Liars & Thieves (23 page)

I took my phone out and laid it beside the pistol. Sarah would call me when and if she learned someone was on the way to arrest me. If they had the place bugged and were merely listening, she wouldn’t know that unless someone called a telephone she was monitoring. Every minute I was here was a risk.

If you think that I knew Joe Billy was on my side, think again. It had crossed my mind that he might be planning to pump me and dump it in person at the office tomorrow. If he did that I was screwed.

Joe Billy got his coffeemaker going, then turned and leaned on the counter. He crossed his arms. “So why haven’t you called in?” he asked.

“Would you?”

He took his time before he answered. “No, I guess not.”

“The president is going to be nominated for his second term next week in New York. His campaign is using the New York Hilton as their HQ. I don’t know if the president will stay there, but Dell Royston, the campaign manager, surely will. We want to bug the Hilton.”

Joe Billy whistled softly.

“Going to need your help to pull it off.”

“We going to share a cell in the joint, or will we each get our own?”

“Hey, man, you can say no. I’m in this to my eyes, but you aren’t. You don’t want to dive in, I understand.”

He busied himself with cups and milk from the fridge, then poured us coffee. Only when we were both sipping did he say, “What do you want me to do?”

“I need bugs and transmitters and a truck.”

“Have to steal it.”

I nodded, sipped some coffee. It was too acidic for my taste, but I drank it anyway.

“You know what I heard? When I got assigned to your division? Someone said you were a jewel thief before you were recruited for the CIA.”

I let that one go by without comment.

“There was also a rumor that you were a suspect in the murder of a microbiology professor a couple of years ago.”

“Jesus!” I roared. “What watercooler have you been hanging out at?”

“Never end a sentence with a preposition.”

“. . . Hanging out at, asshole?”

“Much better,” Joe Billy said. “I deserve that, I suppose. Okay. I’ll get you the stuff. Shouldn’t be too hard—just gin up a fake work order and put it though the system, then pick everything up at the warehouse.”

“How come?”

“You remind me of my older brother.”

“Who is?”

“Dead. Killed by a suicider in Iraq.”

“Okay.” I didn’t ask any more questions. I guess I didn’t want to know. I gave him the specifics of what we needed and my cell phone number, shook hands, and left.

At some level you just have to trust people, yet when the stakes are large, it’s damned hard.

I took the elevator down.

As the door opened at the bottom I started through it—and found myself staring at the muzzle of a silenced pistol. The silencer looked as big as a sausage, but the hole in the middle made it all business.

The man holding the pistol pushed it at me, and I stepped backward. He climbed on the elevator and glanced at the buttons, then pushed the top one.

He was about forty, of medium height, reasonably fit. He grinned broadly as the door closed. “The great Carmellini. You ran over a friend of mine, then shot at me.” He raised the pistol and sighted over the silencer at my head. “You don’t look so goddamn tough—“

His mistake was talking when he should have been shooting. And he was too close to his victim. I lashed out with my left hand, sweeping the pistol aside, and kicked with my right foot. Got him in the balls.

The pistol popped as he crumpled. I grabbed the weapon with both hands and ripped it out of his hands. Then I kicked him again, this time in the stomach. The third kick, in the neck, crushed his larynx.

He convulsed. With both hands around his throat, he writhed on the floor, trying to get air somehow.

I picked up the gun. Working fast, holding him down, I checked his pockets. He had a ring of keys, which I appropriated. He also had a cell phone, which I didn’t think he’d need anymore.

He had pushed the button for the top floor in the building, so When the elevator stopped and the door opened, I pulled him out into the corridor, which at that hour was of course empty. He was turning blue by that time, still making little noises.

I got back into the elevator and reached for the button for the first floor.

Ah, hell.

I didn’t have a pocketknife on me, nor did he. He did have a ballpoint pen, though. I rolled him over, sat on his chest, and pinned an arm with each leg. He was still bucking, with eyes bulging, so maybe there was time.

I jammed his head back and rammed the pen into his trachea below his crushed larynx. A little blood squirted around, but not much. Pulled the pen out, took it apart, then inserted the empty plastic barrel into the hole in his throat to hold it open. His eyes were riveted on me.

He sucked hard pulling in air—and getting nowhere near enough—but his color began to improve. I put his fingers on the thing so he could hold it in.

“You come here alone?” I asked.

He nodded affirmatively. His chest continued to heave up and down.

“Did you call Royston?”

A side-to-side head shake.

“If there’s ever a next time, you’re gonna be dead.”

His eyes followed me as I went into the elevator and stayed on me until the door closed.

I inspected the pistol as the elevator hummed me down. It was an old Colt Woodsman in .22 rimfire. I popped out the magazine, checked it, then snapped it back into the weapon. The bullet that he fired in the elevator had left a tiny hole in the ceiling tile. The small spent cartridge gleamed on the floor. I picked it up and pocketed it.

So how did this guy know to wait for me to come down in the elevator? It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Joe Billy Dunn’s apartment was bugged and this guy had been listening. Obviously he decided to solve the Carmellini problem himself.

The lobby was empty this time. I held the pistol down beside my leg and walked out of the building. Ducking down, I scuttled over to the nearest vehicle and hunkered down beside it, then scanned the parking lot carefully.

Assuming the listeners weren’t in an apartment in the building—which is where they would have been if this gig had been set up as a long-term surveillance—then they were in a vehicle parked near the building with the equipment to receive wireless transmissions from the bugs. All I had to do was find the vehicle, which was probably a van of some kind, with room for people to work a radio and computer and stay out of sight. And I didn’t have much time. I was praying these guys hadn’t called Royston with the news that Grafton and Carmellini were going to bug the New York Hilton. If they had, it seemed to me that Sarah Houston would have called me. If all the fancy techno-shit worked the way it was supposed to.

The parking lot was nearly full, of course, but there weren’t that many vans. I began circling the building, mentally marking likely vans. There were only three that I could see.

Staying low, I went toward the closest. Nope.

I bingoed on the second one, a panel van. While it was marked with a construction company name and logo and sported Maryland plates, it had four antennas protruding from the top.

The driver’s seat looked empty as I approached. It was parked nose-in to a row of cars with not much room for either door to open.

If there was someone in it, I needed to find out fast. Squatting, trying to stay below the view of the outside mirrors, I tapped on the sheet metal with the silencer and waited with my ear against it. No noise. If there was someone in there, he was being damned quiet about it.

I lifted the driver’s door handle as quietly as I could, taking my time while sweat coursed off my face and soaked my shirt.

One deep breath, then another. Still no noise inside. If someone was in there, he was going to blow my silly head off when I jerked this door open.

If I hadn’t pocketed a wad of keys from the guy in the elevator, I wouldn’t have touched that van with anything less than a flamethrower.

No guts, no glory, they say. That isn’t very inspiring, but the truth is, you can only die once. In a way, that is comforting.

I jerked the door open and waited. Nothing.

Stuck my fool head inside and looked.

Empty!

Then I upchucked on the asphalt.

I was so weak I had to bend down and grab my knees to keep blood in my head.

When I was feeling better, maybe a half minute later, I closed the door and checked the killer’s keys. Found one labeled Dodge and tried it in the door. Yep.

I went back upstairs to have another little visit with Joe Billy Dunn.

A key on the killer’s ring worked on the outside door of the building, which figured. That was how he got into the lobby so he could wait for me. I rode the elevator back to Dunn’s floor, knocked on his door until he opened it.

I went through in a rush, sweeping him onto the floor. He was tough as nails—he went down under the rush and would have thrown me off and wound up on top if I had let him. I didn’t. I jammed the silencer against his teeth and growled, “One more twitch and I’ll start pulling this trigger.”

That took the fight out of him, but his eyes were blazing.

“This apartment is bugged. You know about that?”

The look in his eyes was enough. He didn’t know. I backed up, holding the Woodsman on him.

“Met the guy in the lobby who was listening. He was carrying this piece. His van is parked outside—it’s the receiving post for your bugs.”

He was eyeing the little spatters of blood on my shirt. “Who is he?”

“Didn’t know him.” I put the Woodsman behind my belt and looked around. “Let’s find a few of the things. The van and these bugs should be everything I need.”

“He dead?”

“Uh, no.”

It took us six minutes to find ten bugs. They were the latest and greatest, ultrathin, transparent, and capable of being hidden darn near anywhere. Dunn gave me a plastic trash bag from under his sink, and I stowed them in it.

“We might not have gotten them all, but these will do,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”

“Where is the van dude?”

“On the top floor in the corridor. I gotta get going before someone finds him and calls the police.”

“Okay.”

“You still willing to help?”

He eyed me without enthusiasm. An affirmative answer would be proof he needed psychiatric help.

“Like when?”

“Now.”

“Doing what?”

“Follow me around town while I dispose of the van, then bring me back here to get Grafton’s car.” I told him where and when to meet me, then left before he could say no.

I heard a siren as I drove out of the parking lot. Didn’t see the patrol car or ambulance, whichever it was, and he didn’t see me.

I am so lucky.

I stopped a block from Willie Varner’s and looked the situation over. Two of Jake Grafton’s friends were watching the place, so I knew I would be seen. The admiral had made a telephone call earlier that evening to tell them I would be coming, but you never knew.

I crawled into the back of the van and looked over the equipment. Yep, just as I thought, it was an FBI rig, complete with radio receivers, digital recording gear, signal monitors, police scanners, computer, all the goodies. I knew how to operate most of t. That came from watching experts work with the signals from bugs I planted. Ah, me. The things you learn in a misspent life. I locked up the government van and walked toward Varner’s, thinking again what a crummy neighborhood it was. I passed a wino nipping from a bottle on a stoop and a kid on the corner waiting for a customer who needed a fix before I turned in at Varner’s building. The light in the stairwell was still out. Terrific!

I clumped up the stairs, consciously making noise. The role of honest citizen doesn’t come naturally to me.

As I was raising my hand to knock on the door, I heard a noise in the darkness behind me. Someone was on the stairs. “Freeze,” the voice said conversationally. “I’ve got a gun. Don’t turn around.”

I stood there like the Statue of Liberty with one hand in the air.

“You got a name?”

“Carmellini.”

“He’s probably asleep. The door is unlocked.”

“Thanks.” I lowered my hand, turned the knob, and pushed the door open.

“That you, Tommy?”

“Yeah, Willie.” He was propped up in his easy chair with a blanket over him.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“You met those guys outside ?”

“Great guys. Couple of brothers. Retired from Special Forces. One of them is always nearby.”

I turned on the light by Willie’s chair and looked him over. He was heavily bandaged.

“So how you doing?”

“Making it, thanks to you. That son of a bitch sliced me up pretty good. They take out some of the stitches on Thursday.”

“You going to be okay?”

“Some nerve damage here and there, the doc said. Hell, I’m so sore you couldn’t prove it by me.”

“Sorry this happened, Willie.”

“Those brothers outside—they told me you stumbled into something that should have got you killed.”

“That’s about it.”

“You crawl though enough sewers, you’re gonna meet rats,” Willie said. “You gotta get outta the fuckin’ sewers, Tommy.”

“I’m working on it.”

“I bet.”

I pulled a stool over to his chair.

“Before you get comfortable,” he said, “fix me a drink. You, too, if you want one.”

I poured him a bourbon on the rocks and brought it over. He didn’t have any trouble getting it down.

“I need a favor,” I said. “Got a government van I need painted quick by someone who will do a first-class job and won’t talk. Need some new plates for it, too, something not too hot. Know anyone who can help?”

Willie the Wire scowled and took another swig of whiskey. “You ain’t quitting?”

“No.”

He grunted, drank some more whiskey, and gave me a name and an address.

The sky was turning light when I left. I unlocked the van and drove off to find some breakfast.

Tuesday morning in Washington. July. Already it was steamy hot and the traffic was terrible, as usual, even though the worst of rush hour was over.