“True enough,” she said. “Which is why Segreti resurfacing is a stroke of luck for both of us.”
“Yeah? How so?”
“When I first saw the video, I remembered what he’d said when he walked in. That you couldn’t even move a kilo without the Council’s say-so. And then I asked myself, if the Council is for real, wouldn’t they have to’ve been the ones to give the order to have Michael Hendricks whacked?”
Hendricks said nothing. His body remained still. His face showed no reaction except the subtle clenching of his jaw. But it was enough. Thompson saw it and knew that she was right.
“Do you understand what you’re asking? You expect me-a wanted man-to wade into one of the largest investigations in U.S. history and attempt to locate a man who will doubtless do everything in his power not to be found. Then-if I’m very lucky and actually manage to find the guy-I’m supposed to protect him from the most powerful criminal organization in the world.”
“Yes.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Am I? Think of the damage you could do to the Council with Segreti’s help!”
“Assuming his intel’s still worth a damn,” Hendricks replied. “Say, for the sake of argument, I find him. What makes you think I’d hand him over to you?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure you will. But at least with you on his side, he’ll stay alive long enough for me to have another crack at him one day. And who knows? Maybe you will hand him over, if for no other reason than you’re unlikely to bring the Council down all by your lonesome.”
“You underestimate me.”
“No. I don’t. I just think you’re smart enough to understand the value of a strategic alliance.”
“Is that what this is?”
“For lack of a better term.”
Hendricks fell silent. Steepled his fingers in front of his face, his elbows resting on the table. Pondered. Thompson watched him intently but said nothing. Finally, he put his palms down on the table, looked her in the eye, and said, “No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said no. This whole situation’s lousy. Lots of opportunities for it to go sideways and damn few for it to go well. And that’s if you’re telling the truth. If you’re lying, my odds of survival get even worse.”
“Why would I lie? If I knew Evie had a way to draw you out, why go to the trouble of pointing you toward some random old man when I could just have this place surrounded and arrest you here?” She saw him tense up and added, “Relax. I’m just saying.”
“Look, with Lester dead, all I’ve got left to rely on is my gut-and my gut says this is a bad idea.”
“Segreti’s going to die out there, you know. The Council is going to find him, and when they do, they’re going to make him pay. They’ll take him apart slowly, piece by piece, until his body finally fails. Is that what you want?” She was playing on his sympathies by reminding him what Engelmann had done to Lester. The ploy was as underhanded as it was obvious. Hendricks wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of rising to the bait.
Hendricks shrugged. “If he dies, he dies. That’s on you for losing him in the first place. Besides, if everything you’ve said is true, the guy’s as dirty as they come. My guess is, no one’s gonna miss him when he’s gone.”
He finished his coffee. It was bitter. He winced as it went down. Then he stood and reached for his back pocket. Thompson flinched, her right hand ducking beneath the table, toward the piece Hendricks knew she must have secreted somewhere. But when he removed his wallet from his pocket and tossed some bills onto the table, she relaxed.
“Coffee’s on me. I don’t want you thinking I owe you anything.”
“Here,” she said, fishing a business card and a pen from her purse, her movements slow, deliberate, unthreatening. She scrawled a number on the back and offered the card to him. “In case you change your mind and need to get in touch. The one in pen’s my personal cell.”
He took it. Looked it over. Then he crumpled it and dropped it into his empty mug. “I’m not going to change my mind,” he said. “Don’t contact me again.”
17.
FRANK SEGRETI SAT with Lois Broussard on her living-room couch. Her house was lit only by the flickering glow of the television. It was after midnight. The curtains were drawn. Lois’s dog, Ella, snored at Frank’s feet. Sirens droned in the distance, sometimes rising, sometimes falling, but never passing too close by. The house was not on a major through street.
A smattering of empty glasses, plates, and takeout cartons covered the coffee table. Two empty bottles of white wine sat on the floor beside it. Thanks to Frank’s encouragement, Lois had polished off most of the wine herself and-with an assist from whatever pharmaceuticals she’d taken before he arrived-wound up sloppy drunk. His plan had been to keep her drinking until she passed out so he’d have the run of her place until the heat died down.
As the evening wore on, Lois careened wildly between manic oversharing-about her childhood in Gulfport, Mississippi; about her garden; about some old jazz record he absolutely had to hear-and long jags of tense silence during which Frank could feel the hitch of her quiet sobbing through the couch. When the second bottle ran dry, he told himself he should go grab another, but the truth was, he’d begun to worry about her. So instead, he raided her fridge and laid out an elaborate spread of all the leftovers he could find.
He’d figured if he could get some food into her, he could sober her up some. The fact that he hadn’t eaten since first thing this morning didn’t even occur to him. Adrenaline had suppressed his appetite. But when he caught a whiff of cold Hunan pork, he started salivating. They both dug in with gusto, wolfing down enough food to sustain twice their number, and Lois even perked up for a while.
Now she dozed fitfully-brow furrowed, whimpering occasionally-while, on her television screen, Jimmy Stewart fished a despondent Kim Novak from San Francisco Bay, two miles and sixty years from where Frank and Lois sat. The bridge towered over them, its supports blissfully undamaged. The choreography of the scene was quite formal by modern standards. Novak dropping flowers one by one into the water before she leaped took on a ritualistic air, and when Stewart emerged slowly from the water with Novak in his arms, it seemed less a rescue to Frank than a baptism.
A few hours ago, Frank had cleaned himself up in the downstairs powder room and-at Lois’s insistence-changed into one of her husband Cal’s sweat suits so she could throw his clothes in the wash. The house was too damn quiet with the television off and Lois wouldn’t let him put on CNN, so Frank was idly flipping channels when he came across his all-time favorite movie-Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. If Frank were being honest with himself, it’s why he settled in San Francisco. There was something haunting and romantic about the way Hitchcock shot the city; the first time he saw the movie, as a teenager, he fell in love.
Turned out, Vertigo was one of Cal’s favorites too, so they left it on.
“He should have been home by now,” Lois told him more than once, “but his flight was grounded…because of what happened.” Always the same euphemistic phrase, always delivered at a stage whisper, as if she couldn’t bring herself to fully acknowledge it.
Lois told Frank that Cal’s construction firm was putting up a new hotel in Reno, and he’d been out there all week supervising their progress. It was obvious she was having trouble coping without him, and in her medicated, booze-soaked stupor, she found Frank an acceptable enough replacement. He worried about what she’d think of him being here when she finally sobered up-or what Cal would think if Frank was still around when he got home.
Lois shifted on the couch, her eyes active behind closed lids. Then, without waking, she leaned toward him and placed her head on his shoulder. Her cheek was warm against his neck. Her breath was honeyed by the wine. Her hair smelled faintly of apples. Frank’s pulse quickened. His face grew hot. It had been a long time since he’d been this close to a woman.