The Bad Place

Page 2

Bobby was wearing a headset with stereo earphones and with a small microphone suspended an inch or so in front of his lips. At the moment he was listening to Benny Goodman’s “One O’Clock Jump,” the primo version of Count Basie’s classic swing composition, six and a half minutes of heaven. As Jess Stacy took up another piano chorus and as Harry James launched into the brilliant trumpet stint that led to the most famous rideout in swing history, Bobby was deep into the music.
But he was also acutely aware of the activity on the display terminals. The one on the right was linked, via microwave, with the computer system at the Decodyne Corporation, in front of which his van was parked. It revealed what Tom Rasmussen was up to in those offices at 1:10 Thursday morning: no good.
One by one, Rasmussen was accessing and copying the files of the software-design team that had recently completed Decodyne’s new and revolutionary word-processing program, “Whizard.” The Whizard files carried well-constructed lockout instructions-electronic drawbridges, moats, and ramparts. Tom Rasmussen was an expert in computer security, however, and there was no fortress that he could not penetrate, given enough time. Indeed, if Whizard had not been developed on a secure in-house computer system with no links to the outside world, Rasmussen would have slipped into the files from beyond the walls of Decodyne, via a modem and telephone line.
Ironically, he had been working as the night security guard at Decodyne for five weeks, having been hired on the basis of elaborate—and nearly convincing—false papers. Tonight he had breached Whizard’s final defenses. In a while he would walk out of Decodyne with a packet of floppy diskettes worth a fortune to the company’s competitors.
“One O’Clock Jump” ended.
Into the microphone Bobby said, “Music stop.”
That vocal command cued his computerized compact-disc system to switch off, opening the headset for communication with Julie, his wife and business partner.
“You there, babe?”
From her surveillance position in a car at the farthest end of the parking lot behind Decodyne, she had been listening to the same music through her own headset. She sighed. “Did Vernon Brown ever play better trombone than the night of the Carnegie concert?”
“What about Krupa on the drums?”
“Auditory ambrosia. And an aphrodisiac. The music makes me want to go to bed with you.”
“Can’t. Not sleepy. Besides, we’re being private detectives, remember?”
“I like being lovers better.”
“We don’t earn our daily bread by making love.”
“I’d pay you,” she said.
“Yeah? How much?”
“Oh, in daily-bread terms ... half a loaf.”
“I’m worth a whole loaf.”
Julie said, “Actually, you’re worth a whole loaf, two croissants, and a bran muffin.”
She had a pleasing, throaty, and altogether sexy voice that he loved to listen to, especially through headphones, when she sounded like an angel whispering in his ears. She would have been a marvelous big-band singer if she had been around in the 1930s and ’40s—and if she had been able to carry a tune. She was a great swing dancer, but she couldn’t croon worth a damn; when she was in the mood to sing along with old recordings by Margaret Whiting or the Andrews Sisters or Rosemary Clooney or Marion Hutton, Bobby had to leave the room out of respect for the music.
She said, “What’s Rasmussen doing?”
Bobby checked the second video display, to his left, which was linked to Decodyne’s interior security cameras. Rasmussen thought he had over-ridden the cameras and was unobserved; but they had been watching him for the last few weeks, night after night, and recording his every treachery on videotape.
“Old Tom’s still in George Ackroyd’s office, at the VDT there.” Ackroyd was project director for Whizard. Bobby glanced at the other display, which duplicated what Rasmussen was seeing on Ackroyd’s computer screen. “He just copied the last Whizard file onto diskette.”
Rasmussen switched off the computer in Ackroyd’s office.
Simultaneously the linked VDT in front of Bobby went blank.
Bobby said, “He’s finished. He’s got it all now.”
Julie said, “The worm. He must be feeling smug.”
Bobby turned to the display on his left, leaned forward, and watched the black-and-white image of Rasmussen at Ackroyd’s terminal. “I think he’s grinning.”
“We’ll wipe that grin off his face.”
“Let’s see what he does next. Want to make a bet? Will he stay in there, finish his shift, and waltz out in the morning—or leave right now?”
“Now,” Julie said. “Or soon. He won’t risk getting caught with the floppies. He’ll leave while no one else is there.”
“No bet. I think you’re right.”
The transmitted image on the monitor flickered, rolled, but Rasmussen did not get out of Ackroyd’s chair. In fact he slumped back, as if exhausted. He yawned and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“He seems to be resting, gathering his energy,” Bobby said.
“Let’s have another tune while we wait for him to move.”
“Good idea.” He gave the CD player the start-up cue— “Begin music”—and was rewarded with Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.”
On the monitor, Tom Rasmussen rose from the chair in Ackroyd’s dimly lighted office. He yawned again, stretched, and crossed the room to the big windows that looked down on Michaelson Drive, the street on which Bobby was parked.
If Bobby had slipped forward, out of the rear of the van and into the driver’s compartment, he probably would have been able to see Rasmussen standing up there at the second-floor window, silhouetted by the glow of Ackroyd’s desk lamp, staring out at the night. He stayed where he was, however, satisfied with the view on the screen.
Miller’s band was playing the famous “In the Mood” riff, again and again, gradually fading away, almost disappearing entirely but ... now blasting back at full power to repeat the entire cycle.
In Ackroyd’s office, Rasmussen finally turned from the window and looked up at the security camera that was mounted on the wall near the ceiling. He seemed to be staring straight at Bobby, as if aware of being watched. He moved a few steps closer to the camera, smiling.
Bobby said, “Music stop,” and the Miller band instantly fell silent. To Julie, he said, “Something strange here...”
“Trouble?”
Rasmussen stopped just under the security camera, still grinning up at it. From the pocket of his uniform shirt, he withdrew a folded sheet of typing paper, which he opened and held toward the lens. A message had been printed in bold black letters: GOODBYE, ASSHOLE.
“Trouble for sure,” Bobby said.
“How bad?”
“I don’t know.”
An instant later he did know: Automatic weapons fire shattered the night—he could hear the clatter even with his earphones on—and armor-piercing slugs tore through the walls of the van.
Julie evidently picked up the gunfire through her headset. “Bobby, no!”
“Get the hell out of there, babe! Run!”
Even as he spoke, Bobby tore free of the headset and dived off his chair, lying as flat against the floorboards as he could.
3
FRANK POLLARD sprinted from street to street, from alley to alley, sometimes cutting across the lawns of the dark houses. In one backyard a large black dog with yellow eyes barked and snapped at him all the way to the board fence, briefly snaring one leg of his pants as he clambered over that barrier. His heart was pounding painfully, and his throat was hot and raw because he was sucking in great drafts of the cool, dry air through his open mouth. His legs ached. As if made of iron, the flight bag pulled on his right arm, and with each lunging step that he took, pain throbbed in his wrist and shoulder socket. But he did not pause and did not glance back, because he felt as if something monstrous was at his heels, a creature that never required rest and that would turn him to stone with its gaze if he dared set eyes upon it.
In time he crossed an avenue, devoid of traffic at that late hour, and hurried along the entrance walk to another apartment complex. He went through a gate into another courtyard, this one centered by an empty swimming pool with a cracked and canted apron.
The place was lightless, but Frank’s vision had adapted to the night, and he could see well enough to avoid falling into the drained pool. He was searching for shelter. Perhaps there was a communal laundry room where he could force the lock and hide.
He had discovered something else about himself as he fled his unknown pursuer: He was thirty or forty pounds overweight and out of shape. He desperately needed to catch his breath—and think.
As he was hurrying past the doors of the ground-floor units, he realized that a couple of them were standing open, sagging on ruined hinges. Then he saw that cracks webbed some windows, holes pocked a few, and other panes were missing altogether. The grass was dead, too, as crisp as ancient paper, and the shrubbery was withered; a seared palm tree leaned at a precarious angle. The apartment complex was abandoned, awaiting a wrecking crew.
He came to a set of crumbling concrete stairs at the north end of the courtyard, glanced back. Whoever... whatever was following him was still not in sight. Gasping, he climbed to the second-floor balcony and moved from one apartment to another until he found a door ajar. It was warped: the hinges were stiff, but they worked without much noise. He slipped inside, pushing the door shut behind him.
The apartment was a well of shadows, oil-black and pooled deep. Faint ash-gray light outlined the windows but provided no illumination to the room.
He listened intently.
The silence and darkness were equal in depth.
Cautiously, Frank inched toward the nearest window, which faced the balcony and courtyard. Only a few shards of glass remained in the frame, but lots of fragments crunched and clinked under his feet. He trod carefully, both to avoid cutting a foot and to make as little noise as possible.
At the window he halted, listened again.
Stillness.
As if it was the gelid ectoplasm of a slothful ghost, a sluggish current of cold air slid inward across the few jagged points of the glass that had not already fallen from the frame.
Frank’s breath steamed in front of his face, pale ribbons of vapor in the gloom.
The silence remained unbroken for ten seconds, twenty, thirty, a full minute.
Perhaps he had escaped.
He was just about to turn away from the window when he heard footsteps outside. At the far end of the courtyard. On the walkway that led in from the street. Hard-soled shoes rang against the concrete, and each footfall echoed hollowly off the stucco walls of the surrounding buildings.
Frank stood motionless and breathed through his mouth, as if the stalker could be counted on to have the hearing of a jungle cat.
When he entered the courtyard from the entrance walkway, the stranger halted. After a long pause he began to move again; though the overlapping echoes made sounds deceptive, he seemed to be heading slowly north along the apron of the pool, toward the same stairs by which Frank, himself, had climbed to the second floor of the apartment complex.
Each deliberate, metronomic footfall was like the heavy tick of a headsman’s clock mounted on a guillotine railing, counting off the seconds until the appointed hour of the blade’s descent.
4
As IF alive, the Dodge van shrieked with every bullet that tore through its sheet-metal walls, and the wounds were inflicted not one at a time but by the score, with such relentless fury, the assault had to involve at least two machine guns. While Bobby Dakota lay flat on the floor, trying to catch God’s attention with fervent heaven-directed prayers, fragments of metal rained down on him. One of the computer screens imploded, then the other terminal, too, and all the indicator lights went out, but the interior of the van was not entirely dark; showers of amber and green and crimson and silver sparks erupted from the damaged electronic units as one steel-jacketed round after another pierced equipment housings and shattered circuit boards. Glass fell on him, too, and splinters of plastic, bits of wood, scraps of paper; the air was filled with a virtual blizzard of debris. But the noise was the worst of it; in his mind he saw himself sealed inside a great iron drum, while half a dozen big bikers, stoned on PCP, pounded on the outside of his prison with tire irons, really huge bikers with massive muscles and thick necks and coarse peltlike beards and wildly colorful Death’s-head tattoos on their arms—hell, tattoos on their face—guys as big as Thor, the Viking god, but with blazing, psychotic eyes.
Bobby had a vivid imagination. He had always thought that was one of his best qualities, one of his strengths. But he could not simply imagine his way out of this mess.
With every passing second, as slugs continued to crash into the van, he grew more astonished that he had not been hit. He was pressed to the floor, as tight as a carpet, and he tried to imagine that his body was only a quarter of an inch thick, a target with an incredibly low profile, but he still expected to get his ass shot off.
He had not anticipated the need for a gun; it wasn’t that kind of case. At least it hadn’t seemed to be that kind of case. A .38 revolver was in the van glovebox, well beyond his reach, which did not cause him a lot of frustration, actually, because a single handgun against a pair of automatic weapons was not much use.
The gunfire stopped.
After that cacophony of destruction, the silence was so profound, Bobby felt as if he had gone deaf.
The air reeked of hot metal, overheated electronic components, scorched insulation—and gasoline. Evidently the van’s tank had been punctured. The engine was still chugging, and a few sparks spat out of the shattered equipment surrounding Bobby, and his chances of escaping a flash fire were a whole lot worse than his chances of winning fifty million bucks in the state lottery.
He wanted to get the hell out of there, but if he burst out of the van, they might be waiting with machine guns to cut him down. On the other hand, if he continued to hug the floor in the darkness, counting on them to give him up for dead without checking on him, the Dodge might flare like a camp-fire primed with starter fluid, toasting him as crisp as a marshmallow.
He had no difficulty imagining himself stepping out of the van and being hit immediately by a score of bullets, jerking and twitching in a spasmodic death dance across the blacktop street, like a broken marionette jerked around on tangled strings. But he found it even easier to imagine his skin peeling off in the fire, flesh bubbling and smoking, hair whooshing up like a torch, eyes melting, teeth turning coal-black as flames seared his tongue and followed his breath down his throat to his lungs.