12

BACK HOME, JACK REACHED into his fridge for a bottle of Rolling Rock. He popped the top, shut the door, and then sat wearily down at the kitchen table. His right leg ached, and his shoulder was bothering him. He shut his eyes but that didn’t help. He kept picturing Zac Blakely’s terrified face as he turned and smashed into the cafeteria wall.

He’d sacrificed his life to save the kids, and Jack was going to get the bastard who did it . . . he swore it to himself.

Then the phone rang. Jack reached over, took it off the hook.

“Hello.”

“Hello. Is this my friend Agent Harper?”

Jack felt the shock hit his chest.

“Who is this?”

“I’m sure you know.”

Jack let out a breath.

“Steinbach. How’d you get my number?”

There was a mocking laugh on the other end of the line.

“Well, you can hardly expect me to tell you that, Harper. Remember what I told you? My reach is long.”

“You call me at home again, asshole, and you’ll find out how long mine is.”

There was another laugh. It was clear Steinbach was enjoying this.

“So violent. So defensive. I just called to say that I was terribly sorry to hear about the death of your old partner and mentor, Zac Blakely. They just aren’t making cars the way they used to.”

Jack felt a wave of rage passing over him and struggled not to reveal it to Steinbach.

“You’re right, Karl, they’re not,” he said. “And they’re not making hit men the way they used to, either.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning your boy Eddie Rollins won’t be doing any more work for you anytime soon.”

There was a brief silence on the other end. Then:

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Jack. Eddie Rollins? I’ve never had the pleasure.”

“Yeah, right,” Jack said.

“No, really,” Steinbach said. “I merely called to commiserate with you. Yours is such a dangerous line of work. Why, anything can happen to a guardian of the public trust at any given time.”

Jack felt his jaw tense up. He wanted to reach through the phone and squeeze Steinbach’s Adam’s apple until it turned to pulp.

“Listen, you fat fuck, if anything . . . anything at all happens to either my partner or Hughes I’m going to come up there and take it out on you, personally. You hear me?”

There was another little chuckle from the South African’s end.

“Jack, Jack . . . Listen to you raving on. One would never know that you were an agent of reason and the law.”

“What would you know about the law or reason, Steinbach?”

“Quite a bit actually,” Steinbach said. “I passed the bar in 1989. Do you realize that in my home in Capetown, I was one of the few lawyers who stood up for repatriation?”

Jack wanted to hang up, but there was something irresistible about talking with Steinbach in this way.

“So what are you saying, Karl? You used to be a good guy?”

“Yes, Jack. I was very good. But the powers that be didn’t appreciate my idealism. They set me up for smuggling. Sent me away. I lost my wife, my son, my home . . .”

“So you had no choice but to become a scumbag, is that it?”

“None whatsoever. After my five years in jail, I got them all.

Every one of them who had sent me up. They paid for violating my honesty.”

“Bullshit!” Jack said. “You were always a germ, just waiting to infect somebody.”

Steinbach laughed again.

“You’re so simpleminded, Jack. Do you really believe there’s any difference between you and me?”

“All the difference in the world, Karl.”

He slammed the receiver down.

“That fuck!”

Julie appeared in the kitchen doorway. She looked shocked.

“Jack, is something wrong?”

“No,” Jack said. “Just a little mix-up at work. It’s cool.”

From the other room, Kevin called, “Will everybody chill out a little? I’m trying to watch Ghost in the Shell.”

Jack gritted his teeth. He wanted to talk to his son about skipping school, but he hadn’t had a moment.

“How’s Kev doing?” he said to Julie.

“Not so great,” she said. “He won’t talk about the school thing. But I talked to the principal today, and if he does it again, he could be thrown out. When I mentioned that to him, he got very defensive and wouldn’t talk to me at all.”

Jack sat down at the kitchen table.

Julie looked harried, worried.

“He said I wasn’t his mother and that I had no right to ask him anything. It’s so funny, Jack. When I first started going out with you, he seemed like any other kid. I had no idea how angry he was about your divorce.”

Jack nodded and tried to stroke Julie’s hair, but she pulled her head away.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said.

“I think he needs a therapist, Jack. Could do him a world of good.”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Because my ex and I went to therapy sessions for two years and all that happened is that we got angrier and angrier at one another. The therapist would say, ‘This room is a safe place to get out your feelings,’ so we did. Man, did we ever! But it turned out it wasn’t a good place for that at all. We couldn’t leave the stuff we’d said to one another in the room, and when we got home, things really got twisted. You know what I believe in now? You got bad feelings, you work harder, you get a girlfriend, you change your life. You don’t need to indulge them all the time.”

“Great,” Julie said. “Well, they’re coming out anyway, Jack. Maybe not at you. But at me. I spend the whole day teaching fifth graders, then I come home to a furious teenager and a boyfriend who gets home around two A.M. four nights a week. And where the hell were you all night?”

Jack laughed harshly.

“Oh, I was at a party. Yeah, at the Playboy Mansion. Me and Hef and the Bunnies. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Oscar almost got killed, and I ended up shooting a guy in the middle of the freeway. Yeah, you shoulda been there. It was a real gas.”

Julie shook her head and looked at the floor.

“I’m tired,” she said. “And tomorrow’s a long day. Good night, Jack.”

She got up and walked out of the kitchen toward the bedroom. Jack wanted to stop her, take her in his arms, but something held him back. The something that stopped him from going into the front room, switching off the tube, and dealing with his son.

He felt a mental and physical exhaustion, and he knew that he wouldn’t have the words to make things better.

He’d have to deal with it all tomorrow.

Christ . . . the list of things was endless.

And then, just as he had gotten up to head into the shower, the phone rang again.

If it was Steinbach, he was going to take his head off .

But it wasn’t. The phone said F. Feeney.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Agent Harper?”

“Yeah?” Jack said.

“I know it’s late and I’m sorry, but you said if I thought of anything else, I should call you.”

“That’s okay,” Jack said. “What’s up?”

“Well, I’ve thought about it and thought about it, and gone over it with Mr. Toodles, and we both agreed I should call you at once.”

“That right?” Jack said. “And what is this vital information, Fred.”

“Well, I’d forgotten this. Guess I didn’t think it was top-notch important but the thing is, there was another guy I saw wandering around the canyon the day before the agent got killed.”

“Really, you saw him in the mug-shot book at the office?”

“Noooo,” Fred Feeney said. “That’s the amazing thing. The person I saw wasn’t in the book. He was . . . He was an agent. A guy who was right in the next office while we were in there looking at pictures.”

Now Jack was fully awake.

“What? You sure, Fred?”

“Trust me,” Feeney said. “Fred and Toodles never forget faces. As in absolutely never, ever. I saw his door. I remember the man’s nameplate. Kind of gold. And he had movie stars’ pictures all over the walls. Trouble is, I’m not as good with names as I am with faces. I’ve asked Toodles, but he draws a blank, too.”

“Forrester? That ring a bell?”

“Yes, that’s it. Forrester. Supervising Agent William Forrester. Mr. Toodles and I were out for a walk and we saw him drive up to the turnaround, park his car, get out, and walk around. I didn’t think anything of it. Maybe you should ask him about it, hey?”

“Yeah, maybe I should,” Jack said. “You’ve done a good job, Fred. But I don’t want you mentioning this to anyone else. Except Toodles, of course.”

“Toodles should get some of the credit. Without him, I might never have seen him at all. Well, hope I’m helpful. I like being a secret agent, Jack.”

“You’re a hell of a good one,” Jack said. “Good night, Fred.”

“Good night, Agent Harper,” Feeney said.

From behind him there was a sharp bark. As if Special Agent Toodles was signing off , too.

Jack sat at the kitchen table, head in his hands.

Forrester up at the Blakely house? The night before?

What the hell was he up to?

Could it have been Forrester who cut the brakes? Using the Steinbach threat as a cover?

Was he up there, intending to break into Blakely’s, and trying to find the stolen bank loot?

Whatever it was, he had to keep his eye on both Steinbach and his boys and Forrester. And he wondered how long it would be before whoever the hell it was would be coming after him.