Chapter 51

Spook

It was late the next afternoon when I answered the doorbell to see Richard standing, alone, outside.

This time, with no handwritten admonition not to speak, I greeted him as a friend. He smiled and walked in, responding to my greeting but at the same time pointing meaningfully to the study. We went straight in.

As soon as Spook cleared him he dove right in. "Jesus, Jack, that was some charnel house you sent us to last night," he said. "You didn't leave much standing, did you?"

I laughed, a very little; it was still too close in time to feel any real humor. "They kidnapped my wife and son," I reminded him. "Estrada threatened to kill them, several times. What would you have done?"

"The same," he said immediately. "If I could. I'm not blaming you, I'm impressed. Es­trada was a fucking horror, a latter-day Jackal." He was referring to another, earlier terrorist, coincidentally also named Carlos although with different—and multiple—surnames, who'd plagued the international community a decade or so earlier.

"Yes," I said, remembering the menace of the man.

"The world's better off without him," he said firmly. "Him and the ones with him. We have dossiers on them, too. Do you want to see?"

I thought about Joe's casually cruel search of me and shook my head. No, I didn't care to know anything more about any of them.

"I think I've pretty much pieced together what happened," he said. "Every light bulb in the place blown—"

"Not quite every one," I interrupted. "Thank God."

"Mmm," he agreed. "Just the one string. And the laptop, or what was left of it. You got Spook into the act somehow and—"

I held up my hand to stop him. "Richard," I said. "Please. Don't ask me to re-live it."

"I'm sorry, Jack," he said in sudden realization. "They were your first, weren't they? First men you ever killed?"

"Yeah." I nodded. In that moment I almost broke down. My eyes were wet; it would have been so damn easy to simply start weeping, right in front of him. But I didn't want to do that; with an effort of will I pulled myself together. "Did you ever... ?" I began. I couldn't finish the sentence.

" ... kill somebody?" he completed it for me. "Yes. And thinking back, I'd do it again, in a heartbeat. But I had the same reaction, afterwards. Same as you. In one way it was worse for me, it was a woman, not a man—or men, for you. For a long time I wondered, what if she wouldn't have fired? But she had a gun pointed right at me, she was scum, and I really had no choice."

"A woman," I mused. "That's hard, Richard."

"There've been others since," he said. "Both men, but more or less the same circumstances. I've hated it every time. But that's what we do. My people, I mean. I've been ready to kill, every time."

"Have you ever stood over one, one who was helpless, and just ... shot?" I asked suddenly.

He shot me a sharp look. Then recognition flooded his face. "Oh," he said. "Estrada."

I nodded mutely.

"Jack, forget it," he told me. "That was as evil a man as ever walked the face of the Earth. I saw what had happened. We're a lot better off with him dead."

"Richard, he was blind," I said compulsively. "He had no hands, they'd been blown off by the blast. And I stood there and looked down at him and took his own gun out of his pocket and—"

"Stop, Jack," he cut me off. "I don't want to know this. I can't know this, not even unofficially."

I gave him a miserable nod.

"But I'll tell you something else," he said after a minute. "The woman, they sent me to counseling after. They're good about that. And I remember some of the things the counselor said. He told me that, in the heat of the moment, you might do some stuff that you wouldn't ­otherwise do. Panic sets in, fight or flight; you do what you have to do to survive. And you have to be able to understand that afterwards, to forgive yourself for what you had to do."

"It's not the—" I started.

"Yes, it's the same," he interrupted me. "Estrada was Estrada. He was a stone killer. Give him the same choice, he'd have made it without hesitating. And he'd never have stopped; no eyes, no hands, he'd still have gone after you. Dead was the only way to finish it."

"But—"

"Jack, he could buy eyes. He could buy hands." Yeah, he could; it was one of the things I'd thought about before I pulled the trigger. "If he'd lived... ," Richard was continuing, "well. I don't have to tell you. You do what you have to do to survive," he repeated.

"I guess," I said again. I shook my head sharply. "Thanks, Richard."

"No problem," he responded. "Somebody helped me when I needed it. I'm just trying to pass it on."

I had more questions, but most I decided to keep to myself. One, though, was pressing on a more mundane level.

"Richard, there's something else," I said. "I have his car, one of them. Lee and I drove it home last night, with Johnnie. It's parked out there in our garage for the moment, but sooner or later—"

He barked out a laugh. "Going in for hot cars now too, Jack?"

"Is it?" I asked. "Hot, I mean."

He thought a minute. "Oh, shit," he said. "I'm in this so damn deep already, what's one more thing? Come on, let's go take a look. We won't talk out there, we'll just look, OK?"

Together we walked silently out to the garage and I opened the door. He glanced at the license plate, nodded, and went straight to the glove box. He reached in, pulled out a long strip of what looked to be cash register tape, and jerked his thumb toward the study. We trooped back in.

"Rental," he said when we were seated again. "They use distinctive plates. It's to, let's see..." He looked over the strip of tape. "Joseph Smith. Now there's a creative name for you."

"Estrada called him Giuseppe, which I think is Italian for Joe," I put in. "That much was real, anyhow."

Richard nodded. "Giuseppe Catallo," he said. "He was one of the stiffs with all the holes in them. Not going to be missed. Anyhow, he's got it for, let's see, three more days. And they'll wait a while before they put out an alert on it; rental agencies don't like to piss off their customers. So you've got time."

"Good," I said. "So just return it?"

He gave me a concerned look. "Jesus, Jack, don't be a simpleton. You're really off your feed about this, aren't you?"

I returned his gaze bleakly. "It was Lee and Johnnie," I said in a tone that matched my eyes. "I very nearly got them killed. It was different when it was all of you chasing me back then. For one thing I was a lot younger, and it was just me, whatever happened. This was something else again. Richard, is there any chance of a repeat? Did Estrada let other people know that maybe Jack Carstairs is Jack Heyward?"

He shrugged. "Possible," he said. "I doubt it, though. Estrada always played his cards pretty close to his chest, and something like this, all that money, he'd want to keep it as quiet as he could. It's probably why he killed Harding, there was no other obvious reason, it didn't get him his money back."

"'Probably, '" I echoed him unhappily.

Again the shrug. "I can't know for sure, Jack," he said. "I wasn't in Estrada's inner council, if he even had one. But you've got a better source of information than I do. Spook, what do you think?"

"I agree it is unlikely that others will know or surmise," came from the speaker on my desk. "Probability is tentatively in excess of ninety-five percent. In addition, since identification of Estrada to me I have monitored all communications from known associates. The closest of those were the ones here, and all are dead. No others have made any mention of you by name, Jack."

I sighed. "Well, nothing's ever a hundred percent," I said. "Except maybe death and taxes."