Page 59 of Not a Word

He shrugged. “Maybe someplace you keep your own personal items.”

“Lingerie drawer,” she said quickly, the first thing that occurred to her.

The corner of his mouth curled up. “If I were your husband, I might be in there on occasion, perhaps offering a consult on what you could wear on our next assignation.”

Catherine blinked. Now there was a word you didn’t hear every day. And the way he had delivered it, there was some kind of subtext there.

This hadn’t been the first time she felt there was something going on. Crane had been more attentive, more helpful than she might have expected when it came to getting a handgun. And she had been curious about how he had come to acquire it.

“Sometimes things have a way of falling into one’s hands. Passed under the table, so to speak. There are instances when it’s preferable to avoid a lot of paperwork, to eschew recordkeeping.”

This guy, he was better than a thesaurus.

The dodgy nature of how Crane had come into possession of this weapon—a Beretta, he called it—somehow excited Catherine. Someone breaking the rules for her made her feel special, like she was operating outside societal norms.

“You’ll need some extra practice,” he said. “This particular gun, it’s not as heavy as some, which makes it a good gun for a woman, and the trigger is a bit lighter, so it doesn’t have to be squeezed as hard. It’s had some modifications, like the safety has been pretty much disabled. So you don’t want to pick this up and aim it at anything unless you intend to use it. It reacts very quickly. You need to learn the feel of it.”

He put some emphasis on feel.

“We’ll try it at the range, and if you find it’s not quite right for you I’ll see if I can find something more to your liking.”

“I’m sure it will be perfect,” she said. “And let’s hope I never have occasion to use it. But I feel better just knowing it’s available.”

During their times together, she would ask him about what it was like to work for Graham Wiffel.

“Interesting. Being in his employ facilitates opportunities for travel to places I might not otherwise frequent. I think I’ve been to almost all fifty states and ten provinces.”

“So you’re not just some bodyguard for Mr. Wiffel, are you? You’re more than that.”

“Yes.”

“Are you what they call a fixer?”

“A fixer?”

“Someone who, you know, fixes problems. Puts out fires.”

Crane smiled. “I suppose I am. I fix things. Wiffel-Smith has many people who fix things. Lawyers, lobbyists, publicists.”

“But if it’s not a problem for one of them, that’s where you come in.”

“Yes. I do my best to make sure there are no waves on Mr. Wiffel’s pond.”

Pond, Catherine thought. She didn’t like any on hers either.

She prodded him for examples of problems that needed fixing. It wasn’t until they’d been to the firing range a few times before he felt more at ease talking about it.

“Some problems can be solved with a carrot. Others, a stick. Wherever possible, I prefer the carrot. For example, there was an FDA official whose approval we needed on a groundbreaking medication—not Oxy-Mirac, this was before then—and she was being particularly nitpicky. We praised her to the hilt, told her we valued her opinion so much, we would like her to work for us. Specifically in our Seattle research wing, where her family was from, and would she consider joining us at a salary twice what the federal government was paying her? She accepted our offer, and as one of her last acts at the FDA, she approved our drug.”

“A carrot.”

“A carrot.”

“What about the stick?”

“There was a doctor in Memphis. With certain inducements, he started prescribing Oxy-Mirac for his patients dealing with pain issues. But we learned that many of the scrips he was writing were for fictitious patients. He hoarded supply, then resold the medication on the black market at a considerable profit. Mind you, even bogus scrips make Wiffel-Smith money, but we suspected he was being watched by the police, and his antics would reflect badly on us. I paid him a visit.”

Catherine waited.