Downfall

by Jeff Abbott

  She said, “Who the hell are you?” Voice calm, steady. Me holding the picture threw her off; I wasn’t supposed to be in her house, but burglars didn’t hold up photos and ask to talk to ex-husbands.

  “Where is Glenn, Mrs. Marchbanks?”

  “He’s…he’s not here. I don’t know where he is.”

  “So I heard you telling his new wife.”

  She paled slightly.

  Surprise her with approach number two. “Who’s Vivienne Duchamp? I understand that she lives here.”

  Her calm evaporated. “Get out of my house!”

  “Vivienne Duchamp’s car was used in a crime last night that your ex-husband was involved in, and if you don’t know about it, then I need to find her.”

  She stopped her scream and studied me. “Are you a police officer?”

  “No, I work at the business where the crime happened. Is Vivienne Duchamp here?”

  “No, she used to be our au pair. She went back to Switzerland over a year ago.”

  “I guess I’ll just take my concerns to the police.”

  “Why haven’t you already?” she asked. “Why are you here instead of going to the police?” Stopping me with a question after ordering me out. She was panicking, showing her hand. This might be easy, I thought.

  “I haven’t told the police all I know. I thought maybe I could make a deal with your ex-husband.” This is a card, I thought, to be played carefully.

  “A deal? What, blackmail?”

  Let her think what she wanted; she might talk some more. I kept my face neutral.

  She did. “This has nothing to do with me or Glenn; you’re mistaken.” She pulled a cell phone from her pocket and showed it to me like it was a weapon. “Get out or I call the police.”

  “I can e-mail the cops his picture. Bet I can find one on the Internet or on a social networking site. Ask them to show it to the other witnesses. He matches the police description.”

  I heard the slide of the automatic gate closing; Audrey’s Mercedes had pulled out.

  “Or maybe your ex-husband and I can have a talk about what happened last night.”

  “My hus—My ex-husband is a respected businessman. If you’ll leave now, I won’t call the police on you, all right? The Tiburon police have little patience with trespassers…”

  “Did you drive the getaway car? I thought I caught a glimpse of blonde hair.”

  Now there was a rage shifted into her eyes. “Get the hell out of my house.”

  “The man who was with your husband is a Russian for-hire mercenary. I wonder if his friends might want to know where your husband is. Why he left their buddy to die and ran.”

  Every jab made an impact, even if she didn’t want to show it. Reading people is difficult, no matter how easy the books and movies make it sound. Her bottom lip barely trembled, but it was enough to convince me she knew about her husband’s doings.

  And I was holding a picture of her children. All that was at stake without a word spoken.

  “Glenn’s here. He’s in the other wing.” She gestured with her head toward the patio door, toward the other wing of the storybook house. “He’s hurt.”

  Delicious honesty. And Prince Charming down for the count in the castle. “Show me, please.”

  “You won’t hurt him?”

  “I just want to know why he came to the bar.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. He came here, he was hurt, he wanted me to hide him.” It was as much confession as I could hope for. I supposed the weight of what I knew made arguing pointless.

  “Let’s go, then, please.” I gestured toward the hallway and she hesitantly moved forward.

  As she reached me, she slammed her elbow hard into my collarbone. It wasn’t a shove; it was the kind of brutally efficient move I learned in Special Projects training class. If she’d caught me a bit higher, it would have broken my larynx. I staggered back, coughing, fighting for breath, and I hadn’t taken four steps when I heard the whistle behind me.

  I ducked, and if I hadn’t, she would have fractured my skull. She’d grabbed the heavy, tall candlestick from the mantel, the one the photo I’d grabbed had rested against, and swung it straight at the back of my head.

  It went over me by less than an inch, the speed of her blow showing she aimed without hesitation. I leaned in under her arm and dodged past her.

  “Mrs. Marchbanks—” I yelled.

  She didn’t swing the candlestick back in a return arc. No. She pivoted, recalibrating her energy behind it, and powered the heavy blunt end right toward my face. Admirable economy of action. Clearly with a mind to drive the metal base into teeth and nose and mouth.

  And Holly Marchbanks was being completely silent. There was no hysteria of the frightened soccer mom facing an intruder. No panting as she fought. Just cold, relentless calculation.

  I dropped below her blow and hit the floor. She tried to adjust, now raising the two-foot-tall iron candlestick to power it down into my head like a pile driver, but I kicked out her legs. She fell. And she rolled off her back, springing back to her feet as I scrambled to mine. She could have crushed my windpipe with the blow. She could have killed me, gasping my final moments on the stone floor of her storybook house.

  Some soccer mom. She hadn’t learned this at yoga class or book club. She was trained.

  The iron candlestick—or I should say, her fighting stick, because that was entirely how she was using it—came at me again. I danced back. She stopped, feinted; I didn’t buy. She stopped again.

  “So,” I said. Recognizing one of my own. A peer I hadn’t expected.

  “So,” she said. “You came into my house. Law is on my side.” Every muscle of hers was taut, coiled like a cat’s.

  “So let’s call the police,” I said. “Maybe they’ll protect me from you.”

  She didn’t answer. “You’re not armed,” she said. Not a question. An observation. I would have gone for a weapon by now.

  “Mrs. Marchbanks…” I started. I’d rather negotiate than fight.

  “Tell me who you are or I will beat your brains in.” She moved the heavy candlestick again, as if testing me for a weak point. “You’re the infamous bartender. But more than a bartender.”

  “More than a soccer mom.” I stayed low, ready to parry her next attack. I couldn’t go hunting for a weapon, so I’d take hers.

  She swung the candlestick again and I grabbed the base; it smacked hard into my palm, stinging. I was going to wrest it from her, but she was fast, darting like a viper, and she shoved the candlestick hard into my chest, leveled a kick that caught me in the groin.

  She let go of her weapon. Voluntarily, I realized, as I staggered back, went over a leather ottoman, lost my sure footing.

  You only surrender one weapon to get a better one.

  She scrambled to the mantel, past the other heavy candlesticks, and grabbed at one of the framed photos hanging in a collage above the mantel. It was one of her daughter Emma, smiling, front teeth missing, happy in summer. Behind the frame—which opened on a hinge, I saw, resting on its hilt, a Glock 9mm, capped with a suppressor.

  Her hand closed on it.

  And I ran into the kitchen.

  I heard the hiss of the bullet go right above my head, the deadly cough of the suppressor, heard brick chip in the wall.

  She was trained beyond fighting. She was trained to kill.

  The kitchen was huge. Granite countertops, custom cabinets, a heavy door that lay open showing a large walk-in pantry. I grabbed a chef’s knife—nice long blade—from a high magnetic rack. I picked up a huge, heavy skillet, ringed with dried egg, that Nana must’ve used for cooking her own breakfast.

  She didn’t turn the corner into the kitchen.

  I listened for her. I was a few years younger and physically stronger. But she had a gun and I was on her home turf. Her children’s turf. I know what it is to fight for your child. I’d stupidly underestimated her.

  “Bartender,” she calle
d. “Look. I aimed low. Not a head shot. I want to talk.”

  “Yeah, you would have hit my spine. Thank you.” On the west side of the kitchen was the large breakfast nook; then the kitchen proper, with a cooking island and a refrigerator and the big pantry door; then the kitchen led off to a back exit mudroom to the driveway, the door the Marchbanks children had exited with their nana; and then another doorway that led to a butler’s pantry/serving area, where a buffet of food could be set; and beyond that I could see a slice of a rather grand-looking dining room table. Paired with crimson upholstered chairs and a modernist painting.

  Not my usual battleground.

  “Bartender?” she called. “I’d like to place an order.”

  Mocking me. She was overconfident. I wanted her to show herself. I had the skillet and it would stop a bullet. I hoped. And I know how to throw a knife, although I’d never had to in a fight—it’s not terribly accurate or reliable. Miss and you lose your weapon. She wasn’t going to throw her gun at me.

  “Holly,” I said. “Do you think you can kill me and clean up the mess before Nana gets back? Or even before your kids get home? It might be a challenge.”

  I kept the skillet covering my face from nose tip to chest. I moved toward where I’d bolted into the kitchen and out of her sight. Instinct would have her believe I would have retreated farther.

  Maybe she’d try to cut me off via the living room.

  Or maybe she was standing in the den, waiting to drop me with one shot. That’s what I would do.

  I turned into the breakfast nook.

  She wasn’t there. I moved into the den. Here her insanely expensive stone floor was my friend; no creaks in hardwood, no rustle against the carpet. I hurried to the next corner, close to the entryway, where she’d stood talking with Audrey, the second wife.

  I stood where I’d stood before. The mirror showed me her, low, crouching. Listening for me.

  I bolted straight for her and swung the skillet as she turned. I cease being a gentleman when a woman tries to put a bullet into me or smash my face in with a blunt instrument or shatter my trachea. She turned and her arm caught the brunt of the metal swing and the Glock, with its suppressor, dropped from her hands. I powered a kick into her chest, and crouching low, she didn’t have maneuvering room to evade me. She flew back into the wall but landed, even stunned, on hands and fingertips, ready to spring back.

  I grabbed her gun. She crouched, watching me, then clutching her arm. I didn’t care if it was broken.

  Four beats of silence.

  I realized she was waiting for me to shoot her.

  “You and I,” I said, “are going to have a serious chat, Mrs. Marchbanks.”

  I gestured at her with the gun and I herded her into the kitchen. I kept a respectful distance.

  “Now. Last night. Explain.”

  She stared at the counter, not looking at me. A cookbook lay open to a recipe, with a photo of a luscious plate of chocolate chip cookies next to the instructions. I guess she’d thought she’d make them for her kids later. The world that she lived in—toys in the driveway and children in prep school—and what she truly was jarred me.

  Because was I so different from Holly? She had a secret life. Was she me five years from now? I thought of the future, the likelihood of a gun hidden in my house (very), Daniel heading off to an Episcopal school (very) or a French-immersion école in New Orleans (just short of very). He’d wear a uniform like the Marchbanks kids, and maybe one day he’d come home and find out my secrets.

  I pushed the thought away.

  “I don’t know anything,” she said. In the same tone she might have given me her name and rank and serial number if she was a soldier.

  “Why is your ex after Diana Keene?” I asked. “What’s this video everyone wants?”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “Last night I met a man in black, he likes to offer people whatever it is they want most in the world. Who is he and why is he involved? Does he work with your husband?”

  She just stared.

  “Well, Holly?” I asked.

  “I have one piece of advice for you,” she said, her gaze direct. “Leave town. Forget helping Diana Keene, because if she truly understood her situation, she wouldn’t want your help. Walk out of here and forget what happened last night. You’ll be exonerated in the death of the Russian; it was self-defense. You have witnesses. But forget everything else. Or he’ll obliterate you. You can’t even imagine how far he’ll go to ruin you.”

  “Who is he?”

  “If I answer your questions, he’ll kill me. Rule number one.”

  Time to try a different approach. “I’m deeply curious as to why a person like yourself is involved in activities best left to street thugs.”

  “A person like me.”

  “Who has everything.” I gestured at the grand kitchen and beyond, the stunning house filled with photos of her beautiful, bright children.

  “Everything.” Holly shook her head. “Yes, I have everything. I earned it.”

  I’d worked undercover jobs for three years for the CIA, playing people who only existed on paper: money launderers, arms buyers, smugglers. I normally was thoroughly briefed on the people I had to deal with, had to question, had to capture. Here I flew blind. I couldn’t see how the fragments of the puzzle fit together.

  “So I guess you’re not going to kill me,” she said.

  “You’re going to tell me who I’m up against.”

  “When your bank accounts are gone, when your reputation has been destroyed, when the innocent people you love have been ruined and they don’t even know why, remember that I warned you.” She crossed her arms. “If you leave right now, I’ll tell him that you’re leaving town. This is your one chance.”

  I smiled at her; it takes guts to issue ultimatums to the person holding the gun. “Has it occurred to you this is your only chance?”

  “You’re not going to kill me,” she said.

  “I would rather trade information,” I said.

  “Why do you think I have anything more to tell you?”

  “Because you have kids. Nice kids.”

  Her mouth trembled.

  “And if this boss of yours threatens your kids to keep you in line, don’t you want them someplace safe from him?”

  “You assume,” she said, “there’s such a place. Ask her if that’s true.”

  “Her.”

  “Diana. Whatever you’re getting out of protecting her, it’s not worth it. Give her to us, and you’ll be safe.”

  “That doesn’t seem like a fair trade. Her life for my safety.”

  “We don’t want her dead. Last thing we want.”

  “You just want the video she has.”

  “I know nothing about that.”

  “Your boss—I don’t know what else to call him—seemed very interested in me.”

  “He collects people.” She let those words hang in the air. “I’m sure he’d like to add a humble bartender who can defeat a Russian Special Forces vet to his collection.” She laughed and then she stopped herself.

  “Collection. That includes you and your ex. And who else? Janice Keene?” I remembered Diana’s words to Glenn, You’re just like my mother. The phrase had made no sense to me. “What is this, a gang of rich people?”

  Holly bit her lip, shook her head. “Yes. I’ve fit it in between book club and parents’ association.”

  “You don’t answer my questions, I’ll take you to meet a friend of mine, and she won’t be nearly as gentle as I am. Why are you all after Diana? I know she has a video. What’s on it?”

  For a moment she studied my face and then she saw the truth that had escaped the man in black. “You really don’t know her,” she said in a dead tone. “What sort of fool are you? You say I risk it all? You’re doing it for…a stranger.”

  She had a point. “I’m doing it because your boss is not going to leave me alone. It’s me or him. Simple. And it’s not going to be m
e.”

  “Bug versus windshield.”

  “You were driving the car last night,” I said slowly. “An accomplice. You’d lose your kids if you were convicted.”

  Her lips formed a circle, as though she were about to give breath to a word. As if finally meeting a moment she’d long rehearsed.

  The moment the truth comes out.

  “I have to do what he says. Or my kids…my kids…” She repeated the words and gave a little choked cough. “I’m going to be sick.” She clutched at her stomach. She staggered toward the metal sink, leaned over it, jetted water against the steel. Made a retching noise and spat.

  I stood and watched her. I kept the gun trained on her. There wasn’t a weapon nearby; I still had the gun and the knife. She wiped off her face.

  “I’m not telling you anything more,” she said. “If you’re going to kill me, then do it somewhere else. I don’t want my kids thinking of their home as where their mom died.” Her calm was eerie. And I didn’t buy it. She was gaming me.

  If interrogation fails, try searching for evidence.

  I came toward her with the gun and she fought me, driving a hard punch toward my shoulder, trying to seize my throat. I wrested free of her grab and shoved her own gun hard against her temple. I pushed her to the ground. I glanced up, looking for restraints. The big walk-in pantry. I pulled her inside. Fancy metal shelves lined the walls, filled with pasta boxes and high-end olive oils and multigrain cereals. I spotted a box of trash bags, industrial strength ones, with the black plastic ties. I fastened one around her wrists and pulled it tight.

  “Stay put,” I said.

  Holly Marchbanks gave out a raw, howling scream of rage. She leaned back and levered a kick toward my groin. I took the blow in my hip and simply shoved her back into the pantry. I bound her ankles with the plastic grips. I slammed the door shut. It was a much heavier door than usual for a kitchen pantry, but I didn’t think about the implications of that and I barely got it closed as she rolled herself against the wood; I could hear the muted thump.

  I hooked a chair from the kitchen island’s bar with my foot and positioned it under the doorknob. She was trapped.