Chat - Archer Mayor [75]
And before she noticed that she’d left her cell phone behind.
Joe grabbed it and jogged for the elevator banks, finding nobody there. He mimicked Weisenbeck earlier and headed for the stairs, taking two steps at a time and hoping the elevator had lots of stops.
When he reached the lobby, he saw her in the distance, swinging through the bank of doors to the driveway outside. He broke into a jog that wouldn’t also alarm the small army of people milling around him, and reached the doors in under a minute.
From there, he saw her approached by the well-dressed driver of a fancy waiting car, its exhaust plume thick in the cold air, and greeted with a hug and an intimate, almost lingering kiss.
He stopped dead in his tracks, assessing what to do.
In his training as a cop, public and personal safety were the priorities, followed by tactical considerations—level of threat, availability and nature of countermeasures, and on down the line.
Here there was none of that. The adrenaline rush was similar, but the situation was absurdly benign. He stood rooted where he stood, people jostling him to use the doors before him, and tried to unscramble his synapses.
Fortunately, or perhaps not, Gail ended his dilemma by glancing over her shoulder as she broke away from the embrace and began circling the front of the car.
She, too, froze in place, transparently nonplussed.
Lamely he held up the cell phone he still clutched in his hand, and pushed the door open before him, hoping his expression was within a mile of normal.
The car’s owner, one foot already inside his vehicle, was arrested by Gail’s abrupt immobility and glanced in Joe’s direction, giving the latter more purpose.
This was perfectly reasonable, Joe was thinking as he approached—reasonable and logical. Wasn’t he seeing someone else? Hadn’t he and Gail both moved on?
He smiled as he reached them. “Can’t live long without this, I bet,” he told her, sticking out his right hand to the man and adding, “Hi. Joe Gunther. Glad to meet you.”
Gail had, by now, returned to that side of the car, a black BMW, her face red and pinched as if from a steady blast of cold air. “This is Francis Martin, Joe. He works with Martin, Clarkson, Bryan.”
Joe laughed. “Top of the masthead. Good going.”
Martin smiled back, his eyes betraying that he’d figured out what was going on. “Not that tough when you created the company. I’ll never have a reputation like yours—or deserve it.”
Joe gave his hand a last squeeze and dropped it. “I guess that depends on the reputation and who you’re hearing it from.”
Martin nodded. “Good one. You’d make a good lawyer. I promise, I’ve only heard the best.” Here, he glanced at Gail, who was standing quietly, her eyes blank, fingering her cell phone.
“You all set?” he asked her. “We’ll have to beat feet to make that meeting.”
Nicely done, Joe thought, and stepped back. “Have a safe trip,” he said, waving to them both, and added to her, “I’ll let you know if anything changes, one way or the other.”
He stayed standing there, the polite host after the party, until they’d both settled in, slammed their doors, and the dapper Francis Martin had driven halfway down the drive. Gail’s pale face was still visible through the back window as Joe finally turned on his heel and went back inside, his heart beating somewhere in between relief and sorrow.
Sammie Martens parked her car on the street, across from the bus depot parking lot on Liberty Street, and paused before getting out, surveying the surrounding bleakness. Springfield, Massachusetts, was huge in comparison to anything in Vermont, or, as most Vermonters saw it, huge and crowded and blighted and depressing. Sammie had personal knowledge of the social troubles this area visited upon her state. She’d gone undercover in nearby Holyoke for a while in a vain attempt to stifle some of the drug flow heading north.
Of course, she knew that her prejudice was unfair.