The Devil's Teardrop (4 page)

“Twenty million,” he mused.

Without a knock the office door opened and a tall man of about sixty, wearing a gray suit, stepped inside.

Oh, great, Kennedy thought. More cooks in the kitchen.

U.S. Representative Paul Lanier shook the mayor’s hand and then introduced himself to the FBI agents. He ignored Wendell Jefferies.

“Paul,” Kennedy told Lukas, “is head of the District Governance Committee.”

Though the District of Columbia had some autonomy Congress had recently taken over the power of the purse and doled out money to the city like a parent giving a reckless child an allowance. Especially since the recent Board of Education scandal Lanier had been to Kennedy what an auditor is to a set of accounting books.

Lanier missed the disparaging tone in Kennedy’s voice—though Lukas seemed not to—and the congressman asked, “Can you give me a heads-up on the situation?”

Lukas ran through her assessment once more. Lanier remained standing, all three buttons of his Brooks Brothers suit snugly secured.

“Why here?” Lanier asked. “Why Washington?”

Kennedy laughed to himself. The prick’s even stolen my rhetorical questions.

Lukas answered, “We don’t know.”

Kennedy continued, “You really think he’d do it again?”

“Yes.”

The congressman asked, “Jerry, you’re not seriously thinking of paying.”

“I’m considering all options.”

Lanier was looking dubious. “Well, aren’t you concerned with what it’ll look like?”

“No, I don’t care how it looks,” Kennedy snapped.

But the congressman continued in his politician’s perfect baritone. “It’s going to send the wrong message. Kowtowing to terrorists.”

Kennedy glanced at Lukas, who said, “It
is
something to think about. The floodgates theory. You give in to one extortionist there’ll be others.”

“But nobody knows about this, do they?” Kennedy nodded to the note.

“Sure, they do,” Cage said. “And more’ll know pretty soon. You can’t keep something like this under wraps for long. Notes like this have wings. You bet they do.”

“Wings,” Kennedy repeated, disliking the expression intensely and all the happier that Lukas was running the show. He asked her, “What can you do to find him if we
do
pay?”

Lukas again responded. “Our tech people’ll rig the drop bag—with a transmitter. Twenty million will weigh a couple hundred pounds,” she explained. “It’s not something you can just hide under the seat of a car. We’ll try to track the perp to his hideout. If we’re lucky, get both him and the shooter—this Digger.”

“‘Lucky,’” Kennedy said skeptically. She was a pretty woman, he thought, though the mayor—who’d been married to his wife for thirty-seven years and had never once considered cheating on her—knew that beauty is mostly expression of eye and mouth and posture, not God-given structure. And Margaret Lukas’s face hadn’t once softened since she’d walked into his office. No smile, no sympathy. Her voice was flinty now as she said, “We can’t give you percentages.”

“No. Of course you can’t.”

“Twenty million,” mused Lanier, the controller of the purse strings.

Kennedy rose, pushed his chair back and stepped to a window. Looked out on the brown lawn and trees speckled with dead leaves. The winter in Northern Virginia had been eerily warm for the past several weeks. Tonight, the forecasters were predicting, would be the first big snow of the year but at the moment the air was warm and humid and the scent of decomposing vegetation wafted into the room. It was unsettling. Across the
street was a park, in the middle of which was a big, dark, modern statue; it reminded Kennedy of a liver.

He glanced at Wendell Jefferies, who took the cue and joined him. The aide wore aftershave; he must have had twenty different scents. The mayor whispered, “So, Wendy, the pressure’s on, huh?”

The aide, never known for his restraint, responded, “You got the ball, boss. Drop it and you and me both, we’re gone. And more than that too.”

And more than that too . . .

And Kennedy had thought things couldn’t get any worse after the Board of Education scandal.

“And so far,” Kennedy said, “no leads. Nothing.”

So far twenty-three people dead.

So far all they knew was that this psychopath was going to try to kill more people at 4 o’clock and more after that and more after that.

Outside the window the eerily warm air stirred. Five lacy brown leaves twisted to the ground.

He turned back to his desk. Looked at the brass clock. The time was 10:25.

Lanier said, “I say we don’t pay. I mean, it seems to me that when he finds out the FBI’s involved he might just balk and head for the hills.”

Agent Lukas offered, “Bet he had an idea the Bureau’d be involved before he started this.”

Kennedy picked up on her sarcasm. Lanier, again, remained oblivious.

The congressman continued, speaking to her, “I didn’t think you were in favor of paying.”

“I’m not.”

“But you also think he’ll keep shooting if we don’t pay.”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Well . . .” Lanier lifted his hands. “Isn’t that inconsistent? You don’t think we should pay . . . but he’s going to keep killing.”

“That’s right.”

“That doesn’t give us much guidance.”

Lukas said, “He’s a man who’s prepared to kill as many people as he needs to, just to make money. You can’t negotiate with somebody like that.”

“Will paying make your job harder?” Kennedy asked. “Harder to catch him?”

“No,” she said. A moment later: “So,” she asked, “are you going to pay or not?”

The desk lamp shone on the note. To Kennedy it seemed that the piece of paper glowed like white fire.

“No, we’re not paying,” Lanier said. “We’re taking a hard line. We’re standing tough on terrorism. We’re—”

“I’m paying,” said Kennedy.

“You sure?” Lukas asked him, not seeming to care one way or the other.

“I’m sure. Do your best to catch them. But the city’s going to pay.”

“Hold on,” the congressman said, “not so fast.”

“It’s not fast at all,” Kennedy snapped. “I’ve been considering it since I got this goddamn thing.” He gestured at the fiery note.

“Jerry,” Lanier began, laughing sourly, “you don’t have the right to make that decision.”

“Actually he does,” said Wendell Jefferies, who could append the letters J.D. and LL.M. after his name.

“Congress has jurisdiction,” Lanier said petulantly.

Cage said to Lanier, “No, it doesn’t. It’s exclusively the District’s call. I asked the attorney general on my way over here.”

“But we’ve got control of the money,” Lanier snapped. “And I’m not going to authorize it.”

Kennedy glanced at Wendy Jefferies, who thought for a moment. “Twenty million? We can draw on our line of credit for discretionary spending.” He laughed. “But it’ll have to come out of the Board of Education reserve. They’re the only account that’s majorly liquid.”

“That’s the only place?”

“That’s it. It’s debt or nickels and dimes everywhere else.”

Kennedy shook his head. How goddamn ironic—the money to save the city was available only because someone had cut corners and landed the administration in the middle of a huge scandal.

“Jerry, this is ridiculous,” Lanier said. “Even if they get
these
men somebody else could try the same thing next month. Never deal with terrorists. That’s the rule in Washington. Don’t you read Department of State advisories?”

“No, I don’t,” Kennedy said. “Nobody sends ’em to me. Wendy, get started on that money. And Agent Lukas . . . go catch this son of a bitch.”

* * *

The sandwich was okay.

Not great.

Gilbert Havel decided that after he got the money he was going to the Jockey Club and having a real steak. A filet mignon. And a bottle of champagne.

He finished his coffee and kept his eye on the entrance to City Hall.

The chief of police of the District had come and gone quickly. A dozen reporters and camera crews had been
turned away from the front door, directed toward an entrance on the side of the building. They hadn’t looked happy. Then a couple of what were clearly FBI agents had disappeared into City Hall some time ago, a man and a woman, and hadn’t emerged. It was definitely a Bureau operation. Well, he’d known it would be.

So far no surprises.

Havel looked at his watch. Time to go to the safe house, call the helicopter charterer. There was a lot to get ready for. The plans for picking up the $20 million were elaborate—and the plans for getting away afterward were even more so.

Havel paid his check—with old, crumpled singles—and pulled his coat and cap on again. He left the coffee shop, turned off the sidewalk and walked quickly through an alley, eyes down. The Judiciary Square Metro stop was right beneath City Hall but he knew it would be watched by police or agents so he headed for Pennsylvania Avenue, where he’d get a bus down to Southeast D.C.

White man in a black man’s ’hood.

Life sure is funny sometimes.

Gilbert Havel emerged from the alley and turned onto a side street that would take him to Pennsylvania. The light changed to green. Havel stepped into the intersection. Suddenly, a flash of dark motion from his left. He turned his head. Thinking: Shit, he doesn’t see me! He doesn’t see me he doesn’t—

“Hey!” Havel cried.

The driver of the large delivery truck had been looking at an invoice and had sped through the red light. He glanced up, horrified. With a huge squeal of brakes the truck slammed directly into Havel. The driver screaming, “Christ, no! Christ . . .”

The truck caught Havel between its front fender and a parked car, crushing him. The driver leapt out and stared in shock. “You weren’t looking! It wasn’t my fault!” Then he looked around and saw that the light had been against him. “Oh, Jesus.” He saw two people running toward him from the corner. He debated for a moment. But panic took over and he leapt into his truck. He gunned the engine and backed away then sped down the street, skidding around the corner.

The passersby, two men in their thirties, ran up to Havel. One bent down to check for a pulse. The other just stood over him, staring at the huge pool of blood.

“That truck,” the standing one whispered, “he just took off! He just left!” Then he asked his friend, “Is he dead?”

“Oh, yeah,” the other man said. “Oh, yeah, he’s dead.”

Where?

Margaret Lukas lay on her lean belly on a rise overlooking the Beltway.

Traffic sped past, an endless stream.

She looked at her watch again. And thought: Where
are
you?

Her belly hurt, her back hurt, her elbows hurt.

There’d been no way to get a mobile command post near the ransom drop zone—even a disguised MCP—and not be seen by the extortionist if he was anywhere near. So here she was, in jeans, jacket and cap turned backward, like a sniper or gangsta, lying on the rock-hard ground. Where they’d been for an hour.

“Sounds like water,” Cage said.

“What?”

“The traffic.”

He lay on his belly too, next to her, their thighs nearly touching—the way lovers might lie on a beach watching the sunset. They studied the field a hundred yards away.
They were overlooking the money drop near Gallows Road—yes, “Gallows,” an irony so rich that not one of the agents had bothered to comment on it.

“You know how that happens?” Cage continued. “Something gets under your skin and you try not to think about it. But you can’t help it. I mean, it sounds like water.”

It didn’t sound like water to Lukas. It sounded like cars and trucks.

Where was the unsub? There’s 20 million bucks there for the taking and he’s not taking it.

“Where the hell is he?” muttered another voice. It belonged to a somber man of about thirty, with a military hairstyle and bearing. Leonard Hardy was with the District of Columbia police and was part of the team because, even though the Bureau was handling the operation, it would look bad not to have a District cop on board. Lukas would normally have protested having non-Bureau personnel on her team but she knew Hardy casually from his assignments at the Bureau’s field office near City Hall and didn’t mind his presence—as long as he kept doing what he’d done so far: sitting quietly by himself and not bothering the grown-ups.

“Why’s he late?” Hardy mused again, apparently not expecting an answer. His immaculate hands, with perfectly trimmed nails, continued to jot notes for his report to the District chief of police and the mayor.

“Anything?” She turned her head, calling in a whisper to Tobe Geller, a curly-haired young agent also decked out in jeans and one of the same navy-blue, reversible windbreakers that Lukas wore.

Geller, in his thirties too, had the intensely cheerful face of a boy who finds complete contentment in any
product filled with microchips. He scanned one of three portable video monitors in front of him. Then he typed on a laptop computer and read the screen. “Zip,” he responded. If there was any living thing larger than a raccoon for a hundred yards around the ransom bags Geller’s surveillance equipment would detect it.

When the mayor had given the go-ahead to pay the extortion money, the cash had made a detour en route to the drop. Lukas and Geller had had Kennedy’s aide shepherd the money to an address on Ninth Street in the District—a small, unmarked garage that was up the street from FBI headquarters.

There, Geller had repacked the ransom into two huge Burgess Security Systems KL-19 knapsacks, the canvas of which looked like regular cloth but was in fact impregnated with strands of oxidized copper—a high-efficiency antenna. The transmitter circuitry was in the nylon handles, and batteries were mounted in the plastic buttons on the bottom. The bag transmitted a Global Positioning System beacon cleaner than CBS’s main broadcast signal and couldn’t be shielded except by several inches of metal.

Geller had also rewrapped forty bundles of hundred-dollar bills with wrappers of his own design—there were ultrathin transmitting wafers laminated inside them. Even if the perp transferred the cash from the canvas bag or it was split among accomplices Geller could still track down the money—up to a range of sixty miles.