Free Recoil by Brian Garfield

Pacific.”
    â€œThat what you want?”
    â€œNo. I’d go nuts if I didn’t have people around me who talked the same language.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œWe’ve talked. I realize you want the decision fast but we’re talking about the rest of our lives, Glenn. I’ll let you know as soon as I can—we’re not crazy about motel rooms either.” He threw the empty styrofoam cup at the wastebasket, missed, ignored it and leaned back in the chair. “Got any aspirin?”
    Caruso went toward the bathroom.
    Bradleigh said gently, “Scared, aren’t you.”
    â€œSure I am. They found us—they can do it again. I don’t really care how they did it, Glenn. I don’t care if you’ve plugged this leak. They can find another one. That’s what gives me nightmares.”
    â€œNo more leaks.”
    â€œSuppose my kid had gone home to get his baseball bat or any damn thing. Suppose he’d been in the house when they threw the bomb.”
    â€œIt’s no good supposing. He didn’t. Nobody was home. They tried Benson and they tried you and they came up losers on both. Mobsters aren’t supermen, you know. They get power by keeping people afraid, but take away the guns and they’ll never last a day in the real world.”
    â€œThey may not be mental giants but they frighten the hell out of me.” Mathieson took the aspirin with the glass of water Caruso gave him. He rubbed his eyes; they’d be bloodshot all day.
    Bradleigh said with unusual heat, “It’s a crazy mythology we’ve created about the mob. The cold professionals, the never-miss hit men. All they know is triggers and bombs. More often than not they can’t even handle the simplest job without screwing it up. Look at you. Look at Benson. Benson’s off the critical list, incidentally. About the worst they did to him was inconvenience him.”
    â€œInconvenience.” Mathieson clenched his eyes against the ache. “I’m sorry—I don’t feel grateful. I don’t even feel relieved. I’ll feel grateful when there’s nobody out there with guns and bombs looking for my wife and my son.”
    â€œI know how you feel.”
    Bradleigh’s detachment enraged him. He sat with his eyes closed. He was remembering different people, different times. A cheerful young lawyer and his sparkling young wife and their bubbling three-year-old son. Friendships that were built on laughter and simple enjoyments. They had taken warm pleasure in one another: That had been the center of their world—warmth. He remembered the cramped apartment on Thirteenth Street and the laughter that always filled it—and then a man in a men’s room had handed a white envelope to another man and it had all taken on weight and begun to sink beneath the surface.
    He bestirred himself. “Phil Adler’s drawing up dissolution agreements. You’ll have to use that power of attorney for me, wrap things up with him.”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œSell the cars, handle the insurance people about the house, you know.” Scrape up the leavings of the life of Fredric Mathieson, 1967–1976—born by fiat and died of fear, aged eight and one half years .
    Bradleigh said, “We’ll make it as though you never existed at all.”
    4
    They had the pool to themselves: noon in a motel. A few cars were parked in the diagonal slots—the day sleepers who didn’t have air-conditioned cars and drove by night. The pool was in the center of the two-story court, out of sight of the street; outside, Bradleigh’s four operatives were positioned to enfilade the entrances. Caruso was the only visible official presence; he wore a loud Hawaiian shirt with the tails out over his slacks and Mathieson knew there was a revolver under his waistband.
    â€œHow about a drink?”
    She shook her head. “It’s not even one