Ли Чайлд - Persuader

“You could call somebody,” I said. “You don’t need to wait for them to come to you.”

She shook her head. “That would be suicide. For me and Richard.”

“Just like it would be if you talked about me like this in front of anybody else. Remember, I wouldn’t go quietly. People would get hurt. You and Richard, maybe.”

She smiled. “Bargaining with me again?”

“Warning you again,” I said. “Full disclosure.”

She nodded.

“I know how to keep my mouth shut,” she said, and then she proved it by not saying another word. We finished our coffee in silence and walked back to the car. We didn’t talk. I drove her home, north and east, completely unsure whether I was carrying a ticking time bomb with me or turning my back on the only inside help I would ever get.

Paulie was waiting behind the gate. He must have been watching from his window and then taken up position as soon as he saw the car in the distance. I slowed and stopped and he stared out at me. Then he stared at Elizabeth Beck.

“Give me the pager,” I said.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Just do it,” I said.

Paulie unlatched the chain and pushed the gate. Elizabeth unzipped her bag and handed me the pager. I let the car roll forward and buzzed my window down. Stopped level with where Paulie was waiting to shut the gate again.

“Check this out,” I called.

I tossed the pager overarm out in front of the car. It was a left-handed throw. It was weak and lacked finesse. But it got the job done. The little black plastic rectangle looped up in the air and landed dead-center on the driveway maybe twenty feet in front of the car. Paulie watched its trajectory and then froze when he realized what it was.

“Hey,” he said.

He went after it. I went after him. I stamped on the gas and the tires howled and the car jumped forward. I aimed the right-hand corner of the front bumper at the side of his left knee. I got very close. But he was incredibly quick. He scooped the pager off the blacktop and skipped back and I missed him by a foot. The car shot straight past him. I didn’t slow down. Just accelerated away and watched him in the mirror, standing in my wake, staring after me, blue tire smoke drifting all around him. I was severely disappointed. If I had to fight a guy who outweighed me by two hundred pounds I’d have been much happier if he was crippled first. Or at least if he wasn’t so damn fast.

I stopped on the carriage circle and let Elizabeth Beck out at the front door. Then I put the car away and was heading for the kitchen when Zachary Beck and John Chapman Duke came out looking for me. They were agitated and walking quickly. They were tense and upset. I thought they were going to give me a hard time about Paulie. But they weren’t.

“Angel Doll is missing,” Beck said.

I stood still. The wind was blowing in off the ocean. The lazy swell was gone and the waves were as big and noisy as they had been on the first evening. There was spray in the air.

“He spoke with you last thing,” Beck said. “Then he locked up and left and he hasn’t been seen since.”

“What did he want with you?” Duke asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You don’t know? You were in there five minutes.”

I nodded. “He took me back to the warehouse office.”

“And?”

“And nothing. He was all set to say something but his cell phone rang.”

“Who was it?”

I shrugged. “How would I know? Some kind of an urgent thing. He talked on the phone the whole five minutes. He was wasting my time and yours so I just gave it up and walked back out.”

“What was he saying on the phone?”

“I didn’t listen,” I said. “Didn’t seem polite.”

“Hear any names?” Beck asked.

I turned to him. Shook my head.

“No names,” I said. “But they knew each other. That was clear. Doll did a lot of listening, I guess. I think he was taking instructions about something.”

“About what?”

“No idea,” I said.

“Something urgent?”

“I guess so. He seemed to forget all about me. Certainly he didn’t try to stop me when I walked away.”

“That’s all you know?”

“I assumed it was some kind of a plan,” I said. “Instructions for the following day, maybe.”

“Today?”

I shrugged again. “I’m just guessing. It was a very one-sided conversation.”

“Terrific,” Duke said. “You’re a real big help, you know that?”

Beck looked out at the ocean. “So he took an urgent call on his cell and then he locked up and left. That’s all you can tell us?”

“I didn’t see him lock up,” I said. “And I didn’t see him leave. He was still on the phone when I came out.”

“Obviously he locked up,” Beck said. “And obviously he left. Everything was perfectly normal this morning.”

I said nothing. Beck turned through ninety degrees and faced east. The wind came off the sea and flattened his clothes against him. His trouser legs flapped like flags. He moved his feet, scuffing the soles of his shoes against the grit, like he was trying to get warm.

“We don’t need this now,” he said. “We really don’t need this. We’ve got a big weekend coming up.”

I said nothing. They turned around together and headed back to the house and left me there, alone.

I was tired, but I wasn’t going to get any rest. That was clear. There was bustle in the air and the routine I had seen on the previous two nights was all shot to hell. There was no food in the kitchen. No dinner. The cook wasn’t there. I heard people moving in the hallway. Duke came into the kitchen and walked straight past me and went out the back door. He was carrying a blue Nike sports bag. I followed him out and stood and watched from the corner of the house and saw him go into the second garage. Five minutes later he backed the black Lincoln out and drove off in it. He had changed the plates. When I had seen it in the middle of the night it had six-digit Maine plates on it. Now it was showing a seven-digit New York number. I went back inside and looked for coffee. I found the machine, but I couldn’t find any filter papers. I settled for a glass of water instead. I was halfway through drinking it when Beck came in. He was carrying a sports bag, too. The way it hung from its handles and the noise it made when it bumped against his leg told me it was full of heavy metal. Guns, probably, maybe two of them.

“Get the Cadillac,” he said. “Right now. Pick me up at the front.”

He took the keys out of his pocket and dropped them on the table in front of me. Then he crouched down and unzipped his bag and came out with two New York license plates and a screwdriver. Handed them to me.

“Put these on it first,” he said.

I saw guns in the bag. Two Heckler amp; Koch MP5Ks, short and fat and black with big bulbous molded handles. Futuristic, like movie props.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“We’re following Duke down to Hartford, Connecticut,” he said. “We’ve got some business there, remember?”

He zipped the bag and stood up and carried it back out into the hallway. I sat still for a second. Then I raised my glass of water and toasted the blank wall in front of me.

“Here’s to bloody wars and dread diseases,” I said to myself.

I left the rest of the water in the kitchen and headed out toward the garage block. Dusk was gathering on the ocean horizon, a hundred miles away in the east. The wind was blowing hard and the waves were pounding. I stopped walking and turned a casual circle. Saw nobody else out and about. So I ducked out of sight down the side of the courtyard wall. Found my hidden bundle and laid the phony plates and the screwdriver on the rocks and unwrapped both guns. Duffy’s Glock went into my right-hand coat pocket. Doll’s PSM went into my left. I put the spare Glock mags in my socks. Stowed the rag and picked up the plates and the screwdriver and backtracked to the courtyard entrance.