Chapter 5

The mirrored skull-like orange shape displayed on Gcina's ebony desk looked as much out of place as his bare feet crossed next to it.  The attorney's expression said more than his voice.  "Interesting."

"Yeah," said Jared.  "That seems to be the general consensus."

"From this side of the desk, I look pretty pathetic," quipped Gcina

Jared tilted his head.  "Ben said it was hard to fool a reflection."

"Uh, huh. And you?"

"Me?"

"You look better, I presume."

Jared tilted his head slightly.  "I can make me look just about any way I want."

"And you like what you see, right?"

"You might say that.”

"Humph.  One thing you're not is modest."

Jared lifted his chin, revealing two long scars across the side of his throat.  "Modesty sometimes has to give way to self-preservation.”

“How’d you get those?”

Jared shook his head indifferently.  “Little disagreement in a bar, but the bad guy bled a hell of a lot more than me.”  He adjusted his position.  “So, it’s your opinion that I should continue this little egg hunt, even if a golden version seems highly unlikely, right?”

Still taken aback by the scars, Gcina answered, “Like I said a couple of hours ago, Jared, your father wasn’t one for wasting his or anyone else’s time.”

Jared took a sip from a coke.   “Yeah, but these deposit boxes are all over the world.  What if all I’m going to do is find more of the same?”

“You mean ‘dumb’ rocks?”  Gcina smiled.

“Easy for you to say.  He might have ‘stupid’ sand in that Taos vault.”

“Then again, maybe not,” Gcina quipped. 

“Maybe not.  Could just be another note asking me to meet yet another crazy at the next location.”

“You know little about him, so maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to judge his thinking.”

Jared paused.  “But why so dramatic?”

“If you mean the keys, the deposit boxes, eccentric friends...one thing you’re learning about him; he’s never lived his life the way most people think is normal.”

“Well…”  Jared stood up and gestured toward the skull.  “Fucking thing is starting to get to me.”

Gcina lifted his feet from the desk and leaned in on his desk, resting his head on his hands a few inches from the creation.  “Yeah, it does have a way of making you wonder about what you see, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, somethin’ like that.  If you don’t mind, I think I’ll leave it here ‘til I’m back.”

Gcina squinted at Jared.  “Here?  Why here?”

“You forget I’m a house sitter?  I travel light, and my studio pad is not in the best of neighborhoods.  You don’t mind do you?”

Gcina leaned back and shrugged.  “Suit yourself.  But, South LA isn’t exactly a bastion of safety, either.”

Jared looked over at the open antique Japanese cabinet displaying Gcina’s knife collection.  The interior was lined with one-inch bulletproof glass, protecting the irreplaceable treasure.  “Keep it in there, okay?  Nobody would try and suffer through that siren alarm you keep at the ready.”

As Jared headed for the door, Gcina stood up.  “How long you expect to be gone?”

Jared opened the door and looked back.  “Who knows?  Sounds like it I could be just at the beginning of a long hunt.  Last line on that Idaho note asked that I take a bus to the Taos bank, if I was satisfied with meeting Ben.  ‘Satisfied.’  If being entertained with mirrors is what he meant, can’t complain, but a bus?  What’s that all about?”

Gcina chuckled.  “Bus.  Sam told me more than one story about his bus days.  Said he used to get from one dead-end job to another, state to state.  For some reason, he liked buses.”

“So, I’ve got to like them too?”

“Hey, Jared, house sittin’ pay doesn’t exactly qualify for a private jet, now does it?”

“He left some money for me to travel.  I told you that.”

“And he said to use it wisely, didn’t he?  If he asked you to take a bus, you might want to consider that might be a clue about any more money…to travel, that is.”

“He doesn’t like makin’ anything easy, does he?”

Gcina slowly shook his head.  “That would be Sam, alright.”  He glanced at the skull again.  “That head is enough to scare the shit out of the wrong person.”

“And?”

“Well, maybe the head is some kind of a first test.”

“Test.  And I’m flunking?”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself.  In my profession, we might say you came through the first phase of discovery okay.”

Jared nodded, walked to the door and said, “With seven more keys, there’s seven more chances of tripping myself up, right?”

“You could look at it that way.”

“Fuck,” Jared mumbled as he closed the door.

Gcina stared at the mirrored head for several moments.  “Seven more chances…right.”  He moved to his computer and pulled up his incoming E-mail.  After scrolling down, he turned away with disappointment, then swiveled back and picked up the phone, dialing a ten-digit long distance number.  “Barry, Gcina.  No contact.  Yes, of course.  Look…Peter, you’re the one that said you could run a reverse IP trace and get his address, phone number…the whole nine yards, so stop relying on me getting another contact and get your end working.  The man e-mailed me once, just once to get this circus rolling.  This is Sam Brenner we’re talking about.  No.  No, you’re wrong. His game plan is in motion, so he has no reason to… And if he doesn’t make contact?  Fine…I’ll wait.  I’ll check in the morning, but don’t hold your breath.  ‘Do my job!’  Any time you think I’m not…”  The other end of the line clicked off.

He started to slam the receiver down and took a deep breath, gently resting it in its cradle.  After a few moments, he stood, picked up the skull, walked to his knife cabinet, placed it inside and paused.  Pulling open a small drawer, he removed a black blindfold.

***

The New York skyline was layered with an uncharacteristic smog-day.  Pete Marcum, being the germaphobe he was, held his gaze on the phone, then quickly wiped it down with a sani-wipe.  Rising, he walked briskly to the windows of his thirty-ninth-floor corner office and pulled the drapes.  Moving quickly to the four corners of the room, he pressed his ear to each of the air purifiers to make sure no tell-tale dirt sounds were coming forth.  He then stepped into his private bathroom for the obsessive every quarter-hour hand wash—using surgically approved cleanser, of course. 

He stepped back into the carefully chosen aura of his office.  Unlike the other executives at Persall Publishing, his private surroundings presented zero signs of literary success.  Instead, his walls were checkered with framed photos of chessboards showing pieces all frozen at the point of checkmate.  Each picture frame identified with a brass plate indicating the tournament, date, and losing player’s name along with the winner’s: Peter Marcum.

Standing over his conference table, his eyes scanned the book-cover artwork before him.  He absently lifted the filtered-decanter of purified water, poured a glass, and drank the 8 ounces.  Tilting his head from left to right, he leaned down toward the embossed cover.  Tracing the raised outline of a bird, its wings cutting through the water, he suddenly picked up the phone.  “Mr. Stegler, this is not going to work.”

Seated before a large-screened computer, Randolf Stegler, pushed his graying comb-over aside and talking into the monitor’s webcam, continued to work on the engraving dimensions of another book cover design.  “What’s not going to work?”

“It doesn’t catch enough light,” answered Peter.

“Light?”

“Yes, Mr. Stegler, that devilish marketing phenomena called embossing, that casts shadows when there’s light properly positioned to create shadows.  It needs to be raised another thirty-second of an inch…at least.  I’ll let you determine just how much with your scrupulous perfection.”

“Charades aren’t my forte, so do you mind telling me what the hell you’re talking about, Peter.”

“The Brenner cover.”

“Oh, Jesus.  You still stewing over…”

“Mr. Stegler, the word is not ‘stewing.’  Getting it right is more appropriate.”

“I’m into a third month and sixth plate, for God sake.  You’ve cost me more time…”

Peter leaned into the webcam, conveying a distorted fisheye view for Steigler.  “And I’ll cost you even more time till you get it right, Mr. Stegler.”

The engraving artist took a deep breath and dropped his head back, staring at the ceiling of his office.  “Peter, as Marketing VP, you have every right to make unreasonable demands.  But a book that doesn’t exist yet?  Don’t you think putting your focus on a manuscript about to go to press would be more productive?”

Peter sat back and took his from-the-Oval-Office-pose.  “Your job, Mr. Stegler, is not to challenge my judgment.”

“Jesus, Peter, why must we have one of these encounters every fucking week?”

“Because I make decisions that are not easy.  You, on the other hand, your father-in-law’s bequeathed lifetime job to you notwithstanding, are paid to carry out my decisions.  You have a problem with that, Mr. Stegler?”

Pulling his eyes back to his computer screen and tapping in a couple of keystrokes to bring up the bird-in-the-water artwork, Stegler answered, “No more than any other, MR. MARCUM.  Give me a couple, okay?”

“How about tomorrow?  Have a good day.”  Peter hung up and slipped into deep thought, once again fingering the embossed letters spelling out the title:

SAM

The

disappearance of the world’s richest man

Stegler clicked off his webcam with thoughts of a different kind as he thrust his middle finger toward the screen.