F. Paul Wilson - Ground Zero

Jack had pushed Harris into the cab and he was a twitchfest the whole trip, asking the driver over and over if he was really a cabby and if he was really taking them to Mount Sinai Hospital.

But now . . . seeing was believing.

“Is she ever going to wake up?” he said, his face full of angst as he turned to them.

“The doctor’s not sure,” Jack said quickly, before Eddie could speak. “It’s touch and go. She might enter a persistent vegetative state.”

This earned a questioning look from Eddie that Jack ignored. He’d pulled the term out of his store of unwanted coma lore.

“Like that lady in Florida?” Harris said.

Jack nodded. “Exactly. Terry Schiavo all over again.” He hoped Eddie would stay clammed.

Harris turned back to the bed and stepped closer to Weezy. He shook her shoulder as he leaned over her. He spoke in a low voice but Jack caught the words.

“Wake up, Louise. You’ve got to wake up. I think I’ve found him. I think I know who he is.”

“Found who?” Jack said.

Harris jumped and turned. “Nothing. A private matter.” He suddenly looked scared. “I don’t care what the report says, I’ll bet this wasn’t an accident. They found her and got to her. They’ve finally silenced her.”

“We can’t let that happen,” Jack said, flicking a glance at Eddie. “She mustn’t be silenced. I think she knew they were closing in, and that’s why she came to her brother here. To continue her quest for the truth.”

Eddie cleared his throat. “Yes. I, um, run a small security firm—”

Harris stiffened. “Securities?”

Jack wondered why that word would cause a reaction.

“No,” Eddy said. “Security—as in building security. You know, hospitals and such.” He nodded toward Jack. “This is one of my employees.”

Swell. Now I’m working for Eddie.

Jack said, “Yeah. She told us she thought she might need some protection.”

Harris snorted and looked back at the bed. “Some protection.”

“She was just bringing us up to speed,” Jack said. “She was worried about endangering her brother, so she was very stingy with her information.”

Harris nodded, a little more enthusiastic now. “Oh, yeah. That was Louise, all right.”

“You said it.” Jack looked at Eddie. “Like pulling teeth, right, boss?”

Eddie turned away. It looked like he might be fighting tears but Jack was sure he was fighting off a smile from the “boss” line. When he turned back he was composed.

“Sorry. This is very hard.”

Jack said, “Let me be blunt here: I’m thinking that she thought someone wanted her dead. Am I right?”

Harris nodded. “Permanently silenced, yeah.”

Jack pressed his case. “Well, it’s not permanent, not as long as she’s breathing and has a chance to come out of this coma. So that means someone might try again. We can’t protect her very well if we don’t know who we’re protecting her from. That’s where you come in.”

“Me?”

Jack was already winging it, so he decided to push it a little further.

“She told us about someone special, someone close to her that she trusted, but she wouldn’t give us a name.” Jack narrowed his eyelids and fixed a B-movie stare on Harris. “I’ve got a feeling that trusted guy is you.”

He nodded. “Well, I was—I mean, I am.”

“Then you need to fill in the blank spaces she left us—for her sake.”

“I don’t know . . .”

Eddie said, “I told you: I can’t protect my sister if—”

“—if you don’t know who to protect her from. Right-right-right. But you need to know that she didn’t tell me much. Only just enough to help her find what she was looking for.”

“We’ll take whatever you can give,” Jack said.

He chewed his lip. “Okay. Is there someplace private we can talk? You know, where we can’t be overheard?”

Jack thought about that. Julio’s was out—didn’t want anyone tailing him there. Then he remembered that they were right across the street from Central Park.

“How about down by the reservoir? We can find an isolated spot in the open where no one’s in earshot and—”

Harris made a face. “Ever hear of a parabolic microphone? Someone could be listening in from a hundred yards away. We’d be better off in a bar or a restaurant.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s way before the dinner crowd. We should have no problem finding an isolated table in a midscale place.”

Jack couldn’t argue with that. He’d always linked paranoia to longevity, though Harris was taking it a bit far.

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

But no way Harris was picking the restaurant.

19

“I guess this is good enough,” Harris said.

As the hostess led him and Eddie toward the pub’s empty rear dining area, Jack hung back near the door, waiting to see who would follow them in.

Harris had chosen a Mexican place on Lex but Jack had vetoed that and picked this Irish pub on Third Avenue at random. He’d kept his eye out for a tail on the way over. Hadn’t made one, but the streets were crowded with summer tourists—a bird-dogger’s dream.

A couple of laughing young girls speaking something that sounded like Swedish popped in five minutes later. He waited another five and when no one followed, he joined the other two at the booth in a rear corner. He had Eddie slide over so he could take the outside seat facing the bar area.

A florid-faced waiter with a big belly stretching his vest to the limits of its tensile strength asked in a brogue if they wanted a drink before dinner. Eddie ordered another martini, Harris a Guinness.

Jack shook his head. “Not while I’m on duty. Right, boss?”

Eddie rubbed his mouth. “We’ll make an exception this time.”

Jack said, “Well, I don’t much like beer but maybe I’ll try something I saw on tap as I passed the bar. I believe it’s called Smithwick’s?” He deliberately pronounced the “w.”

Eddie appeared to be trying very hard not to roll his eyes.

Jack turned to Harris as the waiter left. “Okay. What can you tell us? You told Weezy you ‘found him.’ Who did you find?”

Harris hesitated, then shrugged. “Okay. She’s had me looking into a particular stock account.”

Jack said, “You mean a brokerage account?”

“Right. In this case, a UBS account. Opened in Basel, Switzerland, in July of 2001 by a Spaniard named Emilio Cardoza.”

Eddie looked as puzzled as Jack felt. “So?”

“It became active the week of September third—the week before the planes hit the towers.”

That brought a hush to the table. Jack broke it, saying, “How active, and what was he buying?”

“More like what he was selling.” He paused for some sort of effect but it was lost on Jack.

“Are you going to tell us or what?”

Harris sighed. “On September sixth he purchased puts on American Airlines, United Airlines, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. Lots of them.”

Jack saw Eddie’s expression register shock but hadn’t a clue as to why.

“What’s a put?”

They both stared at him. Jack didn’t even attempt to explain why he knew so little about the stock market. A person needed a Social Security number to open a brokerage account, and would be expected to pay taxes on the profits. Jack didn’t have an SSN and had yet to file a 1040. So, when reading the paper, he tended to skip to another article at first sight of words and acronyms like Dow Jones and NASDAQ.

Eddie said, “A put is an option, essentially a contract that will allow the holder to sell stocks at a specified price by a given date. A call is the opposite, allowing you to buy a certain stock at a specified price by a given date.”