Secret of the Seventh Sons

by Cooper, Glenn

  He felt compelled to turn on the TV. In a span of five minutes three of the news stories were about him.

  An insurance executive had been killed on a Las Vegas golf course by a sniper.

  Will Piper, the FBI agent in charge of the Doomsday investigation, remained a fugitive from justice.

  In local news, a diner at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant was shot in the head through a window by an unknown assailant still at large.

  He started sobbing again at the sight of Kerry’s body, barely filling out a medical examiner’s bag.

  He knew he couldn’t let Frazier have him. The chiseled man with dead eyes petrified him. He’d always been scared of the watchers, and that was before he knew they were cold-blooded killers.

  He decided only one person could help him.

  He needed a pay phone.

  It was a task that almost defeated him because twenty-first century Beverly Hills was bereft of public phones and he was on foot. The hotel probably had one but he needed to find a place that wouldn’t lead them right to his door.

  He walked for the better part of an hour, getting sweaty, until he finally found one in a sandwich shop on North Beverly. It was in between breakfast and lunch and the place was not crowded. He felt like he was being watched by the few patrons, but it was imaginary. He melted into the drab hall near the restrooms and the back door. He’d changed a twenty back at the hotel, so armed with a pocketful of quarters, he rang the first of his numbers and got voice mail. He hung up without leaving a message.

  Then the second—voice mail again.

  Finally the last number. He held his breath.

  A woman answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

  He hesitated before he spoke. “Is this Laura Piper?” Mark asked.

  “Yes. Who’s this?” Her apprehension was palpable.

  “My name is Mark Shackleton. I’m the man your father is looking for.”

  “Omigod, the killer!”

  “No! Please, I’m not! You have to tell him that I didn’t kill anybody.”

  Nancy was driving John Mueller to Brooklyn to interview one of the bank managers in the borough’s recent robbery spree. There was overwhelming surveillance and eyewitness evidence to indicate that the same two Middle Eastern–looking men were involved in all five jobs, and the Terrorism Task Force was breathing down the neck of the Major Crimes Division to see if there was a terrorism angle.

  Nancy was unhappy about the second-guessing, but her partner was undisturbed.

  “You can’t take these cases lightly,” he said. “Learn that lesson early in your career. We are in a global war on terror and I think it’s completely appropriate to treat these perps as terrorists till proven otherwise.”

  “They’re just bank robbers who happen to look Muslim. There’s nothing to indicate they’re political,” she insisted.

  “You’re wrong once, you’ve got the blood of thousands of Americans on your hands. If I had stayed on the Doomsday case, I would have pursued the possibility of terrorism there too.”

  “There wasn’t any terror connection, John.”

  “You don’t know that. Case isn’t closed, unless I missed something. Is it closed yet?”

  She gritted her teeth. “No, John, it’s not closed.”

  He hadn’t brought it up yet but this was his opening. “What the heck is Will doing anyway?”

  “I believe he thinks he’s doing his job.”

  “There’s always one right way to do things and multiple wrong ways—Will consistently finds one of the wrong ways,” he pontificated. “I’m glad I’m here to get your training back on the straight and narrow.”

  When he wasn’t looking, she rolled her eyes. She was already agitated, and he was making things worse. The day began with a disturbing news story about the sniper-killing of Nelson Elder, surely a coincidence, but she was powerless to check into it—she was off the case.

  Will might have gotten the news on the car radio or a motel TV, and anyway, she didn’t want to call and take the chance of waking him during one of his rest breaks. She’d have to wait for him to reach out to her.

  Just as she was pulling into the bank parking lot in Flat-bush, her prepaid phone rang. She hurriedly unlatched her seat belt and scrambled out of the SUV to get far enough away to be out of Mueller’s range when she answered.

  “Will!”

  “It’s Laura.” She sounded wild.

  “Laura! What’s the matter?”

  “Mark Shackleton just called me. He wants to meet Dad.”

  Will was climbing, which felt good to him because it felt different. He was ragged from fighting hypnotically flat terrain, and the I-40 gradient through the Sandia Mountains was helping his mood. Back in Plainfield, Indiana, he’d caught six hours at a Days Inn, but that was eighteen hours ago. Without another rest soon he’d nod off and crash.

  When he stopped, he’d call Nancy. He’d heard about Elder’s murder on the radio and wanted to see if she knew anything. It was making him crazy, but there were a lot of things agitating him, including his forced abstinence. He was jittery, humoring himself in a silly voice:

  “Maybe you’ve got a drinking problem, Willie.”

  “Hey, screw you, the only problem I’ve got is that I haven’t had a drink.”

  “I rest my case.”

  “Take your case and shove it up your ass.”

  And he was agitated over what he’d told Nancy the day before, the love business. Had he meant it? Was it fatigue and loneliness speaking? Did she mean what she said? Now that he’d uncorked the love word, he would have to deal with it.

  Maybe sooner rather than later—the phone was ringing.

  “Hey, I’m glad you called.”

  “Where are you?” Nancy asked.

  “The great state of New Mexico.” There were traffic noises on her side. “You on the street?”

  “Broadway. Friday traffic. I’ve got something to tell you, Will.”

  “About Nelson Elder, right? I heard it on the news. It’s driving me nuts.”

  “He called Laura.”

  Will was confused. “Who called?”

  “Mark Shackleton.”

  The line went quiet.

  “Will?”

  “That son of a bitch called my daughter?” he seethed.

  “He said he tried your other numbers. Laura was the only way. He wants to meet.”

  “He can turn himself in anywhere.”

  “He’s scared. You’re the only one he says he can trust.”

  “I’m less than six hundred miles from Vegas. He can trust me to fuck him up for calling Laura.”

  “He’s not in Las Vegas. He’s in L.A.”

  “Christ, another three hundred miles. What else did he say?”

  “He says he didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Unbelievable. Anything else?”

  “He says he’s sorry.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  “He wants you to go to a coffee shop in Beverly Hills tomorrow morning at ten. I’ve got the address.”

  “He’s going to be there?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Okay, if I keep going at this clip and take an eight-hour nap somewhere, I’ve got plenty of time to have a cup of coffee with my old buddy.”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “I’ll stop for a rest. My butt’s sore but I’m okay. Your grandmother’s car wasn’t built for comfort or speed.”

  He was happy he could make her laugh.

  “Listen, Nancy, about what I said yesterday—”

  “Let’s wait until this is over,” she offered. “We ought to talk about it when we’re together.”

  “Okay,” he readily agreed. “Keep your phone charged. You’re my lifeline. Give me the address.”

  Frazier hadn’t gone home since the start of the crisis, and he hadn’t let his men leave the Ops Center either. There was no end in sight; the pressure from Washington was intense and everyone was frustra
ted. They had Shackleton within their grasp, he lambasted his people, but an untrained piece of shit had somehow managed to slip the grasp of some of the best tactical ops men in the country. Frazier’s rear end was on the line and he didn’t like it being there.

  “We need a gym down here,” one of his men groused.

  “It’s not a spa,” Frazier spat out.

  “Maybe a speed bag. We could hang it in the corner,” another one piped up from his terminal.

  “You want to punch something, come over here and take a shot at me,” Frazier growled.

  “I just want to find the asshole and go home,” the first man said.

  Frazier corrected him. “We’ve got two assholes, our guy and the FBI turd. We need both of them.”

  A Pentagon line rang and the speed-bag man answered and started taking notes. Frazier could tell from his body language that something was up.

  “Malcolm, we got something. The DIA tappers picked up a call to Agent Piper’s daughter.”

  “From who?” Frazier asked.

  “Shackleton.”

  “Fuck me…”

  “They’re downloading the intercept. We should have it in a couple of minutes. Shackleton wants to meet Piper at a coffee shop in Beverly Hills tomorrow morning.”

  Frazier clapped his hands together in triumph and yelled, “Two birds with one fucking stone! Thank you, Lord!” He started thinking. “Any outbound calls? How’s she passing the info?”

  “No calls from her home line or her cell since this one.”

  “Okay, she’s in Georgetown, right? Get a bead on all public phones in a two-mile radius of where she lives and check them for recent calls to other pay phones or prepaid cells. And find out if she has a roommate or a boyfriend and get their numbers and call logs. I want to see a crosshair over Piper’s forehead.”

  It was evening in Los Angeles and the heat was starting to dissipate. Mark remained in his bungalow all day with a Do Not Disturb sign on the door. He vowed to do penance for Kerry by fasting but got light-headed in the afternoon and broke into the assortment of salty snacks and cookies at the bar. In any event, he reasoned, what happened to her was meant to happen, so he wasn’t really to blame, was he? The thought made him feel a little better, and he opened a beer. He drank two more in rapid succession, then started on the vodka.

  His bungalow had its own private courtyard hidden behind salmon-colored walls inscribed with faux Italianate arches. He ventured out with the bottle, sat on a lounger and reclined. The air was fragrant with the exotic aromas of the tropical garden flowers. He let himself sleep, and when he awoke the sky was black and it had become chilly. He shivered in the night air and never felt more alone.

  The Mojave Desert was 112 degrees in the early hours of Saturday morning, and Will thought he might spontaneously incinerate when he pulled the car off the road and emerged for a pee. He prayed the old Taurus would start up again, and it did. He’d make it to Beverly Hills with time to spare.

  In the Area 51 Ops Center, Frazier was watching Will’s electronic signature as a yellow dot on a satellite-view map. His last cell phone ping was off a Verizon tower five miles west of Needles on I-40. Frazier liked to limit operational variables and eliminate surprises—the digital hawk-eye view was comforting.

  Traditional shoe-leather work led them to Will’s prepaid phone. A Defense Intelligence Agency team in Washington established that Laura’s apartment was rented by a man named Greg Davis. On Friday night Davis’s mobile phone had received and placed calls from a T-Mobile prepaid phone located in White Plains, New York. That T-Mobile phone had only made and received calls from one other number since it was activated, a number corresponding to another T-Mobile prepaid phone moving west through Arizona on Friday night.

  It was a trivial leap to Will’s FBI partner, Nancy Lipinski, who lived in White Plains. The DIA tappers put both prepaid lines under surveillance and Frazier had it all, wrapped in ribbon in a bow, like a Christmas present. His men would be at Sal and Tony’s Coffee Shop for a nice Saturday breakfast, and in the meantime he’d watch Will’s yellow dot moving westward at eighty miles per hour and count down the hours till the misery was over.

  Will rolled into Beverly Hills just before seven in the morning and did a drive-by of the coffee shop. North Beverly Drive was devoid of traffic—at this hour the whole city had the feel of a sleepy small town. He parked on a parallel street, Canon, set the alarm on his phone to nine-thirty, and promptly fell asleep.

  When the alarm went off the street was bustling and the car had grown uncomfortably warm. His first order of business was finding a public restroom to do some morning ablutions. There was a gas station a block away. He grabbed his overnight bag, got out of the car and heard a sound, his prepaid phone clattering onto the sidewalk. He swore at himself, picked it up and stuffed it back in his pants.

  At that moment Will’s screen blip at the Area 51 Ops Center went dark. Frazier was alerted and did a caustic rant before calming down and concluding, “It’ll be okay. He’s in our box. In a half hour this’ll be history.”

  Sal and Tony’s Coffee Shop was popular. A mix of locals and tourists crammed the tables and booths. It smelled of pancake batter, coffee, and hash, and when Will arrived a few minutes early, his ears were assaulted by loud conversations.

  The hostess greeted him with a gravelly cigarette voice: “How’re you doing, honey? You a single?”

  “I’m meeting someone.” He looked around. “I don’t think he’s here yet.” Shackleton was supposed to be at the back door near the pay phone at ten.

  “Shouldn’t be too long. We’ll have you seated in a couple of minutes.”

  “I need to use your phone,” he said.

  “I’ll find you.”

  From the back of the restaurant, Will studied the room, jumping from table to table, profiling the customers. There was an elderly man with a cane, and his wife—locals. Four smartly dressed young men—salesmen. Three pale flabby women with Rodeo Drive visors—tourists. Six Korean women—tourists. A father with a six-year-old son—divorce visitation. A strung-out young couple in their twenties in tattered jeans—locals. Two middle-aged men and a woman with Verizon shirts—workers.

  And then there was a table of four in the middle of the room that made his palms clammy. Four men in their thirties, cut from the same piece of cloth. Clean-cut, recent haircuts, fit—he could tell from their necks they were lifters. All of them were trying too hard to appear casual in loose shirts and khakis, forcing the pass-the-hash-browns banter. One of them had his fanny pack laid on the table.

  None of them looked his way, and he pretended not to look at them. He shuffled his feet and waited by the phone, keeping them in his peripheral field. Agency boys; which agency, he didn’t know. Everything told him to abort, to walk out the back door and keep going, but then what? He had to find Shackleton and this was the only way. He’d have to deal with the lifters. He felt the weight of his gun against his ribs every time he breathed.

  Frazier felt a spark of electricity coursing through his body when Will Piper appeared on his monitor. The fanny pack was being manipulated by one of the men to track him, and the monitor showed him standing up against a wall beside a pay phone.

  “Okay, DeCorso, that’s good,” Frazier said into his headset mic. “I’ve got him.” He clenched his jaw. He wanted to see the screen fill with the second target, he wanted to fire out the go order and to watch his men take both of them down and bundle them up for special delivery.

  Will explored his options. He did his best imitation of a casual saunter and entered the men’s room for a look-see. There were no windows. He splashed some cold water on his face and wiped himself dry. It was still a few minutes before ten. He left the men’s room and headed straight out the back door. He wanted to see if any of the men made a move, but more important, he wanted to scope out his environs. There was an alleyway running between Beverly and Canon that serviced the buildings on both streets. He saw the back entrances of
a bookstore, a drugstore, a beauty salon, a shoe store, and a bank all within a stone’s throw. To his left the alley opened up into a parking lot servicing one of the commercial buildings on Canon. There were foot routes that would take him north, south, east, or west. He felt a little less trapped and went back inside.

  “There you are!” the hostess called out from the front, startling him. “I got your table.”

  The table for two was near the window, but the view to the phone was unimpeded. It was 10:00 A.M. The men at the middle table were getting more coffee.

  DeCorso, the team leader, had a buzz cut, heavy black eyebrows, and thick hairy forearms. Frazier was complaining into DeCorso’s earpiece, “It’s time. Where the fuck is Shackleton?”

  On his monitor Frazier watched Will pouring coffee from a carafe and stirring in cream.

  Five minutes passed.

  Will was hungry, so he ordered.

  Ten minutes.

  He wolfed down eggs and bacon. The men in the middle were lingering.

  At ten-fifteen he was beginning to think that Shackleton was playing him. Three cups of coffee had taken their toll—he got up to use the men’s room. The only other person inside was the old man with his cane, moving like a snail. When Will was done, he left and noticed the bulletin board beside the pay phone. It was a paper quilt of business cards, apartment-for-rent flyers, lost cats. He’d seen the board earlier but it hadn’t registered.