John Miller - Upside Down

“I think we best order now,” Millie said.

“Yep, the noon rush will be starting up any minute,” Hank said.

“I meant while we still have appetites,” Millie said, frowning.

Paulus Styer sat alone at a table twenty feet from where the two men and their wives were eating lunch. His gray ponytail hung over the collar of his button-down shirt. He tapped his fingers softly on the table and stared down at a folded newspaper beside his bowl of chili. Although he appeared to be reading and listening to music through earphones leading to a Walkman resting on the table before him, the small tape machine was actually an extremely sensitive, narrow-field listening device picking up everything the two couples said. After they finished eating, he followed them out, passing by them as they were saying their good-byes on the sidewalk.

Styer was a lifelong competitor whose professional life consisted of one chess match after another, and like any grand master worth his salt he was always plotting his assault on the next king he was sent after. He had been at this match, doing his own last-minute daily field study, for a solid week. That week had come only after studying his opponent's dossier, which had been gathered from every source imaginable by the best researchers and analysts in the world. He had spent two weeks prior to arriving in the United States studying those files, committing them to memory. The research phase was necessary to complete an assignment and assure his success. His style of working an assignment was time-consuming, but his success ratio ensured that he had free rein to be as self-indulgent as he liked. What was Trammel's word for this Nicky Green fellow? Eccentric. Oh yes, Paulus Styer was eccentric. Why work if it wasn't fun? What was the point of walking up to someone and putting a pill in the back of their head-running an awl through their medulla? An ex-marine could do that sort of thing for ten thousand dollars a hit. When you were paying for perfection, you wanted a guaranteed elimination, and cost was a secondary consideration. Paulus Styer, lovingly referred to as Cold Wind, was your man.

A block away, he climbed into his rented car and opened his laptop. Seconds later he was on the Internet, via cellular modem, accessing his e-mail account.

There was an English text message waiting.

Please furnish ETA on next delivery.

He hit Reply and clicked inside the message box:

Going to New Orleans. Advise client that the job will be completed in the next few days. Require immediate file on Nicky Green / a private investigator from in or near to Houston, Texas. I require two unconnected heavy-lifting assistants and an assorted #9000 tool kit plus vehicle on arrival. Flying this afternoon / Direct flight arrives in New Orleans around 4:00 this day from Greensboro, NC.

He closed the computer. Terrorists had made it virtually impossible for a legitimate, hardworking professional to travel with the tools of his trade. Having to have his weaponry delivered to the job sites was a maddening inconvenience.

He had spent several weeks in New Orleans four years earlier after an assignment which left him with wounds to mend. He chose New Orleans in order to listen to some Dixieland and to tour the places of interest he had read about. He had enjoyed himself and was glad he was returning there to work. The city would be a perfect environment for a hunt. He was tempted to charter a flight and beat them to New Orleans, but he decided it would be best to stay close to the Trammels and begin setting up the board.

A cold wind blows in the City of the Dead.

New Orleans, Louisiana

Arturo Estrada was on cloud nine as he strolled into the River Club, where the cleaning crew was hard at work getting the place ready for the Friday-night crowd. His client, Jerry Bennett, was a short man who resorted to a girdle to hold back his expansive gut because he was too lazy to do the exercise that remaining trim required. Bennett sat at a table near the main bar, doing business with a woman who appeared to be a sales representative. There was an open sample case beside her leg, and several open bottles of wine stood on the table, along with stemware for sampling. Bennett saw Arturo, but he ignored him the way he might any other employee.

Arturo strolled straight back to the office in the rear. Jerry Bennett wasn't technically his boss, but he paid Arturo a seventy-five-thousand-dollar yearly retainer in cash that included odd jobs like making more difficult collections, plus a generous bonus for jobs like the one Arturo had performed that morning. In a good year, Arturo made a hundred and fifty thousand dollars from his one client. For difficult assignments, Arturo picked a partner and Mr. Bennett paid the tab. It had been a good relationship for five years, mostly because Arturo had always achieved positive results and Bennett had never once tried to stiff him.

After Arturo had spent ten minutes cooling his heels in the expansive office, Jerry Bennett strolled in. Although his face was the hue of burnished copper, the white skin on his neck and the backs of his hands gave away the fact that his tan was pancake. The collection of fur-thick black hair of his toupee didn't match the mixture of gray and brown chest hair framed in the V of his perfectly starched white shirt. Arturo supposed that nobody had ever mentioned he looked like a silly old woman who made an effort to retain a youthful appearance but only managed to fool herself.

“Mr. Estrada, I have to go right back out there. I'm considering changing the house Merlot. And, with a nice enough order, I might just get a slice of that little wine representative. A vixen, a vixen for sure.”

Arturo wasn't sure what a vixen was, but he assumed it had to do with sexual acts. “Good-looking sales rep. And she can give you an alibi for this morning, Mr. Bennett. Not that you need one… now.”

Bennett's gray eyes blazed with excitement. “You found Amber! You did, didn't you? And you got them back?”

In answer, Arturo reached a gloved hand inside his coat, slipped the curved envelope out, and placed it on the desk. Bennett opened the flap and slid the photographs out just far enough to see the top one. Then he counted the corners to make sure they were all there.

“I caught up to her at some lady lawyer's office. The lawyer didn't make copies.”

“You're sure?”

“Absolutely. I came in before she made any. I looked around. I don't know what Amber told her, but I know she was there only a couple minutes alone with her. It is possible the lawyer called somebody, but it won't matter, since you have everything back.”

“Why did she take it to a lawyer?”

“I found out from one of the girls at the Moonbeam that Amber might be staying with a friend of hers named Erica Spicer. Erica was real helpful. She told me Amber was going to sell those to some lady attorney who's representing the man who's going to die for whacking the judge.”

Bennett searched his mind for a name. “Kathy Porter?”

“It was Porter. I guess-”

“Kimberly,” Bennett interrupted. “Kimberly Porter?”

Arturo nodded. “I guess since the blackmail thing didn't pan out, the lawyer was Amber's last shot at cashing in.”

Bennett nodded slowly. “Yeah, that was the only move left. Myself, I'd have gone to the FBI with it, but that Porter bitch would have waved those papers in front of television reporters and then handed them to the FBI.”

“She told me what building Amber was going to-”

“Who told you?”

“Erica, Amber's pal. I almost caught up to Amber before she went in. I had to wait until the janitor left the lobby. He never saw me and there's no security cameras there.”