"Gracey and Bowles are looking for you," he'd said. "We really need to talk."
Now he was staying silent, and I suspected he'd let the conversation run its course before weighing in with his own opinion and whatever facts he himself had.
Corry said, "I'm with Dale, Atticus."
"She's a paying client," I said. "Like any other."
"Uh, no, I don't think so," Dale said.
"Look, we take money to protect people we don't like all the time. It's never been our job to pass judgments..."
"Okay, hypocrisy readings are off the charts," Corry said. "Perhaps you may recall you're the guy who was complaining about spoiled-brat movie stars. Those are jobs you were all too willing to turn down."
"I never turned them down, I just never liked them," I replied.
Dale was shaking his head. "It's a personal choice, Atticus. I'm not going to protect the Grand Wizard of the KKK. I don't give a damn about how professional I'm being or not. I'd have thought you would agree with that."
"She's not who you think she is."
"She's the woman who nearly killed me twice," Dale replied. "So you tell me, Atticus -- who am I supposed to think she is? How am I supposed to get past that?"
"I did," I said.
Natalie, who had been watching me closely the whole time, looked down at her beer, and I realized it had been the wrong thing to say.
"Yeah," Corry said, quieter. "Yeah, you did. And frankly, that's a problem for us."
"You've put us in a really bad position," Dale said. "You've put the whole firm at risk. If this gets out, what you've been doing, of what happened to Havel, of where you were and who you were with..."
"Wait just a fucking second," I said. I hadn't gotten as far as telling them about Havel. I hadn't told them about Oxford yet. I'd gotten only as far as telling them who my principal was and that I needed their help.
Natalie turned the glass of beer between her hands. "Bridgett came by the office this afternoon. She had us call Scott."
Hell, I thought.
"She told us everything that happened," Corry said.
"No, she didn't. She told you what she
thinks
happened. But she's got her facts assed up."
"Is Havel dead?"
"Yes."
"Were you living with Drama for over three months?"
"Yes."
"Was it more important to you to keep Drama from the authorities than it was to report the murder of a woman who was, ostensibly, if not a friend, at least an acquaintance?"
"Where are you going with this, Corry?"
He didn't like my tone, which was understandable, I suppose, because I certainly wasn't liking his. He put his elbows on the table, leaning forward, and Scott had to adjust how he was sitting to keep his eyes on me. I still couldn't get a bead off of him, of what he was thinking.
"You've abused your friendship with everyone at this table," Corry told me. "We've spent over a quarter of a year worried sick about you, waiting for a word or a sign that you were all right. We were your friends, and you abused our friendship. Did you even consider us?"
"I thought about you guys all the time," I said. "I wasn't in a position where I could just pick up the phone and call."
"You were absent for
four months,
dammit! Four fucking months! You should have found a way!"
"I couldn't! God dammit, if I had she would never have trusted me! If I had you wouldn't have understood! Don't you think I fucking agonized over this?"
Corry straightened, leaning back in his seat. He moved his beer around on the table, then lifted it and drained the glass dry.
Dale said, "Did you really think we'd greet you as the conquering hero?"
"I thought you'd give me the benefit of the doubt."
"We are giving you the benefit of the doubt," Corry said. "We're here, now."
"And when we're done, is Scott going to throw me down and slap the cuffs on?"
Natalie made a delicate snort. "Oh, please."
Corry spread his hands, as if sweeping all of our words from the air. "Okay, let's just forget the personal for a second. Let's talk about the professional. Do you know what happens to us if this gets out? We lose everything we've gained, everything we've worked hard for. We're back where we were when Trent had us blacklisted. You have no idea how we had to scramble after you vanished, Atticus, you have no idea the damage control we had to do. We lost two jobs as a result of your disappearance, and there was major footwork involved in keeping three others."
"Bottom line," I said.
That made him really angry. "Yes, bottom line. And you know what? I don't think I'm in that great a minority on this. I have a wife and a child and another on the way..."
"Esme's pregnant?"
"Yes, she's three months along, and you know what, Atticus? I want to keep a roof over my family's head, I want to send my children to college, I want to keep them fed and clothed and give them the things I never had. And to do that I need money, and I'd prefer to earn that money doing something I enjoy, something I take pride in. Like it or not, KTMH is a
business.
You had a responsibility to that, and you abdicated it."
"Then there's a solution," I said. "Buy me out."
Natalie looked across the table at Dale. She said, "I told you."
"I'm serious," I said. "Buy me out. What you don't seem to get, Corry, is that I
do
understand what you're saying, I
do
understand your concerns, and I sure as hell do know how this could look. I don't want to see the firm die, certainly not through any action of mine."
"Then why are you doing this?" Corry demanded.
"Because I have agreed to protect this life, I agreed to do this job. And because I believe her life is worth protecting."
There was silence at the table for a minute.
"I can't do this, Atticus," Dale said, finally. "I'm sorry, man. You're my friend, we were legs together, dammit. But I cannot do this thing."
"Neither can I," Corry said.
We all looked at Natalie. "You'll sell us your share of the firm?" she asked.
"Draw it up tomorrow morning, I'll sign it tomorrow afternoon," I told her.
"Then once it's signed, I'll take the job," she said.
Both Dale and Corry opened their mouths, objections flying, but she cut them off.
"We've each got our own shares, we've each got our own jobs in the firm. I'm taking this one. But I agree with Atticus. We don't judge our principals. We protect them to the best of our abilities. That's always been the job."
"This goes bad for him, it'll be bad for you," Corry said. "And that'll be bad for us."
"If that's what happens, I'll deal with it."
Neither of them said anything. At the back of the booth, Scott hadn't moved.
Dale slid out of his seat, taking his coat from the peg on the side of the booth. He put it on and headed out of the bar. Corry followed, but he stopped while zipping up his coat.
"When it's all said and done, you know this isn't personal."
"I'm remembering when you were working for Sentinel," I said to him. "The way you hated Trent and how everything was about the bottom line."
He frowned. "If you can change, so can I."
"Hell yeah," I said.
He offered me his hand, and I shook it, then watched him walk away.
Scott cleared his throat. "Hi, remember me? I'm the guy whose face you lied in."
"I'm sorry about that, Scott."
"I figured you were, but I wanted to hear it."
"So," Natalie said. "When do we start?"
"I'm working on getting a house," I said. "She's got some connections. I want to button her up, then we'll start working this thing."
"Working it how?"
"How much did Bridgett tell you?"
Natalie looked at Scott, and Scott held up a hand, ticking off points. "Drama. Oxford. Book. Sex. Stockholm Syndrome."
"She really doesn't want to believe I'm doing this of my own volition," I said.
"She thinks
you
think it's your own volition, but no, she really doesn't," Natalie agreed.
"And what do you think?"
"I don't know enough."
"Scott?"
"I don't care," he said. "Gracey and Bowles have contacted me three times in the past week, wanting me to contact them if I heard from you. They said you were in trouble."
"Did you?"
"Of course not. Bridgett wasn't the only person playing detective these past months. Someone hired Oxford to do the job, and it's not just a coincidence that within days of that job going south I start being pestered for information about you. Whatever's going on here, I want to know about it. For the time being, that's more than enough incentive to make me forget who your principal is, provided everything remains on the up-and-up."
"You're thinking it was Gracey and Bowles?" Natalie asked.
"It had to be. If not them directly, someone who supervises them."
"Why?"
"I've got a theory. Not much evidence for it, but I kinda like it."
"Share," I said.
Scott adjusted his glasses, smiled again, a little embarrassed. "Look at it like this. Havel writes this book, gets a lot of attention. I mean, big-ass attention, pop-culture attention. Suddenly prime-time television is doing episodes about cops chasing professional killers, about lawyers defending assassins. There's a movie in the works. Everybody is suddenly talking about this thing that, up until a few months ago, nobody really gave much credit to.
"That kind of interest, it keeps building until it reaches a sort of critical mass. And the more people who are thinking about it, the more people who are saying, Jesus Christ, there are
assassins
for God's sake, the more people start asking questions."
"Questions like who and what and why and how," I said.
"Yeah, exactly. Now imagine that you're a Backroom Boy, and you've trained someone like Drama, you've created her. And now you're suddenly thinking, oh shit, I'm maybe three weeks away from a Congressional Oversight Committee. You can't stop people from talking about this thing, you can't undo it. But maybe you can get their attention elsewhere."
Natalie nodded. "According to Bridgett's version, that's pretty much what Oxford was trying to do."
"That's almost exactly what he said," I confirmed.
"There are very few people who stand to lose as a result of Havel's book," Scott said. "If two of them aren't Gracey and Bowles, then I'll give you even money that their bosses are."
"Finding evidence for this is going to be rough."
"But possible," Scott said. "Especially if you've got access to someone who knows how the system works. Especially if you're protecting someone who has been on the inside."
"You're a mercenary bastard," I told him.
"Call it payback for lying to a friend. I'm going to start digging, see if I can rattle a few cages. And I'd like to talk to, uh... Alena, is it?"
"Alena," I said.
"I'd like to talk to her in the next couple days. It can wait until she's buttoned up."
"She won't like it."
"Change her mind."
"And I can start tomorrow," Natalie said. "After getting the papers drawn up, of course."
"Just pay me my share, that's all I ask."
"You'll get what you're due."
"That's kind of what I'm afraid of," I said.
November in Brighton Beach has none of the charm reserved for New England, it's as if the autumn palette ignores the neighborhood altogether. Everything is gray, and a stormy sky only serves to reinforce it, as if saying, what the hell's the point?
I parked the car on Avenue Y, just a couple blocks west of Coney Island, and watched the street. Clouds were riding a chill wind off the water, and the few people on the street wore gloves or walked with hands in pockets. Nobody looked happy to be outside. I checked my mirrors, followed a clump of twenty-something tough guys with my eyes as they scowled their way down the block. They turned the corner at Hubbard, into a restaurant with a name written in Cyrillic. Condensation from inside stuck to the windows, and they disappeared out of sight like wraiths.
The gun in the glove compartment was clean and untraceable, one of the pistols from the cache Alena and I had cleared the previous afternoon. It was a Czech semiauto, the CZ75, and it could be carried cocked and locked.
I took the gun out of the glove compartment. I cocked it, locked it, and then put it in my belt at the small of my back.
Then I got out of the car and headed for the restaurant. Before I'd even opened the door I could smell the grease frying inside, hear the noise of the patrons. There was no liquor license posted anywhere I could see, but that didn't seem to bother anyone within, and there looked to be a bottle of vodka for everyone present. Cigarette smoke choked the air. I moved inside as if I knew exactly where I was going, and it helped that Alena had given me explicit directions, and because I didn't look out of place and I didn't act out of place, no one gave me more than a cursory glance.
I worked my way along the aisle between the counter and the crowded tables, giving an eyefuck to anyone who looked my way too long. Almost everyone present was male but for one very busty brunette working the register, and a couple of older women in a booth near the bathroom doors. At least a hundred horses had gone to their great reward to provide the occupants with leather, from boots to jackets to, in a couple of cases, pants. On a lot of the men I saw tattoos, especially on their hands and fingers, Russian mafia call-signs.
At the back of the room was a door marked with a plastic sign in English, ordering me to keep out. I went on through into the back room, passing a very large teenager who was listening to a Walkman as he sat on a stack of plastic crates. He slipped from his perch as I passed him and asked me something in Russian, and I waved my left hand at him in such a way as to indicate he didn't want to mess with me. I was at the next door and going up a flight of stairs as he settled back down.
I'd half expected another whorehouse, because Alena hadn't been clear on what I would be walking into, but it was merely a furnished room with two men doing paperwork at two wooden desks. As I came in both looked up, and from their expressions I could tell they'd been expecting someone else. The one at the closer desk, bespectacled and chunky, asked me something I didn't understand.