透支 英文名著｜第5章

Basia and I took a step back against the wall.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Jason Simmons. I’d like you to come with me, please.”

Before I could say anything more, Basia threw her cup of coffee at the guy. It hit him midchest, coffee exploding across his T-shirt and the cup falling to the ground.

“Run,” she shouted at me.

I froze to the spot, trying to decide what shocked me more. Basia taking on a six-foot muscle guy with her paper coffee cup or the fact that he hadn’t even flinched when it hit him. He just stood there as impassive as a rock, coffee dripping off his forearms and onto his dark shoes.

“I need to talk to you,” he said calmly.

Basia wasn’t finished with her bluster. “Back off, buddy.” She shook her finger at him as if that would cause him to run away, screaming like a girl. “Look, we’ve had enough of weirdoes following us around. Beat it. We’re on a freaking vacation.”

The guy kept staring at me. “You will need to come with me, Miss Carmichael.”

He reached behind him and Basia screamed. Two doors down an old man stuck his head out into the hallway.

“Shut up already. I’m trying to watch my show.” He slammed the door shut.

The guy pulled out a wallet and flipped it open. “Calm down, please. I’m Jason Simmons, U.S. Secret Service. I just want to talk to you.”

I took the wallet and studied the badge. Basia peered over my shoulder. “Oh. My God. You’re a federal agent? I just assaulted a federal agent? How was I supposed to know? You aren’t dressed like a federal agent. Except for the sunglasses.”

I handed it back. “Look, Basia is right. We’ve had a bad day. We’ll only go somewhere public with you, okay? For all we know that badge could be a forgery.”

“Do you have reason to mistrust me, Miss Carmichael?”

“Well, for starters, you know my name and I’ve never seen you before.”

He pushed the sunglasses to the top of his head. He had nice brown eyes. “The badge is not a forgery.”

“Then how do you know my name?”

He put the badge in his back pocket. “I’ll tell you. But let’s go somewhere we can talk. It can be the lobby, if you’d like. Lots of people there.”

I studied him for a long moment. He had big biceps, strong legs and would likely catch me if I made a run for it. Mathematically, my odds for escape were in the negative. Besides, I couldn’t just leave Basia behind. “Okay.”

Basia snatched the keycard from my hand. “Wait. Just in case he’s legit, let me get some tissues and wipe that up. You do realize I only acted in self-defense, right?”

She dashed into the room and came back holding a wad of toilet paper. “Couldn’t find the tissues.” She dabbed at his shirt. “There, hopefully this will all come off, Mr. Simmons.”

He grabbed her wrist, stilling it. “It’s okay, Miss Kowalski. I’m fine. Let’s go.” He turned and walked to the stairway.

“He knows my name too,” Basia whispered.

We trailed behind him and when we got to the lobby, he led us to a table with a glass top and a few rattan chairs. The desk clerk didn’t pay us any attention, although the bellboy smiled at Basia before disappearing outside.

Agent Simmons pulled out a smartphone and punched some buttons on it. Then he flipped it sideways and slid it across the table to me.

“Do you know this man?”

I looked down at the screen. It was Broken-Finger Guy. Basia gasped beside me.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“How long have you known him?”

“About two days, maybe less.”

“You know who he is?”

“Not really.”

“Clarify, please.”

“I mean, I helped him fix his laptop and then smashed his fingers in it. Broke two of them. When I met him the next day at the beach, he said he needed to talk to me about something important, so I met him at the bar. We had this weird conversation and he left. Why is the Secret Service interested in him?”

“I’ll ask the questions, Miss Carmichael. Do you know his name?”

“No.”

“So, you met a man three times and you don’t even know his name?”

“Well, it wasn’t like I was dating him or anything.”

Basia snorted and he looked over at her. “Did you interact with him too, Miss Kowalski?”

“Just from a distance. I gave him my evil eye and would have smashed him with my water glass if he tried anything on Lexi.”

He looked puzzled, but took his phone back. “You mean in the course of those three meetings he never told you his name?”

I shook my head. “No. I know that seems strange, but somehow it just didn’t come up in conversation.”

“Conversation skills aren’t her strong suit,” Basia offered.

“Thanks, Dr. Phil,” I said.

Agent Simmons cleared his throat. “His name is Humphrey Nickelward. I’m going to need to know everything you talked about with him. Every detail you can remember.”

Basia leaned forward. “Seriously, his name is Humphrey Nickelward? I mean that’s so...geeky.”

“Basia.” I gave her my cease-and-desist look. She frowned and sat back, crossing her legs, tapping one of them against the floor in a nervous rhythm.

Agent Simmons adjusted something on his phone and I saw he’d pulled up a notepad app. He opened a blank sheet, his fingers primed and ready for typing.

“You work for the NSA, is that correct, Miss Carmichael?”

“I will neither confirm nor deny that.”

“My mistake. Let’s establish only then that you work for the U.S. federal government.”

“I think that’s a safe assumption.”

“Can you tell me how you met Dr. Nickelward?”

I gave him the rundown and he typed some notes, interrupting me only when I told him the guy refused an ambulance to have his fingers checked out.

“But you saw him with bandaged fingers the next day.”

“Yes. I have no idea if he actually went to the hospital or not. He said two of them were broken.”

“All right.”

I kept talking and he typed furiously, asking several more specific questions when I got to the part where we talked about his research. When I finished, Agent Simmons put down the phone.

“So, he left the bar without saying anything else?”

“No. Just that I held his life in my hands.”

“Why did he say that?”

“I have no clue. He completely wigged out.”

“Are you sure when you looked at his computer, you don’t remember the names of any of his files?”

“I wasn’t looking at his files. I just helped him restart the computer.”

“Do you know why his computer froze?”

“He was running Windows. Need I say more?”

“Actually, no. So, Miss Carmichael, at any time did Dr. Nickelward ask you to keep anything safe for him?”

“No.”

“Give you something as a present or a gift?”

“No.”

“He just left without arranging to meet you again or discussing his work any further?”

“Yes.”

Basia tapped her foot against the floor. “Except he forgot his purse.”

“Pouch.” I realized I still had it, my hands resting atop it on the table. “Oh, I forgot. This is his.” I pushed it at him.

Agent Simmons looked startled. “That’s not yours?”

“No. I don’t carry a purse...or a pouch for that matter. It’s his. Dr. Nickelward’s.”

He unzipped it and pulled out a stack of bills. Whistling, he shoved the bills back in and stood. “I’m afraid we’re all going to have to go to the police station now.”

“Whoa.” I held out my hands. “I didn’t steal that. He left it behind. You can ask the bartender. I was going to try and find him today to return it.”

“It’s the truth.” Basia stood. “Lexi didn’t take it.”

“Then why didn’t you give it to him before he left?”

“He just took off and then I passed out.”

“Passed out?”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot that part.”

Basia snorted. “The creep drugged her wine.”

Alarm crossed Agent Simmons’s face. “Drugged?”

“Well, I’m not sure he drugged me. But shortly after he left, I passed out.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“Well, I’m not certain he drugged my wine. I had a glass before that.” Great. Now he thought I was a drunkard. “Ah, maybe the wine was too strong. Regardless, he left before I passed out.” Jeez, now I sounded like a total wino.

Agent Simmons typed something. “Okay. I’m afraid the presence of this money means you’ll need to be further debriefed.”

“Debriefed about what?”

“I can’t say at this time. Please come with me. Both of you.”

“Hey, what about the beach? Vacation, remember?”

“I’m sorry.” Agent Simmons motioned toward the door. “I’m going to have to insist. This way, please.”

“No.” I stopped, planted my hands on my hips. “I’ve had a lot of bizarre things happen to me lately. The police can come to me if I need to be debriefed. I don’t know you from Adam and there is no way, badge or not, I’m willingly getting into a car with you, and that’s final.”

Ten minutes later the hotel lobby was filled with police, one of whom politely escorted Basia and me to a police cruiser. As we climbed into the back of one of the cars, I’m pretty sure the entire hotel came out to watch us.

Basia ran her fingers through her hair. “Good plan, Bond. Now everyone in the hotel watched us be taken away by the local authorities like we’re common criminals. My picture will be showing up all over Facebook and I didn’t even get a shower yet.”

“You know, if we were locked in the trunk of a psycho’s car, you’d be singing a different tune.”

She blew out a breath. “True.”

Closing my eyes, I leaned back against the seat. I was still wearing the clothes I’d slept in, hadn’t brushed my teeth in twenty-four hours, and my hair hadn’t seen a comb in about as long.

When we got to the police station, Basia and I were separated. Someone gave me a cup of coffee and escorted me into an interrogation room. A different guy, this one thin and in a tie, came into the room and showed me his badge.

“Agent Bradley Mandel, Secret Service.” He shook my hand across the table. “I appreciate that you are willing to come in to speak with us.”

“I told Agent Simmons everything I know.”

“Of course, you did. Thank you for your cooperation. Would you mind telling me the same story again?”

I sighed and once again recounted everything that had transpired. Agent Mandel didn’t interrupt me once, but checked his iPad several times, possibly referring to the notes I presumed Agent Simmons had sent him.

“Remind me again, when did Dr. Nickelward hand you the pouch?”

“He didn’t hand it to me. He left it at the bar. The bartender pointed it out and tossed it to me.”

“Why didn’t you tell the bartender to keep it?”

“I don’t know. It was no big deal. I didn’t know what was inside. Figured I could give it back to him the next time I saw him.”

“You planned on seeing him again?”

“No. Not really. As I told you, he went all psycho on me at the end. But I considered it plausible that I might run into him again.”

“And if you didn’t?”

“I would have given it to the hotel staff and had them track him down.”

“So, you knew he was staying at the Hilton?”

“Not for sure. Just a logical deduction seeing as how I met him twice in the bar there.”

“After you left, you looked inside the pouch?”

“Actually, Basia unzipped it. I looked over her shoulder.”

“Did you take anything from the pouch?”

“Not then. Later I dumped the pouch, but put everything back inside.”

“Why?”

“Curiosity, I suppose.”

A slight knock on the door caused us both to look over. Agent Simmons stepped in the room, shaking his head.

“Not it. Sorry.”

Agent Mandel frowned, looking over at me. “Miss Carmichael, at any time, at any of your meetings, did Mr. Nickelward give you anything, ask you to keep something or set up another meeting?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“One-hundred-percent certain.”

“Are you also certain you didn’t leave anything out that he might have told you about his research? Please think back. It’s important.”

“I told you, pretty much verbatim, everything we spoke about.”

Agent Mandel put both hands face down on the table. “Before you offered to help him with his computer, you had never seen Mr. Nickelward or met him before?”

“No.”

“He didn’t say where he was going when he left?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Okay. Thank you. We would ask that you don’t leave the area without informing us.”

“I’m only here until the end of the week.”

“That’s okay.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“No. But we might have more questions.”

“Now is it my turn to ask a question?”

“You can ask. I can’t promise I can answer.”

“Why is the Secret Service involved? What did Dr. Nickelward do?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Even though I’m somehow involved.”

“Especially because you are somehow involved.”

Frustrated, I pushed my chair back and rose from the table. “Are you keeping the pouch and the money?”

“Yes. I don’t want you to discuss this with anyone. If you see him or he contacts you, please call me immediately at this number.” He handed me a business card and I tucked it in my pocket.

He opened the door and I went out into the waiting area. Basia jumped up from a chair.

“See, I told you that Nickelward guy was a psycho. The Secret Service is after him. Did you find out what he did to get all that money? Did he steal it? Is he a bank robber or something?”

“I don’t know.” That wasn’t exactly a truthful statement as I had a pretty good idea what was going on, but I didn’t want to say it in the middle of the police station with everyone listening.

A policeman approached us and told us he’d be taking us back to the hotel. We followed him to the parking lot and we climbed in the back of the cruiser. He dropped us off and we walked into the lobby. The desk clerk gave us a startled look and then disappeared into the office behind him.

I steered Basia toward the stairway. “Uh-oh. I’ve got a bad feeling.”

“About what?”

“Miss Carmichael? Miss Kowalski?”

I turned around. A thin lady in a dark suit with a gold nametag that said Melissa Johnson, Manager, motioned to us. “Would you come with me, please?”

I sighed. “I had a feeling you’d say that.”