Beck didn’t say anything. Neither did Duke. They looked irritated, but they weren’t going to object. I kept my hands in my pockets and walked back. Doll turned and led me through the secretarial pen and into the back office. Through another door and into a glass-walled cubicle inside the warehouse itself. I could see a forklift on the warehouse floor and steel racks loaded with rugs. The racks were easily twenty feet high and the rugs were all tightly rolled and tied with string. The cubicle had a personnel door to the outside and a metal desk with a computer on it. The desk chair was worn out. Dirty yellow foam showed through at every seam. Doll sat down on it and looked up at me and moved his mouth into the approximate shape of a smile. I stood sideways at the end of the desk and looked down on him.
“What?” I said.
“See this computer?” he said. “It’s got taps into every Department of Motor Vehicles in the country.”
“So?”
“So I can check license plates.”
I said nothing. He took a handgun out of his pocket. A neat move, fast and fluid. But then, it was a good pocket gun. It was a Soviet-era PSM, which is a small automatic pistol built as smooth and slim as possible, so it won’t snag on clothing. It uses weird Russian ammunition, which is hard to get. It has a safety catch at the rear of the slide. Doll’s was in the forward position. I couldn’t remember whether that represented safe or fire.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“I want to confirm something with you,” he said. “Before I go public with it and move myself up a rung or two.”
There was silence.
“How would you do that?” I asked.
“By telling them an extra little thing they don’t know about yet,” he said. “Maybe I’ll even earn myself a nice big bonus. Like, maybe I’ll get the five grand they earmarked for you.”
I pressed the Glock’s trigger lock in my pocket. Glanced to my left. I could see all the way through to the back office window. Beck and Duke were standing by the Cadillac. They had their backs to me. They were forty feet away. Too close.
“I dumped the Maxima for you,” Doll said.
“Where?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. Then he smiled again.
“What?” I said again.
“You stole it, right? At random, from a shopping mall.”
“So?”
“It had Massachusetts plates,” he said. “They were phony. No such number has ever been issued.”
Mistakes, coming back to haunt me. I said nothing.
“So I checked the VIN,” he said. “The vehicle identification number. All cars have them. On a little metal plate, top of the dash.”
“I know,” I said.
“It came back as a Maxima,” he said. “So far, so good. But it was registered in New York. To a bad boy who was arrested five weeks ago. By the government.”
I said nothing.
“You want to explain all that?” he said.
I didn’t answer.
“Maybe they’ll let me waste you myself,” he said. “I might enjoy that.”
“You think?”
“I’ve wasted people before,” he said, like he had something to prove.
“How many?” I said.
“Enough.”
I glanced through the back office window. Let go of the Glock and took my hands out of my pockets, empty.
“The New York DMV list must be out-of-date,” I said. “It was an old car. Could have been sold out of state a year ago. You check the authentication code?”
“Where?”
“Top of the screen, on the right. It needs to have the right numbers in it to be up-to-date. I was a military cop. I’ve been in the New York DMV system more times than you have.”
“I hate MPs,” he said.
I watched his gun.
“I don’t care who you hate,” I said. “I’m just telling you I know how those systems work. And that I’ve made the same mistake. More than once.”
He was quiet for a beat.
“That’s bullshit,” he said.
Now I smiled.
“So go ahead,” I said. “Embarrass yourself. No skin off my nose.”
He sat still for a long moment. Then he swapped the gun from his right hand to his left and got busy with the mouse. He tried to keep one eye on me while he clicked and scrolled. I moved a little, like I was interested in the screen. The New York DMV search page came up. I moved a little more, around behind his shoulder. He entered what must have been the Maxima’s original plate number, apparently from memory. He hit search now. The screen redrew. I moved again, like I was all set to prove him wrong.
“Where?” he asked.
“Right there,” I said, and started to point at the monitor. But I was pointing with both hands and all ten fingers and they didn’t make it to the screen. My right hand stopped at his neck. My left took the gun out of his left. It dropped on the floor and sounded exactly like a pound of steel hitting a plywood board covered with linoleum. I kept my eyes on the office window. Beck and Duke still had their backs to me. I got both hands around Doll’s neck and squeezed. He thrashed around wildly. Fought back. I shifted my grip. The chair fell over under him. I squeezed harder. Watched the window. Beck and Duke were just standing there. Their backs to me. Their breath was misting in front of them. Doll started clawing at my wrists. I squeezed harder still. His tongue came out of his mouth. Then he did the smart thing and gave up on my wrists and reached up behind him and went for my eyes. I pulled my head back and hooked one hand under his jaw and put the other flat against the side of his head. Wrenched his jaw hard to the right and smashed his head downward to the left and broke his neck.
I stood the chair upright again and pushed it in neatly behind the desk. Picked up his gun and ejected the magazine. It was full. Eight bottle-necked 5.45 millimeter Soviet Pistol shells. They’re roughly the same size as a .22, and they’re slow, but they’re supposed to hit pretty hard. Soviet security forces were supposed to be happy enough with them. I checked the chamber. There was a round in it. I checked the action. It had been set to fire. I reassembled the whole thing and left it cocked and locked. Put it in my left-hand pocket.
Then I went through his clothes. He had all the usual stuff. A wallet, a cell phone, a money clip without much money in it, a big bunch of keys. I left it all there. Opened the rear personnel door to the outside and checked the view. Beck and Duke were now hidden from me by the corner of the building. I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see me. There was nobody else around. I walked over to Doll’s Lincoln and opened the driver’s door. Found the trunk release. The latch popped quietly and the lid rose an inch. I went back inside and dragged the body out by the collar. Opened the trunk all the way and heaved it inside. Latched the lid down gently and closed the driver’s door. Glanced at my watch. The five minutes were up. I would have to finish the garbage disposal later. I walked back through the glass cubicle, through the back office, through the secretarial pen, through the front door, and outside. Beck and Duke heard me and turned around. Beck looked cold and annoyed by the delay. I thought: so why stand still for it? Duke was shivering a little and his eyes were watering and he was yawning. He looked exactly like a guy who hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours. I thought: I see a triple benefit in that.
“I’ll drive,” I said. “If you want.”
He hesitated. Said nothing.
“You know I can drive,” I said. “You just had me driving all day. I did what you wanted. Doll told you all about it.”
He said nothing.
“Was it another test?” I asked.
“You found the bug,” he said.
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“You might have acted different if you hadn’t found the bug.”
“Why would I? I just wanted to get back here, fast and safe. I was exposed, ten straight hours. It was no fun for me. I’ve got more to lose than you, whatever you’re into.”
He said nothing to that
.
“Your call,” I said, like I didn’t care.
He hesitated a fraction more and then exhaled and handed me the keys. That was the first benefit. There’s something symbolic about handing over a set of keys. It’s about trust and inclusion. It moved me closer to the center of their circle. Made me less of an outsider. And it was a big bunch of keys. There were house keys and office keys as well as the car keys. Maybe a dozen keys in total. A lot of metal. A big symbol. Beck watched the whole transaction and made no comment about it. Just turned away and settled himself in the back of the car. Duke dumped himself in the passenger seat. I got in the driver’s seat and started the engine. Arranged my coat around me so that both of the guns in my pockets were resting in my lap. I was ready to pull them out and use them if a cell phone rang. It was a fifty-fifty chance that the next call these guys got would be because someone had found Doll’s body. Therefore the next call these guys got would also be their last. I was happy with odds of six hundred or six thousand to one, but fifty-fifty was a little too rich for me.
But no phones rang the whole way home. I drove smoothly and gently and found all the right roads. I turned east toward the Atlantic. It was already full dark out there. I came up on the palm-shaped promontory and drove out onto the rock finger and aimed straight for the house. The lights were blazing all along the top of the wall. The razor wire glittered. Paulie was waiting to open the gate. He glared at me as I drove past. I ignored him and hustled up the driveway and stopped on the carriage circle right next to the door. Beck got straight out. Duke shook himself awake and followed him.
“Where do I put the car?” I asked.
“In the garage, asshole,” he said. “Around the side.”
That was the second benefit. I was going to get five minutes alone.
I looped all the way around the carriage circle again and headed down the south side of the house. The garage block stood on its own inside a small walled courtyard. It had probably been a stable back when the house was built. It had granite cobblestones in front of it and a vented cupola on the roof to let the smell out. The horse stalls had been knocked together to make four garages. The hayloft had been converted into an apartment. I guessed the quiet mechanic lived up there.
The garage on the left-hand end had its door open and was standing empty. I drove the Cadillac inside and killed the motor. It was gloomy in there. There were shelves filled with the kind of junk that piles up in a garage. There were oil cans and buckets and old bottles of wax polish. There was an electric tire compressor and a pile of used rags. I put the keys in my pocket and slid out of the seat. Listened for the sound of a phone in the house. Nothing. I strolled over and checked the rags. Picked up a thing the size of a hand towel. It was dark with grime and dirt and oil. I used it to wipe an imaginary spot off the Cadillac’s front fender. Glanced around. Nobody there. I wrapped Doll’s PSM and Duffy’s Glock and her two spare magazines in the rag. Put the whole bundle under my coat. It might have been possible to get the guns into the house. Maybe. I could have gone in the back door and let the metal detector beep and looked puzzled for a second and then pulled out the big bunch of keys. I could have held them up like they explained everything. A classic piece of misdirection. It might have worked. Maybe. It would depend on their level of suspicion. But whatever, getting the guns out of the house again would have been very difficult. Assuming there were no panic phone calls anytime soon the chances were I would be leaving with Beck or Duke or both in the normal way and there was no guarantee I would have the keys again. So I had a choice. Take a chance, or play it safe? My decision was to play it safe and keep the firepower outside.
I walked out of the garage courtyard and wandered around toward the back of the house. Stopped at the corner of the courtyard wall. Stood still for a second and then turned ninety degrees and followed the wall out toward the rocks like I wanted to take a look at the ocean. It was still calm. There was a long oily swell coming in from the southeast. The water looked black and infinitely deep. I gazed at it for a moment and then ducked down and put the wrapped guns in a little dip tight against the wall. There were scrawny weeds growing there. Somebody would have to trip over them to find them.
I strolled back, hunched into my coat, trying to look like a reflective guy getting a couple of minutes’ peace. It was quiet. The shore birds were gone. It was too dark for them. They would be safe in their roosts. I turned around and headed for the back door. Went in through the porch and into the kitchen. The metal detector beeped. Duke and the mechanic guy and the cook all turned to look at me. I paused a beat and pulled out the keys. Held them up. They looked away. I walked in and dropped the keys on the table in front of Duke. He left them there.
The third benefit of Duke’s exhaustion unfolded steadily all the way through dinner. He could barely stay awake. He didn’t say a word. The kitchen was warm and steamy and we ate the kind of food that would put anybody to sleep. We had thick soup and steak and potatoes. There was a lot of it. The plates were piled high. The cook was working like a production line. There was a spare plate with a whole portion of everything just sitting untouched on a counter. Maybe somebody was in the habit of eating twice.
I ate fast and kept my ears open for the phone. I figured I could grab the car keys and be outside before the first ring finished. Inside the Cadillac before the second. Halfway down the drive before the third. I could smash through the gate. I could run Paulie over. But the phone didn’t ring. There was no sound in the house at all, except people chewing. There was no coffee. I was on the point of taking that personally. I like coffee. I drank water instead. It came from the faucet over the sink and tasted like chlorine. The maid came in from the family dining room before I finished my second glass. She walked over to where I was sitting, awkward in her unfashionable shoes. She was shy. She looked Irish, like she had just come all the way from Connemara to Boston and couldn’t find a job down there.
“Mr. Beck wants to see you,” she said.
It was only the second time I had heard her speak. She sounded a little Irish, too. Her cardigan was wrapped tight around her.
“Now?” I asked.
“I think so,” she said.
He was waiting for me in the square room with the oak dining table where I had played Russian roulette for him.
“The Toyota was from Hartford, Connecticut,” he said. “Angel Doll traced the plate this morning.”
“No front plates in Connecticut,” I said, because I had to say something.
“We know the owners,” he said.
There was silence. I stared straight at him. It took me a fraction of a second just to understand him.
“How do you know them?” I asked.
“We have a business relationship.”
“In the rug trade?”
“The nature of the relationship needn’t concern you.”
“Who are they?”
“That needn’t concern you either,” he said.
I said nothing.
“But there’s a problem,” he said. “The people you described aren’t the people who own the truck.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded. “You described them as tall and fair. The guys who own the truck are Spanish. Small and dark.”
“So who were the guys I saw?” I asked, because I had to ask something.
“Two possibilities,” he said. “One, maybe somebody stole their truck.”
“Or?”
“Two, maybe they expanded their personnel.”
“Either one is possible,” I said.
He shook his head. “Not the first. I called them. There was no answer. So I asked around. They’ve disappeared. No reason why they should disappear just because someone stole their truck.”
“So they expanded their roster.”
He nodded. “And decided to bite the hand that feeds them.”
I said nothing.
“Are you certain they used Uzis?” he asked.
“That’s w
hat I saw,” I said.
“Not MP5Ks?”
“No,” I said. I looked away. No comparison. Not even close. The MP5K is a short Heckler & Koch submachine gun designed early in the 1970s. It has two big fat handles molded from expensive plastic. It looks very futuristic. Like a movie prop. Next to it an Uzi looks like something hammered together by a blind man in his basement.
“No question,” I said.
“No possibility the kidnap was random?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Million to one.”
He nodded again.
“So they’ve declared war,” he said. “And they’ve gone to ground. They’re hiding out somewhere.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I have no idea.”
There was silence. No sound from the sea. The swells came and went inaudibly.
“Are you going to try to find them?” I asked.
“You bet your ass,” Beck said.
Duke was waiting for me in the kitchen. He was angry and impatient. He wanted to take me upstairs and get me locked down for the night. I didn’t protest. A locked door with no inside keyhole is a very good alibi.
“Tomorrow, six-thirty,” he said. “Back on duty.”
I listened hard and heard the lock click and waited for his footsteps to recede. Then I got busy with my shoe. There was a message waiting. It was from Duffy: back OK? I hit reply and typed: Bring a car one mile short of the house. Leave it there with key on seat. Quiet approach, no lights.
I hit send. There was a short delay. I guessed she was using a laptop. She would be waiting in her motel room with it plugged in and switched on. It would go: Bing! You’ve Got Mail!
She came back with: Why? When?
I sent: Don’t ask. Midnight.
There was a long delay. Then she sent: OK.
I sent: Retrieve it six am, stealthy.
She replied: OK.
I sent: Beck knows the Toyota owners.
Ninety painful seconds later she came back with: How?
I sent: quote business relationship unquote.
She asked: Specifics?
Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16] Page 269