Page 53 of Persuader (Jack Reacher 7)
Chapter 15
Ten years ago I waited eighteen hours for him. I never doubted he was coming. I just sat in his armchair with the Ruger on my lap and waited. I didn't sleep. I barely even blinked. Just sat. All through the night. Through the dawn. All through the next morning. Midday came and went. I just sat and waited for him.
He came at two o'clock in the afternoon. I heard a car slowing on the road and stood up and kept well back from the window and watched as he turned in. He was in a rental, similar to mine. It was a red Pontiac. I saw him clearly through the windshield. He was neat and clean. His hair was combed. He was wearing a blue shirt with the collar open. He was smiling. The car swept past the side of the house and I heard it crunch to a stop on the dirt outside the kitchen. I stepped through to the hallway. Pressed myself against the wall next to the kitchen door.
I heard his key in the lock. Heard the door swing open. The hinges squealed in protest. He left it open. I heard his car idling outside. He hadn't switched it off. He wasn't planning on staying long. I heard his feet on the kitchen linoleum. A fast, light, confident tread. A man who thought he was playing and winning. He came through the door. I hit him in the side of the head with my elbow.
He went down on the floor on his back and I spanned my hand and pinned him by the throat. Laid the Ruger aside and patted him down. He was unarmed. I let go of his neck and his head came up and I smashed it back down with the heel of my hand under his chin. The back of his head hit the floor and his eyes rolled up in his head. I walked through the kitchen and closed the door. Stepped back and dragged him into the living room by the wrists. Dropped him on the floor and slapped him twice. Aimed the Ruger at the center of his face and waited for his eyes to open.
They opened and focused first on the gun and then on me. I was in uniform and all covered in badges of rank and unit designations so it didn't take him long to work out who I was and why I was there.
"Wait," he said.
"For what?"
"You're making a mistake. "
"Am I?"
"You've got it wrong. "
"Have I?"
He nodded. "They were on the take. "
"Who were?"
"Frasconi and Kohl. "
"Were they?"
He nodded again. "And then he tried to cheat her. "
"How?"
"Can I sit up?"
I shook my head. Kept the gun where it was.
"No," I said.
"I was running a sting," he said. "I was working with the State Department. Against hostile embassies. I was trawling. "
"What about Gorowski's kid?"
He shook his head, impatiently. "Nothing happened with the damn kid, you idiot. Gorowski had a script to follow, that's all. It was a setup. In case the hostiles checked on him. We play these things deep. There has to be a chain to follow, in case anyone is suspicious. We were doing proper dead drops and everything. In case we were being watched. "
"What about Frasconi and Kohl?"
"They were good. They picked up on me real early. Assumed I wasn't legit. Which pleased me. Meant I was playing my part just right. Then they went bad. They came to me and said they'd slow the investigation if I paid them. They said they'd give me time to leave the country. They thought I wanted to do that. So I figured, hey, why not play along? Because who knows in advance what bad guys a trawl will find? And the more the merrier, right? So I played them out. "
I said nothing.
"The investigation was slow, wasn't it?" he said. "You must have noticed that. Weeks and weeks. It was real slow. "
Slow as molasses.
"Then yesterday happened," he said. "I got the Syrians and the Lebanese and the Iranians in the bag. Then the Iraqis, who were the big fish. So I figured it was time to put your guys in the bag too. They came over for their final payoff. It was a lot of money. But Frasconi wanted it all. He hit me over the head. I came around and found he had sliced Kohl up. He was a crazy man, believe me. I got to a gun in a drawer and shot him. "
"So why did you run?"
"Because I was freaked. I'm a Pentagon guy. I never saw blood before. And I didn't know who else might be in it with your guys. There could have been more. "
Frasconi and Kohl.
"You're very good," he said to me. "You came right here. "
I nodded. Thought back to his eight-page bio, in Kohl's tidy handwriting. Parents' occupations, childhood home.
"Whose idea was it?" I said.
"Originally?" he said. "Frasconi's, of course. He outranked her. "
"What was her name?"
I saw a flicker in his eyes.
"Kohl," he said.
I nodded again. She had gone out to make the arrest in dress greens. A black acetate nameplate above her right breast. Kohl. Gender-neutral. Uniform, female enlisted, the nameplate is adjusted to individual figure differences and centered horizontally on the right side between one and two inches above the top button of the coat. He would have seen it as soon as she walked in the door.
"First name?"
He paused.
"Don't recall," he said.
"Frasconi's first name?"
Uniform, male officer, the nameplate is centered on the right-side breast pocket flap equidistant between the seam and the button.
"I don't recall. "
"Try," I said.
"I can't recall it," he said. "It's only a detail. "
"Three out of ten," I said. "Call it an E. "
"What?"
"Your performance," I said. "A failing grade. "
"What?"
"Your dad was a railroad worker," I said. "Your mom was a homemaker. Your full name is Francis Xavier Quinn. "
"So?"
"Investigations are like that," I said. "You plan to put somebody in the bag, you find out all about them first. You were playing those two for weeks and weeks and never found out their first names? Never looked at their service records? Never made any notes? Never filed any reports?"
He said nothing.
"And Frasconi never had an idea in his life," I said. "Never even took a dump unless somebody told him to. Nobody connected to those two would ever say Frasconi and Kohl. They'd say Kohl and Frasconi. You were dirty all the way and you never saw my guys in your life before the exact minute they showed up at your house to arrest you. And you killed them both. "
He proved I was right by trying to fight me. I was ready for him. He started to scramble up. I knocked him back down, a lot harder than I really needed to. He was still unconscious when I put him in the trunk of his car. Still unconscious when I transferred him to the trunk of mine, behind the abandoned diner. I drove a little way south on U. S. 101 and took a right that led toward the Pacific. I stopped on a gravel turnout. There was a fabulous view. It was three o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was shining and the ocean was blue. The turnout had a knee-high metal barrier and then there was another half-yard of gravel and then there was a long vertical drop into the surf. Traffic was very light. Maybe a car every couple of minutes. The road was just an arbitrary loop off the highway.
I opened the trunk and then slammed it again just in case he was awake and planning to jump out at me. But he wasn't. He was starved of air and barely conscious. I dragged him out and propped him up on rubbery legs and made him walk. Let him look at the ocean for a minute while I checked for potential witnesses. There were none. So I turned him around. Stepped away five paces.
"Her name was Dominique," I said.
Then I shot him. Twice in the head, once in the chest. I expected him to go straight down on the gravel, whereupon I was planning to step in close and put a fourth up through his eye socket before throwing him into the ocean. But he didn't go straight down on the gravel. He staggered backward and tripped on the rail and went over it and hit the last half-yard of America with his shoulder and rolled straight over the cliff. I grabbed the barrier with one hand and leaned over and l
ooked down. Saw him hit the rocks. The surf closed over him. I didn't see him again. I stayed there for a full minute. Thought: Two in the head, one in the heart, a hundred-twenty-foot fall into the ocean, no way to survive that.
I picked up my shell cases. "Ten-eighteen, Dom," I said to myself, and walked back to my car.
Ten years later it was going dark very fast and I was picking my way over the rocks behind the garage block. The sea was heaving and thrashing on my right. The wind was in my face. I didn't expect to see anybody out and about. Especially not at the sides or the back of the house. So I was moving fast, head up, alert, a Persuader in each hand. I'm coming to get you, Quinn.
When I cleared the rear of the garage block I could see the catering company's truck parked at the back corner of the building. It was exactly where Harley had put the Lincoln to unload Beck's maid from the trunk. The truck's rear doors were open and the driver and the passenger were shuttling back and forth unpacking it. The metal detector on the kitchen door was beeping at every foil dish they carried. I was hungry. I could smell hot food on the wind. Both guys were in tuxedos. Their heads were ducked down because of the weather. They weren't paying attention to anything except their jobs. But I gave them a wide berth anyway. I stayed all the way on the edge of the rocks and skirted around in a loop. Jumped over Harley's cleft and kept on going.
When I was as far from the caterers as I could get I cut in and headed for the opposite back corner of the house. I felt real good. I felt silent and invisible. Like some kind of a primeval force, howling in from the sea. I stood still and worked out which would be the dining room windows. I found them. The lights were on in the room. I stepped in close and risked a look through the glass.
First person I saw was Quinn. He was standing up straight in a dark suit. He had a drink in his hand. His hair was pure gray. The scars on his forehead were small and pink and shiny. He was a little stooped. A little heavier than he had been. He was ten years older.
Next to him was Beck. He was in a dark suit, too. He had a drink. He was shoulder to shoulder with his boss. Together they were facing three Arab guys. The Arabs were short, with black oiled hair. They were in American clothes. Sharkskin suits, light grays and blues. They had drinks, too.
Behind them Richard and Elizabeth Beck were standing close together, talking. The whole thing was like a free-form cocktail party crammed around the edges of the giant dining table. The table was set with eighteen places. It was very formal. Each setting had three glasses and enough flatware to last a week. The cook was bustling about the room with a tray of drinks. I could see champagne flutes and whiskey tumblers. She was in a dark skirt and a white blouse. She was relegated to cocktail waitress. Maybe her expertise didn't stretch to Middle Eastern cuisine.
I couldn't see Teresa Daniel. Maybe they planned to make her jump out of a cake, later. The other occupants of the room were all men. Three of them. Quinn's best boys, presumably. They were a random trio. A mixture. Hard faces, but probably no more dangerous than Angel Doll or Harley had been.
So, eighteen settings, but only ten diners. Eight absentees. Duke, Angel Doll, Harley, and Emily Smith made four of them. The guy they had sent to the gatehouse to replace Paulie was presumably the fifth. That left three unaccounted for. One on the front door, one in Duke's window, and one with Teresa Daniel, probably.
I stayed on the outside, looking in. I had been to cocktail parties and formal dinners plenty of times. Depending on where you served they played a big part in base life. I figured these people would be in there four hours, minimum. They wouldn't come out except for bathroom breaks. Quinn was talking. He was sharing eye contact scrupulously among the three Arabs. He was holding forth. Smiling, gesturing, laughing. He looked like a guy who was playing and winning. But he wasn't. His plans had been disrupted. A banquet for eighteen had become dinner for ten, because I was still around.
I ducked under the window and crawled toward the kitchen. Stayed on my knees and slipped out of my coat and left the Persuaders wrapped in it where I could find them again. Then I stood up and walked straight into the kitchen. The metal detector beeped at the Beretta in my pocket. The catering guys were in there. They were doing something with aluminum foil. I nodded at them like I lived there and walked straight into the hallway. My feet were quiet on the thick rugs. I could hear the loud buzz of cocktail conversation from the dining room. I could see a guy at the front door. He had his back to me and he was staring out the window. He had his shoulder leaning on the edge of the window recess. His hair was haloed blue by the wall lights in the distance. I walked straight up behind him. Shoot to kill. Them or me. I paused for one second. Reached around and cupped my right hand under his chin. Put my left knuckles against the base of his neck. Jerked up and back with my right and down and forward with my left and snapped his neck at the fourth vertebra. He sagged back against me and I caught him under the arms and walked him into Elizabeth Beck's parlor and dumped him on the sofa. Doctor Zhivago was still there on a side table.
