Down Solo Read Free

and sat back in my ancient faux-leather Staples office chair. The tilt function tricked me and I almost fell over backward, but caught myself by hooking my foot under my desk.
    The best looking woman I’d seen in years was laughing at me now, and I didn’t even know her name. I picked up a pen and legal pad and tried to look professional. She stopped laughing but then started again. Finally, she settled down.
    “My name is Tanya Peterson.”
    “Okay.” It seemed like she expected me to recognize her name. I didn’t, so I waited for the punch line.
    “My husband is Mickey Peterson.” Now there was a name I knew. Mickey Peterson was a stockbroker who hung out with movie stars and was a big backer of the mayor’s re-election campaign.
    “Who did you say referred you to me?” Whatever she wanted was going to be out of my league, and I wondered how she’d even gotten my name.
    “Alan Hunter suggested you might be able to help me out.” She took her boots off my desk and set the Halliburton on her lap. “He said you were discreet and very thorough.”
    I wrote “A. Hunter” on my pad and considered the possibility. I had done work for his firm, but had never met him and couldn’t imagine ever having been a blip on his radar.
    I waited. I could have charged her by the hour, but just watching her was its own payoff. She put a boot up on the desk again. Her hand hovered up by her face, as if to wave off an insect, but then jumped to the briefcase as if it had been stung. She had a weird, restless energy that fascinated me, but then I’ve always gravitated toward the crazy ones.
    She opened the case and turned it around. “As you can see,” she said, “there’s just a bunch of paperwork in here.” She grabbed a fistful and waved it in the air, “I need you to keep these safe for me.”
    “Safe from what?” Babysitting documents sounded like an easy way to make money, but I needed some background.
    She replaced the papers and closed the briefcase. Her hand flew up to the corner of her eye—did she have an itch?—but she restrained it. “There are people who would like to see these documents destroyed. Let’s just say the truth won’t set them free.”

4
    I must have spent too much time on memory lane, because now I’m hearing her on my cell, going “Charlie? Charlie? Charlie, are you there? For Christ’s sake, talk to me.”
    I say to her, “Yeah, sorry, how’s it going?”
    “‘Sorry, how’s it going?’ Are you fucking kidding me? Where the fuck have you been?”
    I didn’t realize we were such good friends that she could talk to me like this, but I just say, “Hey, something came up. How can I help you?” I’m pretty sure I’m missing some key information about this call, so playing dumb is the best fallback strategy I’ve got.
    “Charlie, you’re sounding really weird. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but we need a Plan B.”
    I don’t know what to say, since I don’t remember what plan A was. It clearly didn’t go well, I’m pretty sure of that.
    “Charlie, what happened to the briefcase? And what did you do to get Jason so crazy?”
    I don’t remember who Jason is, but the briefcase . . .the briefcase . . .

    ¤ ¤ ¤
     
    Tuesday night at ten-thirty. That was the setup. “At the Cheesecake Factory. Leave Jimmy out of this,” she said. “Bring the briefcase. Sit at the table in the far left corner. A guy will come sit with you; have a drink and wait for my call. When I call you and give the go-ahead, give him the briefcase. End of job. Three thousand bucks for a delivery.”
    And now I remember opening the briefcase earlier that day. The papers turned out to be a geologist’s report on a gold mine called Santa Clarita, somewhere near Ensenada. I don’t know much about the mining industry, but this report said something about “inferred mineralization” not being substantiated upon further drilling, and that “at current gold prices this project cannot