Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
The cab dropped her at the marina entrance and she walked the dock alone, the afternoon heat radiating up off the weathered boards. The boats in their slips rocked gently in the wake of something that had passed through, their rigging ticking against the masts in the light wind.
Slip fourteen was toward the end of the dock.
The Marguerite was a cabin cruiser; it’s white hull stained with rust tracks below the railing.
A canvas awning covered the rear deck, and in the shade beneath it, a man was sitting in a folding chair with a bottle of beer and a phone, not looking at anything in particular.
He glanced up and spotted her when she was ten feet away. She watched his face go through three things in quick succession—recognition, confusion, and then something that looked almost like fear.
She stepped up onto the boat without being invited.
“Jessica—” He started to stand.
“Sit down,” she said. She kept her hand in her jacket pocket, her fingers around the Ruger. “I'm going to need you to put the phone face down on the deck.”
He looked at her for a moment—at the jacket, at the line of her arm, at her face—and then he set the phone down. “Jessica, I want you to understand. What happened at the docks—I didn't have a choice.”
“You sold us out,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm. “You took money from Borya Sokolov to give him our location. I'm not here for an explanation.” She took the Ruger out of her pocket and held it at her side, just visible. “I'm here for information.”
Miller looked at the gun. He was quiet for a moment, recalibrating. She watched him decide that argument wasn't an option and move toward cooperation, and she felt something cold settle in her chest. It was the understanding that she could actually do this.
“What do you want to know?” he said.
“Dante went with the woman this morning. Where is she taking him?”
Miller shifted in his chair. “I don't know.”
“Where does Borya Sokolov bring people when he wants them to disappear.” She said it differently this time, making it not a question.
“Philadelphia,” he said. “He has a club there. The Dollhouse, in South Philly. It's his main base when he's in the States. When he wants something handled quietly, that's where it happens. It's also where he—” He stopped.
“Where he what?”
Miller looked uncomfortable in a way that went beyond his current situation. “He runs other operations out of the Dollhouse. Below the main floor. Things that don't get talked about in polite company.” He met her eyes briefly. “You don't want to know the details.”
“No, I don't.”
She lowered the gun and put it back in her pocket. Then she stepped off the boat and back onto the dock. She didn't look back at him. “Get a different line of work, Miller.”
She walked back down the dock toward the marina entrance with the afternoon light long on the water and Philadelphia assembling itself in her mind.
At the marina gate, she flagged down a cab.
“Greyhound station,” she said. “Please hurry.”