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I said, “Section five. Life and Limb.” Stroking him while realizing all he’d heard. Phone conversations. Pillow talk. The violation…
He was my liberator but I didn’t like him any better for it.
Being saved by him was like finding out God existed but that He had a bad personality.
He said, “Actually, these particular components haven’t been featured in the catalogue yet. So you got a sneak preview. I’d be happy to leave them installed, show you how to use them for your own benefit.”
“No thanks.”
“No doubt you’re feeling intruded upon. But monitoring your input and output was necessary. You were my informational conduit. To the school, the police- all of them. No one would help me. Everyone treated me as if I were a pariah. I needed good data- that was my right. I knew I had to be thorough. I pretuned the units to receivers in my house. Identical receivers were also installed in this van. No one else could possibly receive the transmission, so you needn’t be concerned that anyone else was monitoring you. And the tapes will be destroyed very shortly.”
“I appreciate that.”
Unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. But he missed it or ignored it.
We were on the Sherman Oaks/North Hollywood border now, approaching Coldwater. A few cars on the street. Late diners heading home from the restaurants on Ventura. More lights, then the on-ramp to the 134 West.
He said, “The lentils are manufactured in Poland, of all places, though I suppose the actual research and development came out of the Soviet Union. Glasnost and perestroika have been a boon for those of us interested in the free exchange of advanced technology. The distributor in Hong Kong was more than happy to send me a boxful of the little devils at great discount in the hopes that I’d feature them in the next catalogue. It didn’t work out that way, did it, Gregory?”
“No, Mr. B. Too expensive for our target audience.”
“Very expensive- even at discount. But only the best for you, Dr. Delaware. Because I respect you. Your tenacity. I had high expectations of the quality of information you’d be able to shunt to me. And I was right, wasn’t I? So I’d say the lentils paid for themselves. As did the homing tracers I placed in your Seville and in Detective Sturgis’s Matador and Fiat. Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite get to the Ford he traded for the Matador, but by that time I had enough data to be able to trace his abduction.”
“What a guy,” said Milo.
No longer hoarse now. Clear and quiet and enraged.
I knew what he was thinking: Burden had let him endure the interrogation. Waiting. Listening.
I said, “Howard was your conduit too. You dropped in on him and waited in his office so you could install your lentils.”
And hear every hateful word his son had spewed.
“Absolutely,” he said. A little too nonchalantly. “Holly’s behavior had been puzzling- distant, preoccupied. Due to her communication problems, I couldn’t draw it out of her. I knew she’d snuck over to Howard’s, both of them thinking I didn’t know about their little attempt at rapport-building. I thought Howard might be able to shed some light on the change in his sister, now that the two of them were communicating.”
“But you couldn’t simply ask Howard about it, because he also has communication problems.”
“Exactly.”
I remembered the loathing that had filled Howard’s office. How was a father able to deal with that- to defend against it?
I looked over at him. Placid. Blocking it out. Narcissism in service to the soul.
He made a left turn onto the freeway. All six lanes were as empty as Indy the day after the race.
“Howard’s a bright boy,” he said, “but he’s got many, many problems. Blind spots. You saw how obese and nervous he is. How he sweats. He gets eczema too. Gastric discomfort and insomnia. Clear signs of unhappiness. Constitutional weakness made worse by a poor attitude toward life. If he’d allowed me, I could have helped him with all of it. Perhaps one day he will. In the meantime, I couldn’t let his weakness get in the way.”
“That’s why you were so eager for me to meet with him. Hoping he might open up to me and you’d get it all on taper.”
He smiled. “More than hope. Data-based prediction. The conversation between the two of you ended up being a very useful transmission.”
“Wa
“No, no,” he said, a
“Absolutely, Mr. B.”
“Good ventriloquism,” said Milo. “Where’d you find a dummy this big?”
Graff gave a deep loose laugh.
“Hardly,” said Burden. “Gregory’s got training in electronics and biophysics under his belt, a year of medical school at an Ivy League university, a law degree from that same university, and graduate studies in business.”
Pride. Paternal pride.
His real son.
I said, “Sounds like a real renaissance man.” One part of my brain thinking about Linda and ru
“Bet he has military training, too,” I said. “Former intelligence officer, same as you. That’s how you found him, isn’t it? Not some modeling agency. When it was time to recruit a partner, you know precisely where to go.”
“I’m not a partner,” said Graff. “Just a figurehead.” More laughter.
Burden laughed too. The exchange to the 405 appeared. He took it going south, and moved into the center lane, maintaining a steady seventy miles per.
I said, “How about going a little faster.”
He didn’t answer, but the speedometer climbed to seventy-five.
Wanting a hundred but knowing that was all I was going to get, I said, “Here’s another hypothesis: Between the two of you, New Frontiers has access to military computers. Ahlward had a military background. You checked him out.”
“Military background,” said Graff. Bear-growl laughter.
Burden didn’t join in. “He was the first one I researched. Before I approached you. The press was painting him as some kind of hero. I wanted to learn about the one who actually pulled the trigger. The hero who’d killed my daughter. What I found out smelled bad. He’d lied about being a military man.”
His tone said that was the ultimate felony.
“All he had was seven months in the Marine Corps. April of ’sixty-seven to November of ’sixty-eight. A good part of it in the brig before he was dishonorably discharged for moral turpitude. A closed file that I managed to open. Two separate incidents. Sexual harassment of a sixteen-year-old girl- a black girl- and attempts to organize a white-supremacist gang among other new recruits. It was the latter that made me research him further. After his discharge he enjoyed brief stints in local jails for theft and burglary and disorderly conduct. I decided he was scum, looked into his family history. His father had been a Bundist war criminal. Ran one of their summer camps. Schweiben. Ahlward Senior was imprisoned for sedition in 1944, released in 1947, only to die a year later of cirrhosis. Alcoholic scum. Multigenerational scum. Which led to another question: why would a supposedly liberal-minded city councilman hire someone like that? So I researched the city councilman too. Found nothing there but a piece of lint masquerading as a man. Good family, all the privileges, not a trace of hardship in his background. Not a trace of character either. Addiction to the path of least resistance. Needless to say, he found his way into the latrine we know as politics.”