10
I heard Sumpy start the shower. I untied the blue ribbon, and ripped open the envelope: it contained a letter and a small wafer-thin object about an inch long and a third of an inch wide. It was mostly the colour of white marble but on the top side it had a small metal box with a circle of hard clear plastic in the middle, through which one could see a tiny grey rectangle that had minute shiny wires all around it like a spider’s web. On the reverse side it looked like a member of the centipede family, with twenty-four tiny metal legs bent under it. Stamped on the underneath was the word ‘Malaysia’ and a serial number. If nothing else, my three months of training in the computer business had taught me to be able to recognise what this object was: a silicon chip. Doubtless it was programmed to do something, but not having a computer in which to insert it handy, I had no idea what.
I read the letter. It was short and didn’t provide a great deal of enlightenment. It said:
‘Dear Sir Charles,
The number that matters is 14B. When we meet, and I add my own information to the enclosed, I think you will agree that my credentials are satisfactory. As you may already be aware, the colour scheme of this missive is not irrelevant.’
It was signed Doctor Yuri Orchnev. On the back of the envelope was some scribbling: the name Charlie Harrison, and an address: Coconut Grove, Duneway Avenue, Fire Island.
Fire Island is a sand-bar, over 30 miles long but only a few hundred yards wide at its widest point, a short way off the south coast of Long Island. It’s treasured by the islanders to a point of jingoism seldom encountered since the heyday of the British Empire. Untypically of most of the North American continent, cars are strictly banned — not that they’d be much use, since there are no roads. The island is famed as being a gay paradise, although in fact its largely vacation-only population is drawn from a wide cross-section of well-off New York City dwellers, who spread out into the independent communities of summer houses, shops and trendy friendly restaurants strung out along its length, and live out their summer weekends in a state of chic bohemia.
It struck me as being unlikely that the late Dr Yuri Orchnev, if it was the writer himself from whom I had obtained this letter as he lay dead on my apartment floor the night before last, was either en route to, or returning from, a holiday on this island. Mid-December down this part of the world is not prime beach time.
I studied the writing on the back of the envelope carefully. I knew the name Charlie Harrison all right; he was a computer operator, in charge of Intercontinental’s own computer system.
I read through the letter again. There was no date, no address. Why did the man who came into my apartment at half past two in the morning and shot himself have this letter in his pocket? I’d searched him thoroughly at the time, but he had no identification on him whatsoever; nothing; all he had was this letter.
I wanted to find out what that chip contained, and I wanted to find out what went on at Coconut Grove, Fire Island, and where Charlie Harrison slotted into the scheme of things. It was Wednesday today. If there was anything going on at Fire Island, it would most likely be at the weekend. It became a toss-up for Charlie Harrison or the chip first. I decided on the chip. Harrison would take longer to crack; surveillance of people was an arduous task. In the four months so far I’d worked through less than a quarter of Intercontinental’s staff; I’d cleared them all except for a secretary who was having an affair, because I hadn’t yet found out with whom, and a programmer called Howie Kottle, whom I thought might be gay.
My thoughts were shattered by Sumpy, who had emerged from the shower and was repeating the breakfast order for the third time to a slow-witted and apparently hard-of-hearing room-service operator.
I was worried about what to do with Sumpy. I had a feeling that if she went back to her apartment she would find the goons had taken it apart with a meat cleaver, and they’d probably still be hanging around, waiting to take her apart with the same meat cleaver. I wanted to keep her out of harm’s way until I’d got rid of the harm. Hiding her 5 feet 11½ inch blonde-haired, sun-tanned, highly volatile frame was not going to be an easy task.
‘How do you fancy a holiday?’ I said.
‘Before I do anything, Mr Maxwell Flynn —’
‘Maximilian,’ I interrupted, ‘it comes from the Latin, not from the instant coffee.’
‘I don’t care if you’re named after a Nigerian greenfoot monkey,’ she said ever so sweetly. ‘I want to know where you come from and where you plan to go, because I’ve just about had it up to here.’ She swung her hand to the top of her forehead. ‘And if you were the short-assed midget you’re acting like, you’d know that was one hell of a long way.’
I sat and looked at her for a long pause as she stomped up and down the room. Finally I spoke. ‘What do you want me to tell you?’
‘What do I want you to tell me? What do I want you to tell me? I’ll tell you what I want you to tell me: I want you to tell me why you shoot a man dead in your room in the middle of the night; why you tell me not to let cops into my apartment; why you dig a hole through my apartment wall while I’m taking a shower, and kidnap me; why you don’t stop when the cops point a gun at you; why you make me steal a car and come out and check into a hotel under a false name; that okay for openers?’ She stood and glared at me.
Had I been in her position, I’d probably have felt the same way. But I wasn’t in her position. And I couldn’t explain anything to her. I just didn’t want her to go back to her apartment.
‘Do you want to come to Boston with me today?’
‘I can’t. I’m having lunch with Lynn. Then I have to catch the three o’clock flight to Rome — I have to go look at some pictures. I’m not even going to have time to go home and pack, and I’m going to be away several days.’
Lynn, whoever she was, had just done us both a great favour.
A couple of hours later, and wishing to hell I’d been sensible and got on that plane to Rome with Sumpy, I was peering through the misting windshield of a rented Buick, slipping and sliding her through a blizzard of snow that was fast covering the Connecticut Turnpike. The snow had already started to fall when I dropped Sumpy off at the restaurant to meet her friend. It would be stretching the truth to say we’d parted on amicable terms. The muck that was now tumbling out of the sky did nothing to lift my cheerless mood.
An endless convoy of tractor-trailers thrashed past, chucking crate-load upon crate-load of slush, grit, salt and general gunge onto the windshield, while the wipers struggled to turn the combination into a translucent smear, through which I could vaguely make out the darkening road ahead. It was three o’clock and dark was falling very quickly.
I turned on the radio for some cheerful music, and was boomingly exhorted to turn off at the next junction, find the nearest church, and rush in and pray to the Lord God Almighty for the salvation of my soul and the souls of millions of others, all of which were, apparently, in imminent peril due to a multitude of sins too long for the Reverend Doctor Lonsdale Forrester, the Motorists’ Pastor, to relate in the air time he had available between commercials. ‘And while you’re driving, looking for the next church, give thanks to the Lord, yeah, give thanks to the Lord, for the gas in your tanks, for the tyres on your wheels, for your axles, for your transmissions, for the pistons in your cylinders…’