The Pandora Directive

Chapter Eight

The Fuchsia Flamingo hadn’t opened yet, and the doors were locked. I pounded a few times and waited. A minute later, the door swung open, revealing Gus Leach’s massive frame. He looked beat.

“Come on in.” I’d never imagined the mutant could sound so friendly.

The room was dark, except for a soft white light emanating from behind the bar on the far side. I followed Leach to the light and pulled up beside him on a sparkling purple bar-stool. The drink in front of him was at least a triple. He raised the glass to his mouth and reduced it to a shot. He shivered slightly and turned to face me.

“I’m glad you came by. I hope you didn’t have any problems with the police.”

“Nothing serious.”

Leach nodded and got up from his seat. He walked wearily around to the back of the bar. “Want a drink?”

“Sure.”

“Bourbon, right?”

“How’d you guess?”

“Physiognomy. It’s a hobby of mine.”

He filled a glass, neat. Just the way I like it. “You can tell almost anything about a person from their facial features.”

“Really? So I have a bourbon face?”

“Something like that.” Leach poured himself a quadruple Bacardi, straight. I tried not to stare. “I really want to thank you for what you did last night. You saved Emily’s life.”

“How’s she doing?”

“It shook her up pretty good, but she isn’t hurt. If you’d shown up any later…” he shook his head. “She’s upstairs, trying to get some rest.”

I took a deep drink. Leech had given me the good stuff. I swirled it around and took a delicate sip. I raised my glass, but he was looking away.

Then I turned to see Emily coming down the stairway. Leach set his string down and walked over to meet her.

“I’m fine, Gus. I just couldn’t sleep anymore.” She walked toward me and settled onto a bar stool. She was wearing a green, crushed velvet robe. Despite the dark circles under her eyes, she was still stunning.

“Gus told me what you did. I don’t know how to thank you.”

I could think of a few ways, but it probably wasn’t the right time to go into detail. “It was a close shave. I’m just glad you’re OK.”

Leach was behind the bar, mixing a Bloody Mary. He tossed a celery stalk into the concoction and placed it in front of Emily.

“Thanks.” She took a sip. She didn’t look like she was in the mood to answer questions, but I didn’t have the luxury of delaying my investigation.

“Listen, Emily. I need to ask you about a few things, if you don’t mind.”

Leach leaned on to the bar. “C’mon, Murphy. She’s been through enough. The cops already grilled her last night. Give it a rest for a while.”

“It’s OK, Gus. I owe him. Answering a few questions isn’t any big deal.”

She turned to me and took a deep breath. “Go ahead.”

“The man who attacked you took something from your apartment. A box of some kind. What was it?

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know what was in it. It was a weird box… it didn’t open. At least I couldn’t figure out how to open it.”

“Where did it come from? Do have any idea why someone would want to steal it?”

Emily glanced up at Gus.

“You don’t need to tell him anything. It’s none of his business.”

Emily looked pensively into the tomato juice and stirred it with the celery stalk. After a long pause, she turned and looked straight into my eyes. “The box was sent to me by Thomas. Thomas Malloy. My husband.”

I picked up my bourbon and took a long drink. This was just a fine how-do-you-do. Everything I’d seen and heard over the past few days had suddenly shifted around 90 degrees.

“Pardon me for being stupid, but let me get this straight. You’re Thomas Malloy’s wife?”

“We were married about a year ago. I used to work at another club here in the city. Gus was the manager. That’s where I met Thomas. He used to come in and watch me sing. He was so sweet and lonely.”

“So where is your husband?”

“I don’t know,” She said quietly.

“But he sent a box you.”

“That’s right. It came yesterday.”

“And there was no indication where he’d sent it from?”

Emily shook her head. “The box was wrapped in plain brown paper. There was no return address, no letter or anything inside. Just the box.”

“How do you know it was from your husband?”

“I recognised his writing on the outside.”

I wanted to take a look at the paper the box had been wrapped in. Even without a return address, something about the wrapping might help me track down Malloy. “What did you do with the paper?”

Emily shrugged. “I threw it out, I guess. I don’t know where it is.”

I’d look for it later. For now, I needed to keep Emily talking.

“Why did Malloy leave? Did he give you any reason for not telling you where he’d be?” the muscles around Emily’s mouth tensed, and Leach half rose from his chair. Immediately, I knew I’d crossed into sensitive territory. I quickly rephrased the question.

“Do you think your husband left because he was in danger?”

Emily didn’t respond, but the look on her face said enough.

Everything fell into place. I turned to Leach. “You’re a friend of Malloy’s, right? He left Emily here and asked you to take care of her until he came back.”

Leach glanced nervously Emily. When he looked back at me, he nodded. Suddenly, I was the only one talking. “Listen, all I want to do is find Malloy. I’m not one of the bad guys.”

Both of them were still looking at me.

“Okay. One more question, and I’ll get out of here. Do either of you know why Malloy’s on the run?”

Emily cleared her throat and took a sip of her drink. “Thomas never talked about his work. He said it was better that way, safer for me. I honestly don’t know why he left,” She said wistfully.

A dumpster sat in the alley by the side door to the Flamingo. With any luck, the wrapping paper would be inside. Dumpster searching hadn’t been a part of my PI training curriculum. The movies that inspired me to become a detective never showed that part of the job. Oh, well. I rolled up my sleeves and dug in.

It was stinking, rotten work. Damp tissues, gum, coffee grounds, little hairy slabs of food. It reminded me of the buffet restaurants by fat Uncle Monty always took me to. I was glad I hadn’t eaten anything.

Eventually it paid off. I’d gotten lucky. The brown-paper wrapper had been stuffed into a garbage bag with a stack of newspapers and was stain (and smell) free.

I stepped inside my office. Laying the wrapper on the desk, I went to my file cabinet to retrieve my investigative props. Kneeling down, I opened the bottom drawer.

They’d been moved.

I looked through the other jurors in the cabinet and the desk. Nothing seemed to missing, but someone had certainly searched my office. The inspector the locks and a daughter the fire escape, as well as the windows. There was no sign of forced entry. Whoever had broken in had even gotten Hold Of My access code, or was a consummate professional. Me the possibility was very appealing.

I sat down and lit a Lucky Strike, trying to relax and come up with a rational explanation. Maybe Nilo had gotten bored and decided to snoop around some of the rooms. Unlikely. Nilo would have stolen something. Maybe I’d forgotten to lock the door… no, I was certain I’d locked it.

I didn’t want to accept the fact that a professional had gone through my place. Unfortunately, there was no other reasonable explanation. I speculated on why nothing had been taken. Then a thought hit me. The box. Whoever had been in cahoots with the phoney Black Arrow Killer knew about the box and hadn’t located it. Logically, they’d figure that the police or I had ended up with it.

The vid-phone chimed.

“Hello.”

“Murphy? This is Malden.”

I flipped on my video relay. Mac looked worried and rushed. “We’ve gotta meet. Right now.”

“Uh…”

“No questions. Meet me at the usual place as soon as you can get there. Bring that woman and your cigarettes. And make sure no one follows you.” he switched off the feed.

I had no idea what that was talking about. He and I had never met anywhere outside of the crime scene or the precinct. He was the woman he preferred to? This medicine? He couldn’t possibly think that I’d never had to find her. I couldn’t come up with any other woman that Mac would have in mind. And why the reference to my cigarettes? I thought it over. Maybe menu that someone was listening in an couldn’t actually name the place where you want to me. The woman and the cigarettes must be clues.

I punched up the city directory on a computer. First, I checked for any place called the Lucky Strike. There wasn’t one. But there were several places with the word “Lucky” in the name. As I scrolled through the list, a name jumped out at me. The Lucky Lady Cafe. My cigarettes, a woman. I jotted down the address and hurried out my speeder.

Ten minutes later, I walked into a greasy spoon on the other end of town. Remembering what Mac had said, I’d been careful not be followed. Mac was sitting in a booth away from the windows, eating a frosted cake doughnut and sipping coffee.

“I hope this is important. Perry Mason was on, and I’d just made some espresso.”

Mac’s face was as serious as a face can be with sprinkles and frosting on it. “The NSA is probably at your office right now. They were coming to get you.”

It took a moment to sink in. “What does the NSA want with me?

Mac washed down the last bite of doughnut with a slug of foul-smelling coffee. “Remember the guy you tossed off the roof?”

“I didn’t toss him off the roof,” I said indignantly.

“Whatever. Turns out he was an agent. An NSA Special Agent.”

Oh, God.

Mac took a bite out of another doughnut. Glazed.

“His name was Dag Horton. The information came about half-an-hour ago. Five minutes later, word came through the office that they were gonna nail you. That’s when I called.”

“So here we are.”

Mac nodded, his mouth packed. I leaned against the backrest and pulled out my pack of smokes. What was I going to do? I didn’t have a lot of options. They’d catch me eventually, and… then what? Kill me? I’d obviously gotten in the way of something, as well as contributed to the death of an agent. Sure, this Horton guy was as crooked as Lombard Street, but was he murdering women for his own sport, or on behalf of the agency? Maybe they just wanted to question me. A voice in my head said don’t bet on it. I needed leverage… a bargaining chip. The box.

Mac was watching me, mouthing half a doughnut like a cow chewing its cud. I drew in on my cigarette, then slowly exhaled the smoke in one long breath. “The cops who picked me up last night, did they bring a box in from the crime scene?”

“What you mean?”

“You know, a box. A metal box that holds 3-by-5 cards. Like the kind your Mom kept recipes in.”

An anguished look passed over Mac’s puffy face. “My mother didn’t keep recipes. When I was eight, she took me and my brothers and sisters to the circus. A couple of days later, she disappeared. She ran off with one of the circus clowns. Beppo. Left my Dad to raise all nine of us on his own. I’ve hated clowns ever since.”

It was a sad story, but we all had sad stories. I even had my own reason for hating clowns, but that was a long time ago and I tried not to think about it any more. “Sorry to bring it up. But you know what I for am talking about, right?”

Mac picked up a sticky bun. The prospect of a third pastry seemed to ease him out of his bitter memories. “Sure. There was no box. Our boys didn’t bring in anything except a gun and what was on the body. Took everything to the coroner.”

I thought back to the events leading up to Horton taking his last dive. In my mind’s eye, I could see him running across the street and scrambling over the fence into the alley. Suddenly, I realised — he wasn’t carrying the box! His hands were free when he climbed the fence. Horton must have dumped the box somewhere behind the Electronics Shop and the Brew & Stew. And since someone had searched my office earlier today, it was clear that the box hadn’t been found. If I could find it first and put it somewhere safe, it might just give me the leverage I needed to keep breathing.

I got up to leave.

“Where you going?”

I was feeling a lot better now that I had a plan. “I’ve gotta go find something. Something the agency wants even more than me.”

Mac pulled out a cigarette. “I wouldn’t go back to your office for awhile. Knowing the agency, they’ll have lookouts crawling all around your place.”

“I appreciate the warnings, Mac. I guess I owe you on this one.”

Mac waved his Merit at me. “Let’s just say we’re all squared up. And, by the way, we didn’t have this little talk.”