Third Strike (14 page)
“He and Mr. Armstrong are giving statements,” my father said shortly. “The police want your side of it, naturally, but Meyer’s stalling them until you feel up to it.”
I pulled a wry face. Sean was very good at keeping the unwanted at bay. “Are they really willing to wait that long?”
He picked a handful of sterile wipes out of the kit, tore them open and began cleaning my left palm.
“The man driving the cab,” he said, almost conversational as he worked. “I think I recognized him.”
I looked up sharply from what he was doing to my hand but his face, bent close to mine, was a picture of closed concentration.
“Who was he?”
“I don’t know his name, of course,” my father said. “But I believe he may have been the one who drove me across the river to Brooklyn. I hadn’t seen him before that. It was always the other chap who called or visited—the one with the shortback-and-sides.”
Buzz-cut.
He straightened, ripped open another packet. This one contained a pair of tweezers, which he used to pinch a sliver of glass out of my flesh. Probably from the front screen—I’d certainly hit it hard enough.
“I see,” I said. “So, they’ve tried to discredit you and blackmail you, and, now that’s failed, they’re just settling for a spot of good old-fashioned murder. Nice people you’re mixing with.”
He dug the tweezers in again and I flinched, letting my breath out on a hiss. Just when I thought he’d done it simply for badness, he emerged with a second chunk of glass, which he dropped into the stainless-steel waste bin. It was big enough to bounce when it hit the bottom.
“You do realize that he was there, don’t you?” he said suddenly. “In the hotel, the morning you came to see me and brought me that bottle of rather expensive whisky.” He smoothed his thumbs over my palm, searching for any residual splinters. There weren’t any.
“Buzz-cut?” I said, and even as I asked I remembered the tightly closed door to the bedroom in my father’s shabby little suite. No wonder Buzz-cut had looked at me twice when I’d pulled up outside the hotel the next morning.
My father glanced up at me for a moment, frowning before he got the reference. “Hm” was all he said.
He put my left hand down and picked up the right. I’d sliced into the heel of my thumb, small but deep, and the cut was dirty but the damage was generally less widespread. In fact, my knee was shouting loudest. I ignored it.
“Is that why you told me I was a cripple?” I asked without rancor.
He cleansed the cut and applied the self-adhesive closure strips. His hands were cool, dry and confident.
“I was under the strictest instructions—I’m quite sure you don’t need me to go into details. It was impressed upon me that I was not to counter any attempts made to discredit me. Nor,” he added grimly, “was I to elicit any help or assistance from anyone. Any offers were to be firmly … rebuffed, or the consequences would be severe. They were most definite about that.”
Rebuffed. Well, I suppose you achieved that one … .
“So you chose brutality to get your message across.”
My father finished a fast cleanup of my elbow, which had come off best in the injury stakes, and put the tweezers down roughly, almost slamming them. He touched a finger to his discolored cheekbone. “It seemed a method you would best understand,” he said, almost haughty. But underneath that veneer of pride I caught just a glimpse of genuine sorrow. I recalled my own bitter, angry words, hurled without thought to the wounds they would inflict, only aware of the desire to cause him as much pain as he had caused me.
And I had, I realized, by so readily believing the things I’d heard about him were true. Just as I’d been left stripped and wasted by his lack of belief in me, all that time ago.
“Besides,” he went on, remorseless, “I knew if I wasn’t hard enough on you, you would be too stubborn to give up.” He allowed a glint of bleak humor to break through as he bent to examine my knee. “As it was, I think I was convincing, don’t you?”
I forced my mind to concentrate on what he was saying, rather than on what he was doing. The grit seemed to have gone a long way into my knee, and the patella itself felt strangely disconnected. All that work to rid myself of my limp, and now I’d gone and got myself another. And in that distracted moment, I finally understood.
“You weren’t simply rebuffing me,” I murmured as the thought coalesced.
“You’re going to need to take some painkillers for a few days, Charlotte,” he said. “Please don’t be stubborn about it.”
“I’ve got some … something in my bag I can take,” I said, dismissive, suddenly wary of telling him what. My left leg had settled into a sullen throb along most of its length, burning brightest around my knee. “You weren’t just rebuffing me, were you?” I repeated. “You were trying to make me seem too weak to be a threat to them. You were trying to protect me.”
He paused, frowning slightly again. Then he was tearing open more wipes, leaving the packets scattered across the marble surface next to the sink. He was used, I recognized, to having a team to clear up after him.
“Yes,” he said at last, cautiously. “Yes, I suppose I was.”
“Why?”
His eyes flicked to mine in silent censure. “In case it escaped your notice, Charlotte, I’m your father.” He sprayed me with a coat of sealant dressing and straightened, nodding to signify he was done. “It’s what fathers do.”
And I realized then that, despite my earlier jealousy, whenever I’d called on him in the past, he’d come. He might not have agreed with my actions. In some cases he might not even have fully supported them, but he’d come nevertheless.
I stood, trying not to stagger as I put weight through my left leg, testing the knee to make sure it wasn’t going to fold on me.
“You know you can’t leave this here, don’t you?” I said. “Not now.”
My father looked up from scrubbing his hands, met my eyes in the mirror for a moment. Then he was back to his brisk rubbing.
“I was prepared to,” he said remotely, “but clearly
they
are not.” His face pinched and I wondered, briefly, what might happen if my father ever relaxed that ruthless self-control for long enough to well and truly lose his temper.
they
are not.” His face pinched and I wondered, briefly, what might happen if my father ever relaxed that ruthless self-control for long enough to well and truly lose his temper.
“So, are you going to tell the police the whole story?”
He had been drying his hands, and that halted him for a few long moments while he gave it due consideration. “What good will it do?” he said, sounding weary. “Do you honestly think they’ll give due credence to anything I have to say?”
I opened my mouth to respond but got no further. There was another knock on the door and Sean put his head round without waiting for an invitation. His eyes slid darkly from me to my father, who turned away, throwing the last paper towel into the waste bin and straightening his shirt cuffs.
“You okay?” Sean asked.
“I’ll live,” I said.
He advanced and folded my new clothing onto the counter next to the sink—a spare suit and shirt, still in their drycleaning bags. It was a rule of Parker’s that everyone kept a decent change of clothes at the office, just in case of emergencies. In his early days he had once had the misfortune, he’d told us, to have to face a widow when he was still spattered with her late husband’s blood. He’d taken considerable precautions not to be put in the same situation again.
“Are you ready for the police? They want your side of it.”
“Do they think I might have been jaywalking?”
He smiled and, just for a moment I saw the relief and the anguish swimming deep in his eyes, then it was gone.
“Getting hit by a car hasn’t knocked any sense into you, I see,” he said dryly. “I’ll tell them you’ll be another fifteen, shall I?”
I nodded, and he went out. I turned to find my father watching me with an expression that might have qualified as distaste. He removed his glasses and folded them into their slim case, which he tucked back into the inside pocket of his jacket.
“What?”
He shook his head and I shrugged, stripping away the plastic bag to remove the shirt from its hanger.
“What do you intend to say to the police?”
“What would you like me to tell them?”
He made a gesture of frustration. “Don’t play games, Charlotte,” he said, clipped. “It doesn’t become you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Who’s playing games?” I said mildly, buttoning the shirt. By the time I’d eased my way into the trousers, he still hadn’t answered.
“Your reputation’s been blown, your home invaded, your family’s secrets smeared across the newspapers. And now somebody’s just tried to kill you,” I said then, keeping all the emotion out of my voice.
I lifted my jacket. Underneath it was my SIG P228 in a Kramer inside-the-waistband sheepskin clip. Sean must have been into the office gun safe. My father watched me go through my habitual checks and slide the holstered weapon into position just behind my right hip. There was absolute disapproval in his every line.
“If you’d trusted me and Sean enough to come to us when they first started threatening you, we could have dealt with it there and then and avoided it coming to this.” I pulled on my boots and straightened, stifling a groan the movement caused. I shrugged into my jacket, smoothing the cloth to make sure it covered the outline of the SIG. “Whether you like it or not, I’m bloody good at what I do. We could have taken out Buzz-cut and his friend before they got you anywhere near Bushwick.”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt you could have ‘taken out’ my aggressors, as you so coyly put it,” my father echoed bitterly. “Perhaps that was what I was afraid of most.”
One way and another, we were tied up with the police for most of the day. After the uniforms came the plainclothes men. World-weary and sardonic New York cops, they’d seen everything and heard more. And they made it quite clear that the story my father was now telling was more far-fetched than most.
They were obviously aware of Richard Foxcroft’s name—anyone who had read a newspaper or seen a news report in the last week couldn’t fail to be. I got the distinct impression that the only reason they didn’t outright laugh in our faces was because Parker Armstrong’s name carried weight, despite recent events. The hatchet job that had been done on my father’s reputation, however, was a resounding success.
They’d investigate, the cops told us, but what was probably no more than an accidental hit-and-run wasn’t high on the priority list. If we could bring them something more—like the faintest shred of evidence to support our fanciful claims of attempted murder—they might be more inclined to devote some man-hours to the case.
While they were interviewing him and my mother, I brought Parker and Sean up to speed on the conversation with my father while he’d been patching me up. When I’d finished, both of them looked thoughtful and no less worried than they had before.
“We need to put a lid on this quickly,” Parker reiterated, although I was heartened by his continued use of the word
we.
He glanced from one of us to the other. “If he’s finally agreed to make a stand, we can do something. Let me make some calls.”
we.
He glanced from one of us to the other. “If he’s finally agreed to make a stand, we can do something. Let me make some calls.”
He stood, decisive, and regarded us gravely. “Meanwhile, you’re going to have to keep those two out of trouble. They’ve already come after them once. They’ll try again.”
I got to my feet, too. I’d taken the opportunity to swallow a couple of painkillers and they’d done a decent job at floating the edge off things. Rising was considerably easier as a result. “Thank you,” I said. “And I know you don’t like to hear it, but I’ll say it again—I’m sorry for all of this.”
“Jeez, I know that, Charlie.” He offered me a tired smile and, a rarity, put his arm around my shoulder in a more fatherly gesture than I’d ever had from my own. “Don’t worry, we’ll see it through. And anyhow, you can’t be held responsible for your parents.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered. “Can’t live with’em. Can’t kill’em and bury’em in the garden.”
After the police had rolled up their crime-scene tape and departed, we gave my parents a choice. Either Sean and I would put them up in the spare room at the apartment, or we’d put a guard on them at the hotel and stick with them whenever they were outside it. After the briefest of consultations, they went for the latter option, which was both a relief and a snub as far as I was concerned.
I noticed Parker go a little pale when I bluntly offered this ultimatum. His whole ethos for executive protection was to keep clients as safe as possible without cramping their style. Some saw it as risky, but it certainly seemed to work for him. Time and again, I’d come across agencies who’d been fired for letting their operatives crowd the principal and vetoing what the client considered normal activities. I liked Parker’s attitude. It went a long way towards explaining why, family money aside, he was doing well enough to run a substantial office in New York and a weekend place in the Hamptons.
Nevertheless, this was not a normal situation, nor the kind of clients he was used to dealing with. I knew that if we didn’t lay some ground rules right from the start, in an emergency things were going to go pear-shaped at somewhere approaching the speed of sound.
I was coward enough to let Sean tell it to them straight. I didn’t think they liked me any better, but at least I felt my father was likely to hold whatever Sean said in rather higher esteem.
“You are not under house arrest and we will not restrict your movements unless our experience and our judgment of the situation tell us it’s vital that we do so,” Sean said, disregarding the cynical twitch of my father’s mouth. “But, these people, whoever they are, are serious. If you take risks with
your
safety, just remember that you take even bigger risks with
our
safety. As today should have shown you, we will always attempt to put ourselves between you and the threat. That’s what we do.” He let his eyes slide over me briefly, making a point of it. “Is that clear?”
your
safety, just remember that you take even bigger risks with
our
safety. As today should have shown you, we will always attempt to put ourselves between you and the threat. That’s what we do.” He let his eyes slide over me briefly, making a point of it. “Is that clear?”
“We understand,” my father said stiffly.
“Good,” Sean said, and although he kept his face and voice and body entirely neutral, I could tell how much he was enjoying this. “In that case, there are a couple of things you’ll need to remember in case of attack. If we shout ‘Get down!’ at any point, all we want you to do is bend double and keep your head low, but stay on your feet and be ready to move unless we actively push you to the ground. Don’t try and stick your head up to see what’s happening. Don’t try and look round to see where the other one is. You’re going to have to trust us to have you both covered, yes?”
He paused and, after a second’s hesitation, they both nodded.
“One last thing,” Sean said, and now he did allow his voice to go soft and deadly. “This is not a democracy. We will do whatever we have to in order to preserve your lives and keep you safe. What we will
not
do is stand there in the middle of a firefight and discuss alternatives as you see them, or justify our actions. If we tell you to do something, just do it. Afterwards, we can talk about it all you like.”
not
do is stand there in the middle of a firefight and discuss alternatives as you see them, or justify our actions. If we tell you to do something, just do it. Afterwards, we can talk about it all you like.”
“So,” my father said, matching his tone to Sean’s almost perfectly, “what happens when, in the cold light of day, you find you
can’t
justify your actions?”
can’t
justify your actions?”
There was a long silence while they stared each other down. Here were two men who had both handled death, from one direction or another, and never flinched under the weight of that responsibility.
“I don’t know, Richard. It’s never come up,” Sean said deliberately. He checked his watch, a wholly dismissive gesture, and started to turn away. “But if it ever does, I’ll be sure to let you know … .”
Sean, Parker, and I formed a three-man detail to get them out of the building and into the Navigator that Joe McGregor had waiting by the curb. This time, we took no chances, but whoever had been behind the wheel of the rogue cab did not spring out at us for a second attempt.
Nothing happened on the journey to their hotel, where McGregor took station. He had nothing to report when Sean and I arrived to relieve him in the morning, and nothing untoward happened the following day, either. Unless you counted the excruciating politeness with which Sean and my father treated each other. It screeched at my nerves like a tone-deaf child with their first violin.
We spent the day shopping for a replacement suitcase for my mother, and new clothes to fill it. She picked out another hard-shell case just like the last one. Where previously I might have tried to talk her into something lighter, now I voiced no such objections. Structural suitcases, I decided, were my friend.
Parker, meanwhile, was working furiously behind the scenes and providing us with regular updates on progress—or lack of it.
He’d sent to his various contacts Sean’s rudimentary photos of the couple we’d found baby-sitting my mother back in England. Apart from the fact that everyone seemed to think Blondie’s pic had been taken post mortem, nobody initially offered any clues as to their background.
Then Parker got a possible hit on Don, last name Kaminski. It turned out he was an ex-marine with a disciplinary record, who’d been spat out by the military machine two years previously and disappeared into the private contractors’ market. In other words, he was either a bodyguard or a mercenary.
Parker had uncovered the firm Don apparently worked for. Unfortunately, due to delusions of grandeur on their part, they seemed to think they were equal to—and therefore direct rivals of—Parker’s outfit. The result was that they refused to tell him anything about what their guy might or might not have been up to.
They wouldn’t even confirm Don was outside the mainland U.S., which I felt was a bit pointless, given the circumstances. But, Parker did at least manage to pick up a useful little snippet from an unguarded comment. From that, he deduced that Don Kaminski’s employers were growing increasingly alarmed by the fact they’d lost contact with their man. I thought of May and her shotgun, and the aggressive porcine guards around his temporary prison, and decided that it was probably going to be awhile yet before he got in touch.
It took longer to get any information on the woman I knew only as Blondie, although I admit that the state of her face probably didn’t make her any easier to identify.
We were just coming out of Macy’s department store when Parker called on Sean’s mobile. Sean let the answering machine pick up and didn’t make any attempt to respond to the call until we were back in our vehicle and on the move again. I returned Parker’s call while Sean dealt with the lunchtime traffic.
“Are you all together and close by?” Parker demanded.
“Yes,” I said, being cagey over the phone. “About ten minutes, give or take traffic. Trouble?”
“Nothing desperate,” Parker said.
Yes, it could be trouble.
“Just get back to the office as soon as it’s convenient, would you?”
And yes, it’s urgent.
And he ended the call before I could satisfy my curiosity any better than that.
Yes, it could be trouble.
“Just get back to the office as soon as it’s convenient, would you?”
And yes, it’s urgent.
And he ended the call before I could satisfy my curiosity any better than that.
By dint of only a small number of minor moving-vehicle violations, Sean made it back to base inside my ten-minute estimate. We rode the elevator in silence and Bill Rendelson intercepted us before we’d taken more than three steps out into the lobby.
“The boss wants to see you two alone first,” he said quietly to me, not giving away any clues. He turned to my parents. “If you’d come with me, sir, ma’am?” I saw a flicker of impatience cross my father’s face, but he allowed the pair of them to be ushered into one of the conference rooms. Bill promised to be back soon with refreshments, then shut the door on them smartly and hurried across towards Parker’s office, jerking his head much less deferentially that we should follow.
Inside, Parker Armstrong was sitting in his usual position behind the desk. Opposite him, in one of the client chairs, sat a nondescript little man in a badly cut gray suit. He looked like a second-rate salesman or a clerical drone who has trudged the same furrow for so long he’s worn a groove deep enough to bury himself.
The man looked up quickly as Sean and I entered. He had a mournful, rumpled face, with baggy eyes that were slightly bloodshot, but they didn’t miss a trick. I knew before the door had closed behind us that he’d pinpointed the fact we were carrying, and we weren’t exactly being obvious about it.
A pro, then. But what kind?
“This is Mr. Collingwood,” Parker said as both men rose for the introductions. “He’s with—”
“Er, let’s just say I’m with one of the
lesser-known
agencies of the U.S. government and leave it at that, shall we?” the man said, glancing at Parker almost with mild reproof. He offered us both a perfunctory handshake, letting go almost before he’d gripped.
lesser-known
agencies of the U.S. government and leave it at that, shall we?” the man said, glancing at Parker almost with mild reproof. He offered us both a perfunctory handshake, letting go almost before he’d gripped.
Parker stared back, unintimidated. “I like to keep my people fully informed,” he said.
Collingwood ducked his head, smiling apologetically. “I’d be a whole lot happier, at this stage, if we kept this whole thing as
low-key
as possible, Mr. Armstrong. I’m sure you can understand our … concerns.”
low-key
as possible, Mr. Armstrong. I’m sure you can understand our … concerns.”
I was getting better at placing regional American accents. Not quite Deep South enough to be Alabama or Georgia. Maybe one of the Carolinas.
Parker nodded reluctantly and waved us to sit down. Sean and I took the chairs on either side of him, positions of support and solidarity that weren’t lost on the government man. Those heavy-lidded eyes gleamed a little as they regarded us.
Despite his observant gaze, Collingwood struck me as an official rather than an agent—the kind who’d once been in the field, but was now firmly anchored behind a desk. His suit had the bagged knees to prove it. He had a briefcase lying closed on the low table near his right hand and a buff-coloured folder, also closed, in front of him, which he fiddled with while he waited for us to settle, fussily lining it up with the edge of the table.
His hands were misshapen across the backs, I noticed, like he’d spent his youth bare-knuckle fighting or suffered from premature arthritis. Perhaps that explained the lackluster handshake.
“Why don’t you bring everybody up to speed,” Parker suggested.
The little man ducked his head again and smiled at us. His hair was very thick, its glossy blackness at odds with his lived-in face. It couldn’t have looked more like a wig unless it actually had a chin strap.
“This business came to our attention because Mr. Armstrong was attempting to identify, ah …
this
woman,” he said, opening the folder just far enough to peer inside and lifting out a blowup print, which he spun the right way up and slid across the table towards us.
this
woman,” he said, opening the folder just far enough to peer inside and lifting out a blowup print, which he spun the right way up and slid across the table towards us.
“Yes,” Sean said, barely glancing at the picture. He didn’t need to. It was the one he’d taken of Blondie lying on the floor in my parents’ garage with her eyes closed. The blood from her obviously broken nose formed a mustachelike stain on her upper lip.
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