Page 10 of Persuader (Jack Reacher 7)
There wasn't much conversation. The cook was a sour woman of maybe sixty. The maid was timid. I got the impression she was fairly new. She was unsure about how to conduct herself. She was young and plain. She was wearing a cotton shift and a wool cardigan. She had clunky flat shoes on. The mechanic was a middle-aged guy, thin, gray, quiet. Duke was quiet too, because he was thinking. Beck had handed him a problem and he wasn't sure how he should deal with it. Could he use me? Could he trust me? He wasn't stupid. That was clear. He saw all the angles and he was prepared to spend a little time examining them. He was around my age. Maybe a little younger, maybe a little older. He had one of those hard ugly corn-fed faces that hides age well. He was about my size. I probably had heavier bones, he was probably a little bulkier. We probably weighed within a pound or two of each other. I sat next to him and ate my food and tried to time it right with the kind of questions a normal person would be expected to ask.
"So tell me about the rug business," I said, with enough tone in my voice that he knew I was saying I assumed Beck was into something else entirely.
"Not now," he said, like he meant not in front of the help. And then he looked at me in a way that had to mean anyway I'm not sure I want to be talking to a guy crazy enough to chance shooting himself in the head six straight times.
"The bullet was a fake, right?" I said.
"What?"
"No powder in it," I said. "Probably just cotton wadding. "
"Why would it be a fake?"
"I could have shot him with it. "
"Why would you want to do that?"
"I wouldn't, but he's a cautious guy. He wouldn't take the risk. "
"I was covering you. "
"I could have gotten you first. Used your gun on him. "
He stiffened a little, but he didn't say anything. Competitive. I didn't like him very much. Which was OK with me, because I guessed he was going to wind up as a casualty before too long.
"Hold this," he said.
He took the bullet out of his pocket and handed it to me.
"Wait there," he said.
He got up off his chair and walked out of the kitchen. I stood the bullet upright in front of me, just like Beck had. I finished up my meal. There was no dessert. No coffee. Duke came back with one of my Anacondas swinging from his trigger finger. He walked past me to the back door and nodded me over to join him. I picked the bullet up and clamped it in my palm. Followed him. The back door beeped as we passed through it. Another metal detector. It was neatly integrated into the frame. But there was no burglar alarm. Their security depended on the sea and the wall and the razor wire.
Beyond the back door was a cold damp porch, and then a rickety storm door into the yard, which was nothing more than the tip of the rocky finger. It was a hundred yards wide and semicircular in front of us. It was dark and the lights from the house picked up the grayness of the granite. The wind was blowing and I could see luminescence from the whitecaps out in the ocean. The surf crashed and eddied. There was a moon and low torn clouds moving fast. The horizon was immense and black. The air was cold. I twisted up and back and picked out my room's window way above me.
"Bullet," Duke said.
I turned back and passed it to him.
"Watch," he said.
He loaded it into the Colt. Jerke
d his hand to snap the cylinder shut. Squinted in the moonlit grayness and clicked the cylinder around until the loaded chamber was at the ten o'clock position.
"Watch," he said again.
He pointed the gun with his arm straight, aiming just below horizontal at the flat granite tables where they met the sea. He pulled the trigger. The cylinder turned and the hammer dropped and the gun kicked and flashed and roared. There was a simultaneous spark on the rocks and an unmistakable metallic whang of a ricochet. It feathered away to silence. The bullet probably skipped a hundred yards out into the Atlantic. Maybe it killed a fish.
"It wasn't a fake," he said. "I'm fast enough. "
"OK," I said.
He opened the cylinder and shook the empty shell case out. It clinked on the rocks by his feet.
"You're an asshole," he said. "An asshole cop-killer. "
"Were you a cop?"
He nodded. "Once upon a time. "
"Is Duke your first name or your last?"
"Last. "
"Why does a rug importer need armed security?"
"Like he told you, it's a rough business. There's a lot of money in it. "
"You really want me here?"
He shrugged. "I might. If somebody's sniffing around, we might need some cannon fodder. Better you than me. "
"I saved the kid. "
"So what? Get in line. We've all saved the kid, one time or another. Or Mrs. Beck, or Mr. Beck himself. "
"How many guys have you got?"
"Not enough," he said. "Not if we're under attack. "
"What is this, a war?"
He didn't answer. Just walked past me toward the house. I turned my back on the restless ocean and followed him.
There was nothing doing in the kitchen. The mechanic had disappeared and the cook and the maid were stacking dishes into a machine large enough to do duty in a restaurant. The maid was all fingers and thumbs. She didn't know what went where. I looked around for coffee. There still wasn't any. Duke sat down again at the empty deal table. There was no activity. No urgency. I was aware of time slipping away. I didn't trust Susan Duffy's estimate of five days' grace. Five days is a long time when you're guarding two healthy individuals off the books. I would have been happier if she had said three days. I would have been more impressed by her sense of realism.
"Go to bed," Duke said. "You'll be on duty as of six-thirty in the morning. "
"Doing what?"
"Doing whatever I tell you. "
"Is my door going to be locked?"
"Count on it," he said. "I'll unlock it at six-fifteen. Be down here by six-thirty. "
I waited on my bed until I heard him come up after me and lock the door. Then I waited some more until I was sure he wasn't coming back. Then I took my shoe off and checked for messages. The little device powered up and the tiny green screen was filled with a cheerful italic announcement: You've Got Mail! There was one item only. It was from Susan Duffy. It was a one-word question: Location? I hit reply and typed Abbot, Maine, coast, 20m S of Portland, lone house on long rock finger. That would have to do. I didn't have a mailing address or exact GPS coordinates. But she should be able to pin it down if she spent some time with a large-scale map of the area. I hit send now.
Then I stared at the screen. I wasn't entirely sure how e-mail worked. Was it instantaneous communication, like a phone call? Or would my reply wait somewhere in limbo before it got to her? I assumed she would be watching for it. I assumed she and Eliot would be spelling each other around the clock.
Ninety seconds later the screen announced You've Got Mail! again. I smiled. This might work. This time her message was longer. Only twenty-one words, but I had to scroll down the tiny screen to read it all. It said: We'll work the maps, thanks. Prints show 2 bodyguards in our custody are ex-army. All under control here. You? Progress?
I hit reply and typed hired, probably. Then I thought for a second and pictured Quinn and Teresa Daniel in my mind and added otherwise no progress yet. Then I thought some more and typed re 2 bodyguards ask MP Powell quote 10-29, 10-30, 10-24, 10-36 unquote from me specifically. Then I hit send now. I watched the machine announce Your message has been sent and looked away at the darkness outside the window and hoped Powell's generation still spoke the same language mine did. 10-29, 10-30, 10-24, and 10-36 were four standard Military Police radio codes that meant nothing much in themselves. 10-29 stood for weak signal. It was a procedural complaint about failing equipment. 10-30 meant I am requesting nonemergency assistance. 10-24 meant suspicious person. 10-36 meant please forward my messages. The 10-30 nonemergency call meant the whole string would attract no attention from anybody. It would be recorded and filed somewhere and ignored for the rest of history. But taken together the string was a kind of underground jargon. At least it used to be, way back when I was in uniform. The weak signal part meant keep this quiet and under the radar. The request for nonemergency assistance backed it up: keep this away from the hot files. Suspicious person was self-explanatory. Please forward my messages meant put me in the loop. So if Powell was on the ball he would understand the whole thing to mean check these guys out on the quiet and give me the skinny. And I hoped he was on the ball, because he owed me. He owed me big time. He had sold me out. My guess was he would be looking for ways to make it up to me.
I looked back at the tiny screen: You've Got Mail! It was Duffy, saying OK, be fast. I replied trying and switched off and nailed the device back into the heel of my shoe. Then I checked the window.
It was a standard two-part sliding thing. The bottom casement would slide upward in front of the top casement. There was no insect screen. The paint on the inside was thin and neat. The paint on the outside was thick and sloppy from where it had been continually redone to beat the climate. There was a brass catch. It was an ancient thing. There was no modern security. I slipped the catch and pushed the window up. It caught on the thick paint. But it moved. I got it open about five inches and cold sea air blew in on me. I bent down and looked for alarm pads. There weren't any. I heaved it all the way up and examined the whole of the frame. There was no sign of any security system at all. It was understandable. The window was fifty feet up above the rocks and the ocean. And the house itself was unreachable because of the high wall and the water.
I leaned out the window and looked down. I could see where I had been standing when Duke fired the bullet. I stayed half-in and half-out of the window for about five minutes, leaning on my elbows, staring at the black ocean, smelling the salt air, and thinking about the bullet. I had pulled the trigger six times. It would have made a hell of a mess. My head would have exploded. The rugs would have been ruined and the oak paneling would have splintered. I yawned. The thinking and the sea air were making me sleepy. I ducked back inside and slammed the casement down and went to bed.
I was already up and showered and dressed when I heard Duke unlock the door at six-fifteen the next morning, day twelve, Wednesday, Elizabeth Beck's birthday. I had already checked my e-mail. There were no messages. None at all. I wasn't worried. I spent ten quiet minutes at the window. The dawn was right there in front of me and the sea was gray and oily and subdued. The tide was out. Rocks were exposed. Pools had formed here and there. I could see birds on the shore. They were black guillemots. Their spring feathers were coming in. Gray was changing to black. They had bright red feet. I could see cormorants and black-backed gulls wheeling in the distance. Herring gulls swooping low, searching for breakfast.
I waited until Duke's footsteps had receded and went downstairs and walked into the kitchen and met the giant from the gatehouse face-to-face. He was standing at the sink, drinking water from a glass. He had probably just swallowed his steroid pills. He was a very big guy. I stand six feet five inches tall and I have to center myself quite carefully to walk through a standard thirty-inch doorway. This guy was at least six inches taller than me and probably ten inches wider across the shoulders. He probably outweighed
me by two hundred pounds. Maybe by more. I got that core shudder I get when I'm next to a guy big enough to make me feel small. The world seems to tilt a little.
"Duke is in the gym," the guy said.
"There's a gym?" I said.
"Downstairs," he said. His voice was light and high-pitched. He must have been gobbling steroids like candy for years. His eyes were dull and his skin was bad. He was somewhere in his middle thirties, greasy blond, dressed in a muscle shirt and sweatpants. His arms were bigger than my legs. He looked like a cartoon.
"We work out before breakfast," he said.
"Fine," I said. "Go right ahead. "
"You too. "
"I never work out," I said.
"Duke's expecting you. You work here, you work out. "
I glanced at my watch. Six twenty-five in the morning. Time ticking away.
"What's your name?" I asked.
He didn't answer. Just looked at me like I was setting some kind of a trap for him. That's another problem with steroids. Too many of them can rewire your head. And this guy's head didn't look like it had started from a very positive place to begin with. He looked mean and stupid. No better way to put it. And not a good combination. There was something in his face. I didn't like him. I was oh-for-two, as far as liking my new colleagues went.
