“I’m not worried about the racketeering charge.”
“You should be. Protection rackets stink, you know that? They ruin businesses, they ruin lives. If Cozo scripts it right, some local jury of Tribeca traders is going to hate your guts.”
'I’m not worried about it,” Reacher said again. 'I’ll beat it in a second. I stopped it, remember? I didn’t start it. Jury of Tribeca merchants, I’ll look like Robin Hood.”
Blake nodded and ducked his head and wiped his lips with his fingers.
“Problem is it could be more than a racketeering charge. One of those guys is critical. We just heard from Bellevue. Broken skull. He dies, it’s a homicide charge.”
Reacher laughed. “Good try, Blake. But nobody got a broken skull tonight. Believe me, I want to break somebody’s skull, I know how to do it. It wouldn’t happen by accident. So let’s hear the rest of them.”
“The rest of what?”
“The big threats. Bureau does what it has to do, right? You’re willing to move right on into the gray areas. So let’s hear what other big threats you’ve got lined up for me.”
“We just want you to play ball here.”
“I know that. And I want to hear how far you’re prepared to go.”
“We’ll go as far as we have to. We’re the Bureau, Reacher. We’re under pressure here. We’re not going to waste time. We got none to waste.”
Reacher sipped his coffee. It tasted better than when he made it. Maybe she used more grounds. Or less. “So give me the bad news.”
“IRS audit.”
“You think I’m worried about an IRS audit? I’ve got nothing to hide. They find some income I’ve forgotten about, I’ll be extremely grateful, is all. I could use the cash.”
“Your girlfriend, too.”
Reacher laughed again. “Jodie’s a Wall Street lawyer, for God’s sake. Big firm, nearly a partner. She’ll tie the IRS in a knot without even thinking about it.”
“We’re serious, Reacher.”
“Not so far, you’re not.”
Blake looked at the floor. “Cozo’s got guys on the street, working undercover. Petrosian’s going to be asking who did his boys last night. Cozo’s guys could let your name slip.”
“So?”
“They could tell him where you live.”
“And that’s supposed to scare me? Look at me, Blake. Get real. There’s maybe ten people on the planet I need to be scared of. Extremely unlikely this guy Petrosian happens to be one of them. So he wants to come up here for me, I’ll float him back to town in a box, all the way down the river.”
“He’s a hard guy, is what I hear.”
“I’m sure he’s real hard. But is he hard enough?”
“Cozo says he’s a sexual deviant. His executions always involve some sexual element. And the corpses are always explicitly displayed, naked, mutilated, really bizarre. Men or women, he doesn’t care. Deerfield told us all about that. We talked to him about it.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Blake nodded. “We thought you’d say that. We’re good judges of character. That’s our trade, in a manner of speaking. So we asked ourselves how you’d react to something else. Suppose it’s not
6
'WHAT ARE YOU going to do?” Jodie asked.
“I don’t know,” Reacher said.
“I can’t believe they’re acting like this.”
They were in Jodie’s kitchen, four floors above lower Broadway in Manhattan. Blake and Lamarr had left him in Garrison and twenty restless minutes later he had driven south to the city. Jodie came home at six in the morning looking for breakfast and a shower and found him waiting in her living room.
“Are they serious?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“Shit, I can’t believe it.”
“They’re desperate,” he said. “And they’re arrogant. And they like to win. And they’re an elite group. Put it all together, this is how they behave. I’ve seen it before. Some of our guys were exactly the same. They did what it takes.”
“How long have you got?”
“I have to call them by eight. With a decision.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he said again.
Her coat was over the back of a kitchen chair. She was pacing nervously, back and forth in her peach dress. She had been awake and alert for twenty-three straight hours, but there was nothing to prove it except a faint blue tinge at the inside corners of her eyes.
“They can’t get away with this, can they?” she said. “Maybe they’re not serious.”
“Maybe they’re not,” he said. “But it’s a game, right? A gamble? One way or the other, we’re going to worry about it. Forever.”
She dropped into a chair and crossed her legs. Put her head back and shook her hair until it fell behind her shoulders. She was everything Julia Lamarr was not. A visitor from outer space would categorize them both as
“It just went too far,” he said. “My fault, absolutely. I was jerking them around, because I just didn’t like her at all, from the start. So I figured I’d tease them a little, keep it going, and then eventually say yes. But they dropped this on me, before I could get around to it.”
“So get them to take it back. Start over. Cooperate.”
He shook his head. “No, threatening me is one thing.
“But were they really serious?” she said again.
“Safest strategy is assume they might be.”
She nodded. “So I’m scared. And I guess I’d still be a little scared, even if they took it back.”
“Exactly,” he said. “What’s done is done.”
“But why? Why are they so desperate? Why the threats?”
“History,” he said. “You know what it’s like. Everybody hates everybody else. Blake said that to me. And it’s true. MPs wouldn’t piss on Quantico if it was on fire. Because of Vietnam. Your dad could have told you all about it. He’s an example.”
“What happened about Vietnam?”
“There was a rule of thumb, draft dodgers were the Bureau’s business, and deserters were ours. Different categories, right? And we knew how to handle deserters. Some of them went to the slammer, but some of them got a little TLC. The jungle wasn’t a lot of fun for the grunts, and the recruiting depots weren’t exactly bulging at the seams, remember? So the MPs would calm the good ones down and send them back, but nine times out of ten the Bureau would arrest them again anyway, on the way to the airport. Drove the MPs crazy. Hoover was unbearable. It was a turf war like you never saw. Result was a perfectly reasonable guy like Leon would hardly even speak to the FBI ever again. Wouldn’t take calls, didn’t bust a gut answering the mail.”
“And it’s still the same?”
He nodded. “Institutions have long memories. That stuff is like yesterday. Never forgive, never forget.”
“Even though women are in danger?”
