Lee Child - First Thrills

Ralph DeLeon said, “Looks like we got ourselves a coupla perps.”

But not quite yet.

At 11:00 P.M. Jimmy Malloy was walking from the subway stop in Queens to his house six blocks away. He was thinking of how he was going to put the case together. There were still loose ends. The big problem was the cremation thing. Burning is a bitch, one instructor at the academy had told Malloy’s class. Fire gets rid of nearly all important evidence. Like bullet holes in the head.

What he’d have to do is get wiretaps, line up witnesses, track down the ambulance drivers, the doctor in Spain.

It was discouraging, but it was also just part of the job. He laughed to himself. It was like Jacob Sharpe and his “tradecraft,” he called it. Working your ass off to do your duty.

Just then he saw some motion a hundred feet head, a person. Something about the man’s mannerism, his body language set off Malloy’s cop radar.

A man had emerged from a car and was walking along the same street that Malloy was now on. After he’d happened to glance back at the detective, he’d stiffened and changed direction fast. Malloy was reminded of the killer in Vermont, disappearing quickly after spotting the deputy.

Who was this? The pro? Aaron Reilly?

And did he have the break-down rifle or another weapon with him? Malloy had to assume he did.

The detective crossed the street and tried to guess where the man was. Somewhere in front of him, but where? Then he heard a dog bark, and another, and he understood the guy was cutting through people’s yards, back on the other side of the street.

The detective pressed ahead, scanning the area, looking for logical place where the man had vanished. He decided it had to be an alleyway that led to the right, between two commercial buildings, both of them empty and dark at this time of night.

As he came to the alley, Malloy pulled up. He didn’t immediately look around the corner. He’d been moving fast and breathing hard, probably scuffling his feet, too. The killer would have heard him approach.

Be smart, he told himself.

Don’t be a hero.

He pulled out his phone and began to dial 9-1-1.

Which is when he heard a snap behind him. A foot on a small branch or bit of crisp leaf.

And felt the muzzle of the gun prod his back as a gloved hand reached out and lifted the phone away.

We’re a little more organized than that. We come up with a detailed plot, all the twists and turns. Then we execute it. We know exactly how the story will end.

Well, Prescott’s wife and co-author had done just that: come up with a perfect plot. Maybe the man on the street a moment ago was Reilly, acting as bait. And it was the professional killer who’d come up behind him.

Maybe even Jane Reilly herself.

She’s pretty tough…

The detective had another thought. Maybe it was none of his suspects. Maybe the former agent, Frank Lester, had been bitter about being fired by his client and killed Prescott for revenge. Malloy had never followed up on that lead.

Hell, dying because he’d been careless…

Then the hand tugged on his shoulder slightly, indicating he should turn around.

Malloy did, slowly.

He blinked as he looked up into the eyes of the man who’d snuck up behind him.

They’d never met, but the detective knew exactly what J.B. Prescott looked like. His face was on the back jackets of a dozen books in Mal-loy’s living room.

“ Sorry forthe scare,” Prescott explained, putting away the pen he’d used as a gun muzzle-an ironic touch that Malloy noted as his heart continued to slam in his chest.

The author continued, “I wanted to intercept you before you got home. But I didn’t think you’d get here so soon. I had to come up behind you and make you think I had a weapon so you didn’t call in a ten- thirteen. That would have been a disaster.”

“Intercept?” Malloy asked. “Why?”

They were sitting in the alleyway, on the stairs of a loading dock.

“I needed to talk to you,” Prescott said. The man had a large mane of gray hair and a matching moustache that bisected his lengthy face. He looked like an author ought to look.

“You could’ve called,” Malloy snapped.

“No, I couldn’t. If somebody had overheard or if you’d told anyone I was alive, my whole plot would’ve been ruined.”

“Okay, what the hell is going on?”

Prescott lowered his head to his hands and didn’t speak for a moment. Then he said, “For the past eighteen months I’ve been planning my own death. It took that long to find a doctor, an ambulance crew, a funeral director I could bribe. And find some remote land in Spain where we could buy a place and nobody would disturb me.”

“So you were the one the police saw walking away from where you’d supposedly had the heart attack in Vermont.”

He nodded.

“What were you carrying? A suitcase?”

“Oh, my laptop. I’m never without it. I write all the time.”

“Then who was in the ambulance?”

“Nobody. It was just for show.”

“And at the cemetery, an empty urn in the plot?”

“That’s right.”

“But why on earth would you do this? Debts? Was the mob after you?”

A laugh. “I’m worth fifty million dollars. And I may write about the mob and spies and government agents, but I’ve never actually met one… No, I’m doing this because I’ve decided to give up writing the Jacob Sharpe books.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s time for me to try something different: publish what I first started writing, years ago, poetry and literary stories.”

Malloy remembered this from the obit.

Prescott explained quickly: “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think literature’s any better than commercial fiction, not at all. People who say that are fools. But when I tried my hand at literature when I was young, I didn’t have any skill. I was self- indulgent, digressive… boring. Now I know how to write. The Jacob Sharpe books taught me how. I learned how to think about the audience’s needs, how to structure my stories, how to communicate clearly.”

“Tradecraft,” Malloy said.

The author gave a laugh. “Yes, tradecraft. I’m not a young man. I decided I wasn’t going to die without seeing if I could make a success of it.”

“Well, why fake your death? Why not just write what you wanted to?”

“For one thing, I’d get my poems published because I was J.B. Prescott. My publishers around the world would pat me on the head and say, ‘Anything you want, J.B.’ No, I want my work accepted or rejected on its own merits. But more important, if I just stopped writing the Sharpe series my fans would never forgive me. Look what happened to Sherlock Holmes.”

Malloy shook his head.

“Conan Doyle killed off Holmes. But the fans were furious. He was hounded into bringing the back the hero they loved. I’d be hounded in the same way. And my publisher wouldn’t let me rest in peace either.” He shook his head. “I knew there’d be various reactions, but I never thought anybody’d question my death.”

“Something didn’t sit right.”

He smiled sadly. “Maybe I’m a better at making plots for fiction than making them in real life.” Then his long face grew somber. Desperate, too. “I know what I did was wrong, detective, but please, can you just let it go?”

“A crime’s been committed.”

“Only falsifying a death certificate. But Luis, the doctor, is out of the jurisdiction. You’re not going to extradite somebody for that. Jane and Aaron and I didn’t actually sign anything. There’s no insurance fraud because I cashed out the policy last year for surrender value. And Jane’ll pay every penny of estate tax that’s due… Look, I’m not doing this to hurt or cheat anybody.”