the formulation for a drug, or maybe a vaccine, that would actually enable a cure for drug addiction.”
“You mean like methadone?” Anita asked.
“No, not a substitute, but something that would make an addict not need his drug any more. I’ve consulted an expert who tells me that the value of such a discovery could be astronomical.”
“An actual cure?” Anita asked. “You mean like if you’ve been using crack every day you could take this stuff and you could kick crack just like that? Why, that would be a Godsend to all of humanity! Henry, did you hear?”
Henry had just placed a tray on the table beside the bed. He handed Anita her cup, then offered a second to Hannibal. “Just that your father is a hero, Ms. Cooper. I expected no less.”
“There’s more,” Hannibal said, sipping his coffee. “I don’t know where Mantooth is, but I do know how to find him soon. He’ll be returning to the repair shop where he got the crazy car built in a few days. I’ll be there to greet him.”
Anita’s reaction was a curious combination of fear and elation. Her mouth formed the “O” of stunned surprise, but her eyes reflected a reluctance to even consider the possibility that Rod might be captured or hurt.
Standing to the side, Henry stayed silent, standing with a saucer in one hand and the handle of a cup in the other. Hannibal knew that he was fully engaged, but his face was as passive as a tax investigator at an audit. Hannibal considered recommending him to the Treasury Department for secret service work. He was very good at being present but somehow remaining invisible.
Anita’s eyes suddenly focused like a laser on Hannibal’s glasses, as if to center her mind on one thought and blot out all others. “My father did something no one else was able to do.”
“That appears to be the case,” Hannibal said. “Everyone I’ve interviewed has told me that he was a brilliant man.”
“He was a genius,” Anita said, her smile spreading to envelope her face again. “The best pharmaceutical biochemist in the world. Mr. Blair was right. His discovery will change the world. You will get it back, right?”
“I’m certainly going to do my best,” Hannibal said, not sharing her smile. “Meanwhile, I think I need to go brief Mr. Blair himself. After all, he’s paying the bills.”
Ben Blair’s home office was both smaller and simpler than Hannibal expected. The cherry wood desk appeared to take up most of the space, with three tiers of open shelves in place of a traditional hutch. The phrase "organized disorder" came to Hannibal’s mind as he stepped in. Papers and computer discs covered the desk and all three shelves, even crowding the flat screen monitor, but Hannibal suspected that Blair knew what each was, and that every sheet of paper was exactly where it belonged. An acoustic guitar standing in the far corner struck him as the one incongruous note.
Hannibal stood quiet while Blair tapped at a keyboard with steady intensity, like a virtuoso charging through the end of a Dvorak sonata. When he reached the finale, he released a big breath and turned his easy, boyish smile on Hannibal. The straw thatch on his head was uncombed and one could hardly guess that seconds ago this man in a faded Planet Hollywood tee shirt and shorts was directing a billion dollar empire through his simple Dell computer.
“So, Mr. Jones, what do we know that we didn’t know forty-eight hours ago?”
“Well, as I just told Anita, I’ve caught a break in the search for Rod Mantooth. He left his car at a shop for repair and I’ll be alerted when he returns for it.”
Blair waved Hannibal to a chair. Not until he sat did he realize that Blair was burning incense in the room. He wasn’t sure, but he thought the scent was called chamomile. Hannibal got a mental picture of Blair, relaxing like a sixties hippie, strumming a tune in his incense fogged room, maybe getting high.
“That’s not catching a break,” Blair said, crossing his right ankle over his left knee. “That’s due diligence. I knew you were the right man for this job.”