Jeffery Deaver - A Maiden's Grave

You don't have more time.

"You haven't got any more time."

"No, Lou. Pontoons'd be perfect. It's a great idea. I'll get on it right away. But let me buy some time. Tell me something you want."

"A fucking helicopter."

"And you'll have it. It may just take a little longer than we'd hoped. Name something else. Your heart's desire. Isn't there something you can think of you want?"

A pause. Potter thought: guns, X-rated tapes and a VCR, a friend busted out of prison, money, liquor…

"Yeah, I want something, Art."

"What?"

"Tell me 'bout yourself."

From out of left field.

Potter looked up into Angie's frown. She shook her head, cautious.

"What?"

"You asked me what I wanted. I want you to tell me about yourself."

You always want the HT to be curious about the negotiator but it usually takes hours, if not days, to establish any serious connection. This was the second time in just a few hours that Handy had expressed an interest in Potter, and the agent had never known an HT to ask the question so directly. Potter knew he was on thin ice here. He could improve the connection between the two or he could drive a wedge between them by not responding the way Handy wished.

Be forewarned…

"What do you want to know?"

"Anything you wanta tell me."

"Well, there's nothing very exciting. I'm just a civil servant." His mind went blank.

"Keep going, Art. Talk to me."

And then, as if a switch had been flicked, Arthur Potter found himself desiring to blurt out every last detail of his life, his loneliness, his sorrow… He wanted Lou Handy to know about him. "Well, I'm a widower. My wife died thirteen years ago, and today's our wedding anniversary."

He remembered that LeBow had told him there'd been bad blood between Handy and his ex; he turned to the intelligence officer, who had already called up a portion of Handy's profile. The convict had been married for two years when he was twenty. His wife had sued for divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty and had gotten a restraining order because he'd beaten her repeatedly. Just after that he'd gone off on a violent robbery spree. Potter was wishing he hadn't brought up the subject of marriage, but when Handy now asked what had happened to Potter's wife he sounded genuinely curious.

"She had cancer. Died about two months after we found out about it."

"Me, I was never married, Art. No woman'll ever tie me down. I'm a freewheelin' spirit, I go where my heart and my dick lead me. You ever get yourself remarried?"

"No, never did."

"What do you do when you want a little pussy?"

"My work keeps me pretty busy, Lou."

"You like your job, do you? How long you been doing it?"

"I've been with the Bureau all my adult life."

"All your adult life?"

My Lord, an amused Potter thought from a remote distance, he's echoing me . Coincidence? Or is he playing me the way I should be playing him ?

"It's the only job I've ever had. Work eighteen hours a day a lot."

"How'd you get into this negotiating shit?"

"Just fell into it. Wanted to be an agent, liked the excitement of it. I was a pretty fair investigator but I think I was a little too easygoing. I could see both sides of everything."

"Oh, yessir," Handy said earnestly, "that'll keep you from moving to the top. Don't you know the sharks swim faster?"

"That's the God's truth, Lou."

"You must meet some real fucking wackos."

"Oh, present company excluded of course."

No laughter from the other end of the line. Only silence. Potter felt stung that the levity had fallen flat and he worried that Handy had heard sarcasm in Potter's voice and was hurt. He felt an urge to apologize.

But Handy just said, "Tell me a war story, Art."

Angie was frowning again. Potter ignored her. "Well, I did a barricade at the West German embassy in Washington about fifteen years ago. Talked for about eighteen hours straight." He laughed. "I had agents racing back and forth to the library bringing me books on political philosophy. Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche… Finally I had to send out for Cliff Notes. I was camped out in the backseat of an unmarked car, talking on a hard-wired throw phone to this maniac who thought he was Hitler. Wanted to dictate a new version of Mein Kampf to me. I still have no idea what the hell we talked about all that time."

Actually, the man hadn't claimed to be Hitler but Potter felt the urge to exaggerate, to make sure Handy was amused.

"Sounds like a fucking comedy."

"He was funny. His AK-47 was pretty sobering, I have to say."

"You a shrink?"

"Nope. Just a guy who likes to talk."

"You must have a pretty good ego."

"Ego?"

"Sure. You gotta listen to somebody like me say, 'You scurvy piece of dogshit, I'm going to kill you the first chance I get,' and then still ask him if he'd like Diet Coke or iced tea with his burgers."

"You want lemon with that tea, Lou?"

"Haw. This's all you do?"

"Well, I teach too. At the military police school at Fort McClellan. In Alabama. Then I'm head of hostage and barricade training at Quantico in the Bureau's Special Operations and Research Unit."

Now Henry LeBow offered an exasperated expression to Potter. The intelligence officer had never heard his fellow agent give away so much personal information.

Slowly Handy said in a low voice, "Tell me something, Art. You ever done anything bad?"

"Bad?"

"Really bad."

"I suppose I have."

"Did you mean to do it?"

"Mean to do it?"

"Ain't you listening to me?" Testy now. Echoing too frequently can antagonize the hostage taker.

"Well, the things I've done aren't so much intentional, I suppose. One bad thing is that I didn't spend enough time with my wife. Then she died, pretty fast, like I told you, and I realized there was a lot I hadn't said to her."

"Fuck," Handy spat out with a derisive laugh. "That's not bad. You don't know what I'm talking about."

Potter felt deeply hurt by the criticism. He wanted to cry out, "I do! And I did feel that I'd done something bad, terribly bad."

Handy continued, "I'm talking about killing somebody, ruining somebody's life, leaving a widow or widower, leaving children to grow up alone. Something bad ."

"I've never killed anyone, Lou. Not directly."

Tobe was looking at him. Angie scribbled a note: You're giving away a lot, Arthur .

He ignored them, wiped the sweat from his forehead, kept his eyes focused outside on the slaughterhouse. "But people have died because of me. Carelessness. Mistakes. Sometimes intent. You and I, Lou, we both work flip sides of the same business." Feeling the overwhelming urge to make himself understood. "But you know -"

"Don't skip over this shit, Art. Tell me if they bother you, some of the things you've done?"

"I… I don't know."

"What about them people dying you was talking about?"

Take his pulse, Potter told himself. What's he thinking?

I can't see a thing. Who the hell knows?

"Yo, Art, keep talkin'. Who were they? Hostages you couldn't save? Troopers you sent in when you shouldn't've?"

"Yes, that's who they were."

And takers too. Though he doesn't say this. Ostrella, he thinks spontaneously, sees her long, beautiful face, serpentine. Dark eyebrows, full lips. His Ostrella.

"And that bothers you, huh?"

"Bothers me? Sure it does."

"Fuck," Handy seemed to sneer. Potter again felt the sting. "See, Art, you're proving my point. You've never done anything bad and you and me, we both know it. Take those folks in the Cadillac this afternoon, that couple I killed. Their names were Ruth and Hank, by the way. Ruthie and Hank. You know why I killed them?"