So they turned their attention to damage limitation. It was clear what they had to do. They made the necessary stops and wasted a plausible amount of time in a diner just off the southbound side of Route 9. By the time they had battled the traffic back down to the southern tip of Manhattan, they had their whole story straight.
‘It was a no-brainer,’ the first guy said. ‘We waited for hours, which is why we’re so late back. Problem was there was a whole bunch of soldiers there, kind of ceremonial, but they had rifles all over the place.’
‘How many?’ Hobie asked.
‘Soldiers?’ the second guy said. ‘At least a dozen. Maybe fifteen. They were all milling around, so it was hard to count them exactly. Some kind of honour guard.’
‘She left with them,’ the first guy said. ‘They must have escorted her down from the cemetery, and then she went back somewhere with them afterward.’
‘You didn’t think to follow?’
‘No way we could,’ the second guy said. ‘They were driving slow, a long line of cars. Like a funeral
procession? They’d have made us in a second. We couldn’t just tag on the end of a funeral procession, right?’
‘What about the big guy from the Keys?’
‘He left real early. We just let him go. We were watching for Mrs Jacob. It was pretty clear by then which one she was. She stayed around, then she left, all surrounded by this bunch of military.’
‘So what did you do then?’
‘We checked the house,’ the first guy said. ‘Locked up tight. So we went into the town and checked the property title. Everything’s listed in the public library. The place was registered to a guy called Leon Garber. We asked the librarian what she knew, and she just handed us the local newspaper. Page three, there was a story about the guy. Just died, heart trouble. Widower, only surviving relative is his daughter Jodie, the former Mrs Jacob, who is a young but very eminent financial attorney with Spencer Gutman Ricker and Talbot of Wall Street, and who lives on Lower Broadway right here in New York City.’
Hobie nodded slowly, and tapped the sharp end of his hook on the desk, with a jittery little rhythm.
‘And who was this Leon Garber, exactly? Why all the soldiers at his wake?’
‘Military policeman,’ the first guy said.
The second guy nodded. ‘Mustered out with three stars and more medals than you can count, served forty years, Korea, Vietnam, everywhere.’
Hobie stopped tapping. He sat still and the colour drained out of his face, leaving his skin dead white, all except for the shiny pink burn scars that glowed vivid in the gloom.
‘Military policeman,’ he repeated quietly.
He sat for a long time with those words on his lips. He just sat and stared into space, and then he lifted his hook off the desk and rotated it in front of his eyes, slowly, examining it, allowing the thin beams of light from the blinds to catch its curves and contours. It was trembling, so he took it in his left hand and held it still.
‘Military policeman,’ he said again, staring at the hook. Then he transferred his gaze to the two men on the sofas.
‘Leave the room,’ he said to the second guy.
The guy glanced once at his partner and went out and closed the door softly behind him. Hobie pushed back in his chair and stood up. Came out from behind the desk and stepped over and stopped still, directly behind the first guy, who just sat there on his sofa, not moving, not daring to turn around and look.
He wore a size sixteen collar, which made his neck a fraction over five inches in diameter, assuming a human neck is more or less a uniform cylinder, which was an approximation Hobie had always been happy to make. Hobie’s hook was a simple steel curve, like a capital letter J, generously sized. The inside diameter of the curve was four and three-quarter inches. He moved fast, darting the hook out and forcing it over the guy’s throat from behind. He stepped back and pulled with all his strength. The guy threw himself upward and backward, his fingers scrabbling under the cold metal to relieve the gagging pressure. Hobie smiled and pulled harder. The hook was riveted to a heavy leather cup and a matching shaped corset, the cup over the remains of his forearm, the corset buckled tight over his bicep above his elbow. The forearm assembly was just a stabilizer. It was the upper corset, smaller than the bulge of his elbow joint, that took all