CHAPTER TWELVE

The next morning, I was standing in the lobby of Fontaine Fisheries wearing a pinstripe suit and derby hat I had, let's say borrowed, from one of the unattended lockers in the security offices. I pulled down at the sides to make sure it was on right and checked the belt buckle and brim of the hat. Everything seemed in place. I was miserable without my flat cap. The get-up had me feeling like I'd slipped into somebody else's skin and all I wanted to do was itch all over. The secretary looked up at me from her desk.

"Morning, toots," I started, charming up my best smile, and hoping it didn't look too plastered on a mug like mine. "I'm here for the big 10-oh meeting with the man on the top floor."

"Good morning, sir. Let me just check the day's agenda." The lobby secretary looked like she was only a few chromosomes away from being one of the deckhands herself. Polite and all, but she had dark hairs running down her thick arms and over her knuckles. Cropped black hair. Fingers like sausages. Definitely an Ital. "You said 10? 10 o'clock?"

"I did," I said, confident of my meeting time.

"He ain't got no 10 o'clock, sir. Nothing on my agenda here, and this gets updated the end of every day direct from his personal secretary. I'm sorry, I don't think I can help you." She was a trained gatekeeper.

Fortunately, I knew something about getting around gatekeepers. "Listen, I didn't want to say anything, but here's the skinny. See, I'm not on the meeting schedule because I don't have a meeting with Mr. Fontaine. What I do have for Mr. Fontaine is information. I can't get into all the proclivities because of certain, uh, sensitivities. Suffice it to say, the heat is being turned up on Mr. Fontaine's organization. Heat that he can ill-afford at a time such as the present, you understand."

She looked at me like she was trying to decide whether to buy my claptrap or coldcock me, and it looked like she was leaning toward the fisticuffs. She leaned forward across the desktop, "And just how would you be knowing something like that, sir?" She said the last word like it tasted like metal in her mouth.

"Simple," I shrugged. "I'm on the security force. Check it out if you don't believe me. Name's Ace McPhearson. I usually work with a partner, but times being what they are, you understand. I'm hoping to, uh, parlay with the good Mr. Fontaine."

That sent her back. She'd certainly heard of Acey Deucy, like all the dockhands had. She picked up the phone, nearly crushing it in her beefy hands, rang out, and spoke softly in to the receiver. Then she motioned to the stairs.

I blew past the next secretary, who I noticed was a young girl with red hair. Must be Fontaine's type. The sick pervert. Replaced her already like a piece of furniture. I opened the door, and was standing on one side of what had to be the single largest desk under the sea. It looked like it was hundreds of years old, with intricately crafted designs and emblems carved delicately into the hard wood.

"Few years back one of my subs came across a shipwreak on one of their fishing runs. Spanish galleon. 16th century. Wouldn't ya know it'd already been picked dry as a freakin' bone? All except this here fancy table, 'course." Fontaine smiled at me, keeping the end of a cigar chomped firmly between his teeth. "Now, what can I do y'fer, Mr. McFeeny?"

I didn't bother correcting. "If you don't know already, I'm already wasting my time," and I turned to walk out.

"Nah, nah, stop that, will ya? C'mere. They called up and tole' me. That's just an expression, is all." He spread his arms with all the warmth of a favorite uncle.

I stopped and about-faced. "Look, I'm already way out on this. They even catch a word I'm even in the building, I'm the next one out an airlock."

"Funny thing, risk is," Fontaine said with a laugh. "Nobody can take it. Just so happens that some a' us get taken by it."

"I'm here, Mr. Fontaine, to make a trade. I will exchange information for you a secret surveillance detail that's dogging you 24/7. I will tell you the areas they are focusing on, the times they are keeping watch, what they are looking for, and all the best ways for you to slip right past all of it. I won't tell you the names of the officers involved, because the minute I do, I'm shark food and we both know it." Dana better appreciate this. After I had thrown Cat out last night, this was the only play I had left. I was sick of the lies.

"Ryan'll do anything to put me away. He's been coming at me like a dog in heat for months. Don't think you're the first officer to stand on that side of this desk," Fontain said, stroking his mustache. He took a puff on his cigar and lightly tapped the ash off the red ember. "But you make a fair offer. And just what, in precise exactness, is it, that I'm trading for this sunken treasure you're offering?" I could hear it. He was hooked. He wanted to know. Just like everyone wants to know, and I was going to tell him. I was going to make him see what he did to Dana. What happened to the poor innocents that his machine rolled over like clay dolls. He asked again, "Well, what do you want?"

"Justice," I said, at that moment pulling out the picture of Dana and slamming it hard on the table in front of him.