Nate Cousins stopped in at Jayla’s lab at Renewal Pharmaceuticals and asked whether she had dinner plans that night.
“I have a date,” she said, referring to her five o’clock meeting with Mac Smith. She didn’t have plans after that but wanted to leave the evening open. While Cousins’s attention was flattering, she didn’t like to be pressured. Plus, she looked forward to a leisurely evening at home.
CEO Walt Milkin also popped in that afternoon.
“Just wanted you to know,” he told Jayla and her two colleagues, “that although your efforts with the previous experiment didn’t bear fruit, I have every confidence that your future endeavors will tell a different story.”
They were appreciative of this vote of confidence from the top dog and told him so.
“Got a moment, Jayla?” Milkin asked as he prepared to leave.
She accompanied him into the hallway.
“I was just wondering whether you’d heard from the fellow who worked with your father in his laboratory. Waksit is it?”
“Yes, Eugene Waksit. But no, I haven’t heard from him.” She thought of the call from the attorney in PNG, Elgin Taylor, and the call that he’d received from Waksit.
“Damn shame that your father’s notes were stolen. You did tell me that.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that Waksit might have taken them?”
“I’d like to think that he didn’t,” she said.
“Well,” Milkin said, “if you do hear from him I’d like to know.”
Why? she wondered.
He noted the puzzled expression on her face and added, “As I said before, if he ever gets to Washington I’d enjoy meeting the man who worked side by side with your enigmatic father.”
“I don’t expect he’ll ever come here,” she said, “but I’ll keep in mind what you said.”
“Can’t ask for more than that,” he said, sporting a large smile. “Keep up the good work, Jayla. Renewal is counting on you—and your colleagues in there.” He pointed to the lab door, placed a large hand on her shoulder, and walked away.
Enigmatic father.
She showed up at Smiths’ office precisely at five and told his receptionist that she had an appointment. Mac emerged a few second later.
“Hello there,” he said. “Good to see you again.”
“I appreciate the time.”
“Come in, come in. Robert Brixton, Flo’s lesser half, is with me.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t tell him I said that. He’s armed.”
Brixton was reading a magazine as Jayla entered. He got up and shook her hand, said to Smith, “Want me to leave?”
“Not unless Jayla wants you to.”
“No, please stay,” she said.
They settled in chairs and on a couch around a glass coffee table.
“So,” Smith said, “what sage legal advice can I give you?”
Jayla repositioned herself in her chair and said, “I received a call from my father’s attorney, Elgin Taylor, in Port Moresby. He had a variety of issues to discuss about events following my father’s death.” She related the news about Walter Tagobe’s mugging and murder, and the codicil her father had handwritten leaving a small amount of money to Tagobe.
“You say that Mr. Tagobe oversaw a plot of land that your father cultivated to grow plants used in his research?” Mac said.
“Yes. He was a tribesman in the Sepik River region.”
“A tribesman?” Brixton said.
“Much of PNG is extremely primitive,” Jayla explained.
“And his death came on the heels of your father’s death,” Mac said.
“Yes. That plot of land that my father cultivated was burned and bulldozed, also at the time of my father’s murder.”
“If I believed in coincidences,” Brixton said, “I’d say that this is definitely one.”
“But you don’t believe in coincidences, Robert,” Mac said, “and neither do I.” He said to Jayla, “This is the same land that the tribesman, Tagobe, was responsible for.”
“That’s right,” she said.
“Where was he when the field was destroyed?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but since he was killed in Wewak—that’s a town in the Sepik River area—it’s possible that he’d gone there before the men burned the field.”
“Or maybe after. Any more bad news this attorney delivered to you?”
“Yes. My father had an assistant who worked for him in the lab for about five years, Eugene Waksit. Mr. Taylor said that he’d received a phone call from Eugene claiming that my father had promised to leave his lab results to him.”
“Did you father have a will?” Brixton asked.
“Yes,” Jayla said. “In it he left five thousand dollars to Eugene ‘for his service.’”
“But no mention of your father’s research?”
“No. Mr. Taylor learned of the money left to Walter Tagobe when going through dad’s papers. He’d handwritten a codicil to his will stipulating that.”
“Maybe he wrote another codicil leaving his research to this Waksit guy,” Brixton said.
“No,” Jayla said, shaking her head for emphasis. “I believe he would have told me if he had.”
“Was that why he was killed, somebody after his notes?” Brixton asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What about this Waksit guy?” Brixton asked. “If he claims your father willed him the results of his research, maybe he helped himself to the notes.” Mac and Jayla looked at him anticipating his next supposition. “And maybe this Waksit guy killed your father.”
Jayla wrapped her arms about her, closed her eyes, and slowly shook her head. When she opened them she said, “I’ve never been especially fond of Eugene but I can’t believe that he’s a killer.”
The finality with which she said it prompted both men to drop the subject. Smith said, “So, Jayla, what can I do for you?”
“I’m afraid that I’m not making a lot of sense, Mac, paraphrasing what Mr. Taylor told me, and I’m not sure why he suggested that I consult with a lawyer. Would you be willing to talk to him?”
“Of course.”
She handed Mac one of Taylor’s business cards.
“There’s a big time difference between here and Port Moresby,” she said. “It’s fourteen hours earlier.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Smith, “and make sure I don’t wake him in the middle of the night.”
“It was good seeing you again,” Brixton said, standing and stretching against a sudden back spasm, and flexing the knee that had stiffened, the one that had taken a bullet in Savannah when he was a cop there.
“Same here,” Jayla said. “Please give my best to Flo.”
After Jayla had left Mac asked Brixton for his take on what she had told them.
The private investigator hunched his shoulders and continued to exercise his knee. “If I was a writer and writing a book about it,” he said between grunts, “I’d have this Waksit guy—weird name, huh?—kill her father and grab the notes. Then he has somebody burn down the plants the father cultivated as part of his research.”
“And you’d have him kill this tribesman, Tagobe? Why? To keep him quiet?”
“Or hire somebody to do it.”
“But her father left Waksit five thousand dollars in his will.”
Brixton guffawed. “Five grand? If the father came up with an improved painkiller, five grand is chump change. Of course, why would Waksit call the attorney and claim that the father left him the research if he’s already got the notes?”
“Because if he tries to sell the research results to a major pharmaceutical company, they’ll want proof that he owns it.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“That’s why I’m a lawyer,” Smith said.
“And good thing that you are. I have to run.”
“Dinner with Flo?”
“No. Her shop’s open late tonight. I’m running down a lead I was given.”
“Oh?”
“Give Annabel a kiss for me. See you in the morning.”
Brixton went to his car and reviewed a page he’d printed after Googling Paula Silver. There wasn’t much about her, only that she’d appeared as a sexy vamp in two soon forgotten B-grade films, and hadn’t been heard from since. The films in which she appeared were Burn Baby and Depravity, neither likely to be nominated for an Oscar. She was thirty-seven years old. Her last known address was Washington, D.C.
He drove to Adams Morgan, Washington’s vibrant multicultural neighborhood, and found a parking space across from Char Bar. While driving there he’d gone over in his mind how he would approach Paula Silver, the role he would assume, and the extent to which he’d lie. He’d gone undercover before; his recent interplay with the model car racing husband from the Department of Agriculture had been his latest venture playing someone other than himself. He’d dressed nicely that morning, suit and tie and shined shoes. He took a deep breath and walked into Char Bar.
Paula Silver stood behind a podium at the front of the restaurant. Although she’d obviously aged, there was no mistaking her from the one photograph that Brixton had run across online, obviously taken when she was in her early twenties. She had a mane of nicely coiffed blond hair that framed a beautiful face. She was visible to Brixton from the waist up, and he could see that she was amply endowed where aspiring movie actresses are supposed to be, nicely filling out a blood-red blouse. Eric Morrison might be a jerk—that’s how Will Sayers characterized him—but he had good taste in women, at least the mistress variety. She glanced up at him as he approached.
“A table?” she asked.
“I think so,” he answered. “Could I see a menu?”
“Of course. The specials for tonight are on the insert.”
Her voice was husky, sexy.
Brixton took the menu from her and pretended to peruse its offerings.
“Lots of choices,” he said.
She smiled, a nice smile, red lips and perfect white teeth.
“I’ll take a table,” he said.
“For one?”
He gave her a friendly laugh. “Unless you’d like to join me.”
Her smile disappeared. Bad line, he thought.
He recouped. “Please don’t think that this is a come-on,” he said, “but you look familiar.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I know I’ve seen you somewhere before. It’ll come to me. I’ll take that table now.”
She came from behind the podium and he followed her to a vacant spot toward the rear of the restaurant; the bottom half of her was equally as impressive. He stopped her. “How about that table over there?” he said pointing to one that afforded him a view of the podium.
“If you prefer,” she said, and placed a menu on it. “Enjoy your dinner.”
Brixton ordered a martini—with gin, not vodka, straight up, with a twist—from the waiter who walked as though his feet hurt. Brixton had carried that day’s Washington Post in with him and pretended to read it while sipping his favorite drink, occasionally glancing over at Paula Silver as she welcomed new customers. He decided to put his plan into action whenever there was a lull, which happened minutes later. He’d given the waiter his dinner order—a shrimp cocktail and a strip steak cooked “Pittsburgh style,” rare on the inside and charred on the outside—before going to the podium.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“It just hit me where I know you from.”
She stared at him blankly.
“You’re an actress,” he said.
Her expression didn’t change, but he could see the wheels spinning in her pretty head.
“I’m a movie buff,” he said, “especially older ones, movies that don’t have a lot of car chases and things blowing up, movies with good characters.” Because it was true he could say it with authority. He clicked his fingers a few times to indicate he was in deep thought. “Let me see, let me see, I remember you from…” A few more clicks of his fingers before saying, “Something with ‘burn’ in it. Yeah, Burn something.”
“Burn Baby?” she said.
“That’s it! Burn Baby! You were in that.”
“You saw it?”
“Yeah, on TV, you know, the channel that shows old movies, interesting ones that weren’t big at the box office. You were terrific.”
“Thank you,” she said, obviously flattered.
“You were in other movies, too, right?”
“A few. I had a big role in another. It was called ‘Depravity.’ Stupid title, huh?”
She excused herself to seat a couple. When she returned to the podium Brixton said, “My dinner’s on the table. Better eat it before it gets cold. The steak I mean, not the shrimp cocktail.”
She nodded.
“Hey,” he said, “any chance of getting together to talk about old movies?”
“They weren’t that old,” she said.
“You know what I mean. Buy you a drink when you get off?”
She thought before saying, “Okay.”
“Great. I’m Robert Brixton.”
“I’m—”
“I know who you are. Paula. Right?”
“Paula Silver.”
“Right, Paula Silver. What time do you get off?”
“We’re slow tonight. About an hour.”
“Great. I’ll have my dinner and hang around until then.”
An hour later he came to the podium and asked, “Got a favorite place nearby?”
“Bourbon, on Eighteenth Street?”
“Sounds good to me, Ms. Silver. I assume bourbon is on the drink menu.”
“Hundreds of them. At least it seems that way.”
They walked a few blocks to the busy night spot and found a small table in the bar area. She didn’t hesitate to order a single-barrel bourbon, and Brixton did the same. As they made small talk he couldn’t help but wonder at how Hollywood worked. She was as beautiful as any famed movie star, a little shopworn around the edges but time has a habit of doing that to beautiful women. Of course he didn’t know whether she could act, nor whether the few roles she’d landed had been based solely on her platinum good looks.
“So, what do you do for a living?” she asked.
He’d expected that question.
“I’m a researcher,” he said.
“That’s interesting. What do you research?”
“At the moment I’m looking into the influence that lobbyists have on our elected officials.”
Her widened eyes mirrored her interest.
“Yeah,” Brixton continued, “it’s gotten pretty bad. There are lobbyists who own certain pols.” He laughed. “I don’t know if you know it but lobbying used to be legit. The lobbyists helped the elected officials understand things about their clients—but they didn’t buy them the way they do now. But I’m sure you’re not interested in stuff like that. Let’s talk movies.”
He hoped that she would disagree; he knew little about motion pictures and would have trouble keeping up.
“No” she said, “I am interested in lobbyists.” She paused, and he wondered whether she would bring up her affair with Eric Morrison.
“I used to go with a lobbyist here in D.C., a big one.”
Bingo!
“No kidding. That’s a coincidence. Anybody I’d know?”
“Sure. Eric Morrison.”
“That’s an even bigger coincidence,” Brixton said.
“He’s scum,” she said. “I’m writing a book about him.”
“Whew!” came from Brixton. “A book? You have a publisher and all?”
“Not yet. Actually, I’m thinking about writing a book about him.”
“I guess you have to be careful, you know, libel and stuff like that.”
She sneered. “I know plenty about Eric Morrison, plenty about his dirty dealings with politicians.”
“I can’t believe this,” Brixton said. “Wow! Maybe I could help you with your book. I know plenty, too, about Morrison and other lobbyists like him.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“This might be the best coincidence you and I will ever have,” he said. “Here’s to your book.” He raised his glass.
“Thanks,” she said, raising hers.
They chatted for almost an hour until she announced that she had to leave.
“Are you married?” she asked as he slapped a credit card on the bill.
“No, but I live with somebody. It’s not working out too great.”
“Sorry to hear that,” she said.
“How about dinner some night?” he suggested.
“I’m off on Tuesdays,” she said.
“I’ll call you,” he said.
She wrote her number on a cocktail napkin.
When he walked in the door of his apartment he asked Flo how her evening at the shop had gone.
“It was busy,” she said gleefully. “How was your evening?”
“Okay.”
“Did you have dinner with someone?”
“Yeah. Look, I’m following up on a lead that Will gave me, and had a drink with her tonight. Name’s Paula Silver. If she should call and you see her name on the phone, don’t answer, okay?”
Flo cocked her head at him. “Robert,” she said.
“What?”
“Who is she?”
“I’ll pour us a drink and tell you all about it.”