Robert Crais - The Last Detective

They left.

Alvarez turned toward Gittamon.

"Sergeant, you and Starkey wait outside. We'll review what you've done so far when we're finished with Ms. Chenier."

Starkey said, "Have you people been asleep? We made a major breakthrough here. We don't need to have a meeting about it."

Alvarez raised his voice.

"Wait outside until we're finished. You, too, Gittamon. Stop wasting time and get on with it."

Starkey stalked out, and Gittamon followed, so humiliated that he shuffled.

Alvarez said, "You stick around, too, Cole. We want to know why this guy has it in for you."

"No, I'm not wasting more time with that. I'm going to find Ben."

I looked at Lucy.

"I know you don't want me involved, but I'm not going to leave it alone. I'm going to find him, Luce. I'm going to bring him back to you."

"You'd better be downstairs, Cole. I'm not asking I'm telling."

Alvarez said something else, but I had already shut the door. Starkey and Gittamon were on the sidewalk by his car, arguing. I ignored them.

I went to my car. I could get in, I could drive, but I didn't know where to go or what to do. I looked at Michael Fallon's picture and tried to figure out what to do.

This doesn't make sense. He has to have some connection with you.

All investigations run the same course: You follow the trail of a person's life to see where it crosses with another. Fallon and I had both been in the Army, but we had been in the Army at different times, and, so far as I knew, our lives had never crossed. So far as I knew, his life had never crossed the life of any man with whom I served, and I didn't see how it would. A Delta-trained killer. A professional mercenary. A man wanted for murder in El Salvador and war crimes in Africa who had come to Los Angeles to steal Ben Chenier and make up a lie. Current whereabouts unknown.

I glanced up and down the street to see if I could spot Joe. He would be here, watching, and I needed him.

" Joe! "

Men like Michael Fallon lived and worked in a shadow world that I knew nothing about; they paid cash and, were paid in cash, lived under other names, and moved in circles so clannish that they were known in their true lives by very few others.

" Joe! "

Pike touched my shoulder. He might have stepped out of a tight thatch of plants at the corner of the building. His dark glasses gleamed like polished armor in the sun. My hands shook when I gave him the file.

"This man took Ben. He's lived all over the world. He's fought and done things everywhere. I don't have any idea how to find him."

Pike had lived and worked in dark places, too. He read through the file without speaking until he had finished. Then he put the pages away.

"Men like this don't fight for free. People hire him, so somebody somewhere knows how to reach him. All we have to do is find that person."

"I want to talk to them."

Pike's mouth twitched, then he shook his head.

"They won't talk to you, Elvis. People like this won't even let you get close."

Pike stared, but he didn't seem to be staring at me. I wondered what he was thinking.

"I can't go home. I can't just wait."

"It's out of your hands."

Pike disappeared between the buildings with the same distant look on his face, but I was too worried about Ben to notice.

time missing: 47 hours, 54 minutes

Pike

Pike thought that Cole's eyes looked like tunnels the color of bruises. Pike had seen the same purple eyes on cops cruising the edge of a burnout and combat soldiers with too much trigger time. Cole was in The Zone; amped up, wrung out, and driving forward like the Terminator with mission lock. You get in The Zone, Pike knew, and your thinking grew fuzzy. You could get yourself killed.

Pike ran the three blocks to his Jeep, feeling awkward in the way he moved. His back was tight from having been still for so long and his shoulder was numb. The jogging hurt his shoulder, but Pike ran anyway.

Mercenaries didn't simply show up in a war zone and get hired to kill people or train foreign troops; they were recruited by private military corporations, security firms with international contracts, and "consultants." The talent pool was small. The same people hired the same people over and over, just like software engineers jumping from job to job in Silicon Valley. Only with shorter life expectancies.

Pike once knew a few consultants, but he didn't know if they were still in the business. He didn't know if any of them would be willing to help, or, if so, what they would want or how long it would take. He didn't even know if they were alive. Pike had been out of that life for a long time, else he would have called from his car. He no longer remembered their numbers.

Pike drove to his condo in Culver City. When he reached home, he pulled off his sweatshirt, then drank a bottle of water with a handful of Aleve and aspirin. The phone numbers for the men he had known were in a safe he kept in his bedroom. They weren't written as digits, but as a coded list of words. He got them, then made the calls.

The first four numbers were no longer in use. A young woman with a bubbly voice answered the fifth number, which had clearly been recycled into the system. The sixth number was another disconnect, and the seventh a dentist's office. War was a business with a high casualty rate. Pike scored on the eighth.

"Yeah?"

Pike recognized the voice as soon as he heard it. As if they had spoken only that morning.

"This is Joe Pike. Remember?"

"Hell, yeah. How ya been?"

"I'm trying to find a professional named Michael Fallon."

The man hesitated, and the easy familiarity was gone.

"I thought you left the game."

"That's right. I'm out."

Pike sensed that the man was suspicious. They had not spoken for almost ten years, and now the man was wondering if Pike was working with the Feds. The government took a dim view of its citizens hiring themselves to foreign governments or paramilitary groups, and had laws against it.

The man spoke carefully.

"I don't know what you got in mind, Pike, but I'm a security consultant. I run background checks and offer references in a variety of military specialties, but I don't do business with terrorists, drug dealers, or dictators, or associate with anyone who does. That shit's illegal."

He was saying all that for the Feds, but Pike happened to know that it was also true.

"I understand. That's not why I'm calling."

"Okay. So what you want is a consultation, right?"

"That's right. His name is Fallon. He was with Delta, but then he went freelance. Two years ago, he lived in Amsterdam. Today, he's in Los Angeles."

"Delta, huh?"

"Yes."

"Those boys bring top dollar."

"I want to see him face-to-face. That's the important part, seeing him face-to-face."

"Uh-huh. Tell me something that might ring a bell."

Pike read from the NLETS report, citing the countries where Fallon was known to have worked; Sierra Leone, Colombia, El Salvador, the others.

The man said, "Shit, he's been around. I know some people who worked in those places. You really out of the game?"

"Yes."

"That's a shame, man. What's in this for me?"

Pike had known that the man would want something, and Pike was prepared to pay. People like this never did anything for free. Pike had not mentioned that part to Elvis, and wouldn't.

"A thousand dollars."

The man laughed.

"I'd rather book you into a job. I still get offers, you know. Your thing, you'd get top dollar, too. They need people like you in the Middle East."

"Two thousand."

"I can probably find someone who knows this guy, but I might have to call all over the goddamned world. I'm not wasting my time for a few bucks. I'm going to have costs."