The Payback Assignment (13 page)

           
For scenery, their trip rivaled the average hospital wall.
 
The view was of one continuous freeway choked with cars, each mile looking suspiciously like the last.
 
Morgan was oblivious to his surroundings, and figured Felicity would be too.
 
After all, she had seen it all a million times before and, like his, her mind was surely occupied with other things.

Morgan did not recover from his personal reverie until their cab stopped in front of a huge, contemporary structure that had been built as close to the coastline as such a building could stand without sliding into the ocean.
 
Felicity thanked the driver when she paid him, and Morgan noticed that she was a generous tipper.
 
Grabbing the small suitcase and one gun case before Morgan could, she led the way into the lush, luxurious building.
 
The lobby was appointed in stainless steel with gold accents.
 
A uniformed security guard sat behind a marble counter.
 
While Felicity stopped to chat with the guard Morgan read the wall-mounted directory.
 
Most of the building, he learned, was devoted to professional offices. The top three stories held apartments.
 

The velvety decor mildly affected him, but other things impressed him much more. The building and its uniformed employees were quiet.
 
A woman wearing a jumpsuit and apron was polishing a table at the side of the lobby, although the place already looked clean.
 
A repairman stepped out of the elevator, maybe the reason Morgan saw no sign of maintenance needed anywhere.
 
The place emanated efficiency.

           
Morgan and Felicity stepped past the maintenance man just before the doors slid closed.
 
Even the elevator moved silently.
 
At the end of the rocket ride, the elevator whispered open at the top floor, the twentieth.
 
Two apartment doors faced each other there, separated by a central tropical garden that was illuminated from a wide skylight above.
 
He could not remember ever seeing the bird of paradise plants indoors before.
 
Their blues and reds and yellows and oranges glowed as brightly as they ever did in their natural setting, their petals yawning like the birds’ beaks that gave them their names.

           
Felicity strode to the door marked “number two” in fancy scrollwork.
 
Next to the doorknob, an electronic cipher lock presented three rows of four numbers each.
 
Felicity pushed eight buttons in a certain pattern, much like dialing a telephone number on a touchtone telephone.
 
After the subtle click sounded, she turned the knob and opened the door.

           
Morgan followed her into a cavernous space.
 
Felicity touched a light switch revealing a huge, sparsely furnished, sunken living room.
 
He judged the room to be twenty-one feet wide by twenty-eight feet deep.
 
The marble tiled mezzanine under his feet continued around three sides of the room.
 
He stepped down three steps into deep plush carpet that matched the walls.
 
The color wasn’t really pink, but not quite red either.
 
He thought he may have seen it on a paint pallet in a hardware store with a name like dusty rose or something of the sort.
 
He couldn’t imagine anything more feminine.
 
The furniture was plush, a velour texture that added to the feeling of softness the room exuded.
 
Directly to his right stood a round oak table with three nicely padded chairs.
 
In front of him, a hand rubbed oak cube filled in as a coffee table.
 
Beyond it stood a very long and inviting sofa.
 
Some searching of his memory produced a name for the color of the furniture. Mauve.
 
Maybe.
 
Ordinarily he would just call it tan, but in this case the specific shade seemed to matter.
 
Behind the sofa, up on the mezzanine level, an array of stereo equipment looked out from behind glass doors.
 
While he stood rooted, three steps past the door, Felicity crossed the room and stepped up to the bar beside the stereo cabinet.
 
She reached into one of the upper cabinets, rattling glasses.
 

           
 
The kitchen area was to the right of the sofa, and an overstuffed easy chair stood off to its left, almost in the corner.
 
He continued to pan left to take in the wall on that side, and as he did his eyes widened in wonder.
 
To his surprise, there was no wall to his left.

           
On closer inspection, that wall was a series of glass panels, running from floor to ceiling, each three feet wide.
 
Sheer curtains hung at each end.
 
Morgan was staring out at a twenty-one foot vista of the Pacific Ocean.
 
Rarely nonplused, Morgan had to admit that the view totally overawed him.
 
For the first time in years, he was reminded of just what money can buy.

           
“Isn’t it lovely?”
 
Felicity asked.
 
“I get all the light.
 
And I practically own the sunset.”
 
Felicity’s voice had taken on a slightly Californian, almost valley girl accent that mixed oddly with the Irish tones he had detected before.
 
She was pouring something over ice while he continued his turn around the room.
 
Landscapes and still life paintings in a variety of sizes hung on the wall behind him in a random pattern.
 
The huge centerpiece, an oil painting of windmills, unexpectedly changed to a field of pansies.
 
On closer inspection, what looked at first like a huge painting was in fact a forty-two inch plasma television screen.
 
Someone had programmed it to display a rotating collection of art, probably from a disc in the DVD player below it.

           
“By the way, Morgan, do we have a business deal?” Felicity asked, bouncing down the steps back into the living room.
 
She extended her hand, with a drink for him.

           
“I’m still deciding.”

           
“Oh come on,” Felicity prompted, seizing a cellular telephone lying on the floor of the deck behind the couch.
 
She walked around in front of the glass wall, sipping slowly.
 
Watching her there, dwarfed before the Goliath moving mural, he thought this woman must be in love with the sunset.

           
“Oh, I don’t know, Red,” he said, sipping from his own glass, and reacting to the sweetness of its contents.
 
Bailey’s Irish Crème over ice was not one of his regular choices.
 
“Maybe I can help you recover your fee if it requires any rough stuff.
 
How about fifteen percent of what we collect, plus my expenses?”

           
“Fine,” Felicity replied, “but don’t call me Red.”
 
While she dialed the telephone, he dropped the suitcases and bounded easily up to the marble level behind her to stare out at the boundless view.
 
He felt as if he had landed on top of some private mountain.
 
The sky was infinite in all directions, with only one small bank of cotton ball clouds over on the left.
 
There was no hint of the city behind them.
 
In the distance a gull slid across the wind lazily, banking and playing the currents like a seasoned hang glider.
 
Below, foam swirled around a body surfer as he was caught in what looked like a giant washing machine.

           
In the background, he could hear the beginnings of Felicity’s conversation.
 
Her voice was rising and falling as rhythmically as the hypnotic ocean swell before him.
 
It became white noise, as if he could hear the waves below.
 
None of her words caught his attention until a demand broke through.

“If I don’t have the cash within seventy-two hours I’ll come and get it.
 
And don’t be thinking I won’t.”

Morgan spun and leaped to her side in one long bound.

           
“Red!
 
What are you doing?”

           
“I have friends, you know,” Felicity snapped into the telephone, ignoring Morgan.
 
“You won’t get away with this.”

           
“Don’t tell them we’re coming,” Morgan said in a harsh whisper.
 
“You’re throwing away the advantage of surprise, you idiot.”

           
“I won’t take it, Stone,” Felicity shouted, waving him to be quiet.
 
“It’s my money or it’s your arse.”

           
When she slammed the telephone down, Felicity looked up as if she was expecting an argument, but Morgan reacted with neither rage nor resignation.
 
His initial response to her conversation was a dumbfounded silence.
 
Slowly he moved to sit on the edge of her plush sofa, which turned out to be real velvet, not just velour as he had assumed.

           
“Did you just say Stone?” he asked after a moment.
 
Felicity nodded her head.

           
“Tall dude?
 
White hair?
 
Kind of pale eyes?”

           
“You know him?” she asked.

           
“We’ve done business in the past,” he said, settling into the deep, totally comfortable couch.

           
“Well that’s a bit of luck,” Felicity said, perching on her oak cube.
 
“What do you know about the man?”

“He’s an old pro.
 
Sort of a general contractor.”
 
Felicity’s puzzled look prompted him to continue.
 
“Say for example, somebody has the dollars and wants a dirty job done.
 
He contacts Stone.
 
Now, Stone doesn’t actually do stuff, but he knows how to find the people who do.
 
He’s connected.
 
You need mercenaries, a hit man, a bodyguard, a courier...”

“A thief,” Felicity added.

“Yeah, or maybe some Mafia muscle.
 
He can get them.
 
All for a fee or a percentage, of course, and no risk to himself.
 
As a matter of fact, he was the contact man for this last raid I executed.
 
This raid I didn’t get paid for in Central America.
 
You and me, we got some things to discuss.”
 
He tossed back what remained of his drink.
 
“By the way, you got any real liquor in here?”

           
With a thoughtful expression, Felicity picked up the remote control unit resting in a space apparently cut into the oak block for just that purpose.
 
She thumbed a button, and suddenly Brahms filled the room, seemingly from everywhere.

           
Morgan was no lover of classical music, but he considered himself a connoisseur of fine stereo equipment, and the quality of the sound reproduction impressed him.
 
Glancing around, he spotted four of the tiny but powerful Bose jewel cube speakers.
 
There would be an Acoustimass module hidden someplace for the base. .

           
Felicity had wandered back to the bar and when she returned she held a glass of amber liquid at his eye level.

           
“Chivas Regal okay?” she asked.

           
“More like it.”
 
He gratefully tipped the glass to his lips.
 
Felicity stretched out catlike on the couch, her skirt rising high on her shapely thighs.
 
This was not the hyperactive feline he’d met on the trail.
 
She was completely relaxed there on her own home ground, too relaxed for his tastes.
 
Now that he had signed on for a job, he felt he needed to take command.
 
The tactical situation, mostly unknown, was growing worse.

           
“Tell me what you know about the opposition,” he said, sitting up straight.
 
“Who’d Stone hire you for?
 
Where’s your real client?
 
What kind of backing and resources does he have?”
 
From his jacket pocket he produced a small note pad and the sharp stub of a pencil he always carried.
 
Felicity examined the ceiling for several seconds and took a long pull on her drink before she spoke.