Deal Breaker (Myron Bolitar 1)

But so what?

“Kathy …”

His phone rang.

Christian shot up, his heart beating like a rabbit’s. Fast reflexes. Sometimes they played against you. It was only the phone. Probably Charles or Eddie telling him, hey, it’s party time! They’d both gotten drafted too. Charles had gone in the second round to Dallas. Eddie in the fifth to the Rams.

He picked up the phone. “Hello?”

No response.

“Hello?” he said again.

Nothing. But the phone had not been hung up. Someone was there, silently holding the receiver to their ear.

“Who is this?”

Nothing.

Christian hung up. He began to lie back down when the phone rang again. He picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

Silence again. Christian tried to listen more closely. Nothing. Or—or was that breathing? Panic seized him. He couldn’t say why. It was just a prankster calling on his unlisted phone. It might even be Charles or Eddie playing some kind of joke. Nothing to get upset about.

Except he was upset.

He cleared his throat. “What do you want?”

Still nothing.

“If you call back again, I’ll call the cops.”

He slammed the phone down. His hand shook. He was just about to try to settle back down when he remembered something.

Star. Six. Nine.

The phone company had sent something in the mail today. There had been advertisements on the TV—a pregnant woman trying to get to the ringing phone, trudging across the room toward the phone, but when she arrived the caller had already hung up. Then what? She picked up the phone and the voice-over—Cliff Robertson’s or someone like that—said something like “You just missed the call. Was it important? Was it someone you wanted to talk to? There is only one way to find out. Press the star and then six and nine.” They demonstrated it on the screen now, in case anyone wasn’t sure how to use a phone. Then the voice-over continued. “You’ll be connected to your previous caller, even if the number is busy. We’ll keep dialing for you, leaving your phone line free to make or receive other calls.”

The pregnant woman listened to a phone ring and then spoke to her relieved husband, who was working on some drafting board at work.

Christian picked up the phone. Then he hit the star, the six, and the nine.

The phone rang.

He rubbed his chin. A moment later a robotic operator came on. “The number is currently busy. We will ring you back when the line is free. Thank you.”

Christian replaced the receiver. He sat up and waited. The partying was still going on. He could hear three or four distinct partying areas. Someone shouted, “Yahooo!” A window crashed. People cheered. His larger teammates were playing keg toss, a sort of discus throw involving beer kegs.

The phone rang.

He snatched the receiver as if it were a loose ball on the turf. The phone was ringing back the number—just like the pregnant lady’s on the television. After the fourth ring the phone was picked up.

An answering machine.

A voice said, “Hi. We’re not in right now. Please leave a message at the beep, and we’ll be sure to call you back. Thanks.”

The phone slipped from Christian’s grip. A chilly hand caressed the back of his neck. A sound—some kind of choking noise—escaped his lips. Christian tried to form words but he couldn’t.

The answering machine. The voice.

It was Kathy.

Chapter 5

Myron staggered into his office, punch-drunk from lack of sleep. He had not even bothered climbing into bed the night before. He tried to read, but the words swam in front of his eyes in meaningless waves. He put on the television. Nick at Nite, the cultural equivalent of aerosol cheese. Back-to-back episodes of F Troop for three hours. Larry Storch’s portrayal of Agarn was, in a phrase, pure thespian genius. Who knew that hitting someone repeatedly with a big hat could be so funny?

But not even such highbrow entertainment could stop his mind from going back to one thought: Jess was back. And like Win had said, it was no coincidence.

At midnight his mother had come down in her robe.

“Hon, you all right?”

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“You seemed distracted all night.”

“It’s nothing. Just have a lot of work.”

She looked at him with her a-mother-is-psychic-and-knows look of disbelief. “Whatever you say.”

At the age of thirty-one Myron still lived at home. True, he had his own space, his own bedroom and bathroom in the basement. But there was no denying it. Myron still lived with Mommy and Daddy.

Five minutes after his mother had gone back to bed, Christian Steele called Myron on his private line, the one that rang softly in the basement so as not to wake up his parents, both of whom slept so lightly, Myron was sure they’d been some kind of ghetto lookouts in a previous life. He filled Myron in on the weird phone calls.

Myron was familiar with the star-six-nine, known as Return Call. The phone company charged on a “pay-per-use” basis—around seventy-five cents per use. The problem was, Return Call did not trace the number. It automatically redialed the number of the last incoming call received, not letting you know the number. Star-five-seven—Call Trace—would have done the job, though the number is merely reported to the local phone company, which gives it only to the proper authorities.

Still, Myron would call some of his old sources at the phone company, see what he could find out. He knew that star-six-nine worked only for certain local areas. That meant the call was not long distance. A start. Better than nothing. He would also put Caller ID or a trace on Christian’s phone. Taps were no longer like you saw on television, the hero anxiously trying to get the caller to stay on the line until it was completed. They were automatic. Caller ID actually showed you the incoming number before you picked up the phone.

But of course, none of that answered the larger questions:

Was it really Kathy’s voice Christian had heard? And if so, what did that mean?

Lots of preguntas. Not too many answers.

He approached Esperanza’s desk. “How’s it going?”

She pierced him with a glare, shook her head in disgust, and looked back down at her desk.

“Back on decaf?” he asked.

Another glare. Myron shrugged. “Any messages?”

A head shake. Esperanza muttered something. Myron thought he picked up the Spanish equivalent of “asswipe.”

“You want to tell me why you’re so upset?”

“Right,” she said bitingly. “Like you don’t know.”