by Lee Child
He shook his head.
“But?”
“I think he’s OK.”
“You think or you know?”
He didn’t answer, because the waitress came by. The same woman from the morning. I was too hungry to be sensitive about whether or not Jake was going to eat. I ordered a big platter, tuna salad with eggs and a bunch of other stuff. Plus coffee to drink. Jake followed my lead and got a grilled cheese sandwich and water.
I said, “Tell me what happened.”
He said, “The campus cops helped me out. They were happy to. Peter’s a football star. He wasn’t home. So they rousted his buddies and got the story. Turns out Peter is away somewhere with a woman.”
“Where?”
“We don’t know.”
“What woman?”
“A girl from a bar. Peter and the guys were out four nights ago. The girl was in the place. Peter left with her.”
I said nothing.
Jake said, “What?”
I asked, “Who picked up who?”
He nodded. “This is what makes me feel OK. He did all the work. His buddies said it was a four-hour project. He had to put everything into it. Like a championship game, the guys said. So it wasn’t Mata Hari or anything.”
“Description?”
“A total babe. And these are jocks talking, so they mean it. A little older, but not much. Maybe twenty-five or -six. You’re a college senior, that’s an irresistible challenge, right there.”
“Name?”
Jake shook his head. “The others kept their distance. It’s an etiquette thing.”
“Their regular place?”
“On their circuit.”
“Hooker? Decoy?”
“No way. These guys get around. They ain’t dumb. They can tell. And Peter did all the work, anyway. Four hours, everything he had ever learned.”
“It would have been over in four minutes if she had wanted it to be.”
Jake nodded again. “Believe me, I’ve been through it a hundred times. Any funny business, an hour would have been enough to make it look kosher. Two, tops. Nobody would stretch it to four. So it’s OK. More than OK, from Peter’s point of view. Four days with a total babe? What were you doing when you were twenty-two?”
“I hear you,” I said. When I was twenty-two I had the same kind of priorities. Although a four-day relationship would have seemed long to me. Practically like engagement, or marriage.
Jake said, “But?”
“Susan was delayed four hours on the Turnpike. I’m wondering what kind of a deadline could have passed, to make a mother feel like killing herself.”
“Peter’s OK. Don’t worry about it. He’ll be home soon, weak at the knees but happy.”
I said nothing more. The waitress came by with the food. It looked pretty good, and there was a lot of it. Jake asked, “Did the private guys find you?”
I nodded and told him the story between forkfuls of tuna.
He said, “They knew your name? That’s not good.”
“Not ideal, no. And they knew I talked to Susan on the train.”
“How?”
“They’re ex-cops. They’ve still got friends on the job. No other explanation.”
“Lee and Docherty?”
“Maybe. Or maybe some day guy who came in and read the file.”
“And they took your picture? That’s not good, either.”
“Not ideal,” I said again.
“Any sign of this other crew they were talking about?” he asked.
I checked the window and said, “So far, nothing.”
“What else?”
“John Sansom isn’t exaggerating about his career. He seems to have done nothing very special. And that kind of a claim isn’t really worth refuting.”
“Dead end, then.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “He was a major. That’s one automatic promotion plus two on merit. He must have done something they liked. I was a major too. I know how it works.”
“What did you do that they liked?”
“Something they regretted later, probably.”
“Length of service,” Jake said. “You stick around, you get promoted.”
I shook my head. “That’s not how it works. Plus this guy won three of the top four medals available to him, one of them twice. So he must have done something special. Four somethings, in fact.”
“Everybody gets medals.”
“Not those medals. I got a Silver Star myself, which is pocket change to this guy, and I know for a fact they don’t fall out of the box with the breakfast cereal. And I got a Purple Heart too, which Sansom apparently didn’t. He doesn’t mention one in his book. And no politician would forget about a wound in action. Not in a million years. But it’s relatively unusual to win a gallantry medal without a wound. Normally the two things go hand in hand.”
“So maybe he’s bullshitting about the medals.”
I shook my head again. “Can’t be done. Maybe with a combat pip on a Vietnam ribbon, something like that, but these are heavy-duty awards. This guy’s got everything except the Medal of Honor.”
“So?”
“So I think he is bullshitting about his career, but in reverse. He’s leaving stuff out, not putting stuff in.”
“Why would he?”
“Because he was on at least four secret missions, and he still can’t talk about them. Which makes them very secret indeed, because the guy is in the middle of an election campaign, and the urge to talk must be huge.”
“What kind of secret missions?”
“Could be anything. Black ops, covert actions, against anybody.”
“So maybe Susan was asked for details.”
“Impossible,” I said. “Delta’s orders and operational logs and after-action reports aren’t anywhere near HRC. They’re either destroyed or locked up for sixty years at Fort Bragg. No disrespect, but your sister couldn’t have gotten within a million miles of them.”
“So how does this help us?”
“It eliminates Sansom’s combat career, that’s how. If Sansom is involved at all, it’s in some other capacity.”
“Is he involved?”
“Why else would his name have been mentioned?”
“What capacity?”
I put my fork down and drained my cup and said, “I don’t want to stay in here. It’s ground zero for this other crew. It’s the first place they’ll check.”
I left a tip on the table and headed for the register. This time the waitress was pleased. We were in and out in record time.
Manhattan is both the best and the worst place in the world to be hunted. The best, because it is teeming with people, and every square yard of it has literally hundreds of witnesses all around. The worst, because it is teeming with people, and you have to check each and every one of them, just in case, which is tiring, and frustrating, and fatiguing, and which eventually drives you crazy, or makes you lazy. So for the sake of convenience we went back to West 35th and walked the shady side of the street, up and down opposite the row of parked cop cars, which seemed like the safest stretch of sidewalk in the city.
“What capacity?” Jake asked again.
“What did you tell me were the reasons behind the suicides you saw in Jersey?”
“Financial or sexual.”
“And Sansom didn’t make his money in the army.”
“You think he was having an affair with Susan?”
“Possible,” I said. “He could have met her at work. He’s the kind of guy who is always in and out of the place. Photo opportunities, stuff like that.”
“He’s married.”
“Exactly. And it’s election season.”
“I don’t see it. Susan wasn’t like that. So suppose he wasn’t having an affair with her.”
“Then maybe he was having one with another HRC staffer, and Susan was a witness.”
“I still don’t see it.”
“Me either,” I said. “Because I don’t see how information would b
e involved. Information is a big word. An affair is a yes-no answer.”
“Maybe Susan was working with Sansom. Not against him. Maybe Sansom wanted dirt on someone else.”
“Then why would Susan come to New York, instead of D.C. or North Carolina?”
Jake said, “I don’t know.”
“And why would Sansom ask Susan for anything, anyway? He’s got a hundred better sources than an HRC clerk he didn’t know.”
“So where’s the connection?”
“Maybe Sansom had an affair long ago, with someone else, when he was still in the army.”
“He wasn’t married then.”
“But there were rules. Maybe he was banging a subordinate. That resonates now, in politics.”
“Did that happen?”
“All the time,” I said.
“To you?”
“As often as possible. Both ways around. Sometimes I was the subordinate.”
“Did you get in trouble?”
“Not then. But there would be questions now, if I was running for office.”
“So you think there are rumors about Sansom, and Susan was asked to confirm them?”
“She couldn’t confirm the behavior. That kind of stuff is in a different set of files. But maybe she could confirm that person A and person B served in the same place at the same time. That’s exactly what HRC is good for.”
“So maybe Lila Hoth was in the army with him. Maybe someone is trying to link the two names, for a big scandal.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It all sounds pretty good. But I’ve got a local tough guy too scared to talk to the NYPD, and I’ve got all kinds of dire threats, and I’ve got a story about some barbarian crew ready to slip the leash. Politics is a dirty business, but is it that bad?”
Jake didn’t answer.
I said, “And we don’t know where Peter is.”
“Don’t worry about Peter. He’s a grown-up. He’s a defensive tackle. He’s going to the NFL. He’s three hundred pounds of muscle. He can take care of himself. Remember the name. Peter Molina. One day you’re going to read about him in the paper.”
“But not soon, I hope.”
“Relax.”
I said, “So what do you want to do now?”
Jake shrugged and stumped around, up and down on the sidewalk, an inarticulate man further stymied by the complexity of his emotions. He stopped, and leaned on a wall, directly across the street from the 14th Precinct’s door. He looked at all the parked vehicles, left to right, the Impalas and the Crown Vics, marked and unmarked, and the strange little traffic carts.
“She’s dead,” he said. “Nothing is going to bring her back.”
I didn’t speak.
“So I’m going to call the funeral director,” he said.
“And then?”
“Nothing. She shot herself. Knowing the reason won’t help. Most of the time you never really know the reason, anyway. Even when you think you do.”
I said, “I want to know the reason.”
“Why? She was my sister, not yours.”
“You didn’t see it happen.”
He said nothing. Just gazed at the parked cars opposite. I saw the vehicle that Theresa Lee had used. It was fourth from the left. One of the unmarked Crown Vics farther along the row was newer than the others. Shinier. It winked in the sun. It was black, with two short thin antennas on the trunk lid, like needles. Federal, I thought. Some big-budget agency with the pick of the litter when it came to transportation choices. And communications devices.
Jake said, “I’m going to tell her family, and we’re going to bury her, and we’re going to move on. Life’s a bitch and then you die. Maybe there’s a reason we don’t care how or where or why. Better not to know. No good can come of it. Just more pain. Just something bad about to hit the fan.”
“Your choice,” I said.
He nodded and said nothing more. Just shook my hand and moved away. I saw him walk into a garage on the block west of Ninth, and four minutes later I saw a small green Toyota SUV drive out. It went west with the traffic. I guessed he was heading for the Lincoln Tunnel, and home. I wondered when I would see him again. Between three days and a week, I thought.
I was wrong.
Chapter 19
I was still directly across the street from the 14th Precinct’s door when Theresa Lee came out with two guys in blue suits and white button-down shirts. She looked tired. She had caught the call at two in the morning, which put her on the night watch, so she should have quit around seven and been home in bed by eight. She was way into overtime. Good for her bank balance, not so good for anything else. She stood in the sunlight and blinked and stretched and then she saw me on the far sidewalk and did a classic double take. She smacked the guy next to her on the elbow and said something and pointed straight at me. I was too far away to hear her words, but her body language screamed, Hey, that’s him right there, with a big exclamation point in the vehemence of her physical gesture.
The guys in the suits automatically checked left for traffic, which told me they were based in town. Odd-numbered streets run east to west, even numbers run west to east. They knew that, in their bones. Therefore they were local. But they were more used to driving than walking, because they didn’t check for bicycle messengers coming the wrong way. They just hustled across the street, dodging cars, scrambling, splitting up and coming at me from the left and the right simultaneously, which told me they were field-trained to some degree, and in a hurry. I guessed the Crown Vic with the needle antennas was theirs. I stood in the shade and waited for them. They had black shoes and blue ties and their undershirts showed through at the neck, white under white. The left sides of their suit coats bulged more than the right. Right-handed agents with shoulder holsters. They were late thirties, early forties. In their prime. Not rookies, not out to pasture.
They saw that I wasn’t going anywhere, so they slowed up a little and approached me at a fast walk. FBI, I thought, closer to cops than paramilitaries. They didn’t show me ID. They just assumed I knew what they were.
“We need to talk to you,” the left-hand guy said.
“I know,” I said.
“How?”
“Because you just ran through traffic to get here.”
“Do you know why?”
“No idea. Unless it’s to offer me counseling because of my traumatic experience.”
The guy’s mouth set in an impatient scowl, like he was ready to bawl me out for my sarcasm. Then his expression changed a little to a wry smile, and he said, “OK, here’s my counsel. Answer some questions and then forget you were ever on that train.”
“What train?”
The guy started to reply, and then stopped, late to catch on that I was yanking his chain, and embarrassed about looking slow.
I said, “What questions?”
He asked, “What’s your phone number?”
I said, “I don’t have a phone number.”
“Not even a cell?”
“Especially not even,” I said.
“Really?”
“I’m that guy,” I said. “Congratulations. You found me.”
“What guy?”
“The only guy in the world who doesn’t have a cell phone.”
“Are you Canadian?”
“Why would I be Canadian?”
“The detective told us you speak French.”
“Lots of people speak French. There’s a whole country in Europe.”
“Are you French?”
“My mother was.”
“When were you last in Canada?”
“I don’t recall. Years ago, probably.”
“You sure?”
“Pretty much.”
“You got any Canadian friends or associates?”
“No.”
The guy went quiet. Theresa Lee was still on the sidewalk outside the 14th Precinct’s door. She was standing in the sun and watching us from across the street. The other guy said, “It was
just a suicide on a train. Upsetting, but no big deal. Shit happens. Are we clear?”
I said, “Are we done?”
“Did she give you anything?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Completely. Are we done?”
The guy asked, “You got plans?”
“I’m leaving town.”
“Heading where?”
“Someplace else.”
The guy nodded. “OK, we’re done. Now beat it.”
I stayed where I was. I let them walk away, back to their car. They got in and waited for a gap in the traffic and eased out and drove away. I guessed they would take the West Side Highway all the way downtown, back to their desks.
Theresa Lee was still on the sidewalk.
I crossed the street and threaded between two parked blue-and-white prowl cars and stepped up on the curb and stood near her, far enough away to be respectful, close enough to be heard, facing the building so I wouldn’t have the sun in my eyes. I asked, “What was that all about?”
She said, “They found Susan Mark’s car. It was parked way down in SoHo. It was towed this morning.”
“And?”
“They searched it, obviously.”
“Why obviously? They’re making a lot of fuss about something they claim is no big deal.”
“They don’t explain their thinking. Not to us, anyway.”
“What did they find?”
“A piece of paper, with what they think is a phone number on it. Like a scribbled note. Screwed up, like trash.”
“What was the number?”
“It had a 600 area code, which they say is a Canadian cellular service. Some special network. Then a number, then the letter D, like an initial.”
“Means nothing to me,” I said.
“Me either. Except I don’t think it’s a phone number at all. There’s no exchange number and then it has one too many digits.”
“If it’s a special network maybe it doesn’t need an exchange number.”
“It doesn’t look right.”
“So what was it?”
She answered me by reaching behind her and pulling a small notebook out of her back pocket. Not official police issue. It had a stiff black board cover and an elastic strap that held it closed. The whole book was slightly curled, like it spent a lot of time in her pocket. She slipped the strap and opened it up and showed me a fawn-colored page with 600-82219-D written on it in neat handwriting. Her handwriting, I guessed. Information only, not a facsimile. Not an exact reproduction of a scribbled note.