Persuader Part 15

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 pa.s.senger 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, a.s.shole," 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. n.o.body 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 cla.s.sic 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. a.s.suming 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 sh.o.r.e 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 gla.s.s. 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 what 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 bas.e.m.e.nt.

"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 a.s.s," 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?

I sent: Not given.

She replied with one simple word: s.h.i.t.

I waited. She sent nothing more. She was probably conferring with Eliot. I could picture them, talking fast, not looking at each other, trying to decide. I sent a question: How many did you arrest in Hartford? She came back with: All of them, i.e. three. I asked: Are they talking? She replied: Not talking at all. I asked: Lawyers? She came back with: No lawyers.

It was a very ponderous way to have a conversation. But it gave me plenty of time to think. Lawyers would have been fatal. Beck could have gotten to their lawyers, easily.

Sooner or later it would have occurred to him to check if his buddies had been arrested.

I sent: Can you keep them incommunicado?

She sent: Yes, two or three days.

I sent: Do it.

There was a long pause. Then she came back with: What is Beck thinking?

I sent: That they've declared war and gone to ground.

She asked: What are you going to do?

I sent: Not sure.

She sent: Will leave car, advise use it to pull out.

I replied: Maybe.

There was another long pause. Then she sent: Turn unit off, save battery. I smiled to myself. Duffy was a very practical woman.

I lay fully dressed on the bed for three hours, listening for a phone. I didn't hear one. I got up just before midnight and rolled the Oriental rug back and lay down on the floor with my head against the oak boards and listened. It's the best way to pick up the small sounds inside a building. I could hear the heating system running. I could hear the wind around the house. It was moaning softly. The ocean itself was quiet. The house was still. It was a solid stone structure. No creaking, no cracking. No human activity. No talking, no movement. I guessed Duke was sleeping the sleep of the dead. That was the third benefit of his exhaustion. He was the only one I was worried about. He was the only professional.

I laced my shoes tight and took off my jacket. I was still dressed in the black denim the maid had supplied. I slid the window all the way up and sat on the sill, facing the room. I stared at the door. Twisted around and looked outside. There was a slim sliver of moon.

Some starlight. A little wind. Ragged silver clouds. The air was cold and salty. The ocean was moving slow and steady.

I swung my legs out into the night and shuffled sideways. Then I rolled over onto my stomach and scrabbled with my toes until I found a fold in the stone carving where an accent line had been set into the facade. I got my feet set and held the sill with both hands and craned my body outward. Used one hand to pull the window down to within two inches of closed. Eased sideways and felt for a drainpipe running down from the roof gutter. I found one about a yard away. It was a fat cast-iron pipe maybe six inches in diameter. I got my right palm flat on it. It felt solid. But it felt distant. I'm not an agile person. Put me in the Olympics and I'd be a wrestler or a boxer or a weight-lifter. Not a gymnast.

I brought my right hand back and shuffled sideways with my toes until I was as far to the right as I could get. I jumped my left hand along the sill until it was tight in the corner of the window frame. Stretched out with my right. Got it hooked around the far side of the pipe. The iron was painted and it felt cold and a little slick with night dew. I put my thumb in front and my fingers behind. Tested my grip. Craned out a little more. I was spread-eagled on the wall. I equalized the pressure between my hands and pulled inward.

Kicked my feet off the ledge and jumped them sideways, one each side of the pipe.

Pulled inward again and let go of the sill and brought my left hand over to join my right.

Now I had the pipe in both hands. My grip held. My feet were flat on the wall. My a.s.s was sticking right out, fifty feet above the rocks. The wind caught my hair. It was cold.

A boxer, not a gymnast. I could hold on there all night. No problem with that. But I wasn't certain how to move myself down. I tensed my arms and pulled myself in toward the wall. Slid my hands downward as I did so, six inches. Slid my feet down a matching distance. Let my weight fall backward. That seemed to work. I did it again. I bounced down, six inches at a time. Wiped each palm in turn to fight the dew. I was sweating, even though it was cold. My right hand hurt from my bout with Paulie. I was still fortyfive feet above the ground. I inched downward. Got myself level with the second floor. It was slow progress, but it was safe. Except that I was putting two hundred and fifty pounds of shock into an old iron pipe every few seconds. The pipe was probably a hundred years old. And iron rusts and rots.

It moved a little. I felt it shudder and shake and shiver. And it was slippery. I had to lock my fingers behind it to make sure my grip would hold. My knuckles were sc.r.a.ping on the stone. I bounced down, six inches at a time. I developed a rhythm. I would pull close, then fall back and slide my hands down and try to cushion the shock by easing my arms out straight. I let my shoulders take the impact. Then I would be bent at the waist at a tighter angle than before so I would move my feet down six inches and start again. I made it down to the first-floor windows. The pipe felt stronger there. Maybe it was anch.o.r.ed in a concrete base. I bounced down, faster. Made it all the way to the ground.

Felt the solid rock under my feet and breathed out in relief and stepped away from the wall. Wiped my hands on my pants and stood still and listened. It felt good to be out of the house. The air was like velvet. I heard nothing. There were no lights in the windows. I felt the sting of cold on my teeth and realized I was smiling. I glanced up at the hunter's moon. Shook myself and walked quietly away to reclaim the guns.