Patriot games - Tom Clancy [167]
"Why didn't you think about all this before, dammit!"
"Daddy, that's enough!" Cathy rejoined the conversation.
"Shut up-this is between us!"
"If you yell at her again, mister, you'll regret it." Jack needed a release. He hadn't protected his family the previous day, but he could now.
"Calm down, Jack." His wife didn't know that she was making things worse, but Jack took the cue after a moment. Muller didn't.
"You're a real big guy now, aren't you?"
Keep going, Joe, and you might find out. Jack looked over to his wife and took a deep breath. "Look, if you came down here to yell at me, that's fine, we can do that by ourselves, okay?-but that's your daughter over there, and maybe she needs you, too." He turned to Cathy. "I'll be outside if you need me."
Ryan left the room. There were still two very serious state troopers at the door, and another at the nurses' station down the hall. Jack reminded himself that a trooper had been killed, and that Cathy was the only thing they had that was close to being a witness. She was safe, finally. Robby waved to his friend from down the hall.
"Settle down, boy," the pilot suggested.
"He has a real talent for pissing me off," Jack said after another deep breath.
"I know he's an asshole, but he almost lost his kid. Try to remember that. Taking it out on him doesn't help things."
"It might," Jack said with a smile, thinking about it. "What are you, a philosopher?"
"I'm a PK, Jack. Preacher's Kid. You can't imagine the stuff I used to hear from the parlor when people came over to talk with the old man. He isn't so much mad at you as scared by what almost happened," Robby said.
"So am I, pal." Ryan looked down the hall.
"But you've had more time to deal with it."
"Yeah." Jack was quiet for a moment. "I still don't like the son of a bitch."
"He gave you Cathy, man. That's something."
"Are you sure you're in the right line of work? How come you're not a chaplain?"
"I am the voice of reason in a chaotic world. You don't accomplish as much when you're pissed off. That's why we train people to be professionals. If you want to get the job done, emotions don't help. You've already gotten even with the man, right?"
"Yeah. If he'd had his way, I'd be living up in Westchester County, taking the train in every day, and-crap!" Jack shook his head. "He still makes me mad."
Muller came out of the room just then. He looked around for a moment, spotted Jack, and walked down. "Stay close," Ryan told his friend.
"You almost killed my little girl." Joe's mood hadn't improved.
Jack didn't reply. He'd told himself that about a hundred times, and was just starting to consider the possibility that he was a victim, too.
"You ain't thinking right, Mr. Muller," Robby said.
"Who the hell are you!"
"A friend," Robby replied. He and Joe were about the same height, but the pilot was twenty years younger. The look he gave the broker communicated this rather clearly. The voice of reason didn't like being yelled at. Joe Muller had a talent for irritating people. On Wall Street he could get away with it, and he assumed that meant that be could do it anywhere he liked. He was a man who had not learned the limitations of his power.
"We can't change what has happened," Jack offered. "We can work to see that it doesn't happen again."
"If you'd done what I wanted, this never would have happened!"
"If I'd done what you wanted. I'd be working with you every day, moving money from Column A to Column B and pretending it was important, like all the other Wall Street wimps-and hating it, and turning into another miserable bastard in the financial world. I proved that I could do that as well as you, but I made my pile, and so now I do something I like. At least we're trying to make the world a better place instead of trying to take it over with leveraged buyouts. It's not my fault that you don't understand that. Cathy and I are doing what