I felt betrayed, humiliated, and furious. “Do the words ‘informed consent’ mean anything to you? You didn’t tell me the whole truth about what you expected when you pulled me into this. You got my consent under false pretenses. I deserved better than that.”
“Fair enough. Yes, you deserved better,” Price said, in a tone that sounded more like a challenge than a concession, “but we couldn’t afford to risk giving you better. We knew you’d hate the strip club, and we knew Sinclair might try to compromise you. But what Ben said when you called him that night was dead-on: If you were too much of a goody-goody to set foot in a strip club, why on earth would Sinclair believe you’d lie and steal?”
The words stung like a slap — not just “lie” and “steal” but “goody-goody” as well. Was that what Price thought of me? Was that what Rankin thought of me? Was that, in fact, what I was?
“I’m sorry,” Price added, her tone softening. “It was my call, not Ben’s, and I had to hold my nose as I made it. An undercover sting requires imperfect choices and tough decisions. But I stand by this one, and I hope you can understand why. We’ve got great audio and video evidence on multiple counts — wire fraud, conspiracy, and interfering with interstate commerce, for sure. If you’ll hang in there with us just one more step, we’ll nail this guy for extortion, too. And then we’ll let you get back to your normal life.”
“Normal life? I have no idea what that means anymore.”
I looked out the window for a long time. The sun was dropping toward the horizon. A few hundred yards down the hill from where I stood, a sliver of sunlight glanced off the bronze glass of the Sunsphere, one of the few remaining relics of Knoxville’s 1982 World’s Fair. A half mile or so beyond, just before the big bend where the Tennessee River first turns toward the Gulf of Mexico, Neyland Stadium glowed orange and white in the late-afternoon light. At this distance, at this moment, the massive stadium seemed small and unimportant, and my tiny office — my place beneath it — was an invisible, insignificant speck.
I looked back at Price. “I feel infected,” I said miserably. “Diseased. Feels like toxic shock attacking every moral fiber I’ve got.” I stared out the window at the river of cars flowing westward from downtown, taking normal people home to their neighborhoods and their families. “How do I get these toxins out of my system?”
A look of relief passed between the agents. They still had me. The bait was thrashing, but it was still on the hook, still twitching and writhing as the big fish opened its jaws.
Rankin drove me back to my office, partly to save me the walk and partly to retrieve the envelope so the lab could fingerprint the photos. On the way he coached me about the call I needed to place to Sinclair. “You know the drill. Make him spell out the details, if you can. The more explicitly he threatens or pressures you, the stronger the extortion case is. So don’t initiate anything. Get him to say what he wants you to do or what he’ll do to you.”
“Got it,” I said impatiently. This was the third time he’d told me this, in slightly different words, since we’d ridden down in the elevator from Price’s office, and I’d grasped the point the first two times.
We threaded the service road ringing the base of the stadium and parked by the stairwell at the north end zone. Rankin followed me up to my office and took a seat as I unlocked the desk drawer where I’d hidden the envelope.
For the second time that day, I felt close to fainting. The envelope was gone.
CHAPTER 39
“And you’re sure it was in the drawer?”
“Positive.”
Rankin looked around the room. “What about the file cabinet? Couldn’t you have put it in the file cabinet?” I shook my head. “How about checking it, just to humor me?” I unlocked the file cabinet and yanked open the balky top drawer, then each of the lower drawers. It was not in the filing cabinet, as I’d known all along.
I went back to the desk drawer. “Look,” I said, removing a printout of an e-mail message that had been sent to me six hours before. “My secretary printed this out and handed it to me along with the packet from Sinclair. I put both things in the drawer.”
“Maybe you put the e-mail in the drawer and the envelope in your briefcase,” Rankin suggested. “You know, if you were upset, maybe you got the e-mail and the envelope mixed up.”
I shook my head emphatically. “My briefcase is still in the truck. I never even brought it in this afternoon. I’m telling you, somebody’s come in and taken it.”
“You’re sure the drawer was locked? And you’re sure the office door was locked?”
“Give me a break,” I snapped. “I was mortified when I saw those pictures. If I could have bricked up the doorway and welded the damn drawer shut, I would have. Yes, I’m sure they were both locked.”
He leaned down and inspected the edges of the drawer. “Doesn’t look like it’s been forced,” he said. “So who else has keys?”
Before I could answer, the phone rang. The display announced the caller as Peggy. “My secretary,” I said, lifting the handset by reflex.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re there,” she said. “A Dr. Raymond Sinclair’s on the line for you. Something to do with funding for a research project he says he’s sponsoring. This is the third time he’s called this afternoon. He says it’s urgent he speak with you today.”
“Dr. Sinclair?” Given Ray Sinclair’s apparent scorn of advanced degrees, I could only assume the “Dr.” was designed to carry weight with Peggy. I looked to Rankin for guidance. He raised his left hand to his head — his thumb at his ear, his pinkie near his lips — as if the hand were a telephone. He nodded, spinning his right forefinger in a rolling, forward motion that meant go. “Oh, yes,” I said to Peggy. “I do need to speak with Dr. Sinclair. Please put him through right away.” I heard the line click. “Ray, are you there?”
“Hello, Bill,” he said. “How the hell are you?”
I caught Rankin’s eye and pointed toward the speakerphone button on the phone, raising my eyebrows in a question. He shook his head emphatically, so instead I angled the handset slightly away from my ear. The agent leaned close, his ear practically touching mine.
“How am I? How do you think I am, Ray? I’m a little off balance. I had an unpleasant surprise this afternoon.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say that. I thought you’d thank me.”
“Thank you? Why?”
“For sending you mementos of that swell evening we had in Las Vegas. You looked like you were having quite a time while I was out of the room.”
“How did you get those pictures, Ray?”
“A sweet young thing gave them to me. I believe her name is Marian. Marian, Madame Librarian.” He chuckled at the joke.
“And what do you plan to do with them?”
“Do with them? I don’t plan to do anything with them, Bill.” Rankin flashed a thumbs-down sign, which I took to mean he was unhappy to hear that. “I just thought you’d appreciate taking a walk down memory lane. A walk down lap-dance lane. Oh, but you don’t mind if I share them with our friends at The Library, do you? Those would be a nice addition to their Web site.”
“You must be joking,” I said. “Those pictures on the Web?”
“What, you don’t like that idea, Bill? You don’t want your colleagues and students and family to see what a great time you were having?”
“You know I don’t want those circulating on the Internet — or anyplace else. You know that would be very painful to me.”
“So here’s what’s very painful to me,” he shot back, the phony cheerfulness gone from his voice. “You said you’d provide me with bodies, and you haven’t. You thought you had me by the balls, and you got greedy. But who’s got the tighter grip, Bill? Tell me, how does it feel?”