The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [31]
“Indulge this,” Graham said, showing him precisely. “Now tell your old dad. And don’t skip a single juicy detail.”
When Neal had finished the reprise, Graham smiled, shook his head, and said, “She never was going to do you, you idiot. She was just stalling you so Pendleton could get in the car without your getting wise. She doesn’t know you like I do.”
“What do you mean?”
“She told you to wait, remember? Then, when you weren’t buying—you’re an asshole, by the way—she gave you something to keep your, uh, mind on until everyone got nice and comfy in the car. Then she ran off, leaving you holding, shall I say, the bag?”
Neal wondered if he looked as stupid as he felt.
“You don’t think she really wanted to have sex with me?”
“Well, you were naked. She probably got a good look at you.”
“What about the shot? She was setting me up!”
Graham went back to the refrigerator, found a six-dollar can of smoked almonds, and poured them on a plate. He popped the nuts in his mouth as he talked.
“Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t. Could be none of them knew anything about any shot.”
“She ran away!”
“Good idea when shooting breaks out. What did you want her to do, cover you with her body? Oh, that’s right, that’s exactly what you wanted her to do.”
“Pass me an almond.”
“Get your own food.”
“That is my food.”
“Not anymore.”
Neal found a Swiss chocolate bar priced like a silver ingot.
Graham continued, “You ask me, I don’t think she even heard the shot. I think she was just running from you because that was part of the plan. Get you all hot and bothered so you weren’t thinking straight—again, they don’t know you like I do—and leave you wet and naked in the tub. No clothes, no towel. Very bright of you, by the way, son. You also ask me, I don’t think the bullet was meant for you, as appealing an idea as that might be.”
“Why not?” Neal asked, realizing he sounded almost indignant, as if suddenly he wasn’t important enough to be shot at.
“They could have whacked you anytime. The broad didn’t have to show you her stuff to do that. They could have popped you when you first got in the tub.”
“So who—” Neal started, but stopped because he couldn’t talk and think at the same time. Why had AgriTech told him Pendleton was there when he wasn’t? Maybe because they thought Pendleton was dead?
“I called Ed,” Neal said. “He told me Pendleton came back and told me to do the same.”
“So?”
“So I called AgriTech and they told me the same thing.”
“So Ed is right for a change. These things happen.”
“But Pendleton isn’t there, Dad.” He related his ruse involving the medication, then sat silently while Graham rubbed his rubber fist into his palm.
“I think,” Graham said finally, “we have to find out a little more about AgriTech.”
Something about AgriTech was wrong.
The library said so. One of the things that Neal loved about libraries was that they were all the same—not the layout or the architecture or the carpeting, of course, but the system. Once you learned the system, every library was known ground. Hunting ground.
He started with the usual suspects—Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s, Dun & Bradstreet—and found out that AgriTech was a much smaller company than he thought it would be, a lowly sixteenth ranking in the agrichemical category.
The bigger surprise, though, was that it was privately held. That didn’t make sense. Companies engaging in large, long-term research projects usually need the capital they can get on the public market. They’re attractive investments, and the initial investors usually like to roll them over early.
But private firms are just that—private. Harder to get data on, less responsible to watchdog agencies. Neal found a copy of Ward’s Directory, which specialized in private companies. He found out that AgriTech employed 317 people—not many for a research company—and had a narrow market base, mostly in the development of pesticides for the tobacco industry.
Pesticides? Neal thought. What happened to fertilizer? To the old chickenshit?
He took a look at the directors