I pulled the door open, and two young officers with pistols drawn stood on either side of the doorway. A small group of neighbors was gathered outside, and I thought I saw Jim Jobs at the head of the group. I remembered his scolding voice when I first had James install the fire alarm in Sandy Conroy’s office, and I wondered if my comments to him were strong enough to give him reason to shoot out our windows and blow our computer to kingdom come.
“Thank God you’re here.” James crawled up off the floor and offered his hand. Neither officer took it.
“Who called about the gunfire?”
“I did.”
“It came from-”
“The parking lot.”
“We have another officer checking that out.” He glanced around the apartment. “Do you have any drugs in this apartment?”
I couldn’t believe he was even allowed to ask the question. “A case of beer is about the strongest thing we carry.”
He nodded. “I’ll need to take a report.” The younger uniformed officer walked in and started making notes as he moved around the living room. The guy was probably about our age, maybe younger. This was the officer of the law who was going to save us from a sniper? A guy younger than I was?
“Marathon Man, James.” Em gave my roommate a grim look.
“Pardon?”
“When Laurence Olivier is torturing Dustin Hoffman he says ‘is it safe?’ and Hoffman, trying to get away from the pain says, ‘Yes, it’s safe, it’s very safe, it’s so safe you wouldn’t believe it.’”
James shook his head. “You’re good. You’re very good. I can’t believe you came up with that.”
“Sir, would you step outside for a moment?” The older officer motioned to James and the night got a lot longer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
T he cops left a little after midnight. They’d questioned us individually, then together. Did we owe anyone any money? Did we use drugs, did we buy drugs, did we sell drugs? After the exhaustive interviews, they worked the apartment over, digging out three slugs from the walls. They combed the parking lot, looking for I don’t know what. All I know is that we were glad when it ended.
We’d called a 24-hour home improvement company, Twenty-Four Seven, that the police recommended and they boarded up our windows. Em stuck around and helped clean up the broken glass and computer pieces. The computer hadn’t been worth much, but it’s all we owned. The company laptop was untouched. My jackass boss Michael would be so happy. I promised myself when I got paid from everyone, I would buy the apartment its own computer. Something new and state-of-the-art. Something cheap. I had a lot of plans for that money. Travel with Em, a new car, computer, maybe upgrade our lodging-the list was endless. Maybe put back a couple of bucks just in case Em and I decided to take this relationship to the next level. Not that either of us was ready for that.
“We should have told them about Feng. About Jim Jobs.” James was having second thoughts. “Skip, we should have told them the whole story. Carol Conroy and Sandy and Sarah.”
“Hey, James. You did a great job in giving them just the basic facts. We were sitting here and somebody started shooting. That’s all we know for sure. Don’t even think about blowing it now.”
“Blowing it?” He buried his head in his hands. “Skip, I wanted to tell the cops everything and ask them to solve the problem. It’s been a game up until now. It’s no longer a game, pard. We came this close to being killed.”
“The cops made it clear they thought it was a drug thing.” Em sat on the couch, scowling. “Our age, this location,” she flung her arms out. “You guys need to get out of this place.”
“It’s what we can afford, Em.” James shot her a dirty look. “It is what it is.”
“James, maybe it was a drug thing.” For the last hour I’d had this thought in the back of my head.
“What?”
“Maybe somebody picked the wrong apartment. It’s not that we haven’t seen deals going down here before.” We’d seen drugs being sold in the parking lot, and the cops had conducted at least three raids in the two years we’d lived here.
“Yeah. Maybe. But what are those chances?”
“James, Skip is right. If we told the police about Feng and the rest of that crew, the cops would think we were smoking something. What were you going to say? That Skip is pretending to be Sarah’s boyfriend, so maybe her real boyfriend shot the place up? Or maybe her boyfriend’s wife shot the place up? Or would you tell the story about you guys bugging Feng’s car and maybe Feng shot the windows out to get even or to scare you? Or would you use the story about bugging Sandy Conroy’s office and maybe he found out and decided to kill you?”
Em brought it home. Each one of those scenarios was entirely possible. We were in some deep, deep shit.
We sat on the couch, the three of us, drinking strong, black coffee at twelve thirty a.m. We should have all collapsed by now, but the fear and the energy fueled by the caffeine kept us on the edge of our seats.
“Who ordered your security system?” Em stared ahead, watching some spot on the far wall.
“Synco Systems.” What was she thinking?
“Why?”
“Because they wanted to upgrade. Wanted a better-” and then I remembered. In my first conversation with Sarah, she’d mentioned that a new client had demanded that Synco Systems put in a new system. “It was one of their clients.”
“Any idea who?”
I thought about it for a minute. A new client had told them they wanted Synco to install a better security. Presumably to make sure no one broke into the plant and stole that client’s software secrets. “I do remember. I think she said it was the government.”
“Our government?”
“Yeah. I’m sure of it. She said someone associated with the United States government made the request.”
“The government wanted a new security system installed at S.S. to protect the security system that was being designed for them.”
“Sounds convoluted, but yes. That’s what she said.”
James spoke up. “The security software package that Synco is working on right now is for the Department of Defense, right?”
“It is. Sarah said it’s a secret, but she’s under the impression that the Department of Defense is the client.”
“So, we can assume that the Department of Defense is responsible for your big sale, Skip.” Em smiled at me, stood up, and walked to the window. “Did you guys have renters’ insurance?” She tapped on the plywood.
“No.”
“Just wondered.” She paced with a nervous energy. “Do you remember what we talked about yesterday at lunch?”
Could that have been just yesterday? A lot had happened since then.
“Going back to a starting point? Well, we started when Skip sold the job. But now we know that it goes back a little further. It starts when the Department of Defense asked for a new security system to be installed at Synco Systems.”
“Why does it start there?” James had a cynical tone to his voice.
“Because they were afraid someone would break in and steal the plans for this sophisticated software program that is being installed on their computers.”
“Makes sense.” I nodded.
“The Department of Defense is making sure that their new security system is secure.”
“And? You’re just going around in circles.” James was frustrated. Late hours, caffeine, and a headache usually do that to him.
“It’s all right there. The murder of the vice president, Carol Conroy’s paranoia, even Sarah’s relationship with Sandy Conroy. I can feel it.”
“But you can’t tell us what it is?”
“Feng’s part of it. That conversation you recorded this afternoon. We need a couple more pieces of the puzzle. That’s all.”
“Where are we going to get them?” I had no idea where she was going with this.