definitely not convinced that the whole business was over, Harley’s bravado notwithstanding. No, there was something wrong, terribly wrong, so wrong that it nagged at him like a terrier at a trouser cuff. He couldn’t shake it.
And Harriet. Could he just let the chips fall with her? Could he just dismiss her and their relationship with Harley’s ease?
He put one foot on the bridge railing. The rail was cold under his fingers as he braced himself against the wind. The Pittsburgh sky-line sparkled, one neon maze in the October night. He looked to the left at the traffic pouring into town. He stood there, lost in thoughts of his adolescence. Less than a mile away was the theater he had worked at in high school. He breathed deeply and exhaled twenty years of memories, dates, work, shopping and...security. The simple experience of security.
Where had this “normalcy” gone; and where had the madness begun?
CHAPTER FIVE
C.J. strode down the hall, enjoying the smell of the newly laid carpet and the feel of it under his loafers. Sunlight flooded the hallway from the window directly in front of him. He stopped, just outside of the copy room, half-sat on the marble ledge. Twenty stories below, twenty thousand or more office workers scampered to their destinations: ants in a corporate maze. He felt deliciously separated from them; today he was a god surveying trapped humanity from a twenty-story heaven. The feeling was...exhilaration. The door opened, jerking his eyes and attention from the view outside to the one inside. His “escape” from monotony was less than a dozen feet away; today she was wearing black, all black except for the white pearl necklace gently hugging her throat.
“I swear I can never get this thing to work!”
She slammed the copier lid down, cocked one hip and rolled her eyes for an invisible audience.
She wasn’t really his “type.” She was tall, almost as tall as he. And then her wide-set eyes, dished face and dark hair made her appear almost oriental. If she possessed an hour glass figure, time was passing quickly. She was definitely not the large-breasted woman he had thought of “falling for.” That was it, wasn’t it? He had fallen for her; just like one of those “made-for-TV” movies. He was living a short story.
“Rita,” he laughed.
“Are you still dueling with that poor unarmed metal soldier?”
“C.J.!” she yelled. “Pleeez get this thing working. I swear it does this to me on purpose!” She stood there, papers folded in her right hand, her knuckles braced on that cocked right hip.
“Definitely man’s work,” C.J. laughed. He stood over the machine, watching the copies come out one-by-one, wishing there were a thousand more waiting.
She was separated; he was married. Something “new” should be invented for the feeling that passed between them. It was the copy machine, then coffee breaks in the employees’ lunchroom, most recently a dinner...to sort out that G.E. mix-up. He looked up from the machine into her clear, green eyes. He really was feeling his own pulse throbbing against his collar. She smiled, folding her arms in front of her. She looked at him with...understanding, almost like an older sister, innocent but aware.
“This is going to be trouble,” he sighed.
She nodded, “I know.”
CHAPTER SIX
Only one more inch.
Maybe an inch and a half. He reached down, past his guts, for the rest of his life’s allotment of adrenaline and strained in one last attempt to cast his fingers toward the rim above him. The unfinished metal tore his skin as he clamped one, then the other hand over the edge of the tube into which he’d been dumped. He was human garbage to them. Time and exposure would finish what fists and feet had left undone.
Tom looked at his watch. The cracked crystal magnified: 7:30 p.m. Night had just fallen when he’d grabbed the cab to the office. He’d only been a few minutes on the bridge; he hadn’t eaten supper. How long had he been unconscious? How far away were they by now?
He was up, out of the garbage chute now, slapping the dust from his trouser legs. One small, naked light bulb lit the hallway. It was cold and still and quiet, the opposite of his heartbeat.
He lunged up the metal stairs, grabbed the rail and swung himself onto the landing. The heavy door clanged shut behind him as he stood outside in the alley. He slumped back against the cold, red brick, strands of his hair catching on the rough mortar. He hugged himself, trying to deaden the sickening, dull ache in his ribs. The city was oblivious to either his pain or his plight. Tires screeched on wet asphalt.
CHAPTER SEVEN
C.J. sauntered over to the sink, filled a glass with water, gulped it and squinted out the window.
“I think we’re involved,” he called over his shoulder, smiling, waiting for her reply.
“Yeah; that’s what they call it in the movies,” Rita hollered in from the living room.
“So what are we supposed to do now? Get married?” she laughed.
“Beats me black and blue” he said, turning to face her. He leaned against the sink, the enamel creasing his elbows.
“It’s sure going to be strange at work now. I can’t even imagine working together; can you?”
“Let’s don’t even think about work,” Rita mused, tossing her head back against the couch cushion, peering down her nose at him, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth.
“O.K, let’s don’t,” he replied.
* * * *
It wasn’t that Bonnington was inept, not in the slightest. On the contrary, he was a veteran policeman with thirty years of experience. He’d seen a lot; experienced a lot. He’d drunk enough “stake-out” tea to float an ocean liner. No question, dues had been paid, beats walked, respect earned, by the proverbial, “blood, sweat and tears.”
This case was just different.
For one thing, he didn’t know—not actually—what he was looking for. A high ranking British official had simply hired him on the basis of his record. He was to retrieve a piece of “property,” presumably a document of some kind, which had very possibly made its way to Australia.
No, it hadn’t been wise to drink away most of his life’s earnings and “piss it away” at a dozen pubs in London’s east end. But that was behind him now; now he had to succeed—this once—and earn the nest egg his indulgence had hatched prematurely.
His mind raced in time with the train as it made its way to Heathrow. How had his career come to depend on this: a “pre-retirement send-off,” an anticlimactic “one for the road?”
He closed his eyes, let his head slump against the cool window pane. The lights striking his closed lids merged with a tired reverie of the trip he was embarking upon. A trip to what was once an English convict’s last stop, what was now, instead, an island paradise.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The house was dark as Harriet pulled into the driveway. She got out of the car, swung the door closed, caught it, reached back in and scooped up her purse, balancing it with her keys in her right hand; the envelope tumbled out as she re-closed the car door. It lay on the wet gravel in front of her, a gem in a rustic setting. Harriet bent over to retrieve it and dropped her keys. She grunted and crouched down, grabbed all of her things and unlocked the door. She flicked the light switch with her elbow.
World War Three had been fought in the living room of No. 10, Lindon St.
She gasped, dropped her purse, and her keys, slumped into the sofa, rested her heels on the hardwood floor.
The envelope lay in front of the fireplace, center stage.
“What on earth is happening to me?” she asked herself in the quiet of the Sydney evening.
The envelope was magnetic; her eyes were fastened