DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten (the Charlie Fox crime thriller series) (19 page)

“I’m fine, Marie, but you didn’t need to come. I’m real sorry I didn’t call you myself. I guess I just didn’t want to worry you.”

“Hmm, like I wasn’t going to be worried when I heard you’d been shot out of the skies over the very city my husband’s doing his best to save?” she said with spirit. “Why aren’t you on your way home to Patti and the children this very moment? She must be worried sick.”

But without waiting for an answer she stepped back and turned to glance at me and Sean. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “He wouldn’t go, huh? Always the stubborn fool, our Blake.” So, despite the butter-wouldn’t-melt looks, she knew exactly who we were and why we were there.

Shrewd.

“Now, Marie, you know I couldn’t let Tom down—not when he’s put so much into this,” Dyer protested smoothly. “How would that look to everybody?”

“You mean he blackmailed you into staying on, didn’t he? The cunning old devil,” she said, adding with brisk affection, “I’ll have his guts for garters—isn’t that how the English put it? Such a
lovely
expression.”

Marie smiled. In someone less dignified it might almost have been a grin. As it was, the smile lit up her face and crinkled the corners of her eyes. It set up a twinkle in their depths that hinted at a robust sense of self, even if she might be physically frail. In some ways she reminded me of my mother.

Seeing her together with Tom O’Day would be interesting. After all, she could have reassured herself about Blake Dyer’s condition with a phone call. I wondered if she knew about her husband’s apparently close relationship with Autumn Sinclair. Was that why she had really come?

“Will you be at the gala dinner tonight?” Dyer asked, deflecting. “In which case, can I claim the first dance?”

Marie patted his arm with affection. “Bless you, no. I never was much good at the glad-handing—that’s far more Tom’s specialty than mine. A nice room-service tray and a night of old weepy movies on the TV is far more my style. Jimmy can tell me all about it when it’s over.” She paused, and the anxious look was back in her face. “How do you feel he’s doing?”

“He’s doing good—a real chip off the old block,” Dyer lied gallantly. His eyes flickered in my direction, no doubt remembering Jimmy O’Day’s abortive lunge during the opening night reception, and my interception of it. How to voice that? Eventually he settled for, “He’s got some spark, that boy.”

Even his mother looked doubtful. “Well, as long as he’s not allowing it to get him into any trouble,” she said. She turned and seemed to look right at me as she went on, “I don’t quite trust young Vic Morton to keep Jimmy out of hot water while he’s down here—he’s more likely to hold Jimmy’s coat for him.” She slid her eyes across to the silent bodyguard near the hallway and gave what might have been a sniff. “Thad here would have kept him on a tighter rein, had he not gotten sick.”

The bodyguard shuffled his feet, felt compelled to announce in a slightly aggrieved tone, “Everybody knows I have nut allergies, Mrs O’Day, and I’m real careful. I tell you, somebody tampered with my food.”

“Yes, dear, so you said.” Marie O’Day turned to me. “I don’t suppose you know where I can find that damn fool Vic Morton, by any chance?”

I shook my head. I knew I should stay entirely neutral, but couldn’t help asking, “Isn’t Morton
your
security man?”

“Just because he works for me doesn’t mean I’m blind to his faults,” she said briskly. “Heaven knows, I see them more clearly than most in my husband. And my son, too, for that matter—however much the proud mother I may sound. Knowing and understanding are two entirely different things, though, as I’m sure you’ll find out as you get older, my dear.” She smiled again, a little wistfully this time, I thought. “Besides, I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be needing my own security.”

Dyer took a half-step forwards, alarm and distress in his face. “Marie—”

“Oh, not like
that
, Blake. Don’t go all over-dramatic on me. No, I simply mean I plan to stay home a lot more. Take things quietly. I have my art and my books, so I’m content.” The twinkle was back again. “And I confess that I’ve found mention of the O’Day name is very useful when it comes to persuading dealers and so on that if they really want to make a sale, they should travel out to Virginia to show me what they have. May as well take advantage of that pull, hmm?”

Even with the breezy reassurance, Dyer was silent as he digested the possible meaning of her words. There were a few directions you could take with them—none of them exactly optimistic.

He gave her an odd glance, said, “Tom
does
know you’re here, doesn’t he?”

Marie beamed. “I thought I’d surprise him,” she said, and wagged a warning finger. “So don’t you go calling him the minute I’m out the door, Blake. I know he’ll be up to no good without me, but catching him in the act is so much more satisfying, don’t you think?”

Blake Dyer shuffled his feet closer to the tee, lined up the face of a driver to the ball, and unwound his whole body in one fluid, practised motion.

The little white dimpled ball catapulted away into the distance almost too fast for the human eye to track. Dyer followed its progress with a hand shading his eyes from the afternoon sun, his expression clearing as he realised the scope and accuracy of the shot.

“Not bad, Blake, not bad at all,” Tom O’Day said. “Shall we say a thousand bucks a hole?”

Blake Dyer gave him a wry smile. “Does it matter?” he asked. “If I lose you’ll tell me to donate the money to the Foundation.”

“True enough.”

“And if I win?”

“I’ll
ask
you, most politely, to do the same thing,” Tom O’Day agreed comfortably.

Dyer paused as if considering his options. Then he nodded. “Sounds like a fair deal to me,” he said amicably, as if they were discussing playing for loose change one of them had found down the back of his sofa.

“Just as long as you don’t expect me to contribute, Tom,” Autumn warned as she stepped up to tee off. “That’s a little rich for my blood—not to mention my present handicap.”

Tom O’Day laughed and nudged Blake Dyer’s arm. “Don’t believe a word of it, old friend. This lady is a shark, on or off the golf course.”

Jimmy O’Day, partnering his godfather, scowled furiously and fumbled getting his club out of his bag, rattling the shafts together in his frustration. O’Day turned to glance at him, frowning. I think he was more concerned that Autumn not be put off her opening shot rather than that he might have offended his son.

I was no golf expert beyond knowing which club carried the most weight and which make was least likely to break if you hit someone with it—a Callaway putter for preference. Autumn’s initial swing looked fast and smooth, and her ball seemed to travel almost as far as Blake Dyer’s had done.

Jimmy sliced his dangerously close to the rough grass at the edge of the fairway. Morton, who’d selected the club for him like a bloody caddy instead of a bodyguard, did not trouble to hide a smirk. How the hell that guy had survived for so long in an industry which is such a fine balance of subservience and authority, I had no idea.

Tom O’Day, by comparison with his son, uncoiled a big lazy drive off the tee that went further than anyone else’s by a country mile.

“Shall we?” Autumn asked, slotting her club back into the bag on her electric cart. They’d commandeered a small fleet of the things back at the clubhouse.

Maybe it was a power play, but Sean had drawn himself driving duty. My immediate role ended once they trundled away towards the first hole. I watched them go for a while, just to keep an eye on who was coming up behind.

Tom O’Day had supplemented his usual bodyguard, Hobson, with a second man today, an ex-navy SEAL. Both were obviously determined to provide a visible deterrent, making no effort to blend. The group of them had formed a presidential-style cavalcade. Even in an upmarket place like this it was attracting more attention than I would have liked.

Sean did not look back. After our earlier confrontation, I hardly expected him to. Still, it grieved me. Just when I thought we might be making progress on a personal level, I’d been forced to take us right back to square one.

I felt more alone now, I realised, than I had done during Sean’s coma. At least then I’d believe that if he woke up—when he woke up—we would be together again. I’d never imagined that he would come back indifferent to me.

I stepped back to allow the next group to prepare themselves. It was a mixed double of husbands playing a round with either their wives or mistresses. Or it could just as easily have been a pair of wives with their boyfriends, for that matter.

Morton, in one of the carts with Tom O’Day’s other bodyguard, turned in his seat to give me a mocking salute as they trundled away. As if he knew exactly what doubts and fears were running around inside my head, and revelled in them. I ignored him, relying on my dignity to take the moral high ground. It was a strangely unsatisfying victory.

As I moved away my cellphone buzzed in my pocket. One of the women players had just been handed a club and she shot me a sharp glance as I pulled it out and checked the number. I nodded to her and walked farther away before I answered the call.

“Hi,” I said, brusque. “What have you got?”

“And it’s good to speak with you, too,” Parker Armstrong said dryly. “You OK?”

I’d called him to report on the crash and its immediate aftermath, if not Sean’s delayed reaction to it later the same night.

“I’m fine,” I said. “But I’m really hoping you’ve called with something on that bastard Vic Morton, because he’s starting to piss me off no end.”

Parker saw past the flippancy at once. “Look, Charlie,” he said, his voice suddenly very focused, “I know you have history with this guy and you must hate his guts. Jesus, no one on earth could blame you for that after what he did to you—” He shut off abruptly, as if not trusting what he might have been about to say.

“It’s OK,” I said, softening. “Whatever I might be capable of, Parker, I’ll do my best not to embarrass you or the agency.”

“You think that
matters
compared with—?”

“Please,” I said, twisting in the face of words that should remain unsaid. I forced my tone to lighten. “I’ll behave, which is a shame really, because that man has a face I’d never get tired of kicking.”

“Go buy yourself a voodoo doll from the French Quarter and stick pins in it instead,” he said, determinedly matching his tone to mine. “And let me know how that works out for you.”

“Damn,” I said. “I assume that means you haven’t found anything I can use to get that little waster punted?”

“Uh-uh,” Parker said. “He moves around quite a bit—never out of work for long, but never
in
work for long either.”

“Hired for his professional qualifications and fired for his personal failings,” I said, trying to keep the satisfaction out of my voice. “Sounds like he’s using whatever he can get to keep his record nice and shiny.”

Close protection was a very fine line, a difficult tightrope act. Safeguarding a principal meant keeping them away from dangerous situations and locations, but that did not mean we could prevent them going somewhere they wanted to go, or from doing something they wanted to do. Not if we wanted to stay in work.

The pressure to procure for them—alcohol, drugs, sex—was constantly applied. It was a line both Sean and Parker had been adamant was never crossed. Not for anybody. Doing so would have been a firing offence—for operative and client.

I recalled a low point when Sean and I had been arrested during a police raid on a brothel in Bushwick with our supposed client and a barely legal hooker. Only the fact that nobody was there from choice had saved us.

But for someone whose moral compass was skewed to start with, it would be an all-too easy step. And once you’ve got that reputation you get all the wrong kind of offers—from people who then don’t really want to see a self-righteous, smirking face in the cold light of day the following morning.

So they find an excuse to let you go—with a great reference, of course. To do otherwise would be to assure a kind of mutual destruction.

“I think you got that one nailed,” Parker said now. He paused, almost a hesitation, before launching into one last try. “Look, I know how you feel about this guy, Charlie. If you want me to make some calls, get him blacklisted, just say the word.”

“Thank you, Parker,” I said, genuinely touched. “But it sounds like he’ll crash and burn sooner or later without my help.”

And I can’t go there—
won’t
go there—not again . . .

Or where would I stop?

It was my turn to hesitate. “I think you should . . . convey your suspicions to the husband’s chief of security, though,” I said carefully. “I rather like the wife, and Morton is not the kind of guy anyone should want looking after their loved ones.”

Tom O’Day and his head of PR won their mini golf tournament by a convincing margin. Blake Dyer took losing in good heart but Jimmy O’Day sulked for most of the return journey into New Orleans.