The 4 Phase Man (10 page)

Then the short flight to New York.

She assumed she was under constant surveillance, although she’d never detected any. These weren’t the kind that made themselves obvious. Mailing the letter had been the trickiest part of all; a feat only accomplished by driving in circles—to be sure she wasn’t followed, as ordered—and a less-than-thirty-second stop at a Thirty-seventh Street mailbox, just before driving into the Queens Midtown Tunnel and her fate.

As she waited for the obscenity to finally play itself out, she went over that twenty-three-page letter, her middle finger raised at the world that had finally defeated her.

The first part had been a mere recounting of facts: dates, times, what names she knew, what locations. And, of course,
his
name. The bastard chief interrogator, the one she
would get
, if no others.

The next bit was more detailed: physical descriptions of the nameless ones, as-close-as-could-be-recalled accounts of each of the interrogation sessions, what they knew, what they wanted to know. Then there was a little conjecture, Valerie’s sense of what it all meant. The last part, the
shortest part, was her
… explanation
was as good as any word for it.

Valerie wiped a tear from her eye as the headlights of a panel van pulled to a stop twenty feet away. She kissed her favorite photograph of her and the kids—the one taken when they were all so young and unaware of the dark and gooey place that the world truly was—then placed it beneath a statue of Jesus on the seat beside her.

She opened the car door with strength and a will dedicated to one, deadly purpose. It invigorated her, filled her with fire and potency.

“Forgive me, Jesus,” she mumbled before stepping steadfastly—and finally—forward.

In Brooklyn, Xenos was also thinking of finality and ending things.

He stood outside his sister’s apartment looking up at the argument in the window two stories above, and realized that this all had to end. If he was ever to sleep soundly, peacefully again, if he was ever to heal and begin the process of recovery, it must start tonight.

He’d called his sister shortly after leaving the airport. The plan they’d arrived at was simple enough, and—in fact—the kind of thing he might have laid on had the event been an attempted assassination rather than reconciliation.

1. The subject will be lured to a location that is known to him as safe and hospitable. In a neighborhood he knows well and is completely comfortable in.

2. The subject will be engaged on a subject that is sure to anger him, cloud his judgment, give no real alternative but to leave the location at a known time, through a known route.

3. The killers will lie in wait in a position from which they can view the subject’s arrival and the signal that indicates the subject is on the way out.

4. The killers will then place themselves in a position where the subject
must
move past them.

5. The kill.

The argument seemed to wane, move away from the window, and, for the barest moment, Xenos hoped that a confrontation on the street would be unnecessary. But his sister’s reappearance at the window doomed that hope stillborn. As agreed, she shook her head and lowered the blind.

Quietly, with years of training and condition, Xenos moved through the shadows. The old man would turn left when leaving the apartment building. He’d head for the bus stop at Twenty-fifth or the subway at Grand. Either way, he had to pass by a five-foot space between two buildings.

As though it had been prepared for him, Xenos slid noiselessly into it and began to wait. Five minutes, no longer, he told himself. Then they would be on.

Three minutes later the old man casually walked past the space and Xenos silently stepped out behind.

Sensing more than hearing the intruder’s approach, the old man stopped. “I have no money,” he said with the slightest hint of an accent.

“It’s me, Papa,” Xenos said softly.

The old man stiffened. “No,” but it was said as a prayer he hoped would go unanswered.

“It’s Jerry, Papa. I want, I need to talk to you. To set things right.”

For the longest time it seemed as if the old man was about to turn around. Almost as if his body tried turning—physically fighting the old man’s will—but somehow couldn’t overcome his iron resolve.

“My son is dead.”

“I’m right here, Papa,” Xenos begged. “Just turn around and look at me, please!”

The old man involuntarily shuddered. Then slowly he stiffened again. “My son was a murderer and a thief and a looter and a pillager.”

“No, Papa.” Tears rolled down the big man’s cheeks.

“My son is dead. I have said Kaddish, I have helped prepare the way for his soul to God’s side. I will not look upon or traffic with his doppelgänger.”

Xenos grabbed him and spun the old man around. “Look at me, damn you! I
am
your son! You taught me to play the piano, to sing. You were the one who was always there for me! Please, God, I need you here for me now!”

But the old man’s eyes remained squinted tightly shut. “My son is dead.”

Xenos released the old man, seemed to sag, almost deflate. “I don’t sleep, Papa.” His voice was sad and pained, more like a child’s than a man’s. “I see their faces, all their faces, Papa. They’re all there. Everything you always said. They just stare at me, mock me.” He dropped his head; his
shoulders curled in; in every respect the image of a man beyond exhaustion. “Judge me.”

For the briefest flicker of a second, the old man barely opened his eyes wide enough to see the son, the man, he felt almost a physical longing for. He felt his hand start to reach up…

He spun around, tightly closing his eyes and stalking away.

“You are a ghost! A phantom of my son who has been sent to mock me! I deny you!”

“Papa, the too familiar voice called out in the night. But the old man continued on.”

Then a screeching of tires, a shot, and the old man—a veteran of too many gang wars and pogroms in his life—dived into a storefront doorway. When the sounds stopped, moments later, he cautiously looked back out at a completely deserted street.

Deserted except for a shining blackish stain near the space between the buildings.

He slowly walked back—propelled by something more than instinct and less than certainty—stopping by the stain, crouching down, touching it with his tobacco-stained fingers to confirm for his eyes the horrific truth his heart already knew.

Staring into his bloody fingers, his anger—at himself, at his son, at the world that had come between them then and now—boiled and raged, finally finding voice and fury.

“Bastards! Give me back my son!”

“Stupid.”

The impeccably dressed older
European
gentleman opposite the big man in the back of the limousine looked over at the comment.

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“You heard me right enough.” The big man’s tone was full of contempt and disbelief.

A second man merely shrugged. “The situation was thrust upon us.”

“We did what we could,” a third added. “When that failed, we relied on your talents.”

The big man shook his head. “You made it worse by not letting me handle things from the start. If you had, Goldman would be dead and Alvarez would be, well, compliant at worst.”

“But, Canvas, you
didn’t
kill Goldman.”

“Of course not, you stupid carp! After your pointless games, I have to find out how far operational integrity has been compromised, don’t I? Who he’s working for and what he’s told them and why. Christ!” he spit out. “If you’d just blown the bugger away when he came out of the college prick’s apartment, I wouldn’t be missing Liverpool v. Man U.” He began to gaze out the window at the passing farms and fields. “Good bloody match it was going to be too.”

Silence settled over the car.

“Wö xïhuan dàifu häo xîe de,”
the first man whispered casually as he checked his watch.

“Dm,”
the second responded while seemingly obsessed with a loose thread on his jacket sleeve.

The third smiled in the direction of Canvas, who never looked away from his window.
“Nî néng jièsháo xië shéme líangcài ma?”

The first yawned.
“Wô xiâng bâoxiân.”

“Gentlemen,” Canvas said in a quiet voice, “before you start talking about my
relative quality
, or getting
insurance
against my possible failure, I think you should know two things.”

He turned to face them, his eyes cold, narrow, his body virtually emanating death and destruction. “First, you’ll only get one chance at severing our relationship. Fail that and
I
start the severing.”

He leaned back, seeming to relax as he returned to studying the countryside. “Second, I understand that gutter slop you like to speak. So no secrets, right?
Wô dông le.”

“Our apologies, Canvas.” The European bowed slightly toward the big man.

“Forget that and tell me about this new Alvarez bullshit.”

“It is not
bullshit.”
He clearly disliked the word. “It is an ultimatum, and it is most complicated.”

“You must remember,” the third man quickly added, “that options available to us in other circumstances are unavailable now.”

Canvas poured himself a drink. “And why is that?”

“An unscheduled disappearance of a high-visibility member of Congress; visible, unexplained wounds or injuries; or worse—a death?” The second shook his head. “That would raise our profile to an unacceptable level.”

“Unacceptable,” the European repeated. “Ms. Alvarez has reasoned the situation most clearly, I’m afraid.”

“We’ll see,” Canvas said as he stretched.
“I’ll
see.”

For over ten hours Valerie had waited. Constantly evaluating, watching, waiting.

Should I do it now?

Are there enough of them here—the right ones of them—to really hurt?

Have I gotten all I can?

After the usual, routine humiliations, she had been driven for hours—she thought to somewhere in Connecticut. There she’d been searched again, insulted again, and eventually brought into the presence of her three, usual interrogators.