"There's more to it than that, Striker," he continued, digging into the sundae with a long spoon. "Your way works great — within limitations — and yes, it's permanent. But it just takes care of the symptoms, not the problem itself. The organization still stands, and it just promotes others to fill the positions you've caused to be vacant. With this investigation we can clean the slate, not just the hoods, but the legitimate businesses they support, the phony charities they run, the pimps they control, the politicians they own..."
"And every time you put one of those animals back on the street under witness protection, you are just moving the disease to another part of the country." Bolan sighed, sitting back in the booth. "You can't change these people, Hal. All you're doing is paying a monthly stipend for them to start all over again. I don't know if any amount of testimony is worth that."
"Striker," Brognola said, steam from the fudge rising from his spoon, "by keeping the Giancarlos alive, we can do more good with this one investigation than your guns have ever done. Doesn't that mean something? Besides, I'm not going to ask all that much of you this time."
Bolan looked around the diner to see if they were attracting attention. In the heat of their discussion, their voices had been raised, and it was quiet in the small place in the middle of the afternoon. The pair of truckers drinking coffee at the counter, however, appeared to be caught up in their own road talk.
Bolan meant every word he had said to his friend, but he had to admit that the man had made a few points. "What do you want?" he asked.
"I know how you feel," Brognola answered, "but I don't know where else I can go with this." He put down the spoon beside the half-finished sundae and went back to the club sandwich. "We're ninety percent in agreement with you on the Pallonatti thing. It probably was just a fluke. But that ten percent scares us. We can't afford to let the investigation fall apart this close to the end. Grand Jury hearings, trials, sentencings, backup investigations and indictments are coming real strong right now. We can have this wrapped up in a year or so //our witnesses stay cooperative... and alive."
"I think I see what you're getting to," Bolan replied. "If the Pallonatti killing wasn't a fluke — and that's a big if — it means witness protection has been cracked. And there's only one way to crack the system — leaks in the department itself."
"Exactly. You operate outside of the departmental structure. No one's likely to know you. You can poke around without rousing a lot of suspicion or departmental paperwork. And I always know, of course, that I can trust you."
"This is a little out of my line, Hal."
"I can give you a few rookie agents," Brognola continued undaunted, "plus Joan Meredith. There're only a handful of people who have any possible access to the witness protection files...a little surveillance might turn up any problems in that area. I'll try and keep you away from the witnesses themselves."
"Could you get me wiretaps?" Bolan asked.
"One way or the other," the man replied.
"Have you thought about relocation?"
"Yeah," the Fed answered. "And we might do it later. But right now nobody wants to relocate if it was a fluke, plus we hate to push the budget for the same reason. Also, if we're leaking on the inside, the relocation would leak, too. You finished?"
"Yeah," Bolan said, and they slid out of the booth. Brognola paid the cashier for the food, getting a receipt for his expense voucher.
As they walked out into the warm October afternoon and climbed into Brognola's rented Ford, Bolan wrestled with his conscience. Despite the big Fed's insistence, he couldn't help but feel that protecting the Giancarlo family for the purpose of hooking bigger fish was a huge mistake. Mafiosi breathed larceny as if it was air and committed murder as casually as most people canceled the newspaper. Yet Brognola had been his best and most dependable friend over the years, and the man's concerns were ones Bolan took seriously. If only it didn't rub so damned hard against the grain.
They took highway 53 and headed north toward the Lewis Lockport Airport, where a Justice Department plane waited to fly them to Washington.
"You know," Brognola remarked after several minutes' silence, "witness protection does a lot more than pay cheap hoods seventeen hundred dollars a month. There are lots of innocent people, victims, we've given a new lease on life to after their testimony. People whose lives wouldn't be worth a nickel otherwise. If there's a hole in the system, they're going to be left without protection, too."
"And by the way, there's another package for you under the front seat."
Bolan leaned down and pulled out a leather bag from under the seat. Inside was the combat harness containing Big Thunder, his .44 AutoMag, and the Beretta 93-R, his surgical instruments for removing the human cancers from the body of mankind. They'd always served as the arbitrator in his disputes with underworld scum, and never once had he had reason to question the finality or justness of their decisions.
"So, what do you think?" Hal asked.
Bolan pulled the Beretta out of its webbing, instinctively checking the load. "I think you've got me against my better judgment," he returned, fixing his friend with hard eyes. "But once I'm in, it's on my terms." He slid the automatic back in its holster. "I make my own decisions."
"I wouldn't want it any other way."
2
Ken Chasen watched the racquet ball bounce just out of his reach, then heard Bert Kaminsky's echoing laughter mixing with the sound of the balls slamming against the wall up and down the court. His timing was just a second off, his reflexes just dulled enough that his entire game was thrown out of sync. He had too much on his mind.
"Whoa!" Kaminsky yelled, running up to slap Chasen on the back. "That's game! I can't believe I finally beat you."
Chasen forced a weak smile. "I guess every dog has his day," he commented as he surveyed the delight on the face of the older, slighter man.
Kaminsky pulled off his soaked sweatband and used it to dry his face. "I prefer to think that my game has finally caught up to yours," he replied, "a fact I shall prove to you the next time we meet." He looked at his watch and made a face. "Oh God, if I'm not out of here in ten minutes I won't live to play again. Let's hit the showers."
Chasen followed him off the brightly lit court, the last in a whole line of courts in the basement of Justice, and they headed for the locker rooms near the exit. He was nervous now, really nervous, his hand holding the racket in a deathgrip to keep from shaking.
"Any movement on that Teamsters thing?" Kaminsky asked as they entered the white-tiled, brightly lit locker room through the swinging doors.
"We're still taking depositions," Chasen replied. "It's going to be a while yet."
They passed rows of gunmetal-gray lockers, turned down the next-to-last row that was reserved for the Justice Department lawyers and stopped before the doors that had their names taped on the front.
"If we want to docket that case this century," Kaminsky said, "we'll have to build some kind of fire under this thing."
"Hey, boss," Chasen said, sitting on the long bench in front of the lockers, "the whistle blew at five o'clock. Let's save it for the morning."
"You sound like my wife," Kaminsky said, sitting next to Chasen after opening his locker. He struggled out of his knit shirt. "Sure you won't join us tonight for dinner?"
Chasen noticed Kaminsky's clothes hanging in the locker, just like always. He bent down to untie his shoes. "Like to, Bert," he said, "but I promised Marie and the kids I'd take them to a movie. She told me that if she had to listen to one more three-hour Supreme Court discussion, she'd divorce me. I don't think we've done anything that wasn't business related for the past six months."
"I heard that." Kaminsky looked at his watch again, then pulled off his shoes without untying them. He grabbed a towel out of the locker and started toward the showers. "I'd better get a move on," he said.
"Right with you," Chasen said.
Kaminsky moved off, leaving Chasen alone by their lockers. In the
silence, distant echoes drifted through the vents, and showers sounded like a spring rain heard through a window.
Chasen sat for a moment, his heart pounding in his chest. It was stupid to be so nervous, he thought. He looked up and down the aisle, then reached a shaking, sweaty hand toward Kaminsky's locker. Everything he had lived by up until that moment was about to go out the window. Every ideal he had ever held was about to be just so much spit in the wind. All for what — a little sex and adventure, a few moments of illicit excitement, a stroking of his middle-aged ego? It didn't make sense no matter how he looked at it, but there he was, shaking like a leaf, getting ready to impugn the security of the country he loved.
The locker pulled wide open, and Chasen quickly got to his feet. Kaminsky's suit hung there neatly. He went for the jacket, his incredibly unresponsive hand reaching for the wallet in the inner pocket. He found it and jerked it out, nearly pulling the suit coat off the hanger.
Calm down... calm down! This wasn't a big deal. Nobody but some scum would get hurt, and then it would all be over. Life would go on, and the whole thing would be forgotten in a week. So why was his heart beating so loudly that he feared Bert could hear it in the shower?
He fumbled open the wallet. Kaminsky was the attorney general's liaison with all the other departments, and was the only man entrusted with the computer codes to all the files in the department.
Chasen opened the flap in the billfold part of the wallet, where he had once seen Kaminsky look to remind himself of a particular computer password. Chasen didn't need access to all the files, of course. There was only one he was interested in.
Two men, talking loudly and laughing, entered the locker room. Chasen froze, unable to move, his fingers stuck in his boss's wallet. The footsteps came closer, the men's conversation centered on Justice Department politics.
His breath caught in his throat, and he closed his eyes tightly, waiting for the inevitable discovery. But the men turned into an aisle several rows before his, and he was temporarily safe.
Chasen took several ragged breaths, then tore back the leather flap. Quickly he pulled out a small, neatly folded piece of paper and he sat down on the bench, putting the wallet beside him. With trembling hands he unfolded the paper.
A long list of names filled the page. A shaking finger slid down the list, stopping abruptly on the words: WITPRO — NEWLIFE. He read the words twice, three times, then hurriedly refolded the paper and put it back in the wallet.
Though witness relocation was Chasen's specialty, the major concern of the department he worked in, he actually knew very little of how the process worked. As a precaution, no one in the department ever actually knew where a witness would be put. The details were all handled on an as-needed basis through channels outside the government, and only the WITPRO file, accessible only at the highest level, provided a list of where witnesses could currently be found.
And now Ken Chasen had joined that select group.
He stood and quickly jammed the wallet back into the suit coat pocket, slamming the door to Kaminsky's locker when he was done. Taking several deep breaths to calm himself, he then stripped off his clothes, grabbed a towel from his own locker and hurried to the showers, meeting Kaminsky on the way out.
"There you are," his boss said as he dried his hair. "If you hurry, I'll walk out to the parking garage with you."
"You'd better go," Chasen replied. His voice sounded odd to him, a trifle hoarse. "I forgot some papers. I'll have to go back up to the office."
"Now who's worrying about work after the five o'clock whistle?" Kaminsky said, his pale eyes dancing playfully.
Chasen desperately searched his reeling brain for a snappy comeback, but couldn't think straight. Instead he merely smiled weakly and entered a shower stall.
The steaming-hot water filled the stall with a vaporous haze, almost an enveloping fog. He soaped himself, but this time the sudsy lather and the gushing water didn't make him feel clean. At any second he expected Kaminsky to come charging back to the showers, demanding to know why Chasen had looked in his wallet.
But it didn't happen.
He stayed in the shower a long time, not wanting to see Kaminsky again today, afraid that his behavior would give something away. He waited for ten, then fifteen minutes, time enough for his boss to have dressed and left three times over. When he finally got out, his body was bright pink from the hot shower.
He dried in the shower room, then walked back to the lockers to dress. No sounds assailed him now. The place was deserted. Even his heart had slowed its pounding.
As he pulled his suit back on, he realized that it could still all end here. If he never used the information he'd acquired, no harm was done. But, as always, the dream broke on the reality of the videotape they had made of him with Yvette, or whatever her name was. He thought about the dissolution of his marriage and the ruin of his career on Capitol Hill, and realized that if he didn't take the next step, he'd merely be another body thrown on the scrap heap, another promising career shot dead before its prime.
Someone had once told him that he'd rather be a has-been than a never-was. Now, as he shoehorned into his loafers, those words came back to him. Sure, he'd use the password he'd stolen. At this point he'd do anything to save his image. He hadn't worked his whole life and graduated eighth in his class at Harvard and eaten governmental shit for the past ten years just to throw it all away over the lives of a few cheap hoods. There was nothing wrong in what he was doing. Anybody would do the same thing in his shoes.
Wouldn't they?
He swung the locker closed, its sound reverberating through the entire basement like a solitary outcry. He walked out of the locker, past the Marine corporal at the checkpoint, and back into the building proper, taking the elevator up to the offices on the fourth floor.
The main door of his suite of offices was marked: Witness Protection and Relocation. It was locked, testifying to the staffs quick weekend getaway. He used his key, moving into the darkened suite.
Instead of going to his own office and the computer terminal in there, he opted instead for that of his colleague, Chuck Davis. Somehow he'd feel better running this through someone else's machinery.
After using the phone to dial himself into the main trunk feed, he quickly called up the witness protection file, using his newly acquired password, NEWLIFE, to force the secrets of the files out into the open. When the password actually got him into the secret file, he was surprised to feel a pang of regret. He realized that he'd been hoping the attempt would fail, but that success was being forced upon him.
The computer prompted him for names, its cursor flashing impatiently. With shaking fingers he tapped out four names on the keyboard: Perezzi, V.; Ottoni, M.; Barberi, F.; Giancarlo, S. Quickly and without conscience, the machine coughed up four aliases and addresses, in four widely separated states.
He copied them down on a scratch pad, tore off the sheet and folded it and put it in his shoe. He picked up the phone on Chuck's desk and dialed from memory the number of the Econolodge on the outskirts of the city — a place he had gotten to know well over the course of the past two months.
"Econolodge, Washington," came the voice.
"Five-eighteen, please," Chasen said, the number ringing almost before he finished saying it.
Yvette answered on the third ring. "Darling, is that you?"
"I've got it," he said simply. "I'm on my way."
"Good luck, my..."
He hung up on her, then immediately wanted to redial and apologize, but forced himself not to. No matter how badly he tried to think of the woman, he had a difficult time blaming her for the things that had happened.
Ultimately he could only blame himself.
Feeling a guilty sense of excitement, he dialed home and told his wife that he'd be working late again tonight.
* * *
Security-locked doors were the specialty of the Econolodge. Security-locked doors and the indoor swimming pool. Beyond that, the m
otel was a cheap place in a bad end of a bad town. Just the kind of place to be chosen for romantic trysts because the guilty lovers figured no one they knew would use it. So much for originality.
Chasen walked down the hallway toward 518, feeling betrayed, disgusted and excited all at the same time. Yvette was the most incredible woman he'd ever known. She loved with total abandon, giving everything of herself to him as if he were the only man on earth. After eight years of marriage and two kids, Marie's brand of companionship and quiet love couldn't hold a candle to one hour with Yvette. It scared him to think that he quite possibly was capable of selling out his country to her even if the videotape didn't exist.
He reached the door to room 518 and hesitated before knocking. This was it, though. Too much had gone past for them to carry on as before. He'd deliver the information, pick up his tape and walk out for good and all. This time, he resolved, he would break the string.
When she opened the door, her eyes were moist, slightly red from crying. Her blond hair was loose, gently caressing her shoulders. "Oh, Ken..." she said breathlessly, throwing open the door and drawing him inside.
Before he knew what was happening she was in his arms, her body warm and yielding as she clung to him for dear life. "My darling," she cried into his shoulder. "I'm so sorry for all this. I feel so cheap... so dirty, I..."
"Shh," he whispered, lost in the fragrance of her hair, the way her pelvis undulated gently against him, arousing him despite his intention of walking right out. "It's not your fault, baby."
She loosened her embrace and held him at arm's length, looking into his eyes, her body lush under the low-cut, knit dress she wore. "Do you really mean that? Oh darling, it was so awful. They forced me to put that camera in here, I... wish..."
"Why?" he asked, following her from the small entry into the bedroom.
She sat down on the bed, kicking off her shoes. "My... brother had been in trouble and needed legal help. I borrowed a lot of money that I couldn't p-pay back."
The Killing Urge Page 3
