T. Bunn - Drummer in the Dark

She was drawn back inside by a ringing phone. It was Neva, the closest thing she had to a friend at work. “I must have tried to reach you a dozen times yesterday. Me and the boss both. Your phone stayed busy the whole time.”

“Sorry, I was on the internet.” Hooked into the web, searching for clues. This after spending most of the previous night going through the information Esther Hutchings had given her. The preliminary review had been sketchy but compelling. As a member of Congress, Graham Hutchings had made numerous inquiries into the uncontrolled and increasingly rampant activities of the international currency traders and hedge funds-the subject of Jackie’s unfinished thesis. Hutchings had documented occasions when the funds had wreaked havoc with national economies. He specifically named several huge funds that had played these currencies like chips on a roulette table. The list of investment banks and hedge funds was almost smothered in hand-written notes, but the top name made Jackie’s blood run cold. Hayek.

She had then gone on-line and searched out data on specific activities. She had not been looking for answers so much as keeping her hands busy while her mind tried to fit itself around this new juncture in her life. She used several search engines, their names springing up from the past, painful as splinters to her heart. All the work she had put into her own research, all the hopes, all the despair at having to push it aside when Preston became ill and the money ran out.

The final site she stumbled upon had been locked behind e-barriers, requiring her first to request entry and then download a questionnaire. The queries had reflected a group who were either very serious or seriously frightened. Her last act before logging off at one o’clock in the morning had been to send a preliminary response, introducing herself.

“I should have called in,” Jackie told Neva. “But to be honest, I didn’t know what to tell you.”

This was not Neva’s problem. “You better have a serious case of the never-get-overs, girl. Else I’m supposed to ask where you want us to mail your final check.”

“I’ve been offered another job.”

Neva brightened. “Always said you were too good for this grind. Doing what?”

“Investigation.”

“You got your license and you didn’t tell me?”

“I don’t need it for this.”

“So tell.”

“I’m being offered a ton of money by some rich old lady. She’s given me this fancy contract, calls me an independent consultant. Wants me to check out something related to my studies.” Neva was the only person at work who knew the whole tale of Jackie’s former life, and about her brother. Not to mention about her ex-fiancé, Shane, the ultimate destroyer of dreams. “I wish I knew what to do.”

“Wait, let me work on this a minute. Somebody’s come by, offered you a job that’ll get you out of this hole, and says they’ll pay you a heap of cash. And you’ve spent all day hanging in between?” She gave Jackie a chance to come back, then said, “What am I missing from this picture?”

“Come on, Neva. How often do things like this happen without a serious catch?”

“All the time, girl.”

“Not to me. This looks like just another chance for life to stab me with what I see but can’t ever have.”

“So you’re turning it down?”

Jackie wanted desperately to return to the safety of aiming low. But she was bored to tears with life and aching for change. She had not realized how much until the sleepless hours before dawn, lying there with the darkness illuminated by her fears. “You know what my problem is? I want things too much. All it takes is a tiny glimpse of everything I’ve never had, and I go up in flames.”

“What kind of answer is that?”

She was saved from further confessions by a knock on her door. “Hang on a second.” She set down her phone and walked over to where a UPS delivery man stood outside her screen door. “Can I help you?”

“You can if you’re Ms. Havilland.” When he held up his packet she realized it was ringing. “It’s been doing this for the past thirty minutes. Maybe it’s a bomb.”

“Right.” She unlatched the door, signed his electronic clipboard, and accepted the package. “Rid the world of a pair who really matter.”

She ripped the pull-tag, reached inside, came up with an ultraslim cellphone. She pushed the button and raised it to her ear. “Hello?”

It was the frosty matriarch from Boca Raton. “Where are you?”

“Standing in my doorway, staring at a delivery man’s dental work.”

“They promised delivery at nine. It’s almost half past. If I pay for a service I expect precision.”

“We run on Florida time down here. That’s something all the money in the world can’t change. Hold on just a moment.” She walked back over to her other phone and told Neva, “I have to go.”

“Tell you what. I’ll speak with the man, remind him of how you walk on water round here. See if maybe he’ll give you enough time to check this thing out.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Just go find some good luck for both of us. And keep in touch, you hear?”

She set down one phone, picked up the other. Cradled it a moment. Wishing for more clarity than the day offered. Beyond her front window the trees rocked and shuddered beneath a steadily growing wind. “All right.”

“I tried all yesterday to reach you.”

“My place only has one line. I’ve been on it trying to research your problem.”

“There’s a sealed envelope in this packet. Open it, please.” As Jackie tore open the envelope, Esther went on, “Your first payment, as promised.”

So much money. The slip of paper should have weighed a ton, pulled earthward by the ballast of temptation. “Why pluck me out of the unknown?”

“Your questions are becoming repetitive, Ms. Havilland. I wish to hire someone who will remain utterly bought and utterly secret. Have you signed the contract?”

“Not yet.”

“Time is of critical importance here.”

“I’ll decide today.”

“Very well. There is a handwritten slip in the envelope.”

“I have it.” A foreign sounding name and a number. Washington area code.

“A second contact, in case I can’t be found. To be used only for matters of critical urgency.” A pause, then, “I suggest you move on this while you still can.”

Jackie dithered for a time, cleaning her cramped three rooms while struggling with an already tumultuous day. Her garage apartment was carpeted in a ferocious orange shag. The wall air-conditioning units banged and wheezed, the plumbing clattered, and her refrigerator belonged in a museum. But her tiny back porch was a roofline haven, as far from her dead-end world as she nowadays expected to travel. She moved back to her dinette table, its scarred surface lost beneath the Hutchings papers. But she had no stomach for further work, not with the go/no-go decision swinging like a pendulum blade. Her eye was caught by a printout she had made the previous evening. The region’s loose-knit clan of wind surfers had circulated a map of the present storm with a time and place to meet. Jackie rose from the table and dressed for a day that might have some meaning after all.

Taking the beeline expressway from Orlando to the coast, Jackie crossed I-95 and the bridges splitting the Florida mainland from Merritt Island, then pulled onto a tiny spit of sand and saw grass. A half-mile across the northern waters, cruise liners rose from Port Canaveral like clownish mountains. Beyond them, a shuttle had been pulled from Kennedy’s Vehicular Assembly Building and was settled onto the launch gantry nearest the Intracoastal Waterway. The shuttle’s stubby wings stood in resolute serenity, ready to defy all the elements and arguments as to why it could never fly.