Стюарт Вудс - Desperate Measures

On the street he looked carefully up and down and saw no one who looked out of place. He opened the car’s rear door — a search was better done on wheels.

“Where have you been?” Faith asked.

“Looking for you,” he replied. “I went upstairs. How’d you get down here?”

“I used the back elevator that opens onto the side street. Larry, the elevator operator, wasn’t answering, which isn’t unusual.”

“The lobby was completely empty,” Stone said.

“There’s a game. They would all have been watching in the assistant manager’s office.”

“Home, Fred,” Stone said, taking a deep breath.

“You look funny,” Faith said.

“I feel funny,” he replied. “And I’m glad to get you out of this neighborhood.”

Back at the house, Fred collected her luggage, and Stone gave her a kiss. “Good night.”

“Don’t you want that last roll in the hay?” she asked. “It’s always the best one.”

“Let’s bank it,” Stone said, then went upstairs, undressed, and fell into bed, still shaking a little.

Stone was at his desk as usual when Joan came in. “Do you remember that you have a Centurion board meeting in Los Angeles the day after tomorrow?” she asked.

“I remembered the moment you mentioned it,” Stone replied. Centurion Studios was the Hollywood film company where Stone’s son, Peter, and Dino’s son, Ben, were based. Ben was, in addition to being Peter’s partner, head of production at the studio, and Stone served on its board of directors.

“They want to know if you’re attending.”

“Tell them yes, then call Peter for me and ask if he and Ben and their wives would like to join me at the Arrington Hotel for dinner tomorrow evening.”

“Certainly.”

“Then tell Faith about the trip and ask her to get everything ready with the airplane. She’s my new pilot.”

“So I heard on the household grapevine,” Joan said. “It’s not like you were going to tell me.”

“Her contract is somewhere on your crowded desktop,” Stone said. “Put her on the payroll and the health insurance policy. She’s also the new head of my flight department, so you will be relieved of all those tasks. You might bring her up-to-date.”

“Anything else?”

“Anything you can think of,” Stone said. He called Dino.

“Bacchetti.”

“I heard a rumor you’re batching it,” Stone said.

“Yeah, Viv is in L.A.”

“Dinner tonight at Rotisserie Georgette? Seven?”

“Why not? Are you bringing Faith?”

“No, I bought the Latitude from Mike Freeman, and Faith is now an employee — my chief pilot and the head of my flight department. I don’t screw around with employees.”

“I didn’t know you had a flight department.”

“Joan was it, until now.”

“See you tonight.” They both hung up.

Stone met Dino at Georgette, one of their favorite restaurants. They ordered drinks and a roast chicken, specialty of the house.

“So,” Dino said, “you got tired of Faith, so you hired her so you wouldn’t have to sleep with her?”

“Nope. Faith has a three-fuck policy.”

“What is a ‘three-fuck policy’?”

“She doesn’t want a husband or a regular boyfriend, so she limits sex to three times, then dumps them. She figures the fourth time is when she starts to get into trouble.”

“Well, that’s a new wrinkle,” Dino said. “I sort of admire her logic.”

“If she doesn’t want what she doesn’t want, then her policy is a sane one, I guess.”

“So, you used up your three times at bat?”

“Only two. I discovered that I resented the limitation, so I decided to limit it myself instead.”

“So the two of you won’t be joining the mile-high club on your new airplane? Does the FAA have a regulation barring sex at altitude?”

“There’s not a specific no-screw regulation that I’m aware of, but they have lots of loosely worded rules that could cover a multitude of sins.”

“Conduct unbecoming a licensed pilot?” Dino asked.

“Something like that. Also, there’s a regulation about being in control of the airplane at all times, so I guess if the pilots are screwing there could be control issues.”

“Especially on takeoff and landing?”

Stone laughed. “Especially.”

“I was going to join Viv for a couple of days in L.A.,” Dino said. “Mind if I tag along?”

“Be glad to have your company. Be at Teterboro at nine AM. You and Viv stay with me at the Arrington.” Stone had led a group who had begun building new hotels, the first on land in Bel-Air that had belonged to Arrington’s first husband, the film actor Vance Calder, and the original contract entitled him to build a house on the property.

“Thank you. We’ll take you up on that.”

“I’ve invited Peter and Ben and their wives to dinner tomorrow night.”

“Good, saves me the trouble.”

“Dino,” Stone said, “I want details on the murders of those girls on the East Side.”

“Yeah, I knew you’d insist, but you won’t like it.”

“I don’t expect to like it. I just want to know what’s going on. I had a scare last night with Faith at that seedy hotel on Lexington, where the charter airlines put their crews.”

“Yeah, that place is on the downtown edge of the area where the murders are happening.”

“Come on, cough it up.”

“Okay, here’s what the medical examiner is telling us: the girls are rendered unconscious, maybe chemically, then taken somewhere and stripped by the perpetrators.”

“More than one perp?”

“So they say. They’re then awakened, beaten, and sexually assaulted. The corpses are covered in bruises and welts.”

“Any DNA traces?”

“None. The girls are strangled or suffocated, then bathed to clean away incriminating DNA, then they’re redressed, taped into garbage bags, and left in public wastebaskets on the street in the middle of the night.”

“That’s meticulous,” Stone said.

“It gets more meticulous: they’re made up and given manicures and pedicures, too, so that there are no traces of another person if they scratch or kick them, and their hair is washed and styled and their clothes are washed before they’re redressed and put out for collection. We’ve notified every trash crew working the East Side to be on the alert for bodies.”

“Why the makeup and the hairdressing?” Stone asked.

“The ME says it’s a guilt thing on the part of the perps. They want them to look nice when they’re found. They use the girls’ own makeup, so they’re not buying cosmetics in the neighborhood.”

“These people are going to be very hard to catch,” Stone said.

“You’re right, pal. They’re going to have to be caught in the act — the act of murder or the act of disposal — and waiting for that to happen could take years.”

“They’ve got to have a base,” Stone said. “An apartment or a room where they take their victims; someplace they won’t be seen or overheard.”

“We’re on that,” Dino said. “We’re on all of it. I’ve tripled patrols on the East Side.”

“I wish I could think of something to suggest,” Stone said.

“I wish you could, too, pal.”

Stone sat in the right seat and watched closely as Faith ran through her checklist, then got a clearance from ATC, and taxied to the runway. She began her takeoff run, then rotated; Stone handled the gear lever and the flaps for her, and the airplane climbed to its preset altitude of 1,500 feet. They had a departure procedure to fly, and Stone was surprised that Faith hand-flew it instead of just switching on the autopilot, as he would have done in her place. Stone regarded the autopilot as a better operator than he, as many pilots did.