Джеймс Паттерсон - The Inn

“Because if I stay quiet, he might give me a chance,” Russ said. “All I can hope is that after a while he’ll see that I’m still loyal and give up trying to get at me.”

“Look at you.” I gestured to his mangled leg. “Cline did this. It’s your service to him that got you into this fix. You’ll never walk properly again. And you want back in with this guy?”

“Man.” Russ shook his head. “You’ve still got no idea who you’re dealing with.”

“So enlighten me,” I said.

“Cline’s not one of these everyday dealers who is happy to lawyer up and do a small amount of time when he gets backed into a corner,” Russ said. “He’ll kill to make sure he doesn’t ever do time.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s got more to lose than just his business,” Russ said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Russ just glared at me. He knew he’d said too much. I looked at his leg, fantasized about grabbing the apparatus supporting it and giving it a shake to get him to open up more. But I knew the guys at the door would turn me into a human pretzel at the slightest wrong move.

“Tell me how I can get to Cline,” I said. “I’ll solve your problem for you.”

“You won’t get near him.” Russ shook his head. “He’s cleared his house. He’s vulnerable until he gets a new crew. Cline will go to ground for a while, get some new soldiers, pop back up again. Maybe here. Maybe somewhere else.”

I felt the fury rising in my throat. “That’s bullshit. He doesn’t get to just come into my town, threaten and kill my friends, and then disappear.”

“He won’t disappear completely.” Russ smiled. “He’ll wait. In a few months, a year, maybe, he’ll come back into your life so silent and so fast you won’t know he’s there until he’s got his gun in your mouth. That’s what he does.”

A chill prickled through my body, making the hairs on my arms stand on end. I knew that the man before me had seen Cline do this, reappear in his victim’s life like a curse, never letting anyone escape him. If Cline hadn’t taken care of all his crew now, he would get to them in time. The most that Russell Hamdy could hope for was that the man would change his mind.

I realized my best chance to grab Cline was to do it now, before he disappeared and reemerged stronger than he had been before.

My phone rang in my pocket. We had spoken of the devil, and he’d heard himself being discussed.

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

I DIDN’T LET him speak this time. I went out of the room before I answered and took the call in the hospital hallway.

“It takes a special kind of asshole to cut down his own men at the first sign of weakness,” I said. Cline wasn’t ready for my attack. He paused, and then he laughed.

“My uncle,” he said. “He bred racing greyhounds. Have I told you this?”

I was taken aback by Cline’s friendly, reflective tone. He sounded refreshed and bright, like someone waking from a long, deep sleep. Killing had done this to him, made him cheerful. I grunted.

“I forget who I’ve told things to sometimes,” he said. “But my uncle, yeah, he had these greyhounds. I was always curious about them, being as I was a kid and an animal lover. I wanted to pet the dogs, but they were vicious, hysterical, easily spooked things. He made them that way. A good dog will run fast primarily because it wants to catch and kill the rabbit up ahead, but if you add a terror of what’s behind it, the motivation is double. These dogs spent their lives trapped between what they wanted and what they feared. You could see the whites of their eyes all the time.”

I thought about Cline’s guys standing outside his house, so ready to jump at anything that threatened their master. They were vicious purebreds trapped between fear of him and desire for the life he provided.

“Are you telling me this for a reason?” I snapped.

“My uncle chose the best of the breed. He mated only exceptional dogs. But sometimes things happen. A dog overstrains a tendon. It gets lazy. The inbreeding, it sometimes causes problems. When he had dogs that started underperforming, my uncle would take them and bash their heads in on a concrete block in front of all the other dogs. He had a wooden mallet especially for the job that he would carry around on a string attached to his belt. Usually it took only one blow.”

“So the Cline family is full of psychopaths,” I said. “I think that’s the least surprising thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“I had to cut my numbers down,” Cline said. “Replenish my stock. You demonstrated for me that I didn’t have performers in my collection—I had pretenders. You, Robinson. You forced me to reevaluate. This is all on you.”

“Is that what you tell yourself? Is that how you sleep at night?”

“You know I’m right,” Cline said. “You’ve got the guilt. I know you’re thinking of walking away now, Robinson. That’s why you haven’t handed that money back yet.”

“Of course I thought about taking the money,” I said. “It’s a lot of money.”

“There’s more where that came from.”

“Well, I hope you drop the rest of it at the police station in Gloucester,” I said. “Because that’s where I dropped mine this morning. I wonder what the state will do with it. I hope they put it into rehab clinics. You might have just contributed to the demise of your own business, Cline.”

“I don’t think so, chump. The Gloucester police department was exactly where you shouldn’t have taken that money.”

“Why, because all the cops there are on your payroll?” I asked. “That’s the very reason I chose to go there. I sat down and made them count it all out. Watched them enter it into the evidence logs under the cameras. The whole station came to take a look. They’ll know that’s your money, Cline. They’ll know your bribe didn’t work.”

An announcement calling for doctors to respond to a code on the eighth floor blasted over the PA system above me. I covered the phone mike with my hand, adrenaline dumped into my veins.

“Don’t panic,” Cline said. “I know exactly where Russ is. He can recover there with his bodyguards. I’ll get him when the time is right.”

I wondered if Cline was bluffing. It made me decide to try it myself.

“Let me tell you something that I know,” I said. “I know why you won’t do prison time.”

“Really?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Really.”

There was a pause while Cline assessed my words. I hoped my tone was convincing. I could hear nothing in the background on his end. He was somewhere quiet, collecting himself before he went into battle again. The seconds ticked by, and I bit my tongue, waiting for him to call or fold on what I’d said.

“They need me,” he said. “You might think you’re doing them a favor, but they need me.”

I smiled. Nick was walking down the hallway toward me. I hung up on Cline and grabbed his arm.

“Let’s go,” I said. “I think I’ve hit on something.”

CHAPTER NINETY-TWO

NICK WAS SILENT as we walked from the hospital to the car. He sat with his feet on the dash and his seat reclined as I drove close to Cline’s house, then stopped in the street beyond his. I could just make out a slice of Cline’s driveway beyond the neat hedges, but as I watched, the man appeared; I saw a flash of black trousers, shiny shoes, a pin-striped shirt as he headed for the Escalade parked out front. I’d spooked him.

“I knew it,” I said. “I knew it.”

Nick didn’t respond. I did a slow U-turn and waited for Cline to get out into traffic, then followed him at a distance.

“So what did she say?” I asked. “The shrink?”