Paula said, “So you never saw him again.”

“No. And I sure as hell haven’t been looking.”

She said, “You don’t know what he was doing here?”

“I don’t know if he was on holiday, or he had a mistress, or if he wanted to go hiking in the fucking rain forest. I don’t know how long he was here or whether he’s ever been back. I don’t know anything more than what I just told you. And I don’t really want to, either.”

They were all quiet for a moment. Ben said, “I want to know something.”

“What?”

“Why’d you tell us all this?”

Taibbi glanced at Paula. “Because your partner asked so nicely, remember?”

Ben shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Taibbi took a swallow of whiskey. “I told you, I don’t want to cross paths with Larison again. But that doesn’t mean I want him to live happily ever after, either. So whatever you’re planning to do with him, I figure now it’s your risk, and maybe my reward. That’s a division of labor I can live with.”

Paula frowned. “What do you mean, ‘whatever we’re planning to do with him’?”

Taibbi laughed. “What I mean is, if you’re FBI, I’m Doris Day.” He nodded at Paula. “You, maybe.” Then he looked at Ben. “But you? No way.”

“Yeah?” Ben said. “What am I?”

“I don’t know, exactly. But I’ll tell you what you look like. You look like him.”

16. Not a Comforting Thought

In the van on the way to San Jose, Paula was fuming in the passenger seat. “I told you I was going to take the lead. Why can’t you listen?”

“We got what we wanted, didn’t we?”

“Despite you, not because. Every time you open your damned mouth, you antagonize people.”

“Yeah, and then you got to do your sweet southern girl routine. Isn’t that what you guys call ‘good cop, bad cop’?”

“That’s right, ‘you guys.’ That was an FBI ID you showed Taibbi, wasn’t it?”

“What difference does it make?”

“I want to know who the hell you’re with.”

“That doesn’t make any difference, either.”

“Then why won’t you tell me?”

“Because it doesn’t make any difference.”

“It’s all personal for you, isn’t it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You say it’s the job, but it’s not. You’d already gotten past that bouncer, but no, you had to make fun of him afterward, also. And Drew-you’d already disarmed and disabled him, why’d you have to sass him, too? Does the sass help you get the job done?”

He frowned. It was like Hort again, asking him why he went to that Burgos bar.

“Look, a Zen monk can’t do what I do, okay? Not that you would know.”

“Oh, those are the only two possibilities? Zen monk, and you?”

He didn’t answer. He’d never longed to be working alone as much as he did right then.

They drove for a while in silence. Ben said, “Did you catch what Taibbi said about the wallet?”

“Of course I caught it.”

“I mean, what did you make of it?”

“Just what Taibbi said. Larison was trying to make the second killing look like a robbery.”

“Wrong. Larison didn’t give a shit what the second killing looked like. He’d already vanished like a ghost and no one was going to connect him to the body whether the guy died of blunt trauma or a heart attack or was abducted by aliens.”

“Why, then?”

“Because once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”

“Will you please stop talking in riddles?”

“Put yourself in Larison’s shoes. You arrive at the airport. You’re good-you’re the best, in fact-so you remember faces, especially ones that belong to anyone who puts out any kind of operational vibe, no matter how slight. At the airport, you log dozens of faces, knowing most of them, probably all, will turn out to be false positives. The ones you see now are happenstance. Then, a half hour, a bus change, and five miles later, one of those faces pops up again behind you. The guy definitely has the vibe. Okay, that’s twice-coincidence, maybe. Now you get to Barrio Dent-long way from the airport, small part of the city-and you see the guy again. That’s enemy action.”

“Tell me again how you’ve never been in the military.”

“So now Larison knows for sure he’s been followed. But he’s got no reason to think there’s any way he could have been followed from the States. In other words, he’s not being followed because he’s Larison. He’s being followed because he’s something generic.”

“You mean, like a tourist.”

“Exactly. He figures that he drew the attention of a gang whose MO is to follow a tourist from the airport, hit him over the head when he’s alone or somewhere dark, and make off with his bag, his wallet, his passport, his watch. It happens. And the pattern fits what Larison realizes is in his wake. So he decides to disrupt the pattern.”

“All right, that’s Carlos. Then what?”

“Then what, I think, could be our break.”

“How?”

“Larison was in town for a few days, maybe longer. Say he was shacking up with his mistress. They’re going out a lot, enjoying the local nightlife, the restaurants and bars. Carlos’s brother Juan knows Larison had business in Barrio Dent or nearby because that’s where they tracked him to. He knows it’s a long shot, but he’s obsessed and he’s got nothing else to go on anyway. So one night, he cases every watering hole in Barrio Dent, Los Yoses, and San Pedro. They’re all right next to each other and none is particularly big. I read it in the guidebook. Systematically, one by one, starting in Barrio Dent, go back to the beginning, repeat. If he doesn’t get bingo the first night, he does it again the next.”

“Okay, one night, like Taibbi said, he gets lucky.”

“Yeah, although again, lucky might not be quite the right word. He spots Larison and his lady, say, having dinner. Now, he thinks he’s being a cool customer and that no way Larison’s going to make him. Even after what happened to his brother, he doesn’t get what he’s up against. Like Taibbi said, he’s young and hotheaded.”

“And Larison made him.”

“Right. And I’ll give you good odds, too, that Juan was liquored up when he found Larison the second time, so he’d be sloppy and radiating all his inner badassedness. So Larison spots the problem and says to his girlfriend, excuse me, I need to step outside-a smoke, a little air, whatever. Wait here, babe, I’ll be right back. He walks outside, and dumb young Juan follows him. Larison leads him along a little, then doubles back on him, just like he did to Carlos. He doesn’t have time or the opportunity to interrogate him, but he wants to know who are these guys who’ve been following him. So he does him, takes his wallet, puts him in the nearest sewer so he won’t be found until later, and is back inside without even breaking a sweat.”

“Taibbi said Juan’s skull was caved in. How did Larison do that? With some table linen he borrowed from the restaurant?”

Ben reached into his pocket and pulled out the SureFire flashlight. He handed it to Paula. “Feel the bezel, around the glass. That’s Mil-Spec hard-anodized aluminum. Now hold it in your hand like a hammer, with the bezel protruding at the bottom of your fist. Now imagine smashing it into the back of someone’s head with an overhand blow. What do you weigh, a hundred twenty, a hundred twenty-five pounds? You could put a hole in someone’s skull that way. A guy like Larison could do an entire lobotomy.”

She handed the SureFire back to him. “Larison would carry something like this?”

“Like this, or an ASP tactical baton. Or he picked up a rock. It doesn’t matter.”

“How would you know what a guy like Larison carries?”

Ben ignored the probe. “The point is, he does it, takes the wallet, and sees the guy he just killed is named Juan Cole. He would have checked the papers after he did Carlos, so now he knows he’s dealing with brothers. Taibbi suggested these guys were petty criminals, they probably have records, and the papers would have said as much. So Larison’s working hypothesis becomes, two brothers, or maybe a gang of which two brothers were a part, followed him from the airport hoping to mug him. He killed one brother, the other decided he wanted revenge, Larison killed him, too.”