Deadly Pedigree - By Jimmy Fox Page 0,88

Nick with the pistol. Her trembling hands fumbled with the box, revealing to Nick the depth of her crisis. But her finger never left the trigger.

That pill, she needs that pill!

“The legal system’s not what I had in mind,” Nick said. “Allow me.” He stepped forward and took the pillbox from her unresisting hands.

“If you live long enough to do what I propose, you’ll have earned my silence.” He slipped the box in a pocket of his corduroys. “I’ll accept that judgment.”

“How do you know I don’t have more medicine here?”

“You would be reaching for it now. Here’s my deal. Make a settlement with the heirs of Ivanhoe Balzar–immediately. Fifty million dollars. Next, establish a foundation at Freret University for the study of the Holocaust. Another fifty million. Donate the documents in the display cases out there to the foundation–call it the Maximilian Corban Foundation. Finally, leave the past alone–never again damage the historical record. That’s it. I drive a hard bargain, remember?”

“You have thought of everything, Nick. I cannot kill you…” Her words trailed off into rapid breaths.

“And you’re having a heart attack,” he said, finishing the analysis of the royal flush he’d laid down.

He wondered if she’d heard him.

At last, she met his gaze. Nick saw in her eyes the helpless power of a dying lioness. Her voice was faint, barely audible.

“You would stop this…broadcasting, this revelation? I have your word?”

“The word of a third-rate hack and a plagiarist? Yes. Zola will never know the truth from me, and I’ll do nothing to make it more likely that she’ll ever find out.”

She put the gun on the desk and dragged her hand from it.

He had beaten her–for Corban, for Ivanhoe, for Ronald, for Shelvin, for everyone whose past she had sought to erase.

She listed to one side like a sinking ship. “I have always thought that fear of financial ruin was exaggerated. One is never truly bankrupt while dignity remains. Death is a broken bench, too, the ultimate bankruptcy. You will allow me to retain my dignity, Nick?”

It’s more than you did for anybody else.

He watched a moment more. Then he turned and unhurriedly walked toward the doorway, half-expecting to feel a bullet. But if this worked, it would have to work his way.

After all, he was entitled to some dignity, too–dignified revenge.

The blond goon now sat in the driver’s seat of the car, reading the sports section. The door was open. He wasn’t all that interested in Nick’s exit from the chateau.

A human being with the silicon soul of a computer-game demon, Nick thought: he kills only on command. Armiger had not yet instructed him to get rid of the pesky genealogist–and never would, now.

Nick walked past the front of the car. As if a thought had suddenly occurred to him, he took a few steps back.

“Hey, you know CPR?” Nick asked, casually.

“Huh? Yeah. Why?” His head snapped toward the chateau; then he hoisted himself to his feet and ran growling with pain into the building.

Nick removed the pillbox from his pocket and drew his arm back to throw it into the meandering pond of a restful Japanese garden extending back from the parking area. The engraving on the pillbox caught his eye. “Genesis 27,” he could barely make out on the cover. The tiny scene depicted Jacob kneeling at his father Isaac’s bed, receiving the blessing meant for his brother, Esau.

He let it fly. There was no way to be sure, but he wanted to believe that the box, too, had belonged to Jacob Balazar.

.

28

“The rumor is he can’t buy a new Mercedes-Benz this year,” Una said.

“Tragic, tragic,” lamented Dion, from deep in his glass of Young’s Old Nick Ale.

The bizarre label on the bottle of English brick-red brew pictured the devil in Edwardian evening clothes.

They had all ordered one to toast the flesh-and-blood Nick on his recent triumphs. The Folio featured hundreds of such odd beers from around the world; for years, Nick and Dion had been trying to drink their way through the list.

“Here’s to Nick,” Hawty said. “Our lucky devil.”

“Lucky to have such pals,” Nick added, choked up as they drank.

Natalie Armiger had not outlasted the wail of the ambulance siren that ushered her to the emergency room. Soon, official inquiries uncovered startling facts about Artemis Holdings. Armiger had been a loose cannon not only in her private life, but also in business affairs. The catalog of her securities transgressions and other crimes over the course of several decades ran to more than