Page 127 of One of Us Is Guilty

He did as his father asked, turned and left, but he remembered that Dekker hadn’t closed the door. Patrick made it look as if he was heading for the stairs, but he stopped, held his breath, and put his back to the wall, just a few feet from the door, listening to the two men in the room beside him.

Dekker spoke first. It was hard to hear all of it. He at least kept his voice low.

Something, something, something, ‘. . . dead bodies . . . Hamptons . . . FBI on scene.’

‘Fuck me,’ said his father.

He had no trouble hearing that.

‘Did anyone see you?’

‘No, we changed vehicles before we left the city.’

‘Do we know the special agent in charge?’ asked his father.

‘Bill Kennedy. He’s an old friend of Flynn’s.’

‘Fuck me.’

‘What do you want me—’

‘Take out Flynn. Soon as possible.’

Silence.

Patrick had been in the room for those silences before. His father had a way of taking every ounce of oxygen out of the atmosphere, and your only choice was to take a moment. Think. And make sure your response was what he wanted to hear.

‘That could be difficult, and may not suit us in the long run,’ said Dekker.

‘Why not?’

‘If Flynn disappears, the defendant can get the trial adjourned. I thought you wanted this over.’

‘No, it doesn’t work that way. Vanessa has co-counsel, Harry Ford. He’ll take over. Just make sure Tanner doesn’t grant an adjournment or a mistrial. Have Larkin tell her there’s an extra hundred thousand in it if she can give me my verdict in the next three days. That should sweeten her.’

‘Larkin has been quiet. I’ll have to talk to him in person.’

‘I hope our dirty cop isn’t developing a conscience. Tell him we need him to see this through.’

‘What about Bloch and Lake?’

‘They’re too hot right now. We’ll get them after. A month or two, maybe. Flynn is the priority. I don’t care how you do it. I don’t care how you make it look. I want him dead in the next forty-eight hours.’

53

Eddie

‘This office is a lot better than that last shithole you had in West Forty-sixth Street,’ said a voice. A man’s voice.

A voice I hadn’t heard in person for a long time.

Harry had gone home to walk Clarence, and I needed to call in to the office and catch up with work. Bloch and Lake were standing around their desks sipping hot drinks from their mugs. Coffee for Bloch. Some kind of herbal tea that once passed through the digestive system of a Guatemalan cat for Lake. Behind them, I clocked the man who sat sprawled out in Bloch’s chair, with both feet on her desk. He wore a pale raincoat over a navy suit. White shirt. Tie pin. Gold. Silver ballpoint pen in his jacket pocket. He was thin, barely fitting his shirt, and the circles beneath his eyes looked deeper and darker than the last time I’d seen him, which was some years ago now.

‘You remember the last time you broke into my office in West Forty-sixth Street?’ I asked him.

‘As I recall, you put both of my agents on medical leave for a week. One guy had a bruise on his arm the size of Lake Tahoe, and the other had a couple of broken fingers. You still carry a set of brass knuckles?’ he asked.

‘I prefer ceramic these days. They don’t set off metal detectors. How are you doing, Kennedy?’