“The net query, yeah. Nancy told me about that. She’s my manager — she’s the one who does all the Internet/web stuff.”
Kent nodded. “You sold a guitar to somebody who’s supposed to come in tomorrow to pick up.”
“Actually, I have five or six folks dropping by to collect instruments in the next few days.”
“You’d remember this one. The guitar went for ten thousand dollars.”
Cyrus smiled. “You say that number as if it’s amazing. I’ve got almost two hundred thousand dollars worth of guitars on display here, couple of ’em cost three times that much.” He waved an arm at the wall. “But I know the one you mean — the Stansell White Tiger, right?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Some guy bought it from Nancy, and paid for it up front, a bank transfer. Most of our customers I know personally, or by reputation. Some are referrals. I don’t know this one.”
“I’m not certain he’s the guy I’m looking for, but if he is, he’s a bad man, and we need to have a chat.”
“What’d he do?”
“Killed some people, among other things.”
“Really? Not something serious classical guitar players are usually into.”
“He’s not your usual player.”
Cyrus looked at Kent. He nodded slightly. “Okay. So what do you want me to do?”
The man didn’t seem particularly disturbed at the idea that he’d be dealing with a murderer. Kent looked at him with the unspoken question: Why so cool?
Cyrus rolled the protective sleeve down his arm, grinning. The Marine Corps logo was tattooed in blue on his upper arm. “Semper fi, sir,” Cyrus said.
Kent shook his head, and returned the grin. “Do I know you?”
“Not personally, but I was in First Expeditionary in Second Iraq — I saw you around a couple of times, Major.”
“Colonel, now,” Kent said. “Hell of an operation, that.”
“Yes, sir, it was. Glad I survived it. What’s the deal?”
“This guy shows up, you fill out forms or whatever you usually do and send him on his way. But if sometime during that procedure you could get to this”—Kent pulled a small cell phone from his pocket and put it on the counter—“and just push the ‘send’ button, right here, I’d appreciate it.”
Cyrus looked at the phone. “Yes, sir, I can do that. Then what?”
“Nothing happens in the store. I’ll know the guy if I see him. He leaves, I follow him, and somewhere, we get together.”
“No problem, Colonel.”
Once a Marine, always a Marine.
“Thanks.”
“You’ll let me know how it turns out?”
“That’s the least I can do.”
They both smiled.
The driver dropped Thorn off at his house and left. It was only one o’clock, but Thorn had some old business to deal with, business he would rather not do at the office.
He walked to the front door. It was a quiet neighborhood, not far from the University of Maryland. There were a number of college professors and even a dean or two living on his street. The tree-lined roads — mostly pin oak, but some elms and pear trees, too — were shady, the houses big and built mostly in the early part of the last century.
He thumbed the print-reader on the new lock he’d had installed, and stepped inside to do the same to the alarm system control panel, which went from red to green as it disarmed.
He set his case down next to the half-round table against the hall wall, and headed for the kitchen.
Lying on the kitchen counter was a single, long-stemmed rose. The petals were such a dark red that they seemed almost black.
Thorn smiled at the flower as he picked it up and sniffed it.
The rose smelled as good as it looked.
Who did he know who could get past a thumbprint reader lock and alarm system? And who would leave a black rose on his kitchen counter?
His smile got bigger. Oh, this was too much.
He unclipped his virgil from his belt. “Call Marissa,” he said.
He held the little device to his ear with one hand, the dark rose in the other.
“Hey, Tommy.”
“Hey, Marissa. Thank you.”
“For what?”
He held the virgil so that its cam pointed at the flower.
“Very nice,” she said. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“It was on my kitchen counter.”
“And you think I put it there? That would mean I’d have to drive way the hell and gone to God’s country, then rascal a thumbprint reader lock and house alarm with a security cam, to leave that flower in your kitchen, just to make you smile when you saw it. You think you’re worth all that trouble?”
“I hope you think so.”
There was a pause. Then she said, “Maybe. We’ll just have to see. Where are you taking me to dinner tomorrow?”
“Anywhere you want to go,” he said.
“Try and surprise me.”
“Oh, I expect I can manage that.”
“Want to bet?”
“I’ll send a car for you,” he said. “Seven o’clock okay?”
“What’s the wager?”
“Tell you after I win,” he said.
“You’re on.”
She discommed, and he just stood there smiling at the rose.
As it happened, Kent saw Natadze go into the shop. It was just after ten A.M., and while he had camped in worse places than a sleeping bag in the back of a van, it hadn’t been the most comfortable night’s sleep he’d ever had. It was easier to be a twenty-year-old stoic about such things than it was to be a man his age…
He smiled at the memory that brought up. About the time he’d turned fifty, he had hurt his right knee running an obstacle course. He’d come down off a swinging rope over a mud hole, let go, and hit crooked. Wasn’t the first time he’d ever hurt a joint, and he limped through the rest of the course, went home, and RICE’d the injury — rest, ice, compression, and elevation — along with some ibuprofen every few hours, SOP.
After a couple weeks, when the knee was still bothering him more than he thought it should, he went to see one of the base doctors.
The doc, a kid of maybe thirty and a captain, had started his exam, and while he was poking and prodding, asked, “So, how’d you do this, Major?”
Kent told him.
The kid had frowned. “Major, a man your age ought not to be running the obstacle course.”
“A man my age? Son, I’m not a man my age!”
It had been funny. But in the decade since, he’d noticed that the aches and pains he’d shrugged off even at fifty took longer to get better. Some of them hung around for months. Some of them were still with him for years — that knee injury tended to throb when it got cold and rainy even now.
But that was the name of the game, he knew, and while growing old was the pits, it sure beat the alternative…
Natadze, wearing a leather jacket over what looked like khaki slacks and some kind of soft-soled loafers, was twenty-some years younger than Kent, and a professional assassin. It would be stupid to ignore that. He wasn’t going to challenge him mano a mano, straight up. They didn’t like handguns in San Francisco, but somehow Kent didn’t think that meant much to his quarry. He’d be armed — wearing a jacket like that in this heat — and he’d be wary.
Five minutes later, Kent’s virgil beeped, but as he reached to shut it off, he heard Cyrus’s voice: “Colonel?”
“Here.”
“He’s gone out the back door. Said his car was parked back there, asked if it was okay.”