Persuader

more.
    Susan Duffy called me again on the morning of day nine, Sunday. She sounded different.
    She sounded like a person who had done a lot more thinking. She sounded like a person with a plan.
    "Hotel lobby at noon," she said.
    She showed up in a car. Alone. The car was a Taurus built down to a very plain specification. It was grimy inside. A government vehicle. She was wearing faded denim jeans with good shoes and a battered leather jacket. Her hair was newly washed and combed back from her forehead. I got in on the passenger side and she crossed six lanes of traffic and drove straight into the mouth of a tunnel that led to the Mass Pike.
    "Zachary Beck has a son," she said.
    She took an underground curve fast and the tunnel ended and we came out into the weak midday April light, right behind Fenway.
    "He's a college junior," she said. "Some small no-account liberal-arts place, not too far from here, as it happens. We talked to a classmate in exchange for burying a cannabis problem. The son is called Richard Beck. Not a popular person, a little strange. Seems very traumatized by something that happened about five years ago."
    "What kind of something?"
    "He was kidnapped." I said nothing.
    "You see?" Duffy said. "You know how often regular people get kidnapped these days?"
    "No," I said.
    "Doesn't happen," she said. "It's an extinct crime. So it must have been a turf war thing.
    It's practically proof his dad's a racketeer."
    "That's a stretch."
    "OK, but it's very persuasive. And it was never reported. FBI has no record of it.
    Whatever happened was handled privately. And not very well. The classmate says Richard Beck is missing an ear."
    "So?" She didn't answer. She just drove west. I stretched out on the passenger seat and watched her out of the corner of my eye. She looked good. She was long and lean and pretty, and she had life in her eyes. She was wearing no makeup. She was one of those women who absolutely didn't need to. I was very happy to let her drive me around. But she wasn't just driving me around. She was taking me somewhere. That was clear. She had come with a plan.
    "I studied your whole service record," she said. "In great detail. You're an impressive guy."
    "Not really," I said.
    "And you've got big feet," she said. "That's good, too."
    "Why?"
    "You'll see," she said.
    "Tell me," I said.
    "We're very alike," she said. "You and me. We have something in common. I want to get close to Zachary Beck to get my agent back. You want to get close to him to find Quinn."
    "Your agent is dead. Eight weeks now, it would be a miracle. You should face it." She said nothing.
    "And I don't care about Quinn." She glanced right and shook her head.
    "You do," she said. "You really do. I can see that from here. It's eating you up. He's unfinished business. And my guess is you're the sort of guy who hates unfinished business." Then she paused for a second. "And I'm proceeding on the assumption that my agent is still alive, unless and until you supply definitive proof to the contrary."
    "Me?" I said.
    "I can't use one of my people," she said. "You understand that, right? This whole thing is illegal as far as the Justice Department is concerned. So whatever I do next has to stay off the books. And my guess is you're the sort of guy who understands off-the-books operations. And is comfortable with them. Even prefers them, maybe."
    "So?"
    "I need to get somebody inside Beck's place. And I've decided it's going to be you.
    You're going to be my very own long-rod penetrator."
    "How?"
    "Richard Beck is going to take you there." She came off the pike about forty miles west of Boston and turned north into the Massachusetts countryside. We passed through picture-perfect New England villages.
    Fire departments were out on the curbs polishing their trucks. Birds were singing. People were putting stuff on their lawns and pruning their bushes. There was the smell of woodsmoke in the air.
    We stopped at a motel in the middle of nowhere. It was an immaculate place with quiet brick facings and blinding white trim. There were five cars in the lot. They were blocking access to the five end rooms. They were all government vehicles. Steven Eliot was waiting in the middle room with five men. They had hauled their desk chairs in from their own rooms. They were sitting in a neat semicircle. Duffy led me inside and nodded to Eliot. I figured it was a nod that meant: I told him, and he hasn't said no. Yet. She moved to the window and turned so