Surprise Ending

by Jeffery Deaver

  “No, you should’ve seen his eyes. He was going to kill me. I know he was.”

  “All right. I’ll get it in the works. Let’s go inside. You can get cleaned up in the bathroom. What airport?”

  “BWI.”

  They left the garage and went into the house. Reynolds pointed out the guest bathroom to Seybold, and proceeded into the kitchen, where, instead of arranging for a car to the airport and returning the rental, he poured two scotches.

  He was determined to convince the author to stay in Baltimore for a while longer and come up with another plot, or two, this time to help Reynolds bring down Jack Kelley. Thinking: the fact is, Seybold’s books really weren’t that good. But when it came to ideas on how to take down the bad guys, that man had a true gift.

  Alan Seybold certainly could use a bit of cleaning up, but now was not the time.

  As soon as he heard Reynolds walk into the kitchen, he slipped silently back into the garage and hurried out the side door.

  He ran breathlessly down Reynolds’s lengthy driveway and only slowed when he came up to the three Maryland State Police squad cars and two unmarkeds, hidden around a bend in the asphalt. Seybold slowed to a walk, catching his breath.

  He nodded to the person in charge. It was Blondie, the man who’d spotted him in the garage near the drug bust, the man who’d pursued him from the sports bar.

  And the man who was not in fact a hit man for the Federico crew, but a cop. He was State Police Internal Affairs detective Richard Kale.

  His department had received a tip that busting Andre Federico was not all Bradley Reynolds had on his agenda: his tagalong task was to skim a significant sum of the buy money at Pier 8 for himself. The anonymous tip, they suspected, came from Louis Phan, probably tired of living in the pompous detective’s shadow for the past few years.

  But tips don’t mean proof, and Kale started dogging Reynolds, including surveilling the scene of the bust from the parking garage—where he’d spotted Seybold. But he hadn’t been able to actually see the detective slip money out of the bag the buyer from the Boston gangs had brought.

  Kale had wondered how Seybold was involved and began following him. He’d checked him out and learned he was an author, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t in Federico’s pocket. He’d decided to approach him at the Fell’s Point sports bar, but then Seybold had fled. Kale had pursued—and, just to be safe, had drawn his weapon.

  Seybold’s attempt to escape through busy Baltimore traffic, following the bike accident, had been as misguided as he’d suspected—that part about suicidal. He’d leapt back to the sidewalk after nearly getting squashed by a garbage truck and dropped to his knees, begging Kale not to kill him.

  Kale had flashed a badge, calming the author, who explained how he’d been approached by Reynolds and Phan and asked to come up with an idea to trap Federico.

  Kale had thought it bizarre, no, downright weird. But Phan confirmed it.

  “You really think he’s crooked?” Seybold had asked, dumbfounded, after Kale had explained IA’s concerns about Reynolds.

  Kale had replied, “The CI inside the Federico organization said the price for the drugs was $2 million. When Federico’s son was stopped at his dad’s house, there was only $1.5 in the Lexus trunk. We can’t find the missing $500K anywhere. Raine didn’t stop en route. The money disappeared at Pier 8. Reynolds was the one who checked out the cash there. Nobody else touched it, except the buyer from Boston and Ramos, and they didn’t have it on them.

  Kale had then looked directly into Seybold’s eyes. “Look, sir. I don’t read your books. I’ll be honest about that. But I looked ’em up online. All your fans like them because the good guys win. Will you help us? It’s looking like Reynolds has gone rogue. Help us win one for the good guys.”

  At first, the author was reluctant to get involved further. But then a thought occurred to him. What a damn good twist to the story for his true-crime book: the cop who uses an author to plot the downfall of a criminal mastermind is himself crooked.

  Surprise endings don’t get any better than that.

  The plan to find out if Reynolds was crooked or not was so simple that even Maggie Daye could have come up with it. The tipster reported that Reynolds might have smuggled the money out of the warehouse wrapped in a tan raincoat of his. And that it might be hidden in Reynolds’s garage at home.

  The problem, Kale explained to Seybold, was that there was no probable cause to get a warrant to search Reynolds’s house on the basis of a tip alone. But, under the law, if somebody—like Seybold—entered with permission and noticed the raincoat there, he could swear in an affidavit that he’d seen it and a magistrate could issue paper for a full search.

  Now, standing in the driveway of Reynolds’s country house, still catching his breath, the author said to Kale, “It’s there, in the garage. The raincoat. Kind of hidden against the wall in the back. But I could see it clearly. And I’m pretty sure I could see some cash in the folds.”

  As Seybold signed the affidavit that was then emailed to the magistrate, Kale gazed at the house; he did not look entirely happy that he’d caught his prey. Seybold had written about internal affairs officers in his Steve Cameron novels, and he knew that the men and women who did the necessary but difficult job of investigating their own were usually troubled by their fellow cops’ lapses.

  A moment later Kale’s phone hummed in his pocket. He glanced at it and called to the others. “Got the go-ahead. Let’s pick him up.”

  Kale turned to Seybold. “You might want to watch your back. We’ve kept your name out of the public eye, but the Federico operation, well, it’s crippled, but there’re still some bad actors out there. And”—he nodded toward the house—“Bradley Reynolds may’ve had some buddies on the force who’re on the take. They won’t be too happy about what’s going to happen to him.”

  Seybold’s gut churned at this news. He said softly, “I’ll do that.”

  Kale paused and turned. “Some other advice, sir?”

  “Sure, what?”

  “You might want to stick to writing books in the future. Leave this sort of thing to the professionals.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Seybold whispered. And watched the IA detectives and tactical team storm Reynolds’s house and take him into custody.

  Two hours later—after a fair amount of back-watching on the way to the hotel—Alan Seybold was packing his suitcase and watching the news on his hotel room TV.

  Yet another anchorwoman—this one a redhead—was saying, “Maryland State Police detective Bradley Reynolds, an eighteen-year veteran of the force, has been charged with corruption and a number of other counts arising out of the recent arrest of suspected mob boss Andre Federico. It’s alleged that Reynolds skimmed five hundred thousand dollars of drug money during the arrest. His attorney has stated that the detective denies all charges.”

  Seybold stared at the video of Reynolds on a perp walk to booking. His perfect hair was mussed, his clothing wrinkled. His expression was grim. And bewildered.

  Seybold had finished packing and was walking to the door, rolling his suitcase behind him, when he stopped short.

  The anchorwoman was saying, “Alan Seybold, a well-known author of crime novels, aided police in coming up with a plot, you might say, to arrest Federico. Seybold also assisted in the arrest of Detective Reynolds on the corruption charges. Seybold wrote the bestselling thriller The Girl on the Ship, which, he recently announced at a writers’ conference in Baltimore, was going to be a major feature film. The studio holding the option on the book, however, reported that it lapsed months ago and there are no plans to renew it. In other news—”

  Shit. He clicked the set off.

  Who the hell had leaked the story of his working with Reynolds? Well, maybe no one would notice. This was a small, local TV station, not—

  His mobile began to ring.

  The hotel room phone too.

  I’m dead, he thought yet again.

&nb
sp; At the elevator, pushing the button repeatedly, as if that would magically speed the car to his floor, he wondered how far his savings would go in the Caribbean or South America.

  Alan Seybold stabbed the elevator button once more.

  The Stag and Hound was, at heart, phony.

  Sure, the Baltimore waterfront bar reeked of Galway and Dublin and Gaelic and the Clancy Brothers and the Pogues, but in fact the pub had started life thirty years ago as a falafel house, with the meaningless name of Al Kasimbah. The owners were two Romanian brothers. The cuisine never caught on in Fell’s Point, so the restaurant became a punk rock venue briefly, then, after seeing Riverdance (twice), the bros gutted the place and turned it Irish.

  They hadn’t intended to sell, but when one patron made an offer, they accepted instantly. For two reasons. One, the money was good. Two, you always gave Jack Kelley what he wanted.

  This afternoon, Kelley, a compact, slow-moving man of thirty-five, was sitting at the owner’s booth in the back of the Hound, which for some reason was what the locals called it. Never both names together, never Stag.

  Kelley had freckles and a lean face and a shock of blond hair. He was more Germanic than Hibernian in appearance and demeanor. He wore suits exclusively and open-collar shirts. Today he was in a navy two-piece and his shirt was shark gray. As was his habit, he dabbed at the dust on his black Oxford shoes from time to time with a cloth napkin.

  Kelley was sipping Michelob Ultra, a brew that was to him what tap water was to everyone else. He hated Guinness and Jameson and Bushmills, though Midleton—the upscale distillate—was okay if you couldn’t get a margarita or daiquiri. Which were his faves.

  The Hound was mostly empty—another testament to its inauthenticity. A righteous Irish bar in New York, Philly, or, my God, Boston, would be full of pickled drinkers waxing eloquent and long about politics and the IRA and movies and music and neighborhood gossip and anything else that tripped through their soggy minds. But not here. Just a few barflies perched on chairs or stools. Drinking. Silent.

  The way Jack Kelley liked it.

  He was reflecting on the recent events in Baltimore: the arrest of Andre Federico and his psycho associate, Angel Ramos. Another bust too: that of Detective Bradley Reynolds, late of the Organized Crime Task Force in the MSP’s Baltimore office.

  Kelley’s thoughts were accompanied by a near-giddy sensation of victory. As an orphan consistently ignored by his foster parents and bullied by the other, bigger boys in the home, Jack became addicted to TV, watching hour after hour. Later, he tried to decide if he became who he was because of the crime shows he watched or because one or both of his parents, whoever they were, had been missing some important wiring. Both, probably. But the end result was that little Jackie decided at a pretty damn young age that he was going to be the number one crime boss in this difficult, vibrant city. His city.

  He’d made important inroads, putting together a good crew and building a solid drug, money laundering, juice, and numbers network. But in the past year, a brick wall. Federico had ruthlessly expanded his power in the region, severely limiting Kelley’s opportunities. He had been losing ground to an old man who’d never been properly drunk in his life and who liked to garden. It was galling.

  Then there was Bradley Reynolds, an ambitious crusading cop who’d stop at nothing to clean up the city—since it would boost his cred on his way to city hall. Reynolds was more concerned about Federico, but had Kelley in his sights too.

  These two obstacles had to be removed for Kelley’s dream of empire to come true.

  Killing Federico was always an option, but that’d lead to an all-out war, the last thing that Kelley needed. His boys were good, their guns as wicked as those of Federico’s men, but he was outmanned. No, he needed to get Federico removed some other way. He needed him in prison.

  As for Reynolds, well, killing a cop was always a no-no, even one as pretentious and obnoxious as this particular detective. Kelley needed him behind bars too.

  Quite a problem, quite a conundrum.

  Which proved too challenging for Jack Kelley and his crew of earnest but pedestrian thugs to solve. So he turned to outside help—a friend who very likely could come up with a sharp plan to eliminate both of those problems.

  And that person was walking through the door of the Hound just now.

  “Hey, there,” Jack Kelley said to thriller writer Maggie Daye. “Lemme buy you a drink, lass.”

  Daye sat down beside Kelley, gave him a hug. Then she lifted her eyebrow and offered a smile to the waitress, across the room.

  Nikki, the server, smiled back and turned quickly from the booth where she’d been jotting on her pad, leaving a gaggle of college boys in order interruptus. They didn’t seem happy and tossed some glares Daye’s way. Her cold blue eyes turned slowly toward them, and they quickly took to busying themselves with menus they’d already selected from.

  Jack Kelley said to her, “It worked, lass. Worked like a charm.”

  Daye had always been amused by his phony Irishness. He had absolutely no brogue, and his ethnic roots had dissolved generations ago; the “lass” was the only Celtic affectation he’d adopted, and he used it only with her.

  The server brought her beverage—the White Russian she always ordered here—and Daye and Kelley touched glasses.

  “I was pleased,” Daye said, sipping and settling back into the comfortable booth.

  A year ago, the Hound had become a home away from home to her. A home away from a very silent and very lonely home. The Fell’s Point townhouse where she and Sam had lived after getting married had been such a wonderful place. Decorated by the two of them. Filled with laughter, filled with the aroma of exotic and sometimes hilariously disastrous dinners, filled with the soft whispers of making love.

  It was the place where futures had been planned. Babies and vacations and careers.

  But then, the accident. The quiet, bookish couple became, in a split second, half that. And the quiet, bookish woman was forced to begin a new life alone.

  In her grief, Maggie Daye had taken to wandering the streets and parks of the city, going anywhere to escape the spiny solitude of home. Occasionally she would stop into the Hound for a few drinks.

  Then more than occasionally and more than a few.

  One night Jack Kelley sat down beside her. “Listen to me, lass. You’re too smart to kill yourself this way. Can’t you think of something more creative?”

  The ice was broken, and Kelley and his wife and Daye had become friends. She knew what they did for a living. She didn’t care. At one point in her life she might have, but no longer. Thanks to the couple, she dialed down the alcohol and, with their encouragement, decided to devote her life to what she and Sam had so loved: books.

  She began selling her mystery novels to a New York publisher and had some modest success. Critics soundly praised her intricate, clever plots, though occasionally wondered about the excessively gruesome means of murder her villains employed.

  One day she’d read an article in the Sun about a man who had been killed in a workplace accident. The victim, who’d fallen to a horrifying death from a crane in Baltimore harbor, was the same man whose car had swerved onto the sidewalk during an impromptu drag race and struck and killed Sam. The driver’s charges had been dismissed on “technical grounds”—which Maggie Daye had learned meant that his father was a labor leader with ties to city hall.

  After reading the story, she’d walked into the Hound and sat down. Nikki brought the White Russian, and Daye had gestured Jack Kelley over to her. “You have people working the docks.” She fixed his eyes with her own.

  “Do I?”

  “On the cranes.”

  “I may, lass.”

  “Where that guy fell from.”

  “What guy?”

  There’d been a pause.

  She’d squeezed his hand and said, “I owe you.”

  “For what?” he’d said, smiling. And headed off to deal with a drunk at
the bar.

  Three weeks ago, as Daye was nursing her sweet drink and editing a manuscript, Kelley had slipped into the booth beside her. He said, with a coy smile, “I’ve got an idea for a book myself. Can you believe it? I’m hoping you can help me, lass.”

  “Of course.”

  I owe you . . .

  “What it’s about is two men who want to control a neighborhood. Think The Wire. Think Homicide.”

  “The Sopranos.”

  Kelley’s expression twisted a little. “Well, that’s Jersey. But if you want.”

  “Gangsters.”

  “Exactly. Two of them. Rivals. I want one to take out the other—and this crusading son-of-a-bitch cop too. But I don’t exactly have any plot ideas. Think you might be able to come up with something for me?”

  “Sure, Jack. Give me some more details.”

  He’d laid out the scenario, using hypothetical names of Drug Lord F, a paranoid kingpin in Chevy Chase who was determined to drive the other gang leader out of business. “Now, he owns a bar. And he’s a good-looking guy. Mr. K, we’ll call him. Bit of a criminal, but really has a heart of gold.”

  “Is he Irish?” she’d asked.

  “Maybe. I haven’t thought on it much, now, have I?” Kelley’s attempt at a brogue was hilarious. He continued. “Then there’s that fanatical cop, Detective R, who wants to close down both of them.”

  Daye had said, “Good ideas to start with. I’ll do some thinking.”

  She’d gone home and, as with her novels, used Post-it Notes on a bulletin board to come up with the structure of the plan, all the plot points, the twists, the ending. At midnight, she sat back and gazed at the tiny yellow squares.

  “Yep,” she’d said to herself and smiled. “That’ll do.”

  The next day she’d returned to the Hound and told Kelley she had some ideas. He’d inspired her, in fact.

  “Me?”

  “Yep. Asking a thriller writer to help plot something in real life. See, there’s an author appearing with me at a writers’ conference in Baltimore coming up soon. Egotistical bastard. Alan Seybold.”