"I'll repeat it one more time," Justin said. "Call Lincon Berdon and set up a meeting for this evening. Tell him it's important."
"Go to hell," H. R. Harmon said and he began to yell out for help. Before a syllable could escape from his lips, Justin swung his elbow as hard as he could swing it into the aging ex-politician's mouth. A tooth flew out. And Harmon went down hard.
From his seat on the ground, a dazed Harmon spit out some blood, looked up and said, "You just made a big mistake."
"I'm afraid you're the one who made the mistake," Justin said. "My associate is not nearly as easygoing as I am."
Bruno now stepped over to the man on the ground and said, "Take one shoe off."
Harmon looked up, confused. "What?"
"Take one shoe off. It'll be a lot worse if I have to do it for you 'cause I'm already in a bad mood and I might take your whole fuckin' foot with it. Now take your goddamn shoe off."
Harmon reached down and untied his left, all-white golf shoe.
"Take your sock off," Bruno said.
Harmon did as he was told.
"Stand up," Bruno said, and Harmon pushed himself off the ground and stood up.
Bruno pulled out a pistol with a silencer on it. And now Justin could see that Harmon was afraid.
"He asked you twice, so I'm not gonna ask. I'm telling you. I'm gonna shoot one of your toes off. Then he's gonna ask you again. Each time you don't do what he says, I'll blow another one of your toes away. You won't die. But it'll hurt like hell. And I hope you don't mind the sight of blood."
"Wait," Harmon said.
"Too late," Bruno told him. He bent down, and before Harmon could react, Bruno put the end of the barrel against H. R. Harmon's pinky toe and pulled the trigger. There was a quiet pop and the toe disappeared in a spray of blood. The old man fell back down, in shock and enormous pain. Blood poured out of the end of his foot.
"Ask him again, Jay," Bruno said.
Justin stood over the onetime politician and said, "Call Lincoln Berdon and set up a meeting. Set it up for right now. Please." He held his cell phone down toward Harmon, who had, in the past five seconds, aged twenty years. His face had gone slack and his skin had turned pale.
"My foot," he groaned. "My foot…"
"Stand up again," Bruno told him.
"Give me the phone, give me the phone," Harmon said quickly. He reached up to grab it out of Justin's hand. He punched in the required numbers as quickly as he could manage. He was so rattled it took him three tries to get the sequence right.
Harmon reached Lincoln Berdon immediately, said there was an emergency and they had to meet. Said he couldn't discuss it over the phone. His voice was shaky but over the phone must have just sounded urgent. It worked. He hung up and nodded. He stared up at Justin and Bruno, overwhelmed by pain and the stunning realization that he was in a situation over which he had absolutely no control.
Bruno tossed a handkerchief in the air and it fluttered down to the dirt by Harmon's shaking hand. "Here," the big man said, "tie somethin' around that before you bleed to death." He looked over at Justin, saw the look Justin was giving him. "What?" Bruno said. "You got what you wanted, right? Now you think I gotta start touchin' people's feet? Fugettaboutit. He can fix his own fuckin' foot."
H. R. Harmon's driver, Martin, was surprised to see his boss coming up to the car with two men. He was even more surprised when he realized his boss was walking with one shoe off, and that his foot was bleeding like a motherfucker. What surprised Martin the most, however, was when one of the men, the smaller one, put a gun into his side and told him to get behind the wheel of the limo and start driving.
Martin had no desire to get shot, so he said, "Sure," and, without demanding any more information, headed back toward the city, which is where the smaller guy told him to go. The bigger guy, the scarier one, didn't go with them. That was more than okay with Martin. And more than okay with Mr. Harmon-he could see that as soon as the big guy left. At one point during the drive, Martin glanced in the rearview mirror, saw his boss leaning back with his eyes closed, and he asked him if he was okay; but Mr. Harmon didn't say anything in response, so Martin decided to dispense with all further questions.
The traffic heading into Manhattan cost them about twenty minutes, so the drive took a little over an hour. As Martin drove, Justin reapplied the makeshift tourniquet to Harmon's foot. Martin found a few Advil in the glove compartment of the limo and Justin forced the old man to swallow four of them. Almost nothing was said the whole way in. The only words spoken were when Justin's cell phone rang. It was Reggie-Reggie who spoke to him as coolly as if they'd never met before. He closed his eyes while she talked, envisioning her naked on his bed, remembering making love to her. He realized he wasn't paying much attention to what she was saying, so he interrupted her to say quietly, "Look, we have to talk."
"Let's just finish our business," she said, her voice even. "Let's just get through this and finish, and then we'll see if there's anything to talk about."
He said okay, his heart pounding, and she told him what she'd found out since he and Bruno had left East End Harbor. She'd run prints on the Chinese man that Justin had killed. They knew his identity. When she told him, he looked over at the wounded man sitting next to him. He said nothing to H. R. Harmon, just spoke into the phone: "Okay, I've got it." Then he said, "These are sick goddamn people."
She also said she'd gotten the records for all Larry Silverbush's phone calls. Justin had been right, she said-Silverbush had made the calls that Justin thought he'd made. He had a moment of self-satisfaction, then he told Reggie to hold on a second, and he said to Martin, "What's the number of this car phone in the backseat?" Martin didn't hesitate; he reeled off the number. Justin gave it to Reggie, asked if she could get a list of all calls made and received on it starting a week before Harmon's murder, and then he went, "Hold on one more sec." He said to Martin, "You have a cell phone of your own?" Martin said, "Yeah," and Justin said, "Give it to me." It didn't take the driver long to hand that over, and Justin flipped it open, got the number, and gave that to Reggie, too, again asking her to check all outgoing and incoming calls. He saw the look in H. R.'s eyes, knew he'd struck a little too close to home. Then he put his phone to his ear again. He and Reggie both stayed on the phone without saying anything. He could hear her breathing, and he knew she didn't want to sever the connection the same way he didn't. There was nothing they could communicate to each other, not right now, but he was glad she didn't want to be separated from him. Even if it was only temporary. He listened to her breathe, and then he finally heard her hang up.
They went over the Triborough Bridge into Manhattan, but they didn't drive to the Rockworth and Williams building, as Justin had assumed. When they reached the city, Harmon-whose rich man's tan had faded into a sickly-looking pale green color-gave an address on East 69th Street. They pulled up in front of a brownstone.
"What is this?" Justin asked.
Harmon's voice was weak. It had no resonance. Justin knew the old man had to be in serious pain. He didn't really care. "Lincoln's home."
"No," Justin said. "He lives on Park Avenue."
Harmon shook his head. "That's his family home. He keeps this as a separate residence. To use for private functions."
Justin turned to Harmon's chauffeur and said, "Pop the trunk." When that was done, Justin said, "Now get out of the car and get into the trunk."
"What?" Martin said.
"Get into the trunk," Justin told him. "You have five seconds."
Martin was there in four seconds. Justin closed the trunk, said to Harmon, "Try to remember to let him out when we're done."
Harmon nodded but didn't look as if that particular command was going to be a top priority.