Ли Чайлд - "Этаж смерти" with W_cat

[1647] “You think I used this on Morrison?” I said.

[1648] He was staring at the blade. It shone blue in the stormy sun.

[1649] “It wasn’t you,” he said. “But maybe you had good reason.”

[1650] I smiled at him. He knew it wasn’t me who killed Morrison. Therefore he knew who had. Therefore he knew who Morrison’s bosses were. Simple as that. Three little words, and I was getting somewhere. I moved the blade a fraction closer to his big red face.

[1651] “Want me to use this on you?” I said.

[1652] Spivey looked around wildly. Saw the gate guard thirty yards away.

[1653] “He’s not going to help you,” I said. “He hates your useless fat guts. He’s just a guard. You sucked ass and got promotion. He wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire. Why should he?”

[1654] “So what do you want?” Spivey said.

“Friday,” I said. “What was the deal?”

“And if I tell you?” he said.

I shrugged at him.

[1655] “Depends what you tell me,” I said. “You tell me the truth, I’ll let you go back inside. Want to tell me the truth?”

[1656] He didn’t reply. We were just standing there by the road. A battle of nerves. His nerves were shot to hell. So he was losing. His little eyes were darting about. They always came back to the blade.

[1657] “OK, I’ll tell you,” he said. “Time to time, I helped Morrison out. He called me Friday. Said he was sending two guys over. Names meant nothing to me. Never heard of you or the other guy. I was supposed to get the Hubble guy killed. That’s all. Nothing was supposed to happen to you, I swear it.”

[1658] “So what went wrong?” I asked him.

[1659] “My guys screwed up,” he said. “That’s all, I swear it. It was the other guy we were after. Nothing was supposed to happen to you. You got out of there, right? No damage done, right? So why give me a hard time?”

[1660] I flashed the blade up real quick and nicked his chin. He froze in shock. A moment later a fat worm of dark blood welled out of the cut.

[1661] “What was the reason?” I asked him.

“There’s never a reason,” he said. “I just do what I’m told.”

[1662] “You do what you’re told?” I said.

“I do what I’m told,” he said again. “I don’t want to know any reasons.”

“So who told you what to do?” I said.

“Morrison,” he said. “Morrison told me what to do.”

“And who told Morrison what to do?” I asked him.

[1663] I held the blade an inch from his cheek. He was just about whimpering with fear. I stared into his small snake eyes. He knew the answer. I could see that, far back in those eyes. He knew who told Morrison what to do.

[1664] “Who told him what to do?” I asked him again.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I swear it, grave of my mother.”

I stared at him for a long moment. Shook my head.

“Wrong, Spivey,” I said. “You do know. You’re going to tell me.”

[1665] Now Spivey shook his head. His big red face jerked from side to side. The blood was running down his chin onto his slabby jowls.

“They’ll kill me if I do,” he said.

I flicked the knife at his belly. Slit his greasy shirt.

“I’ll kill you if you don’t,” I said.

[1666] Guy like Spivey, he thinks short term. If he told me, he’d die tomorrow. If he didn’t tell me, he’d die today. That’s how he thought. Short term. So he set about telling me. His throat started working up and down, like it was too dry to speak. I stared into his eyes. He couldn’t get any words out. He was like a guy in a movie who crawls up a desert dune and tries to call for water. But he was going to tell me.

[1667] Then he wasn’t. Over his shoulder, I saw a dust plume far in the east. Then I heard the faint roar of a diesel engine. Then I made out the gray shape of the prison bus rolling in. Spivey snapped his head around to look at his salvation. The gate guard wandered out to meet the bus. Spivey snapped his head back to look at me. There was a mean gleam of triumph in his eyes. The bus was getting closer.

[1668] “Who was it, Spivey?” I said. “Tell me now, or I’ll come back for you.”

[1669] But he just backed off and turned and hustled over to his dirty Ford. The bus roared in and blew dust all over me. I closed up the switchblade and put it back in my pocket. Jogged over to the Bentley and took off.

[1670] THE COMING STORM CHASED ME ALL THE WAY BACK EAST. I felt I had more than a storm after me. I was sick with frustration. This morning I had been just one conversation away from knowing everything. Now I knew nothing. The situation had suddenly turned sour.

[1671] I had no backup, no facilities, no help. I couldn’t rely on Roscoe or Finlay. I couldn’t expect either of them to agree with my agenda. And they had troubles of their own up at the station house. What had Finlay said? Working under the enemy’s nose? And I couldn’t expect too much from Picard. He was already way out on a limb. I couldn’t count on anybody but myself.

[1672] On the other hand, I had no laws to worry about, no inhibitions, no distractions. I wouldn’t have to think about Miranda, probable cause, constitutional rights. I wouldn’t have to think about reasonable doubt or rules of evidence. No appeal to any higher authority for these guys. Was that fair? You bet your ass. These were bad people. They’d stepped over the line a long time ago. Bad people. What had Finlay said? As bad as they come. And they had killed Joe Reacher.

[1673] I rolled the Bentley down the slight hill to Roscoe’s house. Parked on the road outside her place. She wasn’t home. The Chevrolet wasn’t there. The big chrome clock on the Bentley’s dash showed ten of six. Ten minutes to wait. I got out of the front seat and got into the back. Stretched out on the big old car’s leather bench.

[1674] I wanted to get away from Margrave for the evening. I wanted to get out of Georgia altogether. I found a map in a pocket on the back of the driver’s seat. I peered at it and figured if we went west for an hour, hour and a half, back past Warburton again, we’d cross the state line into Alabama. That’s what I wanted to do. Blast west with Roscoe into Alabama and pull into the first live music bar we came to. Put my troubles on hold until tomorrow. Eat some cheap food, drink some cold beer, hear some dirty music. With Roscoe. My idea of a hell of an evening. I settled back to wait for her. The dark was gathering in. I felt a faint chill in the evening air. About six o’clock huge drops started hammering on the roof of the Bentley. It felt like a big evening thunderstorm was moving in, but it never really arrived. It never really let loose. Just the big early drops spattering down like the sky was straining to unload but wouldn’t let go. It went very dark and the heavy car rocked gently in the damp wind.

[1675] ROSCOE WAS LATE. THE STORM HAD BEEN THREATENING FOR about twenty minutes before I saw her Chevy winding down the rise. Her headlights swept and arced left and right. They washed over me as she swung into her driveway. They blazed against her garage door, then died as she cut the power. I got out of the Bentley and stepped over to her. We held each other and kissed. Then we went inside.

[1676] “You OK?” I asked her.

“I guess,” she said. “Hell of a day.”

I nodded. It had been.

“Upset?” I asked her.

She was moving around switching lamps on. Pulling drapes.

[1677] “This morning was the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “By far the worst thing. But I’m going to tell you something I would never tell anyone else. I wasn’t upset. Not about Morrison. You can’t get upset about a guy like that. But I’m upset about his wife. Bad enough living with a guy like Morrison without dying because of him too, right?”

[1678] “What about the rest of it?” I asked her. “Teale?”

[1679] “I’m not surprised,” she said. “That whole family has been scum for two hundred years. I know all about them. His family and my family go way back together. Why should he be any different? But, God, I’m glad everybody else in the department turned out clean. I was dreading finding out one of those guys had been in it, too. I don’t know if I could have faced that.”

[1680] She went into the kitchen and I followed. She went quiet. She wasn’t falling apart, but she wasn’t happy. She pulled open the refrigerator door. It was a gesture which said: the cupboard is bare. She smiled a tired smile at me.

“You want to buy me dinner?” she said.

“Sure,” I said. “But not here. In Alabama.”

[1681] I told her what I wanted to do. She liked the plan. She brightened up and went to take a shower. I figured I could use a shower too, so I went with her. But we hit a delay because as soon as she started to unbutton her crisp uniform shirt, my priorities shifted. The lure of an Alabama bar receded. And the shower could wait, too. She was wearing black underwear beneath the uniform. Not very substantial items. We ended up in a frenzy on the bedroom floor. The thunderstorm was finally breaking outside. The rain was lashing the little house. Lightning was blazing and the thunder was crashing about.

[1682] We finally made it to the shower. By then, we really needed it. Afterward I lay on the bed while Roscoe dressed. She put on faded denims and a silky shirt. We turned off the lamps again and locked up and took off in the Bentley. It was seven thirty and the storm was drifting off to the east, heading for Charleston before boiling out over the Atlantic. Might hit Bermuda tomorrow. We headed west toward a pinker sky. I found the road back out to Warburton. Cruised down the farm roads between the endless dark fields and blasted past the prison. It squatted glowering in its ghastly yellow light.

[1683] A half hour after Warburton we stopped to fill the old car’s gigantic tank. Threaded through some tobacco country and crossed the Chattahoochee by an old river bridge in Franklin. Then a sprint down to the state line. We were in Alabama before nine o’clock. We agreed to take a chance and stop at the first bar.

[1684] We saw an old roadhouse maybe a mile later. Pulled into the parking lot and got out. Looked OK. Big enough place, wide and low, built from tarred boards. Plenty of neon, plenty of cars in the lot, and I could hear music. The sign at the door said The Pond, live music seven nights a week at nine thirty. Roscoe and I held hands and walked in.

[1685] We were hit by bar noise and jukebox music and a blast of beery air. We pushed through to the back and found a wide ring of booths around a dance floor with a stage beyond. The stage was really just a low concrete platform. It might once have been some kind of a loading bay. The ceiling was low and the light was dim. We found an empty booth and slid in. Watched the band setting up while we waited for service. The waitresses were rushing around like basketball centers. One dived over and we ordered beers, cheese-burgers, fries, onion rings. Pretty much right away she ran back with a tin tray with our stuff on it. We ate and drank and ordered more.

[1686] “So what are you going to do about Joe?” Roscoe asked me.

[1687] I was going to finish his business. Whatever it was. Whatever it took. That was the decision I had made in her warm bed that morning. But she was a police officer. She was sworn to uphold all kinds of laws. Laws that were designed to get in my way. I didn’t know what to say. But she didn’t wait for me to say anything.

[1688] “I think you should find out who it was killed him,” she said.

“And then what?” I asked her.

[1689] But that was as far as we got. The band started up. We couldn’t talk anymore. Roscoe gave an apologetic smile and shook her head. The band was loud. She shrugged, saying sorry for the fact that I couldn’t hear her talking. She sketched me a tell-you-later gesture across the table and we turned to face the stage. I wished I could have heard her reply to my question.

[1690] THE BAR WAS CALLED THE POND AND THE BAND WAS called Pond Life. They started pretty well. A classic trio. Guitar, bass, drums. Firmly into the Stevie Ray Vaughan thing. Since Stevie Ray died in his helicopter up near Chicago it seemed like you could count up all the white men under forty in the southern states, divide by three, and that was the number of Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute bands. Everybody was doing it. Because it didn’t require much. Didn’t matter what you looked like, didn’t matter what gear you had. All you needed was to get your head down and play. The best of them could match Stevie Ray’s on-a-dime changes from loose bar rock to the old Texas blues.

[1691] This lot was pretty good. Pond Life. They lived up to their ironic name. The bass and the drums were big messy guys, lots of hair all over, fat and dirty. The guitar player was a small dark guy, not unlike old Stevie Ray himself. The same gappy grin. He could play, too. He had a black Les Paul copy and a big Marshall stack. Good old-fashioned sound. The loose heavy strings and the big pickups overloading the ancient Marshall tubes, giving that glorious fat buzzy scream you couldn’t get any other way.

[1692] We were having a good time. We drank a lot of beer, sat tight together in the booth. Then we danced for a while. Couldn’t resist it. The band played on and on. The room got hot and crowded. The music got louder and faster. The waitresses sprinted back and forth with long-neck bottles.

[1693] Roscoe looked great. Her silky shirt was damp. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. I could see that because of the way the damp silk stuck to her skin. I was in heaven. I was in a plain old bar with a stunning woman and a decent band. Joe was on hold until tomorrow. Margrave was a million miles away. I had no problems. I didn’t want the evening to end.