Brigman stared at him, confused. ‘What rest of them? I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, son. None of my people are in hospital. Now, I need to attend to my guests, so if you don’t mind …’
‘That armchair looks comfortable,’ Ben said, motioning with the gun. ‘What is that, Louis XV?’
‘Louis XVI,’ Brigman said suspiciously.
‘Why don’t you take a seat on your nice little velvet throne there and tell me all about how you tried to snap up CIC last year?’ Ben said. ‘And then about how you decided that if you couldn’t have it, you were going to screw it for good and then start setting up your own? What’s the matter, Brigman, it’s not enough to rule the waves, you wanted to rule the sky as well?’
Brigman stared incredulously for a moment, then burst out laughing. ‘Oh boy,’ he said, wiping tears from his face. ‘So that’s what this is all about. You have some balls, I’ll give you that. Especially for an Englishman. You know, my great-great granddaddy was with the Continental Army under Washington in 1781, when we kicked your Brit asses at Yorktown.’
‘Half Irish,’ Ben said. ‘Mine was with the 69th New York Infantry when we helped Lincoln whip the South a few years after.’
Brigman chuckled. ‘All right. You know what, I like your style, son. You want to know about the offer I made Chapman? Sure, last year I’d’ve torched half the island to get hold of a hot tomato like CIC. But if you were a little better informed, my friend, you’d know things have kind of changed for me since then. I ain’t buying any more, I’m selling. This place is the last piece of property I own on Grand Cayman, and it’ll be sold in a week. I’m going back to Dallas and you’ — motioning with the cigar — ‘you just gatecrashed my farewell party.’
Ben said nothing.
Brigman smiled. ‘You want to verify that with my attorney? Go ahead. He’s right outside. Better yet, go talk to Doc Rotella. He’s the one who diagnosed me, right around Christmas time. Lucky if I see another.’
‘Right,’ Ben said.
‘Oh, so you need proof? Step this way.’ Brigman heaved himself up out of the Louis XVI chair and led Ben across the room to a gleaming door set into the walnut panelling. ‘That look like a goddamn multi-gym to you?’ he said, pushing the door open and waving his arm at the machine that took up a large chunk of the room next door.
Ben stared at the machine, all readouts and dials and tubes. Beside it was a chrome-framed hospital bed with crisp white sheets and a satin pillow, encircled by a rail with a curtain drawn to one side. Clustered around like a circle of wagons, six medical gurneys were loaded with surgical equipment and a huge array of drugs and medicines. The room looked like a private clinic.
‘Hemodialysis,’ Brigman said. ‘Twice a day, an evil bitch of a nurse hooks me up to that infernal device and it sucks the shit out of this old carcass of mine. Not that it does me much damn good, after a lifetime pickling my kidneys in scotch and bourbon,’ he added with a grunt.
Ben was lost for words. He suddenly felt like an idiot. A rash, dangerous, violent idiot who’d come storming into a dying man’s home with a loaded weapon and a head full of wild ideas.
‘Precious little point in stopping now,’ Brigman said. He took another puff on his cigar, then plucked it out of his mouth and surveyed it tenderly. ‘You’re looking at a runaway train, son.’ He grinned at Ben. ‘Whatever life’s left to me, I have every intention of enjoying it to the full. If I never make another dime again, I still have about two hundred fifty thousand bucks an hour to live on until I finally drop dead, and that’s plenty good enough for me. You think I’d be interested in corporate takeovers right now, Mr …?’
‘Hope,’ Ben said. ‘The name’s Ben Hope.’
‘Believe me, Mr Hope, I might have done a few things in my time I ain’t too proud of. A guy who comes up from nothing, the way I did, doesn’t make his billion without breaking a few arms. Hell, I can admit that now — what are they gonna do to me? But I ain’t gonna be your whipping boy for whatever you think happened to your friend Chapman. I’d suggest you go look elsewhere. Anything I can do to help, you be sure to let me know.’
‘I made a mistake,’ Ben said. ‘I apologise to you, Mr Brigman.’
Brigman slapped him on the shoulder. ‘No hard feelings, son. I’m a tough old turkey and life’s getting a mite short to hold a grudge. Maybe put that gun away, huh? Then how about you come outside with me and have a drink before you go.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was after four in the morning by the time Ben got back to his hotel. The strong black instant coffee he made in his room was pretty bad, but it masked the stale taste of bourbon on his lips. It would take a good deal more to wash away the sting of guilt and defeat.
He stood on his balcony and watched the sunrise, then stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower. Under the cool water he carefully peeled the dressing off his aching ribs and checked his wound. It was livid and inflamed, and there were spots of blood on the dressing that there shouldn’t have been.
So much for R&R, he thought to himself. Something had got torn in there, but the stitches seemed to have held. He patted himself dry, dabbed antiseptic cream on the wound and put on a fresh dressing that he covered with a clean black shirt.
By eight-thirty, the sun was already hot and he was back in the car, cutting northwards up the Seven Mile Beach road towards CIC. He walked into Nick’s old office without knocking and found Tamara sitting alone at the desk.
‘You’re up early,’ she said.
‘I’m up late. And you can forget about Julius T. Brigman.’ He sat on the edge of the desk and told her what he’d found out.
Tamara leaned back in her chair and pursed her lips. ‘It seemed to make such sense. Who sent those guys to beat you up?’
‘Someone else,’ Ben said.
‘Where do we go from here?’
‘Somewhere else,’ Ben said.
‘Will a cup of coffee make you more communicative?’
Ben shook his head. Gently so as not to yank his stitches any more, he reached into his back pocket for his whisky flask.
Tamara wrinkled her nose. ‘Isn’t it a little early in the morning for that?’
‘Hair of the dog that bit me,’ Ben said.
‘You’ll wind up like Brigman.’
He ignored her, unscrewed the little chrome cap and knocked back a slug.
‘I was awake all night thinking,’ she said. ‘Maybe the Brigman connection was too obvious. I had another idea. What if there was some fault with the aircraft and the manufacturers tried to cover it up to save themselves a bunch of lawsuits? Someone with a history of depression would be an easy target to pin it on.’
Ben screwed the cap back on his flask and shook his head. ‘They’d pin it on CIC maintenance personnel, neglectful servicing. And I don’t think they’d be running around murdering their scapegoat’s relatives. A lot easier just to call their insurers.’
‘Then what?’
‘Something else,’ he said. He slid off the edge of the desk and started pacing up and down the office.
‘Does it really help you to pace like a caged tiger?’ Tamara asked him irritably.
A caged tiger was exactly what Ben felt like, but Tamara was right — pacing wasn’t going to help. He stopped, looking around him for inspiration. His gaze locked on to the Escher print on the wall over the desk.
The angels, then the demons. It was impossible to see them both at the same time. When you focused away from one, the other came into view, creating a whole paradigm shift, an altered reality.