Splicer (21 page)

Otter felt better. A breeze had built into a nervous gust across the park, fluttering litter on the path and cooling his forehead. He was aware that Mike and his men had disappeared like ninjas into the tree line but he felt no great appreciation for their performance. The whole incident in the park seemed overly melodramatic and somehow childish to Otter.
I guess old habits never die
he thought.

Then Otter froze. He felt like a complete ass - like a brain dead rookie. He was holding something of considerable value and clout – the envelope - and walking down the path in the sunshine with it like a teenager in love. Shit. If Grey wasn't military, and that was highly likely, then the military would clearly have a problem with Otter. A real problem. After all, he was dismantling their dream machine and had all the data he needed to connect them with at least one murder. He broke into a run and another sweat. Mike probably assumed Otter was some kind of professional, would take the normal precautions that any pro would under the circumstances.
He got that wrong
.

Otter reached Central Park south and looked around. Nothing. Maybe he was panicking. Maybe New York had knocked the wind out of his small-town sails. Now he not only felt foolish but pissed as well. He scanned the traffic for a cab and saw one with a vacancy headed in his direction, but coming from the other side. He waved. The cabby nodded, pulled over to double-park, and waited for Otter as he dodged several lanes of cars. Just before climbing in, he told the driver to hold on for a second. He hadn't had lunch and noticed a hot dog vendor half a block away. He quickly got out, did a quick 360, saw no one running, no one even looking in his direction.

He walked up to the vendor and ordered a foot-long and a pop. The vendor turned to throw a dog on the grill and Otter felt the fat envelope being pulled from under his armpit. He turned and yelled just in time to see a young man, probably in his teens, running for the alleyway.

Otter reached automatically for his gun out of habit, realizing instantly that he was weaponless. There was nothing left for him to do but give chase. He charged into the alleyway seeing the kid at least twenty yards ahead of him already, almost breaking into the sunlight of the next intersection. Otter swore and pushed himself harder. Did the kid just grab the envelope thinking it contained money? Did he even know what he had?

Out of desperation Otter yelled, “There’s no money in there. They’re just printouts,” as he dodged through the traffic at the next block. He looked hard left and right - hoping to see a New York City cop - someone who could help. No luck.
And they told him he would find one at every intersection.

The kid was now into the second block and rapidly growing the distance between them. He was just a dark shape in the distant shadows now, his shirt flapping around him as he ran full out. Otter now had a stitch in his side and one shoe was threatening to come off. But he wouldn’t let up. The last thing he wanted to do now was go back begging to Mike for another copy. If he could even find him.

At the fifth block, Otter realized he was feeling more than just tired and couldn’t go on. His chest was burning - but it was more than that. He felt like his whole upper body was being squeezed in a vice.

Otter slowed down and saw the kid turn back to look and then hesitate. He knew he had won the race so there was no point in running anymore. The kid waved and melted into the pedestrian traffic. Otter was red-faced and sick to his stomach at this point, his hands on his thighs, more angry than tired. He hadn’t even had time to call Kozak. He reached for his phone but the pressure in his chest was so great that he couldn’t concentrate properly and eventually fell to his knees on the grimy concrete. A man next to him saw his distress and turned to his aid but Otter was now on the sidewalk, face down, his chest hemorrhaging, a dull pain spreading through his upper body. So this was what a heart attack felt like, Otter thought. Like a monster truck parked on your rib cage.

The bystander knelt down beside Otter and told him he had called 911. Otter asked him to bend down closer and he said two words to him – then he died.

It was there. Koz could feel it. Like a dark cold hand squeezing the breath out of him.  He hunched over his desk and pressed his fingernails into his palms. Harder, harder, his nails white and bloodless. Otter's son was seven, a little leaguer. His dad, a big bear of a cop, silenced by a fucking heart attack, in a distant city - a dirty litter-strewn sidewalk his last living sight.
Shit.
He was a good guy. One of the few. A little naïve maybe. Someone who still bought that old-fashioned nonsense about cops being on the right side most of the time.  It should have been Koz laying on the street. He was the one with the bum ticker.

Braintree just gave him the news. No one else was going to New York. Let the locals look after it. There would be a ton of bad-press about this one - about sending some defenseless rookie detective straight into the heart of darkness. The total file they now had on this whole mess could fill an eyedropper.

A run down on Ford got them just what they were expecting. Small businessman. J.C. Background in accounting. A DUI once in the late 60's when he was just out of university. President of X-Tech. The daughter was sorry but said she knew little. Her father was unavailable for comment. The New York police seemed to have a problem checking her story. Ford was well connected. He had a high-level security clearance with the CIA.
What the hell did that mean?

A passerby at the scene of the heart attack, a young businessman, had only one comment. Greg had muttered something before he died.
Erin. Mike.
Just two words.
Mike
they knew was the name of the senior agent he had lunch with. Who the hell was Erin? They had run it through CrimeNet, the computer police network. They came up with nothing.

It was like there was no one left to hunt down now. Or feeling himself like he was being hunted, Kozak searched for Otter's home number. Koz figured it was the captain's job to contact the family
.
But Braintree just fingered his bolo tie.
"I was hoping you would go see her,"
he said.

When his phone cried out, Kozak hesitated, his eyes unfocused. Then he picked up the scratched flip-phone.

"Sergeant Kozak?" asked a voice, distant and hollow.

"Yeah,” said Kozak, biting off the word with an intake of air.

"My names Stallbaum. I tracked you down through CrimeNet." Kozak winced. The last thing he wanted to do right now was talk about the minute details of some irrelevant criminal case with a cop from some other jurisdiction. "You there, Kozak?"

"You better identify yourself, Stallbaum." There was a few seconds of static on the line. "Who are you with exactly?" asked Kozak.

The caller ignored the question. “I might have something for you. What are you investigating?"

"Murder. More than one. But right now I've got to make a call on a woman to tell her that her husband just died in the line of duty. I need this hassle right now like I need another peptic ulcer."

Stallbaum was quiet at the other end. "Sorry. But we have a shared interest. That was the real reason I called. I’m with the FBI in Quantico. You're looking for an ERIN and MIKE with CIA or DIA connections?"

Kozak sat up. "I sure as hell am."

"You might have lucked out. The FBI keeps data on everything but we're sometimes slow collecting it all.
Official Secrets Act
changed a few years ago and truckloads of this stuff started being dumped on our doorstep. Going back to the 50's. So we are way behind.

When I get a request on a homicide, especially a police officer killed in the line of duty, I put the file aside. I was working on it tonight. Kinda like you. Extracurricular.”

“Ain't enough hours in the day,” said Kozak.

“Exactly. So when I worked on this search, I started with the two keywords - ERIN and MIKE. ERIN turned up thousands of files, both first and last name. MIKE got me millions of results. So I tried both together. Didn’t get much.”

There was dead air for a few seconds. Koz noticed he was holding his breath.

“So I tried a little search trick. The system has a little-known feature that looks for words that sound like the search terms. Get it?”

“No,” said Koz. “Words that sound like Mike?”

“How about words that sound like ERIN? That’s when AARON came up.”

“Shit,” said Koz. No one in the chain of handling the evidence had thought that the guy in New York might have heard a name wrong. "You're telling me you've got a match?"

"A trainee. 1961. First job with the directorate. Gets messed up in an inter-departmental wrangle over an embarrassing incident in Vietnam."

"Like what?"

"Can't really tell you, Mr. Kozak. Most of it is expunged from the records. But the director saw something in this rookie, so they played a little name game. What they did is they changed his identity - full clearance and security. With computers today they'd never be so thorough. In those days it was just a file pushed to the back and buried in the vaults at Langley. But the files never get destroyed. I suppose they never figured on a guy with his habits living so long."

"How old is this Mike?"

"Records say 77 if you believe the birth-data. You looking for a near-octogenarian murderer?"

"I’m betting he's involved somehow."

"And always has been. This is the great granddaddy of the cold war. Middle name is
Covert
."

"What's the rest of his name?"

"Behind closed doors he's known as Aaron Grey. Grey with an e. He's sort of a legend around the shop. His name pops up in the strangest places. JFK in 62'. Falklands in the 70's. Cambodia, Iran Contra. For a while, we thought he was just a code name for a bunch of operations. But I don't think so anymore."

"Why not anymore?"

"Because of this file sitting on my desk. An application going back to the first days of the Central Intelligence act. The guy they now call Aaron Grey was born a MIKE. Full name - Michael James Grieves.

"Did you say Grieves?"

"Michael J. Yessir."

"And he's still involved with the CIA?"

"Trying hard not to let it show. But he's in it up to his sphincter."

"So why are you being so accommodating?"

"Let's just say, old ways die hard. We've been trying to flush this Grey fellow for a decade. We need your help. If he's deep into something, I need to know about it. And fast."

Kozak whistled when the connection hit him. "Holy screamin’ shit."

"I had a feeling you'd think that."

Rusty sat shivering in Jayne's elaborate kitchen, his hair still wet and smelling of chlorine. He had found an old bottle of Strawberry Margarita mix in the back of her fridge and had mixed and finished two syrupy drinks in short order. He was working on the third.

The bathing suit he wore wasn't his but he was only vaguely interested in it's owner’s identity or how it got into the guest bedroom closet. The towel wrapped around his shoulders was Jayne's. Only the watch he wore, a gold Seiko, a present from Shay, could technically be called his own. He hadn't been to his apartment in days, hadn't called Beth, didn't know what to tell her.
Was she in danger too?
  He was almost certain of it but he couldn't think of a single thing that he could say that would make her life safer, or his for that matter. He heard the front door latch disengage and swing open and his heart seemed to stop. He froze, staring at the goose flesh on his arms. He heard footsteps, the light clicking of high heels on hardwood. Rusty shook his head and relaxed his shoulders.  Unless his assassin wore pumps, it was likely Jayne.

As she turned the corner from the hall into the kitchen nook, her tired expression changed to concern.

"What happened to you?" she asked.

"Reality."

She gazed at the half empty pitcher of Margarita mix. "Looks like you've been doing your best to avoid it."

"Do you blame me?"

"Not if I'm invited."

"I'll get you a glass?"

Jayne dropped her car keys down onto the island.  "I'm glad to see you finally used the pool. I never have time to use it."

Rusty poured a slushy red brew into a glass and offered it to her. "The trunks you left me? They were a pretty good fit."

Jayne took a sip and smiled, sensing something revealing in Rusty's casual comment. "My brother left them here. They were too big on him, came off the first time he dove in."  She laughed, her eyes on his, and then she grew serious again. "You don't look so good."

"The more I think about my life, the more I feel like another drink."

"That's a dangerous kind of logic."

She sat down at the island, ran her fingers loosely through her hair, then set both of her hands around the stem of her glass. Rusty stood awkwardly by the sink, feeling wet and out-of-place. "I can't stay here anymore, Jayne."

She pursed her lips and took another drink from her glass.  "You've got a safer place in mind?"

Rusty pulled the towel tighter around his shoulders and felt the bathing suit stick to his legs. He was dripping on the ceramic flooring. "I've got to do something. Before I wear out my welcome."

Jayne shook her head, fine gold curls framing her face. “Statutory limitation on wearing out a welcome now is two weeks if I remember my Criminal Code correctly. Besides, you can't leave" she said matter-of-factly  "unless you want to be arrested."

He pushed the hair back over his ears and closed his eyes in disgust.

"It's official. There's a warrant out. For the murder of Shay." She took a long drink of her Margarita. "Add harboring a criminal to my current list of offenses."

Rusty looked like he was about to be sick.  He slumped against the counter. "How could those idiots possibly think ..." he stammered, stung by the uselessness of even attempting a reply.

"And there's more," she interrupted. "One of the cops that arrested you. Otter? He went to New York as part of your investigation and died there."

Rusty turned pale. He swore under his breath. "Are they blaming that on me too?" he asked, all the sarcasm gone from his voice. Jayne felt suddenly sorry for him.

"I wouldn't be surprised."
Maybe this wasn't the time to unload all of this on him?
She watched him carefully, noting the flat stomach, the smooth curve of his back, the wide freckled shoulders. Rusty pulled himself up, lazily reached for his glass, filled it again, his hand shaking, and turned his face toward the south window. The sunlight barely warmed him as he emptied the glass.  Jayne frowned.

"Rusty, before you become incoherent, I've got to ask you something."

"Christ, enough questions already!" He turned on her angrily. "I'm tired of being pumped for information." A trickle of cold sweat ran down the back of his neck. "Half the time no one believes anything I tell them anyway. It's a joke. How about giving me some answers for a change?"

"Go for it," she answered coolly.

"Jayne, for Christ's sake, I was with you the night that Shay was killed! How come nobody knows that?"

"Because I haven't told them."

"You what?"

"I haven't told them.
Yet
."