The Snow Angel (34 page)

“My old man was in AA,” the girl said. “Went into a bar for a coke one night and I never saw him again.”

“Well, I'm not your old man,” Kane said. He stuffed a ten into her G-string. “Merry Christmas.”

“Thanks, sport.” The girl went for the cokes.

Pretending to watch the dancer, Kane and Bell covertly inspected the clientele. The smoke was heavy, despite the no-smoking ordinance. “You still off cigarettes?” Kane asked.

“Not if I stay in here much longer.”

“Then let's find this asshole.”

Bell touched Kane's arm. “Over there. By the men's room.”

Kane picked out Thomas Blackstone, seated by himself at a table for four, mesmerized by the dancer. “There he is, bigger than life. The dumb shit.” He lowered his voice. “Okay. I'll make like I'm going for a piss. When I'm behind him, you make like you're going to the pay phone.”

“Do it.”

Kane stood up and casually walked to the men's room, his eyes on the dancer but his peripheral vision on Blackie. He went into the john, then immediately came back out and stood in the shadows.

Bell rose and walked around the crowd in the other direction. As he moved, he pulled some change from his pocket and pretended to count it. He passed the waitress, carrying a tray of drinks. “Hey,” she called, “you owe me for the cokes.”

“We paid you, remember?” Bell pointed to the ten in her G-string.

“That wasn't for the cokes. That was a
tip.”

Bell wanted to get away from her, in a hurry. They were attracting attention. “Just leave ‘em on the table. We'll pay you when we get back.”

“No way,” she said. “Cash on delivery.” Then she laughed, giddily. “You guys are Vice, aren't you? I can smell Vice a mile off.”

Bell motioned for her to come closer. He leaned down and whispered in her ear, savagely: “You shut the fuck up!”

But she pulled back and looked Bell up and down, stupidly. “The
cops are here!”
she yelled, loud enough for the entire room to hear. She raised her voice still more:
“Ya'll watch out, now, we've got the po-lice in here!”

Blackstone looked up, alarmed. He got to his feet and started for the door.

Kane came at him from behind, a Marine all over again. He grabbed Blackstone's collar with his left hand and pulled him savagely to the ground. With his right hand, he jerked his Beretta from the shoulder rig. Then he knelt down on Blackstone's neck, pressing the pistol hard against the back of his head. “Give me an excuse!” he said through his teeth.

Several customers stood up menacingly. Bell elbowed two of them aside like rag dolls. He pulled his own Beretta. “POLICE OFFICERS!” he screamed. He waved the Beretta at the crowd. “Get the fuck out of the way!”

Kane keyed the hand radio. “Officer needs assistance, inside the Blind Pig!”

Everyone pulled back slightly but stood there watching, hostile. Then four of the low-lifes, acting individually, elbowed their way forward. Two were white and two were black. Together they formed a protective cordon. Bell realized that these were the informants.

Kane reached under his coat for his handcuffs. He knelt down on Blackstone's back and wrestled the cursing killer's hands into them. Then he looked up at the menacing crowd and made an announcement: “This is one of the
heroes
who murdered that little boy!”

A hush fell over the assembly, broken only by the sound of rapidly approaching sirens. “Give him to us,” one voice finally said. The voice belonged to a white man whose neck was covered with prison tats. Blackstone looked up, almost weeping in panic.

“Forget about a motherfucking trial,” echoed a black biker with gold teeth. He was even bigger than Bell, and thirty years younger.

Still lying face down, Blackstone twisted around to look at Bell. “You
can't do this!” he said. “I know my rights!”

“Fuck your rights!” growled the white ex-con.

With that, the first backup officers came bursting in, guns drawn. Bell held up his hand to them. Kane keyed the radio again. “All units, code four. Everything is under control.”

Then Kane leaned down to Blackstone's ear and spoke through his teeth, murderously. “You have thirty seconds to tell us where your partner is, or we give you to these people.”

“Please!” Blackstone whimpered.

“Where is Whitman, fuck-face?” Kane said.

The ex-con whimpered. “Voyager Motel, 129 and Jefferson.”

“What room?”

“Three-ten.”

Kane again pointed to the hostile crowd. “Okay. Now listen closely, you sack of shit. If you're lying, we're gonna bring you back here and turn you over to these guys. You can tell them why you executed that helpless little boy.”

“Man, I ain't lying. That's where he's staying, the Voyager Motel.” Blackstone started sobbing. “He's the one who shot the kid. I begged him not to.”

“Horseshit,” said Bell. He jerked the trembling punk to his feet. While the other cops watched, he dragged him through the hate-filled crowd.

“Hey, guys, cokes are on me,” laughed the junkie waitress.

Kane reached over and yanked his ten out of her G-string. “The little bitch ripped me off,” he announced to the crowd. “Whatever happened to honesty?”

The Blind Pig broke out in applause.

E
asterly stood uneasily before Mosely's desk, flanked by Mackenzie and Georgiades. All three were under extreme stress. The squint, Dunsmore, stood next to Mosely. The chief was livid. “What do you mean, cancel the press conference? You're the ones who asked for it.”

“Chief, circumstances have changed,” Easterly said. “It happens
sometimes.”

“Half the city's media is waiting in my conference room,” Mosely said. “We promised to name the suspects on the five o'clock news. And now we've even got one of them in custody.”

“One of them,” Easterly said. “Now we have a chance to grab the other one
—if
he doesn't know we're on to him.”

“Look outside,” Mosely said. “Look at all the TV trucks out there, waiting for live feeds. We can't call this off now.”

“We don't work for the news media,” Easterly said quietly.

Careful. You could be cutting your own throat here. But principle has to count for something, or none of this matters.

“Sir,” she continued, forcing calm into her voice, “we think we know where Whitman is staying. If we reveal any of this now, he'll flee.”

“Then he'll just turn up somewhere else,” Mosely said. “They always do, his kind. With all the national publicity, it won't be long before someone catches him for something.” He looked at his watch. “Let's hurry this thing up. It's Christmas Eve. I have plans.”

MacKenzie and Georgiades looked at each other, speechless. Easterly lost it. “Plans?! For Christ's sake, this is a police department, not the Rotary Club!”

Mosely glared. “You're out of line, Inspector.” He turned to Lt. Dunsmore. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

This was Dunsmore's big moment. “Sir, I have a plan to orchestrate the effect of the story to our advantage. I think it will maximize our favorable exposure.”

Mosely nodded. “Let's hear it.”

“We'll reveal the details incrementally. For now we go out with a story saying simply that we've cracked the case, and we identify the suspects. Then, later in the evening, in time for the 11 o'clock news and the
Daily Times
final edition, we reveal that one of them has been arrested—or, if we get lucky by then, both of them. That way we keep the story dynamic all night.”

The three command officers looked at each other in disbelief. Easterly felt her stomach churn.
Keep the story dynamic.

Dunsmore, oblivious, smiled and continued. “This being Christmas Eve, people will be home tonight, many of them up late with the TV on. This story will play well for Christmas.”

“Chief…” Easterly started to interrupt. But Mosely raised his hand
to let Dunsmore continue.

“Sir,” the squint went on, “I'd further suggest that you alert Mr. Demarest, in case the FBI would like to hold their own press conference later this evening. That way you won't have to interrupt your plans.

“The TV people can link it with footage from this earlier press conference. Then both you and Mr. Demarest will be visible and can share in the credit. Meantime, I'll stay around to deal with any late-breaking events. If need be, I can go on camera as your spokeman.”

“I've heard enough of this shit!” Nick Georgiades burst out.

“So have I!” echoed Angus MacKenzie.

Mosely glared at them. “This is insubordination! I won't stand for it!”

“And we won't stand for you and that FBI squint fucking up this case any more than you already have!” Georgiades shouted back. “What if this asshole kills some other kid after you've scared him off?”

MacKenzie stepped forward. “We have a chance to arrest a coldblooded child killer,” he said. “If he escapes because of you, we'll conduct our own press conference.”

“Whitman claims he's going to shoot it out with automatic weapons,” Easterly added. “Once he finds out we're on to him, we lose the advantage of surprise. He just might kill some cops. How will you explain that to the troops or will you foist it off on someone else?”

There was dead silence in the room. Enraged but cornered, Mosely looked around at the three command officers.

Then Easterly thought of the photographs in her safe. She felt a surge of hatred. She stared directly into Mosely's eyes. “Chief,” she said quietly but viciously, “why don't you just go on home—
or wherever it is you go when you leave this building?”

Mosely instantly understood her reference to his sexual wanderings. She held his eyes. He looked away in fear.

Easterly felt a surge of power.
Got you, you pompous prick!
She immediately hated herself for sinking to this level. But she didn't pull back. She owed it to Darryl Childress, and to her cops, to neutralize this dangerous bastard. She stood still, awaiting the chief's response.

Mosely was perspiring, groping for words. “I am
still
the chief of police,” he said weakly.

“And nobody will be the wiser, if you let us handle this,” Easterly said. “None of it will leave this room.”

She knew that no one else in the room knew what they were talking about. She pointed at the baffled Dunsmore. “I think the lieutenant here should just go on home, spend a nice Christmas Eve with his family. If we arrest Whitman,
I'm
perfectly capable of dealing with the press.”

After another long silence, Mosely said, “All right. But I'll be back here the day after tomorrow, and I
will
be in charge of this police department.”

Dunsmore did not understand what had just happened. “Sir, what do I say to the reporters?”

Easterly did not let Mosely answer. “That you made a mistake, that we had the wrong guys. I don't care what you tell them. Just don't say
anything
that'll make Frederick Whitman decide it's time to get in the wind.”

Dunsmore looked over at Mosely. The chief nodded reluctant agreement. Mosely was crushed. The perplexed Dunsmore headed for the door.

MacKenzie and Georgiades were as bewildered as Dunsmore. But they also were profoundly relieved. Afterward, they did not ask Easterly about it. A smart cop knows when not to be an investigator.

D
arkness was falling fast, along with the temperature. Kane and Bell sat watching the Voyager Motel from a panel truck that had been disguised as a UPS delivery vehicle. Kane was behind the wheel. He let the motor idle to run the heater.

The Voyager was a South End hot-sheet parlor. The ratty building was decorated with a single string of Christmas lights above the office door. Three of the bulbs were burned out.

Easterly had sent the exhausted MacKenzie and Georgiades home, then had assumed personal command of this operation. Homicide detectives had shown Whitman's mug shot to the motel manager, and the guy had made a positive ID.

Whitman, the manager told the police, was registered as a “Gregory Smith.” The license number on the registration form came back to a stolen Honda. The car was in the lot, but Whitman was away from his
room.

Easterly replaced the manager with an undercover CCB officer. Now she herself waited with Stan Jablonski and a Homicide team inside room 310, monitoring Tac Four.

Bell and Kane had plenty of company out on the street. Crime Suppression had deployed several plainclothes units in a tight but invisible perimeter. An aero unit was orbiting a much wider area to avoid attracting attention—but available to swoop in at a moment's notice.

Kane and Bell both wore bulletproof vests under their winter coats. Neither man had a long gun; they would leave the heavy artillery to the Crime Suppression specialists. But they did have a cheap bottle of wine in a paper sack.

The wine was a prop, part of the game plan: if anyone spotted Whitman approaching on foot, Kane and Bell would get out of the van and pretend to be winos. Then they would stagger up innocently and try to take him on the street. That would lessen the chance of gunfire penetrating the motel.

Now, in the van, Kane leaned back against the head rest. “That wine smells like shit,” he said. “You ever drink anything that putrid?”

“I don't remember.”

“I know I have.”

“Lucky you survived.”

They sat in silence for several minutes. Then Bell said, “I hear a rumor Vito Vitale's circling the drain.”

“That old bastard'll live forever,” Kane said. “He's indestructible.” He looked over at Bell. “What's this I hear about a truce between the Crips and the Bloods?”