Freeze Frame (20 page)

The meeting broke up with the leaders of the
two other cartels agreeing to take part in Arellano's scheme. They
had heard the stories about Mendoza, and had confidence in his
ability to execute the plan. But none of them, not even Arellano,
knew that Mendoza had plans of his own. As the person responsible
for VanBuhler's election, he would have a strong influence on the
man. With President VanBuhler in his pocket, Mendoza - not Arellano
or the others - would in time control the flow of all illegal drugs
from Mexico into the United States.

Ordinarily, Mendoza insisted on working
alone. But he recognized a plan this ambitious called for the help
of others, men he could trust. He suggested Arellano lend him his
bodyguard, his friend and former pupil, Lobo. Lobo had been an apt
student who had mastered three languages in addition to Spanish,
and had become nearly as adept as Mendoza at disguise.

Alone, each stood as a master of his craft.
Together, they would be unstoppable.

80

I waited anxiously in Garry’s apartment for
news from the Media Center. Sean and Garry had joined Matt Carter
to examine the master DVD of the Ampere commercial scheduled to
debut this evening.

When Sean and Garry finally returned, I read
the bad news on their faces.

"We played the Ampere commercial frame by
frame,” Sean said. “Nothing."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure? Of course I'm sure." He took a deep
breath and collapsed on the couch. "I’m sorry, Darcy. It seemed so
obvious VanBuhler's people would use tonight's game to telecast
another message."

Garry cleared his throat. "More bad news. I
got a call from Homicide on my way back.

"They found two bodies near your uncle's
cabin. They also found the Avatar, painted white. They know you're
driving a blue Chevrolet Lumina registered to your uncle, and
they're looking for it here."

"Damn!" Sean echoed my feelings.

Garry looked at us with the expression of a
man who had walked five miles with a stone in his shoe. "You're the
major suspects in four murders now, and the net's getting tighter
by the minute."

"Those DVDs scheduled for shipment to the
stations are our only hope," I said. "We've got to find them."

"I said they're tightening the net, Darcy.
The game's up."

"Damn it, Garry. If VanBuhler’s elected it’ll
open a spigot of drugs pouring onto the streets. You were a narc.
Think of the crime rate, not to mention the danger it’ll mean to
cops doing your old job. We’ve got to find those DVDs."

Garry looked like he might be weakening. I
stared him down.

"Midnight. You've got until then. But you’ve
got to promise to surrender voluntarily if we don't find
anything."

I glared at him.

"I need your word."

"Alright, damn it. You have it." I flopped on
the couch. "Now, let's figure out how we're going to get to the
person who knows where those DVDs are."

Sean turned to Garry. "The keys: did building
security give you a list of people with keys to both back door and
Media Center?"

"Yeah, and I cross-checked both lists. Twenty
people have keys to the back door, twelve have keys to the Media
Center. Just eight have keys to both."

"Who are they?" Higgins asked.

Garry took out a small piece of paper from
the breast pocket of his gray sport coat.

"Sid Goldman, Joe Adams, Michelle Ryder, C.
J. Rathmore, Baron Nichols, Jonathon Goff, Sean Higgins, here, and
Ken Cunningham."

"Michelle Ryder's been in Europe for the past
month," Sean said.

Garry looked up. "That leaves seven
suspects."

"C'mon," said Sean, "it leaves six. You don't
think I..."

"Of course not," I said. "And you can’t tell
me Ken Cunningham or Sid Goldman are involved either. Or Joe Adams.
Or..."

"You can't have it both ways," Garry said.
"If your story is true, one of these people is guilty as hell. If
you want to stay out of prison, you’d better find out who deserves
to be there."

"What about the people who have keys to one
or the other?" I asked.

"With five hundred employees, you've got five
hundred potentials. Midnight’s the deadline. These eight people are
your best shot.”

"Great," Sean Higgins chimed in at his
sarcastic best. "Why don't we just find out who he is and get him
to lead us to the DVDs?"

"I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “Let's get
him to lead us to the DVDs and then find out who he is."

81

The concept was as old as time: fight fire
with fire.

The technology, as new as today: subliminal
persuasion.

Management planned to telecast the Ampere
commercial continuously on the lobby’s closed circuit TV after it
aired at halftime. We would plant a subliminal message warning that
the DVDs scheduled for shipment had been discovered and "must be
moved." That message would be meaningful to only one person: the
SOB who knew the compromised Ampere DVDs existed.

Carter had recognized the technique used on
the tainted Ampere discs and said our young computer wizard Jimmy
Klein could plant the message “in his sleep.” He’d sneak Jimmy into
the Media Center during the crew's dinner break from five to six
o'clock.

The trick: making sure we could follow the
guilty party to the DVDs once he took the bait. With Michelle Ryder
in Europe, six suspects remained, but just four of us to watch
them. The plan I suggested had Sean and Garry watching the side
door from the parking lot. As usual the front doors would be locked
to discourage party crashers. That left the back door where Carter
would be watching from his car for anyone trying to exit that
way.

I would sneak into one of the offices looking
down over the lobby. The lights off, I’d be invisible from below,
but have a clear view of the proceedings. We’d keep in touch via
cell phones. When the guilty person made a move, one of us would
inform the others.

Or so the plan went. If it failed, Sean and I
would have a lifetime to figure out why.

82

3:54 p.m.

The noise from the television on the bedroom
dresser appeared as a whisper to the white-haired man seated on the
bed. He concentrated on the events planned for the evening. The
nine-millimeter Glock, silencer attached, lay beside him on the
white bedspread.

When Mendoza and Lobo arrived in the United
States earlier that year, they had brought two others, both
Americans, former military men, who on occasion performed
unauthorized wet work for the CIA. They had no allegiances and were
for hire to the highest bidder. One, Frank Leath, had recently been
sent to northern Michigan to take out the James woman and her
boyfriend. The same agency-wide wiretaps that betrayed Caponi and
Cato, had revealed the couple's hiding place. The other American,
J. R. "Jack" Roland, decorated Gulf War soldier, bounced around
Central and South America for a decade as a mercenary. Lately he
had acquired an obsession for alcohol that turned him from a
fighting demon to a man fighting demons within. Roland disguised
his weakness, and by the time his addiction had been recognized, it
was too late. Killing the policeman had been unnecessary and
attracted unwanted attention.

A noise outside the door returned the
white-haired man to the present. He opened the door to find Roland
lurching about the small front room. Roland had gotten one arm in
an overcoat and was attempting to pull it around his back.

"Leaving?"

"For another bottle. One you brought's
gone."

The white-haired man put his hand on Roland’s
shoulder and guided him from the door. "You’ll get your bottle," he
said. "First, I want you to kill the Russian."

Roland's eyes lit up.

"Where is your gun?"

"Right here." Roland patted the front pocket
of his trousers.

"I want you to go to the basement and shoot
him twice in the head."

"You got it."

The white-haired man waited for the gunshots.
When they came, he walked to the stairwell door and pulled it open.
Roland stood at the bottom of the stairway.

"No problem," he said, starting up the
stairs.

Roland got no farther than the fourth step. A
quiet poof slid from the silencer as the man at the top of the
stairs shot him once between the eyes.

"No. No problem at all."

83

5:14 p.m.

Kaminski wanted to be present when Jimmy
Klein inserted our subliminal message and it didn’t take a master
detective to figure why my ex-husband insisted Sean go too.

He wanted to make it impossible for Sean and
me to take off together.

The two left for the A & B Building just
after four-thirty, so when the telephone rang a half hour later, it
surprised me that the caller I.D. pinpointed the source as Homicide
Headquarters, 1300 Beaubien. Had Garry changed his mind and turned
Sean in?

I lifted the receiver. "Garry?"

"It’s Joe Washington, his partner. This Rosie
D?"

The last thing in the world we needed:
Garry’s partner finding out he hid a fugitive.

"Sure is." I did my best Rosie D
impersonation. The recipe called for heaping tablespoons of
enthusiasm.

"Kaminski’s forever talkin’ about you, Rosie.
Hope we meet someday."

"Me, too. Garry's not home, Joe. Something I
can do for you?"

"Just ask your fiancé if the invite to watch
tonight’s game there is still on. Have him call me at headquarters.
I'll be here until eight."

"I'll let him know, Joe."

Two thoughts occurred to me. The first and
most obvious: there was no way Garry's partner could come here. The
second: with Bacalla on the loose and events coming to a head,
Manny Rodriguez’s life was very much in danger. He needed a
bodyguard at the hospital more than ever. Joe Washington needed a
place to watch tonight's game, and there were TVs in every hospital
room I ever visited.

I waited five minutes before calling
Washington back. Falling into my Rosie D impression, I told him I
relayed his message to Garry and he had asked a favor.

"I owe him, Rosie. Name it."

I told him Garry wouldn’t be home to watch
the game because of a friend who had suddenly taken ill, and he
worried about another friend who was in a coma. Would Washington
stand guard at Henry Ford Hospital until Garry could take over?

"It would be a big favor, Joe,” I said. “The
man in the coma is a friend. His wife knocked him unconscious with
a frying pan and Garry’s afraid she might come back to do even more
harm.”

I sensed Washington’s disappointment. "Oh,
Rosie," he moaned. "Not tonight." It took some talking, but in the
end Washington agreed to watch Monday Night Football in Rodriguez’s
hospital room. But only until the game ended.

"I can't get there 'til seven fifteen or so,"
he said.

"Thanks, Joe, I'm sure that'll be fine."

I hung up and called Rosie D to ask if I
could borrow her car.

"Certainly. But, it's not a car, it's a
truck. Do you mind?"

Not if it has wheels.

Rosie expressed curiosity about her pickup’s
destination, so I told her. Concerned that I was putting myself in
danger, she volunteered to go along. I used logic to talk her out
of it. The "no visitors" sign was still up for Manny’s room, and
one person had a better chance of getting past the nursing staff
than two. In the end, Rosie agreed, but when I came by to pick up
the keys, she made me promise to take along a pistol Garry had
given her for protection. I’m not crazy about guns, but since it
would make Rosie feel better, I agreed. The small, nine-millimeter
Beretta fit comfortably in the palm of my hand.

"I wouldn't be giving you this if I didn't
have confidence in you," Rosie D said. She’d heard I had shot a man
at Lake Manuka.

She had a hell of a lot more confidence in my
ability to use the gun than I did.

84

I found Rosie D's blue Ford pickup fifty feet
from the front door. Twelve minutes later, I pulled off Poe Street
into emergency parking at Henry Ford Hospital.

Clouds had hung overhead like a dark, wet
blanket all day. Rain fell now, and a dense fog cloaked the parking
lot. Lights from the windows of the Clara Ford Pavilion on my left
pierced the mist with an eerie yellow glow. Halloween loomed just
around the corner and tonight seemed tailor-made for ghosts and
goblins.

The fog hugged me on all sides, making it
seem like walking through a narrow tunnel. Fine cold drops of mist
settled against my face and my footsteps beat against wet pavement.
Shivering, I pulled my dark green knee-length coat around me,
tightened the belt and plunged both hands into the pockets. A scarf
protected my head and ears from the chill.

The thought of Bacalla on the loose prompted
another shiver that had nothing to do with the damp, cold air. The
bastard enjoyed killing for the thrill and seemed to have an
uncanny premonition of the future.

How had he known Vince Caponi, Darren Cato
and Manny Rodriguez knew the secret of the Avion DVD? Did he
suspect Sean and I also knew? Did he know the man sent to kill us
at the Gaylord cottage had failed? If he did, how long before he
came after us again?

I told myself to relax, but began to finger
the pistol in my pocket, wondering if I had the nerve to use
it.

***

Manny’s room was four-eighteen, and as I
neared it, a new worry struck home. What if Manny had visitors? The
sign on his door clearly warned against it, but what if someone
from the agency had come anyway?

Luckily, my concerns proved unfounded. The
room was dark, the only light coming from the hallway behind me. I
could just make out a shape in the bed. Not until I stood
immediately beside it did I know for certain it was Manny
Rodriguez. He seemed to be sleeping, a pained expression masking
his face. He was a long way from the jovial Manny I remembered.