Джозеф Файндер - Vanished

I was intrigued, but I looked both bored and skeptical. “Yeah, every major corporation gives those out. It’s a key fob – a secure hardware card that generates random one-time passwords you type in. Big deal.”

“No. No. I’m not talking about those. This is a smart card with a cryptochip-thingy embedded in it. It’s like a whole new generation. Like superduper high-tech. I heard about it. Developed by the NSA. No one else in the private sector has it yet.”

“So, Neil,” I said, “can you get this for me? As a sample?”

“I think so. I might be able to. His secretary has the combination to his safe – I think I know where she keeps it.”

I looked away. I couldn’t have looked less interested. “Uh-huh.”

“I’m pretty sure I can,” Burris said, handing me back my twenty. “Oh, and hey – beer’s on me. Really.”

He slapped down a crisp new one-hundred-dollar bill.

I looked at it, couldn’t help glancing at the serial number on the front. It began with DB. Just like the ones in the shipment I’d recovered outside Los Angeles.

Burris probably figured I’d be impressed he had hundred-dollar bills to throw around. “Like I told you,” he said. “I get paid in cash.”

His cell phone rang, and he glanced down at it. “Gotta get it,” he told me. “The boss.” He picked it up, and said, “Yes, Carl.”

I stood up, gave him an abrupt wave. Pantomimed we’ll talk by making a little phone symbol out of my left hand and holding it to my cheek.

He gave me a thumbs-up.

I fought my way through the bar, twisting and turning and squeezing between pods of very different types of patrons: neighborhood customers in HVAC uniforms with name patches sewn on, and Hill rats in charcoal suits from the Men’s Wearhouse, letting off steam after a long day of making photocopies and kissing butt in some minor congressman’s office.

As I stepped out of the bar and into the refreshing cool air, I noticed a commotion behind me. Neil Burris was bulldozing a path through the crowd, elbowing people aside.

“Hey,” he said, following me out onto the street. “You’re not Marty Masur.”

“No?” A couple of motorcycles roared by.

Burris drew so close to me I could smell his foul breath. “You’re that guy’s brother,” he said. “You’re Nick Heller.”

Cars whooshed by. Somewhere nearby a dog was barking. A couple of girls in halter tops were smoking, which they couldn’t do inside the Anchor. A gang of overgrown frat boys were jeering, and one of them was pissing in the alley next to the bar. The restrooms there were so malodorous that no one ever used them more than once.

Somehow Carl Koblenz had learned that I was meeting with Burris. I had no idea how, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.

“And I thought we looked nothing alike,” I said.

“You son of a bitch.”

“Where is he, Neil?” A shot in the dark. Maybe he knew; maybe he didn’t.

Burris answered with an obscenity, and suddenly he lunged at me. I saw him move a split second too late. He slammed me against the side of a building, cracking my head hard against the brick. With his right hand, he clamped my throat just below the Adam’s apple and pincered hard. He was strong, even stronger than I expected, and he put his whole overdeveloped body into it. At the same time, he pinioned my left arm with his right shoulder and grabbed my right hand, just above the wrist, and jammed his right knee into the inside of my leg.

Now I knew for sure he’d really been a Navy SEAL. He was doing everything by the book.

Which was good, actually.

His face was so close to mine that I could feel the bristles of his goatee. “Your brother…” he said, breathing hard, “wasn’t as smart as he thought.” His face was red with exertion, and he sounded short of breath. “He thought he could rip us off and get away with it. Not gonna happen.” Flecks of saliva sprayed my eyes.

Then I relaxed my shoulders and contracted my neck to make it hard for him. I stared back into his adrenaline-crazed eyes. Blinked slowly. Said nothing.

He expected me to fight back. He didn’t expect me to do nothing, so that’s what I did. Nothing.

For a few seconds, anyway.

“Your brother ticked off some very powerful people. He got too greedy. Went too far. So get this straight, Heller. Anything your brother left behind – like files or documents or anything – you’re gonna want to share it with us. You hold back, and there’s going to be collateral damage. I’m talking family members. You decide if it’s worth it. Believe me, you don’t want to make an enemy out of us.”

He had that triumphant look of someone who knew he’d overpowered his opponent. He was intoxicated with confidence.

I shot my left hand out and jammed it against his right shoulder, which momentarily eased his hold on my throat, while I grabbed his right hand with my left and twisted his wrist clockwise. He let out a roar, scrambled his feet around to try to gain some purchase, but I levered his arm down and around, sending him sprawling to the gravel-strewn pavement.

I had his right hand in both of mine, the fingers pulled back so far that he only had to move too suddenly and his wrist would snap. He was helpless, and he knew it. But he was too stupid, and too truculent. He tried to swing his legs around, so I kneed him in the face – harder than I intended to, actually. He roared, and I heard something snap, and I knew that I’d broken his nose, perhaps even a cheekbone as well. Blood gushed down the lower part of his face.

“Was that a threat?” I said. “Because I really hate threats.”

He bellowed, and I torqued his wrist around some more just to remind him of the price of any further struggle. He let loose with a string of obscenities, but his heart wasn’t in it, I didn’t think. He didn’t seem to have much energy anymore.

Breathing thickly through the blood in his mouth, he said something about what he planned to do to Lauren.

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “Not with only one hand.”

I grasped his right hand by the fingers and pulled them all the way back. His wrist made a muted snick noise when it broke, not the loud snap I expected. He let out a loud, agonized scream. His right hand – his gun hand, I assumed – dangled uselessly, like a marionette off its strings.

Burris summoned a final burst of strength, tried to rear up, but I kneed him in the chest, heard a few ribs crack. His head snapped backwards, reflexively, slamming into the pavement.

He went uhhh, looked dazed. All the wind went out of him.

I stood up, brushed the dirt and debris from my pants, surveyed the damage.

His eyes were going in and out of focus. He was hovering somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness. His head had collided with the asphalt pretty hard.

“Hey, Neil,” I said.

His eyes shifted slightly in my direction. I doubted he could see me very clearly, but I was sure he could hear me.

He said nothing.

I leaned over him, jamming my knee into his solar plexus, and said softly, “What do you know about my brother?”

He blinked, once. He grunted, barely audibly, the faintest indication that he was listening to me, though he couldn’t form words. A small bubble of blood formed at the corner of his lips.

I knew I wasn’t going to get an answer out of him even if he knew anything.

I’m not one of those guys who get a perverse plea sure from beating people up. Often it makes me feel guilty. But inflicting pain on Neil Burris, I have to admit, was not entirely unpleasurable.

My satisfaction faded somewhat a few minutes later, when I crossed the street and found the Defender with a deep white gouge running across the driver’s side door all the way to the rear quarter panel. It looked like someone had keyed it, but with a screwdriver. Maybe some drunken frat kid.