One of the two men would die within the hour; the one who should have known better.
They sat in a small office, identifiable as such only by the cheap desk in the middle of the room. There was no sign outside to indicate what purpose this anonymous space served. Bob Palmetto sat behind the desk. Unruly wisps of sparse blond hair fell down his forehead, but received no attention. An occasional toss of his head kept the errant strands out of his eyes. He was extremely thin, as if eating was a routine largely ignored. His closely-set eyes darted from the man sitting across from him to the tinted floor- to-ceiling glass wall, all that separated the room from the sidewalk and parking lot of a dingy strip mall. A frayed pea-green shag carpet sported coffee stains. In an old wooden chair across from the desk, lawyer Dexter Jessup sat in sport coat and tie; the tie loosened, a Windsor knot hanging at his throat.
“Why’d you set that damn meeting for tomorrow afternoon? I need you in court with me,” Palmetto said.
“An attorney from my office will meet you in front of the Federal Building,” Jessup said. “Her name is Ruth Kalin. Don’t worry, she knows what to do.”
“I’m supposed to produce more documents,” Palmetto told him. “Last time the judge said he’d throw me in jail if I didn’t turn them over. He had two Federal Marshals just standing…”
“I was there, Bob, remember?”
“Sorry.” Bob Palmetto looked down, studying the bony fingers splayed across his desktop as if seeing them for the first time. “I wish I’d never started fighting this thing. They’re too powerful.” He looked up. “And what you’re doing scares the hell out of me. What good is a dead lawyer to me?”
“I’m going to talk to the FBI Bob, not the Mafia. I have proof of a federal judge accepting bribes, stealing your intellectual property. The bastard belongs in jail, not on the bench. I’m going to see he gets what he deserves, and you can finish what you’ve started. You’re going to be a rich man.”
Palmetto waved away this last remark.
“My discovery is dangerous. If it gets in the wrong hands, the damage could be irreversible. I’ve got to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Dexter looked away from his client to the parking area outside. The afternoon sun hung low in the sky and reflected in the windshields of less than a dozen cars, one of them his, casting blinding flashes of light. It was so incongruous. In a two-room office in a failed strip mall, sat a man who had invented a process that could double the world’s available fossil fuel deposits by withdrawing methane gas from the frozen sub-sea surface. A leading energy company was stealing from him, and using a federal court to do it. There was no doubt. Photos of surreptitious meetings with the judge, documents stolen from court files; Dexter had found this and more. Tomorrow he would share his findings with the only people who could do something about it, the FBI.
“I’ve got to go,” Dexter said. He stood and extended a hand over the desk. “I might be late, but I’ll see you in court tomorrow.”
Palmetto clasped the lawyer’s hand, staring at it, speaking to it, not raising his eyes. “Be careful,” he said. “Be damned careful.”
The lawyer’s route from Palmetto’s office took him due east, towards downtown New Orleans. He knew the direction he was traveling because the sunset was in his rearview mirror. He adjusted it, rendering it useless for its intended purpose, but at least keeping the reflected sun from blinding him. Five minutes later, the sun had dropped and he readjusted his mirror. That’s when he spotted the car behind him, a black Jeep Cherokee. He knew that car and its driver. What did he want now? Dexter slowed down. There was no other traffic on this little used secondary road. The Jeep flashed its lights. It pulled up right on his tail and flashed again. He could see the driver waving one arm out the window, motioning him to pull over. He pulled over onto the shoulder and got out of his car, leaving the door open and the motor running. The driver of the Jeep also got out and moved toward him, a little too fast. There were less than ten feet separating them.
“What do you…”
Dexter saw the gun in the man’s hand. He turned and jumped towards his car’s open door but slipped on the loose gravel of the shoulder, falling painfully to one knee. His pursuer was on him in an instant. He felt the metal against the back of his head. He did not feel the bullet that blew out his brain.
The body was left next to the car with the motor running, the radio playing the nation’s number one pop single, Ice Ice Baby.
It was October, 1990.
For more than two decades, Dexter Jessup’s death would be all but forgotten. Not by Bob Palmetto.
ICE FIRE R. D. LYONS PROLOGUE
Published by Emily Bestler Books/Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster
