Джеймс Паттерсон - The 13-Minute Murder

“I’m not grabbing the gun,” he suddenly said; this came with an opening of his palms to demonstrate complicity. I went over and scooted his pistol out of his reach. Then I positioned myself to help him up. The last thing I wanted to do was save the life of a guy who was guaranteed to hunt me down within a week, but what choice did I have?

“You’re Byron, aren’t you? Can we talk?”

“Go to hell.”

“I would prefer we don’t antagonize each other. Are you sure we can’t talk?”

“Go to hell.”

“Fine. If you need negative stimulation, I’m going to show you something that will scare you.”

“Go to hell.”

He was being combative. So I decided to do this the ugly way. I showed him a picture of my wife.

Chapter 20

“You see this?” I held up a small wallet-sized photo.

“Help me get out,” said Byron.

“You see this?!” I shook my favorite picture of my wife at him.

It didn’t make sense that the big boss had been kneeling to pick up trash off his own floors. The old Croatian fossil in the warehouse kept cleaning. The two dead bodies in the entranceway seemed very dead. And Byron was still treading.

“Her name is Maria Amelia Ryan,” I said. “She’s beautiful and she’s vibrant and she’s dead.”

“I get it.”

“No, you don’t. She’s dead because of a name and I don’t know who that name is.” I aimed my gun at his forehead. I was crouched down tight enough that from a distance anyone would think I was just tying my shoe. But there was still no one around this stretch of the quay.

“Suppose…Suppose I…I had a name to give you. You want a source, right? The Goran boy. Right?”

“Who ordered it?”

“I can help you but…you’re gonna kill me anyway, so the longer I…the longer I…” He winced from internal pain before eking out his point. “The longer I hold back, the longer I stay alive.”

He tried to climb out. No luck, too steep. He took another moment to catch his breath before returning to the negotiation table.

“So why don’t w-we try a deal?” he said, wincing. “Let’s find a way…to guarantee…my life…and I’ll tell you a name.”

“No.”

He stared at me.

My single syllable arrived with such finality that he lost all his leverage and could only gawk back at me. Two men locking eyes. I wasn’t trying to scare him. I’d always wanted my enemies to regard me as respectful and polite.

“Wait,” he said. “Wait, wait. Look, I could lie to you, but I’m not gonna lie, I’m just gonna come clean and tell you I don’t know who ordered the hit.”

“You probably just have one functioning lung,” I told him. I could see that his wound was pretty bad. “That’s hardly a game changer. You climb out, you rest for a month, then you’ll regain full health. The catch…is…you can’t climb out without my help.”

“Go to hell.”

“Eventually, yes. But I’m looking for an answer.”

He didn’t provide one. He was going to die very soon.

“I’m asking one more time, then I’m walking away to let your blood drip into the Atlantic.”

“No! We negotiate.”

“I’ll tell you what.” I flipped my cylinder out to reload. I left one cartridge in my hand for dramatic effect. One cartridge. I did all of this very slowly and with a certain panache. “I don’t negotiate but…Do you like strategy games, Byron?” I placed the cartridge on the pavement between us. “This isn’t exactly Russian roulette.” He was petrified. “See, instead of four empty chambers and one bullet…I have one empty chamber and four bullets.” I spun the cylinder with a classic silent whir. A Wheel of Misfortune. I snapped it in, then abruptly pointed the gun at him and, with no overture, immediately pulled the trigger.

Click! Empty.

“Aagh! You’re insane!” he said, heaving for breath. “You’re insane. I heard about you.”

This got my attention. I lowered my gun. I lowered my voice. “I’m not insane. I have a love of literature and grain-fed meat, but insane? Not true.”

I spun the cylinder again.

“I’m telling you,” said Byron. “I don’t…The…”

I aimed the gun at him.

“I don’t know!”

I pulled the trigger again. Click.

Miraculously, I mean quite miraculously, the hammer had clicked on what was the lone empty chamber yet again, twice in a row. The odds of this were astounding. Twenty-five to one. At which point, at last, to everyone’s relief, Byron decided all bets were off and spoke rapidly and earnestly. “Okay, okay, okay, wait, okay, listen,” he said. “There was only the initial communication from the lady at the county, that’s it. That’s it. Okay? Nobody told me the source because it’s political, okay? Because Croatian business is absolute, okay? And none of us can risk being part of something inside the family.”

“Hang on.”

“None of us can. Okay? That’s why we don’t ask.”

“Hang on,” I said. “The lady at the county? What does that mean?”

And then he told me all I needed to know. “City, I mean. Not county. The city council. Allison. That lady who handles the docks. It comes from her.”

“Allison? Why the hell didn’t you say that?”

“I thought you wanted the source.”

“Allison O’Hara? I just wanted to know who told you.”

“Ohhhhhhhh, thank God,” he exclaimed with profound relief. “Thank God. Then please, please, yes. Help me up.”

“No,” I replied. I shot him. “Time for me to buy a bigger fridge.”

Chapter 21

Cutting up cadavers is gross. Truly. I’ve seen it in TV shows and I get ill just hearing a character talk about it.

I left the dock, and left the old osteoporosis fellow alive and kicking. Was this stupid? Of course. But it was my guess that the gentle relic wasn’t here in the US with the best of paperwork. He would maintain his low profile.

Then I was heading home with a car full of three dead bodies. I had propped the trio upright in their seats so that to anyone else on the road it’d seem like they were just drunk passengers. I was driving home with all the evidence against me in one place.

“This is for Maria,” I said to my carpool as we first hit the road.

“This is for Maria,” I said again as I dragged each body to the door of our Kolpak 1010 freezer system.

I had to remove some more of the cardboard containers—a stack of at least four hundred dollars’ worth of Whole Foods premium cut.

Couldn’t let it all go to waste, so I used some of the grass-fed beef to make dinner for Updike. Real dinner. Candlelit. Folded a linen napkin into his collar. Put a quilted cushion below his hind feet. He deserved it.

He sat upright on the chair, two paws on the edge of the table. The whole thing was defying every domestic rule imaginable for him. He stared at me, riddled with canine insecurity. You sure about this?

“It’s all you, buddy,” I said. “Eat up.”

He bent down and nibbled, then stopped to look up at me. Still hesitant.

“C’mon, have confidence, pal.” Me telling him what I needed to hear. “Life’s about confidence.”

He nibbled again. Eyed me again. Nibbled more. Eyed less. Then soon he was burrowing his head in the bowl. I sat there and smiled at the first pleasant tableau I’d beheld in weeks. I’d tried to distract myself with my book, right there at the table. Le Parfum. But after two attempts I couldn’t distract myself. Each sentence only served to remind me of the urgency of the next step. My next step. Her.

Allison O’Hara.

Allison was a “fixer.” Why would a fixer be a link in this food chain? City council was the title she threw around town, but what Allison actually did was troubleshoot the docks—the dingy, violent world of the Mafia shipping trade, smoothing out whatever kinks the “family” might encounter. I would’ve never connected a lady like her to a Harvard kid.