'Son of a bitch,' he said. 'Son of a bitch.'
Brushy, in her vaguely familiar manner with Krzysinski, stood to read over his shoulder. Soon the documents were passing among the rest of us. The first page was a fax cover sheet from the International Bank of Finance NA, Pico Luan, with the following message at its foot:
Account closed, January 30, per attached
letter of direction.
Best wishes,
Salem George
The letter I'd faxed over on Monday from the Regency was attached. When I looked at the signature, I admit I smiled. Handwriting analysts can't work with a copy. And I'd fool them anyway. Brushy, it turned out, was watching me, something solid, maybe even fatal, in her eye. She mouthed: 'Why are you having such a good time?'
'It's ironic,' I said aloud and turned away.
Pagnucci was reading now, looking quite smug. He made little pontifical sounds but might just as well have said, Told you so.
'What in the hell is Jake up to?' asked Tad. He had said this already a couple of times and nobody had replied.
'He's running,' I answered. 'He put together this story about Neucriss to buy himself time. Now he's headed for the hills. And the money.'
'Oh Christ,' said Krzysinski. 'And I let him out of here. Oh Christ! Let's go. Let's get the police.' Krzysinski was waving at Mathigoris.
Wash had turned to wood right in front of me. He was dead as a stump.
'Who do we call?' Tad asked.
'Mack has friends on the police force,' Martin volunteered at once from across the room. 'He just had one in the office before.'
'Wrong guy,' I said immediately. 'Not for this case.'
'Who's that?' Mike asked me.
'A dick named Dimonte.'
'Gino?' asked Mike. 'Tough cop. He's working Financials now. He'd be fine.'
In desperation I looked to Brushy, but she'd turned away.
'Don't you think the Bureau would be better with an international case?' I asked Mathigoris. He was indifferent.
'This guy's idea of investigative technique is to scare you to death,' I told Tad.
'That sounds like just what Jake deserves. Call him. Go,' Tad said to me. 'Quickly, please. Jake can't get away. We'll move from bad to worse.'
Because the conference room was in use, I ended up in a little phone closet off the TN reception area, where there was a colonial print of a woman in a Dutch collar, a poor cousin of Rembrandt. This was a kind of in-house phone booth, designed for visitors, a place they could take a call from their office in privacy. There was a small bowl of potpourri that sweetened the tight air. I considered the alternatives. I had none. 'I couldn't get through' is not a credible excuse on a call to the police. 'I called him' wouldn't work, because when he didn't show up, somebody would just call him again.
'Gino,' I said. I tried to be upbeat and bright. 'When you hear this one, you're gonna love me.'
'In another life,' he answered at once.
I told him the story. If he ran quick, he could get Jake at home. I gave him the address. Jake of course would be sitting there. Like some beaten hound. Right by the phone, as he promised. Maybe he'd called a lawyer. Or his dad. But he'd be there. I'd have paid some money to see the look on his face when Pigeyes grabbed him. God, I thought. God, I hated Jake.
'You won't need another collar before you retire,' I told Pigeyes.
'I just want you to know,' Gino said when I finished, 'I didn't buy one word of that.' I had no idea what to say.
'Not one fucking word. I don't want you going home and laughing in your beer tonight, or whatever you drink now. Postum. I knew that whole routine was a crock.
About these three guys all doing the bunny hop.' He was talking about what I'd said when he'd come to the office, the tale I told about Bert and Archie and the could-be-Kam from the U. This was
'It's all wrong,' Pigeyes told me. 'How?'
'Archie ain't bent, for one thing.'
'You're the one who told me, Pigeyes. About Archie. Rocket up his ass? Remember?'
'No. You told me. I said, What if. I said, Give, and you said, Has this guy got an elastic asshole? and I said, What if. This mutt Archie, I know the story of his life and his mother's life. He's straight. He don't got nothing but dingleberries back there, same as you and me. So it's a crock. That whole routine. Just so you know.'
Just so I knew. The other one, his young bootlicker, Dewey, he was taken in. Not Gino.
'I'm not following.'
'What else is new?'
'Are we done here or what?' I asked.
'Are we done, you and me done, is that what we're asking?'
'I mean Bert.'
'Fuck 'em.'
Nothing but fuzz on my screen. I did not understand. Which was just what he wanted.
'So what is this? Favor done, favor owed?' I thought maybe with the big collar on Jake, he was calling the score even.
He laughed, he roared. There was a phenomenal clanking wallop in my ear when he banged the phone on something hard.
'You done me enough favors. When you're miserable in hell, suffering your sins and thinking it can't get no worse, you look behind you and I'll be there. Payback time with me and you ain't gonna end, Malloy. Just so you know. I'm telling you, you're dirty somewhere. I said that from the git-go and I still say so. You're covering your ass, same as you were doing with Goodlookin. So stay tuned. Same time. Same fuckin station.' He slammed the phone again and this time it went dead. Maybe he'd hung up. Maybe he'd broken it.
But he'd done what he wanted. I sat in that tight little space and broke a sweat. This time I was really scared.
B. Closing the Circle
In the elevator, on the way down, Martin announced his resignation. I suppose he was forewarning Wash and Pagnucci. He seemed to regard his statement as dramatic, but it fell flat. This group had already been through too much, and as Martin had acknowledged before, there was not much left now to resign from. Brushy, a good kid to the last, started to talk to him anyway about changing his mind.
When the elevator doors parted, back on 37, Bert was standing there. He was dressed in supposed formal wear — a leather coat as a dinner jacket and four days' growth. He looked like a rock star. I guess Orleans was picking his clothes. He remained in the elevator doorway confronting us all in an auspicious posture, sneaking a
