Maybe

50

AGENT CHASE DOESN’T like me.

Ask me if I give a shit.

Look at him leering at me. He’s as big and powerful as a horse, and as fit as you can get outside of prison. He’s also really steamed, which would work against him in a fight.

He’s sizing me up, convinced he can take me.

But he’s wrong.

He’s a rough, tough, no-nonsense guy, but there are different ways to measure tough. He tests his against recruits. I test mine against the military’s latest torture weapons. Over four years I’ve built up my stamina against the ADS weapon. The one they banned citing it cruel and inhumane. See, the army’s only allowed to use humane weapons in combat situations these days. I can handle twenty-two seconds of constant exposure to the ADS weapon. Second best in the world is three seconds. You think the difference of nineteen seconds is a small one? Let me put it in perspective. The three-second guy would kick Agent Chase’s ass.

Don’t fuck with me, Agent Chase. I don’t play fair.

I’ve read up on Agent Chase these past two days, and asked around. He’s got a reputation as a fierce fighter, with years of hand-to-hand combat training under his ninth-degree black belt. Maybe before this is over he’ll try to show me how tough he is.

Agent Chase is a hard-working, honest man, and the world is better off for having people like him in it. I respect him, and that’s the truth. But he needs to sit there and deal with it, because this thing with Dani and Sophie has already been decided.

It’s political.

You hate politics, don’t you, Agent Chase?

Me too.

But while this is politics, I happen to be on the right side. You’re convinced Dani and Sophie are guilty, but you’re wrong. For you to be right, Sal Bonadello has to be wrong.

And Sal isn’t wrong.

You have a greater respect for evidence than Sal does. Maybe it’s because you never planted evidence.

Sal has. In fact, he’s a master of planting evidence. And he says the evidence against Ben and Dani was planted, but not by his niece or Dani.

And I believe him.

So deal with it.

This is as good a time as any to stop giving me your evil game-face stare. It means nothing to me. While I respect the hell out of you, I’m not going to hold back if you come at me. You and I are like Ernest Hemingway and Jack Dempsey. Jack always refused to box exhibitions with Ernest Hemingway because Hemingway was a big guy with a lot of training. In other words, in his world, he could fight. He had just enough training to be dangerous. When a man is dangerous, a guy like Dempsey can’t take the time to pull his punches.

Jack didn’t refuse to fight Hemingway because he feared him.

He refused to fight him because he respected him, and didn’t want to hurt, or possibly kill him.

That’s how I feel about Agent Chase.

These gym boxers and self-defense experts think they can handle themselves because they’ve kicked ass all their lives in the real world. But the real world isn’t Jack Dempsey’s world of elite fighters, and it’s not my world. I kill killers and terrorists, not angry civilians and bank robbers. The people I fight don’t come at you the way they do in the FBI handbook.

Agent Chase needs to cool the fuck down. Because there’s always a moment of truth when these hard asses learn what kill or be killed really means. It means when the attack gets out of hand there’s no one in the room blowing a whistle to end the carnage.

I speak to him respectfully. I go so far as to tell him I respect him.

That seems to help. He’s not happy, but he’s talking. Maybe we’ll be friends before this is over. Wait, he’s about to say something warm and fuzzy.

“You respect me?” he says. “I’m one of the good guys. I don’t need your respect. And don’t kid yourself we’re going to be friends when this is over. I’ve asked around. I know all about you. I want it on the record between us that I don’t approve of you or what you stand for. It’s people like you who weaken the moral fiber of our country.”

“Is your office in downtown Cincinnati?” I ask.

“Yeah. So what?”

I decide he knows nothing about me. I could explain how I saved his life by preventing downtown Cincinnati from being wiped off the face of the earth a few years back, but that information is classified beyond his pay grade.

“Were you making a threat just now, Mr. Creed?”

I sigh. He’s trying to goad me, calling me “mister” to prove I don’t have a title.

“Let’s just move along,” I say, “and I’ll stay out of your life as best I can.”

“That would be wise,” he says.

He tells me how the meeting with Dani Ripper is going to go down tomorrow.

We work out a signal. After the interview is concluded, if I’m still satisfied Dani’s innocent, I’ll put my hands together and form a steeple with my index fingers.

I demonstrate it, and he nods.