The Attitude Adjuster: Three Cavanaugh/Protector Stories Page 2

  “Take me back to the hotel!” Amanda shouted.

  “That’s the first place somebody would look.”

  “Then where the hell are we going?”

  “The Van Nuys airport.”

  “Why are we going there?”

  “I’m curious about something.”

  After LAX and Burbank, the next two important airports in the Los Angeles area were located in Van Nuys and Santa Monica. These were known as “reliever” airstrips because they channeled corporate, chartered, and private aircraft away from commercial traffic at the larger airports, helping to relieve congestion. Because Cavanaugh’s clients often had their own jets, he made a point of knowing the most efficient routes to various reliever airstrips near major cities and now used the Hollywood and Ventura Freeways to get to Van Nuys within twenty-five minutes. Its proximity to Blue Murder was the reason he chose it. He assumed that the same ease would attract his target. Taking care that he and the guard flanked Amanda, they hurried into one of the airport’s small terminals that catered to private aircraft.

  Behind a counter, a woman looked up.

  “We’re late,” Cavanaugh lied to her. “I hope they didn’t take off without us. We’re supposed to be on a Gulfstream.” He told her the tail number of a jet.

  “You’re not late at all,” the woman assured him. “It’s still outside.”

  Security in the non-commercial area of reliever airstrips tended to be minimal. The logic was that passengers of private planes trusted each other, so there was no need to scan for weapons or explosives. Cavanaugh thus had no trouble reaching a window, through which he noticed the sleek Gulfstream among other aircraft on the harshly lit tarmac. Its hatch was open. Its steps had been lowered. A pilot stood next to it, as if waiting for someone.

  “Good. We got here ahead of him.”

  “Ahead of . . . ? Who are you talking about?” Amanda insisted. “And how did you know the number on the jet?”

  “I was on it six months ago. I flew here on it.”

  “What?”

  “Be quiet so he doesn’t hear your voice.”

  Cavanaugh guided Amanda toward an out-of-the-way spot, from where he could discreetly watch the doors that led to the tarmac.

  Three minutes later, a harried man rushed into the compact terminal, carrying a metal suitcase. He was in his forties, tall, overweight, with thinning, brown hair. His face was flushed and sweaty.

  “Mr. Kramer.” Cavanaugh stepped forward.

  The man spun in shock.

  “Jonathan? My God, what are you doing here?” Amanda asked.

  “I had an emergency business meeting.”

  “Sure you did.” Cavanaugh turned toward Amanda. “He’s the one who shot at you tonight.”

  “What?”

  “I shot at Amanda? Don’t be absurd,” Kramer said.

  “It’s easy enough to prove. We’ll test your hands for gunpowder residue.”

  Despite the sweat on his face, Kramer’s gaze remained confident.

  “Okay, I understand,” Cavanaugh said. “You used latex gloves and threw them away.”

  He studied Kramer’s dress slacks and designer shirt. “I’m betting you wore coveralls and threw those away, too. No residue on your clothes. But there’d be residue on your face and hair because you needed to rest your cheek against the rifle to aim it.”

  “Jonathan, what’s he talking about?”

  Cavanaugh answered for him. “Poor sales for books that he really cares about. Kramer House is one of the last independent publishing firms, and if I’m right, it’s close to bankruptcy.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you—”

  Cavanaugh cut him off. “Whoever fired those shots tonight aimed too high to be serious. The first bullet hit way above us. The next two should have been lower, but they didn’t even hit the car, so either the shooter was too incompetent to adjust his aim, or else he didn’t want to. Under the circumstances, the second possibility makes more sense. You’re not trying to hurt anybody. You’re just trying to get enough publicity to boost sales for the new book. You paid me to come here so I’d be an expert witness to the shooting and make the threat credible to the media.”

  “This is the craziest—”

  “Then you won’t mind opening that suitcase,” Cavanaugh told him. “I’m betting it contains a disassembled rifle. That’s the one thing you couldn’t risk abandoning because it might have been traced back to you. You can carry a firearm aboard a private plane without going through a security check. So you figured why not take it back to New York and get rid of it there. Tomorrow morning, the plan was you’d be back in your office. No one would suspect you’d come to Los Angeles. But when I realized what was happening, I remembered that we used your Gulfstream to fly here for a meeting when I protected you six months ago.”

  “This is absolute nonsense.”

  “Then open the suitcase. Prove I’m wrong.”

  Kramer stared at him.

  The moment lengthened. As Cavanaugh reached for the suitcase, Kramer stepped back.

  “Amanda . . .” Kramer sighed. “An independent publisher can’t compete with the international conglomerates. I desperately need this new book of yours to be a mega-hit. It’s not as if you were ever in danger. No one got hurt.”

  “My dog, you creep. You snuck onto my property and shot my dog.”

  “I didn’t have a choice. I needed to make it look as if you were actually being threatened. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been convincing. Honestly, it had to be done.”

  “You bastard.”

  “For the good of the book, Amanda. Believe me, if this had worked out, with all the publicity about the threats against you, we could have made a fortune.”

  “Thank you, Jonathan.”

  “For what? Are you telling me that you see my point?”

  “Yes, not that you’ll profit from it. You’re going to prison, Jonathan. I won’t publish any more books with your company, and I intend to sue you for all your worth. But I do thank you for the idea.”

  Two weeks later, Amanda Ryder’s new globe-trotting thriller reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Cavanaugh happened to be watching the Today Show the morning she was interviewed.

  “Yes,” she said, “this book’s outselling all my others. I think it’s because my readers understand how much I’m devoted to them. When I was being shot at, when I risked my life again and again on my publicity tour, the fans knew I was doing it for them. The fans mean everything to me. Even at the risk of my life, nothing can stop me from getting to my fans and showing my appreciation.”

  Cavanaugh shut off the television.

  THE CONTROLLER

  “You don’t have a first name?”

  “I have one. I just don’t use it. The less people know about me, the better.”

  “Sure. The bodyguard with only one name. Cavanaugh. Like a trademark. Creates a mystique. Clever.”

  “Actually, Cavanaugh isn’t my real last name.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I try to be invisible, starting with my identity. What you called me just now—a bodyguard—that’s not what I am.”

  “But I was assured you could help me.”

  “A bodyguard’s what a mobster uses. His skills are limited to his size and his ability to inflict pain. I’m a protective agent.”

  “Okay. All right. Fine. A protective agent.”

  “If I take this assignment—”

  “If?”

  “I need to be assured of something. A man with your power and wealth. You didn’t get where you are by being passive. It’s your nature to take charge and assume control.”

  “I have three former wives who’ll testify to that.”

  “Well, I won’t risk my life for someone who’ll put us both in danger by not doing what I tell him,” Cavanaugh said. “The paradox of hiring a protective agent is that while you’re the employer, I’m the one who gives the orders. Can you acc
ept that? Can you follow my directions without question and allow yourself to be controlled?”

  * * *

  F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “The very rich are different from you and me.” To which, Hemingway famously replied, “Yes, they have more money.” In Cavanaugh’s experience, however, the true difference was that the extremely rich were able to shield themselves so thoroughly from the basic messes of life that after a while they forgot that messes existed. Problems with vehicles, plumbing, appliances, hot water heaters, furnaces, roofs, on and on, the sort of breakdown that a person of ordinary income might lose sleep over or feel was a sign of impending doom were unknown to the very rich. Fixing messes—that’s what servants were for. That’s what personal assistants were for. That’s what money was for. Fires, floods, earthquakes. Inconvenient, certainly, but while others took care of the mess, a Gulfstream V soared toward Rio or Monte Carlo or Dubai or one of many other resort locations. Of course, even the rich had dental problems, eye problems, bladder problems, but the best medical specialists in the world could correct those things if you threw enough money at them. Meanwhile, it was best to pretend that dental problems, eye problems, and bladder problems didn’t exist.

  But inevitably, even the rich encountered a problem so severe that it couldn’t be ignored or fixed by wealth—a mortal illness, for example—and it always came as a shock that they weren’t as entitled as they assumed. Something similar had happened to Martin Dant. At the age of 20, he’d inherited his father’s oil-refinery business. Because of not-in-my-backyard issues, it was almost impossible to expand that business and build new refineries, so Dant invested in the broadcasting industry. Photogenic, he appeared frequently on news programs he owned, and after expensive instruction by advisors to former presidents, he became—at the age of twenty-eight—a wunderkind public-affairs moderator to whom politicians learned to pay court. At the age of thirty-five, he almost entered the governor’s race in Georgia, but by then, his numerous romantic affairs had jeopardized his first marriage (to a television producer), and he decided that the freedom to have a private life was more appealing than the nuisance of hiding scandals. Besides, he could gain far more power by using his wealth to influence politicians than he could ever gain by being a politician himself.

  When Dant was forty-two, his second marriage (to a Washington political commentator) went the way of the first. By then, his empire included a motion-picture company, which resulted in his third marriage—to a Vogue model, who aspired to be a movie star. She shared his interest in environmental issues, particularly wetland preservation, and in the pursuit of that goal, Dant acquired huge tracts on the U.S. eastern seaboard and in South America. His marriage to the fashion model lasted even fewer years than did his previous marriages, however, and at that point, Dant decided that connubial bliss was probably not something he was destined to achieve. Acquiring possessions and power was far more rewarding and long lasting.

  Cavanaugh knew these details—and considerably more—because of a thick profile that his security company, Global Protective Services, had compiled. The extent of Dant’s financial tentacles was even greater than Cavanaugh expected, but the strength of the man’s ambition, determination, and sense of destiny didn’t surprise him at all. Cavanaugh had provided security for tycoons on numerous occasions, and they all exhibited the same confidence, bordering on ruthlessness, when it came to generating wealth and obtaining what they wanted. Some had a degree of charm comparable to Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby. Others made no effort to ingratiate themselves. If you didn’t like the crude, cruel, or imperious way they treated you, well, tough shit. There were plenty of others who’d be more than happy to take your place.

  Cavanaugh reserved his opinions about this. People who didn’t have money could be crude, cruel, or imperious, also. His business was saving lives, not making judgments. He protected the defenseless against predators, and sometimes even the very rich could be defenseless.

  That was the case with Martin Dant. No one amassed an empire without making enemies. Over the years—Dant was now sixty-four—his enemies had accumulated until it was impossible to keep track of them. One particular enemy had decided to seek revenge. A month earlier, a sniper fired at Dant as he stepped from his limousine and approached his private jet at Teterboro airport outside New York City. Dant heard the snap of the bullet passing his head and then its impact against the limousine. Two weeks afterward, as Dant and a female companion approached a boathouse at his Cape Cod estate, the building exploded, knocking them to the sand. Two days ago, a bullet shattered the window of a Grand Cayman office where Dant was negotiating to buy a struggling airline. Glass sprayed over him, cutting his face.

  * * *

  “We need to give his attacker credit for being persistent,” Cavanaugh said as the elevator closed.

  “And for frequency,” his companion noted as the elevator rose. Her name was Jamie Travers. She was his wife.

  “But whoever it is, isn’t very good at it.”

  “Unless the idea is to scare Dant for a long time before killing him,” Jamie observed.

  “If so, the tactic’s working,” Cavanaugh said. “Whoever’s doing this has definitely got Dant’s attention. He’s not twitching or sweating or pissing his pants, but I can see in his eyes how much strength he needs to appear calm.”

  “Right,” Jamie agreed. “For most of his life, he controlled everything around him, and now someone’s showing him what it feels like to be controlled.”

  They got off the private elevator and reached the entrance to the penthouse of Dant’s Fifth Avenue office building in Manhattan. In the marble lobby, a guard had phoned to announce that Cavanaugh and Jamie were on their way up. The elevator had a security camera. So did the vestibule to the penthouse.

  Two solid-looking men emerged from alcoves on either side of the elevator doors. They wore loosely fitted suits that Cavanaugh had no doubt concealed firearms. Their shoes were sturdy, presumably with steel caps. Their belt buckles had a design that Cavanaugh recognized, hiding knives.

  “I.D.,” the man on the right said, curtly adding, “please.”

  While the man on the left stood a careful distance back, Cavanaugh and Jamie complied.

  “Are you armed?” the man on the right asked.

  “Of course,” Jamie answered. “But you already knew that. The elevator has a scanner, doesn’t it?”

  The sentries looked uncertainly at one another.

  “You’ll have to surrender it,” the man on the right said.

  “I don’t think so,” Jamie told him.

  “No one gets in there with a weapon.”

  “I guess word didn’t reach you. We’re on the security team.”

  “Mr. Novak says there’s been a change of plan.”

  “Mr. Novak?” Cavanaugh frowned. “Who’s he? We’re here to see Mr. Dant.”

  “Let them in,” a voice announced from a speaker next to the camera above the door.

  “Yes, Mr. Novak.”

  The sentry on the left pressed buttons on a keypad. Electronically released, a lock on the door made a metallic sound. Cavanaugh opened the door, revealing a spacious room with a magnificent view of the city.

  A tall, well-dressed man was silhouetted against the bright skyline. Cavanaugh took for granted that the wall-to-wall windows were bullet resistant and that the man had chosen his position for dramatic effect. Crossing the room, he noted metal-and-glass furniture whose rigid lines matched those in several modernistic paintings. A rough guess put the value of the room’s artwork at ten million dollars.

  The man at the window made his own assessment, shifting his attention between Jamie and Cavanaugh, although it was Jamie he mostly looked at: an attractive, athletic-looking woman wearing slacks, a blazer, and a white blouse. He lingered over her auburn hair and green eyes.

  “I’m Ben Novak, Mr. Dant’s security chief.” In his forties, Novak had a thin, stern face and short, military-style hair. “I watched a monito
r when you met with Mr. Dant yesterday, so I know who you are,” he told Cavanaugh. “But I don’t know who your associate is.”

  “Jamie Travers.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” Novak offered his hand.

  When they shook, Novak held Jamie’s hand a moment longer than necessary. “You have calluses on your thumb and your index finger.”

  “That’s awfully personal.”

  “There’s only one way to get calluses like that,” Novak said.

  “Definitely personal.”

  “How many rounds do you shoot a day?”

  “Two hundred,” Jamie replied.

  Novak referred to the calluses that a habitual shooter developed from repeatedly thumbing ammunition into a magazine and pulling a trigger.

  He raised his eyebrows, reluctantly impressed.

  “Good. Now that we’ve gotten to know one another, here’s our threat assessment.” Cavanaugh put a thick folder on a glass desk. “We have an appointment to discuss it with Mr. Dant.”

  “Yes, well, there’s been a development,” Novak said. “Mr. Dant decided you won’t be needed.”

  “Oh?”

  “He asked me to give you this check for your trouble.” Novak indicated an envelope on the desk. “I think you’ll find the amount satisfactory.”

  “It’s hardly satisfactory if he gets himself killed.” Cavanaugh turned quickly, addressing a security camera in the upper left corner. “Mr. Dant, you’re making a mistake.”

  “I’ll escort you to the—”

  “Mr. Dant,” Cavanaugh said louder toward the camera. “When we spoke, I told you a man doesn’t acquire your power and wealth by being passive. I guess I was partly wrong. I didn’t realize your management technique was passive aggressive. Is this how you do business? You don’t have the balls to deal face-to-face with an awkward situation, so you arrange for an employee to take care of it?”