Presidential Deal (23 page)

The guy bounced hard, but kept his grip on the knife. He came off the wall with a loopy grin on his face, might have missed the first time, but was eager to try again. Driscoll steadied himself with one hand on the doorjamb, considering his options: stand there, take it in the gut, try to run, take it in the back.

The guy made a feint, hesitated when Driscoll pulled his hand from the doorframe. A momentary standoff, Driscoll thought, this guy too good to be making some foolish pass. He’d wait until he had things just the way he wanted them, then make his move. Driscoll’s eyes had adjusted to the dim light by now. He could see the guy’s face, some of it, at least. Half a grin in shadow, half illuminated in the reflected light.

“I know you,” Driscoll said, the words coming unbidden.

“Do you?” the man said.

Driscoll nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving the face. Never mind watching the blade. When the guy was ready, he’d see it coming in his face.

And he did know the guy, he was certain of it. The cop’s curse never to forget a scumbag’s face. Though he couldn’t place this particular face right now, and there was some odd psychic static surrounding the memory that wasn’t quite right.

Another feint, another countermove by Driscoll. No way he could get out of it whole. Best case, he could give up a little, hope to take something on an arm, a shoulder, he could get in close, a chance for one straight shot. If he could hit the guy, he could put him down, that much he was certain of. The guy was tall, but slender. Driscoll outweighed him by fifty pounds at least. And Driscoll had a punch. Only trouble was, he didn’t want to trade a right cross for major surgery.

“I am sorry, my friend. Sorry our acquaintanceship must end.”

The voice, Driscoll thought. Something about that voice. But never mind all that. It was coming now, he had seen the slightest tremor in the man’s cheek, the pulsing of a vein in his temple.

He sensed movement in the dim background. There was a strange whistling sound as something rushed through the air nearby, and a metallic flash in front of Driscoll’s eyes. He lurched backward, tumbling through the door of the house. He heard a crack, and the tall man cried out in pain.

Driscoll was on his back, still confused as to why the tall man wasn’t through the door after him, couple of nifty swipes of the blade, this would all be over…and then he saw why it wasn’t happening that way.

It was Ray Brisa there, moving in on the man who’d been about to gut him. The tall guy had his knife hand clutched in his left, knife long gone it seemed, and was still groaning in pain as Ray Brisa came at him, readying himself for another awkward backhand with what looked like a length of chain clutched in his manacled hands.

“Come on, dickwad,” Brisa called, and sent the chain in a another whistling arc.

The tall guy ducked and came in on Brisa, took him in the solar plexus with an elbow. Brisa’s breath left him in a gasp. The chain flew from his hands, went chewing and chattering through a hedge. Brisa was backpedaling, trying to keep his balance, when the tall man hit him in the face with his good hand.

Brisa went over just as Driscoll was shoving himself off the floor of the porch. They both went down in a tangle.

By the time Driscoll rolled out from under Brisa and got to his feet, the backyard was empty. He heard scuffling feet receding down the alleyway that bordered the back of the house, then a car engine, tires squealing away in the night.

He cursed, brushing gritty dirt from his palms onto his trousers. He coughed and felt a pain in his side where some part of Ray Brisa had crunched into him when they went down. Brisa was on his hands and knees, trying to push himself to his feet, a clumsy move with his hands still shackled.

He glanced up, noticed Driscoll staring at him. “Don’t help me, asshole,” Brisa said.

Driscoll reached down, pulled Brisa to his feet. Brisa worked his shoulders, glanced in the direction the tall guy had taken. “You want to take these cuffs off now?” he said, turning back to Driscoll.

Driscoll regarded him for a moment. “That was the tailgate chain you used, huh?”

Brisa shrugged. “Piece of shit truck, man. I could’ve brought the bumper over here, hit him with that.”

Driscoll nodded. “I wish you would have. You got a little excited with that chain. You could have put him to bed, now look what happened.”

Brisa stared at him. “Look what happened? I saved your fat ass is what happened.”

“Guy got away, though.”

“I can’t believe it.”

Driscoll shrugged. “How come you didn’t take off once you got loose?”

Brisa looked around. “I’m in fucking Nassau, man. I never even been on an airplane before. I got no passport, no money, nothing. I figure you got an obligation to get me back home.”

“An obligation,” Driscoll repeated.

Brisa shrugged. Not like his own shrug, Driscoll thought. Brisa’s move was abrupt, combative, really.

“I told you, I wouldn’t mind a crack at those assholes myself,” Brisa said. He glanced off in the direction of their departed assailant. “I got him, too, didn’t I. He hadn’t ducked, he’d be talking to the angels right now…” Brisa broke off, listened to sirens in the distance.

Driscoll heard the sirens, too, but he’d been taken somewhere else suddenly, a dozen years or so, a farm in the Virginia countryside, rolling hills, horses, and vague flashes of the face of the tall man in there, too, like snippets from a crazy dream. Angel, Driscoll found himself thinking. But not like that, not like the mythical creatures with bright blonde hair and fluttery wings. He’d mispronounced the name even then.
Ahn-hell
, was how it was said. Sure. Ahn-hell Salazar.
Dear God
, he thought, fighting what had flashed through his mind.

Angel Salazar, who had been his teacher, no less. Driscoll packed off from Miami to rural Virginia a dozen years ago on a government-sponsored training mission, Reagan-inspired aid to local law enforcement.

Salazar, not really an agency man, but a mercenary they’d trained, a creep brought in fresh from Salvador, the ghoulish half of a team-taught seminar on interrogation techniques, and all his classroom references to what was justifiable in service of the forces of freedom had been the mildest part of the course.

A few of the assembled cops had expressed some minor disagreement about the measures Salazar suggested as being within the limits of the law, or at least undetectable, but most lapped up Salazar’s act like weekend athletes who’d suddenly found themselves in the company of Ray Nitschke during a male bonding retreat: “Why don’t you tell us again how you chewed off that guy’s finger in the pile-up, Ray.”

Last night of the stay, Driscoll had wandered back to the dorm late, found a group gathered around a TV in the rec room, a grainy video running, the color so bad it could have been black and white. Some guys in fatigues were hanging around a scummy-looking room with a battered table and two weary-looking guys with the high cheekbones of the Indios slumped and tied in wooden chairs. Driscoll poked his head in just as a guy tall enough to have been Salazar made his appearance in the video, though it was hard to tell, being that he was wearing a ski mask on his head.

The guy in the ski mask stepped up to the table, grabbed one of the subjects by his hair, shouted something in Spanish that came out like underwater gargling talk on the lousy tape. It didn’t matter what he’d said, though, Driscoll knew that much already.

It looked like the guy who’d had his hair snatched had spit at the one in the ski mask. And that didn’t matter, either. All this had been preordained, probably several million years ago when Angel’s ancestors had slithered out into the light.

Angel, if that’s who the guy in the ski mask was, reached into a back pocket and came up with a plastic bag that he jammed down over the poor bastard’s head. Somebody else in the interrogation room was ready with a roll of tape.

The guy in the ski mask was clearly practiced. He had everything wrapped tight in seconds. The guy in the chair was thrashing about, even managed to get the chair kicked over backward, get himself down on the floor where even though his hands were still bound behind him he could beat his head against the cement.

It wasn’t really clear whether the guy managed to knock himself senseless before the end, but Driscoll suspected he hadn’t. He didn’t know what happened to the other guy at the interrogation table, either, because he’d stepped on into the rec room and kicked the TV’s power plug out of the wall before the tape could get to that point.

There had been a chorus of complaint, somebody up to bang on the set before the group saw Driscoll coming after Salazar and it dawned on everyone what had happened. Just as well they had caught him before he’d reached Salazar, Driscoll thought. Somebody might have died. It might even have been him.

“You takin’ a nap or something?” It was Brisa’s voice, cutting into the memory that had flashed before him.

He looked at Brisa then, still trying to piece it together, what it meant to find Salazar involved in this, then noticed how bright it seemed to be for this time of night, how odd flashes of light danced over Brisa’s face. Driscoll glanced upward and remembered the smell of kerosene inside the room where he’d found the dead men and the soft popping sound he’d heard during the gun battle. And then he saw the reflection of flames in the second-story windows.

He was running again, Ray Brisa on his heels. Inside, running as fast as his weary legs would carry him. Through the kitchen, down the hall, once more up those stairs, struggling upward, Brisa following after him, until they were finally blocked by the wall of flames.

No chance of going further, no hope for anyone caught in that cauldron, he thought. Angel’s murderous grin danced before his eyes, and sirens wailed in his ears. He turned to urge Ray Brisa away, then saw movement from above and a form falling through the flames and suddenly there was Gavin, sleeves ablaze, smoke rising from his hair, hurtling down upon them like a smoldering angel.

“Get me gone,” he called as he tumbled to the landing below. “Get me from those sirens.”

And they did.

Part 4: Homestretch

Chapter 34

“I want to talk to Dedric Bailey. Right,
Chief
Bailey, for Christ’s sake.” Driscoll was trying to keep his voice down, but he didn’t know why he bothered. The vast lobby of the hotel where he and Brisa had been directed by Gavin was deserted at this hour. No bellmen, no one behind the endless stretch of check-in counter. Even the all-night casino, which sat on the opposite side of the cavernous lobby, was nearly deserted.

“Somebody went to get him, just hold tight,” the voice on the other end of the line said. There seemed to be an inordinate amount of static, even more than there had been when he’d spoken to Bailey earlier, from the hospital.

“Tell me who I’m talking to,” Driscoll said. He’d replayed the memories of Salazar over and over during the long cab ride to the hotel, getting his paranoia into primo shape.

“Is this Driscoll?” came the response.

“Who is
this?
” Driscoll demanded, glancing nervously about the lobby. A wave of static filled the line, leaving Driscoll to fume. He needed Bailey. His old pal Bailey who’d agreed to run the checks on Salazar, find out who the bastard was plugged into. Bailey he could trust. That much he was certain of.

“This is Ellenberg,” the voice on the other end came finally. Another wave of static. A distant alarm bell ringing, some diehard hitting a jackpot on one of the hotel casino slots.

“Why don’t you tell me where you are,” the voice said. “We’ll have Bailey get right back.”

More alarms ringing in Driscoll’s head now, but not from any slot machine. Salazar and his connections. Bailey’s stories about the Feds, how easily they steamrolled local law enforcement.

“Give me somebody I know,” he said. “Rogier. Or Pete Rodriguez.”

“There’s nobody else right now.”

“Who went to get Bailey?”

A pause. “Holden.”

“I don’t know any Holden, either,” Driscoll said.

“Just hold on, I think Bailey’s coming,” the voice said. A new urgency there. The alarms a corresponding blare in Driscoll’s head. How many times had he strung a caller along, waiting for a phone trace to complete?

“Forget it,” he blurted. “Tell Bailey I’ll call back.”

“Just one more sec…”

Driscoll slammed down the phone.

Chapter 35

“You consider Vernon Driscoll a reliable individual, do you?”

Dedric Bailey stared back at Harvey Clyde across the briefing table, reminding himself to keep his composure. He was a cop, Bailey counseled himself, chief of the City of Miami Special Investigative Section.

However, over the past few hours he had begun to understand what it was like to be on the other end of a process he had conducted a few thousand times in his career. “Of course I do. We’ve been over it again and again.”

Clyde shrugged. He was the third man who’d been in to interview him through the night. Same routine, same questions. Wear your subject down, wait for the inconsistencies to crop up. Bailey understood the drill. But he was here trying to help, not hide anything.

Bailey stole a glance at his watch, noted it was almost six. No windows in the room, an anonymous cubbyhole in the basement of the Justice Building the Feds had turned into their command center. He assumed it’d be growing light outside.

If he hadn’t answered the phone last night, he’d be pulling on his sneakers right now, readying himself for his morning run. With Robert away at college, he and Dorothy had sold the house, moved into a condo that was part of a sprawl around a series of dredged-out lakes on the west end of the county. It was pretty white bread out there, but Dorothy felt safe, and he’d come to enjoy his new jogging route, along a series of asphalt paths that bordered the lakes. Mist rising up off the water some mornings, the occasional heron wading the shallows for breakfast, a fellow jogger now and then to nod a welcome…quite a contrast to the tightly packed neighborhood they’d left behind, a place where he’d see someone else running, he’d have to assume they were leaving the scene of a crime. He felt a little guilty about leaving sometimes, but not too guilty. He’d worked hard, he’d earned a little peace and quiet.

“We keeping you from something?” Clyde asked, noting Bailey’s glance at his watch.

Bailet couldn’t help himself. “The Montel Williams show,” he said. “I’m supposed to be on right now, explaining why you guys couldn’t find your ass with both hands.”

Clyde gave him a look, then turned back to the pad in front of him. Though Clyde had not identified himself, Bailey suspected he was with the Bureau. Too many of them shared that wrapped-way-tight, holier-than-thou affect; no good cop/bad cop orchestration for these characters. They were bad actors all the way. It could be the stress everyone was under, he supposed, but something told him the guys he’d had across the table were happy to be jerks in any weather.

“You took the call at 1:00
A.M.
?”

“Around then,” Bailey said. “I was still in the office, the call was logged in. You could go check the records if it’s important to you.”

“I appreciate your patience,” Clyde said. “We’re just trying to establish a few things.”

Clyde went back to studying his notes, like maybe he wasn’t quite sure what this was all about. Bailey took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh. When he did this to a suspect, the purpose was to exasperate, to agitate, have the subject blurt out something unintended, something incriminating. Problem was, he was no suspect and there was nothing to blurt.

“The caller identified himself as Vernon Driscoll. You have any reason to doubt that’s who it was?”

“The man has a characteristic way of speaking,” Bailey said. “Listen to him for twenty years, you wouldn’t forget.”

Clyde nodded. “And he informed you he was in the Bahamas.”

“It came up during the conversation.”

“And that he had illegally entered that country in an aircraft obtained under fraudulent pretenses?”

“I don’t recall Vernon using any of those kind of adjectives. He’s not an adjective kind of guy.”

Clyde flipped a page in his pad. “Let’s get back to this business of Angel Salazar.”

“Whoever he is,” Bailey said.

“Vernon Driscoll told you that he’d encountered a man whom he identified as Angel Salazar at a crime scene in Nassau?”

“He did.” Bailey was feeling groggy. He wondered how many times he was going to have to answer these questions. He was ready to leave now, was going to leave.

“And Driscoll asked you to run Salazar’s name through the system, correct?”

“As I must have said about a hundred and fifty times.”

“I’m going to assume that’s a
yes
,” the interrogator said.

Bailey nodded. “Are we finished?”

Clyde seemed not to hear him. He stared at Bailey, waiting for more.

“And I ran the name,” Bailey continued wearily, “which returned a couple of petty criminals, neither of whom seemed to be the guy Vernon was interested in.”

“Did you speak with Vernon Driscoll again?”

“No,” Bailey said. “Driscoll said he’d call me back.”

“Then why did you make the assumption that you hadn’t found the person he was looking for?”

“Because he indicated we were looking at something different here, some kind of a major player. And…”—he nodded across the table—“…because it wasn’t an hour after I got into the computer that your guys showed up in my office.”

“So you haven’t spoken to Vernon Driscoll since that phone call about one last night?”

“Maybe you should check your notes,” Bailey said. “I could have sworn I just told you that.”

“Are you trying to be evasive with me?”

Bailey felt the muscles in his jaw tightening again. He willed himself to relax, clasped his hands on the table before him. “I have not spoken to Vernon Driscoll since we hung up on that call I told you about.”

Clyde nodded, but there was no indication on his face that he necessarily believed what Bailey had said. There was a tap on the door to the room then, and Clyde rose to open it.

Bailey got a glimpse of a military uniform before Clyde stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind him. Bailey heard muffled conversation, a couple of rising inflections there, and then Clyde was back through the door. He picked up his notepad, flipped it shut. He gave Bailey a disinterested look. “We want to thank you for your cooperation, Chief Bailey. We know it’s been a hardship, but you’ll appreciate what we’re up against.” He made a gesture with his pad. “You’re free to go.”

Bailey rose, fighting indignation.
Free to go?
“So what happened? You guys find Vernon Driscoll? The First Lady phone home?”

“Nothing’s happened, Mr. Bailey. But you’ll let us know if you hear from Vernon Driscoll again.”

“Sure,” Bailey said. “The very minute.”

“Then that’s all,” Clyde said, and motioned him out the door.