Linwood Barclay - Bad Move

“Okay, I’m taking this, too, but there’s a part that’s broken off it.”

“It’s the door,” I said. “It needs to be glued back on. It’s on the shelf right where the model was.”

And then he was gone, looking for it. He returned with the model ship, the door, and a small container of liquid plastic cement he’d found on my modeling table.

“I want you to fix it,” he said. “I was never very good at this sort of thing. I always put on too much glue and ruin it.”

“I’m kind of tied up at the moment.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to let you use your right hand.” He began to unwind the duct tape that held my right wrist to my chair.

“I’m gonna need both hands,” I said. “If I’m going to glue it and then hold the door in place.”

“I look stupid to you? You can do it with one hand. I’ll help you, and then we’re going to talk about finding that ledger for Mr. Greenway.”

He unscrewed the cap on the liquid cement. With my free hand I set the door on its back side so I could apply cement to the parts that would come in contact with the ship.

“How about this,” I said to Rick as I dabbed a bit of glue onto the door. “I’ll tell you more about that ledger, but you have to let me tell you about another story I’m working on first.”

“What? Like another science fiction book?”

“No, this one’s a bit different. It’s sort of a mystery, about a double-cross.”

“Oh yeah? I always like those. Like you think the guy is your friend, but then you find out he’s your enemy.”

“This one’s about a guy who does all the dirty work for his boss, takes all the risks, but gets shafted in the end.”

Rick eyed me warily. “Go on.”

“He even kills for his boss, that way the boss is protected, you know? There’s some distance between him and the crime, so that if he has to, he can deny knowing anything about it.”

Rick frowned. “Doesn’t sound like something that would interest me.”

“No? It should. I’m basing it on you. Here, press the door into place, now hold it for a few seconds till it sets. In this story, you’re the central character. You’re the one getting double-crossed.”

“Sure I am.”

“You know what your boss Greenway said to me-I don’t even know how long ago, I got no idea what time it is now. But earlier tonight, he said something very interesting to me.”

“What he say?”

“He said, ‘What if we gave you Rick?’”

Rick ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. “Whaddya mean, what if he gave you Rick?”

“He said, ‘What if we give you Rick for the murders of Spender and Stefanie? We get him to take the fall for that, and then we give you whatever you want.’”

“That’s bullshit.”

“It didn’t sound like bullshit a little while ago. You see, I may not look like I’m in a good bargaining position right now, but a couple of hours ago, I kind of had the jump on your boss and his friend Carpington, and they were ready to say anything to put themselves in the clear. Greenway said you’re a hothead, that you killed those people, and he’s prepared to give you up to save himself. He’s in some pretty deep shit now. This whole thing’s falling apart around him, and if he can keep his ass out of jail by giving you to the cops, I think that’s what he’s going to do. And you know Roger will go along. That guy cries for long-distance commercials.”

“You’re lying.”

“And it seemed like a good idea to Mr. Benedetto, too. He just showed up at the office, I think they’re going over the final details now of how to hang you out to dry for all this. And if you kill us, thinking you’re doing it in Greenway’s interests, well, I wouldn’t be looking for him to back you up.”

“That’s fucking shit!” Rick said, making a fist and bringing it down hard on the model, shattering it into a hundred pieces. Sarah, even tied in the chair, jumped, the chair legs squeaking as they moved an inch across the floor.

Then Rick was very quiet, thinking about it, not sure whether to believe me or not. But it was probably the kind of thing he’d always suspected. Slowly, the rage was boiling up in him. Pretty soon he’d have to get out his baseball bat and smash another car. “Those fuckers,” he said. “They can’t do that.”

“You think they wouldn’t? You really think they-”

There was a loud banging on the front door. We all turned our heads in the direction of the noise. Rick sidled over to the counter and took the knife into his hand.

Sarah and I exchanged glances. It couldn’t be Angie or Paul. They had keys. And even if they’d forgotten them, they’d never bang the door that way.

The police, we thought. Maybe, finally, the police had figured out I was somehow involved in this mess. Maybe they’d checked the last few calls made to Stefanie Knight’s phone, recorded the numbers. Discovered that one of them was my cell, and now they wanted to know what I knew about her murder.

Lots! Ask me anything! I’m ready to talk!

“You stay here,” Rick said to both of us, and I thought: Duh. And: “Don’t make a sound.”

I guess, realizing he might not be able to count on us in this regard, he put the knife back down and ripped off two broad pieces of duct tape. One piece got slapped across my mouth and the other across Sarah’s.

There was another loud knock on the door.

Rick grabbed the knife and ran out of the kitchen. I reached up with my one free hand and pulled the tape back off my mouth. Sarah rolled her eyes, as if to say, “Can this guy not get anything right?”

I heard him reach the front hall, and imagined that he had probably peeked through the glass beside the door to see who’d come calling.

I heard him throw the bolt. Whoever it was, it was someone he was willing to admit into the house. I started clawing at the tape that was wound around my body.

“Mr. Benedetto,” Rick said. There was no warmth in his voice.

“Rick,” Mr. Benedetto said. I heard the door close again. “Mr. Greenway had a feeling you might be over here, tending to a few things.”

“Yeah.”

There were so many layers of tape, I was having a hard time tearing through them. So I tried reaching around, to free my left hand.

“We’ve got a bit of a problem, and you being quite the handyman, we thought you might be able to assist us. If you take a look out there, you’ll see Mr. Greenway and that Mr. Carpington out by the car there, and they’re both in handcuffs.”

“What?” said Rick. In his mind, handcuffs meant cops. Clearly, there had been developments he was not aware of. “So it’s true.”

“What, Rick? What’s true?”

“The cops have already picked them up. And they’re going to cut a deal. What did the cops say to you? That if you came in here and got me, they’d cut you a deal, too?”

I peeled one layer of tape from around my left wrist. There felt like only one layer left. As I picked at it, I wriggled my left wrist around, trying to stretch the tape enough to slip my hand out.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Rick. But maybe you could tell me what’s going on here. Is Mr. Walker here? Did you recover the ledger?”

“Walker told me what’s going on. That you guys are going to turn me over for the Spender thing. And for Stefanie. You know I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about, Rick. Maybe you could come out and give us a hand.”

My left hand broke free of the tape. But I was still wrapped into the chair, and my ankles were anchored to the legs.

“A hand?” Rick’s voice suddenly became more calm. “Sure. I’ve got some tools out in my trunk. Why don’t you come with me, I can show you. I got all kinds of stuff in there.”