Джон Гришэм - The Partner

Guy carefully flipped through the assorted papers taken from Danny Boy’s house, and marveled at the invisible trail. A monthly statement from a local bank listed a balance of three thousand dollars, not exactly what they had in mind. The only deposit was for eighteen hundred, debits for the month of less than a thousand. Danny Boy lived quite frugally. His electric and phone bills were unpaid but not past due. A dozen other small bills were marked paid.

One of Guy’s men checked all the phone numbers on Danny Boy’s bill, but turned up nothing interesting. Another scoured the hard drive from his little computer and quickly learned that Danny Boy was not much of a hacker. There was a lengthy journal about his adventures in the Brazilian outback. The last entry was almost a year old.

The scarcity of paperwork was in itself very suspicious. Only one bank statement? Who on the face of the earth keeps only last month’s bank statement in the house? What about the month before? Danny Boy had a storage place somewhere, away from his home. It all fit nicely with a man on the run.

At dusk, Danny Boy, still unconscious, was stripped to his underwear, tight cotton briefs. His dirty running shoes and sweaty running socks were pulled off, revealing feet that nearly glowed in their whiteness. His new dark skin was counterfeit. He was placed on a one-inch-thick sheet of plywood next to his bed. Holes had been cut in the board and nylon ropes were used to tightly secure his ankles, knees, waist, chest, and wrists. A wide black plastic belt was strapped tightly across his forehead. An IV drip bag hung directly above his face. The tube ran to a vein above his left wrist.

He was poked with another needle; a shot in his left arm to wake him up. His labored breathing grew more rapid, and when his eyes opened they were red and glazed and took a while to study the drip bag. The Brazilian doctor stepped into the picture, and without saying a word stuck a needle into Danny Boy’s left arm. It was sodium thiopental, a crude drug sometimes used to make people talk. Truth serum. It worked best if the captive had things he wanted to confess. A perfect tell-all drug had yet to be developed.

Ten minutes passed. He tried to move his head, without success. He could see a few feet on either side. The room was dark except for a small light somewhere in a corner behind him.

The door opened, then closed. Guy entered alone. He walked straight to Danny Boy, placed his fingers on the edge of the plywood, and said, “Hello, Patrick.”

Patrick closed his eyes. Danilo Silva was behind him now, gone forever. An old trusted friend vanished, just like that. The simple life on Rua Tiradentes faded away with Danilo; his precious anonymity ripped away from him with the pleasant words, “Hello, Patrick.”

For four years, he had often wondered how it would feel if they caught him. Would there be a sense of relief? Of justice? Any excitement at the prospect of going home to face the music?

Absolutely not! At the moment, Patrick was terror-stricken. Practically naked and strapped down like an animal, he knew the next few hours would be insufferable.

“Can you hear me, Patrick?” Guy asked, peering downward, and Patrick smiled, not because he wanted to but because an urge he couldn’t control found something amusing.

The drug was taking effect, Guy noted. Sodium thiopental is a short-acting barbiturate that must be administered in very controlled doses. It was extremely difficult to find the proper level of consciousness where one would be susceptible to interrogation. Too small a dose, and the resistance is not broken. A bit too much, and the subject is simply knocked out.

The door opened and closed. Another American slipped into the room to listen, but Patrick could not see him.

“You’ve been sleeping for three days, Patrick,” Guy said. It was closer to five hours, but how could Patrick know? “Are you hungry or thirsty?”

“Thirsty,” Patrick said.

Guy unscrewed the top from a small bottle of mineral water, and carefully poured it between Patrick’s lips.

“Thanks,” he said, then smiled.

“Are you hungry?” Guy asked again.

“No. What do you want?”

Guy slowly sat the mineral water on a table and leaned closer to Patrick’s face. “Let’s settle something first, Patrick. While you were sleeping, we took your fingerprints. We know precisely who you are, so can we please forgo the initial denials?”

“Who am I?” Patrick asked with another grin.

“Patrick Lanigan.”

“From where?”

“Biloxi, Mississippi. Born in New Orleans. Law school at Tulane. Wife, one daughter, age six. Missing now for over four years.”

“Bingo. That’s me.”

“Tell me, Patrick, did you watch your own burial service?”

“Is that a crime?”

“No. Just a rumor.”

“Yes. I watched it. I was touched by it. Didn’t know I had so many friends.”

“How nice. Where did you hide after your burial?”

“Here and there.”

A shadow emerged from the left and a hand adjusted the valve at the bottom of the drip bag. “What’s that?” Patrick asked.

“A cocktail,” Guy answered, nodding at the other man, who retreated to the corner.

“Where’s the money, Patrick?” Guy asked with a smile.

“What money?”

“The money you took with you.”

“Oh, that money,” Patrick said, and breathed deeply. His eyelids closed suddenly and his body relaxed. Seconds passed and his chest moved slower, up and down.

“Patrick,” Guy said, gently shaking his arm. No response, just the sounds of a deep sleep.

The dosage was immediately reduced, and they waited.

The FBI file on Jack Stephano was a quick study; former Chicago detective with two degrees in criminology, former high-priced bounty hunter, expert marksman, self-taught master of search and espionage, and now the owner of a shady D.C. firm which apparently charged huge fees to locate missing people and conduct expensive surveillance.

The FBI file on Patrick Lanigan filled eight boxes. It made sense that one file would attract the other. There was no shortage of people who wanted Patrick found and brought home. Stephano’s group had been hired to do it.

Stephano’s firm, Edmund Associates, occupied the top floor of a nondescript building on K Street, six blocks from the White House. Two agents waited in the lobby by the elevator as two others stormed Stephano’s office. They almost scuffled with a heavy secretary who insisted Mr. Stephano was too busy at the moment. They found him at his desk, alone, chatting happily on the phone. His smile vanished when they barged in with badges flashing.

“What the hell is this!” Stephano demanded. The wall behind his desk was a richly detailed map of the world, complete with little red blinking lights stuck on green continents. Which one was Patrick?

“Who hired you to find Patrick Lanigan?” asked Agent One.

“That’s confidential,” Stephano sneered. He’d been a cop for years and was not easy to intimidate.

“We got a call from Brazil this afternoon,” said Agent Two.

So did I, thought Stephano, stunned by this but desperately trying to appear unfazed. His jaw dropped an inch and his shoulders sagged as his mind raced wildly through all the possible theories that would bring these two thugs here. He’d talked to Guy and no one else. Guy was utterly dependable. Guy would never talk to anyone, especially the FBI. It couldn’t be Guy.

Guy used a cell phone from the mountains of eastern Paraguay. There was no way the call could have been intercepted.

“Are you there?” asked Two smartly.

“Yeah,” he said, hearing but not hearing.

“Where’s Patrick?” asked One.

“Maybe he’s in Brazil.”