Persuader

out.
    "OK," I said.
    I put the Beretta back in my pocket and let go of her collar and turned her around and trapped both her wrists together in my left hand. Picked up the electrical cord from the phone with my right. Then I straight-armed her into the left-hand office and all the way through to the bathroom. Shoved her inside.
    "The lawyers next door have gone home," I said. "There won't be anybody in the building until Monday morning. So go ahead and shout and scream all you want, but nobody will hear you." She said nothing. I closed the door on her. Tied the phone cord tight around the knob.
    Opened the office door as wide as it would go and tied the other end of the cord to its handle. She could haul on the inside of the bathroom door all weekend long without getting anywhere. Nobody can break electrical wire by pulling on it lengthwise. I figured she'd give up after an hour and sit tight and drink water from the sink faucet and use the toilet and try to pass the time.
    I sat down at her desk. I figured an operations manager should have some interesting paperwork. But she didn't. The best thing I found was a copy of the Keast and Maden order. The caterers. 18 @ $55. Somebody had penciled a note on the bottom. A woman's handwriting. Probably Emily Smith's own. The note said: lamb, not pork! I swiveled her chair around and looked at the wrapped dress on the coat rack. Then I swiveled it back and checked my watch. My ten minutes were up.
    I rode the elevator to the garage and left by a fire exit in the rear. The rent-a-cop didn't see me. I walked around the block and came up on Duffy and Villanueva from behind.
    Their car was parked on the corner and they were together in the front, staring forward through the windshield. I guessed they were hoping to see two people walking down the street toward them. I opened the door and slid into the back seat and they spun around and looked disappointed. I shook my head.
    "Neither of them," I said.
    "Somebody answered the phone," Duffy said.
    "A woman called Emily Smith," I said. "His operations manager. She wouldn't tell me anything."
    "What did you do with her?"
    "Locked her in the bathroom. She's out of the picture until Monday."
    "You should have sweated her," Villanueva said. "You should have pulled her fingernails out."
    "Not my style," I said. "But you can go right ahead, if you want. Feel free. She's still up there. She's not going anywhere." He just shook his head and sat still.
    "So what now?" Duffy asked.
    "So what now?" Kohl asked.
    We were still inside the utility truck. Kohl, the judge advocate, and me. Frasconi had taken the Syrian away. Kohl and I were thinking hard and the judge was in the process of washing his hands of the whole thing.
    "I was only here to observe," he said. "I can't give you legal advice. It wouldn't be appropriate. And frankly I wouldn't know what to tell you anyway." He glared at us and let himself out the rear door and just walked away. He didn't look back. I guess that was the downside of picking out a royal pain in the ass for an observer.
    Unintended consequences.
    "I mean, what happened?" Kohl said. "What exactly did we see?"
    "Only two possibilities," I said. "One, he was ripping the guy off, plain and simple.
    Classic confidence trick. You drip, drip, drip the unimportant stuff, and then you hold back on the final installment. Or two, he was working as a legitimate intelligence officer.
    On an official operation. Proving that Gorowski was leaky, proving that the Syrians were willing to pay big bucks for stuff."
    "He kidnapped Gorowski's daughter," she said. "No way was that officially sanctioned."
    "Worse things have happened," I said.
    "He was ripping them off." I nodded. "I agree with you. He was ripping them off."
    "So what can we do about it?"
    "Nothing," I said "Because if we go ahead and accuse him of scamming them for personal profit, he'll just automatically say no, I wasn't doing that, actually I was running a sting, and I invite you to try to prove otherwise. And then he'll not very politely remind us to keep our big noses out of intelligence business." She said nothing.
    "And you know what?" I said. "Even if he was ripping them off, I wouldn't know what to charge him with. Does the Uniform Code stop you taking money from foreign idiots in exchange for briefcases full of fresh air?"
    "I don't know."
    "Neither do I."
    "But whatever, the Syrians will go ape," she said. "I mean, won't they? They paid him half a million bucks.