Jeffery Deaver - Hard News

That left twelve on her list.

A bad number. If there'd been only three she would've called them. Twenty, she'd have given up and gone home to sleep. But twelve…

Rune sighed and stretched, hearing some remote bone protest with a pop.

Courtney yawned and tore a bunny in half with fidgety glee.

Quitting time, Rune thought. I'm going home. Then she thought of Sutton's raspy, bitchy voice and fuming eyes and she picked up the phone.

Which was fortunate because when she asked Mr Frost, 6B, if he knew anything about the Lance Hopper killing he paused for only a moment then responded, "Actually… I saw it happen."

"You put that in a bottle and you've got yourself something," she said.

Rune had walked into the apartment, right past the elderly man who'd opened the door, and stepped up to a glass case. Inside was an elaborate model of a ship – not a rigged clipper ship or man-of-war but a modern cargo ship. It was four feet long. She said, "Audacious."

"Thank you. I've never made ships in bottles. To tell you the truth, I don't like hobbies."

She introduced herself.

"Bennett Frost," he said. He was about seventy-five years old. He wore a cardigan sweater with a moth hole on the shoulder and cheap gray pants. He was balding and had dark moles on his face and head. He leaned forward, a vestigial bow, as he shook her hand. He held it for a moment longer than one normally would have and looked at her closely. The touch and the examination, though, were not sexual. He was appraising her. When he was done he released her hand and nodded at the glass case.

"TheMinnesota Princess. Odd name, don't you think, for a ship that spent most of her time in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic? My very first ship. No, I shouldn't say that. My veryfirst profitable ship. Which is, I suppose, better than my first ship. I named herMinnesota because I was born there."

He walked into the large apartment. Rune studied the squarish ship. The deck was covered with tiny boxes. Then she followed him. In the cluttered living room she noticed suitcases.

"You going on a trip?"

"I have a place in Bermuda. Haiti was my favorite.

The Oloffson – what a hotel that was. Not true any longer, of course. I never used to go to British colonies but you know how things are elsewhere." He looked at her with slits of eyes, a shared secret. She nodded.

His eyes fell on her camera.

"You have a press pass or something?"

She showed him her Network ID. He scanned her up and down again, a CAT scan of her soul. "You're young."

"Younger than some. Older than others."

He gave that a curly smile and said, "Iwas young when I got started in business."

"What did you do?"

He gazed at the model. "That was my contribution to the shipping industry and the aesthetics of the sea. She isn't beautiful; she isn't a stately ship."

"I think she looks pretty nifty."

Frost said, '"And the stately ships go on/To their haven under the hill/But O for the touch of a vanished hand/And the sound of a voice that is still.' Tennyson. Nobody knows poetry anymore."

Rune knew some nursery rhymes and some Shakespeare but she remained silent.

He continued, "But she made money hand over fist for a lot of people." He lifted a heavy decanter and started pouring two glasses of purple liquor, as he asked, "Would you like some port?"

She accepted the glass and sipped. It was cloying as honey and tasted like cough medicine.

"I started out as a ship's chandler. Do you know what that is?"

"A candle maker?" Rune shrugged.

"No, a provisioner. A supplier. Anything a captain wanted, from a ratchet to a side of beef, I would get it. I started when I was seventeen, rowing out to the ships as soon as they dropped anchor, even before the agents arrived or they'd started off-loading. I gave them cut prices, demanded half as a deposit, gave them fancy-looking receipts for the cash and always returned with what they wanted or a substitute that was better or cheaper."

"I was wondering, sir-" she began.

Frost held up a hand. "Listen. This is important. During the thirties I moved into the shipping myself."

Rune didn't see what was important but she let him talk.

And talk he did. Fifteen minutes later she'd learned about his growing fortune in the shipping business. He was talking about ship propellers he'd designed himself. "They called them Frost Efficiency Screws. I got such a kick out of that! Efficiency Screws! So my ships could make the run from the Strait of Hormuz around the horn to the Abrose Light in thirty-three days. Of course, I was wrong about the Suez Canal but I still had the fastest oil carriers in the world. Thirty-three days."

Rune said, "If I could ask you a few questions. About the Hopper killing."

"There's a point I'm trying to make."

"Sorry."

"I got out of shipping. I could see what would happen to oil. I could see the balance of trade shift. I didn't want to leave my ships; oh, that hurt me. But have to think ahead. Did you hear about the buggy-whip manufacturers who went out of business when autos were developed? You know what their problem was? They didn't think of themselves as being in theaccelerator business. Ha!" He loved the story, had probably told it a thousand times. "So what did I go into?"

"Airlines?"

Frost laughed derisively."Public transportation? Regulations ad nauseam. I thought about it but I knew that it would take one Democrat, two at the most, to ruin the industry. No, I diversified – financial services, mining, manufacturing. And I became the fourth-richest man in the world… You're skeptical. I can see that. You've never heard of me. Some old crackpot, you're thinking, who's lured me in here for who knows what nefarious prospects. But it's true. In the seventies I had three billion dollars." He paused. "And those were the days when a billion meant something."

He sat forward and Rune sensed he was getting to his point.

"But what could I do with money like that? Provide for my wife and children. Buy comfortable shoes, a good set of golf clubs, a warm coat, an apartment where the plumbing worked. I don't smoke; rich food makes me ill. Mistresses? I was contentedly married for forty-one years. I put my children through school, set up trust funds for the grandchildren, though not very fat ones, and…" He smiled, significantly."… I gave most of the rest away. Hence, you."

"Me? What exactly does all that have to do with the Hopper killing?"

Frost considered this for a moment. "I'm confessing."

She blinked.

"But," he said, "you have to understand. It didn't make any difference, you know."

"Uh, like, how exactly do you mean?"

"They had the other witness. You can't blame me really."

"Could you explain please."

"At the time, when he was killed, I had rny fortune. I was giving money away. I had people who worked for me who depended on me for their livelihood. Their families… You people in the media – a man never has any privacy around you." He pronounced it with a short i, privacy. Like "privileged."

He continued. "I was simply scared back then. I was afraid to tell the police that I'd seen Hopper killed. I'd be on news programs. I'd be in court. There'd be stories about my wealth. Kidnappers might come after my family or me. Do-gooders would start hounding me for money for their causes. I felt guilty at first but then I heard that that Breckman woman downstairs saw the whole thing and told the police about the killer. It took the pressure off me."

"But now you don't mind telling me what you saw? What's different now?"

Frost walked to the window and looked into the gloomy courtyard. "I have a different attitude toward life."

Oh, please, Rune was praying, do it now. Tell me what you saw. And, please, make it good. "May I?" She gestured toward the camera.