Outlaws

by Tim Green

  Chapter Eleven

  "What do you mean, it's not going through?" Striker said angrily into the phone. He was talking with General Lamont Parker at the Pentagon. Parker was putting a hold on the delivery of ten thousand army surplus World War II grenades that Striker had arranged to be delivered to Uganda.

  "This kind of thing isn't going to be easy anymore. Bill," Parker said. 'The word has come from high up that any weapons transactions that have anything to do with the CIA are to be put back through the agency's general inspector before they can happen."

  "You said 'high up.' How high?" Striker asked. "I'll give Dick Simmons a call and have him straighten this out."

  "It's way up," the general said. "I don't even know how high. Some people think it goes all the way to the president. You know his fetish for taking the 'covert' out of CIA."

  Striker wanted to say he bet it didn't go any higher than Garbosky himself and that the president didn't have a thing to worry about with an asshole like that at the helm of covert operations. CIA agents around the world would soon be wearing scarlet letters so that they couldn't even think of doing anything in secret. Only the most autocratic, anal-retentive, narrow-minded asshole could actually head up covert operations and destroy it at the same time. They had the perfect man. Striker kept quiet about that, though. He did, however, bother to rage on to General Parker a little more. He knew they were listening, and anything but a tirade after learning that his life's blood was being cut off would seem peculiar.

  When he was done telling the general what a lackey he was and how the whole country was going to the dogs. Striker hung up the phone and allowed himself a grand smile. Garbosky would probably be giggling to himself somewhere at Langley within the week, thinking he had Striker's nuts in a vise, but Striker was a bit of an actor himself. He wished Jenny could have seen his performance. He'd let Garbosky think he was really making his life miserable. That would put everyone at ease. When he was relaxing on some South Sea island in the near future, having his scotch brought to him on the beach, he'd have to send Garbosky a postcard, and, of course, ask how his wife was doing.

  Cody pulled into the garage and shut off his engine. Jenny's car was gone. That pissed him off. She knew he was due back from mini-camp this afternoon. The one time he did finally get in touch with her over the phone, he'd told her he wanted to take her to dinner the night he got home. What did she think that meant?

  Cody took his bag from the trunk and went inside the house. The alarm wasn't on, and that made Cody think that maybe Jenny had just gone out for a minute to the store. On the kitchen table was a jumble of mail. None of it was opened. That was typical. The damn girl couldn't even go through the mail. He went to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. He needed to dull his nerves a little. His knee was sore as all hell. He was tired, and his whole body ached. Getting the call when Biggs went down was good, but it had its price. Well, at least he'd have a contract now. It probably wouldn't be much, but it was a job, at least for another season.

  Cody sat down at the table with a sigh and cracked open the bottle. There was a lot of junk in the mail: proxies from some of his remaining stock holdings--he never opened them, credit-card applications, and solicitations for magazines and financial services. Then something caught his eye. It was not a regular letter. It had a government seal on the return comer. It was from the IRS. Cody was mildly disturbed. That could never be good news, a letter from the IRS. He opened it and read. He read it again. It made him more nervous. They wanted things from him. The letter wasn't easy to understand. There were form numbers and terms that he hadn't heard of. He picked up the phone and dialed his tax lawyer and agent, Marty Cahn.

  After having Cody carefully read the contents of the letter to him, Marty said, "Well, 1 don't think it's anything to get concerned with right now. We've been doing things the right way. The only thing that bothers me is that we've sent them a lot of this stuff already. Remember the letter we got from them two months ago?"

  "Yeah," Cody said, "that's what I was thinking."

  "Well," Marty said, "send me a copy of that letter and I'll get right on it.

  Don't worry about it. This is my job. Hey, you've got to be pleased with getting some reps in mini-camp. I read about it in the paper. I was going to call you tomorrow."

  "Yeah, I don't like to say I'm glad Biggs blew out his ham, but... I'm glad."

  "How did your knee hold up?" Marty asked.

  "You know, all right," Cody said. "I'm on Motrin. I'm looking forward to getting signed so I can get some Butazolidin, something heavy-duty. I think it will help me move a lot better, but I don't want to ask until the contract is signed."

  'That's smart. Any word on how long Biggs will be out?" Marty asked.

  "Not for sure," Cody replied, "but I think it's pretty safe to say thai il. Ey won't be using him much in the beginning of training camp."

  "Good. Well, I've already got a call in to the front office, so I imagine we'll get you signed up pretty soon."

  'Yeah, I just hope they don't use me for a camp body," Cody said, fishing for reassurance.

  "They won't do that," Marty said. "I'll tell them not to bother if that's their plan. We could make a hell of a mess for them in the papers if they did that. There is some value in all the fans you've got around this town. People can stomach an old guy getting cut or not re-signed, but taking a hometown favorite and using him as a camp body is outright rotten. I really don't think they'd ever do that."

  "I hope not," Cody said. "Hell, if Biggs can't come back, they'll need me."

  "I know that," Marty said, "and I'm sure they do, too. Now listen, don't worry about this IRS thing. Just get me the letter."

  "Okay," Cody said. "Thanks."

  Jenny looked at the clock and stepped on the accelerator. She wanted to be there when Cody got home. Her trip to San Antonio had taken longer than expected. Opening up a bank account wasn't as easy as one, two, three. She changed her mind several times as she sat there in the downtown office of Home Bank, but she had remained. Striker's words about being careful rang out in her ears even now, but she was smart enough to handle herself. For all his instructions over the past few weeks. Striker's paramount message to her had been to rely on your own intelligence and resources. Espionage was like a complicated game where you had to be thinking five moves into the future. She figured that her money, once in a bank, could then be wired to an overseas account. That was real security. Striker would be impressed. She knew that, and she wanted to impress him.

  It wasn't that she thought Striker was more intelligent than she. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. But surely her lover had a vastness of experience that she could barely comprehend. She respected that experience and his intellect. She wanted to show him that she was no fool, that she had learned his lessons and taken them one step further. Except for fifteen thousand dollars she'd stuck in her bag for spending money and expenses, Jenny had deposited everything in the bank and made arrangements to have it transferred once she established an overseas account. With the money in an Austrian bank, all traces of it would be lost.

  While she was in San Antonio, Jenny also hired a lawyer and opened a safe deposit box. She gave a senior partner in one of the city's oldest law firms a ten-thousand-dollar retainer for the next five years. His only job was to make certain he received a phone call or a certified letter from her on the first of each month. If he wasn't contacted by her, there were instructions and a key in her file on how to proceed. Jenny had documented Striker's plan in its every detail, both in writing and on audiocassette. If Striker thought that his message about trusting no one stopped with himself, he was dead wrong.

  She'd written out everything she could think of in her manuscript. She imagined there'd be much more she could add in the weeks to come. Already, she knew that Striker could come and go from his apartment without the CIA knowing about it. Because they watched him, and he had established a pattern of coming and going each day that they had come to expect, he wou
ld sometimes go out at night when they thought he was asleep. The building was heated during the winter by steam that came from the university's steam plant. The substation was two blocks away, and there was a tile-lined tunnel that ran between the substation and the basement of the high rise. Striker had a key to the steel door that sealed the tunnel, and he could come and go underground as if it were his own front door.

  She didn't know exactly where the plutonium was going, but she knew that she would be meeting a man in St. Martin who was a strict Muslim. Striker had told her that she would be wearing a veil. He was teaching her certain rules of behavior for her exchange of the second pit for two million dollars in cash. The man, he'd told her, would be put out because he had to deal with a woman, so it was important she keep in her place. She knew she would be staying at the Oyster Bay Hotel. She had the code words. She had the times.

  She had the places. The money would be temporarily stored in a deposit box at the Kroner Bank on the Dutch side of the island. She knew she probably couldn't destroy Striker. No one could do that. But if he crossed her, she wanted to make certain he would feel her sting.

  Jenny pulled up tight to some guy who was blocking the passing lane. She leaned on her horn. The guy still didn't move, so she downshifted and shot past him on the shoulder in a swirl of dust and blaring homs. She wanted to be home for Cody. She didn't need any problems from him right now. She had already tested his patience by being gone while he was in mini-camp. In three weeks he would be going to the team's training camp in San Angelo, and she would have the complete freedom she needed to board a plane for St. Martin, where she would deliver the pit. In the meantime she would make Mc a lot easier by appeasing her husband and making things look as normal as she possibly could. That was another thing she'd learned from Striker. He was fond of telling her that consistency was the ultimate camouflage.

  Even though she was still married to Cody, and even though Striker was elusive about their future together, Jenny was beginning to feel an elation she hadn't felt since she'd landed what she thought was her big role in the Western feature several years ago. Now, like then, she was certain that a new and exciting path had been opened in her life. It was an unexpected relief to finally unchain herself from the vicious sycophantic cycle of chasing producers, directors, and casting agents from party to party. It hadn't worked. That was as simple as it was. Once she was presented with an alternative, Jenny finally saw her situation for what it really was: she was a halfway decent actress whom no one was going to take a chance on. She was already thirty- one, without even a B or C movie credit to her name. Like her husband, she was old in her profession.

  Her new dream was to live out this incredible odyssey with Striker and then flee to some foreign country like France or Australia. After years of frustration, and lately, stagnation, Jenny Grey was finally back in control of her life. Striker had come along and presented her with the opportunity of a lifetime. The life she had with Cody was quickly fading away. It was simply meant to be.

  When she walked into the house, Jenny's cheerful hello was met with a scowl.

  "What the hell?" Cody growled.

  He'd gotten up from his seat and stood in a menacing way. There were five empty beer bottles on the table, and she had no way of knowing if that was all of it. Jenny was behind the eight ball. She got contrite.

  "Cody," she said warmly, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him on the lips, "1 am so sorry. 1 thought you said you weren't getting back until after dinner."

  "I said I wanted to take you to dinner," Cody said, softening a little already because of her meek attitude and caressing hands.

  "I missed you, baby," she said in a husky whisper before kissing him passionately on the mouth.

  Cody shifted his weight from his bad knee to his good one. Jenny began to lightly grind her hips up against him until she felt him respond. Cody, although by no means an amateur, was crude and rough compared to Striker. Then again, Jenny could think of no man who wasn't when compared to Striker. She got hot just thinking about him. Cody had no idea what she was thinking. He pulled her clothes off and took her there on the kitchen table. When Jenny gave it to him, he didn't bother asking why, where, or when he just took it.

  As she lay flat on her back with her buttocks squeaking back and forth on the polished surface of the kitchen table, Jenny stared at the light fixture above her. She thought about many things, none of which had anything to do with the man on top of her. She mouthed out a few obligatory groans and grunts, but her heart was miles away. One of the reasons she didn't really feel all that bad about planning to leave Cody was that he didn't even have a clue that things had gone so wildly wrong. He thought that if he could elicit a few groans from her while he slammed her on the table, then take her out to dinner, that everything would be fine again, just like in high school. He talked about high school sometimes and the way things were. She really couldn't stand it. She was so far from the girl she had been in high school that she didn't even recognize herself sometimes. She was much more sophisticated now. She'd come a long way. That was the problem with Cody. She knew he would be just as happy driving a Yugo to work as a Mercedes. He'd be just as happy eating at Papa's Ribs as he would at the Four Seasons or drinking sweet tea as he would Moet. He talked about coaching high school players one day. High school. It was inconceivable to her, being married to a high school coach. It would be a complete humiliation. But it wouldn't surprise her if that was really what Cody wanted. He had no ambition.

  Cody arched his back and thrust one final time. He grasped for the table's edge, and the empty beer bottles crashed to the floor. Two of them broke. Jenny thought about pancake-breakfast fund-raisers, chaperoning Saturday night dances, hot Friday nights outdoors under the stadium lights, and getting excited when his team beat the other team of kids from the town next door. As he pulled out of her, she shuddered beneath him. He didn't notice. That didn't surprise her. The truth was that Cody Grey would probably be just as happy without her.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was easily Madison's finest moment as a trial attorney. The closing argument she'd given to the jury resulted in a half-hour deliberation before they came back with not-guilty verdicts on every count. Dr. Brayson '. He feeble but distinguished octogenarian, had turned to her with tears in his eyes and hugged her with all his might. He told her that he wished his wife could have met her, that she had always had a great appreciation for women of fine character and intelligence. That was the ultimate compliment Madison knew the doctor could pay, that his wife would have loved to meet her. It was the reverence that the man had for his wife, even now that she was dead, that had given Madison that extra surge of emotion in her closing argument as well as throughout the trial.

  It was a crushing blow for District Attorney Van Rawlins. The blustery Republican had put a lot of eggs in this conviction basket. He had told everyone, from his religious-right followers to the press, that the doctor would be serving at least some time in jail,- it was simply a matter of how much. At the doctor's age, he'd reminded everyone, almost anything would be a life sentence. Even Madison would admit that under the letter of the law it was unusual that the doctor wasn't at least convicted of involuntary manslaughter, reduced from voluntary because of his mental state at the time.

  But Madison had been able to do one of those things that is rare in the life of a trial lawyer. She had convinced a jury to nod and wink and give a verdict that flew in the face of the facts. It wasn't that she asked them to disregard the law. Arguing any case on pure emotion was a mistake for rookies. Although she argued the emotional side of this case with overwhelming fervor, she also gave the jury just a sliver of rational possibility with which to hang their verdict

  Madison took great care to explain to the jury that even where there exists the malicious intent to kill someone in cold blood, if that victim is already dead, there can be no murder. It was a remote principle that Madison remembered from a case in law school where a burglary
suspect shot a policeman his accomplice had already killed. The second gunman was acquitted based on the same principle: you can't murder a corpse. Madison had paraded expert after expert across the stand, each one admitting that, in theory, the doctor's wife could have already been dead.

  Even the god-inspired nurse who had caused the ruckus had begrudgingly admitted on the stand that she could not be entirely certain when the wife died because her monitors weren't being watched when the doctor locked himself in the room with her. No one got back to the monitors until a full thirty minutes later, so no one could say for certain what had caused the wife's death. Madison coupled this with the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. This gave the jury all they needed. They freed the doctor to live out the rest of his sad life in relative peace.

  Madison held a press conference and answered all the questions with as much humility as she could muster. As she wrapped it up, she wondered if her father would see her in her moment of glory on CNN. She knew he would be proud. She'd have to remember to call her mother and tell them to turn it on. When the last camera light had finally been extinguished, Madison left through the back door and walked down a long marble corridor to the judge's chambers. Walter Connack's chambers were everything Iris DuBose's weren't, right down to the smell of the old leather-bound tomes that filled the towering shelves.

  "Congratulations, counselor," the judge said in his booming, baritone voice, holding out a thick, flat hand for her to shake.

  The judge was an enormous man with heavy jowls and rolls of skin at the back of his neck like a basset hound. Besides being one of the few people Madison had ever seen who had to stoop to get through a normal doorway, he was the most senior and most respected judge in Travis County. His closely cropped Afro was almost entirely white, but despite his stem voice and his age, he had a remarkably friendly countenance in the privacy of his chambers.