“What’s the other way?” he asked, sitting forward.
“I could handle it all. I can take out the other hitter. I can take out those who hired it done, as well.”
“There . . . there might be more than one person behind this?”
“The man who tried to hire me said he was representing a group of patriotic private citizens.”
He laughed mirthlessly at that. “And you said, this individual spoke of me as a ‘spoiler’—meaning this threat might have come from the right or the left?”
I nodded.
“If I . . . were to turn you loose on this, to handle it as you wish . . . what would be in it for you, besides a certain satisfaction?”
I shrugged. “Well, the revenge factor is going to work in your favor. That ‘certain satisfaction’ you mentioned is going to make a hell of a perk. So all I need is ten grand. And you don’t owe me anything unless I deliver.”
Those spooky blues studied me suspiciously. “You said you were offered a million dollars.”
“Ten grand for the assassin. Ten more for whoever hired him.”
“That’s still only twenty thousand dollars.”
“Feel free to tip.”
“Will they . . . look like accidents?”
“Not necessarily. No frills. Dead is dead.”
He blew out a stream of smoke and raised his eyebrows and considered the ceiling’s open beams. “You know the name of the man who came to see you,” he said.
“That’s right. I did some snooping today.”
“Are you a detective, or an assassin, Mr. Quarry?”
“Necessity has turned me into a little of both, Mr. Freed. Now do you want my help? Or do you want to handle this yourself, in which case I’ll have to ask a finder’s fee of five grand, if you want the names I know.”
He was thinking.
“Or,” I said, “I can just walk out of here, fade into the forest and out of your life. You can choose to not believe me. Or try to deal with this yourself, without the names.”
He was shaking his head no. “I would like, Mr. Quarry, for you to handle this. But I wish to know none of the . . . messier details.”
“That’s best for all concerned.”
“I would, however, like to know the name of the man who came to see you. Who tried to hire you.”
“You agree to my terms? Ten grand with a ten grand bonus?”
“Yes.”
I drew my upper lip back across my teeth; it was my very worst smile. “Guess what I do if somebody reneges on me.”
“I think I can guess that quite easily, Mr. Quarry.”
“His name is George Ridge.”
He sat up. Turned ashen.
“George Ridge,” he intoned. “George . . .”
“You were friends once.”
“Yes . . . yes, we were. He was one of my staunchest supporters . . .”
“And something went wrong.”
He stood, began slowly to wander amidst the framed political posters and memorabilia. “How much do you know about me—that is, about my party?”
“I’m not political, Mr. Freed. I just don’t care.”
He ignored that. “You must understand—I am thought of, in most quarters, these days, as right-wing. That is a gross simplification. It is an attempt by the powers-that-be, of both major political camps, in league with the media, to defuse my efforts; the Illuminati understand that a third political party, not beholden to the bankers and the mobsters, with a real candidate, not some rehearsed synthetic one, threatens their stranglehold on America, on the world.”
“Mr. Freed . . .”
“I have a ten-year plan, Mr. Quarry,” he said, and his voice, his presence, added up to something persuasive, despite the loony tunes text. “I must keep it, or humanity is doomed. It is unlikely—though not impossible—that I will secure the Presidency this year; but in the following election, I can and must win—and global alliances are but a step away.”
“Yeah, right. Look . . .”
“I’m keeping this simple, Mr. Quarry, because you say you are not political. But you live in a world, a society, controlled by politics. What is politics but human relationships? Make love not war, we once said; but both are politics!”
“Right. What about George Ridge?”
He looked out the window into darkness. “We were great friends. You must understand that my political adventure began in the sixties—in Far Left groups; you may recall the SDS, where both George and I were quite active, where George and I met, in fact. But the SDS seemed to us not to be accomplishing its stated goals, and we broke away. This was at Berkeley, where we formed Strikeforce Freedom, to weed out the leftist groups who were only paying lip service to the cause.”
“How did you weed them out exactly?”
“We armed ourselves,” he said matter of factly. “Not with guns: nothing more lethal than a length of pipe or a chain. It was an important moment, because our people understood that rhetoric wasn’t enough. You had to stand and fight.”
“Is that your idea of politics? Violent overthrow of the government?”
“It was then, in those more innocent days,” he said, smiling, as if discussing a childish phase he’d once gone through. “My roots were in Communism, socialism . . . but I moved on to embrace larger, wider ideals.”
Such as bilking old people out of their savings, I supposed, thinking of the phone scam I’d witnessed in progress at his campaign HQ. Well, that was his business.
I said, “So what are you saying? Ridge maintained his left-wing leanings, while you moved to the right?”
“I am neither right nor left. The Democratic Action party embraces disaffected Republicans and Democrats alike; we have a goodly number of former Ku Klux Klan in our ranks, standing shoulder to shoulder with former SDS. I favor a free-energy economy, and an end to reactionary oligarchs and financiers . . .”
“That’s just peachy keen. But getting back to Ridge—you seem more disappointed than surprised that he’s behind this.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he said, with a world-weary smile that quickly disappeared. “And I doubt he represents any group. I think this is personal. He feels I’ve betrayed him—and he has obviously betrayed me.”
I put my hand up in a stop gesture. “I don’t think we can operate from the assumption he’s alone. He may well represent a group—and if he does, you need to know.”
“What about this assassin? Your replacement?”
“I know him. How he works, how he thinks. He won’t, I don’t think, hit you here at home—although you need to expand and improve your security, obviously. But this guy, he’ll do it when you’re out and about. Out among the public.”
“During my primary campaign,” he said, tensing, stopping in front of me. “I make my first public appearance this Tuesday morning. I’ve set up a press conference at the Blackhawk Hotel—which will be well attended by the national media . . .”
“When Ridge came to see me,” I said, “he specifically mentioned that press conference. If that’s when the hit’s going down, we don’t have much time.”
“What should we do? What can we do?”
I was a little out of my element; a political hit differed drastically from the work I had done, which invariably involved a two-man team, staking out the victim well before the hit, a methodical approach that went out the window when dealing with a sheltered national figure who would present himself as a target only at public events like the coming press conference.
“We’ll start with Ridge,” I said. “I’ll deal with him myself.”
“You sound sure of yourself.”
“I am. I’ll need some details about the man before I go; where he lives, anything about his habits—I already know where his office is. But anything that might be useful.”
“I can certainly help you on that score. Could Ridge lead you to the assassin?”
“Possibly. Probably. But Ridge
doesn’t get back in the country till Monday night. So—if Tuesday’s press conference is really it, we’ll have to alert your security staff, just in case I haven’t been able to shut this thing down by then.”
“But you intend to try?”
“Of course. Like I said, I know the man who took the contract. He’s a pro—very good at what he does; stopping him will not be easy—once put in motion, well . . . but I know him. I worked with him. That’s to our advantage. And I may be able to use what I know about him to find him beforehand; if we’re right about Tuesday morning, he’s probably already in town.”
He sat in the chair next to me and thought. He smelled of musky cologne. The big house was silent. Well, a clock was ticking someplace, but that was about it.
“Let me suggest something,” Freed said, finally, with a sly smile, a fairly demented twinkle in the blue eyes.
“Yeah?”
He lifted a gently lecturing forefinger. “Don’t attempt to deal with this assassin until he tries something . . .”
“What?”
“Let him be shot down in the attempt on my life.”
“Are you crazy?” Stupid question.
“It would have excellent publicity value,” he said. “I would be taken seriously, immediately. The current administration’s failure to provide me with Secret Service bodyguards would create a scandal. The eyes of America, the world, would be tightly focused on Preston Freed.”
I hate it when people talk about themselves in the third person.
“That would be a very dangerous game,” I said.
“Would it? But if we knew he were coming . . .”
“We could half-bake a cake. No, I won’t play that game, Freed. It’s too dangerous. For all concerned.”
He shrugged. “All right. It’s just a suggestion. But I’ll say this: if you feel you could arrange it in that fashion, I could see my way clear to offering a second bonus. Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
That was impressive. Not as impressive as a million dollars, but impressive enough for me to say, “I’ll think it over.”
He extended his hand. “Good. I must say you’re a very brave man, Mr. Quarry, storming my citadel as you’ve done.”
I shook the hand; it was firm, not sweating at all. He had his share of stones, too, willing to go on the firing line just to get some publicity. Or maybe it was the coke and the booze making him brave.
“I’ll give you my private phone number,” he said, and went to the bar and scribbled it on a pad. He tore off the sheet and handed it to me, saying, “Day or night. If we need to meet . . .”
“We will. I may want to brief your security people—just those involved with press conference security. You’ll have to introduce me as a security expert or something. We’ll work that out. Oh, and I made contact with your campaign manager. He’ll be mentioning me to you—Jack Ryan, the name will be—he’ll say I want a private meeting, in return for a sizable contribution. But one way or another, I want immediate acceptance as an insider with the campaign.”
“Done,” he said. “How do I contact you?”
“You don’t. I contact you. And I don’t want to be followed. If any of your people follow me, I’ll just disappear and you’ll be on your own. And you wouldn’t want that.”
“No I wouldn’t.” He sighed, shook his head. Even for a man like Preston Freed, this had been a lot to absorb. “What now?”
“Fill me in a little more on Ridge. Then you’re going to pick out one of your bodyguards for me to uncuff, to have drive me back to my car.”
“Christ, I hadn’t thought about them! How do I explain you to ’em?”
“I’m a security expert, remember?”
“Ah, yes . . .”
“Tonight, I was just a little test you were giving ’em,” I said. “To see how secure your ‘citadel’ really was.”
“A test,” he said, smiling, liking it.
“Yeah,” I said. “And they flunked.”
13
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I WAS RUNNING a little late; it was 10:35 and I hadn’t had time to change my clothes and was still wearing the black windbreaker, turtleneck and slacks. The holstered nine-millimeter and the stun gun and such were in the Sunbird’s trunk. I might have smelled a little raunchy, too—I’m not particularly nervous by nature, but I do sweat, particularly when I storm citadels.
But storming that citadel and briefing its potentate had taken all evening, and when I picked her up at the Embers, where she was sitting at the bar with an empty martini glass in front of her, pretty legs crossed, now all in white, Angela Jordan was a little irritated and marginally pie-eyed. She lifted an eyebrow at the young blond bartender and played with her martini glass, then looked at me and smirked and said, “What’s this? A ninja?”
The bar was still doing some business and people out in the dining area were lingering over meals. The fish from the Amazon was still travelling back and forth in his little kingdom, nibbling goldfish.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “Fell asleep back at the hotel.”
And that was all the explanation it took.
“Aw, no problem,” she said, and smiled without smirkiness. “Sorry I greeted ya with a smartass remark.” She was a good-natured kid. She slid off the stool and I gave her my arm. She needed a little steadying. She wasn’t sloshed, but just the same I said, “Why don’t we take my car?”
“Good idea. Let’s see how she runs.”
“She runs fine,” I said, as we strolled out into the brisk night air. “You wouldn’t sell me a lemon, would you?”
She hugged my arm. “Not to you,” she said, like we were old pals. Lovers, even.
I didn’t know if I was game for that. I hadn’t made this little rendezvous because I was looking to get laid. I supposed someday sex would interest me again, but with Linda gone, the thought of it seemed pretty abstract right now.
But I needed to get close to this lovely, lonely divorcee. She knew all the principals: Best, Freed, and (having worked for Freed) presumably Ridge, even the late Mr. Werner. I might get some information. I might get some insights. It was my best option right now.
“Sorry I look so informal,” I said, behind the wheel, exiting the Embers’ lot.
“I don’t mind,” she said, settled comfortably in the bucket seat.
“Would you like to get a bite to eat?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Something to drink?”
“That’d be nice. How ’bout my place?”
“Your place?”
“My house. The girls are with my mom. She takes ’em on the weekend, Friday and Saturday nights, that is. Between the restaurant and the car lot, I work most of the weekend. It’s better for the girls.”
“That’d be nice. If I’m not imposing.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said.
“You’ll have to guide me. I don’t know my way around the Cities all that well.”
“Head over to Davenport and go up Brady Street. It’s a housing addition way out past the shopping malls and everything.”
“Okay,” I said, and pretty soon I looked over and she was slumped against the door, sleeping. Snoring a bit.
I didn’t figure it was that she’d had all that much to drink. More that she was just bone tired, working two jobs to support her little family. It sort of pissed me off that her husband wasn’t paying his share. There’s a lot of lowlifes in this world.
We’d just glided past a shopping center called Brady Eighty, with signs signaling Interstate 80 up ahead, when I nudged her awake.
She sat up with a start and was immediately embarrassed. “Oh, Jack, I’m sorry . . . really . . .”
“Don’t worry about it. You work hard. You get tired. You’re entitled.”
She rubbed one eye with the heel of a hand, smiled in a crinkly fashion. “You’re r
eally very nice.”
“Yeah, I hear that all the time.”
“It’s right up here.”
“What?”
“The Hastings addition. Where I live. Just to your right.”
I made a turn into well-lit, well-tended, split-level suburbia. The houses were good size, but fairly close together. It took money to live in this neighborhood, but these people weren’t wealthy. Not, say, in the Victor Werner sense. Of course these people were alive, which is something they had over Werner.
She directed me into the driveway of a two-tone green split-level and I parked, got out, opened her door, gave her my arm and walked her up the curving sidewalk with its occasional steps. She wasn’t drunk by any means; but she was tired, and she’d had a few. She fumbled for her keys and then we were inside.
The entryway was a landing between floors; the lower floor, from what I could see of it, seemed to be a family room. I followed her up the open stairs half a flight into the plush living room. This was definitely the home of somebody who grew up lower middle-class and came into a little money. It had that would-be classy look of an above-average motel. Lots of massive Mediterranean furniture, drapes gathered with tassels, sofas and chairs of green and red with crushed velvet cushions, sculptured green carpet. Coats of arms and reproductions of Rembrandts and such on the walls. It was the home of somebody who used to bowl but now golfs.
I followed her through the living room into a smaller, stone-and-brick room; it had a warm look, lots of rusts and golds and browns.
“You know how to make a fire?” she asked, getting behind the bar.
I looked over at the stone fireplace. “Sure. You don’t have any wood, though.”
“You’ll have to go outside and get some.”
“Uh, chop it or . . .”
“No, silly,” she said, stirring a pitcher of martinis, “it’s piled just outside on the patio. Through those glass doors.”
I went outside into the chilly night. I breathed deep. Closed my eyes. Swallowed. Then I picked up an armload of firewood and went in and made a fire.
“What would you like?” she asked, as she poured herself a martini.
“Do you have a Coke? Diet, preferably.”
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