First Thrills - Lee Child [49]
Be smart, he told himself.
Don’t be a hero.
He pulled out his phone and began to dial 9-1-1.
Which is when he heard a snap behind him. A foot on a small branch or bit of crisp leaf.
And felt the muzzle of the gun prod his back as a gloved hand reached out and lifted the phone away.
We’re a little more organized than that. We come up with a detailed plot, all the twists and turns. Then we execute it. We know exactly how the story will end.
Well, Prescott’s wife and co-author had done just that: come up with a perfect plot. Maybe the man on the street a moment ago was Reilly, acting as bait. And it was the professional killer who’d come up behind him.
Maybe even Jane Reilly herself.
She’s pretty tough . . .
The detective had another thought. Maybe it was none of his suspects. Maybe the former agent, Frank Lester, had been bitter about being fired by his client and killed Prescott for revenge. Malloy had never followed up on that lead.
Hell, dying because he’d been careless. . . .
Then the hand tugged on his shoulder slightly, indicating he should turn around.
Malloy did, slowly.
He blinked as he looked up into the eyes of the man who’d snuck up behind him.
They’d never met, but the detective knew exactly what J.B. Prescott looked like. His face was on the back jackets of a dozen books in Mal-loy’s living room.
“Sorry for the scare,” Prescott explained, putting away the pen he’d used as a gun muzzle—an ironic touch that Malloy noted as his heart continued to slam in his chest.
The author continued, “I wanted to intercept you before you got home. But I didn’t think you’d get here so soon. I had to come up behind you and make you think I had a weapon so you didn’t call in a ten- thirteen. That would have been a disaster.”
“Intercept?” Malloy asked. “Why?”
They were sitting in the alleyway, on the stairs of a loading dock.
“I needed to talk to you,” Prescott said. The man had a large mane of gray hair and a matching moustache that bisected his lengthy face. He looked like an author ought to look.
“You could’ve called,” Malloy snapped.
“No, I couldn’t. If somebody had overheard or if you’d told anyone I was alive, my whole plot would’ve been ruined.”
“Okay, what the hell is going on?”
Prescott lowered his head to his hands and didn’t speak for a moment. Then he said, “For the past eighteen months I’ve been planning my own death. It took that long to find a doctor, an ambulance crew, a funeral director I could bribe. And find some remote land in Spain where we could buy a place and nobody would disturb me.”
“So you were the one the police saw walking away from where you’d supposedly had the heart attack in Vermont.”
He nodded.
“What were you carrying? A suitcase?”
“Oh, my laptop. I’m never without it. I write all the time.”
“Then who was in the ambulance?”
“Nobody. It was just for show.”
“And at the cemetery, an empty urn in the plot?”
“That’s right.”
“But why on earth would you do this? Debts? Was the mob after you?”
A laugh. “I’m worth fifty million dollars. And I may write about the mob and spies and government agents, but I’ve never actually met one. . . . No, I’m doing this because I’ve decided to give up writing the Jacob Sharpe books.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s time for me to try something different: publish what I first started writing, years ago, poetry and literary stories.”
Malloy remembered this from the obit.
Prescott explained quickly: “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think literature’s any better than commercial fiction, not at all. People who say that are fools. But when I tried my hand at literature when I was young, I didn’t have any skill. I was self- indulgent, digressive . . . boring. Now I know how to write. The Jacob Sharpe books taught me how. I learned how to think about the audience’s needs, how to structure my stories, how to communicate clearly.”
“Tradecraft,” Malloy said.
The author gave a laugh. “Yes, tradecraft. I’m not a young man. I decided I wasn