The Winner (55 page)

He blew on his cold fingers and stuffed them in his pockets. His injured shoulder ached. He was just about to leave when the hand touched his neck.

“I’m sorry.”

As he turned his head, his spirits soared with such swiftness that he felt dizzy. But he couldn’t help smiling. He needed desperately to smile.

“Sorry for what?”

He watched as LuAnn settled in beside him, slipping her arm through his. She didn’t answer right away. After staring off for a minute and then taking a heavy breath, she turned to him, stroked his hand with hers.

“I had some misgivings.”

“About me?”

“I shouldn’t have. After all you’ve done, I shouldn’t have any doubts left.”

He looked at her kindly. “Sure you should. Everybody has doubts. After the last ten years, you should have more than most.” He patted her hand, looked into her eyes, noted their moist edges, and then said, “But you’re here now. You came. So it must be okay, right? I passed the test?”

She simply nodded her head, unable to speak.

“I vote for finding a warm place where I can fill you in on developments and we can discuss our plan of attack. Sound good?”

“I’m all yours.” Her grip tightened on his hand as though she would never let go. And right now, that was just fine with him.

They ditched the Honda, which was acting up, and rented a sedan. Riggs was getting tired of hot-wiring the car anyway.

They drove to the outskirts of western Fairfax County and stopped for lunch at a nearly empty restaurant. On the drive out Riggs filled her in on the meeting at the Hoover Building. They walked past the bar area and sat at a table in the corner. LuAnn absently watched the bartender tinker with the TV to better the reception of a daytime soap he was watching. He slouched against the bar and pried between his teeth with a swizzle stick as he watched the small screen. It would be wonderful, she thought, to be that relaxed, that laid back.

They ordered their food and then Riggs pulled out the newspaper. He didn’t say a word until LuAnn had read the entire story.

“Good Lord.”

“Donovan should have listened to you.”

“You think Jackson killed him?”

Riggs nodded grimly. “Probably set him up. Had Reynolds call him, say she was gonna spill her guts. Jackson is there and pops them both with the result that Donovan gets blamed for it all.”

LuAnn let her head rest in her hands.

Riggs gently touched her head. “Hey, LuAnn, you tried to warn the guy. There was nothing else you could do.”

“I could have said no to Jackson ten years ago. Then none of this would’ve happened.”

“Yeah, but I bet if you had, he would’ve done you right then and there.”

LuAnn wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “So now I’ve got this great deal with the FBI you negotiated for me, and in order to finalize it all we need to do is drop a net over Lucifer.” She sipped on her coffee. “Would you care to tell me how we’re going to do that?”

Riggs put away the paper. “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought as you might have guessed. The problem is we can’t be too simplistic or too complicated. Either way, he’ll smell a trap.”

“I don’t think he’ll take another meeting with me.”

“No, I wasn’t going to suggest that. He wouldn’t show, but he’d send somebody to kill you. That’s way too dangerous.”

“Didn’t you know, I like danger, Matthew. If I wasn’t constantly smothered in the stuff, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. Okay, no meeting, what else?”

“Like I said before, if we can find out who he really is, track him down, then we might be in business.” Riggs paused as their food came. After the waitress left he picked up his sandwich and started talking in between bites. “You don’t remember anything about the guy? I mean anything that could start us in the right direction to finding out who he really is?”

“He was always disguised.”

“The financial documents he sent you?”

“They were from a firm in Switzerland. I’ve got some back at the house, which I guess I can’t get to. Even with our deal?” She raised an eyebrow.

“I wouldn’t advise that, LuAnn. The Feds run across you now, they might forget all about out little deal.”

“I’ve got some other documents at my bank in New York.”

“Still too risky.”

“I could write the firm in Switzerland, but I don’t think they’re going to know anything. And if they do, I don’t think they’re going to talk. I mean, that’s why people bank in Switzerland, right?”

“Okay, okay. Anything else? There’s gotta be something you remember about the guy. The way he dressed, smelled, talked, walked. Any particular interests? How about Charlie? Would he have any ideas?”

LuAnn hesitated. “We could ask him,” she said, wiping her hands on her napkin, “but I wouldn’t bet on it. Charlie told me he’d never even met Jackson face-to-face. It was always over the phone.”

Riggs slumped back and touched his injured arm.

“I just don’t see any way to get to him, Matthew.”

“There is a way, LuAnn. In fact I had already concluded it was the only way. I was just going through the motions with all those questions.”

“How?”

“You have a phone number where you can reach him?”

“Yes. So?”

“We set up a meeting.”

“But you just said—”

“The meeting will be with me, not you.”

LuAnn half stood up in her anger. “No way, Matthew, there is no way in hell I’m going to let you near that guy. Look what he did to you.” She pointed at his arm. “The next time will be worse. A lot worse.”

“It would’ve been a lot worse if you hadn’t messed up his aim.” He smiled tenderly at her. “Look, I’ll call him. I tell him that you’re leaving the country and all these problems behind. You know Donovan is dead, so Jackson doesn’t have that issue anymore. Everybody’s home free.” LuAnn was vigorously shaking her head as she sat back down.

“Then I’ll tell him,” Riggs continued, “that I’m not such a happy camper. I’ve got it all figured out: I’m a little tired of construction work, and I want my payoff.”

“No, Matthew, no!”

“Jackson figures I’m a criminal anyway. Trying to extort him wouldn’t seem out of line at all. I’ll tell him I bugged your bedroom, that I’ve got a recording of a conversation he had with you, that night at your house, where you both talked a lot about things.”

“Are you nuts?”

“I want money. Lots of it. Then he gets the tape.”

“He will kill you.”

Now Riggs’s face darkened. “He’ll do that anyway. I don’t like sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’d rather go on the offensive. Make him sweat for a change. And I may not be the killing machine he is, but I’m no slouch either. I’m a veteran FBI agent. I’ve killed before, in the line of duty, and if you think I’d hesitate one second before blowing his brains out, then you really don’t know me.”

Riggs looked down for a moment, trying to make himself calm down. His plan was risky, but what plan wouldn’t be? When he looked back up at LuAnn, he was about to say something else but the look on her face froze the words in his mouth.

“LuAnn?”

“Oh, no!” Her voice was filled with panic.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” Riggs grabbed her shoulder, which was quivering. She didn’t answer him. She was looking at something over his shoulder. He whirled around, expecting to see Jackson coming for them, foot-long knives in either hand. He scanned the nearly empty restaurant and then his eyes settled on the TV where a special news report was being broadcast.

A woman’s face spread across the screen. Two hours ago, Alicia Crane, prominent Washingtonian, had been found dead in her home by her housekeeper. The evidence collected so far suggested that she had been murdered. Riggs’s eyes widened as he listened to the broadcaster mention that Thomas Donovan, prime suspect in the Roberta Reynolds murder, apparently had been dating Alicia Crane.

LuAnn could not pull her eyes away from that face. She had seen those features, those eyes staring at her from the front porch of the cottage. Jackson’s eyes bored into her.

His real face.

She had shuddered when she had actually seen it, or realized what she was seeing. She had hoped to never lay eyes on those features again. Now she was staring at them. They were planted on the TV.

When Riggs looked back at her, she raised a shaky finger toward the screen. “That’s Jackson,” she said, her voice breaking. “Dressed up like a woman.”

Riggs looked back at the screen. That couldn’t be Jackson, he thought. He turned back to LuAnn. “How do you know? You said he was always in disguise.”

LuAnn could barely take her eyes away from the face on the screen. “At the cottage, when he and I went through the window. We fought and his face, plastic, rubber, whatever, came off. I saw his real face. That face.” She pointed to the screen.

Riggs’s first thought was the correct one.
Family?
God, could it be? The connection to Donovan couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? He raced to the phone.

“Sorry I lost your boys, George. Hope that didn’t cost you any brownie points with the top brass.”

“Where the hell are you?” Masters demanded.

“Just listen.” Riggs recounted the news story he had just heard.

“You think he’s related to Alicia Crane?” Masters asked, the excitement echoing in his voice, his anger at Riggs completely gone, for now.

“Could be. Ages are about right. Older or younger brother maybe, I don’t know.”

“Thank God for strong genes.”

“What’s your game plan?”

“We check her family. Shouldn’t be too hard to do. Her father was a U.S. senator for years. Very prominent lineage. If she has brothers, cousins, whatever, we hit ’em fast. Bring them in for questioning. Hell, it can’t hurt.”

“I don’t think he’s going to be waiting for you to knock on the front door.”

“They never do, do they?”

“If he is around, be careful, George.”

“Yeah. If you’re right about all this—”

Riggs finished for him: “The guy just killed his own sister. I’d hate to see what he’d do to a nonfamily member.”

Riggs hung up. For the very first time he actually felt hopeful. He was under no delusions that Jackson would be around for the FBI to take into custody. He would be flushed out, cut off from his home base. He’d be pissed, full of revenge. Well, let him be. He’d have to cut Riggs’s heart out before he’d get to LuAnn. And they wouldn’t be sitting targets. Now was the time to keep on the move.

Ten minutes later they were in the car heading for points unknown.

J
ackson boarded the Delta shuttle for New York. He needed additional supplies and he was going to pick up Roger. He couldn’t count on him to travel by himself and get to where he was supposed to be. Then they would head back south. During the short flight Jackson checked in with the man following Charlie and Lisa. They had made a rest stop. Charlie had talked on the phone. No doubt checking in with LuAnn. They had gone on and were now close to reentering Virginia on the southern side. It was all working out very well. An hour later, Jackson was in a cab threading its way through Manhattan toward his apartment.

Horace Parker looked around with intense curiosity. A doorman for over fifty years at a building where average apartments covered four thousand square feet and went for five million, and the penthouse that covered triple that space and went for twenty mil, he had never seen anything like this before. He watched as the small army of men in FBI windbreakers swept through the lobby and into the private elevator that went only to the penthouse. They looked deadly serious and had the weaponry to prove it.

He went back outside and looked up and down the street. A cab pulled up and out stepped Jackson. Parker immediately went over to him. The doorman had known him for most of his life. Years ago he had skipped pennies in the lobby’s massive fountain with Jackson and his younger brother, Roger. To earn extra money he had baby-sat them and taken them to Central Park on the weekends; he had bought them their first beers when they were barely into puberty. Finally, he had watched them grow up and then leave the nest. The Cranes, he had heard, had fallen on hard times, and they had left New York. Peter Crane, though, had come back and bought the penthouse. Apparently, he had done awfully well for himself.

“Good evening, Horace,” Jackson said cordially.

“Evening, Mr. Crane,” Parker said and tipped his cap.

Jackson started past him.

“Mr. Crane, sir?”

Jackson turned to him. “What is it? I’m in a bit of a hurry, Horace.”

Parker looked upward. “There’s some men come to the building, Mr. Crane. They went right up to your apartment. A bunch of them. FBI. Guns and everything, never seen nothing like it. They’re up there right now. I think they’re waiting for you to get home, sir.”

Jackson’s reply was calm and immediate. “Thank you for the information, Horace. Simply a misunderstanding.”

Jackson put out his hand, which Parker took. Jackson immediately turned and walked away from the apartment building. When Parker opened his hand, there was a wad of hundred-dollar bills there. He looked around discreetly before stuffing the cash in his pocket and taking up his position by the door once more.

From the shadows of an alley across the street, Jackson turned and looked up at his apartment building. His eyes kept going up and up until they came to rest upon the windows of the penthouse. His penthouse. He could see the silhouettes move slowly across the windows, and his lips started to tremble at this outrageous invasion of his home. The possibility that they could have traced him to his personal residence had not occurred to him. How in the hell? He couldn’t worry about it now, though. He went down the cross street and made a phone call. Twenty minutes later a limousine picked him up. He called his brother and told him to leave his apartment immediately—not even bothering to pack a bag—and meet Jackson in front of the St. James Theater. Jackson wasn’t sure how the police had found out his identity, but he couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t wind up at Roger Crane’s apartment at any minute. Then he made a quick stop to gather together some necessary supplies from another smaller apartment he kept under a phony name. Under the ownership of one of his myriad corporate shells he maintained a private jet and full-time crew at La Guardia. He called ahead so that the pilot on duty would be able to file his flight plan as quickly as possible. Jackson did not intend to spend time twiddling his thumbs in the waiting area. The limo would take them right to the plane. That accomplished, he collected his brother from in front of the theater.