19. Elias
Chapter nineteen
Elias
The ribs changed the sound of Nolan's morning routine.
I sat in the safe house's gray kitchen with the light coming up behind the blinds and listened to Nolan work on the floor in the living room. The knees-to-chest was still there, one leg at a time, slowly. I still heard the exhale every thirty seconds.
What was gone were the little grunts that often came when he leaned his weight into the lacrosse ball under the glute. Leaning into anything now would mean straining the eighth rib, and it couldn't handle that.
Mac called at seven, on speaker, and his voice filled the kitchen while Nolan took his shower.
"No wire," he said. It wasn't a question. "Reisner reads rooms for a living. He'll find a recorder in minutes. Even if he didn't, counsel can't hang a case on a tape they would call coerced. Mercer walks in clean."
"Only him. Nothing more."
"Yes. He's not there to extract a confession, and he won't get one. Reis is careful, and he's not planning on going to jail. What Mercer is there for is to create a crack between Reisner, the believer, and whoever he has hired to do the unpleasant jobs he avoids."
"Understood."
"One more thing, and then go be a bodyguard.
" I heard paper shuffling. "As of this morning, you're formally off Mercer.
It's in the file. Eamon's seen it. You're staying on him through today because pulling you would raise his risk instead of lowering it.
The policy lets me make that call as long as I document it.
You're the reason the clause is there, Elias. "
"How's the head?" Mac asked.
"Focused on the job."
"That's good enough for today."
Nolan stopped in the kitchen doorway, dressed. It wasn't his pre-game suit. He wore jeans and a crisp cream-colored button-down shirt he could get into without lifting the bad arm past his shoulder. The strips over his temple disappeared under his hair, exactly as the doctor promised.
I grabbed my keys.
"Ready?" I asked.
"No, but let's go anyway."
The clinic looked as forgettable as the first time I laid eyes on it. There was a street number and nothing else out front. I parked the SUV against the curb under the shade of a linden tree and walked Nolan to the door.
It was only eight, but the heat and humidity were already oppressive.
"The private entrance is around the side," I said. "Frey will meet us there."
Nolan silently followed me. Frey was already at the door, and he opened before we reached it. He had his sleeves pushed up and wore jeans over running shoes. He had his Tarn lanyard around his neck and smiled warmly. It was the same presentation I'd mistaken for a professional friendship.
I thought about Mac's order. Change nothing toward Frey. Don't vary your tone or your response time. I reached out to shake hands, and it was brief and firm, like the first time.
"Elias." He shook hands with Nolan. "And you must be Mr. Mercer. It's an honor. I mean that." He'd practiced a performance of sincerity. "Reis is thrilled. He's been telling stories since I called him. Come in, come in. It's beastly out there."
Frey held the door. The building's air conditioning presented a wall of cool air with a hint of eucalyptus.
Reis came out to meet us himself. It telegraphed his confidence. A careful man sends an assistant. He had his jacket unbuttoned and his hand already extended.
"Nolan Mercer." He took Nolan's hand in both of his and held it. "Look at you. You've got the same handshake you had at twenty-one. I'd have known it in the dark." He grinned. "You were always one of the good ones. I told Colin to tell you that, and now I get to say it to your face."
Nolan was quiet, but he shook hands. Reis turned toward me.
"And the kick-mechanics guy." He placed a hand on my shoulder as if he'd known me for years.
"Colin said you were minding a hockey player.
I didn't put together that it was this one.
" I'd braced to argue my way into the room, making a case for a bodyguard in the corner.
I didn't have to say a word. "You'll sit in, of course," Reis said.
" That's a professional necessity in your line of work. "
Kick mechanics. He used it to open the door with me at the symposium—famous man of science knows my work. Now I heard it for what it was: a man flattering me to hide the trail of bodies his company was piling up.
"Thank you," I said. "I'll be quiet and stay out of the way."
"My office is comfortable, but the consultation room's quieter." Reis herded us down a hallway. "Colin, we're fine from here. Nolan, come sit down and tell me about that hip. Don't lie to me. I always know."
He led us into a room with two chairs at a low table. I took my place in the corner where I could easily see both men and the door.
The eucalyptus smell was barely detectable in the consultation room. One wall held eight framed photographs in two rows. They were athletes at the moment of triumph: a gymnast sticking a landing and a skier with arms thrown in the air.
I spotted a line written across one corner of the photo in large, looping text. Couldn't have done it without you, Doc! The athletes were all grateful. I wondered how many could still walk.
Reis took one of the two chairs and gestured for Nolan to take the other.
"Show me the hip," Reis said. "I don't mean the flesh. Just sit. I want to see how it holds in a chair."
Nolan let his left side settle, and Reis watched. For a moment, I thought I saw passing tenderness in his gaze.
"It's there," he said. "You've built everything around not showing it, and you've done so well that the media doesn't know.
I'm sure the team docs know, but they would defer to you.
" He leaned back. "You know what most men do with a hip like that?
They quit, or they let a team doctor bench them into an early grave.
You've done the brave thing. You listened to it, and you decided to play anyway. "
"I get up at quarter to five," Nolan said. "It takes forty minutes before I can walk like a normal person."
"Forty minutes." Reis nodded. "That's what it takes to give this city a man who doesn't limp.
You have discipline, Nolan. You've learned how to confront and stare down the alarm day after day.
It's a talent most don't possess." His voice dropped, warm and confiding.
"It's the one thing I've made my career's work.
I want athletes to know how to have a conversation with their body and realize half the time the alarms are yield signs, not ones that say stop. "
Nolan let a long moment pass. When he spoke, his voice was flat and even.
"His cup was number nine," he said.
Reis blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"Ty Hawkins. The paper cup on your folding table.
His had a nine Sharpied on the side. Mine said seventeen.
" Nolan didn't raise his voice. "He asked me on a plane once whether what you were giving him was the same as what you were giving me.
I was half-asleep. I told him I assumed so.
I asked him if it was working." A breath.
"He said it was working great. Then he looked out the window for the rest of the flight, and about three weeks later he stood in a hotel hallway and told me he wasn't sure he was okay. "
Reis was quiet.
"You're thanking me for my silence," Nolan said, "and I don't accept it.
I spent thirteen years believing what you just described was maturity.
I kept my head down and let the adults do their work.
You're right about what I did. You're wrong that it was good.
" He leaned forward and winced when the ribs announced their presence.
"I want to ask you the thing I never asked him.
How did he feel when he took your drugs?
Did you ever ask him how he felt instead of whether he could play? "
Reis's expression changed. The delight drained out of it.
"Ty Hawkins was a tragedy," he said. "It was a methodological failure. It was early in our development of the protocols, and we didn't understand the cardiac load yet. The boy's tragedy taught us how to make it safer. All the success since has been because of him."
Nolan wasn't finished.
"A man named Ray Halloran was there, too, and he was quiet for thirteen years.
The week he decided to talk, his heart stopped in his sleep.
Elias told me a technician named Russ Tierney was going to talk, too, and he took too many of his own pills two days after making that decision.
Finally, I think you sent a car after me yesterday morning.
You've been eliminating the voices." His voice never rose.
"Somebody in your place is turning names into bodies to keep your work quiet. "
"No." Reis said it to himself more than to us. "No, that's not—Diane wouldn't—" He pressed his lips together. "There are protocols for exposure and legal protocols. She handles the difficult conversations so I don't have to. She's very good at it, but she would never authorize—"
Nolan didn't move. He watched Reis come apart under the pictures of grateful athletes.
Reis abruptly ended the conversation. He was no longer smiling. At the side door, he took Nolan's hand again, and the shake was short, barely there. "Win your game," he said.
I drove us back to the safe house.
"She handles the difficult conversations," he said.
"Yeah."
"That doesn't make him innocent."
"You're right."
Back at the safe house, Nolan sat at the kitchen table and strapped a bag of ice to his ribs. I put Mac and Michael on speaker between us and delivered a clean description of the morning's events.
"Okay. We have her name," Michael said. "The Diane would be Diane Rourke. We pulled the name weeks ago. What we never had was the founder identifying her as his key operative. He can't pull it back. We have two witnesses."
"It doesn't prove anything," I said.