Thomas Perry - Poison Flower

"One is a private detective, only he lost his license. His name is Jack Killigan. He still works for some of his old clients, and he's done some searching for people. He gets so he knows who's worth finding. Another is Van Springer. He works as a go-between who buys things for people. One time it will be a clean car or a few guns, another time it's something else. Sometimes he gets asked to find somebody in particular. Another is a guy named Hosper, a bounty hunter."

"Okay. I get the idea. What did they say"

"That when we got this one we hit the lottery."

"Really"

"Yes. We just wanted to know where Shelby would be headed. When she wouldn't talk I thought if we found out where she was from, we could look there. But both these guys said they had clients who would pay seven figures for her. About five hours later, two more were sniffing around. Then I got an e-mail from a guy I didn't even know. He runs a big security company."

Martel said, "This is really interesting, Wylie. You amaze me sometimes. Most of the time you don't. When were you going to tell me about this woman"

"I did tell you."

"You told me after she got away. You had already started negotiating with all these buyers. You were going to sell her yourself."

"No," said Wylie. "I wasn't. I was just trying to find out what we had on our hands, so I could give you the whole story."

Martel stared at Wylie for a few seconds, not glaring, but looking at him calmly and evenly. Then he said, "We have a different situation today. You don't have him or her, and I want them both. They're probably together again by now. I assume they don't know that we've got his sister's new address-or even that we know he has a sister."

Wylie looked uncomfortable. "Well, yes. The woman knows that we know there's a sister. When we had her, I said if she didn't talk we'd get the sister to talk."

Martel slowly shook his head. "Then if you know where the sister is right now, why the fuck are you in a hotel in Chicago instead of on the way to her"

"We've been on the road for days, after cleaning up the place where we had her, and we were tired, dirty, and hungry for a decent meal. We'll do better if we feel better."

"Wylie. I want you to remember that the reason you're chasing around the country is that you fucked up. Repeatedly. Now you know the address, and here you are, resting up. I'm astonished. I'm sure you know that if you go up there and get Shelby and this woman, there will be a big payday for all three of you. I want her alive, and him dead. If you don't succeed, I'm done with you. I'm giving you a way to fix your mistakes."

Martel sat in the armchair staring at Wylie. Then he slowly moved his head to look at the other two. "Are you waiting for something"

Wylie said, "You want us to leave now"

Martel said, "Can you possibly think I don't"

The three men hurried around the room picking up clothes they had thrown on the floor, filling their pockets with keys, wallets, and change they had left on the furniture. "As soon as you're ready you can just go. Leave your room keys and I'll check out for you."

He waited in silence while they finished putting their belongings into suitcases and headed out the door. When they were gone he stood up, went to the window, and waited until he saw their blue Crown Victoria pull away from the building and drive to the exit from the parking lot onto the highway. He put the three room key cards in his pocket and went to the door.

It was these small, day-to-day decisions that made the difference between them and him. They avoided extending themselves if there was any discomfort, let themselves be distracted, stopped trying the minute they felt they'd expended exactly as much effort as they had to.

It depressed him that he had to pay men like these to solve problems for him. Eleven years ago he had started his business with the idea of never doing anything that would attract the attention of the authorities. That would allow him never to hire criminals. But here he was, years later, with not only these three but nine more on his payroll-a dozen men who were engaged in applying various levels of force to protect his interests.

He'd had the simplest sort of business plan. He had started a medical supply company and given it a name that sounded old and established. In order to have merchandise, he would induce a young salesperson from a pharmaceutical company to sell him medical drugs. He specialized in the obvious ones-Oxycontin, methadone, morphine, Vicodin, Valium, and a few others that were in such high demand he could charge huge markups and sell them instantly. For eleven years he had been an enormously successful drug dealer without ever having to step on a dark street or deal with anyone who used drugs.

He always paid the pharmaceutical company's bill on time. That kept the salesperson in the clear and the pharmaceutical company happy. He would produce paperwork that listed small resales to a large number of genuine hospital pharmacies, clinics, medical groups, and universities. The government looked closely at every prescription written for drugs like these. The prescription had to be written by an MD personally on a numbered prescription slip that carried the doctor's medical license number. But no prescriptions were ever written. In theory, the drug just stayed locked up in these institutional facilities for years. The hospital pharmacists had never ordered or received any of these drugs, so they never wondered where the drugs went. The drugs never got onto an inventory, so they were never reported missing.

Martel's companies never had his name on them. The officers and managers were all doctors. One of his brilliant observations that made his business possible was that it was absolutely futile to go to mature, practicing physicians and present them with a scheme to make extra money. They had money. And the ones who were corruptible were already working schemes of their own and didn't need a partner.

Instead Martel sought out very young doctors, men and women still in medical school or interning. Some were still paying tuition or huge student loans. If they agreed to be on the board of one of his companies, they would receive good pay for doing very little. They might notice at some point that their names appeared on other papers-on the letterhead of company stationery, or even as a signatory of a letter. But they would not know that their credentials were being used to get the company licensed to handle narcotics. After three or four years, the young doctor might move on to another part of the country and forget the relationship, but Martel's companies would not forget him.

Martel had operated some of the companies for as long as eleven years without raising much suspicion. The only way the authorities might find discrepancies was by comparing sales data from the giant pharmaceutical manu-facturers with the records of the hospital pharmacies to which Martel supposedly had sold small amounts of a drug, a form of check that seldom happened. When it did happen, he could produce receipts or drugs on demand. He knew that given the tiny amounts of drugs involved and the age of some of the orders, the authorities would see no point in an investigation.

Whenever it seemed to him that questions were about to be asked, he would dissolve the company or have another company he owned buy it and take over. On some occasions he had even made a show of turning over unsold drugs to the local authorities to be destroyed. When he did that, the bottles were full, but not necessarily full strength. At times he had such quantities of narcotics going through his companies that he could have made a fortune just diverting the number of bottles and pills that would constitute normal breakage from shipping that never took place.

He loved the business. It not only had made him rich but it had also brought him women. Pharmaceutical sales reps were nearly all young, attractive women. To them he was a very important customer. Unlike many of their other customers he was male, unmarried, only slightly older than they were, and unfailingly interested in them. He also traveled from city to city, where he met lots of other women who knew only that he was a rich, handsome man who had something to do with medicine.