Season of the Assassin (23 page)

‘I still have flashbacks. The doctor says I probably will continue to have them.’

‘But you’re back, and you’re here to stay, this time,’ I insisted.

‘Am I? Am I really, Jimmy?’

Her eyes were brimming with tears.

I took hold of Theresa and hugged her tightly.

‘Who did this to me?
Why
would they do this to me, Jimmy?’

I had a lot of explaining to do to her. And her talk about ‘flashbacks’ had me wondering if she was indeed all the way home, in her head.

‘You remember the night Carl Anglin killed all your friends?’

Theresa looked down for a moment. Then she looked back up at me before glancing over at Doc.

‘I remember every second of every minute. I saw him. I saw him kill two of the girls. I was under the bed, but he never saw me. I saw him. Yes. I remember everything.’

[July 1999]

Mason didn’t find the crude transmitter that I’d slapped under his desk, so we still had an ear in his office. When he got another call from the Major, we picked up something interesting. A meeting place for Special Agent Mason and this enforcer from Tactical Five.

Grant Park. Eight p.m. on the button. I myself heard Mason repeating the Major’s instructions.

‘I can’t believe they haven’t located the bug,’ Ralphie told Doc and me after he removed his earphones. ‘Or maybe they’re playing it cute.’

‘You think they know we’re listening and this meeting is to set us up?’ Doc asked. My partner looked over at me. ‘The Major’s no dummy. I can’t believe he’s taking risks,’ he explained.

‘But the bug is crude. They’re used to playing high-tech and maybe they reckon everyone thinks the way they do,’ I told them.

‘Are we going after the Major?’ Doc wanted to know.

When he looked at me again, he had his answer.

Ralphie uttered his usual groan.

*

We were at Grant Park at 7.30. Just the two of us, Doc and I. Ralphie was excused. He was done with this project. It’d been dangerous enough, so we cut him loose.

It was a hot, early summer’s night. Truly breathless. High humidity and just a hint of a breeze coming off the Lake in the east. We were sitting on a park bench near the softball diamond where Mason was supposed to meet the Major. It was Diamond Number 13. We’d heard Mason repeat the number, so we should have been near where they’d be — if they weren’t setting us up, as Ralphie the Tech suggested.

We were armed as always, but the weaponry didn’t make me feel any more confident.

Fifteen minutes went by, along with a few pairs of neckers. Two couples were heterosexual and one twosome was humming Bette Midler tunes in low, masculine voices.

Doc giggled. ‘Hey.’ He gestured to me when I looked over to him.

It was now five minutes to the hour. And we spotted Mason’s blonde assistant. But no Mason. We were far enough away — perhaps the length of a football field — from the baseball diamond for her not to notice us. Doc had a set of opera glasses.

‘It’s the girl. Mason’s girl,’ he confirmed. ‘She’s standing right behind the screen, right behind home plate. I don’t see anyone coming up on her…Wait a minute.’

The light was going. Dusk was on us, and I had to rely on Doc and his opera glasses to keep me informed. I could just barely make out the figure of the girl. And now I saw a male approaching her. He was tall, wearing a black cloth jacket on this hot-as-hell evening. When he reached her, he directed the blonde toward the nearest park bench.

‘He’s very unhappy with her. They’re arguing,’ Doc said. ‘He’s got his hands in his jacket pockets, so it doesn’t look like he’s going to get physical…Shit, Jimmy, it’s getting dim out here. I can barely make them out anymore. Maybe we ought to approach — ’

‘He’ll bolt. He’s got those kind of reflexes. You can bet on it.’

The male in the dark jacket rose. Both of us could see at least that much. The traffic in the park was very light this evening. Most people were probably down by the Lake to get the cooler breezes from the water.

‘He’s taking off, Jimmy. We’re going to lose him…’

We were both off the bench and half-trotting toward the assistant. We closed the 300 feet in seconds. We were moving at a fast clip.

We stopped about twenty feet in front of the blonde woman on the bench. She was sitting, oddly still.

Doc walked up to her.

‘I don’t recall your name, but…’

Then he reached down to touch her, and she slumped over onto the bench.

I walked over to the two of them.

It was then that we both spied the red splotch on her white-bloused chest. The tall guy had pumped a slug through her. He must have had a silenced gun in his jacket pocket.

‘Stay with her and call an ambulance,’ I told my partner.

I took off to the west, the direction the tall man in the black jacket had gone.

It would soon be full dark and then I wouldn’t have a prayer of spotting him. He’d been moving off at a near gallop when we’d started to approach the dead FBI woman.

But I saw him jogging up to the stop sign at the boulevard. He stopped, looked around, and snapped back into motion when he saw me a hundred yards behind him. He bolted across the busy intersection — and I was after him. He was trying to head toward the Loop, toward some crowded streets where he could vanish.

Soon I was running out of steam. My breath was growing ragged from the running, from trying to close the gap between us. But I had shortened the tall man’s lead. We were out of the park and were heading toward the downtown district. I had my handheld radio and I told Doc where I was headed. He responded and said he’d send some help my way if I gave him the general location.

My quarry was headed toward State Street. By now I was really almost out of gas, but the memory of that lump on my head and his threats to me and my family spurred me on. Anger overcame fatigue and I somehow got my second wind.

Now he was on State, nearing Lake. The streets were still crowded from the tourists visiting the downtown shopping locations, and I was afraid that he’d vanish into the pedestrian traffic. But I found that I was still gaining on him.

He had the piece in the right pocket of his jacket. I was picturing it even though I hadn’t actually seen it.

I stopped briefly and removed the Nine from my shoulder holster. I was wearing the weapon under a very light nylon jacket. Light as it was it was still too warm, so I was sweating heavily in this steamy air. I palmed the gun in my right hand and held it against my right thigh. It was dark enough that no one on the street saw the pistol. They were too busy scoping out the tourist traps.

I was within a half-block of the Major — I assumed it was him. I was still edging closer to him. He had slowed down noticeably. He was approaching a crowd of people who were waiting outside a movie theater. They were standing in line for some film — I couldn’t see what was on the billboard outside the place.

He turned back toward me. He waited for me, his hands inside his jacket.

I kept on coming until only 100 feet separated us. The Major placed himself directly in front of a crowd of two hundred movie patrons. He had them as a shield, except that his cover was behind instead of in front of him. It was effective, nonetheless.

At fifty feet, I halted. Stalemate. He knew I wasn’t going to cut loose with all those civilians standing behind him.

Under the glare of the bright theatrical lights of the marquee, I could see his face. He was blond, like his FBI victim. He had what was called an aquiline nose — like an eagle’s beak. But it wasn’t overly large. There was a distinct dimple in his chin. He looked like a Hollywood leading man. A handsome specimen. Tall, athletic, rugged. Like the advertisement for the Marlboro Man. A man’s man.

He was smiling at me. Perfectly white teeth, naturally. I might have been shooting at Gregory Peck when he was younger, the thought occurred to me.

Then I remembered his threats to my family. I watched him smile. The line outside the theater refused to move. The movie might not have been scheduled for another half-hour. I had no way of knowing.

He was still showing me those teeth. And my backups were either lost or late.

His grin vanished when I raised the nine-millimeter pistol. Deliberately, I fired three rounds into the air.

The sound of the shots brought screams from the people in line, and then the crowd scattered and headed for any sort of shelter they could find. The throng in front of the show disappeared in less than five seconds. It was like a magic trick.

And just as the last of the bystanders got out of our way, I saw the Major pull the gun with its silencer attached out of his right jacket pocket. I watched him raise the weapon in my direction, and then I pulled the Nine’s trigger. 

My first round spun him around and knocked him to the ground. I rushed toward him, and as I closed in he tried to raise his gun again. My second bullet hit him in the belly and doubled him over, but he still tried to stand up and get off a shot at me. My third and final round found his throat, and the shock of this impact knocked him flat on his back.

I stood over his supine body. Blood was jetting from his neck wound, but the other hits showed simply as black holes in his clothing.

I removed the handgun and silencer from his grasp. His grip had very little strength left in it, so there was no struggle. There were new shrieks coming from the sidewalk behind me. Female onlookers who’d just realized they’d witnessed a killing.

Except that the Major, if this was really the boss of Tactical Five, was not quite history yet.

I tried to press my fingers over the little gouts of blood coming out of the wound in his throat, but I couldn’t get them properly plugged in. If the paramedics didn’t arrive soon, he’d bleed to death. I tried my handheld radio, but the spurts of blood frightened me into reapplying the pressure on his throat.

Finally a patrol car arrived. I told the uniforms who I was and ordered them to call for the paramedics. There was a first aid kit in their car, so I was able to get a bandage over the Major’s neck wound.

But he’d lost too much blood already. I’d blown an artery in half with the Nine, I thought.

I bent down close to his face.

‘Tell me. Tell me before you die. Tell me how to get to Anglin. How to get his juice turned off at the roots.’

The handsome spook tried to smile, but his own juice had nearly run out.

He tried to mouth some words, but his wound stopped him speaking.

I got close to his face, close enough so no one else could hear, what with all the street noise around us.

‘Anglin killed the President, didn’t he? Tell me…just tell me.’

But all the Major could do was blink his eyes once. And then his stare became focused far, far beyond me — and beyond all of us.

*

‘Why the hell did he shoot the girl?’ Doc lamented.

‘Maybe he thought she was with us. Maybe he scoped us out and thought she was the Judas goat. I don’t imagine the Major handled betrayal very well.’

‘Why’d Mason send her?’

‘Fear. The Major was a scary guy, Doc. I don’t know. Maybe Mason had no clue the spook would take out that pretty little woman just because the Major sniffed something in the air. The Major isn’t talking anymore, and Mason’ll find a little hole to hide in as soon as possible. Bet on it.’

‘Now there’s no way to link Anglin with the President.’

Doc peered out into the darkness from my office’s window. He looked off into the east, where the Lake lay.

‘I can’t think of anybody who’s likely to come forward on the matter. No. It seems our conspiracy theory has sunk with the fortunes of the leader of Tactical Five. I’m sure all his partners will slide into their drains when the papers find out this guy was attached to the secret G.’

‘But they won’t go any further than the Feds will allow.’

‘Of course not.’

He turned and sat down in the leather chair opposite my desk.

‘We have only one card left to play.’

‘Theresa. Yes,’ I agreed.

‘We need to take extraordinary steps to keep her in the pink.’

‘Yes. We do.’

‘There can be no press. No media. Until we’re headed to court.’

‘Our friend Henry Field will not prosecute until he’s sure, damn dead sure, that we have a real live witness in her, Doc. If Theresa regresses, if she goes south on us again, we lose Anglin forever. His deal with the Feds is still active, now that the Major’s croaked. He has his armor in good repair now that his boss isn’t around to remove his insurance policy. We don’t get him with Theresa Rojas, he doesn’t get got.’

‘She has to remain in our world.’

‘There it is. There it truly is.’

*

Theresa made great strides, the Indiana shrinks told us. She had become very vocal, very articulate. Her solitary confinement in the prison of her mind was over and she talked all the time. She was lucid and clear, and there was very little to remind her doctors and therapists of the mental recluse that Theresa Rojas had been.

Doc and I had to take very careful precautions about visiting her and communicating with her over the phone. I didn’t know if the FBI was worried about finding the witness we’d hidden from them, now that they had the Major’s death — and life — to cover up. Except that they knew Anglin would spill everything once we took him in. He’d want all the rats to drown with him. He was that kind of rodent. It’d make great press, and he enjoyed the spotlight.

The thing that disturbed me then was that Anglin would hear about Theresa’s recovery. It would be in the interest of the members of 

Tactical Five, if any remained, to let Anglin know about her. Then his self-defense mechanism would pop into place, and that clique of spooks would get Theresa done for free.

We had to keep Carl under full-time surveillance until we were sure about Theresa’s recovery. Once we’d cuffed him, I’d feel better. I’d have liked to be able to cuff the Major’s surviving ‘relatives’, too, but I didn’t know their names. But I could locate Anglin, at least. He was her most direct threat.