The Drifter (25 page)

Peter

G
o watch the woman and the kid,” Lipsky told Boomer. “Don’t touch them. Just keep them calm and quiet. Start prepping the drums. And send Midden back here.”

Boomer scooped up the coils of conduit from the table, glared at Peter, and walked through the door to the warehouse.

Peter pulled hard at the plastic cuffs. “What did you do?”

“We took them,” said Lipsky. “Your other friends are dead. Collateral damage. I believe you know the term.”

“If you harm them, either one of them,” said Peter, “I will kill you in the most painful way possible.”

Lipsky didn’t seem to notice. His X-ray eyes were focused on Peter, and his voice was calm. “Here’s how it is, Peter. You and I are men of the world. We’ve been to war. We’ve killed other men to protect our friends and our own skins, and to do our job. So I’m going to be honest with you. You’re going to die. There’s no way around that. You can’t save yourself.”

Lipsky held up the phone with the picture on it. Reached out
and cleared a space in the bomb parts on the table, and set the phone where Peter could stare at it.

“But you can save that woman out there, and her son. They haven’t seen anyone’s faces. They don’t know where they are or what’s going on. They won’t be touched. You can save them. If you give me that C-4.”

Breathe in, breathe out.

The door to the veterans’ center opened again, and the man in the black canvas chore coat came through.

Peter watched him read the room in a single silent glance, including Peter cuffed to the chair behind the desk, the flag on the wall, the video camera on its tripod, and Felix working feverishly at his laptop. There was a kind of empty, coiled stillness to the man, like some purpose-built mechanism awaiting only the triggering of his function. But he looked at Peter with a kind of curiosity.

To Lipsky, Peter said, “You’d kill an innocent woman? A child?”

Midden’s head swiveled to stare at Lipsky.

The detective just shrugged. “Collateral damage? That’s up to you.”

“Not collateral damage,” said Peter. “This is taking hostages. Killing hostages. For money.”

“I don’t want to kill them,” said Lipsky, sounding like the voice of reason. “I hope I don’t
have
to kill them. But again, that’s up to you. Where’s the C-4?”

Midden

M
idden looked at Lipsky, trying to gauge his seriousness. Was he bluffing?

Midden had killed many people in war, and more after. So many he’d long ago lost count. Even women, when he’d had to.

But he’d never killed a child. Not knowingly.

Was this the man he had become?

Midden knew there was a point of no return. He thought he’d gone past it long ago. That he was past any salvage, let alone redemption.

But he understood now that there were additional waypoints on the path to hell that would change him further. Beyond his own recognition of even this damaged version of himself.

Would he become a man who would kill a child?

Peter

P
eter looked at the image on the phone on the desk in front of him. On the small screen, Dinah sat on the dusty floor with Miles on her lap, her arms wrapped protectively around him. Their torn blindfolds gave them a ragged, haunted air. He knew hostages were almost never set free.

He thought of other times when he’d needed to make a similar decision.

It was different with his own men. It was part of the job to send his Marines into the fight. Knowing that men could be injured or die. It was part of the job. Part of what he had signed up for, what they all had signed up for.

Peter wasn’t a lieutenant who hung back, who directed his men from the firebase. Peter went to the fight with them. His job was accomplishing the mission, yes, but his job was also protecting his men, making their jobs as safe as he could. Which didn’t include leading from behind. The risk of his own injury or death should be no less than that of his men.

And men had died at his orders. As a direct result of his orders.
Of his mistakes. That was part of his life now. Living with it. Those consequences. Those sacrifices.

Dinah and Miles had been drawn into this battle despite everything he had done to prevent it. Whether they would die as a result of his decision was still undetermined. But if he handed over the C-4, the odds were good that more than two would surely die.

So the answer was no.

He wasn’t going to give up those beige rectangles.

Lipsky must have seen the result on his face. Because as soon as Peter reached this final point of reasoning, Lipsky’s eyebrows popped up. As if the conclusion was unexpected. His X-ray eyes hadn’t been able to see as deeply as he had thought.

Or maybe Lipsky simply couldn’t imagine sacrificing anything he cared about for a larger cause.

“Huh,” said Lipsky. “You are full of surprises. Okay. So who should we kill first, Peter? The woman?” Peter didn’t answer. Lipsky kept talking, now to himself. “No, then the kid will become uncontrollable. And Boomer will have to be a babysitter. Definitely not.”

He turned to the man in the black canvas chore coat. “Midden, kill the kid.”

Midden

N
o,” said Midden.

It came out before he knew he would say it.

He said it again. “No.” With an odd sensation he couldn’t place. An internal tug. Like his organs were trying to realign themselves.

He said, “I know where he’s hidden the plastic.”

Peter

L
ipsky ground his teeth in frustration. “Why the fuck didn’t you say so?”

“I just figured it out,” said Midden. “He’s living out of his truck, so it’s got to be somewhere in that vehicle. At some point he was overseas, and probably working a checkpoint, searching cars. He knows all the best places to hide something. But I had that duty, too. And I used to have a truck like his, a ’67 Chevy, although mine was a short bed. I know that truck inside and out.”

He took Peter’s keys from the table and headed toward the door. “Give me twenty minutes.”

“You’re killing me, Midden,” Lipsky called after him.

Breathe in, Peter told himself. Breathe out. He tried to relax in the chair and live with himself for another day. He thought of Lewis, waiting outside. He closed his eyes and reached for another plan.

Lipsky’s phone rang. He took the call, walked away, and began to talk.

Peter opened his eyes and turned to Felix, still working furiously at his laptop.

“Hey, Felix.”

“They call me Cas.” The skinny kid didn’t look up. “I’m not Felix anymore. They call me Cas.”

The missing Marine was impossibly skinny. Shoulders like a coat hanger. Damaged somehow, and exploited by Lipsky.

“Your nana is worried about you, Felix. She asked me to find you. She wants you to come home. She’ll take care of you.”

At the mention of his grandmother, Felix’s head jerked up from the laptop. But he wouldn’t look at Peter. He looked at the bare brick walls, at the heavy wood ceiling timbers, at the pallets of fertilizer.

“Your nana loves you more than anything,” said Peter. “She’s afraid for you. She wants you to come home.”

Felix’s voice was loud. “There is no more home. The bank is taking her house.” Shouting now, his gaunt face contorted with pain. “The banks are taking everything.”

“Your nana is moving in with her sister,” said Peter. “There’s room for you, too, Felix.”

“I’m not Felix, I’m Cas. I’m Cas.” He rocked his body back and forth, eyes fixed and staring. The kid had his own white static, and it was worse than Peter’s. Maybe he was just off his meds. Or Lipsky gave him something to keep him off-balance.

“You can stop this now,” said Peter. “Walk away. Close up your computer and go home. Your nana loves you. She’ll forgive you. She’ll forgive anything.”

Lipsky walked over, phone call finished, the hard soles of his shoes scraping on the floor. “He doesn’t care about you, Cas.”

He stood behind Felix and put his hands on the man’s
impossibly skinny shoulders. He winked at Peter and kept talking in a low, soothing voice. “He doesn’t understand the plan, Cas. He doesn’t understand what you’re about to accomplish. You’re going down in history, Cas. You’re going to change the world.”

Peter kept pushing. “What about your nana, Felix? When this comes out it’s going to be very hard for her. What’s going to happen to her?”

Felix shook his head wildly and rocked in his chair, the veins in his forehead and neck standing out like snakes under the skin. “I’m already dead! Watch the video! I’m already dead!”

Lipsky bent so his lips were at the younger man’s ear and talked. He spoke slowly, softly, lower than Peter could hear, and all the while working his hands gently on the younger man’s shoulders, calming him, soothing him like a wild animal caught in a trap.

Peter saw Lipsky in a new light.

It wasn’t only about the money.

It was also about breaking something fragile.

And burning down the world just to warm his cold, hungry hands.

—

Lipsky rose and clapped Felix on the back. When the younger man stood, he seemed taller than Peter remembered. Maybe it was just how very thin he was. He strode without a glance past Peter to the white bags of fertilizer on their pallets, and bent to stack the fifty-pound sacks on the hand truck. He lifted one in each hand as if they weighed nothing, and worked with a focused, manic energy. Peter knew that if he tried to talk to Felix now, the younger man wouldn’t even hear him.

Lipsky watched with an odd smile on his face as Felix moved his heavy load out of the room.

“What kind of meds are you giving him?” asked Peter. “Something to really fuck him up, right?”

Lipsky’s smile widened, and Peter knew he’d guessed it. Lipsky had pushed the young Marine over the brink. But Lipsky would never admit it. “Hey, the man’s a patriot,” said Lipsky. “That’s all there is to it.”

“No, he’s zonked out of his gourd,” said Peter. “Delusional and damaged. So what’s your excuse?”

“You really should read your own manifesto,” said Lipsky. “Modern banks have wrecked the economy. They’ve grown so large they can gamble everything on a roll of the dice, and the government has no choice but to bail them out. They’re sucking money out of the middle class. They’re set up now just to profit themselves, rather than facilitate production and innovation, which is the role they’re designed to perform. Something has to change.”

“And you’re actually into this?” asked Peter. “Lipsky the revolutionary?”

Felix came in and stacked eight bags of fertilizer on the hand truck while Lipsky watched silently. After Felix walked back out, Lipsky turned to Peter.

“What I believe,” said Lipsky, “is that the social contract is broken. Government has proven itself incompetent, and our elected leaders are driven only by greed for wealth and power. Corporations are no longer loyal to their employees or their customers, just their stock price. Executives no longer do what’s best for their companies, just themselves. Enron, WorldCom, AIG, Countrywide, JPMorgan. The list goes on.” He shrugged. “The only response for a rational person is to act in his own best interest. To take what you can get.”

“Oh,” said Peter. “I see. You’re a thief. That’s why you’re working with Skinner. A prince among thieves.”

The veterans’ center door banged open and Midden came through, towing a stumbling bear of a man by one unnaturally angled arm. “I got sidetracked by this guy. He must have been watching the truck.”

Detective Frank Zolot moved in an agonized hunch, his face a furious clench of pain. His other arm hung free like a pendulum, some essential connection no longer functional. His cheap suit was rumpled and torn.

Peter thought about Lewis, parked by the loading dock, not by the veterans’ center.

Midden wasn’t even sweating and there wasn’t a mark on him. Although from the black specks on his face and the grime on his fingers, Peter knew he’d been under the truck. But Peter couldn’t imagine how Midden had broken both of the big detective’s enormous arms without any visible effort. Midden was clearly the most dangerous man in the room.

Lipsky walked over. “What the fuck? Where’d this guy come from?”

Zolot’s lip lifted in a silent snarl. Midden handed Lipsky a black automatic pistol. It looked like a Glock. “He had this. He said he was a cop.”

Lipsky took the gun. “Where’s the plastic? Did you find it?”

“I think so,” said Midden. “Give me a couple more minutes.” He dropped Zolot’s arm and the pain on the man’s face eased. Midden fixed Lipsky with a pointed stare. “Don’t kill anyone until I get back.”

Midden held the stare until Lipsky nodded. Then Midden walked out.

Lipsky turned to Zolot. “Hello, Frank.”

“Fuck you.” Zolot’s injuries had not improved the detective’s mood. Although his broken arms rendered him essentially harmless, the heat of his rage still radiated like a glowing forge.

“Who else knows about this?”

“There’s a SWAT team gearing up in a parking lot three blocks from here. They have orders to shoot you on sight.”

Lipsky grabbed Zolot’s wrist and twisted. Zolot gasped in pain.

“Who else knows, Frank?”

The big detective opened his mouth. Nothing came out but an agonized yelp.

Peter sighed. He’d wondered if Zolot could deliver the cops. If his reputation was too damaged. Now he knew. Zolot was just another man caught in Lipsky’s web.

Lipsky shook his head and released the other man’s wrist. “Nobody believes you, Frank. They never did. Shit, just look at you. You’re in a bad way, partner.”

“You’re not my partner. You were never my partner. You were only out for yourself. How much did that asshole Skinner pay you to look away? What’s the going rate to duck a murder?”

Four hundred grand, thought Peter, understanding now. In neatly banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

“Frank, we had no proof,” said Lipsky. “The DA made the call, not me. Look in the record. We didn’t have enough to indict, let alone convict.”

“He paid the DA, too, in campaign contributions. But he killed her. You know it, I know it. We could have sweated that fucker. But we didn’t. He got away with murder. And now? Now you’re going to blow something up. What’s the rate for that, you cocksucker?”

“You eat what you kill, Frank,” said Lipsky. “You never did see it. Where the power is. Where the money is. Nobody’s going to
make your fortune but you. If you want to inch along on your tiny little salary for the rest of your life, you go for it. You could have taken a risk. You could have forged ahead. But you stuck to your narrow little view. And look where it’s gotten you.”

Zolot looked at Lipsky as if he were a different species. “It’s called an oath, Sam. We swore an oath. Do you remember? To serve and protect. All the people, not just the people with money.”

“You’re a fucking dinosaur, Frank. Nobody cares about the people. Even the people don’t care about the people, they only care about themselves.” He shook his head again. “I don’t know why I bother. You didn’t get it then, you don’t get it now. And I’m tired of listening to your sermons. Good-bye, Frank.”

Lipsky raised the pistol and shot Zolot in the head.

The noise rang off the brick walls. Zolot crumpled to the dry and dusty floor, which soaked up the blood like bread under gravy. The smell of it was alive in the room.

“Jesus Christ,” said Peter.

“What?” said Lipsky, taking out a handkerchief and wiping down the weapon. His face was indifferent. “You thought I was going to let him live?”

“No,” said Peter. “But he used to be your partner.”

Lipsky looked at him, those X-ray eyes boring through him. “Partners are overrated.”

Felix returned with the hand truck to take another load of fertilizer. The stacks of bags were shrinking fast. “Hey, Cas.” Lipsky held out the pistol with his pinkie through the trigger guard. “This is for you. It’s loaded and live.”

Felix stood up the hand truck, then took the weapon, his face alive with interest. He dropped the magazine, checked the load, racked the slide to eject the live round, pushed the round into the magazine, and popped the magazine into place, all in under a count
of five. Then tucked the gun into his belt at the small of his back and bent to reload the hand truck.

Whatever was wrong with the guy, thought Peter, some parts of him were clearly still highly functional. The wrong parts.

Midden walked through the door with a black-plastic-wrapped rectangle in his hand. When he saw Zolot dead on the floor, he stopped. “I told you not to kill anyone.”

Lipsky took the package from his hand. “You don’t make those decisions, Sergeant. I do.”

Something flickered across Midden’s face and was gone just as quickly. But Peter saw it.

Lipsky must have, too. “Look, I’m sorry. The man was in pain,” he said. “And he’d seen all of us, Midden. You killed him when you brought him in here. You know that. Hell, he killed himself when he braced you outside. I put him out of his misery, and ours, too. All right?”

He didn’t wait for a response. He carried the package to the table and tore open the plastic, exposing two beige rectangles. “Only two,” he said. He turned to Midden. “This is it?”

Midden shook his head. “That’s all I found.” He glanced at Peter. “Good hiding place, too.”

“Not good enough,” said Peter.

“That’s only half,” said Lipsky. “Where’s the rest?”

“I got rid of it. And that’s the truth.”

Lipsky looked at Peter with his X-ray eyes and seemed to accept it.

“It’s enough, anyway,” he said. “Midden, thank you.” Lipsky took his phone from his pocket and hit a button. “We’ve got it. Bring them in. You need to finish the detonator.”

“Wait a minute,” said Peter. Although this was what he had
known would happen. “You said they hadn’t seen any faces. You said you wouldn’t touch them if you got the C-4.”

“I said I wouldn’t if you provided the plastic. And you didn’t. Midden had to find it. And we’re missing half our goods.”

Peter was watching Midden with one eye and saw it again. That flicker across his face, a look of disgust that came and went so quickly Peter almost missed it. Then the empty coiled stillness was back. But there was something beneath it, Peter now knew. Something submerged.

Boomer, his face a mass of bruises, came through the door, towing Dinah by an elbow. Still handcuffed, Dinah had put the circle of her arms around Miles. They still wore their ragged blindfolds.

Boomer steered them into a corner. “Sit yourselves down right there,” he said. “Don’t move, don’t talk.” Then he went to the table and peeled the plastic facing off the rectangles of C-4.

Peter said, “I’m sorry, Dinah. It’s my fault you’re here.”

“Peter?” She turned her face, trying to find the direction of his voice. She’d pulled Miles into her lap. “Peter, where are you?”

“No talking,” called Lipsky. He was on the phone again.

“I’m cuffed to a chair,” said Peter. “Keep your blindfold on. It’s going to be okay.”

“I said don’t talk.” Boomer came over and backhanded Peter across the face. “You gotta learn to do what you’re told.”

Peter tasted blood. “Fuck you,” he said. “Cut these cuffs off and hit me again. I’ll have you pissing blood for a week.”

“Please, Peter,” said Dinah, arms wrapped tight around Miles, her face shrouded by the blindfold. “Do whatever they say. They told me they’ll let us go when they have what they need. I just told them where the money is.”

Lipsky turned to the scarred man. “Boomer, get that detonator finished. Midden, go keep an eye on Cas. Help him get the bags dumped into the drums.” Midden nodded and walked out to the warehouse.