Харлан Кобен - Win

He stops and takes a deep breath. He rubs his face again.

“We only sent two agents to the brownstone.”

“No backup?”

“No.”

“Should have waited,” I say. I remember this. “Sugarman shot one of them, right?”

“A decorated agent named Patrick O’Malley. His rookie partner screwed up, let him go in through the back door on his own. O’Malley got ambushed. He died on the way to the hospital. Left six kids without a father.”

“And Sugarman escaped,” I say.

PT nods. “There’s been no sign of him since.”

“No sign of any of them.”

“Yeah, the great mystery.”

“Did you have a theory?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“I figured they were all dead.”

“Why?”

“Because I love folklore as much as the next guy, but the truth is, it’s hard to stay hidden for fifty years. All those militants who went underground? They’d either surrendered or been caught by the early 1980s. The idea that all of the Jane Street Six could still be alive this whole time without being discovered — it just didn’t make sense.”

I stare at the photograph.

“PT?”

“Yes?”

“I assume the hoarder is one of the Jane Street Six.”

PT nods.

“Which one?”

“Ry Strauss,” he says.

I arch my eyebrow. “Lake Davies lied then.”

“It would seem so, yes.”

I consider this. “And Ry Strauss, the charismatic face of the Jane Street Six, ends up a reclusive hoarder living atop a high-rise on Central Park West.”

“With a priceless Vermeer hanging over his bed,” PT continues.

“That he stole from my family.”

“Before kidnapping and assaulting your cousin. Not to mention, murdering your uncle.”

We let that sit a moment.

Then I say, “You don’t expect to keep Strauss’s identity a secret, do you?”

“No, that would be impossible. We have a day, maybe two tops, before this story truly explodes.”

I steeple my fingers. “So what do you want from me?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I want you to investigate.”

“What about the Bureau?”

“This revelation is going to bring up a lot of embarrassing memories for the FBI. You probably don’t remember the Church Committee in 1975, but it revealed a whole host of illegal surveillance activities by us — on civil rights groups, feminists, anti-wars, the whole of what we called back then the New Left.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

“The FBI will have to play this strictly by the rules,” he says, giving me a meaningful glance. “Do I need to add, ‘You don’t’?”

“Seems you just did.”

“If you’ll pardon the pun,” PT says, “it’s win-win, Win.”

“I won’t.”

“Won’t?”

“Pardon the pun.”

That gets a smile out of him. “Yeah, fair enough, though it’s accurate. For your part, you get to stay involved and protect the interest of your family and more specifically your cousin.”

“And for your part?”

“It’s a big case to solve.”

I consider that and say, “I don’t buy it.”

He doesn’t reply.

“The last thing you need,” I continue, “is another notch in your retired-undefeated championship belt.” There are a lot of questions, but one keeps bubbling to the surface. So I ask it: “Why is this so important to you?”

PT answers in two words: “Patrick O’Malley.”

“The agent Sugarman shot?”

“I was the rookie partner who screwed up.”

My plane is fueling up as PT walks me through the telephone-book-thick file. There is a lot for me to digest, but time is also of the essence. We both agree the first person I should speak to is Lake Davies.

“She changed her identity after being released,” PT says.

“Not unusual,” I reply.

“Not unusual, but in this case, suspicious. At first, she just got an official name change. Okay, fine. But two years later, after she figured that we stopped keeping tabs on her, she set up with an entirely fake ID.”

But of course, PT had never stopped keeping tabs.

“Her name now is Jane Dorchester. She owns a dog-boarding business on the outskirts of Lewisburg, West Virginia, with her husband, a local real estate developer named Ross Dorchester. No biological kids, but then again, they got married twenty years ago, so she would have been mid-forties. Ross has two grown girls from his first marriage.”

“Does the husband know her real identity?”

“Can’t say.”

There is no reason to waste time. We are already at Teterboro Airport. Kabir quickly arranges for my plane to take me to Greenbrier Valley Airport. Less than two hours after I say goodbye to PT, the jet’s wheels are touching down in West Virginia. I keep sets of clothes on board, so I change into the closest thing I own to local garb — slim-fit Adriano Goldschmied faded blue jeans, a Saint Laurent plaid flannel shirt, and Moncler Berenice hiking boots.

Blending in.

A vehicle awaits my arrival on the tarmac — a chauffeur-driven Chevy Silverado pickup truck. More blending in.

Fifteen minutes after the plane has slowed to a stop, the Chevy Silverado pulls up to a long ranch house on the end of a cul-de-sac. A depressingly cheerful sign in the yard — one where every letter is a different color — reads:

I sigh out loud.

And under that, in smaller lettering:

I sigh again and wonder about state-mandated justification for discharging my firearm.

The website, which I scanned through on the flight, touts the “Rated Five Paws” pet hotel and all its merit. The facility is a “cage-free canine establishment” for both “day care” and “overnight stays” for the “posh pup.” There was an oversaturation of appropriate buzz words/phrases — pampering, grooming, positively-reinforcing, and, I’m not making this up, Zen wellness.

For a dog.

The “hotel” (as it were) is a generic ranch-style suburban home with extended eaves and low-pitched roofs. Barking dogs serenade me up the walk and through an open front door. A young woman behind the desk offers up a toothy smile and too much enthusiasm:

“Welcome to the Ritz Snarl-Fun!”

“How many times a day do you have to say that?” I ask.

“Huh?”

“Does a sliver of your soul leave your body every time?”

The young woman does maintenance on the toothy smile, but there is nothing behind it anymore. “Uh, can I help you with something?” She leans over the desk and looks down by my feet. “Where’s your dog?”

“I’m here to see Jane Dorchester,” I say.

“I can take care of you.” She hands me a clipboard. “If you can just fill out—”

“No, no, I need to see Jane first,” I protest. “I was told by my good friend Billy Bob” — more blending in — “to ask specifically for Jane Dorchester before I fill out any paperwork.”

She slowly puts the clipboard back on the desk and rises. “Uh, okay. Let me see if she’s available. Your name?”

“They call me Win.”

She looks at me. I give her a reassuring smile. She leaves.

My phone rings. It’s Cousin Patricia. I don’t answer, instead text-replying:

I’ll fill you in later.

I don’t yet know how much of what PT told me I should share with Patricia, but it can wait. Do one thing at a time, as my father, who rarely did even that much, always told us. I prefer the way Myron’s mother said the same thing with a delivery that rivaled the greatest of the Borscht Belt: “You can’t ride two horses with one behind.” At the time, she was talking to me about my womanizing, so her point didn’t really take root with me, but I adore Ellen Bolitar and her wisdom just the same.