Suicide Season Read Free

you’ll have a court case.”
    “Let’s leave that part of it to my lawyers, Kirk. You find the evidence of Aegis poking around in my business and who the hell let them poke around. I’ll take care of the litigation end.”
    “Don’t forget the telephone call, Owen.”
    “Yeah. Right. This morning I got a call—my assistant got a call—saying that one of my division directors, Austin Haas, had been approached by an Aegis representative about six months ago.”
    “And?”
    “And nothing. That’s all. Christ, what else do I need?”
    “No time of meeting or evidence? Nothing more than an anonymous call about Haas?”
    “That’s why I’m hiring you—to find out if there’s anything to it. But do it in a way that doesn’t rock the boat. Loyalty’s a two-way street; my people know I expect it and they know I give it. But this … Damn it—if there’s nothing there, I don’t want Haas to get his feathers ruffled. He’s a good man and I don’t want to ruin his reputation or lose him to somebody else because of an anonymous tip. And I don’t want the rest of my people to find out that I’m … spying on one of them, goddamn it. But if Haas is on the Aegis payroll, I’ll by God kill him!” McAllister leaned back against his chair and the corners of his mouth clenched into something close to a smile. “Or at least figure a way to make him wish he was dead.”
    “How many people besides Haas had access to the completed proposals?”
    “Uh huh. Good. You’re right: only a handful. Each section worked on its part and then a few of us pulled the whole thing together and ran a final check of the figures before drawing up the proposal’s narrative. Haas was one of that few.”
    “I’d like a list.”
    “You only investigate Haas. I told you I don’t want my people upset.”
    “Suppose he’s not the one? Suppose someone else on that list wants you to think he is?”
    “I’m not that stupid, Kirk—somebody could be setting Haas up. But I’ll worry about that when and if you clear him. If I wanted my whole damned staff screened, I’d use my own security people. But I want this kept quiet and narrowly focused. I don’t want Haas’s reputation shot down for no reason, and I don’t want my people to think I’m running a general inquisition. That’s why I’m bringing in an outsider. The only person who’ll know what you’re really after is me. Nobody else is to know what you’re doing. Any questions about that?”
    “No, sir.”
    So Kirk and Associates had the big break. Beside me, Professor Loomis gave a muffled grunt of satisfaction, and, at the edge of hearing and beneath a gust of rain on the glass, the flames fluttered in a soft, furry chuckle.

CHAPTER 2
    W E SPENT ANOTHER hour on the details, and McAllister handed me a thick folder holding Haas’s life as viewed by McAllister Enterprises. The usual material was there—dates and places, assignments and achievements. The man himself, of course, would escape his paper profile. But that undefined part was the most interesting. In a lot of ways, the work was like trying to define a thing by saying what it wasn’t—you could come close; sometimes you could even draw a circle around it. But the thing itself waited secretly until finally you found the right word or only the right metaphor, perhaps, to state what it was. And sometimes that never came.
    But Bunch and I tried, buoyed by the fact that a healthy portion of our fee had come up front. We fondled the money briefly as it went through our fingers to pay off debts that loomed larger and larger as Kirk and Associates nickel-and-dimed its way toward a bankrupt’s early grave. Taking Uncle Wyn’s investment with it as well as the monument I secretly wanted to build—the thing I could point to in my mind and say, “See, Dad? I didn’t let you down.”
    It was the kind of work where you could spend a lot of time looking out the window, and that tended to make the chief backer nervous.