Joe spit at me and missed. “I should’ve stayed in the panic room,” he said.
“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” I said. “I’d have taken that machine off the truck and aimed it at the wall. You saw what it did to your car. Imagine what it would have done to your panic room.”
“If you knew where to aim it,” he sneered.
“You got me there, Joe.”
“By the way,” he said, “your family’s dead.”
“So you say.”
The first four that were hit by the ADS ray were dead, which was to be expected, having been exposed for several minutes. My personal best was less than twenty seconds, so I could only imagine their suffering.
We guessed we’d gotten all of them, and if not, I didn’t care. We gathered up all our equipment and headed back to the campground. We’d beaten nearly twenty armed men and eight attack dogs without taking a single hit in return. That’s a hell of a campaign, I thought.
Back at the campground, there was just one thing left to do: humiliate Joe.
It has never been my style to humiliate my vanquished enemies, but Hugo insisted it was a time-honored clown tradition, so I didn’t stand in their way. He grabbed a seltzer and sprayed it in Joe’s pants while the other clowns formed a circle, interlocked arms, and sang, “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants!”
They had so much fun they all took a turn spraying Joe and Grasso. Before long, their pants were a soggy mess.
“You’re fuckin’ nuts!” Joe screamed again and again. “But I got you, Creed. I killed your kid!” he shouted. “I killed your fuckin’ wife!”
“Ex-wife,” I said.
CHAPTER 50
Of course, Joe hadn’t killed Kimberly or Janet, and neither had Sal Bonadello. Sal’s conference call with Joe and me had been part of the plan. It gave Joe what he thought was a bargaining chip, gave him a false sense of security. When I kept coming after him in spite of the threat to my daughter, he came to the conclusion I was certifiable. He reasoned, if I didn’t care enough about my own kid to try to save her, what chance did he have with me? Joe, already in a panic, must have felt like a trapped rat. At least I thought he’d feel that way, and I hoped to flush him out.
Because, truth is, I really didn’t know where his panic room was hidden, and he had a hell of a big house. As it turned out, the architect and his wife knew nothing about a panic room. If Joe had one, the architect guessed it had been added by the second architect, the one who revised the original plans and completed the construction effort. That guy had disappeared shortly after completing work on Joe’s house.
Lou had pulled the building permits and gave us the name, but apparently DeMeo had told the second architect not to file the revisions. Quinn and I felt terrible about kidnapping and torturing our architect and his wife with the ADS ray, but they were okay now. Hopefully they’d be able to look back on the experience some day and laugh about it. If not, who would believe their story anyway, right?
Our captured included the architect, his wife, the security guy, Joe DeMeo, and Grasso. That’s a lot of people to deal with, so I did what I always do when I’ve got a mess to clean up.
I called Darwin.
Darwin sent a company cleaning crew to Joe’s house, and the clowns kept an eye on the architect and his wife and the security guy until the cleaning crew could round them up. Meanwhile, Quinn and I tied DeMeo and Grasso to the sides of the Hummer and made them run a few miles with their pants around their ankles to amuse the clowns. When we got tired of that, I pulled over to the side of the road and put a gun to Joe’s head and made him call Garrett Unger at headquarters. Joe claimed he couldn’t remember the passwords, so I made him run a few more miles. Unfortunately for Joe, he kept falling and spent most of the time being dragged. Then I repeated the process again and again until he remembered enough to make me square with Addie and Quinn and Callie and Sal Bonadello.
After Joe came through with the passwords, Quinn tied him and Grasso to the PEPS weapon on the roof. Then I hauled them off to Edwards to meet Darwin’s plane. Darwin couldn’t understand why it took so long to drive thirty miles to the base. I told him we got a late start.
Joe and Grasso had been dragged half to death, and their faces and bodies showed the effects. Darwin took one look at them and said, “Relatives of yours, Augustus?”
To me, he said, “Do I want to know why their pants are sopping wet?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” I said.
“You got any dry clothes they can wear so they don’t ruin the jet seats?”
Quinn and I gave Darwin our camouflage blankets and watched him wrap them around the two waifs. I remembered the two thousand dollar suit and tie Joe wore last week at the cemetery and thought, You never feel the splinters on the ladder of success until you’re sliding back down.
Darwin took Joe and Grasso back with him to Washington, and Quinn and I took one of the company’s Gulfstream jets back to headquarters.
This time, we both slept the whole way.
When I got back to headquarters, I kept my promise to Garrett Unger and let him go back to his wife, knowing in a week or so the police would arrest him along with Arthur Patelli, the guy who torched Addie’s house.
CHAPTER 51
“It was the suit, man. I swear to God, she loved the suit.” This was Eddie Ray, telling his story about the girl he met in sporting goods. “Words can’t describe her.”
“You were probably drunk,” said Rossman, and the others laughed. The old friends were hanging at Daffney Ducks, the neighborhood watering hole. Eddie Ray had grown up and lived his entire life-forty-six years-within five miles of this place.
She’d been shopping for a birthday present for her dad. A fly rod. It couldn’t be just any rod, had to be the best. Eddie Ray was so stunned at her beauty, he’d just stood there without saying a word. She’d said, “That’s a great-looking suit you’re wearing. Is it an Armani?”
“Laugh all you want,” he said to his drinking buddies, “but I’ve got a lunch date with her tomorrow.”
“Tell us where,” said Lucas, “and we’ll all give her a ride.” He made an obscene gesture with his hands and hips.
More laughter.
“She ain’t like that. This is a high-class broad. Seriously.”
The blond beauty had asked about his suit, and he couldn’t just stand there and say nothing. Eddie Ray had choked up the courage to say, “I’m not sure of the label, but I got it at the JC Penney’s.” She’d nodded, impressed. Things were going good, so he tried for a joke. “But it cost a hell of a lot more than a penny!” he’d said, then added, “Pardon my French.” It hadn’t mattered about the profanity. “I like that,” she’d said. “You’re funny.”
Now, back at the bar, buying a round of drinks for his skeptical buddies, Eddie said, “I’ll take a picture, and you can judge for yourself.”
“Make sure you get the front end,” said Rossman. “I’ve always wanted to see lipstick on a pig.”
“I’ll take a picture, all right,” said Eddie Ray, “and when you see it, you’re gonna shit!”
They’d talked a few minutes, and he’d picked out the best rod in the store for her. She’d been impressed by his knowledge of the sport. He’d asked her name, and when she said, “Monica,” he said, “I knew a girl named Monica once, back in high school. Real pretty, she was.” Monica had smiled a sly smile and said, “I bet she was your girlfriend,” and he’d winked and said, “You’d win that bet for sure.” They’d laughed, and she’d said, “You probably had lots of girlfriends in high school if you had that cool mullet back then,” and he’d modestly said, “No more’n my share, I expect.” Then he’d told her about being on the football team and how he blew out his knee that last season, and by then they were checking out and he couldn’t help but give her the employee discount, meaning, he bought the rod and let her reimburse him, which she did with cash. Cash he was now blowing on drinks for his friends.