"You see them?" Diego had said out of the silence of the ages.
"Uh-huh."
"Not one of them men is over thirty. That tree is two hundred years old, maybe three. It's been there since before their grandparents were born, but they still come at it with their axes and saws. Somebody said it's in the way. Somebody paid somebody, and life is torn from the ground."
That's the reason I called on Diego. Hush was like those axmen. He lived by a logic that was completely of the modern world. Hush had the sensibility of a long history of conquerors. His laws were man-made, while Diego's came from a deeper place.
"CAN I KILL HIM?" he asked me.
"No."
"You can see in his eyes that he's a killer. He might come after you."
"He doesn't know who I am. And I doubt if he could ever figure out who you are."
"You don't know who hired him, but you will before the sun rises."
"Do we have a problem?" I asked.
"No. I'm not afraid of him."
Diego looked into my eyes, seeking my response. Then he grinned. The light in his face spoke of innocence and strength, something that maybe I knew at one time, before the roots of New York had gotten tangled in my soul.
WHEN DIEGO ENTERED THE room again he was carrying my brutal knife. Without a word he began cutting off Patrick's clothes. First he followed the seams of his windbreaker, going from the left wrist up over the shoulders and down the right side. He pulled off the segmented jacket and then did the same with the dark-blue woolen shirt. After that he started in on the khaki pants.
Like some kind of mad tailor, working in reverse, Diego cut off all of Patrick's clothes, leaving him wearing only his socks, shoes, and chains.
It was cold in that room, very cold.
Patrick's skin grew pale. He shivered slightly but otherwise bore up under the divestment rather well.
Diego settled down and stared at his victim for over an hour.
Suddenly, without warning, Diego stood up, took Patrick's left wrist, and cut into it with the point of the knife. Then he calmly returned to his stool, and we both watched the blood trickle down onto Patrick's knee, flowing from there around his calf, past the ankle, to pool on the cold concrete around his feet.
The wait continued.
Half an hour later, Patrick could no longer control his shivering.
"What the fuck do you want?" the killer asked the human embodiment of twilight that sat before him.
Diego did not answer.
Something about the preceding silence kept me from any emotional attachment to the extreme interrogation. It didn't seem like torture, so long as the men were equals in silence. But hearing the pleading tone in Patrick's voice tore at me.
The sound brought me to my feet.
Ten minutes went by. In that time I began to have second thoughts about my actions. There was no question but that I needed to know why Patrick was on that street-and who had sent him-but I felt ashamed hiding in another room while Diego asked the questions. And, beyond shame, I felt guilty. There was no excuse for me putting the South American on Patrick. I was culpable, and I knew I would have to pay for it.
"Tell me!" Patrick screamed.
"I will only ask you once," Diego warned.
"Just ask me."
"And if you hesitate or if you lie, then I will leave you here to bleed. And believe me, my friend, no one will find you down here."
I was too close to an answer to break the trance.
"What?" Patrick barked.
"Who hired you to kill Angelique Lear?"
The question was an ominous hum on the quiet subterranean air. For a few beats the audio feed from the interrogation room was silent.
Patrick studied the face of his death and wondered… but not for long.
"Terry Lord," he said, shivering. "Terry Lord, from down in D.C."
47
McGill?" Alphonse Rinaldo said, answering his special cell phone at 3:17 in the morning. I must've disturbed his sleep, but his voice sounded clear and awake.
"Yeah."
"Go back to sleep, honey," he said to someone in the room with him. "It's just something I have to take care of about work."
I had never expected to be so close to the Important Man's family life. Even at that intense moment I was impressed by how low the great could come.
"I got a name here that I want to put past you."
"Go on."
"I'm told that a person named Terry Lord ordered a hit on the woman you call Tara Lear."
Silence.
Diego came back into the observation room while I waited. "We have to meet," Rinaldo said.
"Fine," I said. "But can you tell me if that claim makes sense. We have the operator here."
"I don't understand it, but it could very well make sense," Alphonse said. "And no one in his right mind would give you Terry's name as a ruse."
"I'll meet you at six at Grimaldi's Diner, at Fifty-sixth and First," I said. "And do you have some connection with law enforcement without using Christian?"
"Of course. What do you need?"
I gave him some coordinates near Columbus Circle.
"Have your police search a dark-green Dodge that will be parked there in an hour. Tell them to arrest and hold the man they find for as long as they can."
He repeated the position and said it would be done.
I gave Diego a syringe loaded with a sedative.
"Only give him half," I said. "Considering all the blood he's lost, the whole thing might kill him."
AT 5:00 A. M. I was seeing Diego off on an airport bus shuttle across the street from Grand Central. We'd bandaged the assassin's wound and left him unconscious in the backseat of his Dodge, under the coarse burlap, on a side street in Midtown.
"How'd you know he'd talk?" I asked my comrade.
"He knew too much about killing. He knew where I would go if he didn't bend."
I shuddered, visibly. Diego stared at this with his innocent, ruthless gaze.
"You should have killed him," he said. "Alive, he will try to find you."
"Yeah," I said. "Maybe so. See you, my friend."
We clasped hands and Diego smiled, his broad face expressing friendship combined with something like pity.
I WAS FIFTEEN MINUTES early to Grimaldi's but Alphonse still beat me. It wasn't the first time that he reminded me of Twill… and Hush.
The suit he wore was Italian, in a price range that was akin to middle-class family vacations. It was dark, dark red, with a white shirt that hinted at a scarlet blush. His hands were manicured. The bluish silk tie he wore simulated snakeskin perfectly. His presence transformed the booth into a kind of portable papal chamber you might find in some corner in a vast room of the Vatican.
I suppressed the urge to make a sarcastic bow and moved in across from him.
We stared at each other for a few moments and I was reminded of Diego and Patrick. The feeling was unsettling.
I expected the Big Man to get right down to the matter at hand. That's how he had always conducted business before. But the last week had been full of revelations.
"I want to thank you for this, Leonid," he said. "I know I haven't given you much support."
Before I could respond, another voice said, "What can I get you, bud?"
It was a nut-brown white man dressed all in cook's white. He was small, wiry, and pretty much emotionless at his job.
"Black coffee, scrambled eggs, and ham," I said.
"Hash browns?"
"No thanks."
The cook/waiter turned away.
"Terry Lord is called 'the Impresario' in his field," Alphonse said. "He's a freelancer of the highest caliber, an entrepreneur who, how shall I say, leverages events."