Glass Tiger
- Автор: Горес Джо
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Quercus
- ISBN: 978-1-84724-072-9
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Glass Tiger». Краткое содержание книги:
Uniformed guards checked his i.d. at the resort’s front gate before letting him through the high enclosing adobe wall into the compound. Supposedly the place had been built by Al Capone; there was even a Capone suite hewn out of the native rock, all antique furniture and art deco, where Wallberg had stayed when he had been there.
Thorne’s room was in a tamarisk grove down by the picnic area. There was a tennis court surrounded by rare California clump grass; there was an exercise pool flanked by ornate teaberry bushes; there were ‘sun bins’ designed for solo nude sunbathing. The gambling casino of Capone’s day had been converted into the Casino Restaurant, with plush draperies, a huge fireplace, and a chunky refectory table that should have been gracing a medieval monastery. Perhaps it once had.
He bought swim trunks at the gift shop, draped a big woolly bath towel over his shoulders, and padded up the walk past the mud baths and sauna and massage rooms to the hot pool. It was a blue, smooth-bottomed concrete cup, going from one foot to five feet in depth, shielded by decorative rocks and shrubs. At one end, the hot natural mineral water boiled up at regular intervals to spill down a man-made cliff into the pool. The closer to this overflow, the hotter the water.
Thorne drifted in the hundred-degree velvet half-darkness, waiting for just the right security guard to stroll by. Had him! In his fifties, with a lined, leathery face, hard eyes, thinning sandy hair, a flawless uniform, and a military bearing. Perfect.
‘Vietnam?’ asked Thorne, dog-paddling to the side of the pool. ‘You can always tell a guy who’s seen action.’
‘Twenty-five years as an MP, stateside and overseas.’
‘Ex-Ranger myself. Panama. Desert Storm.’ He shook water out of his eyes and hauled himself up on the side of the pool. ‘They were telling me about that crazy nut jumped the president last fall. Were you working here then?’
The guard glanced around, then sat down on a lounge chair.
‘I gotta tell you, there was something screwy about that whole thing. Hell, this naked guy, he was just talking with Wallberg, and then the feds showed up. He shoved Wallberg underwater and took off. They started shooting. They found blood but didn’t find him.’ His thin, hard lips curved in contempt. As Thorne had hoped, this ex-MP had no respect for civilian security forces. ‘They couldn’t find him, so they claimed he crawled off into the desert and died.’
‘Did they even hit him?’
‘Hell no. That guy took off like a scalded-ass ape. No way did he take a round. I think he scraped his head on the rock deliberately to give ’em the blood. I didn’t see his face, but he was about the President’s age. Rangy and quick even though he had a limp. Wouldn’t surprise me if he was ex-military.’
At seven a.m. the next day, Sammy Spaulding met Hatfield at the unobtrusive corner of LAX where the FBI landed its jets. He whistled softly when he saw the Gulfstream.
‘And you thought I was blowing smoke,’ grinned Hatfield.
‘I thought you were covering your ass on some screw-up.’
‘Never happen, my man.’
Sammy was one of the few people outside his own team whom he actually trusted, but Hatfield drove alone to keep his appointment with Marlena Werfel at Cedar’s-Sinai. She met him behind her bastion desk in the admin office.
‘First,’ he told her, ‘I want to apologize for any inconvenience or distress our man might have caused you.’
‘He was extremely rude.’
‘He has that reputation.’ Hatfield focussed on her. ‘You see, he’s supposed to be undercover in Chihuahua, Mexico. That’s why I flew out here from D.C. to talk to you in person.’
‘I knew it! He was asking inappropriate questions about a patient we had here last November. Janet Amore.’
Who the hell was Janet Amore? But if Thorne wanted her, Hatfield wanted her. ‘What was Amore being treated for?’
‘She was mugged and beaten badly in an alley.’
‘And you couldn’t give Thorne an address for her?’
‘Could have. Didn’t. Her sister’s. But she’s long gone from there. He also wanted to know what sort of financial arrangements she made with the hospital, and her doctor’s name.’ A satisfied sniff. ‘I wouldn’t give him either one.’ She lowered her voice. ‘But he might have gotten the doctor’s name from one of our nurses who’s a talker and a trouble-maker.’
‘You’re a true patriot, Mrs. Werfel,’ said Hatfield.
He phoned Houghton’s office and ordered the receptionist to have the doctor awaiting his arrival. In Houghton’s crowded cubicle office, Hatfield flopped his FBI credentials on the desk.
‘Special Agent Terrill Hatfield. I have just come from an interview with Marlena Werfel at Cedar’s-Sinai—’
‘I know Mrs. Werfel. She is an... efficient lady.’
‘More than efficient. A patriot.’
‘Spare me,’ said Houghton.
He was just the sort of black man Hatfield despised: smooth, suave, polished, self-assured, with manicured nails.
‘Last November you treated a mugging victim named Janet Amore. Everything you have on her, including current address.’
‘If I ever treated such a patient—’
‘Oh, you treated her, all right.’
‘If I ever treated such a patient, her medical records are protected by law, Agent Hatfield.’
‘Not from me. How would you like a handcuffed ride to the Federal Building?’
Houghton stood up so as to be eye to eye with him.
‘I came up from South Central, Hatfield, the first one in my family to finish high school, let alone go to medical school. I make a lot of money and I have a lot of clout — my bedside manner with this town’s movers and shakers is impeccable. So take your best shot — boy.’
Hatfield was quivering with rage, but it was he who looked away first. Unlike Dorst, Houghton was unfazed by threats. The President would not want a public squabble over Hatfield’s right to see the patient records of a woman whose name he had just heard for the first time an hour before. He switched tacks.
‘Has a man named Thorne, maybe posing as an FBI agent, been to see you? Since he’s not one of your patients, you can’t hide behind doctor privilege on him.’
‘I never hide behind anything, Agent Hatfield. Since you won’t believe whatever I say anyway, I have no information.’
Getting into his car, Hatfield thought, Fuck him, I’ll get to Janet Amore from other sources. Or maybe Thorne was there, and Houghton’s covering his ass for some unknown reason.
He’d better put a bug on Houghton’s phone. If necessary, hack into his computer, burgle his files, intimidate his staff. One way or another, Hatfield would get what he wanted. He had the President of the United States in his pocket.
30
‘You missed.’
‘Did I?’
The exchange had added weight and meaning now. Driving back to LA with the easy noontime traffic, Thorne mulled over what he had learned at the Desert Palms Resort. Corwin had confronted Wallberg face-to-face, had even talked with him — about what? Could have killed him, and hadn’t. Just ducked Wallberg under the surface of the water so he could escape. Did this mean he really had meant to shoot Jaeger after all?
Thorne left the Hollywood Freeway at Vine, went west on Sunset, then south toward Houghton’s office. By now, the FBI surely would have interviewed the doctor and would have a tap on his phone whether he had been cooperative or not.
Doubtful they’d have a tap on Houghton’s fax machine. Thorne found a Kinko’s, parked beyond it, walked back, sent an unsigned message to Houghton’s fax number: Your day is up. From a coffee shop across the street from Kinko’s, he watched and waited for half an hour. Nobody resembling a Feeb appeared. He went in, asked if there was a reply to his fax. There was. The Taco Bell a mile from my office. 2:30 p.m.