Puppets

by Daniel Hecht

  "You mean, did it involve bondage, confinement, that stuff? I don't know." Mo made a note to look for those details.

  Rebecca was thinking furiously. "Could our junkyard be a place from his past? Maybe he was taken to a dump or junkyard and tormented there?"

  Mo shrugged, made another note.

  "Also, what about the physical appearance of the abusive fathers?"

  "Right—are they by any chance blond, blue-eyed? Don't know." Mo jotted the question. Rebecca was a hot ticket, no question.

  Rebecca went on for a while, thinking out loud. She had the mind of a sleuth, thinking of angles, playing them out in her head.

  But Mo found himself shifting gears. At this point Ty seemed out of the question, Flannery was looking too good. But how could you catch a guy like Flannery? Positioned at the top of the law-enforcement food chain, cultivating relationships everywhere, Flannery had eyes and ears in every department, every county office. Good connections throughout the New York metropolitan area. Since he was considered a guy who was going places, people liked doing him favors in expectation of some future reward, and outside the DA's office itself Flannery was well liked. The arrangement made it hard to poke into his life without someone noticing and reporting back to him. Gus: For all his uncanny talents, there were basic things he couldn't know, facts that weren't recorded in some file or computer somewhere.

  Such as where Flannery went at night after work.

  That's where some old-fashioned legwork would do the trick, Mo thought. He looked at Rebecca as she wrote something down and decided that for now he'd avoid mentioning the idea to her.

  As Mo had expected, the junkyard idea pooped out. By midday Thursday, St. Pierre and the others had reported in. No employees had recognized the photos of Parker or Radcliff. As far as physical evidence went, dumps were messy places, and short of finding eyelets set into some wall in a star-shaped pattern, it was impossible to tell whether any of the sites had been used as training grounds for killer puppets.

  Disappointing, but expected. Long shot. Mo had plenty of other things to do. At four o'clock, he called Flannery on his personal cell phone with the excuse of wanting to report in. He got the DA on the line briefly, related a few details about Radcliff. As soon as he hung up, he left the barracks, got into his car, drove downtown. He parked in a spot with a good view of the county building parking lot and the entrance. At four-thirty, county employees flooded the exit, swarming toward their cars. Mo scanned the crowd with binoculars, watching for Flannery's unmistakable bald dome above the other heads. No sign of him. But that was okay, too: As the cars in the lot thinned out, he spotted the DA's silver-gray BMW. It had been easy to get the DA's registration information from the DMV earlier.

  Five-thirty and the BMW was still there in an increasingly empty parking lot. Mo began to feel exposed, sitting here on the street. He started the car, pulled into traffic, took one turn around the block, then another, wondering if maybe Flannery just left the Beemer there for show and used other transportation when he went to his lab or wherever.

  But on the third circuit, he came along Martin Luther King Drive to see the big man leaving the building, attended by a couple of suits. The three of them paused on the sidewalk to discuss something. Flannery gave orders, and then they went separate ways. Flannery went on alone, briefcase in hand, the picture of a hurried, harried guy: long strides, tie loosened and jacket unbuttoned, scowling as he went through his keys.

  Then Flannery dipped into the BMW, started up, left the lot. Mo held back to let some other cars get in between, then followed the silver car through the city.

  For a while Flannery drove through the business district on Mamaroneck, then he pulled over. Mo shrank down in his seat as he drove past, then watched in the rearview as Flannery got out, crossed the sidewalk, and went into a hardware store.

  Mo drove up another couple of blocks, pulled a U, drove past the store again. Two blocks farther down, he turned again and pulled over. After a few minutes, Flannery came out with a paper bag that he tossed into the passenger seat before getting in again. Mo experienced a sudden hankering for the contents of that bag. Light-bulbs? Or supplies for his puppet-making hobby?

  The BMW pulled out and after a decent interval Mo followed. Flannery was a skillful driver, running just at the speed limit when traffic allowed, his turn signals coming on just before his turns. If it came to Flannery taking evasive maneuvers, Mo knew his Chevy Lumina would never keep up with the agile BMW. But Flannery seemed oblivious—wherever he was going, he wasn't worried about being followed. A turn, another, then onto a residential street. Mo followed for another couple of blocks before realizing with a shock that this was his own neighborhood. And then the DA turned onto the block where Carla's mom's house was.

  Mo paused at the end of the tree-shaded block. Six o'clock,

  sun still well above the horizon, nice neighborhood, a few kids on the lawns. Flannery pulled his BMW into Mo's driveway. He got out, stood looking around the yard for a moment, then sat back against the hood and squinted up at the empty windows of the big house.

  Okay, Mo was thinking. Let's see what you've got in mind. He pulled up to the curb in front of the house and got out.

  "What a surprise," Mo said.

  "Nice place you've got here," Flannery said. "Guy almost has to wonder how you can afford a place like this on a detective's salary."

  "Looking for something else to charge me with?"

  Flannery just frowned at him. "Listen, you got anything cold to drink? It's hot out here."

  "Sorry. Nothing. If I'd known I was having visitors, I'd have picked something up."

  Flannery took a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket, dabbed his bald head. "Okay, good, we got the pleasantries out of the way. So let's get to business. Why I'm here."

  Mo approached the BMW. He could see the bag on the seat, Ace Hardware logo, the bulge that could be just about anything. Then the thought occurred to him: Flannery's wrists. If Rebecca was right, Geppetto might also have scarring on his wrists, bondage might have been part of Flannery's abuse as a child. Thinking back, Mo realized he'd never seen him without his suit jacket on, except on his treadmill or in the racquetball court. And both those times he'd been wearing wide, sweat-absorbent terry wristbands. But Flannery had already put away the handkerchief, put his hands in his pockets so the jacket sleeve covered his wrists.

  "I'm here," Flannery went on, "because I wanted a very private conversation with you. Because I need you to do something, you have a visceral, instinctive resistance to doing."

  "Which is?"

  "To trust me." Flannery's eyes were a little wry but very alert as he said it. "To try to help me out."

  "Right. Good. Of course."

  A little flash of anger, quickly quelled. "Here's the deal. You and I both know what the rules are—what we can and cannot do within the legal constraints of our positions. But the difference between us is, you don't give much of a shit about working within those constraints. You have a well-deserved rep as an independent thinker, a free operative. And at your level, you can just about get away with it. Me, it's a different story. Oh, I can throw my weight around, I can trade favors. But the spotlight's always on me. And I have a career here, I can't jeopardize it with"—Flannery groped for the right euphemism—"marginally acceptable procedure."

  "You want me to do something illegal? When you're trying to fuck me over? Are you kidding?"

  "Not illegal, just problematical for me. It has to do with your friend and mine, Erik Biedermann."

  "So go for him. You don't need me."

  "Sure I do. If Biedermann has any personal connection to this puppet business, it's a big problem. Because he's a highly placed federal agent. Because he has connections with covert intelligence-community operations. Because accusing him, rightly or wrongly, can create big problems for the person doing it."

  Mo was thinking, Tell me about it. He wanted desperately to see what was in the bag. Flannery's wrists,
too. But the DA was still wearing his suit jacket, and now he crossed his arms so that his wrists were out of view. His biceps bulged the fabric of the suit. Definitely one big, fit guy.

  Flannery just watched him. Despite his sharp eyes, the DA looked more tired and harried than Mo could remember seeing him.

  "Put yourself in my shoes, okay? I'm willing to go after Biedermann. Absolutely. I told you, it's a golden opportunity. But I can't get noticed doing it, I can't have anyone in my investigative unit get noticed, looking suspicious of him, can I? Not until I know I've got something more to justify my suspicions. I can't even explain to any of my own staff what I want or why, a couple of them are former FBI, they'll take it the wrong way. I've got something working in Washington to look at his background more closely, but that's very subtle and it'll take a while. And in the meantime there's somebody killing people in my town. So I need to get things moving right away."

  "Which is where I come in."

  "You're the perfect guy! Dammit, I wouldn't be telling you this if I didn't think you had the smarts and the freedom of movement to do this and, frankly, the fundamental honesty to see the necessity of it. You won't make problems for me ifit turns out to be wrong, because you're not that kind of guy, it's not worth your time to play those games."

  Flannery was turning on the charm, staring straight at Mo, looking absolutely the honest-but-desperate guy asking for a reasonable favor.

  "Also so you don't take any heat if Biedermann notices and gets offended. But you can still take major credit if you're right."

  Flannery looked pleased that Mo had understood. "Sure, taking credit is an issue," he admitted easily. "Hey, Mo, look, it's no secret I'm thinking of bigger and better things. Are you? Look at yourself—we both know this kind of thing isn't your game. You're no climber. You wouldn't want what comes with this, you wouldn't know what to do with the opportunities this presents. But me—I'm hungry for this, I'm in position for the next step. Whether this means blowing the lid off an old government secret or maybe nailing a prolific killer who turns out to be employed by one or more federal agencies, either way, it's a news story of national importance. A springboard. A launchpad. And PR aside, the fact is I've given you a potentially big lead here. So if and when we nail this bastard, it was my operation. So I thought I'd offer you a little carrot-and-stick thing here."

  "What's the carrot?"

  "Well, let's see. The stick is the grief I can give you. But figuring out the carrot for a guy like you, that's hard. So in this case I guess the carrot is the simple absence of grief. Standard Pavlovian conditioning." Flannery gave him a conspiratorial wink as if they both thought that was funny.

  Conditioning: Mo felt ice in his spine. But he just blew out his cheeks and looked away with a thoughtful frown. "What did you have in mind?"

  Flannery unfolded his arms, pulled back his left jacket sleeve to check his watch. The move goosed Mo's adrenaline, the chance of a peek at the wrists. But the DA wore a rugged, outdoorsy watch with the wide "sports" band. Just part of the athletic image he liked to project, or a way to conceal his wrist? Mo hoped Flannery hadn't noticed his quickened interest.

  "It's simple," Flannery went on. "And it's not illegal, but it does require some time. I want you to figure out where Biedermann goes after work. What he does with his free time. You do the legwork here, I'll take care of the Washington connection, keep that ball rolling. We'll make a good team."

  "You mean, like what—tail him?"

  "Exactly! If he's got extracurricular activities, I'd like to know about them. Where he goes. When. With whom."

  Mo was thinking, Is this ironic or what?

  Flannery went on, not at all cutesy conspiratorial now: "You know—kind of like what you were doing today. When you were tailing me." Mo's expression must have shown his surprise, because the deadly nasty look on Flannery's face showed a hint of satisfaction.

  47

  FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Mo left the barracks and headed out to the baking parking lot. A lousy week. Slogging around junkyards, really severing it with Carla, fighting with Rebecca. The shadow of Geppetto. The fun meetings with Flannery. Maybe the worst thing was that Flannery was now aware that Mo was suspicious of him. Mo had denied tailing him, said he'd just been driving home, but the DA looked anything but convinced. Just before he'd driven away, he'd told Mo, "The clock is ticking, Detective. I don't know what you're doing, exactly. But you play ball with me or I fuck over your life so it stays fucked, so help me."

  The dump initiative had fallen flat but for one last gasp, Rebecca's suggestion that the junkyard might be a relic from Geppetto's past, the site of his own childhood torment. Dumps and junkyards eventually closed up, got covered over, abandoned. In fact, with the advent of stricter controls on waste disposal, there had been a period in the seventies and eighties when large numbers of old dumps were shut down and new landfills built to more hygienic standards. So Mo had asked St. Pierre to call the county land records offices. He found that, yes, they retained older maps, and, yes, the maps would show most disposal sites active from, say, 1945 to 1970. St. Pierre hadn't made it back with the materials by the time Mo left, but Mo planned to give the matter some time over the weekend. It was almost certainly a dead end, one he'd pursue only because his bulldog instincts demanded exhausting a line of inquiry before abandoning it.

  That and the continued resonance of Mudda Raymon's "vision."

  He had to look into it over the weekend, because next week was shit-hitting-the-fan week. On Monday, he'd have meetings with the union rep and attorney, and then on Tuesday the grand jury hearing. And after that, who knew? The relatives of Big Willie were waiting to hear the results of the grand jury hearing and would decide whether or not to file a civil suit. And in the background, always: Geppetto, no doubt working overtime to reprogram Dennis Radcliff. If it was Flannery, he would have to be feeling some pressure, and since he'd caught Mo following him, he'd be seriously considering countermeasures. Mo wasn't kidding himself anymore about who his targets would be.

  There'd been another suggestive development on Flannery. A piece of chuckle gossip had been going around the uniform side of the barracks this morning when Mo got to work. A young trooper named Galliston had pulled over a speeding BMW on Friday evening, and when he got to the window, who should it be but Westchester district attorney Flannery. A tough moment for any rookie, but he dutifully wrote out a ticket. So Mo made a point of dropping casually by Galliston's desk. Heard you pulled over the DA, Jesus, doing eighty in a fifty-five zone. This was northbound on 684? Wonder where he was going—hurrying home for a hot date? Galliston didn't know, but it wasn't home, because Flannery's legal address was an apartment only five blocks from the county building in downtown, and it probably wasn't a hot date because everybody knew his pied-a-terre was an apartment he kept in Manhattan, straight south. Galliston said he'd made the stop only about ten minutes after Flannery had left Mo's house.

  Everybody got a laugh out of it but Mo. He was thinking that having to maintain a day job would put a crimp in your private time with your puppets, especially during the workweek. Especially now, when you were maybe beginning to feel things unraveling. If you were in a hurry to get back to your lab in northern Westchester, you might slip up and get caught speeding.

  Thinking about it, Mo had crossed the parking lot and pulled out his keys before he noticed the big black car idling next to his Chevy. He could barely make out the interior through the tinted glass, but it seemed there were more heads in there this time. When the window slid down, it was Erik Biedermann's face that emerged.

  "Hey, buddy," Biedermann said amiably. "Hop in. Enjoy some government air-conditioning. Cool your heels."

  The heat was rising from the asphalt in waves, oven-dry air that singed the nostrils. Biedermann moved over and Mo got inside, and, yeah, it was cool and dark. Zelek was also there in back, and this time there were two guys in the front seat.

  "What're we feeding today?" Mo asked. "The hyenas?"


  Zelek didn't think that was funny. In fact, his alien face looked downright sour, the mouth a small wound at the bottom of the triangle. The car pulled out, the locks snicked. Nobody said anything until they were on the Cross Westchester Expressway.

  "Mo," Biedermann said, "you want to do me a favor and take off your jacket?"

  "Not particularly."

  Zelek looked at him, ice in the tilted eyes. "Take it off or we'll take it off for you."

  "Go ahead," Mo told him.

  Biedermann's big shoulders slumped and he looked exasperated. Then without warning he pitched a vicious left hook that smashed Mo's cheek hard and drove his head against the side window. It almost knocked him out. Before he could recover, Biedermann had swung a leg over and was straddling him, pinning his arms with his hands. Zelek began feeling in his pockets, around his waist, the small of his back, the clever fingers searching expertly. He pulled Mo's Glock and pocketed it, then looked through Mo's briefcase. It took only a moment. When he was done, Biedermann got off. The guys in front never looked back.

  "Why d'you always have to be a dickhead, Ford?" Biedermann was puffing from anger as much as from exertion. "I mean, here I thought you and I had established, you know, a fucking rapport, a little camaraderie. But, no. Why can't anything be easy with you? Why can't you get into the team spirit here? We need to talk, you've been getting very crafty recently, so it's in our interest to see that you're not carrying a recording device. But you can't just cooperate, can you? Prick. What, you think we're kidding around here? Is that what you think?"

  "Calm down," Zelek ordered.

  Mo put up a hand to probe his cheek. Biedermann's fist had hit like a plank of wood. No teeth seemed to be loose, but the jaw was already swelling and could easily be broken. "What're we doing?" he asked finally. "What's the agenda today?" Talking hurt.

  Zelek took the lead: "I thought, I really did, that we had an understanding. That you would honor your word to me. But you and the psychologist continue to pursue avenues that jeopardize the integrity of our mission."