Had he already talked?
No matter. He had been a child when it began, and even knowing the preliminary steps still left him miles away from any logical conclusion—much less the astounding truth.
If the investigation should proceed, and it came down to an interrogation, Oxley was prepared to lie his ass off for the cause. To save himself. He had been on the job too long to even think of working out a deal, betraying Radcliff or the project that had been his life.
He still believed, in spite of everything. The doctor was a genius, and a man of vision. He was working miracles.
I’m getting old, he thought. Ten years ago, I would have shrugged this off like it was nothing.
But he wasn’t forty-five today, and never would be. He was coming up on sixty in a few more years, and it was all downhill from there. Before he knew it, in the twinkling of an eye, there would be nurses, rest homes, maybe a dialysis machine.
Unless he kept the faith, hung tight with Radcliff and was born again. The ultimate reward for faithful service to the cause.
The house was dark when Oxley pulled into the driveway, parked the Buick, killed the engine. There was no one home to greet him. He had never married, never learned to nurture a relationship beyond the “fuck ’em and forget ’em” stage, had never been much good with pets. A moody type might have called the empty house symbolic of his life, but there were many different ways to live.
Right now, for instance, Oxley had a chance to save himself some grief, refer his problem to an expert who could make it go away—or minimize its repercussions, at the very least. This time tomorrow—or the next day, at the latest—they would have it made.
He made a point of checking out the house before he went inside. A simple thing, but he felt better having done it, knowing that the Feds were out there somewhere, sniffing inch by inch along his trail. They couldn’t be this close, not yet, but Oxley had a flair for anticipating and taking care of details.
Once inside, he poured himself a drink and took it with him to the bedroom, shed his jacket and the tie that he had worn to Radcliff’s house from force of habit. Always put your best face forward, even in a crisis.
Oxley didn’t have to look the number up. He had it memorized. Long distance, with the prefix for Miami, even later there than where he was.
Tough shit.
With so much riding on the line, he didn’t give a damn if Lasser got pissed off about the loss of sleep. He could catch up on sack time later, when the job was done, and take a couple of his pricey bimbos with him.
Thinking of the women, with their year-round tans and supple bodies, Oxley wondered if it wasn’t time for him to take a short vacation of his own. There was a little village south of Manzanilla, on the coast of Mexico, where he was well received. At least his money was, and it came down to the same thing. The women there were most accommodating. Sometimes, he could hear them laughing in his dreams.
But it would have to wait. Before he started planning any getaways, he had to deal with business, wait and see it through. When they were home and dry, there would be ample time for Oxley to congratulate himself and take his just reward for one more job well done.
Eleven digits. Oxley waited while the distant telephone rang once, twice, three times. Lasser picked it up at last, his voice a groggy snarl.
“Hello!”
“It’s me. No names.”
“Do you have any fucking clue what time it is?”
“We have a problem.”
“Oh?”
“It could be serious. I’ll call you back in fifteen minutes, at the other number.”
“Make it twenty, will you? Give me time to put some clothes on.”
“Hurry!”
Twenty minutes later, Oxley tapped another number out from memory and waited for his man in Florida to pick up on the secure phone.
“I’m here. Get to it.”
Oxley spelled the details out, told Lasser what he had to do. He got no argument.
“The three of them. Is that all?”
“For the moment,” Oxley said. “Take care of that, and I’ll get back in touch.”
“Okay. Will do.”
He felt immeasurably better as he cradled the receiver, slumped back on the bed and heaved a weary sigh. He had done all that he could do, for now. It would be Lasser’s job to take care of the dirty work.
And if he failed?
Forget it.
Lasser’s specialty was solving problems. It was what he did, and it had made him rich. He wouldn’t fail this time, because his own head was among those on the chopping block, if anything went wrong.
He would not let them down.
It would be all his life was worth to drop the ball. The chairman of Security Unlimited was thirty-eight years old. It was ironic, he supposed, that the events that shaped his adult life had their beginning in the days when he was still a third-grade student, but the normal course of any life was filled with ironies. It took a sense of humor to survive, much less succeed and prosper in this crazy world.
As for Morgan Lasser, laughing at the world had never been a problem. He enjoyed life’s little challenges, the rush that came with ironing out a sticky problem, whether it involved some piece of new technology or human obstacles just waiting to be forcibly removed.
Security Unlimited was Lasser’s brainchild, one of several companies he had created out of piss and vinegar, with other people’s money, using sheer audacity in place of ready capital from time to time. The other companies had folded, but they always left him better off than when he started. This time, Lasser was convinced, he had it right.
The call from Indiana was a problem, no doubt about it. Feds meant trouble, and he didn’t relish dealing with the FBI, but there were ways around that difficulty if he only kept his head. The plan that Warren Oxley had suggested to him sounded feasible, though Lasser had some private doubts about whether it went far enough.
Three names, and that was all. There had to be more loose ends somewhere out there in the ozone, waiting to snap back and sting his two esteemed associates—sting him—if he wasn’t prepared to deal with trouble as it came. The good news was that he could try to sniff around, elicit more details from Oxley and initiate the necessary corrective measures.
No sweat.
But he would take the three names first, and deal with them. They were the obvious weak links, and two of them should have been dealt with years before, in Lasser’s judgment. It was not his call, of course… until tonight.
There was a saying, source unknown—though many gave the credit to Hell’s Angels—that three men can keep a secret, provided two of them are dead. A corporation obviously couldn’t run on strict enforcement of that rule, or there would be no corporation, but the sentiment was sound enough. The best way Lasser knew to eliminate the weak links in a chain was to remove those links, forge new ones, or maybe settle for a shorter, stronger chain.
He rose and padded naked from the bedroom, hearing Debbie mutter something on the edge of sleep, ignored her in his concentration on the problem.
There was only one man Lasser trusted to coordinate a job like this. As for the hands-on labor… well, his business partners could help out in that regard.
It was, in fact, what they did best.
He would consider it a gesture of good faith.
Security Unlimited had bankrolled Dr. Radcliff’s labors for the past eight years, the latest in a string of sponsors who had recognized his genius and pursued it with a profit motive. There was nothing wrong with making money, after all. In fact, it made the world go round…or was that love?
No, it was money. Absolutely.
You could always purchase love, or its facsimile, if you had ready cash on hand.
In Lasser’s private study, on the spacious teak-wood desk, there were two telephones. One was the businessman’s special, with a dozen buttons for the different lines; its mate was something else entirely, boxlike in appearance, mounted with a row of colored lights.