Postcard killers

Chapter 96

"You old bastard!" the FBI agent said with feeling, hugging him.

"Come in, for god's sake!"

Jacob stepped into a sparsely furnished room with a deep-pile beige carpet that had seen better decades.

His mentor had aged. His hair was white and his suntanned face was covered in a network of wrinkles. But his eyes were the same, dark brown and crackling with intel igence. And suspicion.

"God, Lyndon, you look like an old man."

The FBI agent laughed hard and closed the door behind him.

"Prostate trouble, Jacob. The cancer's eating me up, slowly but surely."

Jacob let his duffel bag fal to the floor and sank down on a chair at Lyndon's round dining-room table. "So – what have you heard? Anything?"

"I got a message from Jil in New York," Lyndon said, taking out two Budweisers. "They're wondering when you're going to stop running round Europe chasing murderers. They say they've got enough of those in the Thirtysecond and could do with your help. Today, if not sooner."

Jacob laughed so loud and long that the noise almost shocked him.

"Wel," he said, "I'm certainly not planning to settle in this dump of a city."

Lyndon smiled.

"You know what they say: L.A. isn't a cat that jumps into your lap and licks your face. But with a little time and patience, it just might."

And Jacob replied the same way he had for the past twenty years whenever pets were mentioned.

"No cats for me, Kimmy's al ergic."

Lyndon Crebbs suddenly became very serious and looked much more like himself, which meant even more suspicious.

"I've got a whole lot to tel you," he said.