Т Паркер - The Room of White Fire

I butted through Dick and Liz and looked through the window at Joe Bodart, sitting on the living room couch. Dark suit, walrus mustache, shiny head. His wrists were bound with two plastic ties. Glaring at me, he raised them for me to see.

“Company man is my guess,” said Burt. “I confiscated his gun and phone.”

“Langley could have your ass for this, Burt,” snapped Lindsey.

“I take full responsibility. But, Roland, that man approached me in a threatening manner. Disarming and restraining him was the most secure and humane course of action. I could easily have taken my driver to his knee.”

I looked through the window again. Bodart now stood in the middle of the small living room, raised his wrists to me again. I stepped inside and closed the door.

“PI, you’ve put yourself in a bad position.”

“At least I don’t look ridiculous.”

“If Clay Hickman has classified material from White Fire, he’s guilty of a crime. If he makes it public, that’s treason, and the DoD will send him to prison. He’ll beg for his cushy digs in the nuthouse again, believe me. What did he show you?”

“Nothing,” I lied.

Bodart looked down at the plastic ties. “Can you cut these fucking things off?”

“When I’m ready.”

Bodart stepped in closer. He was a big man, and heavy. I didn’t think he was foolish enough to kick me or take me down, but I was very ready. He stared at me as if in judgment, then moved away and sat back down on the couch. He looked past me at the Irregulars, who were no doubt watching the action through the window.

“I hope you’re a reasonable man, Ford. If not, you’ll get a lot of people hurt for no reason. Okay. Do you know where he is?”

“I haven’t seen him since he crawled out the bathroom window on you guys.”

“With your help. Which makes you a co-conspirator. I won’t hesitate to have you prosecuted, Ford. And we won’t stop until we have Clay and whatever his so-called evidence is. Top priority. We’ve been given wide latitude.”

“Latitude.”

“You know exactly what I mean. Cut these damned ties off me, will you?”

I shook my head no, returned his flat look. I was tempted to call him Wrangler, but Joe Bodart registered even higher on my scale of menace than Briggs Spencer. Especially where Clay Hickman was concerned. I pictured him in his cowboy togs at White Fire. I feigned ignorance of him because I had to. “What’s your name and who do you work for?”

“Bodart. And I work for the president of the United States. I have a number you can call. CIA, Special Activities Division. I’m the real deal, Ford, and I hate amateurs.”

“What do you want from me, except for what I don’t know?”

Bodart studied me. “I want Clay Hickman alive and well. In possession of no state secrets, no evidence of crimes committed at White Fire, and no plans to get vengeance on Spencer. Or whatever ‘white fire to Deimos’ is. I want to see Clay back in the hospital, which is probably the best place for him. And I want world peace, too.”

“So Hard Truth can come out next week and Spencer can tell the world what a hero he was in Romania. How he saved American lives and foiled terrorist plots.”

Bodart glanced at the window, then stood again. He went to the glass, pressed his face up close to Grandpa Dick’s. “Who’s that golfer?”

“Just a tenant.”

Bodart turned back to me. “Ford? Our nation needs to know the truth from people who were there . The Senate report on torture only got a tenth of it. But not the tenth that matters.”

“So you decide what matters.”

He looked at me with a hint of exasperation. “I defend my country by protecting the people above me.”

I thought back to Briggs Spencer’s “new” government, realizing that some of the new people wouldn’t be new at all. They would be the same people who had approved of White Fire, and places like it, in the first place. Rewritten the rules. Changed the game. They badly needed soldiers who could cover their butts or take the blame. “Does that make Clay more valuable to you dead, or alive?”

Bodart stepped in closer again and gave me an odd look — doubt and sympathy, maybe. His big mustache made him look somehow sad, but wise. “This is national security. Everyone’s expendable.”

“Like John Vazquez?”

A pause while Bodart’s wheels turned. I was fishing, but I could see that I’d gotten to him. I immediately regretted it. “What I’m trying to reveal to you is that if you have any good will or affection for Clay Hickman, deliver him to me. Quickly. Not to Spencer. Not to Arcadia security. Not to his shrink. To me. If you don’t do that, I can’t even come close to guaranteeing his safety.”

“But you’d kill him to get what he has. ”

“We are not killers,” said Bodart. “But we have a mission to complete. We’re not torturers, but we get the intelligence we need. If you are in our way, you are a threat to national security. Do comprehend this.”

Again I pictured Bodart and his Wranglers loitering in Aaban’s smokehouse torture chamber. Remembered Clay’s description of him: Crazy monster would do anything.

I said nothing. Was going to ask him how a badass such as himself ended up in plastic ties carried by a small golfer.

He walked to the bed, stopped, and looked into the little casita bathroom, then turned to me again. “Who’s the girl he’s abducted?”

I told him her age and first name, and that she had paired up with Clay willingly. Bodart shook his head and exhaled with disgust, though I wasn’t sure if it was for Clay or Sequoia or me. “One more time. What does Clay have? Video, right? Made by him and John Vazquez.”

“He claims he has evidence of a crime at White Fire.”

“And you claim not to know what it is?”

“He wasn’t ready to trust me,” I lied again. “He was still vetting me when you blitzed the motel.”

A long and skeptical stare. He looked at the window again. I saw Wesley peering in up close, and Burt lingering behind him on the walkway to the pond. “If that little guy is a tenant, you must have done a background check.”

I had actually done no background on him at all. Ditto the others. “Nothing came up.”

“I’ve never seen a man move that fast. He had my gun before I realized what he was doing.”

I led Bodart outside and toward the barn. The Irregulars fell in around us and we made our way across the sparse barnyard grass. On a workbench I found a pair of tin snips and cut through the heavy plastic ties. I asked Burt where he’d found the ties.

“Golf bag. I use them when I travel by air. You know, keep my sticks safe from those apes in baggage.” Burt handed Bodart his handgun and phone. “Sorry I had to get physical. Being called an asshole dwarf set me off because I know three dwarves personally. Good people.”

Bodart looked baffled, then tempted to attack Burt, then baffled again. He pocketed the phone, holstered the weapon, and rubbed his wrists while walking toward the barn door. At the threshold he stopped and turned and looked at us. He started to say something, then must have thought better of it.

“Next time, pay attention to those no-trespassing signs,” said Grandpa Dick. “We don’t want to have to go through all this again.”

“Oh, come on Dick,” said Liz. “You loved every minute of it.”

Later that afternoon I hiked the Rancho de los Robles with Wesley. The day was cooling and the clouds tumbled in, heavy and gray from the Pacific. Wesley led the way, stopping often to scan with his binoculars, but I was the one who saw most of the birds first. His vision was fading and his pace was slower. My thoughts were troubled, filled with Clay Hickman and what would happen. I knew it was only a matter of time before Bodart or Spencer and their men caught up with him. And that if I could do anything on earth to help Clay, I would have to do it soon.