Strangled - Brian McGrory [60]
Edgar said, “Jack, we’ve been monitoring your incoming mail for obvious reasons. I hope you don’t mind. First off, I want to be on record as saying I think it’s fine that you’re the New England chapter vice president of the Martha Stewart Fan Club.”
That Edgar, such a card. This, for whatever reason, made Monica laugh uproariously. It’s probably reasonable to note here that since Monica works in IT, almost anything could make her laugh uproariously.
Edgar continued, “You received a disc in this morning’s mail, an unlabeled DVD in an unmarked envelope with a Boston postmark. I opened it. There was no note included. I didn’t feel right invading your privacy by viewing the DVD, but I did take the liberty of having Monica upload the contents into the computer system. She, in turn, is going to e-mail it to you, and you can view it and determine whether it’s got anything to do with this Phantom Fiend business. It probably doesn’t, but I don’t want to leave anything to chance right now.”
Edgar is how old? Sixty-five? Seventy? Older? And here I am, somewhere in the middle of my life, and I lost him at DVD. I said, “That’s great, but I’m not near my hotel at the moment to view it.”
Monica chimed in. “Jack, Monica here.” She said this even though she was the only woman on the call, as if I was an absolute idiot. I guess maybe when you work in IT, you grow accustomed to the idea that everyone around you is an idiot. “Do you have your laptop with you?”
“I do.”
“You can receive your e-mail right from your laptop.”
I went into a long explanation of how I couldn’t, because I wasn’t wired into anything. She went into a longer explanation on how I didn’t have to be because of something called an air card that she had installed in my machine a year ago when she had it in for maintenance. I explained that she was wrong. She asked me to press a couple of buttons and proved that she was right. All in all, this is why I don’t make my living writing manuals for IBM, though that would probably pay more and prove less hazardous, at least compared to my professional life at the moment.
We hung up so I could deal with the DVD. I called up the e-mail with the video clip, expecting it to be another piece of schlock from an independent film producer desperately looking for a few moments of free publicity that would allow his arty movie to take off in the direction of The Blair Witch Project.
As the video was downloading, my phone rang again.
“Hey, Fair Hair, I hope you’re about to tell me you won a million dollars at the craps table, spent the night having wild sex with a pair of thousand-dollar-an-hour escorts, and are about to quit journalism to pursue your dream of being a hydroponics farmer.”
It was my mother.
Just kidding. It was Mongillo.
I said, “You’re using spy satellite photography to monitor my every move, aren’t you?”
With the halfhearted attempts at humor out of the way, he asked me how I was doing. I, in turn, told him about my meeting with Bob Walters and his information about Paul Vasco.
I said, “I don’t even know if he’s still alive, but my gut says he’s the key.”
Mongillo replied, “Best that I know, Vasco is alive and well.”
As he was talking, the video began playing on my laptop screen, a very methodical tour of the inside of a reasonably nice apartment. The camera proceeded slowly around the living room, pausing at an ornate marble fireplace, scanning the coffee table, which held some magazines and an unlit candle, glancing past a chunky contemporary couch in what a designer might describe as an aloof shade of gray. The tape looked to be nothing more than a particularly aggressive Realtor trying to sell an upscale condominium.
I said to Mongillo, “Oh yeah? Walters was adamant about it. We need to track Vasco down