“Where’s Roger?” I said. “I need to speak to him.”
“I doubt that.”
“You know something I don’t?”
“Quiller’s dead.”
“How?”
“Cyanide, they say.”
“Who says?”
“The news, Rikers Island, federal prosecutors, probably every conspiracy theorist in America.”
“They said he was under arrest?”
“It wasn’t so clear. They’re saying that he’d been taken into custody for selling state secrets some time ago but only yesterday was when they charged him.”
Of course he killed himself. Of course he did. They’d boxed him in, probably threatened Mathilda...
“You got a car I can borrow, Forth?”
I parked the mirror-bright chrome-colored Jaguar under the building I lived and worked in. Making my way upstairs I swore never to drive that four-wheeled looking glass anywhere else.
The key dragged a little in the lock, but I had too much on my mind to worry about office repairs.
“Mr. Oliver,” a woman’s voice said somewhat graciously as I crossed the threshold. “It’s so good to meet you at last.”
Other than myself, there were three people in the room. The older woman who greeted me and two suited men, one big and the other slight. They were all on the lighter side of the skin spectrum.
Upon hearing the woman’s voice, my mind cleared from its muddle. The first decision I had to make was — fight, flight, or wait and see. There was a longish hallway behind me and I had to believe the men were armed. My own gun was in a pocket. Getting to it would have taken too many seconds. I could have tried a physical assault, but I was outnumbered and the guys had a street sense of professionalism about them.
So, I affected a smile and said, “Hello.”
The woman was standing next to Aja’s desk with an expression on her lips that she probably thought was a smile. Not all that much past seventy, she was around five-nine, with a rose-colored serape draped over a darker maroon dress, or maybe just a skirt that was ankle-length.
“We were hoping you’d come back sooner than later.”
“Who are you?” I asked pleasantly.
The smaller henchman approached me holding out both hands and reaching toward my chest. When he got close enough I jutted my palm into his sternum, making him stumble back a step or two.
“I don’t get patted down in my own office.”
The larger guy and his partner were moving toward me. There was just enough time to draw out and fire the pistol. I would have done so if the lady hadn’t spoken up.
“Billings, Ray, Mr. Oliver is correct. This is his property.”
Billings and Ray moved back to their previous positions.
“My name is Cassandra Ferris-Brathwaite,” the woman said. “You’ve heard of me?”
“My grandmother might be your stepmother someday soon. So I guess we’ll be step-siblings or cousins or something.”
She lost the false smile completely.
I thought, goody.
“Would you like to take a seat?” Cassie offered.
“You don’t tell me what to do in my office.”
“No reason to be stubborn,” she said.
“What do you want?”
“I need your help with a problem I’m having.”
“I already have a job, two actually.”
Nodding, she said, “Working for my father.”
“What do you want?” I asked again.
“My father is old. He’s been making bad decisions. That’s not going to work because thousands of people depend on our company for their daily bread. MDLT needs new blood at the helm.”
“As I understand it, that’s for the courts to decide.”
Shrugging, she said, “Maybe you can help.”
“I don’t see how.”
“You have my father’s trust. You can speak to him for me and my brother.”
“And what would you have me say?”
“That it’s time for him to step down.”
“Look, I don’t have anything to do with your business squabbles. Your father hired me to find out if Alfred Xavier Quiller was guilty of the crimes he was charged for.”
“And was he?”
“I don’t think so.”
“And were you able to exonerate him, to keep Zyron International from bunging him in an underground cell?”
Hm.
“The old man’s time is running out,” she said into my bemused silence.
“He is old,” I agreed. “Why not just wait?”
“Don’t fuck with me. I could have you back in Rikers,” she said, snapping her fingers, “like that.”
I was thinking that this was probably the one responsible for my grandmother getting shot.
“I know what my father is afraid of, Mr. Oliver.”
“And what is that, Mrs. Ferris-Brathwaite?”
“The truth.”
“You mean if I told him that zero is neither a positive nor a negative integer he’d scream and jump out the window?”
The little guy had a large nose. Under that schnozzle his rubbery lips formed into an understanding smile. You never know when someone will appreciate a good joke.
“I think we should sit down,” Cassandra said. “Won’t you join me?”
The boss, of course, sat in the swivel chair behind the desk. The henchmen took their natural positions, standing more or less at attention behind her.
I pulled one of three visitors’ chairs up as close as I could to the desk. That way the pistol pocket was hidden.
“What do you know about A. X. Quiller?” I asked the lady in charge.
She took her time with the question, relishing it.
“It’s time for my father to step down,” she said as if it were an answer.
“He thinks that passing the company over to its employees is a better move.”
“Corporations are capitalist entities,” the lady said, quoting something. “You know where I learned that?”
“No.”
“My father.” She delivered the line like a bad actor on a country stage.
Sitting back, pretending that the words had the intended effect, I let my right hand fall to its knee.
“Um,” I articulated, “maybe he learned something along the way since then.”
“My father,” she said with true spite. “Did you know that he competed in fencing at the ’58 Olympics?”
“That was Rome, wasn’t it?”
“He didn’t achieve a medal, but our family gave so much money that they made him an assistant coach to the American team for many years after that.”
My client’s daughter liked to parse out information like treats to a slavering lapdog.
“He worked with the team in ’76, in Montreal.” Her eyes took on a demonic cast. “That’s where he met eighteen-year-old Valeria Ursini. Have you ever heard of George Laurel?”
“No.” My expectant heart was pounding so hard that if I were hooked up to a lie detector it would have been shooting off fireworks.
“He was murdered at Yale in ’77.”
“How did you get my name, Mrs. Ferris-Brathwaite?”
“Aren’t you interested in George Laurel?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Why not?”
“Answer my question first.”
The heiress did not like to be spoken to like that. It took her a moment to compose herself. As she suppressed rage I leaned over to rest my left elbow on the edge of Aja’s desk. With that torque to my torso, my right hand now rested on the pistol pocket.
“Move it back,” Billings, the larger bodyguard, said.
I did so, leaving the right hand where it lay.
“A confidential agent at Zyron International passed your name along. They had done some work for me recently and you were involved in the same, um, arena.”
“A. X. Quiller.”
“Mr. Quiller keeps in-depth files on the rich and powerful. My father has an entry in that record. Did you know that?”