Persuader (37 page)

And it was slightly translucent. I could see that she was wearing nothing underneath it.

“Military life is full of sacrifices,” I said, more to myself than to her.

“I’ll get over it,” she said.

Then she asked me the second question I wish I had answered differently.

“Will you let me make the arrest?” she said.

Ten years later I woke up alone in Duke’s bed at six o’clock in the morning. His room was at the front of the house, so I had no view of the sea. I was looking west, at America.

There was no morning sun. No long dawn shadows. Just dull gray light on the driveway, and the wall, and the granite landscape beyond. The wind was blowing in off the sea. I could see trees moving. I imagined black storm clouds behind me, way out over the Atlantic, moving fast toward the shore. I imagined sea birds fighting the turbulent air with their feathers whipped and ruffled by the gale. Day fifteen, starting out gray and cold and inhospitable, and likely to get worse.

I showered, but I didn’t shave. I dressed in more of Duke’s black denim and laced my shoes and carried my jacket and my coat over my arm. Walked quietly down to the kitchen. The cook had already made coffee. She gave me a cup and I took it and sat at the table. She lifted a loaf of bread out of the freezer and put it in the microwave. I figured I would need to evacuate her, at some point before things turned unpleasant. And Elizabeth, and Richard. The mechanic and Beck himself could stay to face the music.

I could hear the sea from the kitchen, loud and clear. The waves crashed in and the relentless undertow sucked back out. Pools filled and drained, the gravel rattled across the rocks. The wind moaned softly through the cracks in the outer porch door. I heard frantic cries from the gulls. I listened to them and sipped my coffee and waited.

Richard came down ten minutes after me. His hair was all over the place and I could see his missing ear. He took coffee and sat down across from me. His ambivalence was back.

I could see him facing up to no more college and the rest of his life hidden away with his folks. I figured if his mother got away without an indictment they could start over somewhere else. Depending on how resilient he was, he could get back to school without missing much more than a week of the semester. If he wanted to. Unless it was an expensive school, which I guessed it was. They were going to have money problems.

They were going to walk away with nothing more than they stood up in. If they walked away at all.

The cook went out to set the dining room up for breakfast. Richard watched her go and I watched him and saw his ear again and a piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

“Five years ago,” I said. “The kidnap.”

He kept his composure. Just looked down at the table and then looked up at me and combed his hair over his scar with his fingers.

“Do you know what your dad is really into?” I asked.

He nodded. Said nothing.

“Not just rugs, right?” I said.

“No,” he said. “Not just rugs.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“There are worse things,” he said.

“Want to tell me what happened five years ago?” I said.

He shook his head. Looked away.

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

“I knew a guy called Gorowski,” I said. “His two-year-old daughter was abducted. Just for a day. How long were you gone for?”

“Eight days,” he said.

“Gorowski fell right into line,” I said. “One day was enough for him.”

Richard said nothing.

“Your dad isn’t the boss here,” I said, like a statement.

Richard said nothing.

“He fell into line five years ago,” I said. “After you had been gone eight days. That’s the way I figure it.”

Richard was silent. I thought about Gorowski’s daughter. She was twelve years old now.

She probably had the Internet and a CD player and a phone in her room. Posters on her walls. And a tiny dim ache in her mind about something that had happened way in the past. Like the itch you get from a long-healed bone.

“I don’t need details,” I said. “I just want you to say his name.”

“Whose name?”

“The guy who took you away for eight days.”

Richard just shook his head.

“I heard the name Xavier, ” I said. “Someone mentioned it.”

Richard looked away and his left hand went straight to the side of his head, which was all the confirmation I needed.

“I was raped,” he said.

I listened to the sea, pounding on the rocks.

“By Xavier?”

He shook his head again.

“By Paulie,” he said. “He was just out of prison. He still had a taste for that kind of thing.”

I was quiet for a long moment.

“Does your father know?”

“No,” he said.

“Your mother?”

“No.”

I didn’t know what to say. Richard said nothing more. We sat there in silence. Then the cook came back and fired up the stove. She put fat in a skillet and started heating it. The smell made me sick to my stomach.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I said.

Richard followed me outside to the rocks. The air was salty and fresh and bitter cold. The light was gray. The wind was strong. It was blowing straight in our faces. Richard’s hair strung way out behind him, almost horizontal. The spray was smashing twenty feet in the air and foamy drops of water were whipping toward us like bullets.

“Every silver lining has a cloud,” I said. I had to talk loud, just to be heard over the wind and the surf. “Maybe one day Xavier and Paulie will get what’s coming to them, but your dad will go to prison in the process.”

Richard nodded. There were tears in his eyes. Maybe they were from the cold wind.

Maybe they weren’t.

“He deserves to,” he said.

Very loyal, his father had said. Best buddies.

“I was gone eight days,” Richard said. “One should have been enough. Like with the other guy you mentioned.”

“Gorowski?”

“Whoever. With the two-year-old girl. You think she was raped?”

“I sincerely hope not.”

“Me too.”

“Can you drive?” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“You might need to get out of here,” I said. “Soon. You and your mother and the cook.

So you need to be ready. For if and when I tell you to go.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m a guy paid to protect your father. From his so-called friends, as much as his enemies.”

“Paulie won’t let us through the gate.”

“He’ll be gone soon.”

He shook his head.

“Paulie will kill you,” he said. “You have no idea. You can’t deal with Paulie, whoever you are. Nobody can.”

“I dealt with those guys outside the college.”

He shook his head again. His hair streamed in the wind. It reminded me of the maid’s hair, under the water.

“That was phony,” he said. “My mom and I discussed it. It was a setup.”

I was quiet for a second. Did I trust him yet? “No, it was for real,” I said. No, I didn’t trust him yet.

“It’s a small community,” he said. “They have about five cops. I never saw that guy before in my life.”

I said nothing.

“I never saw those college cops either,” he said. “And I was there nearly three full years.”

I said nothing. Mistakes, coming back to haunt me.

“So why did you quit school?” I said. “If it was a setup?”

He didn’t answer.

“And how come Duke and I were ambushed?”

He didn’t answer.

“So what was it?” I said. “A setup or for real?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You saw me shoot them all,” I said.

He said nothing. I looked away. The seventh wave came rolling in. It crested forty yards out and hit the rocks faster than a man can run. The ground shuddered and spray burst upward like a star shell.

“Did either of you discuss this with your father?” I said.

“I didn’t,” he said. “And I’m not going to. I don’t know about my mom.”

And I don’t know about you, I thought. Ambivalence works both ways. You blow hot, then you blow cold. The thought of his father in a prison cell might look pretty good to him right now. Later, it might look different. When push came to shove, this guy was capable of swinging either way.

“I saved your ass,” I said. “I don’t like it that you’re pretending I didn’t.”

“Whatever,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do anyway. This is going to be a busy weekend. You’ve got the shipment to deal with. And after that you’ll be one of them anyway.”

“So help me out,” I said.

“I won’t double-cross my dad,” he said.

Very loyal. Best buddies.

“You don’t have to,” I said.

“So how can I help you?”

“Just tell him you want me here. Tell him you shouldn’t be alone right now. He listens to you, about stuff like that.”

He didn’t reply. Just walked away from me and headed back to the kitchen. He went straight through to the hallway. I guessed he was going to eat breakfast in the dining room. I stayed in the kitchen. The cook had set my place at the deal table. I wasn’t hungry, but I forced myself to eat. Tiredness and hunger are bad enemies. I had slept, and now I was going to eat. I didn’t want to wind up weak and light-headed at the wrong moment. I had toast, and another cup of coffee. Then I got more into it and had eggs and bacon. I was on my third cup of coffee when Beck came in to find me. He was wearing Saturday clothes. Blue jeans and a red flannel shirt.

“We’re going to Portland,” he said. “To the warehouse. Right now.”

He went back out to the hallway. I guessed he would wait at the front. And I guessed Richard hadn’t talked to him. Either he hadn’t gotten a chance, or he hadn’t wanted to. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Checked my pockets to make sure the Beretta was safely stowed and the keys were there. Then I walked out and fetched the car.

Drove it around to the front. Beck was waiting there for me. He had put a canvas jacket over his shirt. He looked like a regular Maine guy heading out to split logs or tap his maple trees for syrup. But he wasn’t.

Paulie was about ready with the gate so I had to slow but I didn’t have to stop. I glanced at him as I passed. I figured he would die today. Or tomorrow. Or I would. I left him behind and gunned the big car along the familiar road. After a mile I passed the spot where Villanueva had parked. Four miles after that I rounded the narrow curve where I had trapped the bodyguards. Beck didn’t speak. He had his knees apart with his hands held down between them. He was leaning forward in his seat. His head was down, but his eyes were up. He was staring straight ahead through the windshield. He was nervous.

“We never had our talk,” I said. “About the background information.”

“Later,” he said.

I passed Route One and used I-95 instead. Headed north for the city. The sky stayed gray.

The wind was strong enough to push the car a little off line. I turned onto I-295 and passed by the airport. It was on my left, beyond the tongue of water. On my right was the back of the strip mall where the maid had been captured, and the back of the new business park where I figured she had died. I kept on going straight and threaded my way into the harbor area. I passed the lot where Beck parked his trucks. One minute later we arrived at his warehouse.

It was surrounded by vehicles. There were five of them parked head-in against the walls, like airplanes at a terminal. Like animals at a trough. Like suckerfish on a corpse. There were two black Lincoln Town Cars and two blue Chevy Suburbans and a gray Mercury Grand Marquis. One of the Lincolns was the car I had been in when Harley drove me out to pick up the Saab. After we put the maid into the sea. I looked for enough space to park the Cadillac.