by Barry Eisler
“I can’t explain it to you. You wouldn’t understand, you didn’t live with him. There was something inside him he was struggling to keep from exploding. Maybe it finally did. I don’t know. I look back now, and I realize … he was very controlled. He only let people see what he wanted them to see. Even his wife. So I don’t have anything else I can tell you.”
They were quiet for a moment. Ben said, “Do you still have the contact information for the local investigator?”
“Sure. Harry McGlade. He operates out of Orlando. Or at least he did—we haven’t been in touch since he dropped the case.”
Ben couldn’t rule out the possibility that she was in some kind of collusion with Larison. But if so, they’d have to be in collusion with the PI, too, or at least they would have had to manipulate the hell out of him years in advance. All of which he judged highly unlikely. His gut told him she was telling the truth.
“What else?” he asked, reminding himself to use the kind of open-ended questions they’d taught him at the Farm were best for general elicitation.
She laughed. “What else were you expecting? That’s got to be more than you were hoping for right there.”
He was half impressed, half irritated by her spunk. He wondered what she’d been like as Larison’s wife. A handful, that much was clear.
He looked at her. “If you think of anything else, will you call me?”
She smiled, a faint, sad movement at the corners of her mouth. “If you learn anything else, will you do the same?”
Why not, he thought. She’s still in pain over this. You can call her, tell her anything you want, and make her feel better.
“If I learn something that would be personally helpful to you,” he said, “then yes, I’ll try to find a way to let you know. Off the record.” It felt good to say it. It wasn’t even a lie exactly.
“I just want to know about Costa Rica. You understand?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Was he seeing someone there.”
“Got it.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I doubt it. That’s a very hard thing not to know about the man you were married to. If you’re decent, you won’t even put what you find in your report.”
“I don’t … I’ll try not to.”
She looked at him and nodded gravely, as though grateful for his gesture and doubtful of its worth. “Well, if you happen to come back here and want to fill me in in person, that would be fine.”
He nodded, wondering whether he’d been wrong after all about her initial interest. “I can’t promise anything,” he said. “But … I think that would be nice.” Again, he wasn’t exactly lying.
She walked him to the door. He opened it and took a quick glance through the crack—first right, then sweeping left as he opened it wider. Everything looked all right. The gardener and his truck were gone. Other than that, nothing had changed since he’d arrived.
“My husband used to do that,” she said from behind him, her voice cold.
He stepped out onto the stoop and glanced back at her. “Well, I don’t want to wind up like him.”
Even before the words were out, he realized it sounded harsher than he’d intended. As he tried to think of a way to soften it, she said, “Don’t, then,” and closed the door between them.
7
The Easy Way
Ben walked down the steps, scanning the street. The information about Costa Rica sounded promising. He would check with Horton ops in South America, and if they could eliminate business, he would assume Larison had been traveling for personal reasons instead. A lover? The wife certainly seemed to think so.
And he’d follow up with McGlade, the investigator. Guy had to have been mildly brain damaged to try to tail someone like Larison, but he’d at least had the sense to figure out at some point the job wasn’t worth the per diem.
Marcy. He had to admit, even beyond operational necessity, he was intrigued. She was a strange combination of savvy and honesty, openness and mystery. He wanted to do right by her, if he could. Not because he was interested in her. Or at least, not only because of that. It was something about the way she’d watched her son. That … sadness he’d seen in her face when the bus had pulled away. Initially it had made him think uncomfortably about Ami, but now it was summoning images of his own childhood, the breakfasts his mother would serve her three kids and her slightly absentminded engineer husband. Happy breakfasts, mostly, even though Ben had little patience for little brother Alex. Or at least they’d been happy until Katie’s accident. Happiness had fled the Treven household after that, with Ben close on its heels.
Forty yards from his car, he noticed another one parked behind it, a brown Taurus that hadn’t been there before. His heart rate kicked up a notch and his alertness level moved from orange into red. He slowed, watching the car, aware of the weight of the Glock.
Thirty yards out, the passenger-side door opened. A big white guy with close-cropped hair in a suit a lot like his started to get out. The driver-side door opened, too, and a black guy emerged, as big as his partner and also in a dark, forgettable suit. Ben slowed more, his readiness now completely at condition red, his heart pounding, his limbs suddenly suffused with adrenaline. They started walking toward him, their hands empty. He sensed, without having to consciously articulate it, that this wasn’t a hit. If it had been, they wouldn’t have moved on him while he was this far away.
Ben’s head tracked left to right and he scanned his flanks to confirm the primary threat wasn’t just a setup—a trained response burned by combat into reflex. A petite young black woman with a short afro, shapely and well-dressed in navy slacks and a matching sleeveless blouse, was walking along the sidewalk toward them. Her vibe was civilian and he sensed no connection to the two men. He judged her not part of the threat.
Ten yards. Ben watched their hands and shoulders, not their eyes. If anyone’s arm even twitched, he would have the Glock out and they’d have to skip the pleasantries.
Five yards. “Excuse me, sir,” the black guy said. “We need to ask you a few questions.”
Ben checked his flanks again. The black woman was watching them, but with no more than normal curiosity. When she saw Ben looking, she glanced away, just another civilian recognizing possible trouble and not wanting it to recognize her back.
Three yards. “Who’s ‘we’?” Ben asked.
“FBI,” the white guy said. “You need to come with us.”
They stopped, close enough to try to grab him now, if they were that stupid.
“Nah, I don’t feel like going anywhere right now,” Ben said. “Better just ask me here.”
“Look,” the black guy said, his hand easing his jacket back, thumb first. “We can do this the easy way—”
Ben didn’t give him a chance to finish the move, or even the sentence. He shot an open-hand jab into the guy’s throat, catching his trachea in the web between his thumb and forefinger, feeling the cartilage shift unnaturally behind the blow. The guy’s teeth slammed shut and his head snapped forward.
The other guy started to shuffle back to create distance, his hand going for something under his jacket. But he was on the wrong end of the action-reaction equation. Ben caught him by the lapels and smashed his forehead into his face. He felt the guy’s nose break. He took a half step back and shot a knee into the guy’s balls.
He turned back to the black guy, who was clutching his throat with his left hand and groping under his jacket with his right, his eyes bulging. Ben closed the distance, caught the guy’s right sleeve, and yanked him past in the kind of arm drag he’d once favored as a high school wrestler. He hoisted him from behind, rotated him over an upraised knee, and slammed him facedown into the sidewalk.
The white guy was on his knees, his face a bloody mask. He snaked a jerky arm inside his jacket. Ben took a long step over and kicked him in the face. The force of the kick lifted the guy’s supporting arm clean off the sidewalk and he dropped the gun he’d been fu
mbling for. Ben swept it up—a Glock 23, just like his. He checked the load. Good to go.
He tracked back to the black guy, aiming the Glock with a two-handed grip. No movement. Track back to the white guy. Same.
He stepped over to the black guy and bent to take his gun and check for ID.
A voice came from behind him, feminine, sweetly southern-accented but with steel underneath. “Put the weapon down, sir. Now. Or you’re dead right there.”
He looked up. Son of a bitch, the black woman. She’d taken cover behind a parked car and was pointing a pistol at his face.
“I’ll be damned,” he said, slowly lowering the Glock. “You’re with these guys. I didn’t spot that.”
“Drop. The weapon. Now.”
Ben didn’t know who they were. They felt like law enforcement. From the way they were armed and what the black guy had said, they could have been FBI. And Hort had said the Bureau was investigating.
But he’d be damned if anyone was going to take him into custody again. Not today. Not ever.
He eased the Glock into his waistband. “Yeah, I heard you the first time.”
“Sir, I will shoot you.”
He looked at her. “Then shoot me.”
The black guy groaned and started to get up. Ben kicked him in the face and he went down again.
“Stop that!” the woman yelled.
“You want to ask me your questions, ask,” Ben said. “Otherwise, I’ve got places to go.”
There was a long pause. The woman continued to watch him through her gun sights and for a tense moment Ben wondered whether he’d miscalculated, whether she might actually shoot him.
She watched him for a moment longer, and he could see the tension in her face. Incongruously, he found himself noticing her skin. Smooth, light brown, with a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks. There was a hint of Asian in the shape of her eyes.
She lowered the pistol and muttered, “Goddamn it.”
She came out from behind the car and approached him, the gun in a two-handed grip but pointed at the ground. Ben noted that she was watching his torso, not his face. She was well-trained.
She walked over to the fallen white guy and knelt next to him. “Bob,” she said, “are you okay? Bob.”
Bob groaned. He got a hand on the street and started pushing himself up. The woman helped him. While she did, Ben reached inside the black guy’s jacket.
“Hey!” the woman called.
Ben extracted a Glock from a shoulder holster. “Too late,” he said. “Doesn’t look like you’re going to shoot me, but I don’t know about this guy.”
The woman walked over. “Drew,” she said. “Goddamn it, Drew, talk to me.” She looked at Ben. “If you killed him, I swear to God you’re going down.”
Drew wheezed, then broke into a coughing fit. He rolled to his side, his hands on his throat.
“Well, he’s breathing,” Ben said. “What were you saying there, chief? Something about, what, doing this the easy way? Well, you were right, it was easy.”
“Shut up,” the woman said. “Drew. Look at me. Can you drive?”
Drew sat up and massaged his throat. Ben didn’t think the guy looked good to drive. He looked good to puke.
But Drew managed a nod.
“Then go.”
Drew wheezed. “That’s not—”
“Just go. I’ll interview this guy and fill you in later.”
She stood up and holstered her gun. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“Go? Where are we going?”
“Wherever you like. A coffee shop. A park. Somewhere we can talk.”
“I don’t think—”
“Just shut up and drive your car, okay? Before I get sorry I didn’t shoot you.”
8
No One Ever Sees Me Coming
They found a Starbucks in the direction of Orlando. At the counter, Ben told the girl at the register, “Just a black coffee. Tall.” Then he walked off and found a table that put his back to the wall.
A minute later the black woman set a couple of coffees on the table and joined him. She looked miffed, whether at having to buy and bring him his coffee or being stuck with her back to the door or both, he didn’t know. It was satisfying either way.
“Who are you?” the woman said.
He picked up the coffee and took a sip. “It’s not going to work that way.”
“What way is that?”
“The way where you ask the questions.”
“Look, if I wanted to—”
“But you don’t want to. Otherwise you would have already.”
She drummed her fingers along the table. He couldn’t help noticing how attractive she was. That great skin; close-cropped, natural black hair; full lips; perfect teeth. Maybe that’s why he’d instantly written her off as a potential threat when he’d first spotted her. Stupid.
She opened her purse and took out an ID. The ID read, Special Agent Paula Lanier, Federal Bureau of Investigation, along with a photo.
Ben looked up from the ID. “Well, Paula, it’s good to meet you.”
“Sorry I can’t say the same. And now it’s your turn.”
Ben didn’t want to get into specifics. The Froomkin identity was backstopped, but someone within the FBI itself could debunk it easily enough.
“Why don’t you just call me Ben,” he said.
“All right, Ben, who are you with?”
“With?”
“Stop messing around with me, okay? I want to know who you are and what you were doing at Marcy Wheeler’s house. And I want to know whatever she told you.”
He took another sip of coffee. “That’s a lot to ask, on short acquaintance.”
“It’s not, really. Not when you consider that you can tell me here, or I can arrest you right now and we can conduct the interview at the Orlando field office instead.”
“Is this the hard way or the easy way again? It didn’t work out well for Bob and Drew back there. You sure you want to go down that road, too?”
“I’m the one who had the drop on you, remember?”
“Then why haven’t you just arrested me?”
“Because I’d rather do this off the record for now.”
“Why?”
“Look, I know who you are. Or what, anyway. You’ve got spook written all over you.”
Ben couldn’t help smiling. “I could say the same about you, you know.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Funny. I know you’re CIA. Could have been DIA, maybe, but I know they’re not involved in this thing.”
Interesting that she would assume that. Well, Hort told him the CIA would be conducting its own off-the-books investigation, trying to beat the FBI to the tapes. Looked like the Bureau was aware of the problem, too.
He felt a momentary unease. These missing tapes were big. Maybe the biggest thing he’d ever worked on. A lot of players were after them, maybe for a lot of different reasons. A part of him wondered why all these agencies were circling one another the way they were, and the thought was as unfamiliar as it was uncomfortable. He was accustomed to thinking in terms of who. And when. And where. And how. But why? For the second time in as many days, he reminded himself that why was someone else’s problem.
“What are you, Ground Branch?” she said. “You’re former military. I can tell by the way you move.”
“Yeah? Well, I took a look at you and couldn’t tell anything. Until you were pointing a gun at me.”
She smiled. “That’s right. No one ever sees me coming.”
An unprofessional double entendre popped into Ben’s mind and some vestigial sense of judgment saved him from giving it voice.
“I’ll bet they don’t,” he said, keeping it neutral.
“So don’t blame yourself too much.”
“I’ll get over it.”
They sat in silence for a moment, watching each other, and Ben knew she was evaluating him the way he was her.
“All right,” he sa
id, “so why off the record?”
She smiled just the tiniest bit, and he realized she’d been using the silence to draw him out. Damn, he had to stop underestimating women.
“Because I’ve never seen interagency cooperation worse than what we have on this case. Not even compared to what I’ve heard it was like before 9/11. And look what all that distrust and rivalry caused back then. When we don’t work together, Americans die. It’s that simple, but you people never seem to wake up to it.”
“‘You people’? What about your side?” Weird to suddenly find himself pretending to be an FBI guy pretending to be a CIA guy, but he went with it.
“Oh, there’s plenty of blame to go around, I’m sure. But we’re getting next to zero from the Agency on this one. We had to threaten a subpoena just to get a few records. And your presence at Wheeler’s house confirms you’ve been holding back. If you know something about her, if she’s relevant, why haven’t you told us?”
“Well, it’s not like you told us, either.”
“The only reason my team was staking out Wheeler’s house in the first place is because the Bureau thinks she’s a dead end. If they thought she was important, someone else would have been assigned.”
“You mean you, Bob, and Drew aren’t the A-team?”
She cocked an eyebrow again. “You keep up the sarcasm,” she said, her voice sweet, “you might get smacked.”
“I don’t know. That might be nice.”
She went to take a sip of coffee. Halfway to her mouth, she snapped the cup toward him. Hot coffee hit him in the face. He shot to his feet, spluttering and wiping his eyes.
“What the fuck?” he said.
He looked around. A few patrons were staring, but quickly glanced away.
“Oh, what, did I not smack you the way you were hoping?” she said.
He wiped his face and flung coffee droplets from his palms. “You’ve got nerve, sweetie, I’ll give you that.”
“Sit your ass down and recover your pride. Unless you want me to school you again.”
He sat down, his ego smarting much worse than his face. “I like when you get all ghetto-talk on me. Really, it’s sexy.”