Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

I kept my ear to the phone and soon the line changed to a fast busy signal, like it had grown tired of waiting for me to push additional buttons. Okay, so maybe it was a four-digit passcode. I tried 8137. Pause. Pause. Fast busy signal.

“You know I’m making more money than I know what to do with?” the Director said, still panting slightly from his sprint. “I’m not sure I could print money as fast as I’m making it. It’s all I can do just to get it laundered and shipped offshore.”

I keyed in 81378. Pause. Pause. Fast busy signal. Then 081378. This time it went immediately to a fast busy signal. So it was a six-digit code. But even assuming there were a couple hundred employees with passcodes, that made my odds at guessing less than 1 in 1,000.

“You should come join my operation, Carter,” the Director went on. “You’ve been the only one smart enough to catch on to what’s happening here. No one else has even come close. Not the FBI. Not those supposed geniuses at the CIA. Not the ATF. The most powerful government in the world and I fooled the whole damn thing. But not you. I could use a man like you. Why don’t you come out so we can talk about it? I can make you rich, you know.”

I rolled my eyes. If I was smarter than the CIA, what the hell made him think I was dumb enough to step outside the office door and greatly hasten my own demise?

The Director’s voice was getting louder-and closer.

“You can’t hide forever,” he bellowed. “There’s not another employee due on this floor until Monday at eight A.M. I’ve got all the time I need to find you. Come on out and we’ll talk this through.”

I could hear him opening doors one by one. Obviously, he had some kind of master key and was going office to office looking for me.

“Don’t even think of escaping,” he called out. “We’ve got holding cells on every floor. The place is designed so you can’t escape. We’ve hired experts to expose flaws in our security system by escaping, and even they couldn’t do it.”

I was sure I couldn’t, either. But I could do a little better job concealing myself. As softly as I could, being mindful that even the slightest squeak could be deadly, I stood up on the desk and slid open one of the ceiling panels. That was always how they did it in the movies, right? Climb up in the ceiling, replace the panel, and you were as good as invisible.

Except, of course, when you were on the top floor and it was just a drop ceiling with nothing above it but a concrete wall. I couldn’t even climb around in the space between the real ceiling and the drop ceiling-there was nothing that would come close to supporting my weight.

So, in short, I had no communications, no place to hide, and absolutely no way out.

Sorry, Mrs. Ross. Your boy is flat-out hosed.

There was going to be a showdown, and it was going to come soon. I looked around the room for some kind of weapon, pulling on desk and cabinet drawers to see if there was something sharp inside. A letter opener? A fountain pen? Something?

But even the fed who had been sloppy enough to leave his door slightly ajar had been careful enough to lock everything else tight. So I grabbed the only thing in the room that looked like it could do a little damage: the plant. The pot was made out of terra-cotta, which wasn’t exactly known as the world’s hardest substance. But maybe if I swung fast enough and connected with something soft and vital, the Director would be the first human being to experience Death by Ficus. Then I could take my chances with Monty.

I hid by the side of the door, hoping the Director might lead with a particularly vulnerable part of his head. I listened as the sound of the Director trying locks inched ever closer. He was perhaps three or four rooms away and closing in fast.

Idon’t know how long I stood there, ficus in hand, waiting for the end. I was keeping myself so still, so quiet, so alert for any tiny noise that when I finally did hear a sound-a series of loud and thunderous ones-I nearly dropped my plant.

It was a door slamming open and dozens of men rushing onto the floor. There was shouting and struggling and grunting. There were loud orders being barked in rapid succession. Then there was just one voice, and it was asking for me.

“Mr. Ross? This is the Tactical Response Team. Mr. Ross, can you hear me?”

I almost emerged from my hiding spot, but stopped myself. Did I really know who the good guys were? Was this just a ploy by the Director to flush me out? Did he have a Tactical Response Team-or guys who could pretend to be a Tactical Response Team-at his disposal?

“Mr. Ross? Mr. Ross? Can you hear me?”

Staying put. I was staying put. And staying quiet.

“I don’t know if he’s up here. Maybe he’s hiding somewhere.”

Then I heard a radio squawk and a sweet, squelchy response poured out of it.

“Tell him if he doesn’t come out, he’s not getting any nooky tonight,” Tina Thompson said.

“I surrender,” I yelled. “Tell her I surrender.”

I walked out of the office to find the hallway filled with men in riot gear. Director Randall Meyers was lying facedown on the floor, his hands and legs bound, his mouth shut. Monty was also bound, but he was whimpering softly.

“Are you okay, Mr. Ross?” one of the riot cops asked me.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Sound as a pound.”

“Is there any reason you’re carrying that tree, sir?” he asked.

I still had a death grip on the ficus.

“This tree and I have been through a lot,” I said. “I think I’d like to keep it.”

The guy nodded. “Fine by me, sir. You have some friends downstairs who would like to see you.”

I rode down the elevator with six heavily armed men, enjoying the knowledge that none of them wanted to shoot me. When I stepped out in the lobby, I was able to put my tree down just in time before Tina and Tommy pounced on me.

“You’re an idiot,” Tina murmured as she nestled her face in my neck. The three of us stood there for a long minute, clutching each other. I released them when I saw a tall man with a thick head of white hair reaching out to shake my hand.

“Hello, Carter,” he said. “Irving Wallace.”

I grasped his hand and pumped, still bewildered.

“You? So. . how. . what. . I don’t know where to start,” I said.

“How about: How did we find you?” Tina suggested.

“Yes. Right. How did you find me?”

“I followed you,” Tina said, delighted by her own cleverness. “I’ve been following you all day long. I was sitting five booths behind you at the IHOP and you didn’t even notice. You’d make a crummy spy.”

“Okay, but how did you know I was in trouble up there?”

“That’s where Tommy and I come in,” Irving said. “You’re lucky that he’s a crummy spy, too.”

“Aww, come on,” Tommy complained. “I wasn’t that bad.”

“I saw him sitting on my street, not looking at anything but my house,” Irving said. “I figured he was casing my place to rob it and I wanted to have a little chat with him.”

Tommy jumped in.

“I was starting to hightail it out of there, but as Irving got closer he took his hat off,” Tommy said. “Suddenly I could tell he wasn’t the man from the sketch. Way too much hair. Not nearly enough neck. And he obviously didn’t weigh three hundred pounds.”

Sure enough, Irving Wallace looked to be two hundred, tops, with a runner’s build.

“So I slowed down and talked to him. After I proved to him I wasn’t a crook, and he proved to me he wasn’t a crook, we started talking like normal law-abiding people,” Tommy said. “I told him what I knew. He told me what he knew. And it kind of fell in place.”