by Child, Lee
“What?”
“Shout,” Tony said again. “You’re real slow, aren’t you, Mr. Stone? Put two and two together and draw a conclusion. There’s no phone in here, you can’t leave the room, you want to talk with your lawyers, so you’ll have to shout.”
Stone stared blankly into space.
“Shout, you useless piece of shit,” Tony screamed at him.
“No, I can’t,” Stone said helplessly. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Take the shirt off,” Tony screamed.
Stone shook violently. Hesitated, with his arms halfway in the air.
“Get it off, you piece of shit,” Tony screamed again.
Stone’s hands leapt up and unbuttoned it, all the way down. He tore it off and stood there holding it, shaking in his undershirt.
“Fold it neatly, please,” Tony said. “Mr. Hobie likes his things neat.”
Stone did his best. He shook it out by the collar and folded it in half, and half again. He bent and laid it square on top of the jacket on the sofa.
“Give up the twelve percent,” Tony said.
“No,” Stone said back, clenching his hands.
There was silence. Silence and darkness.
“Efficiency,” Tony said quietly. “That’s what we like here. You should have paid more attention to efficiency, Mr. Stone. Then maybe your business wouldn’t be in the toilet. So what’s the most efficient way for us to do this?”
Stone shrugged, helplessly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then I’ll explain,” Tony said. “We want you to comply. We want your signature on a piece of paper. So how do we get that?”
“You’ll never get it, you bastard,” Stone said. “I’ll go bankrupt first, damn it. Chapter eleven. You won’t get a damn thing from me. Not a thing. You’ll be in court five years, minimum.”
Tony shook his head patiently, like a grade-school teacher hearing the wrong answer for the hundredth time in a long career.
“Do whatever you want,” Stone said to him. “I won’t give you my company.”
“We could hurt you,” Tony said.
Stone’s eyes dropped through the gloom to the desktop. His tie was still lying there, right on top of the rough gouges from the hook.
“Take Mr. Hobie’s pants off,” Tony screamed.
“No, I won’t, damn it,” Stone screamed back.
The guy at Tony’s shoulder reached under his arm. There was a squeak of leather. Stone stared at him, incredulous. The guy came out with a small black handgun. He used one arm and aimed it, eye-level, straight out. He advanced around the desk toward Stone. Nearer and nearer. Stone’s eyes were wide and staring. Fixed on the gun. It was aimed at his face. He was shaking and sweating. The guy was stepping quietly, and the gun was coming closer, and Stone’s eyes were crossing, following it in. The gun came to rest with the muzzle on his forehead. The guy was pressing with it. The muzzle was hard and cold. Stone was shaking. Leaning backward against the pressure. Stumbling, trying to focus on the black blur that was the gun. He never saw the guy’s other hand balling into a fist. Never saw the blow swinging in. It smashed hard into his gut and he went down like a sack, legs folding, squirming and gasping and retching.
“Take the pants off, you piece of shit,” Tony screamed down at him.
The other guy landed a savage kick and Stone yelped and rolled around and around on his back like a turtle, gasping, gagging, wrenching at his belt. He got it loose. Scrabbled for the buttons and the zip. He tore the pants down over his legs. They snagged on his shoes and he wrenched them free and pulled them off inside out.
“Get up, Mr. Stone,” Tony said, quietly.
Stone staggered to his feet and stood, unsteadily, leaning forward, head down, panting, his hands on his knees, his stomach heaving, thin, white hairless legs coming down out of his boxers, ludicrous dark socks and shoes on his feet.
“We could hurt you,” Tony said. “You understand that now, right?”
Stone nodded and gasped. He was pressing both forearms into his gut. Heaving and gagging.
“You understand that, right?” Tony asked again.
Stone forced another nod.
“Say the words, Mr. Stone,” Tony said. “Say we could hurt you.”
“You could hurt me,” Stone gasped.
“But we won’t. That’s not how Mr. Hobie likes things to be done.”
Stone raised a hand and swiped tears from his eyes and looked up, hopefully.
“Mr. Hobie prefers to hurt the wives,” Tony said. “Efficiency, you see? It gets faster results. So at this point, you really need to be thinking about Marilyn.”
THE RENTED TAURUS was much faster than the Bravada had been. On dry June roads, there was no contest. Maybe in the snows of January or the sleet of February he would have appreciated the full-time four-wheel drive, but for a fast trip up the Hudson in June, a regular sedan had it all over a jeep, that was for damn sure. It was low and stable, it rode well, it tracked through the bends like an automobile should. And it was quiet. He had its radio locked onto a powerful city station behind him, and a woman called Wynonna Judd was asking him why not me? He felt he shouldn’t be liking Wynonna Judd as much as he was, because if somebody had asked him if he’d enjoy a country vocalist singing plaintively about love, he’d have probably said no he wouldn’t, based on his preconceptions. But she had a hell of a voice, and the number had a hell of a guitar part. And the lyric was getting to him, because he was imagining it was Jodie singing to him, not Wynonna Judd. She was singing why not me when you’re growing old? Why not me? He started singing along with it, his rough bass rumble underneath the soaring contralto, and by the time the number faded and the commercial started, he was figuring if he ever had a house and a stereo like other people did, he’d buy the record. Why not me?
He was heading north on Route 9, and he had a Hertz map open beside him which went up far enough to show him Brighton was halfway between Peekskill and Poughkeepsie, over to the west, right on the Hudson. He had the old couple’s address beside it, written on a sheet from a medical pad from McBannerman’s office. He had the Taurus moving at a steady sixty-five, fast enough to get him there, slow enough to get him there unmolested by the traffic cops, who he assumed were hiding out around every wooded comer, waiting to boost their municipal revenues with their radar guns and their books of blank tickets.
It took him an hour to get level with Garrison again, and he figured he would head on north to a big highway he remembered swinging away west over the river toward New-burgh. He should be able to come off that road just short of the Hudson and fall on Brighton from above. Then it was just a question of hunting down the address, which might not be easy.
But it was easy, because the road that dropped him south into Brighton from the east-west highway was labeled with the same name as was in the second line of the old folks’ address. He cruised south, watching for mailboxes and house numbers. Then it started to get harder. The mailboxes were grouped in sixes, clustered hundreds of yards apart, standing on their own, with no obvious connection to any particular houses. In fact, there were very few houses visible at all. It seemed like they were all up little rural tracks, gravel and patched blacktop, running off left and right into the woods like tunnels.
He found the right mailbox. It was set on a wooden post that the weather was rotting and the frost heave was canting forward. Vigorous green vines and thorny creepers were twisting up around it. It was a large-size box, dull green, with the house number painted on the side in faded but immaculate freehand script. The door was hanging open, because the box was completely stuffed with mail. He took it all out and squared it on the passenger seat beside him. Squeaked the door closed and saw a name painted on the front in the same faded neat hand: Hobie.
The mailboxes were all on the right side of the road, for the convenience of the mail carrier, but the tracks ran off in both directions. There were four of them visible from where he was stopped, two of them to the le
ft and two to the right. He shrugged and headed down the first of them, leading to the right, over toward the river.
It was the wrong track. There were two houses down there, one north and one south. One of them had a duplicate name-plate on the gates: Kozinsky. The other had a bright red Pontiac Firebird parked under a new basketball hoop on the garage gable. Children’s bicycles were sprawled on a lawn. Not persuasive evidence of aged and infirm people living there.
The first track on the left was wrong, too. He found the right place on the second right-hand track. There was an overgrown driveway running away south, parallel with the river. There was an old rusted mailbox at the gate, back from when the postal service was prepared to come a little nearer to your house. Same dull green color, but even more faded. Same neat painted script, faded like a ghost: Hobie. There were power lines and a phone cable running in, swarming with vines which hung down like curtains. He swung the Taurus into the driveway, brushing vegetation on both sides, and came to a stop behind an old Chevy sedan, parked at an angle under a carport. The old car was a full-size, hood and trunk like flight decks, turning the same pitted dull brown that all old cars turn.
He killed the motor and got out in the silence. Ducked back in and grabbed the stack of mail and stood there, holding it. The house was a low one-story, running away from him to the west toward the river. The house was the same brown as the car, ancient boards and shingles. The yard was a riot. It was what a tended garden becomes in fifteen untouched years of wet springs and hot summers. There had been a wide path running around from the carport to the front door, but it was narrowed like a gangplank with encroaching brush. He looked around and figured an infantry platoon equipped with flame-throwers would be more use there than gardeners.
He made it to the door, with the brush grabbing and snatching at his ankles. There was a bell-push, but it was rusted solid. He leaned forward and rapped on the wood with his knuckles. Then he waited. No response. He rapped again. He could hear the jungle seething behind him. Insect noise. He could hear the muffler ticking as it cooled underneath the Taurus over on the driveway. He knocked again. Waited. There was the creak of floorboards inside the house. The sound was carrying ahead of somebody’s footsteps and spilling out to him. The footsteps halted on the other side of the door and he heard a woman’s voice, thin and muffled by the wood.
“Who’s there?” it called out.
“Reacher,” he called back. “General Garber’s friend.”
His voice was loud. Behind him, he heard panicked scurrying in the brush. Furtive animals were fleeing. In front of him, he heard a stiff lock turning and bolts easing back. The door creaked open. Darkness inside. He stepped forward into the shadow of the eaves and saw an old woman waiting. She was maybe eighty, stick thin, white hair, stooped, wearing a faded floral-print dress that flared right out from the waist over nylon petticoats. It was the sort of dress he’d seen in photographs of women at suburban garden parties in the fifties and the sixties. The sort of dress that was normally worn with long white gloves and a wide-brimmed hat and a contented bourgeois smile.
“We were expecting you,” she said.
She turned and stood aside. He nodded and went in. The radius of the skirt meant he had to push past its flare with a loud rustle of nylon.
“I brought your mail,” he said to her. “Your box was full.”
He held up the thick stack of curled envelopes and waited.
“Thank you,” she said. “You’re very kind. It’s a long walk out there, and we don’t like to stop the car to get it, in case we get rear-ended. It’s a very busy road. People drive terribly fast, you know. Faster than they should, I think.”
Reacher nodded. It was about the quietest road he had ever seen. A person could sleep the night out there right on the yellow line, with a good chance of surviving until morning. He was still holding the mail. The old lady showed no curiosity over it.
“Where would you like me to put it?”
“Would you put it in the kitchen?”
The hallway was a dark space, paneled in gloomy wood. The kitchen was worse. It had a tiny window, glassed in with yellow reeded glass. There was a collection of freestanding units in muddy dark veneer, and curious old enamel appliances, speckled in mint greens and grays, standing up on short legs. The whole room smelled of old food and a warm oven, but it was clean and tidy. A rag rug on worn linoleum. There was a chipped china mug with a pair of thick eyeglasses standing vertically in it. He put the stack of mail next to the mug. When her visitor was gone, she would use her eyeglasses to read her mail, right after she put her best frock back in the closet with the mothballs.
“May I offer you cake?” she asked.
He glanced at the stovetop. There was a china plate there, covered over with a worn linen cloth. She’d baked something for him.
“And coffee?”
Next to the stove top was an ancient percolator, mint green enamel, green glass knob on the top, connected to the outlet by a cord insulated with frayed fabric. He nodded.
“I love coffee and cake,” he said.
She nodded back, pleased. Bustled forward, crushing her skirt against the oven door. She used a thin trembling thumb and operated the switch on the percolator. It was already filled and ready to go.
“It takes a moment,” she said. Then she paused and listened. The old percolator started a loud gulping sound. “So come and meet Mr. Hobie. He’s awake now, and very anxious to see you. While we’re waiting for the machine.”
She led him through the hallway to a small parlor in back. It was about twelve by twelve and heavily furnished with armchairs and sofas and glass-fronted chest-high cabinets filled with china ornaments. There was an old guy in one of the chairs. He was wearing a stiff serge suit, blue, worn and shiny in places, and at least three sizes too big for his shrunken body. The collar of his shirt was a wide stiff hoop around a pale scrawny neck. Random silky tufts of white were all that was left of his hair. His wrists were like pencils protruding from the cuffs of his suit. His hands were thin and bony, laid loosely on the arms of the chair. He had clear plastic tubes looped over his ears, running down under his nose. There was a bottle of oxygen on a wheeled cart, parked behind him. He looked up and took a long, loud sniff of the gas to fuel the effort of lifting his hand.
“Major Reacher,” he said. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”
Reacher stepped forward and grasped the hand and shook it. It was cold and dry, and it felt like a skeleton’s hand wrapped in flannel. The old guy paused and sucked more oxygen and spoke again.
“I’m Tom Hobie, Major. And this lovely lady is my wife, Mary.”
Reacher nodded.
“Pleased to meet you both,” he said. “But I’m not a major anymore.”
The old guy nodded back and sucked the gas through his nose.
“You served,” he said. “Therefore I think you’re entitled to your rank.”
There was a fieldstone fireplace, built low in the center of one wall. The mantel was packed tight with photographs in ornate silver frames. Most of them were color snaps showing the same subject, a young man in olive fatigues, in a variety of poses and situations. There was one older picture among them, airbrushed black-and-white, a different man in uniform, tall and straight and smiling, a private first class from a different generation of service. Possibly Mr. Hobie himself, before his failing heart started killing him from the inside, although it was hard for Reacher to tell. There was no resemblance.
“That’s me,” Hobie confirmed, following his gaze.
“World War Two?” Reacher asked.
The old man nodded. Sadness in his eyes.
“I never went overseas,” he said. “I volunteered well ahead of the draft, but I had a weak heart, even back then. They wouldn’t let me go. So I did my time in a storeroom in New Jersey.”
Reacher nodded. Hobie had his arm behind him, fiddling with the cylinder valve, increasing the oxygen flow.
“I’ll bring the
coffee now,” the old lady said. “And the cake.”
“Can I help you with anything?” Reacher asked her.
“No, I’ll be fine,” she said, and swished slowly out of the room.
“Sit down, Major, please,” Tom Hobie said.
Reacher nodded and sat down in the silence, in a small armchair near enough to catch the old guy’s fading voice. He could hear the rattle of his breathing. Nothing else, just a faint hiss from the top of the oxygen bottle and the clink of china from the kitchen. Patient domestic sounds. The window had a venetian blind, lime green plastic, tilted down against the light. The river was out there somewhere, presumably beyond an overgrown yard, maybe thirty miles upstream of Leon Garber’s place.
“Here we are,” Mrs. Hobie called from the hallway.
She was on her way back into the room with a wheeled cart. There was a matching china set stacked on it, cups and saucers and plates, with a small milk jug and a sugar bowl. The linen cover was off the platter, revealing a pound cake, drizzled with some kind of yellow icing. Maybe lemon. The old percolator was there, smelling of coffee.
“How do you like it?”
“No milk, no sugar,” Reacher said.
She poured coffee into a cup, her thin wrist quivering with the effort. The cup rattled in its saucer as she passed it across. She followed it with a quarter of the cake on a plate. The plate shook. The oxygen bottle hissed. The old man was rehearsing his story, dividing it up into bites, taking in enough oxygen to fuel each one of them.
“I was a printer,” he said suddenly. “I ran my own shop. Mary worked for a big customer of mine. We met and were married in the spring of ‘47. Our son was born in the June of ‘48.”
He turned away and ran his glance along the line of photographs.
“Our son, Victor Truman Hobie.”
The parlor fell quiet, like an observance.
“I believed in duty,” the old man said. “I was unfit for active service, and I regretted it. Regretted it bitterly, Major. But I was happy to serve my country any way I could, and I did. We brought our son up the same way, to love his country and to serve it. He volunteered for Vietnam.”