The Directive

by Matthew Quirk

  I knocked on his door, hard. He answered it with half his body hidden. He let me in, then laid his gun down on a side table.

  “What’s up, man?” he said. “Any word on those cameras? You want some coffee?”

  “I’ll take a cup,” I said.

  He took a mug down and filled it. I sat at the kitchen table. Jack took the chair opposite and laid his cell phone down in front of him.

  “I need you to tell me everything again, from the top,” I said.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I’m risking my life for you, so just answer the goddamn questions. Now tell me, how did you start working for Lynch?”

  “A referral.”

  “Who?”

  “A guy I knew from Florida.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “I always knew him as Flores. Jeff Flores.”

  “And his number?”

  “I can get it for you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Now? It’s up in my office. In my old cell phone. I have to find the charger.”

  “We’ll get it before I leave. I need every time you met with Lynch. The tick-tock on the Sacks approach. Every address. You know his real name?”

  “Hold on. Why are you asking me all this?”

  I stood up. My chair skidded back.

  “Because someone left a fucking bullet in my bedroom this morning. Because Annie’s going to leave me if this doesn’t stop today. Because you’ve ruined my life. How’s that? I deserve some answers, and I’m going to get them.”

  “Was it Lynch?”

  “Just answer the questions, Jack.”

  “I’m sorry you were dragged into this, but you can’t keep me in the dark, Mike. Did they threaten Annie?”

  I laid the bullet on the table.

  He stood and moved closer to me. “You’ve got to trust me, Mike.”

  “Trust you? There’s no one I know better, and no one I trust less.”

  “We do this job and nothing bad will happen. You have to believe me. I swear. We do it, everyone will be fine.”

  “How are you so sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “These guys sent you to the hospital.”

  “Squabbling is only going to hurt us, Mike. We need to focus on doing the job and getting out of this.”

  “Wait. How are you so sure?”

  “Because I know these guys. Because—”

  “You’re absolutely positive?”

  “Yes.” He was trying to reassure me, but he’d just given away his own game.

  “You asshole,” I said, my voice cold, my body numb, in shock from what I was beginning to understand. “I was right all along. You were in on it. That first night.”

  I’d always known that Jack had the potential to be one of the great confidence men. In the old days, I often thought that he could do something beautiful, ingenious, something like art, if he would only finally get his head clean. This was it: the long con, the calculated, expert play I’d always known he was capable of. It had been as good as I dreamed. There was only one problem: I was the mark.

  He held his finger across his lips and looked down at the phone, suddenly afraid.

  They were listening.

  I walked over to Jack and put my hand on his shoulder. It might have been a consoling gesture, but then I turned and, holding his shirt, brought my arm across his neck as I stepped behind him. I dragged him off the chair, back on his heels toward the bathroom.

  I turned the shower on as high as the water would go and shoved Jack in, tripping him backward over the tub. I turned up the radio on the counter and blasted music as the room filled with steam.

  No one could hear us. No bug would survive that water.

  “You set me up,” I said. “You were working for them from the beginning.”

  “No, Mike,” he said. “I told you I was honest. It was the truth, but then they came after me. I had no choice.”

  I grabbed his soaking shirt and shook him hard.

  “Stop lying!” I shouted.

  “Fuck you.” He punched me hard in the cheek. I didn’t let go.

  “My whole life. My job. Annie. It’s all falling apart because of you.”

  “Some part of you wanted in. You can’t con an honest man.”

  “You’re blaming me?”

  “That’s the problem. It is all about you. There are a million guys better suited to pull this off, so why are they so set on you? They set me up just to get to you, Mike. You dragged me into this.”

  His gall was unbelievable, his willingness to not only pervert the truth, but flip it completely.

  “Don’t you dare,” I said. “Is that why? Are you behind this whole fucking thing? Is everyone working for you? I’ll kill you.” I shook him harder, banged his head against the edge of the tub. He shut his eyes and wrinkled his face as he started crying.

  “I’m sorry, Mike. I’m just a piece of shit. I tried. I really did, but they caught me out. I can’t change, Mike. But you have to know that none of this was supposed to happen. No one was supposed to get hurt. And no one will. We just need to do the job, and we’ll be free and clear. Let’s go back and figure something out. We can fix this.”

  Oh Christ. I preferred Jack punching me in the eye to this sputtering self-pity.

  “I’m done with you.”

  “They’ll kill me, Mike. You know that. You’ve seen them.”

  “I’m not buying it anymore, Jack.”

  “We need to go out there and walk this back. If they find out that you know this is a setup, it’s my life.”

  “No, Jack.”

  “If you leave, they’ll know. They heard what you said. They’ve been watching me. I wanted to tell you, Mike, but they would have killed me.”

  “You need some new material.” I turned and walked out.

  As I drove away from Jack's house, I was so keyed up with rage I barely noticed that I was doing sixty on a residential street. I eased the brake down and took a deep breath. I didn’t know what was going on, whether Jack was really just a pathetic piece of bait or whether he had somehow been orchestrating all this, trapping me from the beginning.

  My phone rang. It was him. I should have ignored him, but I’d thought of a couple more items I wanted to throw in his face. I answered as I palmed the wheel to the right through a red light.

  “Don’t even call, Jack. You’re dead to me.”

  “Michael?” the voice asked. It was Lynch.

  “What?”

  “I thought I would let you know that Jack isn’t dead yet, but he will be in, I don’t know, ten to fifteen minutes. I’m no doctor. So you should probably hurry back. Stop fighting this, Mike. It only gets people hurt.”

  The line went dead. I pulled a U-turn. My tires skidded through the gravel on the shoulder, and I raced back to Jack's house.

  The front door was open. As I entered, I could see his feet through the kitchen door. He lay facedown on the tiles. I moved closer. A puddle of blood surrounded him, slowly pooling around his chef’s knife.

  Lynch had cut deep into his scalp. I folded paper towels into a compress, clamped it down on his matted hair, and called 911. He was breathing, drifting in and out of consciousness. The cup of coffee I’d left untouched was still cooling on the table.

  It took about ten minutes for the EMTs to show up. They seemed remarkably calm as they lifted Jack down the stairs and into the ambulance, at least until they read his blood pressure. One said something about a thready pulse and blood pressure of 65 over palp. They started pouring a clear IV into his arm with a thick needle. He opened his eyes for a moment, looked at me, then passed out again. I called my father as we drove.

  At the hospital a surgeon was waiting with two assistants. They took him straight into the trauma bay. I watched through the open door as they transferred him to a table. “Cut his pants, prep a femoral line, and bring me a Cordis and a cutdown kit,” the surgeon said. “We need to get some volume into him
fast.” He lifted a scalpel, then looked back, saw me staring, and barked at an aide to shut the door.

  Someone marched me to the waiting room. I passed the time with the other unfortunates, watching the clock advance toward my appointment with the FBI.

  Chapter 31

  THE PROCEDURE TOOK an hour. They led me to a recovery room, where a woman from billing hovered near the door like a vulture.

  “We have some forms for you to sign if you have a moment,” she said as I walked in.

  I stepped past her.

  Jack was still unconscious, his cheeks white as wax.

  I sat in a hard chair beside him and waited, watching Access Hollywood and counting down the minutes until I would miss my meeting with Lasseter, my only way out of this nightmare.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said as the doctor stepped in. It was the physician assistant from last time. “Is he going to be all right?”

  “Sure. It was just the blood loss. Weird cut, though. The head just oozes and oozes forever. What was he doing?”

  “Making a curry.”

  “Huh. Weren’t you in here before?”

  “You’re probably thinking of someone else.”

  “I don’t think so. You guys should be more careful.”

  “I agree.”

  Jack finally came to, swallowing and wincing in pain as he traced the various plastic tubes going into his body.

  “I’m sorry, Mike,” he said, and cleared his throat.

  “You should be.” I threw my coat on. I had only waited to see him wake up, to make sure that he would survive. “Dad’s on his way. I’m going to settle this, one way or another.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I walked away. The woman from billing followed me down the hallway, saying something about ID and the responsible party.

  “He’s awake,” I said. “Go talk to him. I’m done paying for his mistakes.”

  Seeing Jack lying in a pool of blood convinced me of one thing. This was personal. I had been the target from the beginning. I tried to think through it methodically, but the names came too fast. There was the dark money, whoever was behind it. There was Mark, who I always suspected of being on the hustle somehow, maybe fighting the corporations while shorting their stock. There were all the secrets I had learned, all the corrupt politicians who had fallen as I cleaned up the mess after taking down my old employer. Every case was another suspect.

  I grabbed another cup of coffee in the cafeteria on my way out, then took a walk through the parking lot to clear my head. I still had time to make it to my meet-up with the FBI.

  I saw Cartwright rolling through the hospital parking lot in his old Cadillac Eldorado. My father sat on the passenger side. I met them as they parked.

  “How is he?” my father asked.

  “Fine. They cut him. He lost a lot of blood, but he’ll be out tonight or tomorrow.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ve had better days,” I said.

  “We’re going in.”

  “I just said goodbye to him. He’s awake.”

  My father nodded. Cartwright told my father he would meet him inside, then hung back with me. When my dad was out of sight, he gestured me toward the car. We sat in the front seats. From a false panel under the dash, he pulled out a packet.

  “Here’s the full kit.” There were licenses, credit cards, and Social Security cards.

  “The Socials are clean?” I asked.

  “Yes. Recent deaths, haven’t been reported to the SSA. Their master file is a mess anyway.”

  “The security badges for the Fed?”

  “I’m still working on them. They’ll be fine. You did a good job with the pictures.”

  I bundled up the papers. “Thanks. Can I ask you something?”

  “Probably not. I’ve only lived this long by being uncurious.” I stared at him for a second. He sighed and checked the mirrors. “Fine.”

  “If someone is shafting you. And you can get the law to get them out of the way. And they deserve it, one hundred percent. That would be okay, right? If none of your own people would be involved? No betrayals. Just knocking out an enemy?”

  “This is getting pretty heavy.”

  I looked back at the hospital. “Yes.”

  “There’s no line between black and white, Mike. But you only realize that once you get up close to where it should be. You understand what happens if my name gets brought into it.”

  “I never would.”

  He nodded. “Good. Everyone with any profile works out some accommodation with the feds. It’s another piece on the board. But leave it for the grown-ups if you can. It’s dangerous ground. I appreciate you checking in with me first.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “You should know, once they get their nails into you, they never let you go. They’re worse than the wise guys. They’ll lever you with it, and they make plenty of mistakes. Forget all the G-man stuff, it’s still government work.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Be very careful.”

  I laughed bitterly. I didn’t need to be reminded of that.

  “What’s up?” Cartwright asked.

  “I was thinking of the last man who tried to dime on these guys.”

  “How’d that work out?”

  “Shot in the heart on the National Mall.”

  He raised a finger. “I’ve got something you might be interested in.” He stepped out of the car. I followed him around to the trunk. From a compartment on the side he pulled a duffel bag and started rooting around in it. I saw something that was either a flare or a hand grenade.

  “You carry that around?”

  He ignored the question, then pulled out a vest. “Here you go.” He knocked on the chest with his knuckles. “Chicken plates. This is what the cops use. Level two. Good for everyday wear, will stop most handguns.”

  “I was hoping to avoid getting shot altogether.”

  “Belt and suspenders. Can’t hurt.”

  I lifted it up. It seemed awfully thin. “Put that on my tab, too.” He stuffed everything into a plastic shopping bag.

  “I hate to seem insensitive, Mike. But based on what you just told me…”

  It took me a second: dead men don’t get credit. I reached for my wallet.

  I pulled up outside an Ethiopian coffee shop with free Wi-Fi and took my laptop out of its case. I had a broadband card, but I didn’t trust it for this hacker stuff. I double-checked the Trojans Cartwright had sent by mail first. They had taken root. Then I tried my flash drives. One pinged back. It gave me a great view of the bulletin board in a cubicle, mostly obscured by a very French-looking economist’s enormous head. As he scratched the side of his nose and pondered some unseen spreadsheet, I surveyed the room behind him. There were no passwords I could make out on the bulletin board, just a few business cards and xkcd cartoons.

  I put my thumb over my own webcam. I knew it was silly, but it’s hard to believe when you’re staring someone in the face that they aren’t staring back.

  I felt a certain pride in myself and Derek and our little flash drives. Next I tried my baseball. I watched the little string of periods crawl across my screen and then the pixelated image pop up in a window in my client software.

  It worked. Anyone walking by would have seen me, a guy sitting alone in a parked car, hunched over a laptop, shouting “Yes!” and raising his fist in the air.

  I had eyes in the office that would receive the directive. Jesus, all I would have to do was sit in pajamas at home and shoulder-surf the guy, and I’d be done with all this. At the very least, it would keep Lynch from putting a coin slot in the top of my skull.

  That camera sent back still photos, taken every few seconds to conserve power. I checked out the first batch. The office looked familiar, same paneled walls, same desk.

  Except this time, the desk was clear except for a phone. I pulled up one of the original photos I’d found of the senior vice president’s of
fice. The baseball with the camera in its stand was on the correct shelf, exactly where I had hoped. The computer should have been there, in plain view of the camera.

  I could make out wires on the far right of the image, and a flat surface on some kind of metal mount. It didn’t make any sense until the guy showed up a few frames later. He ate carrots out of a Tupperware dish, then stood facing to the right, half blocking the camera as he typed.

  He’d moved his computer.

  I grabbed the steering wheel and shook it hard in anger. The guy was working at a goddamn standup desk, as if he had a bad back or something—which I guess made sense given that he’d just worked through the biggest economic implosion in eighty years, but still, his ergonomics jones was going to cost me my life.

  That was my main gambit. Unless I pulled a miracle with my other cameras, I was done. I went back to my one good webcam shot, of the exit sign that I had shown Lynch last night. At least this time the lights were on.

  The camera showed the inside of a suite. To one side I could see a glass-walled conference room with a few cubicles around it. The only good view was of a printer, a fax machine, and a few reams of paper. Taped to the wall was a sad 8½-by-11-inch sheet that read “Execute Policy Like a Champion Today” in inch-high letters.

  I had nothing. Lynch had access to these cameras. He must have known by now. He probably knew by this morning. That’s why he had left a bullet in my bedroom.

  There was no easy way to do this job, and Lynch would be gunning for me now. My only out was the FBI. I reached into the back seat, took the bulletproof vest out of the bag, slipped it over my head, and strapped it on tight.

  Chapter 32

  THE WASHINGTON FIELD Office of the FBI was in Judiciary Square, next door to the US Attorney’s Office from which I had unwittingly lured Sacks to his death.

  I drove a route along the Metro Red Line on my way down, doubling back over bridges and turning randomly until I was certain I’d cleaned any tails.