Robert Crais - The Last Detective

We walked up three flights of stairs and into a waiting room that smelled like new carpet. Polished steel letters on the wall identified the company: THE RESNICK RESOURCE GROUP – Problem Resolution and Consultation.

Problem resolution.

A young woman smiled at us from a desk built into the wall.

"May I help you?"

She had an English accent.

Pike said, "Joe Pike for Mr. Resnick. This is Elvis Cole."

"Ah, yes. We're expecting you."

A young man in a three-piece suit came out of a door behind the receptionist and held it for us. He was carrying a black leather bag.

"Afternoon, gentlemen. You can come with me."

Pike and I stepped past him into a hall. As soon as we were out of the waiting room, the young man opened the bag. He was fit, with the pleasant professional expression of a mid-level executive on the way up. He wore an Annapolis class ring on his right hand.

"I'm Dale Rudolph, Mr. Resnick's assistant. The weapons go in here and will be returned when you leave."

I said, "I'm not armed."

"That's fine."

Pike put his.357, a.25, the sap, and a double-edge SOG knife into the bag. Rudolph's expression never changed, as if men de-arming themselves was an everyday occurrence. Welcome to life in the Other World.

"Is that everything?"

Pike said, "Yes."

"All right. Stand erect and lift your arms. Both of you, please."

Polite. They taught manners at Annapolis.

Rudolph passed a security wand over us, then put the wand into the bag.

"Okey-doke. We're good to go."

Rudolph led us into a bright airy office that could have belonged to someone who sold life insurance except for the pictures that showed mobile rocket batteries, Soviet gunships, and armored vehicles. A man in his late fifties with crewcut gray hair and coarse skin came around his desk to introduce himself. He was probably a retired admiral or general with connections to the Pentagon; most of these guys were.

"John Resnick. That's all, Dale. Please wait outside."

"Aye, sir."

Resnick sat on the edge of his desk, but didn't offer us a seat.

"Which one's Pike?"

Pike said, "Me."

Resnick looked at him.

"Our mutual friend speaks well of you. The only reason I agreed to see you is because he vouched for you."

Pike nodded.

"He didn't mention anyone else."

I wanted to identify myself as the sidekick, but sometimes I'm smart. I let Pike handle it.

Pike said, "If our mutual friend spoke well of me, then that should cover it. Either I'm good or I'm not."

Resnick seemed to like that answer.

"Fair enough. Perhaps you'll have the chance to show me just how good, but we can discuss that another time."

Resnick knew what we wanted and got to the point.

"I used to work with a PMC in London. We used Fallon once, but I would never use him again. If you're trying to hire him, I would recommend against it."

I said, "We don't want to hire him, we want to find him. Fallon and at least one accomplice abducted my girlfriend's son."

Resnick's left eye flickered with an unexpected tension. He studied me as if he were deciding whether or not I knew what I was saying, then he sat a bit taller.

"Mike Fallon is in Los Angeles?"

I told him again.

"Yes. He took my girlfriend's son."

Resnick's left eye flickered harder and the tension spread through him. But then he shrugged.

"Fallon is a dangerous man. I can't believe that he's in Los Angeles or anyplace else in the country, but if he is and he did what you said, you should go to the police."

"We've been with the police. The police are trying to find him, too."

Pike said, "Without my resources. You know him. The thought is that you know how to reach him, or know someone who does."

Resnick considered Pike, then slid off his desk and went to his seat. The sun was beginning to lower and bounced off the cars. Jets arced out of LAX heading west over the sea. Resnick watched them.

"That was years ago. Michael Fallon is under a warcrimes indictment for atrocities he committed in Sierra Leone. Last I heard, he was living in South America, Brazil, I think, or maybe Colombia. If I knew how to find him, I would have told the Justice Department. Jesus, I can't believe he had the balls to come back to the States."

Resnick glanced at Pike again.

"If you find him, will you kill him?"

He asked it as simply as if he wanted to know whether or not Pike enjoyed football.

Pike didn't answer, so I answered for him.

"Yes. If that's your price for helping us, then yes."

Pike touched my arm. He shook his head once, telling me to stop.

I said, "If you want him dead, he's dead. Not, then not. All I care about is the boy. I'll do anything to get the boy."

Pike touched me again.

Resnick said, "I believe in rules, Mr. Cole. In a business like mine, rules are all we have to keep us from becoming animals."

Resnick went back to the jets. He watched them wistfully, as if a jet could take him away from something that he could not escape.

"When I was in London, we hired Mike Fallon. We sent him to Sierra Leone. He was supposed to guard the diamond mines under a contract we had with the government, but he went over to the rebels. I still don't know why – the money, I guess. They did things you can't imagine. You would think I'm making it up."

I told him what I saw in the van at the edge of the Los Angeles River. Resnick turned back from the jets as I described it. I guess it sounded familiar. He shook his head.

"A fucking animal. He can't work as a mercenary anymore, not with the indictments. No one will hire him. You think he kidnapped this child for ransom?"

"I think so, yes. The boy's father has money."

"I don't know what to tell you. Like I said, the last I heard he was in Rio but I'm not even sure of that. There must be a lot of money at stake for him to come back."

Pike said, "He has an accomplice. A large black man with sores or warts on his face."

Resnick swiveled toward us and touched his own face.

"On his forehead and cheeks?"

"That's right."

He leaned forward with his forearms on the desk. It was clear that he recognized the description.

"Those are tribal scars. One of the men Fallon used in Sierra was a Benté fighter named Mazi Ibo. He had scars like that."

Resnick grew excited.

"Is a third man involved?"

"We don't know. It's possible."

"All right, listen, now L.A. is starting to make sense. Ibo was tight with another merc named Eric Schilling. I guess it was a year ago, something like that, Schilling contacted us looking for security work. He's local, from here in L.A, so Ibo might have contacted him. We might have kept something."

Resnick went to work on his computer, punching keys to bring up a database.

I said, "Was he involved in Sierra Leone?"

"Probably, but he wasn't listed in the indictments. That's why he can still work. He was one of Fallon's people. That's why it stood out when he contacted us. I won't hire any of Fallon's people even if they weren't involved. Yeah, here it is."

Resnick copied an address from his computer, then handed it to me.

"He had a mail drop in San Gabriel under the name Gene Jeanie. They always use these fake names. I don't know if it's still good, but it's what I have."

"Do you have a phone for him?"

"They never give a phone. It's like the mail drop and the fake names. It's a way to stay insulated."

I glanced at the address, then passed it to Pike. I stood, but my legs felt wobbly. Resnick came around his desk.

He said, "We're talking about very dangerous people right now. Don't mistake these men for your basic shiteating criminals. Fallon was as good as it gets, and he trained these people. No one is better at killing."