Persuader Part 10

"Duke's expecting you. You work here, you work out."

I glanced at my watch. Six twenty-five in the morning. Time ticking away.

"What's your name?" I asked.

He didn't answer. Just looked at me like I was setting some kind of a trap for him. That's another problem with steroids. Too many of them can rewire your head. And this guy's head didn't look like it had started from a very positive place to begin with. He looked mean and stupid. No better way to put it. And not a good combination. There was something in his face. I didn't like him. I was oh-for-two, as far as liking my new colleagues went.

"It's not a difficult question," I said.

"Paulie," he said.

I nodded. "Pleased to meet you, Paulie. I'm Reacher."

"I know," he said. "You were in the army."

"You got a problem with that?"

"I don't like officers."

I nodded. They had checked. They knew what rank I had held. They had some kind of access.

"Why not?" I asked. "Did you fail the OCS exam?"

He didn't answer.

"Let's go find Duke," I said.

He put his gla.s.s of water down and led me out to a back hallway and through a door to a set of wooden cellar stairs. There was a whole bas.e.m.e.nt under the house. It must have been blasted out of solid rock. The walls were raw stone patched and smoothed with concrete. The air was a little damp and musty. There were naked lightbulbs hanging in wire cages close to the ceiling. There were numerous rooms. One was a good-sized s.p.a.ce with white paint all over it. The floor was covered with white linoleum. There was a smell of old sweat. There was an exercise bicycle and a treadmill and a weights machine.

There was a heavy bag hanging from a ceiling joist. There was a speed bag near it.

Boxing gloves on a shelf. There were dumbbells stored in wall racks. There were free weights stacked loose on the floor next to a bench. Duke was standing right next to it. He was wearing his dark suit. He looked tired, like he had been up all night. He hadn't showered. His hair was a mess and his suit was creased and wrinkled, especially low down on the back of the coat.

Paulie went straight into some kind of a complicated stretching routine. He was so muscle-bound that his legs and arms had limited articulation. He couldn't touch his shoulders with his fingers. His biceps were too big. I looked at the weights machine. It had all kinds of handles and bars and grips. It had strong black cables that led through pulleys to a tall stack of lead plates. You would have to be able to lift about five hundred pounds to move them all.

"You working out?" I said to Duke.

"None of your business," he replied.

"Me either," I said.

Paulie turned his giant neck and glanced at me. Then he lay down on his back on the bench and shuffled around until his shoulders were positioned underneath a bar resting on a stand. The bar had a bunch of weights on either end. He grunted a bit and wrapped his hands around the bar and flicked his tongue in and out like he was preparing for a major effort. Then he pressed upward and lifted the bar off the stand. The bar bent and wobbled.

There was so much weight on it that it curved way down at the ends, like old film of Russian weight-lifters at the Olympics. He grunted again and heaved it up until his arms were locked straight. He held it like that for a second and then crashed it back into the stand. He turned his head and looked straight at me, like I was supposed to be impressed.

I was, and I wasn't. It was a lot of weight, and he had a lot of muscle. But steroid muscle is dumb muscle. It looks real good, and if you want to pit it against dead weight it works just fine. But it's slow and heavy and tires you out just carrying it around.

"Can you bench-press four hundred pounds?" he called. He was a little out of breath.

"Never tried," I said.

"Want to try now?"

"No," I said.

"Wimpy little guy like you, it could build you up."

"I'm officer cla.s.s," I said. "I don't need building up. I want some four-hundred-pound weight bench-pressed, I just find some big stupid ape and tell him to do it for me."

He glowered at me. I ignored him and looked at the heavy bag. It was a standard piece of gym equipment. Not new. I pushed it with my palm and set it swinging gently on its chain. Duke was watching me. Then he was glancing at Paulie. He had picked up on some vibe I hadn't. I pushed the bag again. We had used heavy bags extensively in handto-hand combat training. We would be wearing dress uniforms to simulate street clothes and we used the bags to learn how to kick. I once split a heavy bag with the edge of my heel, years ago. The sand dumped right out on the floor. I figured that would impress Paulie. But I wasn't going to try it again. The e-mail thing was hidden in my heel and I didn't want to damage it. I made an absurd mental note to tell Duffy she should have put it in the left shoe instead. But then, she was left-handed. Maybe she had thought she was doing the right thing all along.

"I don't like you," Paulie called. He was looking straight at me, so I a.s.sumed he was talking to me. His eyes were small. His skin glittered. He was a walking chemical imbalance. Exotic compounds were leaking from his pores.

"We should arm wrestle," he said.

"What?"

"We should arm wrestle," he said again. He came up right next to me, light and quiet on his feet. He towered over me. He practically blotted out the light. He smelled of sharp acrid sweat.

"I don't want to arm wrestle," I said. I saw Duke watching me. Then I glanced at Paulie's hands. They were clenched into fists, but they weren't huge. And steroids don't do anything for a person's hands, unless they exercise them, and most people don't think to do that.

"p.u.s.s.y," he said.

I said nothing.

"p.u.s.s.y," he said again.

"What's in it for the winner?" I asked.

"Satisfaction," he said.

"OK."

"OK what?"

"OK, let's do it," I said.

He seemed surprised, but he moved back to the weights bench fast enough. I took my jacket off and folded it over the exercise bicycle. Unb.u.t.toned my right cuff and rolled my sleeve up to my shoulder. My arm looked very thin next to his. But my hand was a shade bigger. My fingers were longer. And what little muscle I had in comparison to him came from pure genetics, not out of some pharmacist's bottle.

We knelt down facing each other across the bench and planted our elbows. His forearm was a little longer than mine, which was going to put a kink in his wrist, which was going to help me. We slapped our palms together and gripped. His hand felt cold and damp to me. Duke took up station at the head of the bench, like a referee.

"Go," he said.

I cheated from the first moment. The aim of arm wrestling is to use the strength in your arm and shoulder to rotate your hand downward, taking your opponent's hand with it, to the mat. I had no chance of doing that. Not against this guy. No chance at all. It was going to be all I could do to keep my own hand in place. So I didn't even try to win. I just squeezed. A million years of evolution have given us an opposable thumb, which means it can work against the other four fingers like a pincer. I got his knuckles lined up and squeezed them mercilessly. And I have very strong hands. I concentrated on keeping my arm upright. Stared into his eyes and squeezed his hand until I felt his knuckles start to crush. Then I squeezed harder. And harder. He didn't give up. He was immensely strong.

He kept the pressure on. I was sweating and breathing hard, just trying not to lose. We held it like that for a whole minute, straining and quivering in the silence. I squeezed harder. I let the pain build up in his hand. Watched it register in his face. Then I squeezed harder still. That's what gets them. They think it's already gotten as bad as it's going to get, and then it gets worse. And then worse still, like a ratchet. Worse and worse, like there's an infinite universe of agony ahead of them, stepping up and up and up, remorselessly, like a machine. They start concentrating on their own distress. And then the decision starts flickering in their eyes. They know I'm cheating, but they realize they can't do anything about it. They can't look up helplessly and say he's hurting me! It's not fair! That makes them the p.u.s.s.y, not me. And they can't face that. So they swallow it.

They swallow it and they start worrying about whether it's going to get any worse. And it is. For sure. There's plenty more to come. There's always more to come. I stared into Paulie's eyes and squeezed harder. Sweat was making his skin slick, so my hand was moving easily over his, tighter and tighter. There were no friction burns to distract him.

The pain was all right there in his knuckles.

"Enough," Duke called. "It's a tie."

I didn't loosen my grip. Paulie didn't back off with the pressure. His arm was as solid as a tree.

"I said enough," Duke called. "You a.s.sholes have got work to do."

I raised my elbow up high so he couldn't surprise me with a last-second effort. He looked away and dragged his arm off the bench. We let go of each other. His hand was marked vivid red and white. The ball of my thumb felt like it was on fire. He pushed himself off his knees and stood up and walked straight out of the room. I heard his heavy tread on the wooden staircase.

"That was real stupid," Duke said. "You just made another enemy."

I was out of breath. "What, I was supposed to lose?"

"It would have been better."

"Not my way."

"Then you're stupid," he said.

"You're head of security," I said. "You should tell him to act his age."

"Not that easy."

"So get rid of him."

"That's not easy either."

I stood up slowly. Rolled my sleeve down and b.u.t.toned my cuff. Glanced at my watch.

Nearly seven in the morning. Time ticking away.

"What am I doing today?" I asked.

"Driving a truck," Duke said. "You can drive a truck, right?"

I nodded, because I couldn't say no. I had been driving a truck when I rescued Richard Beck.

"I need to shower again," I said. "And I need some clean clothes."

"Tell the maid," he said. He was tired. "What am I, your d.a.m.n valet?"

He watched me for a second and headed for the stairs and left me all alone in the bas.e.m.e.nt. I stood and stretched and panted and shook my hand loose from the wrist to ease the strain. Then I retrieved my jacket and went looking for Teresa Daniel.

Theoretically she could be locked up somewhere down there. But I didn't find her. The bas.e.m.e.nt was a warren of s.p.a.ces carved and blasted out of the rock. Most of them were self-explanatory. There was a furnace room filled with a roaring boiler and a bunch of pipes. There was a laundry room, with a big was.h.i.+ng machine sitting high on a wooden table, so it would drain by gravity into a pipe that ran out through the wall at knee height.

There were storage areas. There were two locked rooms. Their doors were solid. I listened hard but heard nothing from inside them. I knocked gently and got no response.

I headed back upstairs and met Richard Beck and his mother in the ground-floor hallway.

Richard had washed his hair and parted it low on the right and swept it sideways so it hung down thickly on the left, to hide his missing ear. It looked like the thing old guys do to hide the fact they're going bald on top. The ambivalence was still there in his face. He looked comfortable in the dark safety of his house, but I could see he also felt a little trapped. He looked pleased enough to see me. Not just because I had saved his a.s.s, but maybe because I was a random representation of the outside world, too.

"Happy birthday, Mrs. Beck," I said.

She smiled at me, like she was flattered that I'd remembered. She looked better than she had the day before. She was easily ten years older than me, but I might have paid her some attention if we'd met somewhere by chance, like a bar or a club or on a long train ride.

"You'll be with us for a while," she said. Then it seemed to dawn on her why I would be with them for a while. I was hiding out there because I had killed a cop. She looked confused and glanced away and moved on through the hallway. Richard went with her and looked back at me, once, over his shoulder. I found the kitchen again. Paulie wasn't there. Zachary Beck was waiting for me instead.

"What weapons did they have?" he asked. "The guys in the Toyota?"

"They had Uzis," I said. Stick to the truth, like all good scam artists. "And a grenade."

"Which Uzis?"

"The Micros," I said. "The little ones."

"Magazines?"

"The short ones. Twenty rounds."

"Are you absolutely sure?"

I nodded.

"You an expert?"

"They were designed by an Israeli Army lieutenant," I said. "His name was Uziel Gal. He was a tinkerer. He made all kinds of improvements to the old Czech models 23 and 25 until he had a whole new thing going. This was back in 1949. The original Uzi went into production in 1953. It's franchised to Belgium and Germany. I've seen a few, here and there."

"And you're absolutely sure these were Micro versions with the short mags?"

"I'm sure."

"OK," he said, like it meant something to him. Then he walked out of the kitchen and disappeared. I stood there and thought about the urgency of his questions and the wrinkles in Duke's suit. The combination worried me.

I found the maid and told her I needed clothes. She showed me a long shopping list and said she was on her way out to the grocery store. I told her I wasn't asking her to go buy me clothes. I told her just to borrow them from somebody. She went red and bobbed her head and said nothing. Then the cook came back from somewhere and took pity on me and fried me some eggs and bacon. And made me some coffee, which put the whole day in a better light. I ate and drank and then I went up the two flights of stairs to my room.

The maid had left some clothes in the corridor, neatly folded on the floor. There was a pair of black denim jeans and a black denim s.h.i.+rt. Black socks and white underwear.

Every item was laundered and neatly pressed. I guessed they were Duke's. Beck's or Richard's would have been too small and Paulie's would look like I was wearing a tent. I scooped them up and carried them inside. Locked myself in my bathroom and took my shoe off and checked for e-mail. There was one message. It was from Susan Duffy. It said: Your location pinpointed by map. We will move up 25m S and W of you to motel near I-95. Response from Powell quote your eyes only, both DD after 5, 10-2, 10-28 unquote. Progress?

I smiled. Powell still talked the language. Both DD after 5 meant both guys had served five years and then been dishonorably discharged. Five years is way too long for the discharges to have been related to inherent inept.i.tude or training screw-ups. Those things would have been evident very early. The only way to get fired after five years is to be a bad person. And 10-2, 10-28 left no doubt about it. 10-28 was a standard radio-check response meaning loud and clear. 10-2 was a standard radio call for ambulance urgently needed. But read together as MPs' covert slang ambulance urgently needed, loud and clear meant these guys need to be dead, make no mistake about it. Powell had been in the files, and he hadn't liked what he had seen.

I found the icon for reply and typed no progress yet, stay tuned. Then I hit send now and put the unit back in my shoe. I didn't spend long in the shower. Just rinsed the gymnasium sweat off and dressed in the borrowed clothes. I used my own shoes and jacket and the overcoat Susan Duffy had given me. I walked downstairs and found Zachary Beck and Duke standing together in the hallway. They both had coats on. Duke had car keys in his hand. He still hadn't showered. He still looked tired, and he was scowling. Maybe he didn't like me wearing his clothes. The front door was standing open and I saw the maid driving past in a dusty old Saab, off to do the household's marketing.

Maybe she was going to buy a birthday cake.

"Let's go," Beck said, like there was work to be done and not much time to do it in. They led me out through the front door. The metal detector beeped twice, once for each of them but not for me. Outside the air was cold and fresh. The sky was bright. Beck's black Cadillac was waiting on the carriage circle. Duke held the rear door and Beck settled himself in the back. Duke got into the driver's seat. I took the front pa.s.senger seat. It seemed appropriate. There was no conversation.

Duke started the engine and put the car in gear and accelerated down the driveway. I could see Paulie far ahead in the distance, opening the gate for the maid in the Saab. He was back in his suit. He stood and waited for us and we swept past him and headed west, away from the sea. I turned around and saw him closing the gate again.