forlorn. “I may have killed an innocent man.”
“We’ll see about that,” Naomi says. “My office. Now.”
What Naomi calls her office is really our command center. Think mission control, without all the giant screens, but with a similar sense of purpose, and the ability to communicate with just about anybody, anywhere, over any system, as well as extract data, voluntary or not. The style is spare and cool. Lots of dark laminates, cove lighting, discreetly recessed panels, stacks and servers hidden away. There’s never any doubt about who is in command, either. You can tell because she gets the pivoting seat behind the big curved desk with all the touch screens and gizmos, and we peons get the straight-back chairs with the wide unpadded armrests that are adequate for a laptop or a notebook, or in my case an unfinished cup of Beasley’s coffee and a legal pad.
Randall Shane wouldn’t fit in the peon chairs without a very large shoehorn, so he roams the big high-ceilinged room and finally, at boss lady’s insistence, parks on the far edge of the command desk, his long chino-clad legs crossed at the ankle and his large, muscular arms folded across his very substantial chest. Not a weightlifter type, from the lean-waisted look of him, just built to a larger scale than most. Making all six feet of Jack Delancey seem short and slight in comparison. The neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper Van Dyke beard gives Shane the look of a supersize jazz musician. The watery blue eyes are soulful, but pure cop, always watching.
“Heard of you,” the big man says, focusing on Naomi. “Jack says you’re the best, and that includes me.”
Naomi smiles, shrugs. “We do different things. Or do things differently. Probably both.” After a moment’s pause, she begins again. “Normally when interviewing a potential client I’d wait for the rest of my team to be assembled and then record a formal statement, but since this is hardly a standard situation, please go ahead. We’ll do the legal stuff later, when our attorney is present.”
“There isn’t much time,” Shane responds, fidgeting, his big hands busy making fists. “This won’t be a normal arrest,” he cautions. “Once they take me, I’ll likely be transferred to an undisclosed location for interrogation. A form of in-country rendition. No lawyers, no communication. That’s how they do it.”
“Who are ‘they,’ Mr. Shane? Please be specific.”
“Randall, please, or just plain Shane.”
“‘They’?” Naomi persists. “Explain. Elaborate.”
“Sorry. Whatever covert agency is about to frame me for the murder of my client.”
“Your client?”
He nods, looking mournful. “Joseph Keener, MIT professor. His son, Joey, is missing, that’s why he contracted me. In all likelihood I’m responsible for Professor Keener’s death. I didn’t kill him, but they’ll make it look that way. The evidence will be rock solid.”
“What covert agency?”
Shane shakes his head. “I’m not sure,” he begins, “but my best guess is an agency associated with the Department of Defense. Or possibly Homeland Security. My client was working on a top-secret project, and it’s possible that—”
And that’s when the windows explode, covering us all in diamonds of shattered safety glass. The security alarms start to whoop but there’s no time to react, let alone flee to the safe room. Through the sudden breach swing half a dozen gun-wielding thugs wearing black ski masks. In less than a heartbeat there’s a second explosion and somehow a wire net engulfs Randall Shane, and they take him down like a wild animal, hitting him with several tranquilizer darts through the net, until he sighs and stops struggling.
Unconscious, maybe dead.
That’s all I can see from under my little desk, face burrowing into the thick carpet. That and the shiny black boots standing an inch from my head.
Chapter Two
Tea & Sympathy, Not
The first time I ever laid eyes on Naomi Nantz she had a bad toothache. I was the office manager for an association of dentists in Cambridge and she came in as an emergency appointment. Barely got through the door before fainting from the pain. By which I mean she stated her name and then her eyes rolled up and she dropped to the floor. Apparently she’d been ignoring a deep abscess in a lower left premolar for a couple of weeks, due to being involved in a case, and finally her body said that’s enough, we’re turning off the lights. That’s how Dr. Pavi, our really excellent oral surgeon, explained the situation when she regained consciousness. Then he ever so gently put her back under, did whatever he needed to do, successfully and with a minimum of fuss. From then on Naomi Nantz was one of our loyal patients. Came in every three months for a deep cleaning and, because she misses nothing, apparently took notice of how I managed the office. One time her appointment coincided with me having red eyes from days (and nights) of crying and she asked what was wrong and for some reason I told her, which was strictly against the office rules (written by me) of sharing personal or family troubles with patients (we were there to serve, not kvetch), and Naomi said she’d see what she could do, and I said my husband has vanished and my savings account is empty, what can you possibly do?
She’d smiled and said, let me get back to you.
Two days later she called me into the Back Bay residence—sent a driver for me, actually—had me take a seat and then proceeded to explain, very calmly and deliberately, that my husband wasn’t the man I thought he was, and for that matter my marriage had never been legal. The man I knew as Robinson “Robbie” Reynolds was in reality a handsome, charismatic con artist born William J. Crockett—“Wedding Willy” to the bunco squads—who wooed and married two or three victims at a time, then drained their assets. My assets had been a personal savings account (fairly substantial because I’m very careful with money and always keep to a budget) and my parents’ four-bedroom home in Newton, which I’d been managing as a rental since Mom died, the income being split between my sister and me. Somehow or other Robbie had got my signature on a legal document and he’d sold the big house in Newton, as well as our small but very comfortable condo in Arlington, cleared the bank accounts and then vanished. Leaving me more or less homeless and with my sister ready to kill me because she’d “always known Robbie was bad news,” although I’d never noticed that, what with her giggly jokes that were variations on “if you ever get sick of my little sister, you know where to find me!” Can’t blame her, really, Robbie was irresistible. I’m the living proof.
Anyhow, Naomi saw to it that he’d been arrested in Toronto on a similar charge—yet another “marriage”—where he’s currently serving time and supposedly writing a book about his exploits. None of the money was ever recovered because aside from his habit of proposing to foolish females who had a few bucks socked away, Robbie liked to trade on the currency markets, highly leveraged, and he lost every penny.
So, that’s my sad little story, and the upshot is that Naomi offered me a job managing her office, at twice the salary and double the benefits, and that’s how I happened to find myself face to the floor, and boss lady somewhere above me demanding, “Show us the warrant! Where’s the paper?”
During and after the snatch-and-grab of Randall Shane, Naomi Nantz is highly indignant, demanding legal justification for the home invasion. None is forthcoming, because no one on the assault squad ever says a word. They simply do not respond. Not a word. Not to Naomi, not to anyone. That kind of black-masked silence is truly scary, in a way much scarier than the invasion itself.
The only good thing about the whole awful mess is that it’s over in less than two minutes. They break in through the windows, seize our client and seemingly vanish into thin air, back out the same way they came in. By the time we call Beacon Hill Security and tell them not to bother sending a car, the crisis is already over.
As the security alarms cease whooping, I get up from the floor, still shaking. “Where’d they go? For that matter, where’d they come from?”
When Jack Delancey