“Then my answer is no.”
Silence. Blake turned the corners of his mouth down.
“We talked with Deerfield before we came up here,” he said. “You can understand we’d do that, right? As a courtesy? He authorized us to tell you Cozo will drop the racketeering charge if you play ball.”
“I’m not worried about the racketeering charge.”
“You should be. Protection rackets stink, you know that? They ruin businesses, they ruin lives. If Cozo scripts it right, some local jury ofTribeca traders is going to hate your guts.”
“I’m not worried about it,” Reacher said again. “I’ll beat it in a second. I stopped it, remember? I didn’t start it. Jury ofTribeca merchants, I’ll look like Robin Hood.”
Blake nodded and ducked his head and wiped his lips with his fingers. “Problem is it could be more than a racketeering charge. One of those guys is critical. We just heard from Bellevue. Broken skull. He dies, it’s a homicide charge.”
Reacher laughed. “Good try, Blake. But nobody got a broken skull tonight. Believe me, I want to break somebody’s skull, I know how to do it. It wouldn’t happen by accident. So let’s hear the rest of them.”
“The rest of what?”
“The big threats. Bureau does what it has to do, right? You’re willing to move right on into the gray areas. So let’s hear what other big threats you’ve got lined up for me.”
“We just want you to play ball here.”
“I know that. And I want to hear how far you’re prepared to go.”
“We’ll go as far as we have to. We’re the Bureau, Reacher. We’re under pressure here. We’re not going to waste time. We got none to waste.”
Reacher sipped his coffee. It tasted better than when he made it. Maybe she used more grounds. Or less. “Sc give me the bad news.”
“IRS audit.”
“You think I’m worried about an IRS audit? I’ve got nothing to hide. They find some income I’ve forgotten about, I’ll be extremely grateful, is all. I could use the cash.”
ifufl/U/M filing
57
“Your girlfriend, too.”
Reacher laughed again. “Jodie’s a Wall Street lawyer, for God’s sake. Big firm, nearly a partner. She’ll tie the IRS in a knot without even thinking about it.”
“We’re serious, Reacher.”
“Not so far, you’re not.”
Blake looked at the floor. “Cozo’s got guys on the street, working undercover. Petrosian’s going to be asking who did his boys last night. Cozo’s guys could let your name slip.”
“So?”
“They could tell him where you live.”
“And that’s supposed to scare me? Look at me, Blake. Get real. There’s maybe ten people on the planet I need to be scared of. Extremely unlikely this guy Petrosian happens to be one of them. So he wants to come up here for me, I’ll float him back to town in a box, all the way down the river.”
“He’s a hard guy, is what I hear.”
“I’m sure he’s real hard. But is he hard enough?”
“Cozo says he’s a sexual deviant. His executions always involve some sexual element. And the corpses are always explicitly displayed, naked, mutilated, really bizarre. Men or women, he doesn’t care. Deerfield told us all about that. We talked to him about it.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Blake nodded. “We thought you’d say that. We’re good judges of character. That’s our trade, in a manner of speaking. So we asked ourselves how you’d react to something else. Suppose it’s not your name and address Cozo leaks to Petrosian? What if it’s your girlfriend’s name and address?”
II
fifi
fl/4lfvi are you going to do?” Jodie asked.
“I don’t know,” Reacher said.
“I can’t believe they’re acting like this.”
They were in Jodie’s kitchen, four floors above lower Broadway in Manhattan. Blake and Lamarr had left him in Garrison and twenty restless minutes later he had driven south to the city. Jodie came home at six in the morning looking for breakfast and a shower and found him waiting in her living room.
“Are they serious?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“Shit, I can’t believe it.”
“They’re desperate,” he said. “And they’re arrogant. And they like to win. And they’re an elite group. Put it all together, this is how they behave. I’ve seen it before. Some of our guys were exactly the same. They did what it takes.”