One Shot

up until he’s out of the picture.”
    “I don’t see what I can do.”
    “I want you to bring him in.”
    “I can’t,” Emerson said. “Not without a complaint.”
    Rodin went quiet.
    “Well, keep an eye on him,” he said. “He spits on the sidewalk, I want you to bring him in and do something to him.”
    “This isn’t the Wild West,” Emerson said. “I can’t run him out of town.”
    “An arrest might be enough. We need something that breaks the spell. He’s pushing Helen where she doesn’t want to go. I know her. On her own she’ll give Barr up, no question.”

    Linsky was in pain on the way back to his car. An hour on his feet was about all he could take. A long time ago the bones in his spine had been methodically cracked with an engineer’s ball-peen hammer, one after the other, starting with the coccyx and moving upward through all the lower vertebrae, and not in rapid sequence. Generally one bone had been allowed to heal before the next was broken. When the last had healed, they had started over again. Playing the xylophone, they had called it. Playing scales. Ultimately he had lost count of how many scales they had played on him.
    But he never spoke of it. Worse had happened to the Zec.
    The Cadillac had a soft seat and it was a relief to get in. It had a quiet motor and a gentle ride and a nice radio. Cadillacs were the kind of things that made America such a wonderful place, along with the trusting population and the hamstrung police departments. Linsky had spent time in several different countries and there was no question in his mind about which was the most satisfactory. Elsewhere he had walked or run or crawled through dirt or hauled carts and sleds by hand. Now he drove a Cadillac.
    He drove it to the Zec’s house, which stood eight miles north and west of town, next to his stone-crushing plant. The plant was a forty-year-old industrial facility built on a rich limestone seam that had been discovered under farmland. The house was a big fancy palace built a hundred years ago, when the landscape was still unspoiled, for a rich dry-goods merchant. It was bourgeois and affected in every way, but it was a comfortable house in the same way that the Cadillac was a comfortable car. Best of all it stood alone in the center of many acres of flat land. Once there had been beautiful gardens, but the Zec had razed the trees and leveled the shrubberies to create a completely flat and open vista all around. There were no fences, because how could the Zec bear to live another day behind wire? For the same reason there were no extra locks, no bolts, no bars. The openness was the Zec’s gift to himself. But it was also excellent security in its own right. There were surveillance cameras. Nobody could approach the house undetected. By day visitors were clearly visible at least two hundred yards away, and after dark night-vision enhancement picked them up only a little closer.
    Linsky parked and eased himself out of the car. The night was quiet. The stone-crushing plant shut down at seven every evening and sat brooding and silent until dawn. Linsky glanced in its direction and walked toward the house. The front door opened before he got near it. Warm light spilled out and he saw that Vladimir himself had come down to welcome him, which meant that Chenko had to be there too, upstairs, which meant that the Zec had assembled all his top boys, which meant that the Zec was worried.
    Linsky took a breath, but he walked inside without a moment’s hesitation. After all, what could be done to him that hadn’t been done to him before? It was different for Vladimir and Chenko, but for men with Linsky’s age and experience nothing was entirely unimaginable anymore.
    Vladimir said nothing. Just closed the door again and followed Linsky upstairs. It was a three-story house. The first floor was used for nothing at all, except surveillance. All the rooms were completely empty, except one that had four TV screens on a long table, showing wide-angle views north, east, south, and west. Sokolov would be in there, watching them. Or Raskin. They alternated twelve-hour shifts. The second floor of the house had a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, and an office. The third floor had bedrooms and bathrooms. The second floor was where all the business was done.
    Linsky could hear the Zec’s voice from the living room, calling him. He went straight in without knocking. The Zec was in an armchair with a glass of tea