Long Way Down Read Online Free Page B

stateroom, he stripped off the wet clothes and changed into dry khakis and a sweat shirt. Still shivering from the sudden drop in temperature, he poured a shot of brandy and carried it into the lounge.
    He picked up the phone and punched in a number he had not called in a long time, but knew from memory. He took a sip of the brandy while the phone rang. The vapors felt good in the back of his throat.
    “Massage parlor,” the voice on the other end said. Sam heard rock music in the background. The music faded away to nothing.
    “J.T.,” Sam said. His full name was John Templeton Smith III, and Sam had known him since his days in the military with Naval Intelligence. Now he spent his time as a computer criminal, taking money from the rich. Sam often wondered how well J.T. might have done in honest computer work, and concluded that he would have done poorly, because larceny fueled his genius.
    “Sammy! I just thought about you.”
    “What’s that massage parlor business all about?
    “Oh, nothing, I didn’t recognize your ID. I see you finally broke down and got a cell phone.”
    “Yep, sure did.” Sam had registered the phone to a fictitious person, as J.T. surely did with his own phone.
    “Well, how you doing, buddy?”
    “Not bad. You?”
    “Hey, you know me, man. I’m doing great.” J.T. hesitated for a couple of seconds and Sam heard computer keys clicking. “If I could keep the bad guys off my ass I’d be even better. Anyway, what’s going on?”
    People who lost large sums of money had been after J.T. for as long as Sam could remember, but J.T. always seemed to stay a step or two ahead of them.
    “I wondered if you would check out some things for me.”
    “Sure, what do you need?”
    “You know anything about Philip Moran? I think he went by the name ‘Philly.’ Somebody killed him, maybe a couple of months ago.”
    “Oh, yeah. I remember him. I figured he did something pretty bad to end up like he did.”
    “The rumor mill said he stole a lot of money, and someone killed him for it.”
    “Hmmm. How much?”
    “I don’t know. A lot.”
    J.T. clicked the computer keys again.
    “Any chance some of that money’s still laying around?”
    J.T. could smell money almost as well as Jack Craft, and he usually tried to cut himself a slice of the pie. Sam didn’t really care. He just wanted to find out about the girl and the guys trailing him. If J.T. found some cash in the process, more power to him. Besides, he had saved Sam’s life a year or so before, and used a computer better than anyone Sam had ever seen. He always came up with answers no one else had.
    “I heard they never got the money back,” Sam said, “which is kind of strange. Why would you kill somebody before you recovered the money?”
    “Yeah, bizarre.”
    Sam could almost hear the gears turning in J.T.’s head.
    “His daughter also might be involved in it, so see what you can find on her, too. Her name is Candi. Probably Candace.”
    Sam also asked him to see what he could find out about La Salle. That might be overkill, but it couldn’t hurt to get the information. This La Salle sounded like someone he needed to know about, even if he never saw Candi Moran again.
    “Yeah, okay, I’ll see what I can do. Anything else?”
    “That should take care of it...no, wait, you remember a guy named Grimes?”
    “Yeah, I think so. Crazy dude and real skinny.”
    “That’s him. He’s here tailing me. He looks a little different, but I’m pretty sure it’s him.”
    J.T. said he would call Sam as soon as he had something, and hung up. Sam set the phone on the table, looked at the empty brandy glass, and got up for a refill.
    The rain quit almost as quickly as it had started. Sam walked on deck and leaned on the rail, looking toward the parking area. The gray Dodge sat there, empty, but he knew they lurked close by with their eyes on his boat. He had been trying to figure how they had gotten on to him, and decided that they probably