Pernell covered the mouthpiece. “What do you want to ask him?”
“Ask if he’s heard anything recently about his old friend, who brought the woman and the cigarettes the last time they talked.”
Pernell repeated my message.
Mac had apparently forgotten. It took him a minute to catch the wave. “Oh, yeah, that useless bastard. I haven’t seen him for a while, but if you run into him, let him know that the bill collectors have backed off. They were pretty damn upset at first, but it looks like someone paid his bills for him. Don’t ask me why. All I know is that, for now, everything looks OK.”
Pernell answered. “All right, Malden. I’ll let him know if I see him.”
Why would the NSA have backed off? If the Feds were giving me some slack, they were probably just waiting until I wove enough rope to hang myself with. Having the NSA watching and waiting would be like having a bum ticker. Everything would be fine until the minute I dropped dead. But at least it gave me some breathing room.
Pernell pocketed his vid-phone. “Is that what you wanted to here?”
I took a drag of my smoke. “Yes and No. But I appreciate your help.”
He hunched over his notepad. “I’d send my grandmother up the river for a hot story.”
I gave him all the details: the struggle on the roof, the Black Avatar, Dag Horton’s name. For good measure, I even described my little trip to the NSA Office, and meeting the delightful Jackson Cross.
“I knew it!” Pernell was lit up like the resident floozy at an office Christmas party. “I was sure the NSA had their dirty paws all over this thing. With my connections, I’ll have this story on the front page in week.”
Under normal circumstances, I’d have been nervous about Purnell publishing the story. The NSA could easily put two and two together and come up with who the “anonymous source” of all the information was. But, for better or worse, I’d already offended the agency. Stepping on the metaphorical toes one more time shouldn’t make much difference.
I was about to get up when I remembered another detail Pernell could help me with. He was bent over his notebook, scribbling. I waited for him to finish. “You got a few more minutes to burn?”
“It will make me thirsty.”
I caught the barmaids eye and motioned for another bourbon. “You remember Sandra Collins?”
Pernell nodded impatiently. “Yeah. Berkeley.”
“Look… I won’t bother you with the details, but she figures into this whole mess. Do you know what she was doing at the University before she was murdered?”
A flicker of interest crossed Pernell’s face. He played with his empty glass, thoughtfully. “It’s been a while… she was hired to work as an assistant on some research project.”
He paused and looked up at the barmaid who’d arrived with his bourbon. He took a sip as I paid for the drink. The waitress walked away, and Purnell spoke softly, the glass halfway to his lips. “She was working with a guy named… it began with an M… Mann, Mathers, Matlin…”
He paused and took a drink.
“Malloy?”
Pernell shook his head with a mouthful of bourbon. I tried to think back. Fitzpatrick had said that Malloy was using an alias. What was it? Pernell looked apologetic. “It’s been a long time.”
I remembered. “Matthews? Tyson Matthews?”
Pernell snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “That’s it! Matthews. Anyway, Sandra Collins turned out to be at the top of her class in optical science. Holographic projectors, virtual-reality simulators, that sort of thing. That’s apparently how she got onto the project. It was just her and Matthews working together.”
“Did you ever talk to this Matthews guy?”
“No. He disappeared from the University a little but before the murder. I didn’t really try to track him down.”
Did any of the authorities find out if he was involved? Or if what Sandra was working on figured into the murder motive?”
Pernell finished off his drink. “Not that I know. For all the police knew, it was the Black Arrow Killer, open and shut. Apparently, the Feds treated it the same way.”
“Do you think that there’s anyone at the University who would know what Sandra and Matthew’s were working on?”
“No. I asked around. It was an airtight project, sanctioned by someone way up on the food chain.”
Pernell flashed a sneaky grin. “You got something interesting you want to tell me?”
I got up from the table. “Not today. Maybe sometime when I’m really broke and really thirsty.”
Chapter Nineteen
“You smoke too much.”
I looked up from my matchbook, a Lucky dangling from my lips. “Yeah, so?”
Regan smiled serenely as I looked up. “I have a theory about people who smoke too much.”
I exhaled a tremendous amount of smoke. “Please, enlighten me.”
“|Smokers are lonely. Cigarettes are their one good friend. No matter what, they can always reach into their pocket and find their little friend, Mr Smoke.”
“I’m not a lonely guy.”
Regan leaned forward, chin resting in her hand. “Sure you are.”
I inspected my tie and flicked off a lint ball “I’ve just found myself to be the only consistently reasonable person I know.”
Regan sat back as a waitress arrived. “The two of you must be very happy.”
A glass of wine for Reagan and a cup of black coffee for me. I’d already had a bourbon with Pernell. Catching a buzz around lunchtime wasn’t on my list of things to do. I looked around. The Imperial Lounge was busier than it had been yesterday. It made me a little nervous, but crowded rooms always did. I looked back at Regan as she finished leaving a soft, red impression of her lower lip on the outer rim of the wine glass.
“You certainly didn’t pull any punches yesterday.”
Her tone was as cool as a mint julep. I stared into the ashtray as the butt of my cigarette gave up the ghost.
“Was I too hard on you?” I looked up and met Regan’s eyes. She was smiling in a way that made me curious.
“Don’t flatter yourself, shamus. I’ll let you know when you’re too hard.” She certainly had a way with a phrase. “There you go again, twisting my words. How do you expect us to get anything accomplished with you talking like that?”
Regan tossed me a mocking pout like it was a bone. “I’ll be good if you insist. But you’re brushing off an extremely sincere effort. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“I am.” I reached down for my backpack and pulled out the notebooks I’d taken from Malloy’s room. Setting them on the table, I took a sip of coffee. It tasted like dishwater. Louie could teach these people a thing or two about brewing a part of Joe. Regan leaned over the table to get a look at the notebooks.
“What’re those?”
“Notebooks.”
Regan looked up sarcastically. “Really? How do they work?”
“They’re full of paper. People write in them. These particular notebooks belonged to your father.”
The caustic look evaporated. “My father? Where’d you get them?”
“That’s not important. What is important is finding out what’s written in them. Your father used some kind of shorthand. I can’t make out a thing. I was hoping you could.”
Regan pulled one of them across the table and opened it. She flicked through the pages quickly, pausing only to moisten her fingers. After some time, she looked up and took a sip of wine. She seemed to enjoy making me wait.
“What do you think?”
She set down her glass and looked back at the notebook. “He never liked to write on the computer. Most everything he wrote was in notebooks like this.”
“Can you read it?”
She flipped pages idly. “Some. It’ll take awhile to get through it all.”