‘How could Klerke be sure there weren’t more pictures?’
Billy shrugged. ‘Maybe there were. In any case, what choice did he have? And Patrick must have been at least bright enough to know that if the pictures came out, the company stock would tank no matter who was CEO.’
Alice thinks that over and says, ‘Like mutually assured destruction. In a way.’
‘I guess. What I know from Nick is that Klerke agreed, and once his lawyer had a letter announcing his intentions to basically retire and turn the company over to his older son, and once that letter was published in the board minutes, Patrick gave the thumb drive to his father. Who destroyed it. Patrick never foresaw his father going to Nick Majarian and hiring a man to kill him. His imagination just didn’t stretch that far.’
‘It isn’t the grasshopper and the ant. More like a Shakespeare play. One of the bloody ones.’
‘With Patrick dead, when Klerke steps down – given his health it won’t be long – Devin will take over.’
He pulls into a service area, because the Mitsubishi needs gas and because his throat is dry and he wants a cold drink. Alice checks out the Quik-Pik shelves and uses the restroom while he pays. When she gets back into the car she’s crying.
‘I’m sorry.’ Her purchases are in a little white bag. She takes out a pack of Kleenex, wipes her nose, and tries on a smile. ‘But while I was in the bathroom I made us a reservation at the Ramada Inn in Wendover. It’s supposed to be nice.’
‘Good. And you don’t have to be sorry.’
‘I keep thinking about that horrible man with a child. He deserves to die.’
Billy thinks, that’s the plan.
4
By the time he finishes – again weaving what he knows from Nick into what he deduced on his drive back from Promontory Point – some of the cars on the highway are showing headlights.
‘Klerke told Nick he wanted the best man for the job, a guy who’d do it and get away clean and not talk about it afterward. Nick said he knew a guy—’
‘You?’
‘He said he thought of me first, but never even went to Bucky with it. He said he was pretty sure I wouldn’t do it because Patrick Klerke was maybe not bad enough to fit my scruples. He put it to Allen as an ordinary cleaning job.’
‘That’s what he called it? Cleaning?’
‘Yes. The figure they settled on was eighty thousand dollars, twenty before and the rest after. Basically the same method of payment I was promised, but on a smaller scale.’
Alice is nodding. ‘He didn’t want Allen to know what a big deal this was. How much was involved.’
‘Sure. Nick felt okay about it, because Allen was what I always pretended to be, just your basic mechanic who fixed problems with a gun instead of socket wrenches and a timing computer. He gave Allen photos of Patrick’s apartment building, photos of the apartment itself, the code to the service entrance, the car exchange after the job was done, anything he might need to do the job clean and quick.’ Billy pauses. ‘Nick didn’t tell me all that, but I’ve worked for him before. I knew the drill. What he didn’t tell Allen was why and Allen didn’t ask.’
‘But he asked Patrick, didn’t he? Before he killed him.’
Billy thinks that over. ‘It’s possible, but it seems unlikely for a guy like Joel Allen. He’d be a lot more likely to just do the job. No conversation, just point and shoot.’
‘Maybe Patrick offered him the thumb drive in exchange for …’ Alice stops. ‘Except he couldn’t, could he? He didn’t have it. Thought he was home free once his appointment was announced to the board.’
‘Nick doesn’t know what happened, and Allen can’t tell us how he found out about Roger Klerke and the kid in Tijuana, but I have an idea. Allen was told to make it look like a robbery, maybe committed by some fellow user who met Patrick along the Los Angeles drug trail. He was told to take any money or jewelry he found. He was supposed to toss the jewelry, watches and gold chains and shit like that, but he could keep the money as a little bonus. So after he killed Patrick he searched the place and might have found a picture, maybe more than one, that Patrick kept in reserve. At least one that showed his father’s face nice and clear while he was … doing what he was doing. Does that make sense?’
Alice nods hard enough to make her hair bounce. ‘I bet it happened just that way. Even if the picture or pictures were in a safe, Allen could have been given the combination with the rest of his background info. Would he really have recognized the man in the picture?’