David Dun - Overfall

Inside Anna’s building a security man, dressed in blue blazer and gray slacks, greeted him as he approached the counter. Another armed security guard wearing a side arm and crisp blue uniform sat in the corner.

“Whom will you be visiting this evening?”

“Anna Wade.”

“And you would be Sam with no last name?”

“That would be me.”

“I was told you won’t be showing us any ID,” the man said with a tone of disapproval. “But you might tell us Anna’s favorite flower.”

“Herb’s lilies.”

“Go on up.”

Engrossed now in how exactly he would conduct the next couple of hours, he floated in his mind while his feet took him without thought to her door. Amidst all the death he began to think about being close

… making love. He imagined seducing Anna over dinner. Shohei would approve, of that there was no doubt.

The man in the hall in front of her door, a contract private investigator, looked like he could wrestle alligators. The man knocked for Sam, and Anna opened the door.

“You feel afraid,” Sam said.

“Kind of shaken up. They were good people and now they are dead because of complications in my life. But still I want to get Jason, to act, before something else happens.”

Sam carried his package into the kitchen and put it on the counter. “It’s easy to jump off a cliff. It takes more effort and planning to climb one. We gotta climb the cliff and it will take preparation.”

“What do we do?”

“We’re already doing it. I’ve got a team assembled to get Jason out of Canada. We’re doing surveillance to see how much soldier power they have around him. We’re lining up the psychiatrist, a guy in Seattle. There’s a whole lot to this and we’re going full speed, but if we just roll on in there without preparation we may tip them off, fail, and lose Jason.”

“I guess you have a point. It’s hard to wait.”

“Right now we’re going to make ourselves eat, breathe, drink in Shohei’s honor.”

“You say that so easily.”

Sam removed the baguettes along with the mushroom salad. “Knives?”

“In there,” she said. She sighed, seeming to resign herself to Sam’s plan, and got out some olive and garlic hummus to go with the bread.

“Let me tell you what we’ve found out.”

“Okay,” she said as if willing to wait but not convinced.

“Pots and pans?”

“There.”

“Let’s start with the therapist Grace has Jason seeing. Dr. Galbraith. We found that he went to Harvard, apparently has no publications, at least of note, has practiced for twenty years, is considered an expert in memory loss, has seen a number of celebrities, and has been credited with some remarkable cures. We found several associations with public figures including a couple of press releases where he was named and quoted. Two of the stories concerned people I know and want to talk with because they were said to have made remarkable improvement. One of them was in bad shape.”

“Were these clients of yours?”

Sam smiled. And set about getting the fish on a greased baking pan.

“Confidential, right?”

“I’m interested in talking with a guy named Jeremiah Fuller. Apparently Galbraith was Fuller’s doctor, and Fuller suddenly got his memory-building capacity back in the midst of a nasty bout with some sort of memory-wasting disease. We’ll see.”

“I can’t relate that to my brother.”

“Neither can I. But we’ll look into Jeremiah Fuller nonetheless. As for Grace Technologies, Interpol is interested in them. I think that’s because of a link to this arms dealer, Samir Aziz. We

think Aziz sent the two gunmen on the roof-we think they were after the CD-ROM.”

Sam told her what they knew and she listened intently. With the fish baking in the oven, he put some water in a pot and set a colander over the water.

“Why would an arms dealer be associated with DuShane Chellis?”

“Computers are the foundation of all modern weapons systems.”

“And Jason’s work would be relevant if it makes the computers smaller.”

“Or the rockets more accurate. Small and accurate are important in weapons.”

It was too soon to cook the pasta or put on the vegetables. The fish would take twenty-five minutes.

“We still haven’t talked about my terms.”

“Well, obviously I still want to hire you.”

“You aren’t exactly a team player,” he said, watching for her reaction.

“I’ll work on it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ve had the same agent since nearly the time I started acting.”

“My dog loved me and forsook all others.”

“Now you’re being a smart-ass. Do you know what we’re arguing about?”

“Not a clue.”

“Well,” she said, “how do I hire you? Do we do some secret society thing?”

“You have to have a sponsor-and don’t give me a hard time.”

“Sounds like AA.”

“It isn’t. It’s practical and it’s my system.”

“Okay, well, that’s Peter, right?”

“Right. And it’s a minimum fee of five hundred thousand dollars, but that counts toward my twenty-thousand-per-day fee. That covers my time and basic staff time at five staff man-hours per day. More than that and it’s two-hundred-dollars-an-hour staff time. The good news, I suppose, is that my fee drops to five thousand per day after I have put in sixty days.”

“What about the days you’re not working exclusively on my case?”

“I prorate, but you’re my only case at the moment.”

“So how much, in the end, does it really cost?”

“It usually runs six or seven hundred thousand a month if we’re working steady and I’m not using a lot of independent contractors and staff. My average fee per case for all cases has been one-point-four million. Cheap compared to what you get for a movie.”

“I’d like to ask how often you do pro bono, but I’m afraid you’re gonna bring up that we don’t do free movies.”

“Or even give refunds on the bad ones.”

“Ooh, you’re nasty tonight,” she said.

“I do maybe a free job a year or several little ones. Poor people don’t usually have particularly complex problems.”

“All right. You aren’t cheap, but okay.”

“Well, that’s not all. You have to agree to my contract.”

“What’s that?”

Sam put on the vegetables and peeked at the fish.

“Let’s sit on the couch. You should be comfortable when you hear this.” Sam took the two glasses of wine and Anna carried the bread and cheese. They sat close.

Sam explained the contract at some length, watching Anna’s brow get tighter and tighter. Finally she summarized:

“I have to shut up about you forever, unless I get your permission to offer your services to a friend or an acquaintance, and to ensure that I don’t make any untoward disclosures I have to post a deposit of one million dollars in stocks or bonds in Switzerland. My heirs get the stocks and bonds and all earned income and appreciation upon my death, and so I lose the use of my money unless you give consent for its removal.”

“Hey, if you fall on hard times I can be reasonable.”

“You get to know all about me while you attempt to tell me nothing about yourself. Notice I said attempt. If we have a legal dispute, it is decided by arbitration in the Cayman Islands. And if a court says that is not enforceable, we have arbitration in Las Vegas, Nevada, in front of a list of arbitrators all of whom, no doubt, know and love you, and if that’s not enforceable, it’s arbitration in front of the American Arbitration Association. Who’s working for who here?”

Sam shrugged. He knew words would not help.

“And grown people do this?”

“Apparently you’re going to do it.”