The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [33]
We have Levine lying about Pendleton’s return, and AgriTech security backing up the lie. We have Levine telling me to come home and forget about it. Why would they say Pendleton’s back when he isn’t? Why isn’t Levine jumping up and down and screaming at me to do my fucking job and bring him back?
Unless all of a sudden they don’t want him back.
Unless they want to make sure he doesn’t come back.
Ever.
Paranoia is like a seatbelt—it’s when you don’t put it on that you get in an accident.
So thought Neal Carey as professional paranoia gripped him around the middle. Graham would never let anything happen to me while he’s on the job, so they take him off. They make a big show out of sending their golden boy retriever, me, to find the absent professor. Good old dog that I am, I go on point, and someone shoots … not me, but what they think is Pendleton. Dark night, dimly lit deck, the back of my head to the hill, where the shot came from. It’s possible.
So someone goes out and picks up my poor corpse and makes the sad announcement that Robert Pendleton is dead. Murdered. The investigation fizzles and is forgotten.
But who has the swag to carry that kind of load? The same people who have the swag to set up dummy companies, phony histories, and multimillion-dollar insider loans.
He reran his conversation with Pendleton in his head. Meeting in a hot tub to make sure he wasn’t wired. “So did the company send you?” No, idiot, not the company, but the Company. The Company.
Paranoia. Pure fucking paranoia, Neal thought. The CIA? What would a dorky biochemist be doing for the CIA? Get real.
But the bullet was real. Very real, so pay attention here. Suppose they did try to whack Pendleton? That presents some problems for one Neal Carey. If they still think they killed Pendleton, they have to deal with me somehow. And if they know by now that they missed Pendleton, they’ll be looking for both of us. They’ll know where to look for Pendleton. He’s with Li Lan.
And they sure as hell know where to find me, don’t they? I have a return ticket to my isolated cottage in the moors.
Except I’m not going to be there. There’s only one thing to do when paranoia hits this bad—run with it.
First he had to get to Crowe, because Friends and their new CIA buddies could connect Crowe to him with a quick cross-referencing of the files just by pushing a couple of buttons and asking for Neal Carey cases in San Francisco. So he had unwittingly put the artist in some danger.
Crowe answered on the first ring.
“Crowe.”
“It’s Neal.”
“You are taking me to an expensive dinner, aren’t you?”
“Crowe, has anyone been around asking for me?”
“No.”
“Anything unusual? Repairmen you didn’t expect? Pollsters? Jehovah’s Witnesses?”
“No! I’m in the mood for French cuisine, I think.”
“Just shut up and listen. I won’t be back. Thanks for all the help. If anyone comes around asking questions, you haven’t seen me or heard from me in years, okay?”
“Where are you going?”
“It’s too long a story.”
“Where are you now? Neal, are you in trouble?”
Well, sort of, Crowe. I have this creepy feeling that the CIA and my own employers want to kill me, but other than that …
“I just need to disappear for a while, Crowe.”
“Let me help, Neal.”
“You already have. Thanks, Crowe, and ’bye.”
Neal met Graham outside the Chinese Crafts Center on Grant Avenue. Groups of tourists from Grey Line bus tours were prowling Chinatown, gawking in store windows and choosing restaurants as night fell and the neon came up.
“Let’s take a walk,” Neal said. He told Graham about his research and his suspicions about AgriTech.
“And the Man is on their board?” Graham asked when Neal was finished.
“Yeah.”
“So what is AgriTech to the CIA or the CIA to AgriTech?