He shook his head. “No you don’t.”
“You listen to me, Joe,” Eve said fiercely. “No one wants to talk to Gallo more than I do. I know nothing about Paul Black, and John seems to be the only one who can tell me anything about him. I might have had a chance of persuading him to talk to me, but you put him on the run. Do you think I won’t do anything on earth to find him and make him tell me everything he knows? Bill Hanks isn’t going to be able to help. He as much as told me when I first met him that John didn’t often confide in him. And Hanks preferred not to know.”
“He could have been lying.”
“I don’t believe he was.” She took his elbow and nudged him forward. “You and Catherine are both working and analyzing this as if it were an objective problem. Well, I’m not objective. So you do your thing, and I’ll do mine. But don’t expect me to approve when you go running down a mountain and get yourself shot and then-” She drew a deep breath. “To hell with it. Let’s get back to the house and take care of your arm.”
JACOBS WAS SCARED, NATE Queen realized, as he held the phone a few inches away and listened to the spate of curses and questions. He should have expected it. Thomas Jacobs always fell apart when the going got tough. Queen sometimes wondered why he still kept Jacobs on as a minor partner instead of ridding himself of the coward. But Jacobs had been with him a long time, even at the initial recruitment of Gallo. He knew more than was comfortable for Queen. Besides, he was willing to set up all the little deals with which Queen didn’t want to bother.
“I know all that,” Queen said. “I didn’t handle it well. But are you telling me you would have been able to handle Catherine Ling and Quinn? They were nasty as hell, and there was no way I was going to end up dead.”
“Of course not. But there should have been a way to stop them.”
“It’s done. I only told them what I had to tell them.”
“You said you gave them the map.” Jacobs paused. “What are the chances they’ll get into the compound?”
“I wouldn’t bet against them. They disabled my security system, and it’s fairly sophisticated. They’re both tops in their fields, and they work well together. After they get in, it’s a different proposition. They’ll have to deal with Gallo.”
“But you said Quinn is lethal. That could be a problem. We can’t afford to have Gallo dead before we get our hands on the ledger.”
“I’m sending a team to Utah to move into the compound if we hear Gallo has been killed.”
“It may not even be in the compound. Gallo warned us it would go straight to the Washington Post if you moved against him. It may be in a damn lawyer’s office somewhere. You blundered big-time, Queen.”
The prick. He was getting pissed. “How was I to know that he’d go after Eve Duncan after all these years? He kept talking about Ling. Who the hell could tell what he was thinking? Ling is CIA. Duncan was no threat.”
“Then why did he take her?” Jacobs was silent, thinking. “Was it to frighten her into keeping silent that he was still alive and might be a suspect? Or was it something else? As you say, he’s unstable. Who knows what’s going on in his head?”
“Frighten? Gallo doesn’t bluff. She may be dead by the time Quinn gets to her. Serve the bastard right.”
“And if she is dead, we’ll have to do a cleanup for Gallo. You’d better hope that she’s still alive. So what do we do?”
“We find out what’s going on in the compound. Who’s our man on the payroll there?”
“Lon Davarak. He’s a perimeter guard. It’s as close as we could get to Gallo. Hanks is damn careful of the guards for the house.”
“Then call Davarak and get him to scout around and see if he can find out what the hell is happening.” He was silent again. “Eve Duncan…”
“What are you thinking?”
“He had a kid with Eve Duncan. When he made no attempt to approach her after Korea, we assumed that she was nothing to him, just a good lay. Even the reports on her he demanded could have been just to protect himself.” He paused again. “But we know he’s emotionally disturbed. What if those emotions are focused on Eve Duncan? It could be an Achilles’ heel.”
“I don’t think so. He’s not vulnerable in that way. He’s cold as ice.”
“You have no imagination. We have to accept that Gallo’s temperament can change like a weather vane and take advantage of it.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?”
“Why, if Gallo hasn’t already cut her throat, we might do well to look deeper into the possibility of Eve Duncan.”
JUDY WAS IN THE STUDY, emptying the contents of desk drawers into boxes, when Eve and Joe came into the house.
“What are you doing?” Joe asked.
“What I’ve been told to do.” Judy glanced at his blood-soaked arm. “Got yourself hurt, didn’t you? It wasn’t Hanks’s fault. He was only protecting John.”
“Where are Catherine and Hanks?” Eve asked.
“In the living room. She tried to stop me from packing up, but I told her she’d have to shoot me. I do my job, and Gallo told me he wanted these out of the house before those military guys decided they’d come calling.” She straightened her gaze on Joe’s arm as she added grudgingly, “But I guess I could bandage that up for you first. There’s a first-aid kit in the kitchen cabinet.”
“I’m going to do it.” Eve’s eyes were on the boxes. “Why doesn’t he want Queen to see those records?”
“We’ll see for ourselves,” Joe said. “And the only thing in which I’m interested is Gallo’s name and address.”
“The only names and addresses you’d find are banks and account numbers,” Judy said. “John spread his funds in banks all around the world. He said that as long as Queen and his buddies didn’t know where it was, they couldn’t find a way to confiscate it.” She looked him in the eye. “I’ll let you take a look if you don’t believe me. I don’t think you’d tell Queen anything about the banks. You want John, not the money.” She turned away. “I’ve got to finish up here. John said that if they found out that he’d gone on the run, Queen would move in quick.” She glanced at Eve. “And to tell you that you should watch out for them.”
“ I’ll watch out for them,” Joe said grimly. “And John Gallo.”
“Come into the kitchen and let me clean that arm,” Eve said. “You can go through those boxes after I make sure that wound’s taken care of.” She suddenly turned back to Judy. “You talk as if John’s been preparing to go on the run for a long time. Why? And why now?”
She shrugged. “I just know that he told me right after I came to work for him that there was a good chance that it would happen. He told me what to do. I’m doing it.” Her lips tightened. “He told me to take care of Hanks, too. If you hadn’t gone running after John, this would never have happened. Are you going to have Hanks thrown in jail?”
“Maybe. It depends on what he can tell me.”
Judy shook her head. “He’s a good man. You shouldn’t have-” She stopped and opened another drawer. “Talk to him, Eve. It’s your responsibility. This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t come here.”
“She hardly had a choice,” Joe said dryly.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Judy said. “But John didn’t hurt her, did he? Everything’s okay.”
“Come on, Joe.” Eve knew she’d better get him out of there before Judy’s simplistic approach to the situation made it infinitely worse. “And a wounded arm isn’t exactly okay, Judy,” she said as she drew Joe out of the room.
“The place seems to be reeking of Gallo’s fans,” Joe said sarcastically. “Everything he does is just fine as long as no one is dead.”