Last Man Standing (15 page)

“Oh, I don’t know, Paulie, maybe because I’m a cop and he’s just not big into law enforcement types. Why don’t you go ask
some of the snipers about it? They can tell you if I was crying or shooting. Or maybe you wouldn’t believe them either.”

Romano ignored this. “I guess people turn chickenshit all the time, course I wouldn’t really know about that.”

“You know, you’re a real bastard.”

Romano put down his beer and half rose out of his chair. “You want to find out how much of a bastard I really am?”

The two looked to be working up to blows when Angie came over and said hello to Web and gave him a comforting hug along with
some soothing words.

“Paulie,” she said, “maybe Web would like to stay for dinner. I’m making pork chops.”

“Maybe I don’t want Web to stay for damn pork chops, okay?” growled Romano.

Angie bent down and grabbed Romano’s shirt, jerking him up. “Excuse us for a sec, Web,” she said.

Web watched as Angie dragged her husband over to the side of the garage and gave him what Web could only describe as a dressing
down of intimidating proportion. She tapped her bare foot and waggled her hand in his face and did a very fine impersonation
of a drill sergeant taking a serious bite out of an enlisted man’s ass. And Paul Romano, who could kill just about anything
that lived, just stood there, head down, and quietly took it from his “little woman.” Angie finally led him back over to Web.

“Go ahead, Paulie, ask him.”

“Angie,” said Web, “don’t make him—”

“Shut up, Web,” snapped Angie, and Web shut up. Angie smacked the still-silent Romano on the back of the head. “Either ask
him or else you’ll be sleeping in the garage with that stupid car of yours.”

“Do you want to stay for dinner, Web?” asked Romano as he stared at his lawn, arms folded across his chest.

“A pork chop dinner,” prompted Angie, “and why don’t you try saying it like you actually mean it, Paulie?”

“Would you like to stay for a pork chop dinner, Web?” asked Romano in the meekest little voice Web had ever heard, and damn
if he didn’t even look Web in the eye when he said it. That Angie was a miracle worker. With all Romano’s suffering, how could
Web say no, although the truth was, he was really tempted to decline the invitation just to tick the guy off.

“Sure, Paulie, I’ll stay, thanks for thinking of me.”

As Angie went in to start dinner, the men worked on their beers and stared at the sky.

“If it makes you feel any better, Angie scares the crap out of me too, Paulie.”

Romano looked over and for the first time, at least in Web’s recent memory, he actually smiled.

Web looked down at his beer. “I guess you told uptown what the kid said.”

“Nope.”

Web glanced up, surprised. Romano just stared straight ahead.

“Why not?”

“Because it wasn’t true.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I know when kids are lying their asses off, my own boys do it enough. I guess I was just pulling your chain. Guess that’s
gotten to be a habit.”

“But I really can’t believe the kid said all that, Paulie. I saved his butt. Hell, he got lucky twice. It’s only thanks to
me he didn’t have another bullet hole in his head.

Romano looked at him, puzzled. “That kid didn’t have a bullet wound.”

“Sure he did, on his left cheek. And he had a knife slash on his forehead too, long as my pinky.”

Romano shook his head. “Look, Web, I was with the kid and maybe I wasn’t paying all that much attention to him, but I wouldn’t
have missed something like that. I know what a bullet wound looks like because I got one of my own. And I sure as hell have
popped enough guys to know what they look like.”

Web sat up very straight. “What was his skin color?”

“What the hell are you talking about, what was his skin color? He was black!”

“Damn it, I know that, Paulie! I mean light-skinned? Dark?”

“Light-skinned. Smooth as a baby’s ass, and not a mark on him. From my lips to the Pope, I swear.”

Web smacked the arm of the chair. “Damn!” Kevin Westbrook, at least the one Web had run into, had chocolate brown skin.

After dinner with the Romanos, Web visited Mickey Cortez and got the same story. He’d heard no other statements from the kid.
No ID on the suit who had taken him away, but corroboration on the time. And no bullet wound on the boy’s cheek.

So who had made the kid-switch? And why?

F
red Watkins climbed out of his car after another long day for the U.S. attorney. It took him an hour and a half to drive into
Washington each day from his northern Virginia suburb and about the same coming home. Ninety minutes to drive barely ten miles—
he shook his head at the thought of it. His work wasn’t over either. Despite having risen at four
A.M
. and having labored ten hours already today, he had at least another three hours awaiting him in the small study he used
as an office in his house. A little dinner and some brief quality time with his wife and teenage kids and he would burn the
midnight oil. Watkins specialized in high-profile racketeering cases at the Department of Justice in Washington after a long
stint as a humble commonwealth’s attorney in Richmond prosecuting whatever miscreants came his way. He enjoyed the work and
felt he was doing a real service for his country. He was reasonably well compensated for doing so, and though the hours were
sometimes long, his life had turned out all right, he believed. His oldest would be going off to college in the fall, and
in another two years so would his youngest child. He and his wife had plans for traveling then, seeing parts of the world
they had only viewed in travel magazines. Watkins also had visions of taking an early retirement and teaching as an adjunct
professor of law at the University of Virginia, where he had received his degree. He and his wife were thinking of maybe even
moving to Charlottesville someday permanently and escaping forever the traffic dungeon that northern Virginia had become.

He rubbed his neck and breathed in the fresh air of a nice, cool evening. A good plan overall; at least he and his wife had
a plan. Some of his colleagues patently refused to think beyond tomorrow, much less years from now. But Watkins had always
been a practical, commonsensical man. That’s how he had always approached his law practice and that’s how he dealt with life.

He closed the car door and headed up the sidewalk to his house. On the way he waved to a neighbor pulling out of her driveway.
Another neighbor was grilling next door, and the smell of cooking meat filled his nostrils. He might just fire up the barbecue
tonight too.

Like most people in the Washington area, Watkins had read about the ambush of the Hostage Rescue Team unit with great interest
and sinking despair. He had worked with some of those folks on a case once and had nothing but good things to say about their
bravery and professionalism. Those guys were the best, at least in his book, and they did a job that virtually no one else
would be willing to do. Watkins had thought he had had it tough until he saw what those fellows went through. He felt especially
sorry for their families and was even thinking about inquiring if a fund had been established to help them. If there wasn’t
such a fund, Watkins was thinking about starting one. Just another item to add to the old to-do list, but that’s just how
life worked, he guessed.

He never saw it until it rose from the bushes and charged right at him. Watkins yelled out and then ducked. The bird missed
him by inches; it was the same damn blue jay. The thing seemed to lie in wait for him most nights, as though trying its best
to scare him into a premature coronary. “Not this time,” said Watkins to the fleeing creature. “Not ever. I’ll get you before
you get me.” He chuckled and walked up to the front porch. As he opened the front door, his cell phone rang.
Now what?
he thought. Few people had this number. His wife, but she wouldn’t be calling him because she had no doubt seen him pull
in the driveway. It had to be the office. And if it was the office, that meant something had happened that would probably
take up the remainder of his evening and perhaps even require him to turn around and drive back into town.

He pulled out his phone, saw that caller ID was unavailable and thought about not answering it. But that just wasn’t how Fred
Watkins did things. It might be important, yet maybe it was just a wrong number. No, no barbecuing tonight, he thought as
he punched the talk button, ready to confront whatever it was.

They found what remained of Fred Watkins in the neighbor’s bushes across the street where the blast that disintegrated his
house had delivered him. The instant he’d hit the talk button a tiny spark from his phone ignited the gas that had filled
his house, gas that Watkins had little chance of detecting when he opened the door because of the smells of grilling meat
next door. Somehow his briefcase had survived, still clamped in a hand that was now virtually all bone. The precious papers
were intact and ready for another attorney to take over from the deceased lawyer. The bodies of his wife and children were
found in the wreckage. Autopsies would show that all of them had already died from asphyxiation. It took four hours to extinguish
the fire, and two other homes were engulfed before the conflagration was put out. Thankfully no other people were seriously
injured. Only the Watkins family had ceased to exist. The question of how he and his wife would spend their retirement years
after a lifetime of hard work was laid to rest with them. They had no problem finding Watkins’s phone, because it had melted
to his hand.

A
t about the time Fred Watkins’s life was ending, ninety miles south in Richmond, Judge Louis Leadbetter was climbing into
the back of a government car under the watchful eye of a United States marshal. Leadbetter was a federal trial judge, a position
he had held for two years after being elevated from being chief judge of the Richmond Circuit Court. Because of his relative
youth—he was only forty-six—and his exceptional legal ability, many folks in powerful places had their eye on Leadbetter as
eventually a candidate for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and perhaps even one day taking his seat on the Supreme Court
of the United States. As a judge in the legal trenches Leadbetter had overseen many trials of varying complexity, emotion
and potential volcanic eruption. Several men that he had sentenced to prison had threatened his life. Once he had almost fallen
prey to a letter bomb sent by a white supremacist organization that hadn’t cared for Leadbetter’s steadfast belief that all
persons, regardless of creed, color or ethnicity, were equal under the eyes of God and the law. These circumstances dictated
that Leadbetter receive additional security, and there had been a recent development that had further increased concerns for
his safety.

There had been a daring prison escape by a man who had sworn revenge on Leadbetter. The prison where the man had been held
was very far away and the threats were from several years ago, yet the authorities were wisely taking no chances with the
good judge. For his part Leadbetter simply wanted to live his life as he always had and the beefed-up security was not particularly
appealing to him. However, having barely escaped death once, he was practical enough to realize that the concern was probably
legitimate. And he didn’t want to die violently at the hands of some piece of filth who should be rotting away in prison;
Judge Leadbetter wouldn’t want to give the man the satisfaction.

“Any news on Free?” he asked the U.S. marshal.

That the man who had escaped from prison was named Free had always rankled Leadbetter. Ernest B. Free. The middle initial
and surname weren’t his real ones, of course. He had had his name legally changed when he had joined a paramilitary neo-conservative
group whose members all had taken that name as symbolism of the perceived threats to their liberty. In fact, the group called
themselves the Free Society, ironic since they were violent and intolerant of anyone who didn’t look like them or who disagreed
with their hate-filled beliefs. They were the type of organization that America could certainly do without and yet they were
also an example of the vastly unpopular types of groups that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution was constructed
to afford protection to. But not when such groups killed. No, not when they killed. No bit of paper, no matter how cherished,
could protect you from the consequences of that.

Free and other members of his group had broken into a school, shot two teachers to death and taken numerous children and teachers
hostage. Local authorities had surrounded the school, and a SWAT team had been called up, but Free and his men were heavily
armed with automatic weapons and body armor. Thus, federal lawmen specializing in hostage rescue had been called up from Quantico.
At first things looked like they would end peacefully, but shooting had erupted from inside the school and eventually the
Hostage Rescue Team had gone in. A horrific gun battle had ensued. Leadbetter could still vividly recall the heartbreaking
sight of a young boy lying dead on the pavement, along with two teachers. A wounded Ernest B. Free had finally given up when
his accomplices had been gunned down.