Chapter 3

James scanned the lists of hotels and restaurants he had compiled, comparing various travel times to the nearest airport. There were fifteen names on the list: six in San Francisco, two in Oakland, one in Berkeley, two in San Jose, one in Cupertino, one in Mountain View, one in Walnut Creek and one in San Ramon. During the past three weeks he had attended a dinner and a reception in San Francisco, a dinner at the Sofitel in Redwood City, which was only ten miles from the San Francisco International airport, and one luncheon in San Jose at the Radisson Marriott, which was only a mile away from the airport and had a free shuttle service available until eleven at night. The Doubletree Hotel San Jose was only a half mile from San Jose International Airport, which was easy walking distance. Before and after his meetings, he had driven to the nearest airport and back, recording the time it took him to make the trip compared with the time of day. One San Francisco trip had taken thirty-five minutes at peak commute time, but the rest had taken less. Although there were other places James had gone to for various meeting, dinners, seminars, receptions and the like, the ones he had listed would be more than enough to serve his purpose.

Over the next two weeks he had nothing scheduled in the evenings, so he decided to go to the Marriott’s in Walnut Creek and San Ramon—the most commonly used meeting places in those ‘remote’ East Bay cities—and clock the trips to the Oakland airport. He would only make the trip at commute hour, knowing that the “return” trip later in the evening would take a lot less time. From those five trips, he would just guestimate all of the other travel times. They would be close enough for his purposes.

James clicked the mouse, switching files so he could go over the flight schedules of the various airlines, although he already knew them pretty well. Southwest was definitely his best bet from Oakland airport, although he could always fall back on the Shuttle by United. Southwest was pretty much the airline of choice from the San Jose airport, but San Francisco, being the largest airport of the three by far, presented a much wider variety.

Although he wasn’t close to completing his research, it seemed that making the trip to and from L.A. from virtually anywhere in the Bay Area would be the least of his problems. He hadn’t even begun to tackle the hard ones.

To begin with, there was airport security. Because of all the bizarre acts of terrorism and random violence in the past few years, one of the stringent security measures at all airports was that the airlines demanded to see picture I.D. of all passengers who boarded the planes. Maybe he could obtain false I.D. from somewhere; the airlines would not check too closely on such a local flight, would they? James decided not to bother with that detail until later.

After that would come the problem of getting the weapon to L.A. As a knife would be just as difficult to transport as a gun, and a lot more messy to try to kill someone with, the weapon may as well be a gun. Which brought up the problem of getting one.

Oh, it was easy enough for a respectable businessman to walk into any gun store and buy one, of course. And it was a perfectly logical desire for someone who worked in Oakland, often late, to want to protect himself. But what if the cops investigated and found out he had recently bought one? Most murderers got rid of the weapon after the crime, didn’t they? So he would not only have to explain why he had bought one, and why it was missing, but perhaps also why there was a perfect ballistics match if it were ever found. So it would have to be something purchased off the streets.

But how the hell would a clean-cut executive living in a place like Placida buy a hot gun? James could just picture someone like himself walking up to the first rough looking guy he saw on the streets of Oakland and saying, “Hey, buddy, know where I can pick up a Saturday Night Special, cheap?” Uh, no. It was something he would have to investigate, of course, but not now. Maybe when everything else was in place.

One thing was certain. He could not just pick up a gun in L.A. the day of the murder. He was certain it would take some time and connections, so it would have to be in place once he landed on the actual night of the deed. James started to take a large drink of wine as he contemplated the problem.

“You look more thoughtful that usual tonight. Deep, dark secrets?”

James choked on his wine and started coughing loudly, spraying the liquid all around the computer table and the floor. He automatically clicked the exit command.

“Sorry, dear,” he stammered, still choking. “I was lost in thought, and didn’t hear you come in.”

“Well, if you didn’t have secret girlfriends to think about, you wouldn’t have to worry about when I might walk in on you,” Donna purred, with only a touch of malice in her voice.

“Very funny,” James said, wiping tears away from his eyes, his throat still burning. “You know I don’t have the time—or the desire, of course—to keep a girlfriend on the side.”

“So what was it, then?”

“What was what?”

“What you were thinking about so deeply when I came in. And why did you close that window so quickly? It didn’t look like a chat line to any cybersex site.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. It was nothing. Nothing important.”

“Well, if it wasn’t important, then why don’t you tell me?”

“Alright. I was searching for the answer to world peace. Satisfied?”

“So you are thinking about getting a girlfriend.”

“No, ‘peace’ as in no more war. Truce?”

“Why, are we at war?”

“Not right now. But we will be soon if you don’t quit pushing this.”

“So you’re not going to tell me.”

“Not right now,” he repeated, containing his irritation. “I’m not ready yet. But I think it’s going to impact you—no, I know it’s going to impact you. So I will tell you ... when I’m ready.”

“And when will that be?”

“When I’m ready. Soon.”

“You’re probably all wondering why I called this meeting,” Tom Johnson said as if delivering the punchline to an original joke. Some of the staff laughed politely, but no one in the company thought he was going to threaten Jay Leno’s job.

Johnson had called a meeting of the entire staff, nearly fifty people, near the end of the day. It was unusual enough to create some excitement in the air, as Johnson was notorious for making every precious moment in the day count when it came to research and development and production.

As usual, these meetings were held in the building lobby, as the company’s only formal conference room held twenty-five at the most, assuming fifteen of them were standing. He stood in front of the receptionist’s counter, on which cloths had been draped over mounds of something. Normally this melodramatic performance would mean the introduction of a new line of drugs, but the mounds seemed way too large for that, and there were distinct smells of delicious foods hiding under the cloths. Everyone sensed something of major importance in the air. Those who couldn’t fit into the lobby peeked above cubicles, stood in doorways, and fit into every other nook and cranny available to try to get a view of the proceedings.

“As you all know, Advanced Pharmaceuticals has been trying to crack some of the major markets for about seven years now. Our failure has not been because our products and our production aren’t good, or even for lack of effort,” Tom said earnestly, looking out over the mostly young, eager faces in front of him. “We have some excellent young minds in R&D, we’ve produced some excellent products, and you folks in production do a fantastic job of making sure they’re top quality and that availability has always kept pace with demand.”

Johnson paused, again scanning the faces of his staff, many of whom were working at relatively low wages, and all of whom worked long, hard hours. It was clear that he was trying to maintain a cool, professional attitude, but that his exuberance was about to get the best of him.