A Welcome Grave (36 page)

He had the phone in his hand when I crossed my right fist into the back of his head, driving him forward, into the couch. I had his arm up and wrenched behind his back before he got his balance back, and I took the phone from his hand while I shoved him against the wall.

“You’re going to give me the name,” I said. “Until that happens, nobody is called, and nobody leaves. You know who Jefferson went to, you son of a bitch. Now tell me.”

“Bring him here.”

Thor spoke from behind us, and I turned to see him standing at the top of the sunken living room, gesturing me forward with one gloved hand. I pulled Reed upright and shoved him forward, toward Thor. Thor reached under his jacket and brought out a pistol, a Glock 9 mm very similar to my own. Reed began to tremble against me. Thor pointed the gun at his forehead and said, “Walk him into the bathroom.”

I pushed Reed down the hall, Thor walking backward in front of us, the gun trained on Reed.

“Let me go, unless you want me to start shouting,” Reed said, twisting against me but not making any headway. “There’s a security guard right underneath us. He’ll hear.”

“No, he will not,” Thor said. “And you will not shout.”

A door opened up to my left, and I forced Reed through it. We were standing in front of a large bathtub, scalding water cascading into it. Steam rose off the tub and clouded the mirror behind us. Reed was shaking now, his knees hammering.

“No, don’t . . . You’ve got to understand. I do
finances.
That’s all! I don’t know anything about this woman.”

Thor stepped in beside me, placing his hand near my own, so that he was
holding Reed’s arm behind his back. He twisted it upward, and Reed gasped in pain as his shoulder tendons pulled to their limits. I let go and stepped back.

“Take off his clothes,” Thor said.

“What?”

He’d placed the Glock back in its holster and had the knife out again. Now, in a quick flourish, he whipped the blade along Reed’s pinned arm, and the shirtsleeve parted and fell away. Two more quick cuts, and the suspenders flapped against his legs.

“Get his shirt off first,” Thor said. “Then the pants.”

I didn’t move, and he looked up at me, his blue eyes seeming to catch the light in the room and hold it. “The shirt first,” he repeated.

I stepped forward and grabbed Reed’s shirt at the collar. He put up his free arm to ward me off, but Thor grabbed it and jerked it behind his back and pinned both of his hands, holding him easily. For a thin man, Thor was remarkably strong. I tore the buttons loose and then ripped the shirt away from Reed’s chest. Thor cut the fabric free from the arms until the shirt dropped to the bathroom floor. Reed’s fat, pale chest and belly appeared. He was still shaking, and the rolls at his sides quivered, the white skin coated with sweat.

“Stop it,” he said. “Stop it. Don’t.” His words came out in ragged gasps.

“We will take your clothes off and you will step into the water,” Thor said. “You will have one last opportunity to be truthful. If you do not take it, I will cut your wrists, wait for you to die, then clean every trace of us from this apartment and leave you in the water.”

Reed bucked against him and then lunged forward, but Thor held on. A stream of urine ran down Reed’s leg, soaking his pants and trickling out around his ankle. Without looking down, Thor moved his foot out of the way.

“Take off his pants,” he said. “The pants and the shoes, and then we will put him in the water.”

“Stop!”
Reed shouted. He sagged, and Thor had to lift to keep him from falling to his knees. Reed’s face was wet with tears and the steam from the bathtub.

“Tommy Gaglionci,” he said, his voice thick and choked. “I think that’s who he went back to.”

I looked at Thor, and for the first time since he’d walked into Cujo’s I saw some sort of reaction in his face. His eyes showed recognition of the name, and something more. Something that seemed akin to alarm.

“You know who he’s talking about?” I said.

Thor was looking down at Reed, and now he lifted his head and met my
eyes. Whatever I’d seen in his face folded beneath the usual empty expression, and he nodded once.

“Used to work with the Italians. His family was connected, when that still mattered. He works alone now. Does not like partnerships. He is an intelligent man, and violent, and unpredictable. I do not know where to find him.”

I dropped to one knee so I could look up at Reed, full into his face. His hair hung wet against his forehead, blood and water a pink smudge across his chin and mouth.

“You said you thought that’s who Jefferson went
back
to. Clarify, Reed.”

“I arranged for Gaglionci to help Jefferson with some things a long time ago. I don’t know what it was, Jefferson just came to me, and I put him in touch with Gaglionci. That’s why—”

“Wait,” I said. “How long ago? When was this, Reed?”

“I don’t know, maybe five years.”

“No—you
do
know, and you’re going to think about it and give me the right answer. When was it?”

He sniffed back tears and mucus and considered it.

“It would be, well, about five years.”

“More specific.”

“Summer. I know it was the middle of summer.”

“And he’s Italian. A dark-looking guy, muscular?”

“Yes.”

Son of a bitch. Donny Ward’s description of the man who’d shot his dog and Jerry Heath’s description of the fake cop who’d arrived with Jefferson and Fenton Brooks spun through my head. Summer, five years ago. When Doran was arrested, before he’d been pressured into the plea bargain. Jefferson hadn’t wanted to go back to Gaglionci, but he was out of options. Now I saw Doran on the breakwater, telling me that his partner was the same man Jefferson had hired to kill him. Didn’t seem likely Doran understood what role Gaglionci had played when he went to prison.

“It’s the same guy,” I said. “This prick is working with Doran now, but he sent him to prison before. Whoever waves the biggest handful of money wins. Doran convinced him they could get more out of Jefferson than Gaglionci would get for killing him. He just doesn’t understand who the guy is, what he did.”

Reed didn’t follow a word of that, and the confusion seemed to scare him more.

“You said Jefferson went back to him, but he didn’t want to,” I said. “Explain that.”

“He told me he needed someone again, but not Gaglionci. He didn’t trust him. Seemed scared of him. I told him I didn’t know who to send him to, but he kept asking, insisting. I told him to talk to”—Reed shot a fast, nervous glance over my shoulder—“Thor.”

“So you don’t know that he went back to Gaglionci? You’re guessing?”

“He went back to him. He told me he didn’t like the idea of it, but I didn’t have anyone else to offer and he kept saying he was running out of time.”

“How do we find Gaglionci?”

His lips opened and closed, a string of spit appearing in the corner of his mouth, but he didn’t say anything.

“Reed,” I said, “we could kill you today. You already know that. We could leave you in that bathtub to be found in a day or two, your body sitting in water gone cold and bloody. That’s your option. That’s all you can gain from silence.”

“He has a town house somewhere on the east side. I don’t know the address. All I have is a cell phone number.”

“He has an abducted woman with him. You think he’d take her back to his home?”

His tongue slid out and wiped over his lips. “Probably not.”

Probably not.
I drew back my fist, ready to hit him, but stopped myself. I turned away and looked into the mirror and saw my own face, distorted through steam but with the fear still obvious. We’d made progress, but not enough. Even if Gaglionci had Amy, he wouldn’t have taken her back to his own home. If we checked it out, it would be empty. I was sure of that. He was a pro, and he’d have a safe house somewhere.

Thor dropped Reed. He fell onto the bathroom floor and scrambled over to the toilet, tried to shove himself between it and the wall. I looked at him and felt overwhelmed with anger and disgust. His life was devoted to making money off the crimes of others, people like Gaglionci and Doran. They hid the bodies; he hid the money.

Hid the money. That was what Thor had said—
he hides money, and he does that well
. And what was it Reed himself had whined as we’d brought him in here?
I do
finances.
That’s all! I don’t know anything about this woman
.

“They’re going to move millions with computers,” I said. “And not just move the money—make it disappear. An untraceable transaction that even trained professionals won’t be able to follow.”

Reed’s eyes were on the floor. He’d wedged himself as far behind the toilet as possible. I pointed at him and turned to Thor.

“Could he make that happen?”

Thor looked almost impressed as he nodded. “Yes. He could do it.”

Reed tried to move but couldn’t. He had nowhere to go. It was just him and us, trapped in that bathroom. He began to weep.

“I didn’t know about this.
I didn’t know about the woman.
I just said I’d help with the money. That’s all I knew about—the money.
That’s all!
”

His voice was wet with spit and tears. I nodded as he talked, and I thought my expression must be calm, because it seemed to reassure him. The sobs stopped, although his face was still streaked with tears, and he repeated what he’d already said—all he knew about was the money.

“That’s fine,” I said. “That’s really quite good, Reed. I’m glad you’re helping him with the money. But I think you’re about to have a problem with the transaction. And you’re going to need to see him in person.”

I
t was Joe who came up with the scenario we needed.

He’d joined us in the apartment after Thor dragged Reed back out to the living room. I said I wanted Joe with us, and Thor didn’t object. When Joe came through the door his eyes went right to Reed, sitting there in his underwear, his body still damp with sweat and steam, his face dripping blood. Joe looked at him for a long time and then at me.

“We’ve got the name,” I said.

Joe didn’t say anything. He walked down into the sunken living room to join us, and he kept his face away from Reed. I knew what he was thinking—that he’d gotten a lot of information out of a lot suspects over the years without putting any of them in Reed’s sort of condition. This was a different game, though, and that was why I’d gone to Thor. We were in a darker world now, and the clock was running. The time for rules was gone.

Joe sat down, and I told him that Reed was in charge of the money transaction, that I wanted to use him against Gaglionci and Doran.

“If we can get them here, we’re halfway done. To do that, we need a reason for them to see Reed in person. They’re going to call me in a few hours with instructions on how to move the money. We need a change in that plan, something that seems like it came from Reed but will disrupt them enough that one of them will actually come here.”

Joe frowned. “Gaglionci’s got a kidnapped woman with him. It’s not going to be easy to convince him to come in without making the trap obvious.”

“He wants that money, Joe. Wants it bad. He’ll come in if he feels like he has no other choice. All we need is an excuse to bring one of them down here, but everything I’ve thought of is too simple—signing a transaction document or some shit like that. That won’t work. Not for a computer transfer like this.”

If Reed had any ideas, he wasn’t volunteering them. Thor was silent, watching us with his gun in his hand, and I didn’t know the first damn thing about money transfers.

“How will you do this, Reed? Once the money is ready to go, how do you make it disappear?”

Reed was sitting on the floor, holding what was left of his shirt against his chin to stop the blood. He took the shirt down when I spoke and looked at the crimson stain on it as if reminding himself why candor was the way to go.

“I’ll ricochet it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Ricochet—that’s the term we use. When the money moves into the account I’ve designated, I cycle it out immediately, keep doing that through a series of accounts. I use numbered accounts, offshore banks . . . there are a million ways to do it with computers. It’s called a ricochet because it bounces off a number of accounts before finally landing. That makes it harder to trace.”

“These accounts exist only for the ricochet?”

He nodded. “They’re dummy accounts. I’ve already got them set up.”

“What’s a reason you’d need to see these guys in person? It doesn’t have to be real, it just has to
sound
real.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’d better start thinking, asshole. Because either we get them to come here, or—”

“Fingerprints,” Joe said.

I turned to him. “What?”

“I saw something on TV . . . maybe it was in the paper, I don’t remember. About computer security. How there’s a move to use fingerprints for identification now. They’ve got these readers, fingerprint scanners, that you can hook up to your home computer. There’s a whole brand of laptops that have them built in.”