Reese nodded slowly, then turned his head to stare out the car’s window. “All right. You win. I lose. Now what?”
“You don’t lose,” Spiceman said. “Not if you work it right.”
Reese turned back. “Okay,” he said. “How?”
“You know something, Brother Reese,” Keeling said, “we’re sure glad it’s you. Christ, when I think of some of the guys it could’ve been. You know, real dummies. Or tightasses. That’d’ve been even worse. But you, you’ve always been kinda flexible.”
Reese nodded slowly. “Flexible,” he said. “How flexible?”
Keeling waved one of his big thick hands back and forth. He did it with curious grace. “You’re gonna have to bend with the breeze. First one way, then the other.”
“I don’t think he wants to talk about the breeze,” Spiceman said. “I think he wants to talk about the money. The twenty million.”
“Well, shit, he can have that. I thought that was all cleared up.”
Reese licked a dry tongue over dry lips. “You got anything to drink?”
“Drink? Sure. What’re you drinking nowadays, bourbon?”
“Bourbon.”
Keeling leaned forward and pulled out a miniature bar. He filled two small glasses with bourbon from a decanter and handed one to Reese, keeping the other for himself. He didn’t offer any to Spiceman, who kept his hands wrapped around the revolver that was still aimed at Reese’s stomach.
“I can keep the money?” Reese said slowly, as if asking the question of some foreigner whose English depended on the two dimly remembered sessions at Berlitz long ago.
“Sure,” Keeling said. “Hell, Spiceman and I don’t need it. We’ve got plenty. Right, Jack?”
“After the first five million, who counts?” Spiceman said, but smiled in a way that kept Reese from believing him.
“What about your boss?” Reese said.
“He’s going to be happy it’s you,” Keeling said.
Again Reese nodded thoughtfully and finished his whisky. “All this started with Felix, didn’t it?”
“Felix was just a tool,” Keeling said.
“A tool to do what with?”
“To give us a handle.”
“On me.”
“Or somebody like you.”
“What happens to Felix now?” Reese said. “You going to hand him back?”
Keeling looked questioningly at Spiceman. After a moment, Spiceman shrugged. Keeling turned back toward Reese. “Well, poor old Felix, he sort of had an accident.”
“An accident?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Bad?”
“Pretty bad. Fatal.”
“No shit?” Reese said.
“No shit.”
Reese held out his glass. “How about another little touch, just to ease the sorrow.”
As Keeling poured him another drink, Reese said, “The fingers. Was he dead or alive when you cut them off?”
“Dead. He just went to sleep and never woke up. It must’ve been real peaceful.”
“They think it was us.”
“Who?”
“Felix’s bunch, Anvil Five. They think it was Langley. So do the Libyans.”
“Is that a fact,” Keeling said, not quite succeeding in making it a question.
“But that’s all anybody’s going to get back — the two fingers?”
“That’s all that’s left. By now, the fish have had the rest.”
“They’re going to start wondering what happened to their money.”
“Well, I guess they’ll just have to ask old Doc Mapangou about that, won’t they?”
Reese was silent for a moment. Finally he said, “Mapangou could have told them about you.”
“You mean about Mr. Arnold and Mr. Benedict? That’s all he ever knew us by.”
“Yeah, that was sort of cute. They could backtrack though. Especially the Israelis. They’re not bad at it.”
Spiceman shook his head, not taking his eyes off Reese’s stomach. “They’re not all that good either. But let’s say they did get a line on us. Guess who we’d lead them to.”
Reese’s big chin went up and down three times in a trio of slow, thoughtful nods. “What’ve you got — pictures?”
“Of you and Mapangou?” Keeling said. “Yeah, we’ve got pictures. Jack here’s the camera nut. Fast film, infra-red. Whatever. He’s got you coming out of the bushes and sitting down and getting up and breaking Old Black Joe’s neck and all that. But look at it this way. If you pick up the money down in the Bahamas, we really won’t need the pictures, will we?”
Reese drained his glass of whisky, then tipped it up again to make sure he had got the last drop. He was still looking at the glass when he asked his question. “What do you really want?”
“Really?” Keeling said. “Well, we thought we’d let the boss tell you that.”
The limousine took a sudden right turn. Reese looked out the window and realized where they were going. He turned back to Keeling. “In Jersey?”
“In Jersey,” Keeling agreed.
There was a uniformed guard on the Newark International gate that led to the area where the 727 was. The guard held up his hand for the Cadillac to stop. He went around to the driver’s window. The window went down, and a hand came out. In the hand was a plain white envelope, unsealed. The guard peered into the envelope, looked around quickly, stuffed it away, and moved to the gate, which he slid open. The Cadillac rolled through it onto the field.
Keeling went up the rear steps of the cream-colored 727 first, followed by Reese. Behind Reese came Spiceman, still holding the pistol with both hands. The three men entered the lounge section of the airplane, the same section through which the man called Felix had been carried and then tumbled out and down through the rear entrance a mile into the sea.
Seated in one of the lounge section’s armchairs was a young man with a roundish, childlike face. He smiled as the three men entered the lounge section. It was a warm, almost cozy smile that displayed no teeth.
Keeling made the introductions. “I don’t think you know the boss. Alex Reese. Leland Timble.”
“So happy you were able to join us, Mr. Reese,” Timble said, ignoring the pistol that was still aimed at Reese’s chest. “Please,” Timble continued and waved vaguely. “Let’s everyone sit down.”
Everyone sat down. No one said anything as the co-pilot came through and saw to the raising of the rear steps. On his way back, the co-pilot pretended not to see the pistol and said, “Fasten your seat belts, folks.”
Spiceman waited until Reese fastened his seat belt before he put the pistol down in his lap so he could fasten his own. The pilot started the engines one by one. A few moments later the plane began to taxi toward a runway.
Finally Reese spoke. “Where’re we going?”
Timble smiled. “That depends on you, Mr. Reese. We can either go to our place, which is quite nice — or we could go to the Bahamas. I think for you the Bahamas would be far more profitable.”
24
No one spoke as the plane taxied onto the runway. There was that familiar pause when the plane seems to gather its strength, as though preparing to lunge. Then the engines screamed, the plane began to move, and Timble’s face paled and stayed that way until the plane was up and level. Reese noted the blanching and filed the fact away in his mind. Maybe it would prove useful. But he wasn’t too hopeful. Reese decided that he had just about run out of hope.
He leaned forward in his chair toward Timble, his arms and big belly resting on his knees. When he spoke, his deep voice was a confidential rumble. “Let’s have it, sonny. The bottom line.”
“‘The bottom line,’” Timble said, as if repeating a scrap of half-forgotten poetry. “Do people still say that? They were saying that years ago when I first — well, went abroad. The... bottom... line. Well, Mr. Reese, the bottom line is simply this: I want to go home.”