Ли Чайлд - Persuader

“The soup was very good,” Richard said.

I handed the phone back to Beck. The cook reached across in front of me and took my bowl away.

The first time I ever heard the name Xavier was the sixth time I ever saw Dominique Kohl. It was seventeen days after we danced in the Baltimore bar. The weather had broken. The temperature had plummeted and the skies were gray and miserable. She was in full dress uniform. For a moment I thought I must have scheduled a performance review and forgotten all about it. But then, I had a company clerk to remind me about stuff like that, and he hadn’t mentioned anything.

“You’re going to hate this,” Kohl said.

“Why? You got promoted and you’re shipping out?”

She smiled at that. I realized it had come out as more of a personal compliment than I should have risked.

“I found the bad guy,” she said.

“How?”

“Exemplary application of relevant skills,” she said.

I looked at her. “Did we schedule a performance review?”

“No, but I think we should.”

“Why?”

“Because I found the bad guy. And I think performance reviews always go better just after a big break in a case.”

“You’re still working with Frasconi, right?”

“We’re partners,” she said, which wasn’t strictly an answer to the question.

“Is he helping?”

She made a face. “Permission to speak freely?”

I nodded.

“He’s a waste of good food,” she said.

I nodded again. That was my impression, too. Lieutenant Anthony Frasconi was solid, but he wasn’t the crispest shirt in the closet.

“He’s a nice man,” she said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong.”

“But you’re doing all the work,” I said.

She nodded. She was holding the original file, the one that I had given her just after I found out she wasn’t a big ugly guy from Texas or Minnesota. It was bulging with her notes.

“ You helped, though,” she said. “You were right. The document in question is in the newspaper. Gorowski dumps the whole newspaper in a trash can at the parking lot exit. Same can, two Sundays in a row.”

“And?”

“And two Sundays in a row the same guy fishes it out again.”

I paused. It was a smart plan, except that the idea of fishing around in a garbage can gave it a certain vulnerability. A certain lack of plausibility. The garbage can thing is hard to do, unless you’re willing to go the whole way and dress up like a homeless person. And that’s hard to do in itself, if you want to be really convincing. Homeless people walk miles, spend all day, check every can along their route. To imitate their behavior plausibly takes infinite time and care.

“What kind of a guy?” I said.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Who roots around in trash cans except street people, right?”

“So who does?”

“Imagine a typical Sunday,” she said. “A lazy day, you’re strolling, maybe the person you’re meeting is a little late, maybe the impulse to go out for a walk has turned out to be a little boring. But the sun is shining, and there’s a bench to sit on, and you know the Sunday papers are always fat and interesting. But you don’t happen to have one with you.”

“OK,” I said. “I’m imagining.”

“Have you noticed how a used newspaper kind of becomes community property? Seen what they do on a train, for instance? Or a subway? A guy reads his paper, leaves it on the seat when he gets out, another guy picks it up right away? He’d rather die than pick up half a candy bar, but he’ll pick up a used newspaper with no problem at all?”

“OK,” I said.

“Our guy is about forty,” she said. “Tall, maybe six-one, trim, maybe one-ninety, short black hair going gray, fairly upmarket. He wears good clothes, chinos, golf shirts, and he kind of saunters through the lot to the can.”

“Saunters?”

“It’s a word,” she said. “Like he’s strolling, lost in thought, not a care in the world. Like maybe he’s coming back from Sunday brunch. Then he notices the newspaper sitting in the top of the can, and he picks it up and checks the headlines for a moment, and he kind of tilts his head a little and he puts the paper under his arm like he’ll read some more of it later and he strolls on.”

“Saunters on,” I said.

“It’s incredibly natural,” she said. “I was right there watching it happen and I almost discounted it. It’s almost subliminal.”

I thought about it. She was right. She was a good student of human behavior. Which made her a good cop. If I ever did actually get around to a performance review, she was going to score off the charts.

“Something else you speculated about,” she said. “He saunters on out to the marina and gets on a boat.”

“He lives on it?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I mean, it’s got bunks and all, but I think it’s a hobby boat.”

“How do you know it’s got bunks?”

“I’ve been aboard,” she said.

“When?”

“The second Sunday,” she said. “Don’t forget, all I’d seen up to that point was the business with the newspaper. I still hadn’t positively identified the document. But he went out on another boat with some other guys, so I checked it out.”

“How?”

“Exemplary application of relevant skills,” she said. “I wore a bikini.”

“Wearing a bikini is a skill?” I said. Then I looked away. In her case, it would be more like world-class performance art.

“It was still hot then,” she said. “I blended in with the other yacht bunnies. I strolled out, walked up his little gangplank. Nobody noticed. I picked the lock on the hatch and searched for an hour.”

I had to ask.

“How did you conceal lock picks in a bikini?” I said.

“I was wearing shoes,” she said.

“Did you find the blueprint?”

“I found all of them.”

“Did the boat have a name?”

She nodded. “I traced it. There’s a yacht registry for all that stuff.”

“So who’s the guy?”

“This is the part you’re going to hate,” she said. “He’s a senior Military Intelligence officer. A lieutenant colonel, a Middle East specialist. They just gave him a medal for something he did in the Gulf.”

“Shit,” I said. “But there might be an innocent explanation.”

“There might,” she said. “But I doubt it. I just met with Gorowski an hour ago.”

“OK,” I said. That explained the dress greens. Much more intimidating than wearing a bikini, I guessed. “And?”

“And I made him explain his end of the deal. His little girls are twelve months and two. The two-year-old disappeared for a day, two months ago. She won’t talk about what happened to her while she was gone. She just cries a lot. A week later our friend from Military Intelligence showed up. Suggested that the kid’s absence could last a lot longer than a day, if daddy didn’t play ball. I don’t see any innocent explanation for that kind of stuff.”

“No,” I said. “Nor do I. Who is the guy?”

“His name is Francis Xavier Quinn,” she said.

The cook brought the next course, which was some kind of a rib roast, but I didn’t really notice it because I was still thinking about Francis Xavier Quinn. Clearly he had come out of the California hospital and left the Quinn part of his name behind him in the trash with his used gowns and his surgical dressings and his John Doe wrist bands. He had just walked away and stepped straight into a new identity, ready made. An identity that he felt comfortable with, one that he would always remember deep down at the primeval level he knew hidden people had to operate on. No longer United States Army Lieutenant Colonel Quinn, F.X., Military Intelligence. From that point on, he was just plain Frank Xavier, anonymous citizen.