Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child [103]
“Close to you,” I said. “Third Avenue and 56th Street.”
She started to reply, and then she stopped herself immediately. She got no further than an inchoate little th sound. A voiced dental fricative. The start of a sentence that was going to be impatient and querulous and a little smug. Like, That’s not close to me.
She wasn’t anywhere near Third and 56th.
“Last chance,” she said. “I want my property.” Her voice softened. “We can make arrangements, if you like. Just leave it somewhere safe, and tell me where. I’ll have it picked up. We don’t need to meet. You could even get paid.”
“I’m not looking for work.”
“Are you looking to stay alive?”
“I’m not afraid of you, Lila.”
“That’s what Peter Molina said.”
“Where is he?”
“Right here with us.”
“Alive?”
“Come over and find out.”
“He left a message with his coach.”
“Or maybe I played a tape he made before he died. Maybe he told me his coach never answers the phone at dinnertime. Maybe he told me a lot of things. Maybe I forced him to.”
I asked, “Where are you, Lila?”
“I can’t tell you that,” she said. “But I could have you picked up.”
A hundred feet away I saw a police car cruising 14th Street. Moving slow. Pink flashes at the window as the driver moved his head right and left.
I asked, “How long have you known Peter Molina?”
“Since I picked him up in the bar.”
“Is he still alive?”
“Come over and find out.”
I said, “You’re on borrowed time, Lila. You killed four Americans in New York. No one is going to ignore that.”
“I killed nobody.”
“Your people did.”
“People that have already left the country. We’re fireproof.”
“We?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“If your people acted on your orders, then you’re not fireproof. That’s a conspiracy.”
“This is a nation of laws and trials. There’s no evidence.”
“Car?”
“No longer exists.”
“You’ll never be fireproof from me. I’ll find you.”
“I hope you do.”
A hundred feet away the police car slowed to a crawl.
I said, “Come out and meet with me, Lila. Or go home. One or the other. But either way you’re beaten here.”
She said, “We’re never beaten.”
“Who is we?”
But there was no answer. The phone went dead. Nothing there, except the dumb silence of an empty line.
A hundred feet away the police car stopped.
I closed the phone and put it back in my pocket.
Two cops climbed out of the car and headed into the square.
I stayed where I was. Too suspicious to get up and run. Better to sit tight. I wasn’t alone in the park. There were maybe forty people in there with me. Some of them seemed to be a permanent population. Others were temporary strays. New York is a big city. Five boroughs. Journeys home are long. Often easier to rest along the way.
The cops shone a flashlight beam in a sleeping guy’s face.
They moved on. Lit up the next guy.
And the next.
Not good.
Not good at all.
But I was not the only person to reach that conclusion. Here and there around the square I saw shapes rising up from benches and shuffling away in different directions. Maybe people with outstanding warrants, dealers with stuff in their backpacks, surly loners who didn’t want contact, helpless paranoids wary of the system.
Two cops, an acre of ground, maybe thirty people still on benches, maybe ten newly mobile.
I watched.
The cops kept on coming. Their flashlight beams jerked through the nighttime haze. Long shadows were thrown. They checked a third guy, and then a fourth. Then a fifth. More people stood up. Some left altogether, and others simply moved from bench to bench. The square was full of shapes, some inert, some moving. Everything was in slow motion. A tired, lazy dance.
I watched.
New indecision in the cops’ body language. Like herding cats. They approached the people still on benches. They turned away and jerked their beams on the people moving out. They kept on walking, bending, turning. No pattern. Just random movement. They kept on coming. They got within ten yards of me.
Then they quit.
They played their flashlight beams one last time around a token circle and then they headed back to their car. I watched it drive