Joe Ledger (28 page)

“I insulted him.”

“Irrelevant. He’s in biotech, so he’s used to that. He said that you didn’t try to provoke him into any action that would have allowed you to use force on him.”

“Wasn’t that kind of moment.” Which was true in its way. I’d heard he had a bad temper, so I was deliberately rude in hopes he’d swing on me. He didn’t, so the whole thing stayed in low gear.

“You could have turned it into one,” said Church. “It was probably the only time when someone could have. You chose not to. He said it was very professional. It engendered a degree of trust. Now he wants to come in and talk to us and there aren’t many people left whom he trusts.”

“So I lose a day at Camden Yards for a dickhead everyone wants to see in a body bag. How did I get so lucky?”

“Perhaps you were too charming for your own good.”

“Cute. So what do I do with him once I have him? We putting him in a hotel under guard or do you want me to take him to the safe house in Elkton?”

“Did you ever finish the repairs on the holding cell at the Warehouse? The one where the toilet backed up?”

“No. The plumber comes in next Monday and….”

“Put him there,” he said.

He disconnected without further comment.

Chap. 5

I considered the way Frick and Frack flanked me on the elevator. I was in the center of the car, they were fanned to either side, quarter-turned toward me. Both had their jackets unbuttoned, which meant they were carrying. If they were both right handed, the guy to my right—Frack—was going to have to reach into his jacket toward me, which meant I could jam him back against the wall and keep the piece in its holster. Frick would have to reach across his chest away from me, because his piece would be hanging under his left armpit, the barrel facing away. If it came to a watershed moment, I’d bodyblock Frick and kick Frack’s kneecap off.

I generally don’t rehearse this sort of thing, preferring the fluidity of spontaneous reaction. But these guys were not top tier. I doubted they were graduates of a super-soldier program. More like meat in off-the-rack suits.

They didn’t make a play, so we didn’t need to explore the extent of their health plan.

Fair enough.

Maybe this would go by the numbers.

The car stopped and the doors opened and my assessment of the day changed.

Myron Bishop was right there, waiting directly outside. He was well dressed in a five-thousand-dollar suit and a million-dollar smile. There were four very, very large men behind him. They were smiling too.

Myron Bishop said, “Fuck you.”

And he jabbed me in the throat with a stun gun.

Chap. 6

So, there I was.

Buck naked.

Duct-taped to a chair.

I was never completely unconscious, though Bishop and—I think—both Frick and Frack kept juicing me with the stun guns.

Stun guns fucking hurt.

I twitched and jerked and pissed myself and screamed.

They laughed their asses off.

Despite the constant shocks, I didn’t make it easy for them. I strained my muscles, fought them, made them earn it.

One of the big goons with Bishop took my rapid-release knife and cut my clothes off. Except for my Orioles shirt. He pulled that off and set it carefully aside. Everything else was slashed to ribbons. He even looped my socks over the knife and cut them in half. While I can appreciate attention to detail, that seemed somewhere between petty and psychotic.

I hadn’t been wearing my earbud because this didn’t seem like that kind of situation. The bad call was entirely my own. No radio, no backup.

Had one of my guys done something as rookie as this, I’d have fried him.

There’s a lesson about hubris in all this. Balls.

The big goon with my knife was one of the ugliest men I’ve ever seen. His face was lumpy and distorted, his nose flat and crooked, his eyes buried in little pits of gristle. And damn if he didn’t stink. Worst body odor I’ve ever smelled, and I’ve been to the great apes exhibit at the zoo. When he turned away to unload my weapon and place it on the table, I saw that his thighs and buttocks were unnaturally lumpy and huge. Not sure whether this was a bad side effect of the super-soldier formula or the wrong kind of manic weight training. Or whether he was simply a freak.

The other two goons were merely big. Six-five, six-six. Muscles upon muscles. No mercy at all in their eyes.

While all this was happening, Myron Bishop sat on the edge of a desk, swinging one foot and listening to a smooth jazz station. Kenny G or some shit.

He finally waved the goon squad back. He sent Frick and Frack down in the elevator.

“Nobody comes up until I say so,” he told them. “That means no calls, no nothing.”

They grunted like obedient dogs and disappeared.

Bishop pushed off from the desk and strolled toward me. “You know, I’ve seen every James Bond movie. I have them all on DVD. Great stuff.”

“Yeah? Who’s your favorite Bond?”

“Not my point,” he said. “In the movies there’s always this scene where the bad guy captures Bond, ties him to some kind of device….”

“Like the laser table in
Goldfinger
,” I said, trying to stretch this out.

He snapped his fingers. “Exactly. Or the villain invites him to dinner. Either way, the bad guy does this info dump where he brags about his evil master plan and basically tells Bond all the information he’d need to fuck him up if Bond ever got free. And Bond
always
gets free and then fucks him up.”

I said nothing.

“Which is crazy, ’cause why the hell would anyone do that? I mean, how stupid is that?”

“It doesn’t adequately reflect the real world.” 

He grinned and nodded. “It’s a plot device. You read the books?”

“Sure. When I was a kid.”

“Same problem in the books,” said Bishop, nodding and grinning. Couple of guys bullshitting about movies. Like any other day. “But in the real world the hero would almost never meet the villain. Bond might tear down Blofeld’s plan or infiltrate Dr. No’s hollowed-out volcano with a bunch of ninjas, but if the super villain was there he’d be killed in any resulting firefight, am I right?”

“Ideally.”

“Unless—?” he prompted.

“Unless,” I said, “the op was to apprehend the bad guy and turn him over to an interrogation team.”

“Bingo. The hero and villain aren’t really going to meet and have a heart-to-heart. That doesn’t happen.”

“It doesn’t
always
happen.” 

“What, you mean it does sometimes?”

“Life’s weird like that.”

He thought about it. “Fuck. I didn’t know that. You’ve done it? You’ve had that James Bond info-dump moment?”

“Not over dinner,” I said. “And never with a laser cannon.”

“But you’ve had it.”

“I guess.”

He looked excited. “I’d love to hear about it. Could you…you know…
tell
me about it? Just one or two.”

I smiled at him. “You are, of course, shitting me here.”

“No, I’m dead serious.”

“I’m tied to a chair with my junk hanging out.”

The goons laughed at that. The ugly one, Stanky McButtchunks, laughed hardest.

Bishop chuckled.

I did, too. It was a funny moment. Mind you, you’d have to be a few steps along the path to psychosis to find it funny, but I think we all qualified.

Bishop said, “I really would like to hear about it. Seriously.”

 “Sorry,” I said. “It’s classified.”

“Unclassify it. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Ummm….no. I don’t see it happening.”

He leaned casually on the wheeled cart on which the generator sat. “Try.”

“Can’t and won’t.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about that.”

It wasn’t something I wanted him to rush to prove.

So, I said, “What’s this all about, Myron? I thought you were going to go all Bond-villain on me and tell me about your master plan. Wasn’t that what you were leading up to?”

“No. I wanted to point out how stupid those movies are. Villains don’t have confessional moments with spies or assassins.”

“I’m not technically a spy.”  

“You’re an assassin, though.”

“Labels are ugly things, Myron.”

He grinned, showing me expensive dental work. “Christ, I really like you, Joe. I even liked you that day when you were fucking up my life. You have balls—”

“As we can all clearly see.”

“—And you got a weird way of looking at the world. Skewed is the word, I think.”

“I prefer ‘unique perspective.’”

“Whatever. Point is, I got no evil master plan to reveal. I’m fucked. And I mean bent over a barrel with everyone from the SEC to NATO waiting in line to pull a train. I’m in total crash-and-burn mode here. My former customers and most of my business associates would like to see my head on a stick, and except for a few guys in my inner circle, I’ve got no one at my back.” When he mentioned his inner circle he gestured to Stanky and the other two.

I didn’t comment.

“So I am well and truly screwed here, Joe. A baby-raper in prison has a better chance than I do.”

“Nice comparison. You sure you want to run with that?”

“You’re missing the point.”

“No, I get you. Your empire has crumbled. Cut me loose, and we can go cry about it over some beers. Bring the goon squad if you want.”

“I think that ship has sailed.”

“Actually, it hasn’t.”

“You’re a federal agent. I’m pretty sure we committed about nine felonies in the last few minutes.”

“Which I’m willing to forgive and forget. No, don’t smile, I’m serious. So far all that’s happened is a little fun and games. I’m a big boy, I can let it slide. We’d rather have you come in where we can protect you—”

“—And interrogate me.”

“Let’s call it an extended interview. If you came in it would be with the understanding that you’re willing to cooperate, name names in exchange for immunity.”

“No one’s going to give me immunity.”

“No? Look in the front right pocket of my jeans.”

He did. The paper was in three pieces, thanks to Stanky and the knife, but Bishop smoothed them out on a desk and puzzled the pieces together. He grunted.

“That is an Executive Order from the President of the United States. It offers full immunity from prosecution in exchange for complete and unreserved cooperation. That means we protect you, we give you a completely new identity in a place no one will ever look, and we go out and arrest anyone who would ever want to do you harm. It also gives the State Department some iron boots with which to kick the ass of a few countries on our current shit list. The bottom line is that you get to have a good life and get to
live
that life. That was the offer I came to deliver today. That offer still stands. I can get a new copy of the Order. We can all step back off this diving board and end the day with everyone smiling.”

“I’m supposed to believe this after we kicked your ass?”

I laughed. “Dude, having my ass kicked is pretty much on my day-planner on any day that ends in a ‘y.’ I don’t burn up a lot of calories holding grudges. For me it’s all big picture, and my job gets easier if you’re in a nice split-level somewhere with no one shooting at you and the two of us swapping YouTube videos of kittens, you dig?”

“You really buying this shit?” asked Stanky. Even his voice was ugly.

For a moment it looked like Bishop was, in fact, buying it. Lots of different expressions crossed his face. Doubt, interest, some fear. The guy was an emotional train wreck, and I could see what months of stress were doing to him. Under his fake tan, his skin color was bad. There was a little tremolo in his voice, and his hands shook. I’d bet my pension that he was drinking too much and not getting any sleep unless he rode a sleeping pill down into troubled dreams.

In a weird, detached way I almost felt sorry for him. We’d done an even better job of ruining his life than I’d thought.

Now, understand me, when I say I felt sorry for him, it was only a fleeting thing. Like gas pains after a plate of nachos. He was a scum-sucking bottom feeder whose business deals had probably cost thousands of people pain and maybe put a few hundred in the dirt.

So, yeah, I’d actually kill him without blinking, but in that moment I felt bad. He looked like a hurt, scared, little kid.

Bishop turned away and paced the office for a few minutes. We all waited him out. Now was not the time to push. After a dozen turns back and forth, he stopped by a tall metal cabinet, opened it to reveal shelves filled with office products and cleaning supplies. He took down a box of Hefty trash bags, tugged one out, and turned to one of the other goons.

“Red,” he said, “put his stuff in here. Dump it somewhere no one will find it.”

He handed the box of bags to the other goon. “Billy, there should be enough here to wrap up the parts.”

I said, “Ah, fuck, Myron.”

Bishop looked at me for a few silent seconds. “Sorry, Joe. The truth is that you fucked me over pretty good. You know how many days I’ve had diarrhea? My blood pressure could blow bolts out of plate steel. You ruined more than my business. You ruined me.”

“So let me make it right,” I said. “We’re not the Marshals. They’d hide you away in some Podunk town and make you live small. The DMS can give you a better life than clerking at a shoe store in East Galoshes, Iowa. I’m serious. We have some places on some islands. Palm trees, ocean views, the works. Like a resort.”

“I
had
that.”

“Have it again. Have it forever.”

“Even paradise would get boring if I could never leave.”

“Well, shit, man, what’s your plan now? Go on the run for the rest of your life? Defect to North Korea and live in some underground bunker until you stop being useful?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said, “I have other plans.”

“
What
other plans? What other options do you have left? I’m offering you the best deal.”

“Sorry, Joe, I’ll pass.”

“Tell me why.”

He smiled. A thin, small, slightly weary smile. “This isn’t a James Bond movie, Joe. Guys like me don’t have confessional moments. You don’t get to know our plans. All you get to do is know that you fucked up and failed. Maybe that’ll give you a little taste of what I’ve been going through.”