Blackjack by Andrew Vachss

Author:Andrew Vachss
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307744722
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-07-10T05:00:00+00:00

“ALL I can do is give you a stack of rule-outs, partner.” The consultant’s voice came through the van’s multi-speaker system.

“I’ll take whatever you have, Doctor,” the blond man said. “For one, he’s no sociopath.”

“But he makes a living—”

“No offense, my friend. But if you keep sticking your two cents in, this conversation’s going to take a long time. I get paid by the hour. And a lot more than two cents.”

Tiger giggled. Percy threw his thousand-yard stare. Both aimed at the same target.

“The sociopath diagnosis was ruled out because I couldn’t find even a trace of narcissism. And no question but the man has some real loyalty to others. But the absolute tell was when you were able to link him with that car bomb. The target was head of a cartel operating out of Guatemala—the first one to use MS-13 soldiers in America, in fact.

“You don’t know who paid him, but no question that Cross brought a whole team down there years ago. The mission had something to do with a diplomat’s daughter. Remember, I’m looking at papers with the usual spook blackouts of key data, so that’s the best I can do.

“Anyway, Cross lost at least two men in that operation. A narcissistic sociopath might seek revenge because of some ‘Nobody messes with me and gets away with it’ need to maintain his personal reputation, sure. But Cross seems to have been acting based on what the dead men would have expected of him. That’s the kind of leader professional soldiers would want to follow.”

“Anything else?”

“From what I can determine, there isn’t much to him,” the expensive consultant answered. “His personal relationships—male-female, I’m talking about here—seem to be limited to … professionals. Strippers. Or, if you like, ‘dancers.’ That kind of thing.”

“He pays for sex? That could—”

“I said ‘relationships.’ He’s not paying for sex. What you’d call a series of ‘girlfriends’ are all drawn from that same world.”

“Doesn’t that mean something?”

“Yeah, it actually does. It means Cross only understands people who work for their money, and do that work on his side of the law. Interestingly enough, his original partner—this ‘Ace’ individual—goes the opposite way. He’s had the same relationship with the same woman for a good twenty years. Children, too.”

“Does she know what he does?” Tiger asked.

“Probably not exactly, but she knows he works nights and never gets a W-2.”

“That doesn’t really help,” the blond man reminded the team.

“Not for what you want, no,” the consultant acknowledged. “Oh, Cross can do a lot of things, but now he seems to be following some script I can’t get at. His whole crew is like a band of guerrillas operating in hostile territory, but I can’t see any objective. They seem to hate the government, but they lack any desire to overthrow it.”

“Money?” Percy guessed.

“No,” Tracker responded instantly.

“He’s right,” the consultant echoed. “The money’s almost secondary to some of the things this crew has done. Taken individually, all might have their individual reasons. But what you have collectively is a gestalt of outcasts.

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