Aphrodite w-3 Read online

  "Do you want to talk to Elron yourself?" Fromm asked when he couldn't stand the quiet or the filing any longer.

  Stiles shook his head, put his hands together, and placed the well-manicured fingers under his chin.

  "Is there anything else you want me to do?"

  Stiles nodded but still didn't speak. He pulled his hands from under his chin, stared at the nails, and began filing again.

  "What?" Byron Fromm asked. "What do you want me to do?"

  "This Elton," Stiles finally said. "Elron," Fromm corrected. "It's Elron, not Elton."

  "Byron," Bert Stiles said. "I don't give a rat's ass what his name is. What I want to know is if he has any idea who these people were." When he raised his voice, he ran the emery board a little harder and faster.

  "He doesn't. But I do."

  "You?"

  "I can't be sure. I mean, I didn't see them. But the guy, he sounds like someone who was around here two days ago. And then again yesterday. The first time, he was trying to get into the Growth offices. I didn't let him in. The second time, he insisted on talking to me out of the office, said it was too confidential to discuss inside. But it was just bullshit. I decided he was a nut. But now I realize it was right around the time of the break-in. I went outside with him because he said he was a cop and I think he might be. Not local, though. He showed me his badge but it wasn't from around here."

  "Where was he from?"

  Fromm shook his head. "Long Island somewhere. He took the ferry over."

  "What about the woman?"

  "I never saw her."

  "Do you remember the cop's name?"

  Fromm shook his head again. "But you can describe him?"

  Fromm nodded this time. And, as Bert Stiles filed even harder and faster, Fromm described Justin Westwood as best he could. He was within two inches of the correct height, got the hair right and the body type, didn't know the eye color. When he was done, Stiles asked Fromm to repeat the description and this time around took notes, holding the pen very carefully and gently between his delicate fingers. Then he thanked Byron Fromm for coming to him with the information.

  As Fromm walked out of his office, Stiles stared at the three-line phone on his desk. He sat there silently for quite a while, maybe ten minutes, not even bothering to use the emery board, until he decided he couldn't put off the phone call any longer. So he pushed down the button for line one, picked up the receiver, and dialed, the whole time thinking he'd rather have his fingernails pulled out one by one than have the conversation he was about to have.

  Justin hung up the phone and turned to Deena and Kendall, who were both doing their best to look elsewhere.

  "I'll try one more," he said.

  "You're not very good at this," Kendall told him.

  "Thank you very much," he said. "I'm a little rusty at this kind of thing, too. And it's not easy getting information out of people when you don't even know what you're trying to find out." He turned to Deena. "I'm getting stonewalled. Whatever's going on, either none of the people at these numbers know about it or they know not to talk about it."

  "You still don't seem very good at it." Kendall sniffed. "And it's boring."

  "That's her new word," Deena explained. "Everything's boring."

  Justin held out the phone to the little girl. "Would you like to try, miss?" When she smiled a somewhat haughty smile and took the phone, Justin began dialing. Before anyone could answer on the other end, he shrugged at Deena, as if to say: She can't do any worse than I've done.

  A moment later, Kendall was saying into the phone, "Yes, I'd like to speak to my grandfather, please."

  Justin stopped his shrug. He looked at Kendall as if asking: What are you doing?

  Next they heard Kendall say, "I don't really know his name. I just call him Grampy-gramps. But my daddy is Mr. Edward Marion."

  Now Justin looked at Deena. This look said: What the hell have you raised here?

  There was a pause, then they heard Kendall say, "Yes, I'll hold." She turned sweetly to Justin and said, "He's getting the manager."

  Both Justin and Deena held their breath until they heard Kendall saying, "This is Lucy Marion. I'd like to speak to my grandpa, please." The girl listened, then said, "My daddy told me to call. It's Grampygramps' birthday." The manager said something and Kendall responded, "No, he's not here. I'm with the baby-sitter." There was another pause while the manager said something into the phone; then Kendall broke into a huge grin. "Yes. That's right. I guess I did know Grampy's name. Lewis Granger."

  She flashed a triumphant smile at Justin, then her eyes widened and she looked confused. To the manager on the other end of the phone, she said, "Yes. I'll hold." She held the phone out away from her. "He's getting the man," she hissed at Justin. He nodded, said, "You're my new hero," and took the receiver. He waited for several minutes, then he heard an elderly man come on and say, "Hello?"

  "Mr. Granger?"

  "Who is this?"

  "Mr. Granger, my name is Justin Westwood."

  "What are they talking about? My granddaughter's on the phone? I don't have a granddaughter. She died years ago."

  "Mr. Granger, I'm sorry, I'm afraid we lied about that. I just needed to talk to you and I didn't know how else to get to you."

  "What do you want to talk about?"

  Justin hesitated, then said, "Growth Industries."

  The old man's tone got even sharper. More suspicious. "You work for them? What happened to that Ed Marion?"

  "I don't work for them. I'm trying to get some information about them."

  "What kind of information?"

  "Just about anything you can tell me, sir." There was no response from Granger. As the silence lengthened, Justin thought the old man had hung up. "Mr. Granger? Are you still there?"

  "I'm tired," the man said. "I'm very tired."

  "I can call you back another time, if you'd like."

  "I don't mean I'm tired right this minute. I mean I'm tired. Tired of everything. Tired of life."

  "I'd like to come see you, if I can."

  "See me?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Nobody's been to see me in years."

  "What about Ed Marion?"

  "Oh yes. He comes. But he doesn't count. He just asks his questions and gives me the shots."

  "Shots?"

  "I'm tired of those damn shots. I'm tired of everything."

  "Can I come see you, Mr. Granger?"

  "To ask me questions?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "You won't believe my answers, you know."

  "Well," Justin told him, "I'd like to give it a try. How about tomorrow?"

  "Today, tomorrow, the day after, the day after that one, doesn't make any difference to me. If there's one thing I've got," Lewis Granger said, "it's time." There was a very definite chain of command

  After Byron Fromm had passed his bad news along to Bert Stiles, Stiles made his own call, passed the same news along, and got reamed. The man who did the reaming was named Alfred Newberg. Newberg was paid over a million dollars a year to deal with bad news-to receive it and to pass it along to his employer. As expert a job as he did dressing down Bert Stiles, it was nothing compared to the verbal lashing he took over the phone. He did not defend himself, nor did he offer any excuses. There were none to offer. He was paid his handsome salary-as well as given enormous loans at almost no interest and provided with regular use of a private jet, an extremely comfortable and luxurious Challenger-to take such abuse and then go out and solve whatever problem had arisen. So when the spew of obscenities began dying down and he heard the words "This is a very, very delicate situation, you do understand that?" he knew the tirade was over and it was time for him to do his job.

  "Yes, sir. I know exactly how delicate this is."

  "It's a Chinese puzzle we're involved in."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Do you know what a Chinese puzzle is, Newberg?"

  "Yes, I do, sir. Boxes within boxes."

 
"Exactly. And do you know what happens when one box is removed?"

  "The puzzle doesn't fit together the same way."

  "It's worse than that. Much, much worse than that. The puzzle, the thing itself, is altered. It's not the same object. It becomes something different, something else entirely."

  "Yes, sir."

  "In other words, it's destroyed."

  "I understand that, Mr. Kransten," Newberg said. "I understand what's at stake."

  "We are so close," Newberg heard his boss say. "We are so goddamn close. After all these years…"

  "Yes, sir, I know."

  "I don't want to see it destroyed. I won't let it be destroyed."

  "It won't be."

  "Well, it might be if this goddamn policeman-what's his name?"

  "Westwood."

  "Well, whoever the hell he is, he can't be allowed to come any closer. For God's sake, what the hell is he trying to do?"

  "He's looking into what happened with Bill Miller."

  "Who?"

  "Bill Miller, sir. The actor."

  "Right, right, right. What does he have to do with the policeman?"

  "There was the incident with the woman. The reporter who wrote the obituary."

  "Oh, for chrissake, it's ridiculous. Make him go away. Get rid of him."

  "I will."

  "Get rid of him now, before he pulls one of our little boxes away."

  "Consider him gone, Mr. Kransten."

  There was a long silence and Newberg thought, perhaps, that the line was dead. But he heard the faintest wisp of breathing and then he heard Kransten say, "You like using that plane, don't you, Al?"

  "I like it very much. And you don't have to worry, sir. I like it too much to risk screwing this up. I just received a call from the manager of Leger. That's the one in upstate New York, outside of Albany. He said that Lewis Granger received a call from his granddaughter."

  "Granger?"

  "That's right."

  "Does he have a granddaughter?"

  "No. I'm certain it was the little girl who's with the policeman. Her mother was the one who witnessed the… scene…in East End Harbor."

  "Careless. It's all been very careless."

  "Yes, sir. But I'm sure Westwood's going to see Granger. So we know where he'll be very soon."

  "How'd he track Granger down?"

  "Possibly through Helen Roag."

  "Goddammit."

  "Although it's more probable it's got nothing to do with her. He might have gotten on to Ed Marion."

  "Really?"

  "Marion's the link. Between the woman in East End Harbor and now this."

  "Where'd you take it last week, Al?"

  "Excuse me?" Newberg asked, momentarily thrown.

  "The plane. The Challenger. Didn't you use it last week?"

  "I did. Mexico. A resort south of Puerto Vallarta called Las Alamandas."

  "Nice down there?"

  "Very."

  "Lot of nice places in the world, Al. A lot of nice places. I hope you get to see many more of them."

  "So do I. Believe me, so do I, Mr. Kransten. So don't give the policeman a second thought. Or the witness. I promise you: They're as good as gone."

  17

  Ed Marion was confused and annoyed by the phone call from the manager of the Weston Mall. He was certain there was some mistake. Why the hell would anyone break into Growth Industries? And, if he did, what the hell was he going to steal? A bunch of used answering machines? A cheap fake-leather swivel chair? It didn't make sense. There was nothing of value; there was no meaningful paperwork. There wasn't even any indication of what the company did. But none of that mattered now because someone had been inside and he actually had to go there and check things out. He hated going into that office, stopped by only once a month, perfunctorily. He didn't really need to do it, but he felt as if he should. He needed to reassure himself that things were untouched and safe.

  Only now things weren't untouched. And now things might not be safe.

  The best he could hope for was that this was the work of some incompetent burglar. The worst he could expect was…

  Ed Marion didn't want to think about the worst. He knew that when it came to the realities of the game he was playing, he was in way over his head. The people he worked for were scary and they were nasty. They frightened him. They paid awfully well, though. And as long as they left him alone to do his work, he could live with what he was doing for them. His extracurricular duties were reasonably unobtrusive and not all that time-consuming. They were also extraordinarily valuable from a professional perspective. But he knew that if they ever decided he was a liability, if, God forbid, he ever fucked up, well-that was what he didn't want to focus on. He didn't like thinking about his wife being a widow or his kids going through the rest of their lives without a father.

  He drove his nine-month-old Lexus out of the driveway of his two-story white colonial, turned left on his quiet suburban street, and headed past a series of manicured lawns and freshly painted houses, toward the mall. Marion paid no attention to the blue-gray Buick that started up and chugged along behind him. He was so lost in thought that when he stopped at the first stop sign he came to he didn't even notice the man who was standing on the corner. He didn't see the man step toward his car and tap on the passenger-side window. The man was holding a map and looked confused, so Ed Marion instinctively touched the button to his left, the one that automatically rolled down the passenger window. Ed was still so lost in thought it took him a full three seconds to register that instead of the map, the pedestrian had shoved a gun through the open window. The gun was pointing straight at him, Marion realized, and the man, perfectly calm-there was even the hint of a reassuring smile on his face-was saying, "It's time we had a little talk, Ed." Justin had Ed Marion pull the Lexus over to the side of a quiet street, about three blocks from the man's house. Deena pulled the Regal up behind them and cut the motor; she and Kendall stayed in that car, as Justin had instructed.

  "Whatever you want," Marion said, staring at the gun in Justin's hand, "it's yours. I don't have a lot of cash but just take it. I have credit cards, a bank card, this watch is worth a few hundred dollars. Here, take the watch."

  "I'm not here to rob you, Ed."

  Marion studied him now, his eyes taking in Justin's posture, his clothes, the serious expression on his face. "Oh my God," Marion said, "you're going to kill me."

  Justin decided to play things as they unfolded. This guy was clearly afraid. The question was, of what? Right now he was afraid of Justin. Might as well take advantage of that, give him some room and hope he'd lead the conversation somewhere worthwhile.

  "I have some questions," Justin said. "Why don't you give me some answers and we'll see how things go."

  "I don't know anything about the break-in, I swear. I didn't do anything to cause it."

  "No? How about the fuckup with the girl?"

  "What girl?"

  "The one you spoke to about Bill Miller."

  Marion looked genuinely confused. "I did what I was supposed to, didn't I? I called Newberg, he called… whoever he calls. Maybe he called you. Then he told me to call the girl back, keep her calm, he was taking care of it."

  "By having her killed?"

  "Look, I don't ask about things like that. It's not my business."

  "It is now. Somebody screwed up. There was a witness."

  "I know. I saw it on the news. But that's not my fault." Marion was sweating profusely now. "Look, I took care of my end. I was told to call her. They told me to give out the number. What happened there, it's just not my fault. I never said a word. I mean, I'm not even supposed to be on this side of things. They said this kind of stuff would never happen. Let me just talk to Newberg. Let me talk to Kransten. I've done everything they want and I haven't said a word to anybody. I swear to God, even the people I work with don't know anything about Aphrodite. My wife doesn't know!"

  Amfer. Or Afro. That's what Deena thought she'd
heard Susanna's killer ask about. Afro. Aphrodite? It made as much sense as anything else.

  Justin wasn't sure where to head next. He didn't know any of the names Marion had just tossed out. And clearly he was supposed to. He wasn't confident of his ability to draw out information. He needed the basics-who and why and where-but he didn't have enough info to go the subtle route. And he didn't know how much longer he could keep Marion on the hook. So he took the plunge and went direct. "Tell me about Lewis Granger," he said.

  "What?"

  "What's the connection between Granger and Bill Miller?"

  "What? What do you mean?" Marion's eyes narrowed.

  "Do you know how old Miller was?"

  "Who are you?" Marion asked. "How old is Lewis Granger?"

  "Jesus Christ," Marion moaned. "I know who you are. You're the cop on the news."

  So much for direct. "I may not be who you thought I was," Justin said, tapping his gun on his thigh, "but I can still pull the trigger. So answer the questions, Ed."

  "You don't know what the hell you're doing."

  "You work for the Ellis Institute. What do they research?"

  "You're the one who broke into the office. Oh my God, you don't know what you've done."

  "What's Aphrodite? Why do you think Susanna Morgan knew anything about it?"

  The guy had his head in his hands now. Justin thought he might begin to rip his own hair out. "They'll know you found me. Jesus Christ, they're going to kill me now."

  "Who?"

  "You're gonna lead them right here. You're definitely dead and so am I." Marion glanced back at the Buick. "And so's whoever you're with. Everybody's dead."

  "I can get you help," Justin said.

  "It's too late now."

  "No it isn't. But you have to talk to me."

  "I can't," Marion said. His words were barely audible now. They were coming out as half-gasps, half-sobs. "I can't talk to you. They'll know you got to me. You're killing me."