The Dead Key Part 18

"Do you think that there really are some bribes going on?" she asked quietly.

Tony frowned and stirred his coffee. "I want to say it's impossible, but times are tough right now. A lot of guys I'm workin' with have two mortgages to pay . . . I don't know."

"Those men, they mentioned that the feds were asking questions. They also talked about how a leak had been 'contained.'"

"You think they were talking about Max."

"Do you think Max would have gone to the feds?"

"I wouldn't put it past her. If she is working with the FBI, they may have her under wraps right now. I'll have to see what I can find out." He stopped talking and looked at her like he was unable to decide what to do with her. "You need to be careful, Beatrice. Where have you been staying?"

"What do you mean?" She tried not to look alarmed. Maybe he'd been following her.

"I haven't been able to track you down outside of work lately."

He had been following her.

She swallowed hard. "I've been working late."

"So have I."

He didn't believe her, she could tell. If he'd been following her, he knew she had slept at the hospital. She squeezed her hands together under the table, waiting for him to announce he was taking her into custody.

After an agonizing pause, he finally said, "You still work at the bank. Do you think you can poke around and find out who this Ted and Jim really are?"

"I . . . I think so," she said, even though she wasn't nearly that sure. Teddy and Jim could work anywhere in the building. An image of the personnel office sprung to mind. There had to be a directory in there somewhere.

"I hate asking, but all of my sources have dried up over there. Meet me here next week and we'll see what we've found out. Contact me immediately if you hear from Max or if you need anything." He stood to leave. His eyes held hers, and she could see a hint of tenderness inside them. "Beatrice?"

"Yes?" she said, shrinking in the booth.

"The minute things get too scary, I want you out of there."

CHAPTER 37.

Tuesday, August 18, 1998 Iris woke up Tuesday morning stiff and sore on the couch. An enthusiastic housewife was holding up her trash like a trophy on the buzzing TV screen. Click.

Piles of Beatrice's papers covered the coffee table. Somewhere underneath the piles, a key and a manual were hiding. Iris buried her head back in a pillow. Ten minutes later, she hauled her a.s.s up and gathered all the evidence of how stupid and crazy she was, thinking she could solve some twenty-year-old missing-person case with a shorthand manual. She shoved the mess into the kitchen junk drawer. She was late for work. Again.

When she pulled up to the old bank, she was shocked to see Nick standing outside the rolling garage door. He held a camera and clipboard in his hands and was apparently waiting for her. She stopped her car short. She considered running him over and splattering his sleazy carca.s.s across her winds.h.i.+eld. Instead, she put her car in park and stepped out.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded.

"I'm here to work." He held up his clipboard, and a wicked smile spread across his face. "So don't get any wild ideas."

That's right, she remembered. He had no idea she'd caught him with Amanda. Her eyes narrowed angrily. "You have nothing to worry about, believe me."

She pushed past him and pressed the call b.u.t.ton to open the door, then climbed back into her car. She rolled into the loading dock, leaving him in the dust.

"Hey, what's your problem?" he asked once he caught up with her on the loading dock stairs.

"Problem? Why should I have a problem? I'm here to do a job."

She pressed the elevator b.u.t.ton and waited, glaring at the door.

"I don't know what I did to p.i.s.s you off . . . But you're kinda cute when you're angry."

That's it. She turned to him, eyes blazing. "Save your bulls.h.i.+t flirting for some other sucker, okay? You got what you wanted, right?"

She stepped onto the elevator and turned the key for the eleventh floor. She let the elevator doors close in his scowling face. He could find his own d.a.m.n way, she thought to herself as the elevator whisked her up the tower.

Iris had pressed the b.u.t.ton for the wrong floor but didn't care. She began her usual routine, laying out her schematics. She refused to let Nick steal one more second of her time. Angry hard lines filled up her graph paper. He wasn't worth it. The s.e.x wasn't even that good. That was a lie, but it made her feel better.

The gla.s.s doors down the hallway read, "Goldstein & Stack Attorneys at Law." They must have rented the s.p.a.ce from the bank. Column, wall, hall-she scratched them out in red ink. She walked the perimeter and came to a corner office. The door was closed. She kicked it open. f.u.c.k Nick and his long, slow kisses.

She staggered back. Sitting on the thick s.h.a.g carpet was a bedsheet and some rags piled together in the middle of the room. Empty food wrappers and debris surrounded the pile. The room reeked like a garbage can. She covered her nose and mouth with her hand. A door in the far corner stood open. Iris knew it led to a bathroom. Terror stabbed at her gut as it occurred to her that the person who slept on the floor might be lurking in there. Holding her breath, she listened for the sound of footsteps, rustling wrappers, or a switchblade snapping open.

"h.e.l.lo?" she whispered into the room.

There was no response. She tentatively stepped onto the thick carpet, giving the pile of garbage in the middle a wide berth. As she edged closer to the bathroom door, her legs readied themselves to run the other way. She could see more wrappers in front of the toilet. She could just make out a muddy footprint on the tile in front of the shower stall.

A hand fell onto her shoulder.

Iris shrieked. She spun around, swinging her field bag as hard as she could. Five pounds of equipment went careening into her a.s.sailant's head. The figure stumbled behind her as she scrambled out of the room, screaming. She ran to the service elevator and pounded the call b.u.t.ton. The car was down at the bas.e.m.e.nt. She couldn't afford to wait for it. She ran down the hall to the emergency stairs. She threw her shoulder into the door and was about to fly down all eleven flights when she heard a voice coming from the hallway.

"Iris . . . Iris! It's me, you friggin' psycho!"

It was Nick. She had clocked Nick in the head. She turned and grimaced. His hand covered half his face.

"Nick?" She approached him cautiously. "s.h.i.+t, are you okay? Come into the light so I can get a look at you."

She led him back into the office clearing, where she could a.s.sess the damage. He wasn't bleeding-she was relieved to see that-but she was pretty sure he was going to have a black eye.

"What the h.e.l.l is the matter with you?"

"I'm sorry. You snuck up and scared the living s.h.i.+t out of me," she tried to explain. "You don't do that in an abandoned building, okay! It's spooky as h.e.l.l around here! And there was a bed. There's some . . . person sleeping up here . . . Here, come look at this."

She dragged him by the arm back to the room where she'd found the bed on the floor.

"It looks like the building has a squatter."

"Yeah, I guess I thought you were him." She examined his bruised face and looked away sheepishly. He had called her a friggin' psycho. He was probably right.

"Hey." He lifted her chin with his finger. His eyes were soft. They seemed to be saying he was sorry for not calling. Maybe he was and just couldn't find a way to tell her. She held his gaze and found herself searching for a reason to forgive him.

She snapped her chin away and turned to leave. She was not giving in that easy. Not again.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing up here anyway?"

"I came looking for you." He grabbed her arm. "Hey, what's your problem?"

"Just leave me alone." Iris yanked her arm back.

She marched toward the emergency stairs to pick up her field bag. He grabbed her wrist. She spun, ready to give him another black eye to match the first. He caught her other wrist and held them both firmly while he searched her face.

"Iris, you're going to have to tell me what the h.e.l.l is going on."

"You know what's going on! We had our fling. You don't call. You're with Amanda . . ." She trapped her tongue between her teeth to keep it from saying more.

"Amanda," he said flatly. "What do you mean, I'm with Amanda?"

"Don't give me that. I was in Tremont house hunting. I swung by. I saw her there with you." She wrenched her hands free and stepped away from him.

"Amanda's just a friend."

"Bulls.h.i.+t! Just how many girls at the office are you s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g exactly?"

"She came by. We had a beer. I sent her home. I went to bed . . . I would have much rather seen you." He smiled slyly and took a step toward her.

She recognized the carnal look and stepped back. "Well, then, why the h.e.l.l didn't you call me?"

He shrugged. "You never gave me your number. Besides, I thought I'd catch up with you today."

"Well, I didn't know that!" she yelled, feeling more and more foolish. She hadn't given him her number. She'd been waiting by the phone, and he didn't even have her number.

"Well, now you do. Jeez, Iris. I had no idea how much you cared." His eyes fell to her lips and he leaned toward her.

Her stomach flipped. Iris ducked away before he could plant one on her. She knew what his kisses could do. "Not so fast."

"Okay." He chuckled. "Not so fast. How about dinner Friday night?"

Iris nodded in agreement and decided to flee before he managed to get her into another compromising position or noticed the big, stupid smile on her face. She scurried down the hall to get back to work.

"I've got a big deadline. Mr. Wheeler wants schematics for all fifteen floors by Friday. I'll catch up with you later," she called over her shoulder.

Nick stood in the empty hallway, holding a hand over his eye.

CHAPTER 38.

Iris woke up with a start. She didn't know where she was, but she wasn't home. She was on a mattress on a strange floor. Her head was being crushed by a vise, and the whole room was pulsing. She blinked at the boxes and the blank walls and finally remembered. She was in her new apartment.

The previous night came pouring back. After Iris had slogged through the ninth and tenth floors at the old bank, Ellie and her boyfriend had helped her move off Random Road. They had celebrated with too many martinis at the Lava Lounge down the street. Iris could barely recall stumbling home. She lay back down on the floor to make the room stop spinning. It didn't work. She pulled the blanket over her head and tried to fall back to sleep. Snippets of conversations from the last twelve hours replayed at warped volumes in her ears as her brain throbbed.

"Good-bye, Mrs. Capretta!" Iris had waved from the back of a pickup truck next to her ratty sofa.

"So you really think movin' out of here's gonna be better, huh? Just remember, Iris, no matter how many times you move or how big and fancy your house gets, you're still stuck with yourself. You got me? You can't buy your way outta that one, not with all the money in all . . ." The old woman's voice trailed off as the truck pulled away.

Thanks for the parting wisdom, she had thought as she left Mrs. Capretta behind.

Later at the bar, Iris had blathered on about Nick. "He didn't call all that time because I forgot to give him my number! I'm such an a.s.s!"

Ellie had raised a newly pierced eyebrow. "What, this guy never heard of calling Information? He sounds like the a.s.s to me."

Iris wanted to protest, but she had nothing. Her friend was right. It wouldn't have been that hard for Nick to find her number. She sucked down the c.o.c.ktail in her hand and waved the notion away. "We're going out Friday! Like a real date."

Iris rolled over and grabbed the sides of her head. Acid was rising in her throat, but she fought it back down. Ellie's harsh observation still bothered her. She strained to remember the rest of the conversation, but it was scattered.

After another drink or two or three, she finally admitted to having s.e.x on the bathroom floor with him. This little tidbit piqued everyone's interest.

"I know! I'm such a slu-ut!" She had cackled, and almost fell off her bar stool. A few drinks later, she was staring at the table, muttering on and on about Beatrice Baker's ghost. "It's haunting me. In that building, it's following me. I just know it. Strange things keep happening. The desk, the file, my bag . . . I never should have taken . . . that key . . ."

"Let's get you home." Ellie's voice had sounded far away.

Iris cringed and rolled onto her side. She hated herself for saying stupid s.h.i.+t, getting sloppy drunk, and being such an idiot. She had a job, for f.u.c.k's sake. She was supposed to be a grown-up now.

"Uh, make it stop," she whimpered into her pillow.

It was late morning when she woke up again. She had no concept of time, but the sunlight was beating through her naked windows. She managed to sit up without getting dizzy. She rubbed her eyes; then a panic tore through her. She was late-really late. It was Thursday, and she had a ton of work to finish before the next morning. Brad was expecting results.

Iris was still in her clothes from the day before and didn't care. She staggered out the door after finding her keys and purse and got in the car. She didn't bother to brush her teeth or her hair. She didn't have time. The clock on the dashboard glared "11:15."

She sped toward Euclid Avenue like she'd just robbed a liquor store. Halfway downtown, she decided that pa.s.sing out from dehydration wasn't going to help her meet the deadline. She stopped to grab french fries and Hi-C in a drive-through and shoved the food in her mouth at traffic lights. She almost felt human as she pulled up to the garage door that led into the bank.

The elevator jostled her mercilessly up all eleven floors to where she'd clocked Nick in the head two days earlier. Her stomach slammed into the top of her rib cage and threatened to spill out all over the floor as the elevator slowed to a stop. She felt her way out of the s.a.d.i.s.tic metal box and took several shaky breaths before looking around. The homeless pile was still sitting in the corner office. She had to get started and finish as quickly as possible.

She unloaded her equipment and hobbled straight to where she'd seen evidence of some vagrant living in the building. It didn't look any different than it had Tuesday. Ramone had probably chased the squatter out ages ago. He must do patrols, she reasoned. Still, she took the room dimensions as fast as she could. She stepped over the makes.h.i.+ft bed and held her breath as she worked. She stepped into the bathroom, holding her nose. The toilet was relatively clean, but there was a man's razor on the ledge of the sink. She snapped two dimensions with her measuring tape and got the h.e.l.l out of there.

Her hands were clammy as she hurried out of the room. It was ludicrous she was all by herself on this a.s.signment-maybe even dangerous. If she were in any kind of shape to go talk to Ramone, she probably would have. Cold sweat beaded up on her forehead. The hangover was going to be an all-day affair, she could tell. She caught a glimpse of herself in a hall mirror. Her face looked green. It was a good thing there wasn't a chaperone with her-she might've gotten fired. She could hear Ellie in the back of her head asking, "So, you'd rather be hacked to bits instead?"

She wasn't going to get hacked to bits, she argued. Brad seemed to think she could handle it by herself. She moved on to the next office. She didn't want to prove him wrong. She couldn't run screaming from the building like a girl. A hungover girl at that.

The rest of the eleventh floor was unremarkable. She came to a blank door near the elevators. She knew from her work on the lower floors what was probably behind it. A slop sink, cleaning supplies, and possibly a Playboy pinup for the janitorial staff to enjoy. Yep, it was a closet.