“I should have told him, I guess.”
“Hey, that’s up to you. I don’t go around telling people how to conduct their relationships. But the interesting thing is, then he stops calling you. Suddenly he’s not calling you anymore. Now why is that? Did he find out you were safe over there in London, England?”
She started to reply, and then she stopped.
“I’ll take that for a no,” Deerfield said. “You were worried about Petrosian, so you told people in your office to clam up about where you were. So as far as Reacher knew, you were still right here in town. But he’s suddenly not worried anymore. He doesn’t know you’re safe and sound in London, England, but maybe he does know you’re safe and sound because of some other reason, such as maybe he knows Petrosian isn’t going to be around for very much longer.”
Jodie’s eyes were back on the floor again.
“He’s a smart guy,” Deerfield said. “My guess is he whistled up some pal of his to set the cat among the pigeons up here in Chinatown, and then he sat
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back and waited for the tongs to do what they always do when somebody starts messing with them. And he figures he’s safe. He knows we’ll never find his busy little pal, and he figures those Chinese boys aren’t going to tell us diddly, not in a million years, and he knows the exact moment old Petrosian is getting the good news with the machete, he’s locked into a room down in Quantico. A smart guy.”
Jodie said nothing.
“But a very confident guy,” Deerfield said. “He stopped calling you two days before Petrosian finally bought the farm.”
There was silence in the kitchen. Deerfield turned to Reacher.
“So am I on the money?” he asked.
Reacher shrugged. “Why should anybody have been worrying about Petrosian?”
Deerfield smiled again. “Oh, sure, we can’t talk about that. We’ll never admit Blake said a word to you on that subject. But like I told Ms. Jacob, information is king. I just want to be a hundred percent sure what I’m dealing with here. If you stirred it up, just tell me and maybe I’ll pat you on the back for a job well done. But if by some chance it was a genuine dispute, we need to know about it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Reacher said.
“So why did you stop calling Ms. Jacob?”
“That’s my business.”
“No, it’s everybody’s business,” Deerfield said. “Certainly it’s Ms. Jacobs business, right? And it’s mine too. So tell me about it. And don’t go thinking you’re out of the woods yet, Reacher. Petrosian was a piece of shit for sure, but he’s still a homicide, and we can crank up a pretty good motive for you anyway, based on what was witnessed by two credible witnesses the other night in the alley. We could call it a conspiracy with persons unknown. Careful preparation of the case, you could be inside two years, just waiting for the trial. Jury might let you go in the end, but then who really knows what a jury might do?”
Reacher said nothing. Jodie stood up.
“You should leave now, Mr. Deerfield,” she said. “I’m still his lawyer, and this is an inappropriate forum for this discussion.”
Deerfield nodded slowly, and looked around the kitchen, like he was seeing it for the first time.
“Yes, it sure is, Ms. Jacob,” he said. “So maybe we’ll have to continue this discussion someplace more appropriate at some future time. Maybe tomorrow,
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maybe next week, maybe next year. Like Mr. Blake pointed out, we know where you both live.”
He turned on the spot, with the grit on his shoes loud in the silence. They heard him walk through the living room and they heard the apartment door open and slam shut.
“So you took Petrosian out,” Jodie said.
“I never went near him,” Reacher replied.
She shook her head. “Save that stuff for the FBI, OK? You arranged it or provoked it or engineered it or whatever the correct phrase would be. You took him out, as surely as if you were standing right next to him with a gun.”