The Jake Helman Files Personal Demons (10 page)

Do it
.

Sliding the barrel of the gun into his mouth, he tasted metal. His trembling hand caused the barrel to rattle against his teeth. Rotating his wrist, he aimed the gun at the roof of his mouth. One squeeze of the trigger, one bullet through the brain, and his pain would end forever.

Like father, like son.

Good-bye, Sheryl
.

He squeezed the trigger.

The cell phone rang again, making him flinch.

Who the hell—?

Maybe Sheryl had changed her mind.

His finger froze on the trigger, and for an instant he thought the gun would discharge anyway. When nothing happened, he set the gun down, seized the phone, and opened it.
TOWER INTERNATIONAL
flashed on the display screen.

Goddamned telemarketers
.

Anger flushed through him as he jabbed the
TALK
button. “Hello?”

“Mr. Helman?” A cool, feminine voice.

The hair on his neck rose. “Yeah?”

“My name is Kira Thorn. I work for Tower International and I’m calling regarding an opening in our internal security firm.”

Resisting the urge to say,
Where’s Old Nick?
Jake narrowed his eyes. “What makes you think that I’m looking for work?”

“Today’s Post mentioned your resignation in a story on yesterday’s gunfight.”

I’m a star
. “How did you get this number?”

“It’s on your home answering machine.”

Sheryl had wasted no time recording a new message. His eyes moved back to the Glock. “Sorry, but I’m not interested in being a toy cop.”

“You misunderstand me. I wish to discuss a management position with you. A lucrative one. Are you available for an interview at the Tower this afternoon?”

His eyes widened. This had to be some kind of practical joke. But the display screen on his cell phone confirmed Kira Thorn’s legitimacy. “Sure. What time is good for you?”

“Three o’clock. Do you know the address?”

“Of course.” Everyone in Manhattan knew Tower International’s headquarters.

“Use the Madison Avenue entrance and ask for me.” She repeated her name and hung up.

Jake stared at the cell phone and blinked.

Tower International!

He had been out of work for less than twenty-four hours, and a representative for a major corporation had expressed interest in meeting him, all because of a newspaper story.
Gunplay equals media play
. It occurred to him that he had no résumé. Big deal. After all, Kira Thorn had contacted him. Feeling a sense of excitement and optimism for the first time in months, he showered and shaved. Then he unpacked a royal blue shirt and a navy blue suit—dress blues—and ironed them. Thorn had to be interested in his police background, so he intended to play up that image. He wore a red tie that Sheryl had bought him with a gold clip. Pulling on his trench coat, he took an elevator downstairs. Outside, the temperature had dropped to the midfifties. He bought a pack of smokes at a corner newsstand and polluted his lungs, then entered a nearby coffee shop. Too nervous to eat, he sipped a cup of black coffee while he skimmed the
Post
. The police sketch of the Cipher made the cover. Staring at the blank face, he felt nothing. Inside the tabloid, he found the story he wanted, beneath the caption,
“HERO COP IN DEADLY SHOOT-OUT.”
Mug shots of Dread and Baldy appeared next to a photo of Jake taken at his graduation from the Academy.

Hailing a taxi, he instructed the driver to take the FDR Drive downtown to Twenty-third Street. The cab stank of body odor, and he rolled down his window as he gazed at the East River. In the last decade, Nicholas Tower, the so-called Pharmaceutical King, had acquired numerous high-profile genetics companies with names like DNAtomy, Genutrition, and Genometry. Their success in developing genetically enhanced agriculture and breakthrough drugs propelled Tower International to the top of the financial reports. Tower had no wife or children, just a reputation as a fierce businessman: the “Power of Tower” influenced legislators to repeal the president’s Anti-Cloning Act. And then, at the height of his notoriety, the billionaire vanished from the public eye.

Jake’s taxi drove west, through the afternoon traffic congesting East Twenty-third Street. The Tower rose into view several blocks ahead, dwarfing other buildings in the neighborhood, such as the Flatiron Building. The black structure loomed sixty stories into the sky, blocking Jake’s view of the Empire State Building. The glass and steel cylinder, along with its parking garage, plaza, and tree-lined lawn, took up an entire city block of land that had once been the southern third of Madison Square Park. The sale of the park land—supposedly protected—proved as controversial as its new owner, who appeased many of his critics by pouring millions of dollars into the beautification of other parks in the city. The objections subsided, and the Tower became a fixture of the New York City landscape.

The taxi passed Madison Avenue, and Jake spotted the entrance Kira had told him to use. This portion of the avenue looked more like a side street, its sidewalk deserted. Gray, skeletal trees surrounded the building, and two police vans and two Radio Motor Patrol cars flanked the property on Twenty-third Street. The taxi pulled over to the curb at the corner of Broadway, and Jake paid the driver. Getting out, he studied the Tower’s main entrance: wooden police barricades held back a crowd of demonstrators, and two dozen patrolmen in riot gear stood between them and the Tower. A twenty-foot-tall letter T, constructed of black marble, shadowed the entrance. The fountains in front of the building had been shut off due to a citywide water shortage stemming from yet another drought attributed to global warming.

A man with a bullhorn paced the sidewalk between the police and the demonstrators. Approximately thirty years old, clean cut and professional looking, he wore a long black coat over his suit, and black leather gloves. He held the hand of a woman roughly the same age. Her sculpted hair did not move in the wind. They resembled his-and-hers department store mannequins and their audience looked more like PTA members than protesters. The picket signs rising into the air bore illustrated DNA strands with flaming red crosses over them, with
“GOD CREATES LIFE, SCIENCE SHOULDN’T!”
and
“STOP STEM CELL ATROCITIES NOW”
as their slogans.

The Anti-Cloning Creationist League
, Jake thought. The grassroots movement had recently relocated to New York City from the Midwest and their ranks had swelled: Jake estimated the crowd to number at least five hundred strong.

The man with the bullhorn pointed at the top of the building. “Up there, in that Tower of Babel”—his comment inspired scattered applause and snickers—”a demagogue and his corporate minions are altering the nature of life on this planet.”

The crowd jeered, and the speaker grew more animated, the woman beside him nodding. Jake walked a safe distance behind the demonstrators, measuring the intensity of their fervor. He had no use for mob mentality.

“It started with a tadpole, then progressed to a sheep. Remember Dolly?”

“Yes!” the demonstrators yelled as one.

“It continued with rhesus monkeys and pigs. Now we have designer babies, cloned pets, ‘therapeutic cloning,’ and DCL-21. Where will it end?”

Lighting a cigarette, Jake circled the Tower. Deceleroxyn-21 was supposed to extend the human life span by as much as fifteen percent, but he didn’t believe it. Behind him, the man continued preaching to the converted.

“Genetically enhanced food, genetically enhanced medicines, genetically enhanced people. DNA? How about G-O-D?” The crowd roared its approval. “Is it God’s plan for the rich to live longer than the poor simply because they can afford Tower’s new wonder drug? Of course not!”

Jake turned right on Twenty-first Street, the man’s sermon and the ensuing applause fading from his ears. Prior to the Tower’s construction, Twenty-fourth Street had ended at the park and resumed on its other side. Now the street continued unbroken, separating the Tower from the park’s remains. A twenty-four-hour diner, an upscale Italian restaurant, and a jazz bar all faced the park from the Tower’s ground level. Jake stopped at the corner of Madison Avenue and finished his cigarette in the cool shadow of the mammoth art deco buildings across the street. He popped a breath mint into his mouth, glanced at his watch, and took a deep breath.

Time to enter the lions’ den
.

T
he tinted glass doors made it impossible for Jake to see inside. Entering the lobby, he faced a security station manned by two guards, one African American and the other Caucasian. The door closed behind him, and he stepped forward, his rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the polished granite floor. His shadow skimmed a marble wall as he glanced up at the high, vaulted ceiling. The guards wore matching black shoes, gray slacks, and dark blue blazers with burgundy-colored ties. The black man sat at the console, his photo ID identifying him as “Birch, Barry.” His colleague, “Laddock, James,” stood beside him with his arms folded behind his back, like a Secret Service agent. Jake saw the slight bulge of a gun beneath Laddock’s blazer, and each man wore a discreet listening device in his left ear. Both gave off a hard military vibe. Three sets of golden elevator doors gleamed twenty feet behind the station.

Jake removed his wallet and presented his driver’s license to Birch. “I have an appointment with Kira Thorn.”

Birch examined the license, then swiveled his chair so that he faced a computer monitor recessed within the wall. He keyed in Jake’s name, then scanned the driver’s license and printed out a visitor’s pass, which he handed to Jake with the license. “Please stick that on your coat, Mr. Helman.”

Jake put his license away and inspected the pass: the photo from his license had been duplicated, his name and a security number appearing beneath it. He peeled off the backing and adhered the pass to the front of his coat.

Laddock slid an electronic clipboard across the countertop. “Sign in, please.”

Jake picked up the pen attached to the clipboard and signed the screen. He guessed the lobby served as a private entrance for the company’s top executives.

“Take any one of those elevators to the top,” Laddock said, gesturing at the gold doors behind him with a cocked thumb.

Jake moved around the security station and thumbed a call button on the wall. An elevator chimed to his left. Stepping before it, he aimed the pass on his coat at a laser scanner mounted on the wall. The elevator’s doors whispered open, admitting him into a spacious car. He faced two buttons on the wall: one with an
UP
arrow and the other with a
DOWN
arrow. Pressing the top button, he raised his eyes to a shiny black dot above the doors. Recognizing it as a security camera, he lowered his gaze as the doors shut and the elevator surged upward. His stomach lurched, and he reached out to steady himself. His ears popped, and he swallowed saliva. Then the high-speed elevator decelerated and stopped, and his stomach settled.

Stepping off the elevator, he entered a marble corridor with dim lighting. The corridor led to a glass door, through which he saw another security station, this one circular and stacked high with monitors. As he approached the door, he noticed a hand scanner mounted on the wall to his right. A lone guard at the station reached across the console and toggled a switch, and a hollow-sounding click emanated from the door. The guard appeared to be Jake’s age, except that his short, curly hair had already turned gray. Jake pulled the door open and entered the receiving area.

The guard stood as the door closed behind Jake. “Mr. Helman?” He had a British accent and a solid physique.

“Yes.”

“Welcome to Tower International. I’m Simon Graham, the security coordinator here. Ms. Thorn will be right with you.”

“Thanks.” Jake looked around the space, which had no chairs. Glass doors on either side of him led to corridors that curved along the building’s outer contour. Behind the security station, a glass-faced office sat dark and empty next to a pair of lacquered doors. Seeing no windows, he felt a twinge of disappointment.

“May I take your coat?” Graham held out his hand.

“Thanks.” Jake removed his coat and handed it over. Graham took it to a wall on the right-hand side of the station and opened a seamless closet door. He hung the coat and returned to his seat.

The double doors behind the station swung out, and a woman stepped through them, silhouetted by sunlight flooding the space behind her. Standing the same height as Jake in her high heels, she stepped into the overhead light, her dark eyes and smooth skin coming into view. She approached Jake with catlike poise and a
Mona Lisa
smile. She could not have been more than twenty-five years old, and she wore her raven black hair pulled back. Her black jacket matched her skirt, which reached midway down her thighs, and she had unbuttoned her silk blouse just enough to allow a hint of cleavage.

“Mr. Helman? I’m Kira Thorn. Thank you for coming on such short notice.”