But now the Mexicans had pretty much taken over the trade, and they preferred to use their own boys when they needed muscle.
The Mideast was the place. Saudi Arabia, especially. Plenty of money to spend, but no infrastructure. And feeling pretty paranoid after what Iraq did to Kuwait. His contacts over there kept telling him they didn't want or need mercenaries, but Baker knew different. Every Saudi he'd met thought he should be a prince. No one wanted to do the dirty work. That was why the country was full of Koreans and Pakistanis, imported to do all the menial work. If your Mercedes broke down, there was no one to fix it. But so what? You bought another one. And as for soldiering, why put your ass on the line when you can hire someone else's ass to take your place?
Baker wasn't getting any younger. He was tired of shopping himself around. His lion's share of the bonus when this job was done would put his finances on an even keel and pay up his mother's nursing home bills, but he wasn't about to spend the rest of his life sitting around and watching the tube. He needed a reason to get up in the morning, and Saudi Arabia looked to be a bottomless well of steady, low-risk paramilitary work, waiting to be tapped. If he showed this Iswid Nahr group Muhallal worked for that he could get things done, that he was the man, he'd be set for the rest of his working life.
But Baker believed in his own version of Murphy's Law: No matter how deep you've buried it, never underestimate the ability of shit to find a fan.
He wanted the whole crew in on tonight's dirty work. They could look on it as a sort of bonding ritual… a sort of baptism of blood.
Baker smiled. Not blood… a baptism of fire.
After which they'd be more than comrades in arms. They'd be accomplices.
And the Arab? Baker would tell Kemel Muhallal about it later.
7
Yoshio stood by the lamp in Kemel Muhallal's second bedroom and stared across the courtyard at his own apartment.
He had seen Muhallal leave and had sneaked over to do a quick search. Nothing. He had opened and thoroughly searched every drawer, every closet, every corner, every possible hiding place, and had found nothing unusual.
And now he stood where Muhallal and sometimes his superior, Khalid Nazer, stood and studied something almost every night. What? What could interest them so? And why did they always gaze at it here, under this lamp that was never turned off?
Was that the key? The lamp?
Yoshio reached under the shade and found the knob. He twisted it, and the lamp turned off. He twisted it again, and the bulb glowed once more.
Just a lamp.
Nazer or Muhallal must have taken the object with them. Whatever it was that fascinated them so was not here now, so that was the only answer. Was it so precious that they did not dare leave it in the apartment? Perhaps he could intercept one of them and take it from him… make it look like a mugging…
But no… too risky. They might get suspicious… might guess a third party was involved here…
Yoshio sighed and headed for the apartment door. A wasted trip. All he could do was keep watch, just as he had been doing for months.
So frustrating. He wished something would happen. And soon.
8
Alicia had given up peering through the skylight. She'd dropped into her reading chair and sat among her mending trees and plants, staring at the scanner.
But no word of a fire in Murray Hill.
Had Benny the arsonist scammed her? He didn't set fires, he just told people he did. Then he took the money and ran.
But then again, maybe he hadn't found the conditions right. He knew about the security guards Thomas had hired but had told her he could easily slip past them. Maybe it hadn't been as easy as he'd thought.
Maybe he'd go back tomorrow night.
Alicia shuddered.
"Do it tonight," she said to the empty room. "I don't know how much longer I can take this waiting."
THURSDAY
1
"So, did you hear about Benny the Torch?"
Abe's offhanded question stopped Jack in midbite.
He'd dropped by the shop with some bagels and Philly—the cream cheese was for Abe; Jack ate his dry. Abe supplied the coffee.
"No," Jack said as a premonition started a slow crawl up his back. "What about him?"
But Abe's attention had turned to Parabellum, perched on his left shoulder this time. The parakeet was pecking away at the piece of bagel Abe held up to him.
"Look at the little fellow! He loves bagels. A kosher parakeet."
"I think it's sesame seeds he likes," Jack said. "And that one's coated with them. But what about Benny?"
"Found him dead early this morning under a ramp to the Manhattan Bridge."
"He fell?"
"No, he burned. To a crisp, I'm told. With his own accelerant."
The piece of poppy seed bagel Jack was swallowing paused halfway down as his esophagus tightened.
"How'd he manage to do that?"
"Oh, I doubt he had much to do with it. Somebody burned the word 'firebug' in the ground next to him."
"Jeez."
"And word is he was still alive when he burned."
Jack shuddered. Benny was a lowlife… but burned alive…
"Oy, Parabellum," Abe said. "This is the way you show appreciation?"
Jack looked up and saw that the parakeet had dropped a load on Abe's shoulder. From the look of the stains up there, it wasn't the first.
"What goes in, must come out," Jack said. "And look at it this way. You only had stains on the front of your shirts before. Now you've got them on the shoulders as well."
"I know, I know," Abe said, wiping at the glob with a paper towel. "But I think this little fellow's got a condition. Colitis, maybe. Hey, you buy that stock I told you about?"
"You know I can't buy stock."
"Not can't—won't. You're missing out on a lot of easy money. Such a broker I've got. Puts me in these IPOs. I'm out before I know I'm in. A thousand shares, it goes up two bucks, we sell. Money for nothing. All you've got to—" He stopped and stared at Jack. "That face. You're making that 'when-will-you-drop-it-Abe' face."
"Who me?" Jack said, wishing Abe would drop it.
"Yes, you. And I should be making my 'when-will-Jack-wise-up' face."
"Jeez, if it isn't you, it's Gia."
"I'm not telling you to quit. You're too good a customer. I'm telling you to get your money out of those fahkaktah gold coins and put it to work for you."
"You need a social security number to open a brokerage account, Abe."
"So? You've got all those false identities, and I know some of them have social security numbers."
"Dead folks' numbers."
"Fine. You convert some of those ducats and Krugerrands into dollars. You use a dead man's number to open an account with my broker. You let him make trades for you. He makes you twenty percent a year."
"No thanks."
"Jack! How can you say no thanks to doubling your money in less than four years?"
"Because I'd have to pay taxes on those profits."
"Yes, but—" .
"No buts. I'd have to. And sitting back and letting them take their cut is saying it's okay. And saying it's okay…"
Jack couldn't do that. Once he crossed that line, even under another identity, he'd… belong. He'd have joined them. And they'd know him.
"But you wouldn't be saying okay. It'd be the fake guy with the dead man's Social Security number."
"Same thing, Abe."
Abe stared at him a moment, then sighed. "I don't understand you, Jack."
Jack smiled. "Yes, you do. And Parabellum just ejected another casing."
"Oy!"
As he watched Abe wipe the glob away, he said, "Any word on who might've done Benny?"
Abe shook his head. "Nothing. But if you should want my opinion, and I'm sure you do, I say it looks to me like Benny might've tried to set a match to the wrong building."
Jack had a sinking feeling he knew
what building that might have been.
He remembered Alicia telling him how two people she'd hired to get involved in her will problems had wound up dead. Did Benny the Torch raise the tally to three?
Only one way to find out.
2
Alicia had just hung up with the hospital lab—no results yet on Hector's cultures, but the little guy was hanging in there despite more fever spikes;—when Raymond's voice came over the intercom. "That fellow named Jack to see you," he said. "He doesn't have an appointment but says it's important." A faint murmur in the background, then: "Check that—he says it's 'urgent.'"
Alicia's first instinct was to send him away. He'd blown her off two days ago, so as far as she was concerned, they had nothing left to talk about.
But the word "urgent" got to her. It wasn't one she'd associate with Jack. If he said this was urgent, he probably meant it.
Oh, hell. "Send him in."
A few seconds later, Jack slipped past the door and closed it behind him.
"Did you hire Benny the Torch?"
He hadn't sat down, hadn't even said hello. But the name "Benny" made Alicia disregard all that.
He knows! But how could he?
"What are you talking about?" was the. best her startled brain could come up with.
"He was found dead this morning. Someone burned him alive last night. Any connection between him and what you asked me to do?"
"Oh, no!" she gasped. "Not again!"
Jack dropped into the chair. "Okay. That answers my question."
She felt his stare as she fought a surge of guilty nausea.
That twitchy little man… burned alive…
Finally he said, "I thought you weren't going to go running off looking for somebody else. I thought you were going to think about it."
"I didn't have to look," she said. Her voice sounded dull and far away. She felt as if she were listening to herself from another room. "I already had his name. My God… I killed him…"
"You didn't kill him. But I think you may have a point about the short life span of people who get involved in this. Everyone but you. And that's what I don't understand."
"I do," she said, shaking herself and forcing herself to focus. "I read the will yesterday."
"About time. And it clears up all the mysteries?"
"No. Not by a long shot. But it does explain why I'm still alive."
Her mind flashed back to yesterday, and the crawling sensation as she read that man's words, as she tried to fathom what he'd been thinking when he'd drawn it up.
"Which is?"
"Thomas is not next in line for the house."
Jack's eyebrows lifted as he nodded slowly. "Very interesting. And who is?"
"Not who. What. Greenpeace."
"The nature folks?" He laughed. "The ones who sail around ramming whalers?"
"The same."
"No wonder your brother—"
"Half brother."
"Right. No wonder he's ticked. Your father'd rather give the house to an environmental group than him. The two of them must have had one hell of a falling out somewhere along the way."
Alicia remembered the date on the will—only weeks before that man had died. Was that when he'd cut Thomas out—or had he always been out?
"I wouldn't know. As I told you, I've had no contact with either of them since I left for college." And wish it had remained that way. "And as for that man being 'green'… that's almost laughable. I don't think he ever gave a single thought to the environment in his life. He had… other interests."
Jack frowned and leaned forward. "Then why did he—?"
"I have no idea. None of this makes any sense. The way things are worded… I don't know much about law, but I can't imagine this being a typical last will and testament. I mean, it's almost as if he expected this kind of violence in connection with the house."
"Why do you say that?"
Alicia leaned over and pulled the will from her shoulder bag. She had no trouble finding the passage—she'd underlined it.
"Just listen to this: 'If Alicia dies before she can take possession of said house, or if she dies after she takes possession of said house, said house shall be deeded to the international environmental activist group known as Greenpeace with this message: This house holds the key that points the way to all you wish to achieve. Sell it and you lose everything you've worked for.' " She slammed the document down on her desk. "Can you tell me what the hell that's supposed to mean?"
"Can I see it?" Jack said, leaning forward.
Instinctively Alicia reached for the will, to grab it and put it away. She didn't want anyone knowing about her family. But she stopped herself. She had to trust someone, and Jack was all she had right now.
She pushed the will toward him. "Knock yourself out."
She felt her jaw clench as she watched Jack scan the page. She was on edge and knew it. Ready to take a bite out of somebody. She'd thought she was free of that man, but even from the grave he was managing to make a mess of her life.
"You know," Jack said, nodding, "this really does sound like he expected trouble." He looked up at her. "Your brother ever been jailed?"
"No."
"Drug problem? Violence?"
"Not that I know of." Thomas had problems, but not those.
Jack began flipping through the rest of the will. "Then why…?" He stopped and stared. "What's this? Poetry?"
"Yes! Can you believe it?"
Jack began reading. " 'Clay(ton) lies still, but blood's a rover.' "
"That's from Alfred Housman," she said. When he shot her a look, she added, "I looked it up."
"I only know John Houseman."
"The original reads 'Clay lies still.' He added the 't-o-n."
"So what's this mean? That your bro—half brother is a 'rover?' He's a wanderer? Has a wandering eye? What?"
"I couldn't say." It had baffled her too.
"Wait," Jack said. "Here's another: 'Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?'"
"That's from someone named Robert Bridges. I looked up the poems to see if anything else in them helped, but found nothing."
"It's crazy."
"That's exactly what Thomas's lawyers are saying. They're using all this weirdness as evidence that he wasn't competent when he changed the will."
"And when did he do that?"
"According to the date there, shortly before he died."
"Well, whatever his state of mind, he was sure as hell determined to see you got that house."
"I'm not so sure," she said. "It seems to me he wanted to keep it away from Thomas more than anything else."
"Can you think of anything important enough about that house that your half brother would kill for? What could your father have left behind that he wants so bad?"
"I don't know. I don't know Thomas. I can't explain him. I don't even want to try."
"All right, then," Jack said. "Your father. He seems to be at the root of all this. Who was Ronald Clayton? What did he do?"
Alicia closed her eyes and swallowed. He wanted her to talk about that man… who he was… what he did…
If you only knew …
Jack was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with Alicia—sitting so pale and silent on the other side of the desk—but then her eyes popped open and she began to talk.
"People called him brilliant," she said in a flat tone as she stared past Jack's shoulder, almost as if she were reading from a TelePrompter somewhere behind him. "His field was physics, and at various times in his life he was attached to the departments at Princeton, Columbia, and NYU, doing basic research. Somewhere in there he worked at Bell Labs and IBM. He followed the money. I suppose he did have a brilliant mind, but he was utterly ruthless: He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it and to hell with anybody else. His son is no different."
Jack realized he'd never heard Alicia refer to Ronald Clayton as her father. "He" or "him" or "that man," but never "my father."
Had
she been abused by him? Her brother? Both of them?
"Doesn't sound like you had a great relationship with him."
Her voice got colder and even flatter.
"Ronald Clayton was scum, a lower lifeform without conscience or scruples. I don't care that he left me his house. I don't want it. I don't care what he left behind in his house. I don't want anything that man touched. I'd be happiest if all traces of him were wiped from this earth. That was why I wanted you to burn the house. That's why I… I…"
She seemed to have run out of words.
Jack too was speechless. Alicia's feelings for her father went beyond anger, beyond rage. She loathed the man. And not simply because of his character faults.
What in God's name happened in that house? Was it physical? Sexual?
Jack watched her closely, hoping she wasn't about to cry. He never knew what to do with a crying woman—or man, for that matter. Gia he could take in his arms and hug. But Alicia? Uh-uh. She was flying a Gadsden flag at full mast.
But she didn't cry. Didn't even come close. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then looked at him.
"Sorry."
"It's okay," Jack said, hiding his relief. "What's your next step? And please tell me it doesn't include the word 'fire.'"
The barest hint of a smile curved her lips. "Okay. No fire." She sighed. "Maybe I should think about giving in. I mean, it would sure as hell simplify my life if I simply sold the damn place to Thomas and his backers. Being a multimillionaire would solve a lot of problems."
Jack was surprised by a sudden pang of disappointment. Who killed the PI, the lawyer, and Benny the Torch? And why? What in that house was valuable enough to kill for?
If Alicia gave in, all those questions would remain unanswered.
"And then again," she said after a pause, her eyes going steely. "Maybe I shouldn't. I don't like to be bullied. Especially by Thomas."